The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme is a teaching program sponsored by the Japanese government that brings university graduates to Japan as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), Sports Education Advisors (SEAs) or as Coordinators for International Relations (CIRs) in local governments and boards of education. Since its founding in 1987, more than 77,000 people from 78 countries (more than 11,000 from the UK) have participated in the JET Programme through its years.

In this lecture, Dr Sharleen Estampador will demonstrate how the JET Programme has been beneficial in changing attitudes towards Japan through grassroots diplomacy, examining the deepened connections and experiences past participants developed over their time on the programme and beyond. Focusing on how soft power was created from the bottom up, Sharleen argues that memory and nostalgia were found to be powerful tools for diplomacy and for a continued positive engagement with Japan, and that a transmigratory form of nostalgia was key to maintaining the connections over time. Furthermore, she will explains how the concept of embodied intersectionality uncovered intersections of race, gender, and culture, giving way to a liminal experience while living in Japan. Using an autoethnographic approach, Sharleen will discuss her experiences as a North American Filipina living in suburban Japan and how her everyday day life while on JET revealed hidden social meanings, contributing to her own nostalgic sentimentality and attachement to Japan.

Sharleen Estampador is a scholar that has published on topics including nostalgia, soft power, intersectionality and Japan, and teaches undergraduate courses in sociology and social anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She has submitted an autoethnographic account of her JET experiences to the Social Identities Journal and have discussed this topic on the Kotatsu podcast. She is the Executive Secretary for the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee and in recent times co-partner of a start-up documentary film company called Flaneur Sensory Productions.

Images from Kenrokuen Garden (right) and the Kanazawa Castle during the Hyakumangoku Festival (left) in the Kanazawa prefecture where Sharleen lived while on JET. © Sharleen Estampador

If you have any questions, please call The Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

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