Mr. Sensei to You
Learned Vol. 8, Issue 11
Like every other member of my demographic, my formal introduction to Japanese culture came in the form of Mr. Miyagi, the gruff, wise, older mentor who takes young Daniel under his wing and turns him into the eponymous Karate Kid. The movie presents Mr. Miyagi, and, by extension, Japan as a land of ancient wisdom, honor, tradition, and mystical philosophy-as-self-defense.
And, like every other member of my demographic, I got enrolled in a karate class about ten minutes after seeing the movie in the theaters. I hated it. There were no heart-to-heart conversations about the deeper nature of self and of using mental resilience to move through the world. No, just a lot of getting kicked and lots and lots of push-ups. Like, oh my god, so many pushups.
All of which is a long preface to saying that sensei is not only one of the first Japanese words I learned, it’s one of the first ways I learned to identify my role in Japanese society. I was, and am, Neff-sensei1 in almost every aspect of my day to day life. Which is odd if only because I do not think of myself as a master of anything.
sensei means a lot more than just teacher
And, to be clear, sensei means a lot more than just teacher, but, at the same time, it doesn’t not mean teacher. Clear as mud, right? Let’s break it down. This is from jisho.org:
Sensei is a Japanese word that is literally translated as "person born before another". In general usage, it means "master" or "teacher", and the word is used as a title to refer to or address teachers, professors, professionals such as lawyers, CPA and doctors, politicians, clergymen, and other figures of authority.
In other words, sensei encompasses respect, social standing, function, value, and place in a hierarchical society, while teacher…well, we’ll come back to that.
Japanese, unsurprisingly, has several good synonyms or near-synonyms for sensei. There’s “kyouin” which is used for everyone who works in education, and “kyoushi” for instructor, and even words like “shihan” which is a word reserved for your sensei’s sensei, the one true master of a martial art.
English follows a similar path: instructor, tutor, professor, and even words like coach and trainer all define different roles and methods of teaching. The difference being that none is quite the catch-all that teacher is, nor do they have the sneering, “Well, just look at what the teachers are telling the children!” derision that teacher sometimes seems to have. In fact, this slide into derision feels oddly familiar, almost like we’ve discussed something like it recently…
In Learned Volume 8, Issue 7, Possessive Pedagogy, we learned that an early word for teacher was pedagogue. Originally a term of respect, it has become a derisive term for someone who uses their education to elevate themselves over their students, often contemptuously. Teacher, itself, seems to be undergoing a similar decline based on recent discourse.
we are in the age of truthiness where facts don’t matter nearly as much as vibe
I asked Google: Why does it feel like teacher is becoming a less respectful term? Among the reasons Google’s AI response returned are:
Negative media coverage
High-stakes testing and accountability
Changes in societal values
Lack of support and resources
Boundary issues.
These make a lot of sense. And while Google does provide sources, the caveat in the room is that this is an AI summary designed to provide what it thinks the correct answer is based on exactly how you phrase the question. In fact, depending on how, exactly you ask the question and what your recent search history is, you’ll get different answers. So, to be clear, this result from Google is non-peer-reviewed, “summarized2” from education-adjacent websites like EdWeek, and heavily biased by my grammatical framing.
However, these results feel true to me and, as we all know, we are in the age of truthiness where facts don’t matter nearly as much as vibe, so let’s run with it.
There is a documented and growing anti-education rhetoric being espoused in the U.S. right now. I grew up with a teacher; my mother spent her entire working life as an elementary school teacher. Several members of my family have also worked in education in varying roles. Taken together, from an interested observer, it paints a very bleak picture of the state of education in America. By contrast, here in Japan, education is given a lot of vocal support but surprisingly little funding. So while the senseis are well-regarded, they are overworked, overburdened with responsibilities, and greatly underpaid.
But back to the words sensei and teacher, there’s also a small matter of grammar. Neff-sensei sounds polite, respectful, even, at times, playful. Neff-teacher sounds like someone hasn’t quite gotten the grasp of how we use titles and honorifics in English. The slightly-more-correct Teacher Neff just sounds like someone is trying hard to cover up the problematic Orientalism in their role-playing sim.
So where does that leave us? Does English have a word that contains the scope and respect of sensei? Of course it does. Here are a couple that might fit the bill:
Preceptor, from the early 15th century means someone who is an expert writer and instructor (Hi! It’s me!).
Educationist, a British term for someone who works as a, uhm, teacher at a school.
Inculcator, which is just a fancy word for tutor but which sounds like a role requiring a mask and a red lightsaber.
Catechist, an older word for a kind of preacher or minister, but which could be adapted into a new usage.
Docent, a 17th century word that actually derives from the Latin verb docere, which means, wait for it, to teach.
Personally, I’m angling for Inculcator if only because I want there to be an entire series of movies about how much of a badass I am. In the meantime, I’ve got a class to teach.
Stay curious,
Joel
Or Joel-sensei or even, for a few badly confused kids, Joel-Neff-Sensei-san.
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