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

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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

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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).

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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. From 1991 to its peak in 2008, this Justice 2013). This mass exodus wasnumber grew by more than 400 percent, from

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5,463 to 28,575 (Kanno 2008a; MEXT 2009) school. I also taught remedial Japanese and (See Chart 1.1).4 Thus, in 2008, 38 percent of mathematics, led free Spanish classes on the 75,043 foreign students in Japanese public Saturdays, and accompanied immigrant schools, including Nikkei and other foreign families in social gatherings. I also conducted children, had a sufficiently poor command of intensive interviews with 31 Peruvian and the Japanese language as to require remedial Bolivian parents, and informal interviews with instruction (MEXT 2009).5 At Shiroyama 16 teachers and administrators. I recorded and Elementary, the number of foreign students has later transcribed these interviews, with a increased steadily in recent years, including research assistant performing the Japanese during my fieldwork, when it rose from 43 transcriptions. students in 2005, to 48 in 2006, to 56 in 2007.6 (See Table 1.1.) Nearly all of these children In the following section, I first examine were born in Japan, and all but a few attended Japanese public education, and then the JSL Japanese preschool or kindergarten prior to classroom, as competing ethnic projects. I starting elementary school. Nonetheless, in the explore Shiroyama Elementary’s JSL program 2006-07 academic year, 28 out of the 48 in detail, including the use of the JSL room as a immigrant students were scheduled to leave place to relax, the implementation of JSL their homeroom classes to attend pullout JSL instruction, and teacher resistance to the classes for at least one class period each week. program, before concluding with a summary analysis. Table 1.1. Japanese and foreign children at Shiroyama Elementary School (2005-2007) TEACHING JAPANESE AND IMMIGRANT by parents’ countries of origin CHILDREN

Parents’ The principles of egalitarianism byōdōshugi( ) Country of 2005 2006 2007 and collective communalism(issei kyōdotai Origin shugi) guide Japanese public education. Total Foreign 43 48 56 Egalitarianism directs teachers to treat all Peru 33 34 38 children equally and to instill the same desire Bolivia 5 5 7 to learn in each of them (Shimizu 1992; Brazil 3 5 5 Shimizu et al. 1999; Shimizu and Shimizu 2001; Philippines a 2 1 4 Tsuneyoshi 1996, 2001). This approach China 0 3 2 conceptualizes all students as equal members Japan 749 772 804 of the classroom, entitled to a similar education, with little distinction for students’ a These totals include two children who have individual needs or desires. Inherent to this one Filipino and one Japanese parent and who ethnic education project is a connection to the possess Japanese citizenship. children’s imagined futures as Japanese citizens who are equal members of the nation- From November 2005 to April 2007, I state, and who possess similar rights and conducted participant observation at the responsibilities. Thus, the school seeks to both school. Funded by a Fulbright fellowship, I provide children with human and cultural volunteered full-time as a Japanese-Spanish capital (Becker 1964; Bourdieu and Passeron interpreter, translator, and assistant teacher. I 1990; Schultz 1961) and inform their sense of interpreted during parent-teacher meetings, membership in the larger society. translated messages between teachers and parents, and fielded direct calls to my cell Following the principle that all students are to phone from parents who needed to contact the receive the same education, Japanese public

4 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF schools offer no separate courses for gifted differences (Ōta 1996, 2005; Sakuma 2006; students and little remediation for students Satō 1998; Shimizu 2006). Instead, students try who are not performing at grade level.7 Two to advance at the same time that they avoid exceptions to the rule of no separate courses appearing different by learning the Japanese exist, as students with developmentallanguage and culture. This silence regarding disabilities attend classes in a separateethnic differences reveals a hidden curriculum classroom, and immigrant students who need (Jackson 1968) in Japanese public education: to remedial JSL instruction leave their homeroom fully integrate, students must either be classes for JSL lessons. All homeroom classes in ethnically Japanese or act as if they were each grade progress at the same rate, and from (Kanno 2008a; Sakuma 2006).8 elementary school through junior high, schools automatically promote all students to the next The Amigos Room grade, regardless of the students’ academic progress. The JSL classroom appeared in Japanese schools following a 1992 Ministry of Education The second principle, coordinatededict that allocated funding for JSL classes in communalism, conceptualizes each class as a schools with large numbers of immigrant single, comprehensive, cooperative body (Cave students (Kanno 2008a; Ōta 2002). Under this 2007; Takato 2006; Tsuneyoshi 1996, 2001). As system, teachers identify students who are in Tsuneyoshi (2001:45) notes: need of remedial JSL instruction, and then obtain the parents’ consent for the children to leave class for the JSL lessons. So that JSL This communalism is at the students may participate in as many homeroom foundation of the “Japanese school activities as possible, the students remain in model.” Coordinated communalism their homerooms during lessons that require assumes a tight-knit, self-sufficient, less Japanese language skill, such as music and and homogeneous type of art, and leave during core subjects including classroom/school community, and language, mathematics and social studies. This places central importance on the approach puts much of the students’ academic sharing of communal experience, learning on hold until they have gained a empathy, mutual interdependence, sufficient command of the language to rejoin and other communal values … It their classes, as the students receive fewer dictates, moreover, … that lessons in the core subjects (Kanno 2004, everyone engage in the same kind 2008b; Ōta 2000; Sakuma 2006; Satō 1998; of communal activity together. Vaipae 2001). While their classmates learn new material and develop new skills, JSL students face the daunting task of catching up to them Pulling students out of class for JSL lessons while receiving remedial JSL education challenges this sense of collectivity. However, (Cummins 2000).9 teachers justify this practice by claiming that the JSL students cannot fully participate in Like JSL rooms at other schools in the region, classroom activities, and, as I discuss later, that Shiroyama Elementary’s JSL room is given a the students need a break from attending class. name in the JSL students’ native language. In this case, the school uses the Spanish word The focus on class cohesion encourages Amigos (Friends), written Amiigosu in Japanese immigrant students to assimilate, as it leaves katakana.10 The Amigos Room occupies a no space for classroom discussions of vacant classroom on the third floor, and is respecting or retaining students’ ethnic

5 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF staffed full-time by one teacher, and part-time by another teacher and by the school’s language counselor (gogaku shidōin), who is also responsible for interpreting and translating. Homeroom and assistant teachers also provide occasional one-on-one lessons. The room is sparsely decorated with charts of hiragana and kanji characters, faded tourist posters and maps of Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia, and inspirational poems in Japanese. Despite these decorations, the room feels empty and unused. Other classrooms of the same size hold more than 30 students, while the Amigos Room has only ten desks and a few tables to Peruvian student Ricardo relaxes in the accommodate the one to five students who Amigos Room. attend classes there each period. Bare shelves line two walls, holding only a few stacks of worksheets, in contrast to regular classroom Giving Immigrant Students a Place to shelves which are brimming with books, Relax teaching materials, and students’ artwork. Notwithstanding Ms. Tanabe’s concerns over The homeroom classes are at the center of the her ability to teach Japanese as a second social world of the school, with the Amigos language, JSL and homeroom teachers contend Room on the periphery. Homeroom teachers that instruction is only one goal of the Amigos retain their authority over the JSL students in Room. Another, more primary goal is to give their classes, including deciding when the immigrant students a place to relax so they can students will attend JSL lessons. Thus the overcome the stress of feeling like outsiders in position of JSL teacher is subordinate to the their homeroom classes. A sixth-grade teacher, homeroom teachers, and holds Mr.a Mori, describes the role of the Amigos correspondingly lower status within the school Room in terms of this emotional support: (Gordon 2006). The school principal assigns teachers to the Amigos Room, at times against their wishes. These assignments lead to much The work they (the JSL students) grumbling, as in the case of Ms. Tanabe, a can’t do in the regular class, they teacher who complains for the first two weeks can do in the Amigos Room. But of the school year that she is a music teacher, another point is hāto (heart), the not a Japanese-language teacher, and that she emotional aspect. For … children has no idea how to teach JSL. who really can’t speak Japanese, being in the [regular] classroom is painful, painful, difficult, difficult. But, if they go to Amigos, they can ... relax. In that sense, Amigos is important. That’s an important role for the Amigos Room to play. It’s not just studies, but also the child’s feelings, so the children can relax. A classroom where they can speak

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in their mother language with learn Japanese as to regain their sense of self” other children, and can (Ōta 2000:176, as quoted in Kanno 2004). communicate, that’s good, I think. In the Amigos Room, the students spend much of their time playing, while the teachers offer This view interprets the children’s needs little supervision or direction. An entry in my through both ethnic and linguistic lenses, as fieldnotes captures this pattern, as I describe the need to address students’ feeling of the actions of Yuka, a Brazilian girl in the sixth isolation and marginalization supersedes their grade, and Ms. Maeda, an Amigos teacher: need for linguistic remediation. Like other teachers, Mr. Mori does not describe any curricular connection between his class and the I enter the Amigos Room partway Amigos Room. He says his studentscan through the period, and find … complete homeroom work in the Amigos Room, Yuka sitting at her desk folding but in practice they do not do so. papers. The papers have pre- printed drawings on them, Teachers also explain that, in the Amigos drawings of a toilet, “unchi man” Room, JSL students lose the identity of pitiful (poo man), and toilet paper. Yuka (kawaisō) foreign children who are unable to is folding the papers so that when complete their work (Kanno 2008b; Ōta 2005). you lift up the toilet seat, you see Often silent and detached in their homeroom “unchi man” sitting in the bowl. classes, the students perk up before their JSL She asks me to help her fold the lessons, quickly grabbing their materials and toilet paper roll but I refuse. hurrying to the Amigos Room, where they are reborn, smiling, laughing, and playing with While the children play around, their friends in a mix of Spanish and Japanese. walking around the room and not Ms. Satō, a fourth-grade teacher, notes of her studying, Maeda ... draws 4x6” JSL student, Rafael, who is from Peru: portraits of the children, asking them to stand still for a minute while she sketches a basic outline When he goes to Amigos, his of their faces. Below her finished attitude changes completely. When drawings, she writes each child’s he goes to Amigos, he can relax first name, in cursive script. and speak in Spanish. He can relax, talk to his friends, the atmosphere is completely different. When I attempt to engage the children in a And when he comes to class, he language lesson, or inquire about their work in falls silent and doesn’t say their homeroom classes, the children dismiss anything. my concerns as out of place, since they have followed the teachers’ lead in defining the Amigos Room as a place to play and not to In the Amigos Room, Rafael opens up,study. frequently inventing stories of monsters and boasting of his ability to speak three languages: JSL Instruction Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, which he claims to have learned at the airport during a Like the vast majority of teachers in Japan, stop-over in Brazil. Thus, students “come to the Shiroyama’s teachers, in both the regular and Japanese Language classroom not so much to JSL classrooms, have no training in JSL.

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Japanese teacher credentialing programs do Matsuda, Mitsumoto, and Yukawa 2009; Sato not include lessons on second-languageand Kubota 2012; Uzuhashi 2004; Wang 1998). acquisition or cross-cultural communication However, despite the seemingly intuitive value (Gordon 2006; Kanno 2008a; Okano and of connecting the homeroom and JSL lessons, Tsuchiya 1999; Ōta 2002; Tsuneyoshi 2001; at Shiroyama Elementary little collaboration Vaipae 2001). Teachers also report that at prior between those rooms exists. schools, they rarely had any immigrant students in their classes. This lack of training The Amigos teachers also have developed and experience forces teachers to learn to work almost no JSL lesson plans or materials, beyond with JSL students on the job, with fewphotocopying worksheets. As in JSL rooms at resources to support them. One of the JSL other schools, the Amigos Room’s only written teachers further lacks any teacher training, as curriculum lists simple lessons for complete his primary responsibility is to serve as an newcomers to the Japanese language (Ōta interpreter and translator. 2000; Vaipae 2001). These lessons are irrelevant for nearly all the JSL students, as Each JSL student carries an “Amigos File,” a they come to school already familiar with basic binder of notes on the child’s daily JSL work. Japanese conversation, but lacking grade-level However, this file provides homeroom teachers skills in spoken and particularly written little information on students’ work, beyond Japanese. For these students, the Amigos vague references to kanji“ review.” Many teachers improvise ad hoc lessons that focus homeroom teachers admit to not reading the almost solely on basic reading and writing file and to not using it to request specific skills, and that ignore the students’ need for lessons, even though the file has space for such academic literacy in the spoken language (cf. requests. Homeroom teachers actually know August and Hakuta 1997; Vaipae 2001). little of what happens in the Amigos Room, Students receive virtually no grammar prompting some to ask me what their students instruction beyond the construction of simple actually do there. This disconnect alsosentences, and instead spend their time negatively impacts parent-teacher conferences, mechanically completing worksheets on which as homeroom teachers explain that they can they practice writing hiragana, katakana and say little about the children’s languagekanji characters. Thus, the students find progress because they complete those lessons themselves between a rock and a hard place, as in the Amigos Room—and the Amigos teachers they “are either placed in the regular do not attend parent-teacher conferences. classroom where they do not understand the instruction, or [are] pulled out for JSL Research in Japan and the United States has instruction, in which they engage in cognitively shown that collaboration between remedial and undemanding, content-less language drills homeroom teachers holds the potential for while their Japanese classmates march on with improving students’ academic performance and their academic learning” (Kanno 2008b:15). easing their transition into regular classes (i.e., Calderón, Hertz-Lazarowitz, and Slavin 1998; On the rare occasions when the Amigos Ishii 2006; Minicucci and Olsen 1992; Ozeki teachers provide the students a grammar 2006; Short 2002; Sugahara 2009) Moreover, lesson, the efforts are generally half-hearted remedial programs that strongly connect and poorly coordinated, as the teachers also second-language instruction with academic use class time to prepare for other classes and content are correlated with higher student to share gossip and complaints. Sensing the outcomes (i.e., Crandall, Bernache, and Prager teachers’ focus on other matters, the students 1998; Lucas, Henze, and Donato 1990;turn away from their studies and play. In this

8 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF excerpt from my fieldnotes, Mr. Nakamura, a stops the lesson and walks over to second-grade teacher, has come to the Amigos Nakamura, and the two of them Room to provide one-on-one instruction to complain about other teachers ... Yoshi, a Peruvian boy with autism, while Ms. Meanwhile, Yoshi sits and silently Maeda works with three other students. traces ... in his workbook. Nakamura does not look at Yoshi, instead focusing all his attention Maeda corrals the kids into their on Maeda. seats, calling Rafael to come ... to the front of the room. Rafael and Rafael and Takashi copy down my Takashi (a Peruvian boy in the fifth Spanish translation, ... laugh, talk grade) sit next to each other, about fruit, say silly things, and do gabbing the entire class. anything but study. Sylvia speaks Nakamura sits next to Yoshi at the softly to me ... I walk over to her front of the room, with a ... desk and ask her if she workbook on the desk in front of understands. She says no, so I Yoshi. Sylvia (a Bolivian girl in the explain, in a mix of Spanish and second grade) sits to the left, and Japanese, the construction of the Maeda starts drawing an apple and sentence. a tangerine on the board. She writes ringo (apple) and mikan My lesson is drowned out by the (tangerine) under the pictures, and sound of the two teachers then asks the kids what they are in complaining to each other, and the Spanish. The children reply, and two boys playing around. Maeda Maeda then says that she can’t rejoins the lesson, to say to the write that in Spanish, and asks me boys in Japanese that I am taller to write the Spanish translations than her, which merely redirects manzana and mandarina for her. the boys’ conversation to talking She then starts writing a about who’s taller than whom ... comparative sentence, “Ringo wa Maeda then withdraws and returns mikan yori ōkii.” (The apple is to her complaining with bigger than the tangerine.) Nakamura.

She recites the sentence quickly, while Rafael and Takashi play At the end of the class period, Sylvia leaves the around and talk loudly. The boys Amigos Room still not understanding how to copy the sentence down, and when construct a comparative sentence in Japanese, Maeda asks them how to say it in and the lesson is not repeated the rest of the Spanish, the boys sense the school year. opportunity to stop their Japanese lesson. They tell her the sentence As the above excerpt reveals, the JSL classes in Spanish, repeating it over and are often Spanish lessons for Ms. Maeda, over again, as if teaching it to rather than Japanese lessons for the students, [her]. ... as she asks the students for the Spanish translations of Japanese words. Using student’s Sylvia remains lost, staring at the native language can serve as a mechanism for blackboard, unsure of what the imparting content and understanding Japanese sentences mean. Maeda (Calderón, Hertz-Lazarowitz, and Slavin 1998;

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Carter and Chatfield 1986; Hernández 1991; complexity of the concepts underlying the Lucas, Henze, and Donato 1990; Uzuhashi characters. Without remedial language 2004). However, in this case Ms. Maeda uses assistance to help JSL students gain the Spanish because she is unsure how to teach requisite language skills to process more JSL. Thus she focuses heavily on learning complex concepts in Japanese, the students Spanish—despite the fact that the students’ struggle to keep up their pace ofkanji dominant language is Japanese. Many of the acquisition. This perpetual challenge frustrates students have never studied Spanish beyond students, and further encourages their being the free weekly classes I lead on weekends, labeled as kawaisō (pitiful) and incapable have limited Spanish vocabularies, and are (Kanno 2008b; Ōta 2005). illiterate in the language. Prior to being assigned to the Amigos Room, Ms. Maeda Teacher Resistance spoke no Spanish, but during her two-year tenure in the room, her Spanish vocabulary Over the course of the academic year, the expanded significantly to include most of the various problems with JSL instruction fuel the vocabulary taught in first and second grade as homeroom teachers’ skepticism and resistance, well as basic Spanish grammar. Thesewith the result that increasingly they choose language skills facilitate her communication not to send their JSL students to the Amigos with the Spanish-speaking parents; however, Room. Supporting this resistance is the fact dedicating so much classroom time to her that some mainstreamed immigrant students Spanish learning reduces the time available for are able to perform on a par with their the students to learn Japanese. Japanese classmates, while the JSL students make little progress. The immigrant children A rare exception to the pattern of ad hoc and who are performing best tend to have started incomplete JSL lessons occurs during formal elementary school with a stronger command of observations by visitors such as university Japanese than the JSL students’, often gaining researchers, district administrators, and other this greater command in Japanese preschool. In school officials. Prior to these visits, the Amigos contrast, the JSL students start off behind their teachers freshly decorate the room and prepare Japanese classmates and largely fail to close detailed lesson plans for distribution to the that gap, even after years of JSL lessons. visitors. However, the lessons are largely for show and offer little academic benefit, as the The homeroom teachers often do not inform the teachers prepare lessons that are far below Amigos teachers of changes in students’ their students’ levels, for example teaching schedules, and when students do not show up kanji for first graders to Japan-born students for their classes, Ms. Tanabe and Ms. Maeda who are in the fifth and sixth grades and who take no action but idly sit and wait for them. As had long since mastered that beginning-level I write in my fieldnotes: work. Before the end of the period, I As a result of the limited efficacy of the Amigos head to the Amigos Room, where lessons, JSL students struggle to catch up to Tanabe and Maeda are talking. No their classmates and to perform at grade level. students are in the room, although Kanno (2004) and Ōta (2000) note that many five students are scheduled to be JSL students’ kanji acquisition is limited not there during this class period. As I just by the increasing complexity of the step into the room, Tanabe turns to characters or the number of characters taught me and gestures, her hands up in each grade, but the increasing cognitive high, palms up, expressing

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disbelief that no students came to although it would not be appropriate for him to the room. Maeda turns to me and openly admit to such a practice. says that Ogawa (a fifth-grade teacher) was very happy that I had DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION been going into Takashi’s class to help him. “You helped him a lot.” In short, despite the fact that the ethnic project of Japanese public education is guided by the egalitarian norm that all students are to receive While the teacher praises my assisting the boy a similar education through junior high school, in his homeroom class, the Amigos teachers do and that they are not to be sorted into different not venture beyond their classroom to assist tracks until they reach high school (LeTendre, the children or encourage their attendance. Hofer, and Shimizu 2003; Shimizu 1992, 2001; Other teachers encourage them to take this Shimizu et al. 1999; Tsuneyoshi 1996, 2001), step, however the Amigos teachers refuse as this research reveals a competing ethnic doing so would lower their status to that of a project in which immigrant students are teacher’s aide in another teacher’s classroom. trapped in a low-performing track as early as Thus the teachers remain in the Amigos Room, the first grade of elementary school. Teachers waiting and complaining, while retaining the explain the disparate treatment of these authority of being in charge of their own students in ethnic terms, claiming that more classroom, albeit a classroom of lower status than rigorous remedial education, the students and one providing little instruction. need a place to relax and ease the stress of being a foreigner in a Japanese school. This Teachers’ resistance to sending their students explanation justifies providing ad hoc lessons to the JSL classroom challenges the new ethnic that are disconnected from the students’ project, and reflects homeroom teachers’ homeroom curricula, and dedicating minimal agency within the school setting. However, resources to the JSL program. keeping the students in their homerooms fails to address their remedial language needs, as The varied academic performance of immigrant the students continue to struggle to complete students likely foretells divergent future their coursework. The principal does not outcomes. Continuing their education into high publicly address teachers’ concerns over the school is not guaranteed, as high school quality of JSL instruction, other than to offer attendance is not compulsory.11 Students must his support for the teachers in the Amigos apply to high schools and pass an entrance Room. However, the frequency of teachers’ examination to gain admission. School complaints, the low status of the JSL position, attendance rates for foreign youth drop and teachers’ lack of JSL training, all raise dramatically at the high school level (Chitose questions about the criteria by which the 2008; Sakuma 2006; Takenoshita 2005). principal selects teachers for the Amigos Room. Korekawa (2012) estimates that of the youth in One answer may be found in the social Japan aged 15-18, only 42 percent of Brazilians, marginality of past and present Amigosand less than 60 percent of Filipinos, are in teachers. In an environment in which teachers high school, contrasted with 97 percent of frequently chat and share jokes during breaks Japanese. Uzuhashi (2004) attributes these low in the main office, the Amigos teachers often rates in part to JSL students’ struggles with work alone. They are also conspicuously absent junior high school’s more rigorous academic from faculty social events. This pattern raises content, its greater reliance on passive the possibility that the principal selected these learning, and the pressure of the high school teachers, in part, because of their marginality, entrance exam. The immigrant students who

11 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF are performing on par with their Japanese … If the parents want it, the classmates may be on track to attend higher- opportunity for the kids to go to ranked high schools and possibly some form of high school is there, I think. higher education. In contrast, the JSL students are performing far below grade level and are making little progress. These students will However, many teachers are less sanguine. As likely be limited to attending a lower-level Mr. Mori notes of his student, Ricardo, who academic or vocational school, like the ones was born in Peru: Ms. Ishii, a fourth-grade teacher, describes: Children like Ricardo work hard, The children who are really smart but if they can’t read Japanese, go to these [good] schools, and the even if they try hard, they will have children whose levels are lower go trouble living in Japan and will to other places. There’s a range of have few opportunities. … It’s good schools to go to. At the different- to graduate from a Japanese level schools, the textbooks are school, but it's not good if you still different, these children use these can't read Japanese. If you’re like [good] books, and those children, that, then even if you have desire well, they use books that are like and work hard, I think it’s elementary school books. They unfortunate when you can’t reach have high school content, but it’s your goals. written for children of a low academic level, so they can Barring a dramatic improvement in the quality understand it. They go to that kind of JSL instruction, indeed, in the very concept of high school. of the program, these students’ futures appear to be limited. Some immigrant children may Students from these schools, both those who choose, as adults, to acquire Japanese graduate and those who do not, often move on citizenship to further their integration into to low-paying, temporary jobs as “freeters,” not Japanese society, and to gain rights such as to stable, long-term employment (Slater 2010). suffrage and easier access to public employment. However this research reveals Despite the challenges JSL students face, some that citizenship alone will not be enough to teachers and administrators predict positive move them out of the margins of Japanese futures in which hard-working students will be society. The mainstream Japanese labor market able to attend Japanese high schools and is largely closed to immigrant workers, universities and integrate into Japaneserestricting them to contract laborer positions society. As the principal describes it: that are particularly vulnerable to economic downturns (Higuchi and Tanno 2003; Takenoshita 2006; Tsuda, Valdez, and If the children work hard, they can Cornelius 2003). For the second generation to get into high school. They have to bypass these positions and enter the broader choose to go to high school, it’s not labor market, they will need Japanese human compulsory, but the foreign and cultural capital (Becker 1964; Bourdieu children, like the Japanese and Passeron 1990; Schultz 1961), and the children, can work hard and make primary source of that capital is the public the effort to get into high school. school system that is failing them. Some

12 11 | 32 | 3 APJ | JF immigrant parents attempt to address this Related articles problem by hiring a tutor, or sending their children to after-school study programs.• Stevan Harrell and Aga Rehamo, Education Nonetheless, even with this assistance, for or Migrant Labor: A New Dilemma in China’s many JSL students closing the academic gap Borderlands between them and their classmates remains a daunting challenge. • Lawrence Repeta with an introduction by Glenda S. Roberts, Immigrants or Temporary Japanese public education is predicated on an Workers? A Visionary Call for a “Japanese-style egalitarian and communal notion of citizenship, Immigration Nation” in which students become equal members of the nation-state and part of tightly knit, • David H. Slater, The Making of Japan's New cohesive social groups. To this end, teachers Working Class: "Freeters" and the Progression strive to provide students the necessary skills. From Middle School to the Labor Market However, in the space between the school’s • Timothy Lim, Who is Korean? Migration, ideals and reality, many immigrant children are Immigration, and the Challenge of left behind in the Amigos Room to idly Multiculturalism in Homogeneous Societies complete worksheets and play, as the years until graduation pass them by. • Arudou Debito and Higuchi Akira, Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to This is a revised and updated version of a Japan chapter that was originally published in Nanette Gottlieb, ed. Language and Citizenship • Eika Tai, Multicultural Education in Japan in Japan, pp. 98-116. London: Routledge, 2012. • Arudou Debito,The Coming Reproduced by permission of Taylor and Internationalization: Can Japan assimilate its Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc. immigrants? Robert Moorehead is Associate Professor in • Tomoaki Nomi,Inequality and Japanese the College of International Relations at Education: Urgent choices Ritsumeikan University. In addition to the chapter in Language and Citizenship in Japan, • Patrick Heinrich,Language Loss and he is also the author of Ethnic“ Boundary Revitalization in the Ryukyu Islands Enforcers: Conceptualizing Japanese Teachers’ WORKS CITED Treatment of Migrant Latino Parents” (Shakai Fukushi Kenkyū 9:77-87, click here for pdf), August, Diane, and Kenji Hakuta, eds. 1997. and “Teaching and Learning Across an Ethnic Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Divide: Peruvian Parents and a Japanese Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: School” (Imin Kenkyū 3:89-104, click here for National Academy Press. pdf). With his students, he also manages the blog JAPANsociology. Becker, Gary. 1964. Human Capital. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. Recommended citation: Robert Moorehead, "Separate and Unequal: The Remedial Japanese Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Language Classroom as an Ethnic Project," The 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society, and Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 32, No. 3, Culture. London: Sage. August 12, 2013. Calderón, Margarita, Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz,

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Evaluation and Policy Analysis 20:137-156. students who do not attend public schools, and those in public schools who have been Notes mainstreamed into Japanese classrooms but still lack grade-level proficiency in Japanese 1 All names in this chapter are pseudonyms. (Kanno 2008a).

2 Drawing on Lowe (1996) and Espiritu (2003), 6 School officials report that they did not start I refer to this population as immigrants, and officially tracking the number of foreign not foreigners, foreign migrants, or other more students until the 2005-06 academic year. commonly used terms. This use of the term immigrant challenges the popular notion in 7 Private schools in Japan, including Japan that this is a purely “foreign” population international schools and ethnic Brazilian with little connection to the host society. It also schools, may operate on different principles; highlights the complex historical relationship however, the cost of tuition makes private between Japan and the Japanese diaspora in school inaccessible to many Nikkei families. South America. The diaspora’s return migration Moreover, few private schools are available for to Japan was preceded by decades of ties Spanish-speaking Nikkei in Japan, including between the Japanese state and ethnicnone in the Shiroyama area. associations in South America. These ties provided the material support to sustain a 8 Teachers struggle to explain how to include Japanese identity in the diaspora, an identity non-Japanese into this project, other than by that facilitated the ethnic return migration to having the children assimilate to Japanese Japan (Takenaka 2004, 2008). social norms and by saying that the children’s ethnic difference should not matter. 3 Nikkei is an abbreviated version of the Japanese term Nikkeijin, and is widely used in 9 Notably, some immigrant parents have English, Spanish, and Portuguese to refer to requested that their children not attend JSL members of the Japanese diaspora. lessons, out of concern that the cost of missing homeroom lessons would exceed the benefit of 4 An additional 4,895 children with Japanese the JSL lessons. citizenship also required remedial JSL instruction, including 2,997 students whose 10 Homeroom classes are not named, and are ethnic backgrounds the Ministry of Education listed by grade and number. However, other did not disclose (MEXT 2009). These students classrooms such as the special education rooms may be immigrant Nikkei children who possess also have names, albeit in Japanese. Japanese citizenship. 11 In Japan, education through junior high 5 These statistics likely underestimate the school is only compulsory for Japanese citizens; number of students who lack grade-level thus, immigrant children are not legally proficiency in Japanese, as they exclude required to attend any schooling.