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Hi Blog. What follows is a summary of book I endorsed with a blurb on the back cover:
“A conscientious and incisive work by a scholar tracing Japan’s long struggle to reconcile openness and insularity in education policy. More Than an Assistant illuminates how the Assistant Language Teacher framework evolved as part of Japan’s soft power approach to internationalisation — teaching global awareness while maintaining rigid boundaries at home. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand how Japan’s education system mirrors its broader tensions with globalization.”
Recommended reading. Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
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Internationalisation in Name Only: What Japan’s ALT System Reveals About Structural Limits in Education Reform
Book summary of More than an Assistant: ALTs, Inclusion, and the Future of Educational Roles in Japan, by Nathanael Reed
By Nathaniel Reed, Special to Debito.org, March 25, 2026
For decades, Japan has presented itself as an increasingly international society, and its education system has been one of the most visible sites of that effort. Tens of thousands of non-Japanese educators have been recruited into public schools to support English language learning, often framed as part of a broader commitment to global engagement. On paper, this appears progressive. In practice, it reveals a more constrained and carefully bounded model of internationalisation.
The Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) system is frequently described as a success story of exchange and cooperation. After nearly two decades working in and around Japanese public schools, I have come to see it less as a model of integration and more as a case study in how internationalisation can be implemented without altering underlying institutional structures. The issue is not simply how ALTs are treated, but how their role is defined and limited from the outset.
At the centre of this is the designation “assistant.” ALTs are not recognised as teachers, regardless of qualifications or experience, and are positioned outside the formal professional hierarchy. This is not merely a matter of terminology. In Japan, full teaching status is tied to licensure systems that are, in practice, closely linked to nationality and long-term institutional integration. While there are technical pathways for non-Japanese individuals to obtain teaching credentials, these are limited in scope and rarely align with the roles created for international hires. The system therefore recruits international staff into positions that are structurally excluded from advancement.
This is where the discussion moves beyond workplace experience and into institutional design. The ALT role does not sit on a pathway toward professional recognition; it is designed to remain adjacent to it. By maintaining the assistant designation, the system avoids the legal and administrative implications of recognising foreign educators as full participants, while still benefiting from their presence in classrooms.
The commonly cited phrase “ESID” (Every Situation Is Different) reflects how this structure is experienced on the ground. ALT roles vary widely between schools: some are actively involved in lesson planning and delivery, while others are confined to peripheral tasks. This variability is often explained as a cultural or logistical reality. In practice, it is a predictable outcome of decentralised governance. Local Boards of Education retain significant control over implementation, and there is limited national standardisation in training, evaluation, or role definition. Flexibility, in this context, becomes a mechanism through which inconsistency is normalised.
What is often overlooked is that this ambiguity operates within clear boundaries. ALTs may be given informal responsibility, but not formal authority. They may be relied upon in practice, but are not institutionally recognised. The system allows for variation in what ALTs do, but not in what they are.
This distinction matters because it shapes how internationalisation itself is understood. In many contexts, internationalisation implies structural change: the integration of international staff into existing professional frameworks, with corresponding rights, responsibilities, and career pathways. In Japan, the term often operates differently. It refers less to integration than to the visible presence of international elements within existing structures. The system appears globalised, while its underlying design remains largely unchanged.
Legal and administrative frameworks reinforce this stability. Public school teaching positions are embedded within a broader system of civil service employment, certification, and registration that is not easily reconfigured. Expanding full professional inclusion for international educators would require changes not only to hiring practices, but to licensure systems, employment categories, and, more broadly, how membership within institutional structures is defined. These are not incremental adjustments; they are structural questions.
The result is a model of internationalisation that is both functional and limited. The ALT system works in the sense that it delivers visible international presence and supports aspects of language education. At the same time, it maintains clear boundaries around authority, recognition, and long-term integration.
Japan is not alone in facing tensions between international recruitment and institutional inclusion. However, the scale and longevity of the ALT system make these dynamics particularly visible. After nearly forty years, its core features remain largely intact, suggesting that what appears as flexibility or ambiguity may in fact be a stable and deliberate configuration.
This raises a broader question. If internationalisation does not lead to structural inclusion, what is it intended to achieve?
These issues are explored in greater detail in More Than an Assistant: ALTs, Inclusion, and the Future of Educational Roles in Japan, which uses the ALT system to examine how education systems define roles, distribute authority, and maintain continuity even where inconsistencies are widely recognised.
More information about the book is available here: https://a.co/d/0cDB7dsG
(Photos courtesy of Debito)
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8 comments on ““Internationalisation in Name Only: What Japan’s ALT System Reveals About Structural Limits in Education Reform”. Book summary of “More Than an Assistant”, by Nathaniel Reed (Amazon KDP, Global Classroom Author, 2026)”
Interesting article, but it feels like it fell from the ‘noughties’ directly to 2026.
The whole ALT issue is moot now, isn’t it? With the Japanese economy in the doldrums, I see so many ALTs employed through various dispatch companies as opposed to the JET program, and as a measure in reducing costs, they are employing ALTs whose first language isn’t English, which is also a function of the JPY being so weak as to make wages unattractive to native speakers.
Like I said before, Japan lost 25% of its rice farmers in 2025 alone due to ‘natural wastage’. English education issues are deck chairs on the Titanic stuff now.
To be fair the requirement that someone has just to be a native speaker with a bachelor‘s degree in any field to get the job was and still is pure racism. For example, a German national with a master’s or even PhD in English who has 10 years of experience teaching it as a foreign language, will most likely be a better teacher than some random 22 year old native speaker. There are also a ton of stories from native speakers from India, Nigeria, Jamaica, etc. who claim that they never got a chance, because the J gov just wants white and blue eyed „gaijin“ from the US, UK, Australia and New Zeeland, because that‘s their image of „native English speaker“.
They later changed this to „yeah you can be a non native speaker, but you must have spent 12 years of education in an English only institution“, which is still a ridiculous requirement and would still disqualify most PhD holders of the English language (and unofficially they still prefered white native speakers).
I‘m actually quite enjoying the irony of the yen being so weak now that they have to settle for the people they never wanted in the first place.
I mean, the whole system doesn‘t make any sense, student‘s language abilities will not improve by having a native speaker standing in the classroom to pronounce words like a tape recorder, you actually need to hire qualified people and let them design a decent national curriculum based on science and modern teaching methods. The system is like over 30 years old and Japan keeps slipping in English proficiency every year, so cleary something is wrong.
But of course, we can‘t have „gaijin“ decide anything, much less the education of glorious nippon children, so we‘ll continue as before.
It looks like there is about to be a huge shortage of cheap English language teaching foreigners in Japan.
First, the government just decided that you gotta have JPLT to get a ‘Specialist in Humanities’ Visa;
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/04/15/japan/society/jlpt-visa-requirement/
Second, Japanese government isn’t letting anyone who is not already resident in Japan take the JPLT test for the rest of this year!
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/02/18/japan/jlpt-tourist-ban/
The Eikawa and dispatch English teacher business model is about to die!
Easy: the appearance of global engagement + structural exclusion!
Here’s my read of the situation:
“Dear gaijin-san,
If you want to teach in Japan, you must now do so via a managed program (e.g., JET) or arrive here already demonstrating integration capacity (e.g., via JLPT).
Regards,
J-Gov
P.S., eikaiwa-san, your pipeline of unmanaged gaijin is now officially closed!”
Correct for the exception that it will now be impossible to ‘arrive here already demonstrating integration capacity (e.g., via JLPT)’ since the JPLT will not be available to non-Japan residents for the rest of this year (the second link I provided).
So really it’s the managed JET pipeline or those already here.
And that’s the sound of the door slamming shut you can hear.
Next they’ll appease the right wing by attacking NJ residents even further as NJ residents become even fewer.
So now the essential arithmetic is ‘how quickly will Japanese feel the pain from decreasing standards of living as reduced NJ labor participation precipitates economic collapse versus how quickly and deeply the government is prepared to enact policies making life unbearable for NJ residents in order to mollify a populace considering withdrawing support for the LDP in favor of Sanseito because of dissatisfaction over hordes of NJ tourists’?
Well, that didn’t take long!
Next step is to crack down on the NJ sent to Japan by their (Japanese) companies to work here!
https://japantoday.com/category/national/intra-company-transfers-to-japan-tightened-for-foreigners-from-april
With only about 20,000 NJ on these types of visas, they’re sure to be closing down a HUGE loophole in the rules that is presently being exploited by (at the most) a mere handful of illicit users🙄
J-Inc won’t put up with this forever surely?
Here’s some additional content courtesy of Asahi Shimbun:
外国人経営者、5%「廃業検討」 在留資格「経営・管理」の厳格化で
Original article:
English translation is courtesy of GPT-5.2 with me on proofreading duties:
My two-yen: if the actual goal was to weed out paper companies while protecting legitimate NJ small businesses, you’d expect to see something like established operators with clean track records being grandfathering in, or perhaps the creation of a lower threshold + audit pathway for renewals.
But nope!
The sixfold jump in required capital tells me that the J-Gov either didn’t care about the survival of small NJ businesses, and/or viewed their demise via raising the bar to be good governance!
That would be worth a Dejima Award, LOL!!
Best thing about this book coming out when it did is that newer ALTs can get an idea of what “the system” was/is like from the 80s to now.
A huge disappointment that the JLPT will not be made available outside of Japan for the remainder (more than 7 months left!) of the year, but are we surprised? I’ve always maintained that the Japanese bureaucracy wants “internationalization” on THEIR terms, so if it disappears, so be it; it wasn’t wanted nor needed anyway.