“Make Japan Great Again” #6_Data Analysis❷

A Philanthropic Scholarship Program and Transnational Youths’ Yaritaikoto for “Social Good”

19 min readMay 30, 2022

This is an excerpt from my 81-page anthropology thesis titled “‘Make Japan Great Again’: An Emerging Class of Transnational Youths and Their Yaritaikoto for ‘Social Good’.”

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6. The Disparity between the Foundation and Scholars

6–1. Yanai Scholars’ Struggles to Find and Pursue “Altruistic Yaritaikoto”

While some scholars might find the administrators’ individualized advice helpful for practicing “altruistic yaritaikoto,” many others struggle to do so mainly due to societal factors they cannot readily overcome — namely, Japanese and US education systems, familial and peer pressure, recruitment practices, and migration policies. Throughout the interviews, I witnessed the administrator and Chairman Yanai’s genuine expressions that they want to help society through this program. In the discipline of anthropology, however, ethnographic research focuses on behavioral impacts, rather than psychological intentions (Shankar 2020b). Hence, I sympathetically put the Foundation’s seemingly good intentions aside in order to examine students’ lived experiences and reported impacts.

In this section, I will illustrate how and why Yanai scholars struggle to practice “altruistic yaritaikoto” by exploring narratives of four specific scholars — Arisa, Mayuko, Ao, and Devin. The first two students emphasize difficulty in finding and pursuing their yaritaikoto regardless of how selfish their motivations may be. Meanwhile, the latter students demonstrate the inherent dilemma in pursuing their “altruistic yaritaikoto” under capitalist values of maximizing profits and maintaining higher class status. While contextualizing their backgrounds and college experiences, I intentionally changed information that could potentially identify my informants (e.g. class year, school type, academic and career fields, etc). By paying particular attention to the students’ career-related decisions, I dissected the process of developing “social-good” yaritaikoto into four steps: 1) discovering yaritaikoto in general, 2) pursuing unique yaritaikoto, 3) committing to “social good,” and 4) getting a job for “altruistic yaritaikoto.”

6–2. Disengagement with both “Social Good” and Yaritaikoto

Arisa: Private high school → Graduate from Liberal arts college → US finance

“I don’t think I can meaningfully contribute to your research,” said Arisa as soon as she joined the Zoom call for our interview. She continued, “I’ve never lived my life trying to improve society like other scholars do.” After telling her that my research looks at all forms of engagement with “social good,” including the lack thereof, I asked her about her experiences with the Yanai admission process. Without much pause, she responded:

Of course I said I was interested in social business to alleviate poverty in my application, but I told an over-exaggerated story, if not a lie, in order to get this scholarship. To be honest, I just wanted to be the CEO of a company and work hard in a beautiful office. I showed my interest in social betterment because the Foundation says they want to support people with that kind of goal, and so did my high school. So I thought that kind of person would succeed and be appreciated. All in all, I have always made my choices for my career.

Her complete disinterest in “social good” may sound surprising given that the scholarship program explicitly aims to support students who desire to help people rather than chasing their selfish desires. However, a handful of my interviewees shared a similar sentiment towards “social good.”

Even some scholars who got admitted through the new admission process, which allegedly places stronger emphasis on “social good” than the previous one, unapologetically articulated their disengagement from altruistically helping people. Along the same line as Arisa, another student in her cohort reflected on his casual interactions with other scholars: “When we hung out in person, we were like ‘Global leader? Oh that’s bull shit LOL.’ So I kind of figured there is a disconnect between the Foundation’s mission and scholars’ real experiences.” This student’s narrated event with other scholars demonstrates that some scholars, if not all, openly acknowledge their lack of genuine interest in grandiose acts of “social good,” which the Foundation promotes through its website and application materials. Even though I informed one of the administrators about such student sentiments, he leniently responded: “Those students will eventually realize there is no happiness after chasing selfish desires. I don’t think the Foundation can make them learn that.” Despite this diversion from the Foundation’s intended outcome, administrators still showed no willingness to intervene in the status quo.

While recalling her interactions with the administrators who encouraged her to pursue her yaritaikoto without worrying about “social good,” Arisa opened up about her lack of yaritaikoto in general. She admitted that she has been chasing what the general society considers laudable because she had no idea what she wanted to do. When I asked her why she thinks she cannot find yaritaikoto, she reflected on social expectations she received during her childhood:

Because my father is an over-achiever who has led a career that people would praise as “impressive,” my extended family members have always asked me, “Are you going to the University of Tokyo since your dad graduated from Kyoto University? … In the case of my elementary and secondary education, many of my peers went straight to the affiliated university, worked for major trading companies, and became housewives after a few years. So I was instilled with this mindset that career success was the foundation for happiness.

Under such circumstances, she continued, the availability for academic and professional options was highly limited, and exploring her interests in arts was out of the question. Calling her childhood environment conservative, she shared her jealousy for those who have managed to flee such societal expectations. Moreover, despite her resentment toward her own obsession with objective prestige, Arisa admitted that without her excessive concern about others’ opinions, she would have no intrinsic motivation to work hard. For her, internalized competition with others, particularly with talented Yanai scholars, has provided positive inspiration to dream bigger.

Arisa’s self-identified inability to consider her own yaritaikoto closely exemplifies negative symptoms of what Arjun Shankar termed neoliberal curiosity. Shankar (2020b) defines neoliberal curiosity as “a form of curiosity that is instrumentalized toward questions that pertain only to monetary success and value as defined by corporate-State interests.” He argues that neoliberal curiosity increases the gap between what students want to do (i.e. intrinsic motivation) and what they should want to do (i.e. extrinsic motivation). Like Arisa, many Yanai scholars confessed that they had articulated their “social-good” yaritaikoto just because they felt compelled to do so in order to receive the scholarship. By focusing on “emotional values” associated with different types of academic, extracurricular, and professional engagements, Shankar demonstrates that even if institutions remain neutral about students’ decisions and provide students with complete freedom to choose whatever they want to do, dominant social values inhibit students’ willingness to pursue their self-driven curiosity. Likewise, the Foundation’s neutral attitude that counts nearly all endeavors as doing “social good” merely reproduces existing social pressures to pursue objective prestige and material wealth. Furthermore, Shankar’s ethnography illustrates that neoliberal curiosity paralyzes students who desperately seek “what they are supposed to do” due to their “fear of doing anything wrong.” This claim seems especially true for Yanai scholars who have yet to develop their own yaritaikoto, like Arisa, as well as those who desire to pursue non-mainstream academic and career paths, like Mayuko.

6–3. Physical Breakdown and Imposter Syndrome

Mayuko: Boarding school abroad → Senior in Ivy League → Undecided

After taking a year-long break from college after sophomore year, Mayuko decided to change her major from computer science to literature. During the interview, she described her younger self before her gap year as “obsessed with meeting clear goals set by societal values.” Similar to Arisa, Mayuko attributed her past behaviors to familial and school environments:

Since I was little, I lived in an environment where people around me always praised my accomplishments. You get good grades at school; people applaud you. So you work harder and get into a prestigious middle school; people applaud you again and you work even harder. I kept running in this feedback loop of achieving my goals, getting praised, and working harder and harder.

While Mayuko graduated from one of the top middle schools in Japan and got into one of the best universities in the world, the “feedback loop,” which motivated her to overwork herself, eventually damaged her health, making her bedridden for an extended period. She explained: “When I got into college, I thought I was finally free. But I still took five courses per semester and studied all day every day in order to maintain a high GPA. While wondering if I had to repeat this cycle for two more years, I physically crashed.” Yet again, her self-described “crash” resonates with Shankar’s (2020b) description of neoliberal curiosity that drives students to value objective accomplishments over their own well-being. However, as the illness forced her to slow down, she unexpectedly encountered diverse values about “success” on social media and through volunteering. During her time off, Mayuko realized that “there is no need to earn lots of money or seek the societal definition of happiness.”

Even though Mayuko believes she has overcome such capitalist values, she still struggles to follow her authentic yaritaikoto that might deviate from peer expectations, or what she calls “the Yanai standard.” Acknowledging that her opinions are likely misconceived, Mayuko articulated: “Since everyone else is seeking impressive achievements that they can put on their resume, I often wonder how my Yanai peers might judge my career choices.” She further explained that Yanai scholars typically represent “honor students (優等生) who search the ‘right answer’ defined by the society.” She suspected the source of her anxiety to be the tiny pool of Yanai scholars. Despite their diverse fields of interests, Mayuko elaborated, most Yanai scholars come from similarly privileged backgrounds and receive similarly elite higher education. Due to their homogenous environments, Mayuko subconsciously hesitates to pursue her yaritaikoto that would deviate from the Yanai community’s elite norms. In fact, many other scholars similarly struggled to recognize their own ability and accomplishments. During my interview, they shared their unease with directly interacting with other Yanai scholars or even reading newsletters that comedically introduce a few scholars. All of them expressed a sense of insecurity that they are not good enough compared to their “hyper-elite” peers.

As Mayuko reflected on her struggle with pursuing her yaritaikoto, she recollected her first two years in college when she was mindlessly following her peers who hoped to get a job in consulting or investment banking. When she described her resistance against working for those industries, Mayuko insisted that she was doing her best “not to fall into an escape route.” She elaborated upon what she means by popular career options as an “escape”:

I think going into consulting or investment banking without a specific purpose allows you to get away from deeply reflecting who you are and what you really want. On the consulting or finance path, you can easily estimate how much you will earn at what stage of your career. Sure, it may be hard to get in, but once you’re in, it’s a completely safe rail. Although non-mainstream paths may seem uncertain, I often talk with my roommates that it is better to follow one’s yaritaikoto.

By attributing people’s decisions to work in mainstream industries to the fact that they can avoid self-reflection, Mayuko rationalized why she is critical of such career choices. Her emphasis on deeply understanding oneself relates to the program administrators’ advice for Yanai scholars to regularly ponder over one’s identity and yaritaikoto. Moreover, the Yanai community’s value in self-understanding reflects broader Japanese society’s focus on self-analysis (jiko-bunseki) in the hiring practices (Ukai 2007). Similar to Mayuko, several scholars I interviewed resented choosing popular industries without thoughtful reasons. Furthermore, they all insisted on the importance of holding onto one’s own yaritaikoto, rather than getting swayed by others.

6–4. Mindlessly Going with the Flow of Corporate Recruitment

Ao: Public high school → Senior in Ivy League → Japanese education company

Although many scholars mentioned popular career paths as “an escape,” Ao was one of few who actually had a first-hand experience of “falling into the escape route.” By her senior spring, however, she ended up declining a job offer from a management consulting firm, because she too realized the importance of consciously making her own decisions. When a Japanese Harvard graduate referred her to casually chat with their colleagues from a consulting firm, Ao was barely thinking about job hunting since she had just decided not to go to graduate school a few days before. Various consultants she met through this opportunity encouraged her to join the two-day spring internship on Zoom. Ao explained that she took their suggestion “just to gain some experience,” despite her lack of interest in consulting at that time. Her experience regarding the consulting internship highlights how easy it could be to fall into the “escape route”:

Without thinking twice, I simply clicked the links they sent me and took online tests, which didn’t take much time. At the actual internship, I saw a powerpoint slide saying “final selection” [for full-time positions]! Then, I finally realized that I had signed up for the real hiring process without knowing it!! Soon after the internship, the firm set up a Zoom meeting and told me I got the job! I actually wanted to work there, but I also knew that I just went with the flow without making my own choices! [emphasis original]

Ao’s story highlights that her recruiting process was so effortless that she did not even recognize that she had become a job applicant. During the interview, she elaborated on how challenging it was to refuse “going with the flow” because she needed to make little to no effort to secure her consulting position. Ao explained that most Yanai scholars are competent enough to meet societal standards of “success” even when mindlessly swayed by the mainstream: “when you are praised for being ‘successful,’ who would want to step out of the already well-paved career path?” Yet again, her mindless job-hunting experience reflects Shankar’s (2020) theory of “emotional values” associated with certain kinds of curiosity: Lucrative/prestigious jobs, such as consulting and finance, are socially valued, which results in scholars’ unconscious decision to choose occupations that they themselves acknowledge are ineffective in helping the vulnerable. Unless students consciously move against the mainstream, most students end up “getting swayed by what is socially acceptable.”

After weeks of personal reflection, which made Ao believe that she should not accept the unsolicited consulting offer, she began exploring other career options. Yet, she decided to do so at the Boston Career Forum, a Japanese-English bilingual career fair which takes place in Boston every November. Many people in Japan’s study-abroad community condemn this three-day event for exporting Japan’s problematic recruiting practices. (See the footnote for more details.) Despite its notoriety, over five thousands Japanese students seek positions in merely about two hundred companies every year (One Career 2019). Ao also chose the Boston Career Forum “because everyone else was doing it. As an international student, it was literally the only thing [she] knew about job hunting in Japan.” Although she wanted to “consider many other options before committing to the consulting firm,” the alternative opportunity at the Career Forum still provided a highly limited and skewed pool of employers. Many Japanese international students attempt to secure a position during this forum primarily for the extreme convenience it offers — almost all steps for hiring take place within three days in Boston. This convenience is especially beneficial given that international students already have busy schedules, which makes the job search considerably difficult during the academic year. A handful of Yanai scholars mentioned during the interview that they intentionally waited to start their job hunting until after the Boston Career Forum to avoid the temptation to accept convenient job offers. At the time of my interview, however, most of those scholars had yet to find a job that enables them to pursue their “altruistic yaritaikoto.” They regrettably shared their bitter feelings about refusing to attend the Career Forum earlier.

6–5. Refusal to “Help People” Under Capitalist Occupations

Ao continued : Public high school → Senior in Ivy League → Japanese education company

Contrary to scholars who seek to contribute to others through full-time jobs, Ao insisted that she never wanted social contribution during her job hunting process; instead, she planned to continue helping a specific group of Japanese students as an unpaid side project. She explained her rationale for this decision:

When volunteering, the benefit to me, I mean the emotional fulfillment, would remain the same no matter how many hours I put in. However, the moment I help people through hourly-paid work, I would try to maximize profits by lowering the quality of my work or reducing the time I spend on it. I never want to think that way, but I know that I can’t act like Buddha.

Her comment vividly highlights the conflicting values between helping people and maximizing material wealth, refuting Yanai administrators’ idealistic assumption that competent scholars can readily merge their altruistic interests and personal yaritaikoto. Under the capitalist value of conserving or improving one’s socioeconomic status, Ao refuses to merge her paid job and “altruistic yaritaikoto.” In doing so, she intentionally distances herself from the corporate systems that prioritize profits over her morality.

Despite her rebellious attempt, however, she has still taken a regular corporate job that in and of itself does not challenge the status quo. On one hand, her decision to continue helping under-served communities seems a deliberate compromise to pursue her yaritaikoto for “social good.” Yet on the other hand, her preference toward volunteering demonstrates the inherent dilemma in helping people in the neoliberal social system, which tends to prioritize economic capital over human well-being. While many Yanai scholars describe “social good” as helping the vulnerable and critique private corporations that only help the rich become richer, they too desire to sustain their decent lifestyles by seeking a high-status job.

6–6. Hiring Obstacles to Securing Esteemed Jobs for “Altruistic Yaritaikoto”

Devin: Private high school — Graduate from state university — Consulting

Like Ao, Devin held a fairly clear vision of how to help people yet did not end up with a full-time position for his “altruistic yaritaikoto.” Yet unlike Ao, he actively sought such jobs but could not secure one due to structural practices in corporate recruitment. Throughout his senior year, Devin applied for engineering positions; however, his aspiration to work for a high-status global corporation left him with no job offer. As a result, he took a position at a consulting firm — a career that did not exactly match his yaritaikoto. When I asked him how he decided to work for a company that he knew would make him unhappy, he smiled awkwardly and sighed:

I think I just took what was available at that time. I really wanted to work in the technology industry, but I guess I didn’t have enough ability to do so. In consulting, I as a student with a technical background easily met the expectations of recruiters, but in the technology industry, I absolutely lacked networking, credentials, and experiences. They sometimes rejected me because of my skill after interviews. But without decent connections, I couldn’t even pass most of the initial screening for summer internships in the first place. You know, connections are also part of your skill.

In his comments, he too implied a negative connotation of choosing a mainstream career path that does not match one’s yaritaikoto. After he committed to the firm, Devin tried to make sense of his career decision by appreciating his upcoming job as “a paid MBA that teaches [him] business fundamentals and boosts credentials on [his] resume.” In the end, he embraced it as “just a few years of extended education to prepare for his next career step.”

The way Devin narrated his job-hunting struggles in the technology industry reflects structural issues with the “Self-as-Business” metaphor in US hiring practices. In her book Down and Out in the New Economy, Illana Gershon (2017) argues that today’s white-collar job seekers view employment as business-to-business transactions that split risks and benefits between the institutional employer and the individual employee. “When you are a business,” she explains, “you see yourself as a bundle of skills, assets, qualities, experiences, and relationships” (Gershon 2017: 9). Under this Self-as-Business metaphor, for example, resumes function as a marketing document to sell “your self,” just like Devin viewed his consulting position as a resume booster. Additionally, in order to present the self as a bundle of valuable assets, experiences, and relationships, job seekers must display their previous career trajectory as a coherent story tied to a given position (Gershon 2017: 12). This premise fundamentally jeopardizes recruitment opportunities for recent graduates like Devin, who does not have previous internship experiences to demonstrate his competency in new positions.

As Older Sharon (2013) demonstrated, the high expectation to be passionate about work leads white-collar workers to blame themselves for their inability to find a job, rather than structural failures (as cited in Gershon 2017: 215). In fact, some of my interviewees who have yet to discover yaritaikoto, like Arisa, acknowledged the intense discourse around passion could damage their self-esteem because “it makes [them] feel as though they were not trying enough.” Whereas Gershon and Sharone suggest that job-seekers unconsciously dismiss systemic issues that require systemic solutions, many upper-class Yanai scholars, including Devin, recognized their structural disadvantages as an employee. Those who had sought positions in the U.S. especially stressed their inherent inability to mitigate hardships with securing visa sponsorship or finding entry-level positions for which they are qualified.

Despite their diverse backgrounds and yaritaikoto, the four scholars I discussed in this section shared one experience in common: societal hurdles with finding and practicing yaritaikoto that contributes to “social good.” Arisa, who continuously received expectations for objective prestige throughout her childhood, struggles to explore what she wants to do purely out of her intrinsic motivation. Mayuko, whom Arisa envied for successfully overcoming the societal pressure after her gap year, still feels insecure about her non-mainstream yaritaikoto that allegedly does not meet the Yanai community’s elite standard. Ao managed to continue her “altruistic yaritaikoto” through unpaid volunteer work while almost falling into the “escape route” of effortless and thoughtless job hunting. Devin described structural obstacles he had experienced with securing a position that combines his “altruistic yaritaikoto” and his desire to maintain his decent socioeconomic status. These scholars’ narratives disprove the Yanai Foundation’s assumption that individual efforts “to deepen self-understanding with a relaxed mindset” will help scholars discover and pursue their “altruistic yaritaikoto.” As far as I know, all of my 24 informants have worked hard to comprehend and express who they are in order to survive in a foreign county. Yet, only a handful of exceptionally talented — or perhaps lucky — students ended up fullying combining their yaritaikoto and “social good.”

6–7. The Foundation’s Strategies to Erase Critique About the Program

A few Yanai scholars directly criticized the Foundation’s lenient attitude toward its scholars’ disengagement with “social good” because it reproduces existing class inequality in Japan. For instance, Erin, a graduate from a state university, called out the administrators for “just letting those privileged elites run wild (野放しにしている).” The discrepancy between the Foundation’s individualized advice and scholars’ societal struggles reflects what social scientists coined practice theory. According to Linguistic anthropologist Laura Ahearn, practice theorists argue that “[individual] actions are always already socially, culturally, and linguistically constrained” (1999: 13). Ahearn claims that “agentive [or seemingly transformative] acts may also involve complicity with, accommodation to, or reinforcement of the status quo — sometimes all at the same time.” In the case of the Yanai Foundation, the supposedly change-making structures for the scholarship program — such as the complete economic freedom enabled by the financial package and the absolute lack of oversight about individual career choices — reproduce or even exacerbate existing systemic troubles discussed in the aforementioned students’ narratives.

Despite the scholars’ struggles, the Foundation’s vague definition of social good makes any critique about the program irrelevant to both the Foundation and scholars. When I mentioned scholars’ disinterest in “social good,” Mr. Jackson tried to convince me not to evaluate the scholarship program based on the short-term outcomes available today, because it takes “quite a while before we can see any change in society.” He openly told me that he does not expect scholars to contribute to society during or after undergraduate education; instead “it would be wonderful if that happens in five or ten years after graduating, or even anytime in their careers.” On top of the ambiguous description of what counts as “social good,” the Yanai Foundation does not suggest any timeframe for scholars’ contribution to society. This temporal vagueness ends up deflecting any criticism about the program since the administrators can simply respond “oh, our scholars have yet to engage with social change.”

When discussing what the program’s ultimate success would look like, both the administrators and some scholars used the analogy of long-term investment to explain the inherent uncertainty around “social-good” outcomes. For example, Mie, a sophomore at a private university, rationalized her opinion that not all Yanai scholars must contribute to society:

I think it would be excellent enough if 1–2% of those scholars change the world. I say this because the Yanai Foundation invests from a long-term perspective. If you look at it in the long run, you can’t maintain the 100% accuracy rate for your prediction. Kind of like investing! If the Foundation hits a little jackpot in its own portfolio, that brings success to the Foundation.

Her investment framework illustrates two critical points. First, it is fundamentally impossible to predict the long-term performance of the Yanai scholar portfolio with 100% accuracy. Second, as long as the total portfolio (i.e. the student body) is net positive, the Foundation will consider the program successful as a whole, even if just a small number of scholars achieve significant results. Under this framework, the Foundation does not even require every scholar to contribute to society in the first place; thus, critics should excuse the Yanai Foundation for not having all of its scholars accomplish its mission of “social good.”

Armed with the lack of a temporal bound for “social good” and the long-term investment framework, the Yanai Foundation is capable of dismissing any critique about its scholarship program as irrelevant. This phenomenon exemplifies what linguistic anthropologists call prospective erasure. In their highly influential chapter on sociolinguistics, Judith T. Irvine and Susan Gal define erasure as “the process in which ideology … renders some persons or activities invisible. Facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either go unnoticed or get explained away” (2000: 38). Building on the broad umbrella of erasure, Matt Tomlinson and Julian Millie theorized prospective eraser, which “anticipates criticism” and rules out “any meaningfully engaged response at all” (2017: 4). Within the Yanai community, the dominant ideology includes the application requirement to demonstrate “the ability to help develop Japanese society” and the loose request to “do something that is not entirely selfish.”

When I asked critical questions about the disconnect between the Foundation’s mission and students’ lived experiences, the administrators indeed explained away some facts — such as Arisa’s absolute disregard for “social good” and Devin’s reluctant decision to work in consulting. They did so by introducing the temporal ambiguity about “social good” and the long-term investment analogy. As a form of prospective erasure, the Yanai Foundation’s extremely vague approach to “social good” deflects any critical opinions about the program as not contrary to their vision. Thus, unless the Yanai Foundation narrows down its definition of “social good,” it remains impossible to have a meaningful dialogue about how effective the program has been — perhaps, my year-long research might get erased.

Next >> 7. “What Is Your Version of ‘Social Good’?” (Conclusion)