The present study explores how scholars working in the field of applied linguistics, language policy and language education might best contest and negotiate the increasingly economics-driven language polices enacted at the institutional levels of schools and workplaces. The study focuses on Japan as an interesting case of incongruence between world-class economic success and sub-standard English education from the 1970s to the early 2000s, followed by the current disjunction between the media discourse on Japan's search for global talent and the reality of many entities still favouring home-educated monolingual male elites. The study, based on primary data resources (e.g. economic statistics, industrialists' narratives, national "globalisation" policies, corporate English language policies), shows that Japanese society has been belying English teaching professionals' unverified expectation that global English capital would lead to personally and nationally rewarding outcomes. By addressing the overlooked relationship between language education and national growth, the study hopes to provide insight into the taken-for-granted discourse on global English capital and language professionals' future direction in the new era of the non-West.