“Visible / Invisible Japan”: A Guest Lecture for American Psychology Students with EF Education First

EF Education First recently invited our founder, Satoko Ishikawa, to deliver a lecture on Japanese work culture and mental health for a group of American psychology students visiting Japan.

How are work culture and mental health connected in Japan? And how does that differ from what the students know in their home country, the United States? Rather than a one-way lecture, the session was designed as an interactive space to think through these questions together, taking the students’ own questions and insights as its starting point.

From the Visible to the Invisible

The lecture moved step by step through Japanese working life and the values behind it, shifting perspective from the most visible layers of society toward the least visible.

Japan’s long-term employment practices, exemplified by new-graduate hiring and lifetime employment. Workplace hierarchy and its unspoken rules. How people in Japan face stress, and why asking for help can be so difficult. The stigma surrounding mental health, and how far companies are expected to carry responsibility for their employees’ wellbeing — financial, physical, and mental. These were the themes we explored together with the students.

We also introduced how careers in Japan tend to be built not by changing employers, but by accumulating transfers and experience within a single company — and how, in contrast to US companies that typically hire for a defined specialty, Japanese companies tend to select new graduates for their potential and fit with the organization, developing them into generalists through job rotation.

The discussion then widened further: as AI changes employment and the nature of work itself, how do people think about job security and autonomy in their working lives — and which will they choose to prioritize?

In Dialogue with the Students

What left the strongest impression was the students’ active engagement. Drawing on their own experiences of work in the US and on what they had felt and noticed during their time in Japan, they raised many sharp questions and opinions.

In the case-study discussions in particular, each student shared their own distinct values and perspectives. Precisely because these are questions with no single right answer, the differences in assumptions across countries and cultures came into sharp relief — and the session became a valuable time of learning on both sides.

Here is some of the feedback we received from participating students:

“The lecture helped connect many of my experiences in Tokyo with the invisible aspects of Japanese society. Overall, this lecture helped me realize that many tourists only experience the visible side of Japan.”

“The presentation perfectly expanded on and explained the reasoning behind why Japan’s work culture can become suffocating, while also highlighting the benefits of the society’s nature.”

“Our lecture brought lots of insight on the career path for the Japanese lifestyle and how it compares to careers in the U.S.”

Finally, our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Yalcin Acikgoz, who accompanied the group, to the students themselves, and to EF Education First for this valuable opportunity.