I'm planning on applying for university/college positions in Japan and would love to hear any advice people might have for increasing my odds of being hired.
I'll be looking for employment either as a philosophy professor (I am not above temporary non-TT jobs) or as a philosophy postdoc. I'm American and my native language is English. I am JLPT N2 certified but cannot lecture in Japanese (I can handle everyday tasks though, like communicating with administrators, emailing, attending school meetings, etc.). I have two publications in reputable journals and by the time I obtain my PhD, I'll likely have at least one more. I have significant teaching experience in philosophy and a TEFL certificate as well. I can graduate as early as summer 2025, depending on whether or not I'm hired somewhere ABD.
Note: I'm not naive enough to think this is a sure thing, and I will be applying to jobs in the US/UK/AUS as well. If you think my odds are low, no need to tell me about how low you think they are; just give any advice you might have for increasing them, even if you think they'll still be low after I implement the advice.
Many thanks!
by CountFront8566
4 comments
I think you have everything needed to be able to apply, although 3 publications seem to be the industry standard. Dumb and obvious answer to your question would be: teaching experience at a university. You mustʻve had experience teaching undergrads since youʻre getting your PhD in the US, but make sure to include that under teaching experience.
Iʻm basically on the same boat as you, except that I only have an MA. After 2 years of job hunting, interviewing, and receiving rejection after rejection, Iʻve finally given up and will be returning home to find greener pastures.
However, Iʻm pretty sure the PhD will boost your employability tenfold compared to me. And the other great thing is that if youʻre outside of Japan, they will tend to allow you to send your application documents by email and even attend interviews online (domestic applicants are forced to used snail mail and attend in-person interviews… zzz).
The odds are low. To work at a university you basically have to be fluent in Japanese, and in the oft-repeated ‘three publication minimum’ mantra, the emphasis is strongly on minimum: that’s a quasi-legal floor that’s applied to part-time instructors handling two or three classes. (I finished my doctoral program with about 20 publications.)
If you are working in a hard-science field or some sort of field in which you’ll be likely pulling in grant money your chances will be better, but, as the old joke goes, the philosophy department only needs pencils.
The TEFL certificate will have no bearing on your case.
Focusing on your goal of getting a job in **philosophy**, then with the information provided, I think:
1. odds of getting a TT philosophy job in Japan are zero.
2. odds of getting a temporary job in Japan in philosophy are low.
3. odds of getting a postdoc are the highest of the things you mentioned.
First, as you stated N2. So, it makes little to no sense for them to hire you at a university where you would need to function in Japanese. So that limits you to universities where they would want you to teach in English… but on that point, they’re going to believe their own faculty with “roughly N2 English” can do it even though they wouldn’t do that for you in Japanese. (So that limits the pool to roughly speaking the elite privates, the former imperial universities, hiroshima, tsukuba).
Second, you didn’t give any indication of where you’re getting your PhD. Japanese universities won’t know the rankings of American programs and this will make it about general university prestige. So people from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale get a sheen where the top places here tend to take them regardless of whether those are the top places in a discipline.
Third, philosophy in Japan is a bit of a niche field where they actually produce more PhDs than they have jobs for of their own. Add to that, Japanese people who get their PhDs abroad and you’re looking at a bad market for applicants. (Roughly true in all humanities in Japan).
Fourth, as alluded below, most places prefer domestic applicants. There’s a much higher chance you’ll flake / find a job elsewhere if you’re not already here.
Best chance would be a postdoc through JSPS which would mean that it’s a net benefit for that university to have you.
Most people who post here are either: ALTs, eikaiwa workers, or university English teachers. So when they give you feedback about teaching at universities, there’s a bit of a skew towards the language teaching market — which depending on the university is treated identically to al of the faculty or is its own ghettoized employment sector.
(I myself have a PhD in a humanity, almost 20 publications at this point, and yet teach English at a university).
As dougwray pointed out, the TEFL certificate will mean nothing to people in philosophy. At worst, if you write it on your CV, they will think you want to be a university English teacher rather than in philosophy.
MA + 3 publications talk is primarily about TESOL and part-time (but derives from a MEXT expectation of the minimum qualifications to teach a university class). In the humanities, a PhD would be largely expected of any teaching even part-time (see the glut production problem above).
Of course, I have looked into the prospects myself (which is one of the reasons why I asked for advice about maximizing my odds, not about what my odds are in the first place). I have seen 4 philosophy job postings on J-REC in the past 18 months which explicitly said that the language of instruction was English and Japanese isn’t required at all, though applicants with some Japanese proficiency are preferred. One of those jobs was a hybrid philosophy/ESL position, which is why I included the TEFL bit, just in case there are more of those. Unfortunately, I couldn’t apply to any of them because I wasn’t yet close enough to graduating. Also, only one of them was at a highly-ranked Japanese university. All of this seems to suggest that many of the commenters are more pessimistic than necessary, unless that recent run of job postings was somehow a major deviation from the norm 🤷🏻♂️
Also, the folks who wrote up this 2021 blog post seem like they would know what the prospects are like and they aren’t exactly oozing pessimism:
https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2021/05/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-philosopher-in-japan.html
This said, univworker’s odds ranking is spot-on, at least ordinally: TT odds are low (I am aware of this, obviously, but I also don’t think they’re zero), non-TT odds are a bit better, and postdoc odds are the highest.