Multicultural Education in Japan

Volume 5 | Issue 12 | Article ID 2618 | Dec 01, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Multicultural Education in Japan Eika TAI Multicultural Education in Japan appreciated the idea. In the mid-1980s, scholars of education began to pay attention to Eika Tai the idea of multicultural education that was gaining popularity in other parts of the world. Article Summary In the early 1990s, as the number of children who needed to learn Japanese as a second Korean ethnic education in Japanese public language noticeably increased, works on schools, which started in the 1960s, is a form of multicultural education were introduced from multicultural education that provides useful the United States, Canada, and Australia. By ideas for multiculturalist teachers dealing with the late 1990s, teachers and researchers had children of newcomer foreigners. In Osaka, attempted to apply these imported ideas to Japanese and Korean activists with different Japanese contexts. However, as Nakajima political agendas developed two distinctive Tomoko, a leading scholar of multicultural approaches. Those interested in the homeland education, points out, certain forms of politics of the two Koreas tried to develop an multicultural education had been practiced ethno-national identity among Korean children, long before multicultural education arrived while those involved in civil rights politics in from outside. One such form is Korean ethnic Japan encouraged the development of political education. As early as the 1960s, Korean subjectivity. activists and Japanese teachers started to develop educational approaches tailored to the Introduction needs of Korean children enrolled in Japanese public schools. Nakajima points out that this Multiculturalism has spread worldwide as educational movement coincided with the managing cultural and ethnic diversity has development of ethnic studies and multicultural become a key to political stability in many education in the United States.[3] countries. While “multiculturalism in its diverse modalities has indeed become the official policy Although the ethnic composition of resident designed to solve racism and ethnic conflicts in foreigners has been diversified, the largest the North,”[1] it has also been adopted in group of foreigners has remained Korean various ways in regions beyond the North, such (598,687 in 2005). The majority of the Koreans as Asia, Africa and South America.[2] Japan has are former colonial subjects and their offspring been part of this international wave of(447,805 in 2005). These resident Koreans have multiculturalism. The recent increase ofpersistently demonstrated their political and foreigners in Japan (up to about two million) cultural presence in Japan despite their has contributed to spreading this idea in a disenfranchised status and the state’s society that has been dominated by theassimilationist policies, through engaging in ideology of monoethnicity. political activism and paying special attention to ethnic education. Their persistent presence Educators concerned about children ofin Japan is important not simply for their ethnic newcomer foreigners have especiallycontinuity. A constant reminder that Japan was 1 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF once a multiethnic empire, it points to the need realization of difference and diversity; (2) the for a critical perspective in today’s multiethnic inclusion and exclusion of social groups in a Japan. In light of the adoption by government definition of multicultural education; and (3) and business organizations of a discourse of the effects of power on relations between multiculturalism, it is imperative thatgroups.[7] In the first area, problems are found multiculturalists learn from Koreans’ political in the politics of difference played out by struggles in order to steer multiculturalism minorities, which tend to give rise to cultural away from the reproduction of the colonial essentialism, and in the practice of the hierarchy in today’s Japan, precisely the tolerance of difference expected from direction toward which those in positions of majorities, which often ends with “boutique power seem to be heading with theirmulticulturalism” characterized by superficial interpretation of tabunka kyosei (multicultural appreciation of ethnic cultures in such forms as co-living), a phrase used to definefoods and festivals.[8] multiculturalism in Japan. Similar debates are present in multicultural In what follows, I present a historicaleducation in Japan. In their efforts to promote perspective on contemporary debates on understanding of cultural difference, teachers multicultural education in Japan by examining often introduce food, fashion, and festivals from its origins in Korean ethnic education.[4] In the homelands of newcomer children. This doing so, I want to join Nakajima to show how “three-F” approach is effective in raising self today’s multiculturalists can learn not only esteem among newcomer children and cultural from studies of multiculturalism imported from awareness among Japanese children, when outside but also from within, i.e., from the past planned carefully. Yet, education centering on experience of Korean ethnic education in Japan. newcomers has been criticized for its tendency Such a move has already been made to some to concentrate on the three Fs, and to extent by educators familiar with Korean ethnic enumerate different cultures as if they were education, as we will see. I also aim to fossilized displays in a static museum.[9] In contribute to comparative theory building in such educational practice, the majority the field of multicultural education. Concerned Japanese, who are supposedly exercising about “the extent to which debates around tolerance, are observers of diverse cultures multicultural/antiracist education have been performed and displayed by foreigners. hermetically sealed within nationalMoreover, there has been a critique of the boundaries,” Stephen May has called for superficial use of the catch phrase, “let’s turn building a “cross-national perspective.”[5] Such difference into richness” (chigai o yutakasa ni), an effort is important in order to prevent in multiculturalism programs, where newcomer Western experience with multiculturalism from children are often afraid of expressing being “falsely” universalized.[6] difference despite efforts made by multiculturalists.[10] Debates on Multicultural Education in Japan The first area also concerns the dilemma of accommodating diversity within a nation state. Let me first discuss contemporary debates on In countries of immigration, such as the Unites multicultural education in Japan, using a States, Canada, and Australia, where the idea comparative perspective. In discussing “global of a common civic culture is central to national constructions of multicultural education,” Carl unity, there has been a debate on the balance Grant and Joy Lei identify three areas of between the need to maintain a common concern: (1) the conceptualization andculture and the need to recognize cultural 2 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF pluralism. Multiculturalism is criticized as the former, people seen as multicultural are “inherently destabilizing and destructive of the nationals or future nationals. As in Germany, common bounds of nationhood.”[11] Aware of which has descent-based citizenship with some such a critique coming from conservative and recent modification,[12] multicultural liberal commentators, multiculturalisteducation in Japan focuses on foreign children. educators stress the development of national While also addressing issues surrounding the identification based on a civic culture while Ainu, and to some extent the Okinawans, appreciating different ethnic cultures. “multicultural” tends to refer to the presence of culturally diverse foreigners in Japan, as In Japan, a country in which there has been demonstrated in multicultural education little immigration since the Pacific War and in policies, which mostly include the term which citizenship is based on the principle of “foreigners” in their titles.[13] Naturalized descent, the idea of a unifying civic culture is children and Japanese children born of almost absent. The ethnic cultures ofinternational marriage are treated as rutsu no newcomer children are labeled as foreign, ko (children with foreign roots), i.e., as foreign which deepens their separation from the and different. While their difference is made majority students. Multiculturalist teachers in visible, their Japaneseness or the changing Japan emphasize, not national unity, but the content of Japaneseness is not addressed. idea of living together in harmony, kyosei, Multiculturalism has emerged as a critique of between Japanese and newcomers.the ideology of monoethnicity, but the myth of Multicultural education may end up functioning homogeneity among people within national to exclude newcomers as foreign and different boundaries is not effectively debunked, leaving and thereby solidify, not destabilize, Japanese the position of rutsu no ko suspended in national boundaries, while including therelation to Japanese nation and ethnicity. newcomers at the margins of society. As discussed below, the old practice of Korean The third area is relevant to progressive ethnic education can offer a great deal to critiques of multiculturalism. It has been today’s teachers on the idea of kyosei. argued that multicultural education fails to address adequately structural inequalities surrounding minority students. When preoccupied with superficial culturalism, it helps reconstitute

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