Developing Competitive Skill: How American Businesspeople Learn Japanese

Despite a crying need for more Japanese competence in the American business community, bilingual businesspeople are still surprisingly rare. Members of a specially convened focus group—American businessmen in Japan—discuss the reasons why this is so. They include the difficulty of learning the language while employed full-time, suspicion of bilinguals on the grounds that they have gone native, and the negative influence of an international stint on many American corporate career paths. In fact, American bilinguals find their best job prospects with Japanese companies at home or abroad or with American companies in Japan. There are few opportunities waiting for them in American company headquarters. In the future, we need to prepare our young Asian studies majors more realistically for the job market, to demonstrate to corporations the potential rewards of long-range commitment to the Japanese market, and to become more aware of our changing place in the international order.