ABSTRACT
In the thousands of university departments across Japan in which English courses are offered—required or elective—mild-mannered professors toil in obscurity. Their scholarly focus might be the role of prepositions in phrase structure in Chomsky’s generative grammar or the biographical origins of female characters in the short fiction of Henry James. The more obscure and specialized the topic, the better. Traditionally, the thinking goes, anyone can be a generalist and gain knowledge about broad topics, but a scholar should probe subjects that few others understand. Polite, self-effacing, and far more erudite than they let on, these Japanese professors of English are the unsung human infrastructure behind most universities’ language programs and English course offerings. This is because in addition to teaching courses and pursuing their own research, they chair committees, draw up teaching schedules, and coordinate curricula. They work long hours behind closed office doors, rotating from the entrance exam committee to the personnel committee to coordinator of foreign teachers to department chair. When something goes wrong—students complain, a senior fails, a non-Japanese doesn’t show up for work, a part-timer abruptly quits—they take responsibility.
