Volume 11 | Issue 32 | Number 3 | Article ID 3980 | Aug 08, 2013 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Separate and Unequal: The Remedial Japanese Language Classroom as an Ethnic Project 日本の補習言語教育と市民権 民 族的課題としての第二言語教室 Robert Moorehead education until they enter high school, at which time students are sorted into academic and The economic downturn of the Great Recession vocational schools with differing curricular has largely brought an end to the wave of emphases and degrees of prestige (LeTendre, ethnic return migration of Japanese South Hofer, and Shimizu 2003; Shimizu 1992, 2001; Americans to Japan, a wave that began in the Shimizu et al. 1999; Tsuneyoshi 1996, 2001). late 1980s. By 2012, the number of South However, the presence of immigrant children is American residents in Japan had dropped by challenging this Japanese educational model of more than a third, contributing to the shrinking equality and inclusion. of the foreign resident population in Japan to the lowest level since 2005 (Ministry of Justice To meet the needs of immigrant children, 2013). This emigration wave from Japan has Japanese public schools have created separate been encouraged by growth in the Brazilian JSL classrooms for students who require economy and by financial incentives from the remedial language training. These classrooms Japanese government for Japanese South break with Japanese educational practices by Americans and their family members to leave pulling students out of their homeroom classes the country. However, despite these changes, for remedial lessons, instead of having all the number of non-Japanese children in students complete the same lessons together. Japanese public schools who require remedial Teachers contend that the JSL classrooms help in Japanese remains high. While the provide more than remedial instruction—they number of Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking also serve as sites of refuge for immigrant children in Japanese-as-a-second-language children, providing them places to relax from (JSL) classes has dropped, the number of the challenges of adapting to the Japanese Chinese- and Tagalog-speaking children language and culture. receiving these classes has increased (MEXT 2013). I examine the JSL classroom at Shiroyama 1 Thus, Japanese public schools, like their Elementary School, a public school in central counterparts in other countries, continue to Japan that has more than 50 immigrant face the responsibility of preparing immigrant students. The great majority of the school’s children for their futures in Japan. This project immigrant families come from Peru, with of citizen-building is occuring in a Japanese smaller numbers from Bolivia, Brazil, China, classroom setting that emphasizes the equality and the Philippines. The school’s Peruvian, of all students, and a strong sense ofBolivian, and Brazilian students are the third- collectivity and mutual interdependenceand fourth-generation descendants of Japanese (Tsuneyoshi 2001). Professional norms in emigrants who settled in South America in the Japanese education further dictate that schools early twentieth century.2 Nearly 60 percent of must provide all students with similarthe immigrant students at Shiroyama 1 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF Elementary attend remedial JSL classes, while where these children learn to read and write in the other 40 percent are deemed to have Japanese. Success could enable the students to sufficient Japanese language capacity to be be mainstreamed into their homeroom classes, mainstreamed. Asking how the JSL room has where they could participate more fully in the been integrated into the educational and social school’s citizen-building project. However, fabric of the school, I examine the connection failure could isolate the students in the JSL between the JSL room and the school’sclassrooms, limiting their ability to improve homeroom classes, and the school’s plan for, their command of the Japanese language and to and delivery of, JSL instruction, including the close the academic gap between them and their preparation of JSL teachers, the content of JSL Japanese classmates. Such a project would lessons, and teachers’ reactions to the JSL prepare these immigrant children for life on program. I also analyze the impact of the Japan’s social and economic margins, where school’s JSL instruction on immigrant students’ the children’s parents are already firmly academic development, and the implications for entrenched. their future ability to integrate into Japanese society. In the following section, I provide an overview of my field site, including details on My analysis reveals that the dominant practice Shiroyama’s foreign population and on my of Japanese public education and the new research methods. In subsequent sections, I (since 1992) practice of the JSL classroom are examine the ethnic projects of Japanese public competing ethnic projects that reflect education and the JSL classroom, and provide a particular conceptualizations of the children’s summary analysis. future lives as members of Japanese society. I am thus amending Omi and Winant’s (1994) BACKGROUND concept of the racial project, which they define as “an interpretation, representation, orShiroyama is a working-class district of a city of explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to 75,000 people in central Japan. The district’s reorganize and redistribute resources along … primary industry consists of auto parts and racial lines” (p. 56). I substitute the term electronics factories, which employ thousands ethnicity for race to better fit the Japanese of workers, including Shiroyama’s immigrant context, where notions of group membership population of roughly 700 people. Many of 3 extend beyond race, to include shared ancestry, these immigrant workers are Nikkei, or culture, and nationality. In so doing, I am foreign nationals of Japanese descent. Nikkei foregrounding the role of ethnicity in the immigration to Japan was made possible by the distribution of school resources and inImmigration Control and Refugee Recognition teachers’ explanations of group dynamics (cf. Act of 1990. This law created a long-term Omi and Winant 1994:56). I also highlight the resident visa specifically for the Japanese classroom’s role in the construction of Japanese diaspora, with whom the Japanese state has citizenship and the co-construction of Japan’s sustained ties through decades of support for ethnic others. ethnic associations and cultural institutions (Takenaka 2004, 2008). Since the law’s This analysis serves as a cautionary tale of the passage, hundreds of thousands of Nikkei have risks of failing to educate Japan’s immigrant migrated to Japan from South America. By children. The outcomes of the school’s JSL 2007, the number had peaked at nearly program likely foretell the future lives of the 394,000 residents, up from only 3,600 in 1985 JSL students who choose to remain in Japan as (Statistical Research and Training Institute adults, since the school is the primary site 2010). 2 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF In Shiroyama, the Nikkei population isaccelerated by growth in the Brazilian predominantly from Peru. It is estimated that economy, and by a Japanese government offer roughly 70 percent of the Peruvian Nikkei in of ¥300,000 (approximately US$3,000 at the Japan are entirely of Japanese descent, and 30 time) for each Nikkei adult and ¥200,000 percent are of mixed ancestry (Japan(US$2,000) for each spouse or dependent to International Cooperation Agency 1992). return to South America (Ministry of Health, Japanese emigration to Peru started in 1898 Labour, and Welfare 2009; Ministry of Justice and lasted until World War II, with reduced 2010). Those who received this payment levels of migration in the postwar era. Some became ineligible for long-term resident visas Nikkei can directly trace their Japanesefor a period of three years (Ministry of Health, ancestry back through multiple generations, Labour, and Welfare 2009). When able to find with no history of out-marriage since their employment in Japan, the Nikkei are often in family’s migration to South America. This low-skilled positions with no opportunities for population is phenotypically indistinguishable advancement (Higuchi and Tanno 2003; from native-born Japanese, however, when they Takenoshita 2006; Tsuda, Valdez, and speak, their non-native accents quickly reveal Cornelius 2003). Like labor migrants in many their foreign status. Other Nikkei have weaker countries, the Nikkei also have few ties to Japan, with only one spouse having opportunities to transfer their skills to the Japanese ancestry, at times through a single broader labor market, as they are held back by grandparent—the minimum degree of Japanese their limited command of the language and by descent required for a long-term resident visa. discrimination, from which Japanese law offers Whatever their ancestral ties to Japan, many few protections (Gurowitz 2006). Nikkei find that Japanese treat them as complete foreigners, orgaijin , a largely Chart 1.1 Number of children requiring unassimilable other who is a permanent remedial JSL instruction in public schools outsider to Japanese society (Takenaka 1999). Many of Shiroyama’s Peruvian families migrated in 1990 with plans to return to Peru after several years of work. They have since decided to settle in Shiroyama for the forseeable future, attracted by low-cost public housing and the presence of other Peruvian family members. The fact that the children have acculturated to life in Japan, and often speak Japanese better than Spanish, further encourages the families to remain. However, the current global economic recession has reminded the Nikkei of their precarious position in Japan, as their contract positions Sources: Kanno 2008a; MEXT 2013. were among the first terminated at the start of the recession in 2008 (Higuchi 2010). By the end of 2012, the recession had prompted more Alongside the rise of Nikkei immigration, the than 140,000 South Americans to leave Japan, number of foreign children officially tallied as reducing the population of South American needing remedial JSL instruction has also residents in Japan to 253,000 (Ministry of increased.