My recent (but now terminated) participation on LinkedIn provided me a glimpse into how some foreigners—particularly foreigners who are having language-related employment problems in Japan or who want to come here to work but haven’t yet made it—view Japan and its “language problem.”
A complaint I often hear is that it is unfair for Japanese companies to require foreign employees to be Japanese capable. Some foreigners cite the requirement to pass a Japanese language proficiency test as being discriminatory. After all, they are highly educated, speak English, and have extremely valuable technical skills that don’t require Japanese ability, right?
I am not talking about farm or factory workers brokered into Japan from Asia, but rather people seeking work in jobs that call for a high level of education and skill; jobs such as programmer, but physically in a Japanese company, not on a farm in Tochigi or a factory in Aichi.
To my ears, the above type of comment is evidence of both entitlement and linguistic imperialism.
Where did these people get the notion that Japanese companies are obligated to treat them any differently from other employees?
I have spent a few years in Japan (about 50, actually), have had professional interaction with hundreds of companies, and have yet to encounter a Japanese company that operates in English here, or that would consider a foreign employee in Japan incapable of communicating in Japanese to be a full member of their team.
Surprise! The language of Japan is Japanese, and almost everybody here, including me, thinks that’s just fine.
The people voicing displeasure at the language requirement would, as employees, be required to interact on a daily basis with Japanese employees, most of whom are not proficient in English, and that needs to be done in Japanese. Interacting with other employees is part of the job. Without Japanese, a foreigner will not be fully functional.
These disgruntled foreigners need to remember that Japanese companies are made not of computer programs, databases, and hardware, but of carbon-based humans who communicate in Japanese. I suppose an argument could be made that the foreigners could work remotely, but then they don’t need to be in Japan, and that would burst the come-to-Japan balloon that many of these people are floating.
Why don’t Japanese speak English, some might wonder? Well, the short answer is that they don’t need to.
Additionally, although Japan never succeeded at conquering enough countries for long enough to force their language down the throats of many non-Japanese in a lasting manner, the situation with English is quite different. The success of anglophone incursions into countries and linguistic lives all over the globe has fostered a cohort of native English speakers who think that English is a given.
Many they think that having to learn Japanese places them at an unfair disadvantage with respect to native Japanese speakers. Fair or not, they are correct about the disadvantage and just need to suck it up.