The Tragedy of Being Someone Who “Only Speaks English”: A Fine Iron Club Is Useless Without an Ogre to Wield It

The other day, I came across a YouTube video titled “Even If You Speak English, There Are No Jobs.”

It featured a woman around the age of 40. She spoke English fluently and had worked as an instructor at an English cram school.

However, her income was low and her employment was unstable. Wanting a proper job with a steady income, she had apparently started applying to regular companies.

But it was not going well at all.

The reason was remarkably simple.

Almost no company is looking to hire someone who “only speaks English.”

Companies want accountants who speak English, salespeople who speak English, and engineers who speak English. No matter how fluently someone speaks the language, a company has little reason to hire them if they lack the practical experience that actually matters.

She had made a living teaching English, yet English alone could not get her a stable job. The irony is hard to miss.

Someone Close to Me Who “Could Speak English, at Least”

In fact, there is someone similar at a company run by an acquaintance of mine.

She studied abroad when she was young and is said to speak English extremely fluently. But when it comes to actual work, she can do little beyond basic office tasks.

As a result, she has apparently been shuffled from one department to another.

At a foreign-owned company, she might well have been fired long ago.

She can speak English. Ironically, however, it is not her command of English but Japan’s traditional employment practices that have kept her employed.

Perhaps she has simply resigned herself to it, because her stock phrase is, “I can’t do anything.”

Well, she can speak English.

The problem is that the company has no idea what it should ask her to do with that English.

She went to all the trouble of studying abroad to acquire that ability, only for her employer to have no real use for it.

English Is the Iron Club, Not the Ogre

This brings to mind the Japanese proverb oni ni kanabo—“an iron club for an ogre.”

An ogre is already strong, and giving it an iron club makes it stronger still.

Applied to business, the analogy is remarkably clear.

The ogre is practical professional ability. The iron club is English proficiency.

It could be accounting, sales, or programming. First, you need to be an “ogre” who is capable of doing the job.

Add the iron club of English, and your opportunities may expand beyond your home country to the rest of the world.

Yet some people who have devoted themselves solely to studying English spend all their time polishing the iron club without ever developing the ogre who is supposed to wield it.

The club alone is gleaming. It may even be an exceptionally expensive one.

But there is no one to wield it.

A company cannot hire an iron club by itself and put it on the payroll.

The Real Mistake Was the Career Choice She Made Before Turning 40

That said, the woman at the beginning of this article faces a slightly different problem as well.

Teaching English is itself a respectable professional skill. It requires not only language proficiency but also the ability to teach others.

The problem is that, in Japan, there are limited opportunities to earn a stable income using that skill.

Becoming an English teacher at a school can offer a relatively stable career. Instructors at private English cram schools and conversation schools, however, may struggle with low pay and insecure employment.

In other words, this woman’s fundamental mistake was not studying English.

It was choosing a career as an English cram-school instructor—a path with uncertain long-term prospects—and remaining on that path until the age of 40.

In her twenties, she might have been able to move into another industry and build practical experience from scratch. At 40, however, entering an unfamiliar profession becomes much more difficult.

What companies generally expect from a 40-year-old mid-career hire is someone who can contribute immediately.

“I’m good at English, but I’ll learn the actual work after I join.”

That is hardly an easy proposition for a hiring manager to accept.

To her, the English she has honed over many years is probably her greatest weapon. In the job market, however, she cannot find anyone who needs that weapon.

What she finally discovered at 40 was not a lack of English ability, but a failure of career planning.

Develop the Ogre Before Polishing the Iron Club

In Japan, people who speak fluent English have long tended to be seen as highly capable on that basis alone.

But English is ultimately a tool that extends your abilities.

Being able to participate in a meeting in English means little if you lack the expertise needed to contribute to the discussion. Being able to read technical documents in English will not qualify you for the work if you do not understand the technology itself.

Put simply, switching to English does not suddenly enable you to do work that you cannot do in Japanese.

Young people studying English should also think about what kind of work they intend to do with it.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing English qualifications and test scores, but those alone do not guarantee future employment.

The woman at the beginning was not wrong to choose English teaching. But she probably needed to consider much earlier what kind of employment and income awaited her farther down that path.

Oni ni kanabo really is an apt proverb.

Even if you spend 20 years polishing the iron club, the ogre will not develop on its own.

And in the job market, once you reach 40, employers are unlikely to wait when you say, “I’ll start developing the ogre now.”

Ironically, her ability to explain that harsh reality in English may be better than anyone else’s.