Jan 11

CLAIR Magazine “JET Plaza” series: Austin Moore (Yamaguchi)

Article/Journalism, Japan Local, LifeAfterJET, Return on JET-vestment Comments Off on CLAIR Magazine “JET Plaza” series: Austin Moore (Yamaguchi)

Each month, current and former JET participants are featured in the “JET Plaza” section of the CLAIR Forum magazine. The January 2013 edition includes an article by Austin Moore, a former Monbusho English Fellow (MEF), the forerunner to the JET Programme. Posted by  Celine Castex (Chiba-ken, 2006-11), currently programme coordinator at CLAIR Tokyo.

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“Sometimes I joke that back when I began what quite unexpectedly is turning out to be a lifetime in Japan, the local men carried swords and wore topknots.”

Austin Moore was born and brought up in a house that was built in 1830 in a small town of Massachusetts. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1984, he came to Japan to work as a member of the Monbusho English Fellow Programme in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Three years later, he moved to Tokyo to join the organization which is today known as CLAIR. Austin has been working for the Japan Intercultural Academy of Municipalities in Shiga Prefecture for the past twenty years. He is also the head of the Historic Preservation Society of Hino town, where he lives in a house that dates back to Edo period.

Adoption Of and By Japan

Sometimes I joke that back when I began what quite unexpectedly is turning out to be a lifetime in Japan, the local men carried swords and wore topknots. While that is more than a small exaggeration, the changes in Japanese society that I have witnessed during these three decades are nearly as significant.

In 1984, immediately after concluding my studies at Eisenhower College and Syracuse University, I was accepted into the Monbusho English Fellow (MEF) Program (preceding JET and run exclusively by the Ministry of Education) and spent almost three years in Yamaguchi Prefecture – the philosophical birthplace of modern-day Japan. There, for the first year, I had the distinction of being the only American employed by the prefectural education board and, as such, visited most every public high school in the prefecture, as well as numerous junior high schools.

It was the very beginning of July when I arrived in Yamaguchi. My supervisor was a kind man who spoke extremely good English – the only one in the office who did. But a week into life as an MEF, my supervisor, my ‘life-support system’, left for a month-long training seminar at Tsukuba University. And so it was that I promptly learned to breathe on my own.

My job title was Assistant English Teacher Consultant or ‘AET’ for short. School visits were usually referred to (by the 134 of us distributed sparingly across the country) as ‘one-shots’ because return engagements were rare. Each class was a one-time-only opportunity to give pupils a glimpse at American culture and hopefully spark/reignite their interest in studying a foreign language for which the majority saw no practical use. And in many cases it was the first chance for the schools’ Japanese teachers of English to share their classroom with a non-Japanese instructor.

I recall estimating that by teaching an average of four different classes of 30 pupils at four different schools 40 weeks out of the year, in just 12 months’ time I had stood in front of approximately 20,000 pupils. If after three years I had been able to run for public office and my former pupils were of voting age, on name recognition alone, I would have had a reasonable shot at being elected! Many of the AETs around the country were in a comparable situation; the few who had what was called a ‘regular school’ were the envy of the program. But I for one was always happy that I had such broad exposure to the local population. It was one of the best social immersions that one could hope for.

Coming from a relatively small town on the northeastern coast of Massachusetts, living amidst cultural history was nothing new. As a small child, I spent many hours alongside my father (who was president of the local historical society) sifting soil at an archaeological dig searching for relics from the Salem Village witch hysteria; but in Yamaguchi one didn’t have to pick up a shovel. There were pre-Meiji Restoration artifacts under foot, or in broad view, just about anywhere one chose to look.  This had a great impact on me as I developed a totally new personal measuring stick for human civilization. Prior to coming to Japan, the oldest thing I’d ever seen first-hand was from the 1700s.  In America, that was OLD!

Gradually, I began spending as much of my free time as possible visiting places where historic events had taken place, developing an appreciation for Japan’s architectural styles, and increasingly feeling the desire to make a small piece of this country my own.

Twenty years later, after being fortunate enough to be part of the development of CLAIR and the JET Programme, as well as the Japan Intercultural Academy of Municipalities (in Shiga Prefecture), I found what I suppose may one day be referred to as ‘my calling.’ I bought a house built circa 1868 which was owned by three generations of one of the area’s wealthy merchant families. It had been vacant for over a decade but thanks to the fine materials and techniques used in its construction, was in reasonably good shape.

Restoration began with roof repairs and the introduction of modern plumbing and wiring. After six months of weekends ‘camping’ at the house, I moved in. No doubt the neighborhood – consisting of twenty homes, was wholly unprepared for what has happened since.

In 2004, of those twenty homes, four (including mine) were unlivable and two were used only when the owners returned home during the O-bon holidays. Today, the situation is very, very different. All but one of these has been or is being repaired. And the owner of the one ‘holdout’ is all but committed to transforming his family’s old home into a museum showcasing twelve generations of lacquer making. In addition, no less than five other families have taken steps to restore the outside of their homes making them match more comfortably with the surrounding townscape. Watching all of this unfold has been both surprising and inspirational.

Non-Japanese in Japan often feel that they have not, and will never be, accepted into the local community. For me, it is quite the opposite. If anything, I find the degree of acceptance and the accompanying long-term responsibility to, at times, be almost overwhelming. Just four years after moving to Hino, I was asked to assume leadership of the town’s Historic Preservation Society; and with trepidation, I accepted. Together with several other ‘younger’ members, the group has transformed itself into an increasing vocal actor in town affairs. And now, thanks to the trust and generosity of its supporters, it has its own headquarters in an Edo-period house on the main thoroughfare, close to the town government building.

Back in Massachusetts, ironically the colonial-era home that my parents bought and painstakingly restored is now threatened with demolition in the name of ‘development.’ How I wish that a Japanese fan of American history could have bought it and been welcomed into the community the way that I have been.