David Blake Willis

Working Paper Series No. 51

Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development StudiesRyukoku University

A Nation at Risk, A Nation in Need of Dialogue: Citizenship, Denizenship, and Beyond in Japanese Education

Mission of the Afrasian Centre forPeace and Development Studies

Poverty and other issues associated with development are commonly found in many Asian andAfrican countries. These problems are interwoven with ethnic, religious and political issues, andoften lead to incessant conflicts with violence. In order to find an appropriate framework forconflict resolution, we need to develop a perspective which will fully take into account thewisdom of relevant disciplines such as economics, politics and international relations, as well asthat fostered in area studies. Building on the following expertise and networks that have beenaccumulated in Ryukoku University in the past (listed below), the Centre organises researchprojects to tackle new and emerging issues in the age of globalisation. We aim to disseminatethe results of our research internationally, through academic publications and engagement inpublic discourse.

1. Tradition of Religious and Cultural Studies2. Expertise of Participatory Research / Inter-civic Relation Studies3. Expertise in Southwest Asian and African Studies4. New Approaches to the Understanding of Other Cultures in Japan5. Domestic and International Networks with Major Research Institutes

Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies

A Nation at Risk, A nation in Need of Dialogue:Citizenship, Denizenship, and Beyond in Japanese Education

David Blake Willis

Working Paper Series No.51

2009

Ⓒ2009Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies1-5 Yokotani, Seta Oe-cho, Otsu,Shiga, JAPAN

All rights reserved

ISBN 978 4-903625-82-9

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewsof the Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development Studies.

The publication of the Working Paper Series is supported by the Academic Frontier Centre (AFC)research project “In Search of Societal Mechanisms and Institutions for Conflict Resolution:Perspectives of Asian and African Studies and Beyond” (2005-2009), funded by the Ministry ofEducation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Ryukoku University.

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A Nation at Risk, A Nation in Need of Dialogue:

Citizenship, Denizenship, and Beyond in Japanese Education

David Blake Willis

Abstract

The Japanese society and educational system are being challenged today by a range of issues that heraldthe advent of a global multicultural society. These issues challenge the traditional Japanese identity as wellas the organization and thrust of the curricula of Japanese educational institutions even in those local areasnot directly affected by Others in their midst. The Government, the Ministry of Education, and the societyat large, have, however, viewed 1) culture and identity, 2) education for a global consciousness, and3) recognition and appreciation of multicultural diversity as issues to be resolved at the local level by localschools and teachers. These key issues for a globalizing world have been seen as unworthy of larger,nation-wide policy deliberation. What is needed now is dialogue in Paulo Freire’s sense of the word ofdialogue as praxis, as constitutive of both reflection and action. Praxis can transform the world, as Freirepoints out. This paper calls for a dialogue in Japan as the encounters between peoples both inside andoutside Japan. It is thus at the local level where we begin to see the transformation of Japanese education.Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right andprevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression of elite-directed mass education. We begin with anew transcultural, multicultural Japan at the local level in schools and communities.

Key Words: cultural transmission, citizenship, nation at risk, educational reform, minorities, globalization

A Nation at Risk, A Nation in Need of Dialogue

The Japanese society and educational system are being challenged today by a range of issuesrelated to diversity that herald, at least in some local areas, the advent of a multiculturalsociety. These issues challenge the traditional Japanese identity, even in those local areas notdirectly affected by Others in their midst, as well as the organization and thrust of thecurricula of Japanese educational institutions. Among them are:

1) Culture and Identity2) Education for Global Consciousness3) Recognition and Appreciation of Multicultural Diversity4) Alternatives to the “Credential Society” (Globalization as Elite Standardization)5) Japanese Identity as Cosmopolitan Identity

These key issues for a globalizing world have been seen as unworthy of larger, nation-widepolicy deliberation by the government and the Ministry of Education, while the society atlarge has skirted these and other multicultural challenges. Generally speaking, they have beenseen as matters to be resolved at the local level by local schools and teachers, if at all. In anera of risk, where action has to be taken in a timely, proactive, and not reactive way, we notethe continuing risk-aversive nature of Japanese policy-making.

Professor of Anthropology and Education, Soai University, Osaka, Japan (Emeritus, 1986-2009) and Schoolof Human and Organization Development, Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California, USA(2009-Present).

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This is quite at odds with foreign depictions of Japanese education. The late 20th century saw

a celebration of Japanese educational achievement and the accomplishments of Japanese

society, often attributed directly related to a successful educational system by the mainstream

media and by scholars of education (Rohlen 1983; Duke 1986; Bennett 1987; White 1987;

Leestma and Walberg 1992; Stevenson and Stigler 1992; Lewis 1995; Rohlen and LeTendre

1998, are some examples). These scholars seldom noted social or ethnic conflict.

At the same time, refuting these rosy reports, attention within Japan began swinging towards

topics such as dissolution of order and plunging test scores in the late 1990s. Concerns about

a rising class gap between haves and have-nots then began to be highlighted as the

educational system became increasingly privatized (Kariya 2001).

Deep criticism by the Japanese media and society of the education system have appeared:

gakkyu hōkai (classroom collapse), gakuryoku teika (tumbling academic achievement,

lazy/poor/uncommitted teachers, continued ijime or bullying, increasing tokō kyohi (school

refusals; 130,000 in Japan last year and growing), and other problems. The documentation of

falling scores in international tests of educational achievement has shown dramatic drops in

mathematics literacy (2000: 1st place; 2007: 6th place in an OECD study) and reading ability

(2000: 8th place; 2007: 14th place). The Ministry of Education released a statement at the time

that Japan was no longer in the top rank of nations educationally (Asahi 2004), although a

more recent report from the first national achievement tests in 43 years revealed high marks

for basic knowledge at the same time as lower marks for the application of knowledge

(Kyodo 2007), a mixed bag which may not justify the policy surge for a wholesale change of

the education system (Tsuneyoshi 2004).

Along with the increasing commentary on problems in the education system, important

developments have been taking place, including an assertive individuality and a serious

questioning of traditional values; gender, race, class, and cultural differences; and educational

purpose (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999; Sato 1999; Cave 2001; Tsuneyoshi 2001; Kariya 2003;

Willis 2007). There is questioning at all levels of the Japanese educational system, something

that would have been unheard of ten or fifteen years ago. While this discourse has revealed

class conflict, social dislocation, and transformations in the society, it has not addressed

issues of diversity or difference in the society or in schools. Nor was there much about

globalization beyond elite platitudes and slogans such as kyosei shakai (the symbiotic society;

see Umesao and Ishi 1999).

What, then, are the key problems and prospects for this nation, a nation in need of

deliberation and dialogue on globalization and its impacts on education? One of the

immediate and pressing need concerns the rising populations of those who are different in

Japanese society. We need to ask, first of all, who are these Others in Japan? What are their

needs? Moreover, what do reflections on diversity in Japan mean for oldcomers and

newcomers in Japan, for both old and new groups and their agendas in the educational system

and the society, for old and new communities? Where are the needs for the larger education

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system in Japan? What are the needs for educating The Other and about The Other in Japan?

Finally, how do these issues get situated in terms of the broader concerns of citizenship and

human rights?

My research follows earlier work which has been concerned with the critical examination of

being Other in Japan. This work portrays the multiple intersections of the architecture of

cultural identities. I have been concerned with a) Identities and structures of power, and b)

Race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Understanding the ways the transcultural, transnational

borderlands of Japan reflect globalization in this island nation, our research concerns a new,

Transcultural, Transnational Japan that reveals relationships formed in contexts, both global

and local, of unequal power relations. Regional, national, and cosmopolitan movements

complement global flows, hybridity, and networks. These social nexus points show the need

for an educational vision in a planetary context.

Fieldwork I have done with the alumni and community of an international school in Kobe,

Japan, including a longitudinal study as well as over 250 interviews (1980-2007), aims to

understand the impact of an international education and a transnational lifestyle over the

lifecourse. Moreover, I have also been working with Professor James Banks of the University

of Washington, America’s leading scholar of multicultural education, exploring possible

education approaches for diversity and citizenship in transnational settings. Professor Banks,

I might note has shifted his attention from national to transnational settings.

What I would like to do with this paper is to introduce the range of changes affecting the

society in terms of diversity and suggest how these are having, and might have, an impact on

schooling. This paper is intended as a vehicle to generate discussion in the context of

education, identifying the issues and prospects for both the larger need of responding to

globalization and the more specific needs in terms of providing for Japanese minority

education. What do reflections on globalization and diversity in Japan mean for oldcomers

and newcomers in Japan, for both old and new agendas, old and new communities?

The Center of Changes, A Problem Posed: Depictions of Japanese Education

Education is at the center of changes in any society. It is the core of cultural transmission at

the same time that it is the vehicle for values and their enactment. What is happening in

Japanese educational settings today in terms of cultural transmission? How are policy-makers

ideas of the “Third Great Education Reform” being translated into practice in the classroom,

families, schools, and other educational settings? How have these educational settings

become key places for reflecting, encouraging, promoting, denying, or supporting difference?

How are they contested ground for schools and minorities and for Japan in and of the world.

Recent work by Satoshi Yamamura, Jeremy Rappleye, and myself has noted that there are

now two depictions of Japanese Education in the popular and scholarly media (Willis,

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Yamamura, and Rappleye 2008). These are:

1) Japan as a leader on the frontiers of education

2) Japan as a system in chaos with instability, falling standards, and deep uncertainty

One depicts democratization, equality of opportunity, fair outcomes. The other depicts a

society riven by class conflict, desperately torn between haves and have-nots. These

metaphors for Japanese education reveal much about those competing for policy-making

ground in either Japan or other countries. Who is viewing whom? Why and where? What are

the agendas (competing, coalescing)? Whose responsibility is this set of deliberations?

There is a need to explore the cultures of crisis and reform in Japanese education in terms of

globalization and a cosmopolitan world of haves and have-nots, from the inside and the

outside, from micro and macro level, as seen through the ways power, identities, and

relationships are revealed in Japanese schooling/education in relation to diversity/difference

in global and national settings (Linicome 1993; Willis and Yamamura 2002; Miyake 2006;

Lebowitz et. al. 2007; Takayama 2007). With the perspectives of peace, development, and

equity, what are the roles of cultural transmission; ethnographic and sociological

documentation and analysis; and policy formation and cross-national attraction? How can

comparative educators, educational anthropologists, sociologists, and others inform the

debate?

Japan’s Metamorphosis: Transformation in the Cultural Borderlands

Japan is now a society undergoing metamorphosis as the coming of globalization has meant

the advent of a multicultural society. Transformations in the cultural borderlands of Japan

mean new transcultural realities, making the reporting of the cultural spaces of others in

Japan an important task for scholars. Racial discrimination and xenophobia highlighted in the

recent Diene Report of 2006 of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (Diene

2006) has meant that issues of cultural identity, ethnicity, race, gender, and identity have to be

situated in a larger context and not one only of what has long been stereotyped as a

homogeneous, unchanging, monolithic Japan (Graburn et. al. 2007; Willis and Murphy-

Shigematsu 2008).

Diaspora and mobility are a good example and have resulted in cases like the Japanese-

Brazilian migrants, those who have journeyed to what Angelo Ishii calls “the land of yen and

the ancestors, between privilege and prejudice” (Ishii 2008). Soccer, samba, and Nissan all

take on different meanings in this changed Japan. Surprisingly, there are nearly 100,000

Muslim workers in Japan now, too, representing yet another changing face of Japanese

society.

As examples of visibility and invisibility, these new members of the society have identities

that are often diasporic. And many of them have children, children who are part of the

education system, a status more de facto than de jure. These children and their parents operate

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between being buffers or bridges for some, like the Okinawans, or forming new/old enclaves

for others, like the Nikkei Brazilians or Zainichi Koreans (Ikegami 2001, Onai and Sakai

2001, Arita 2003, Onai 2003, Okano 2004). The limits and ambiguities of Chinese identity in

Japanese society are of special interest here as Chinese numbers rapidly eclipse those of

Zainichi Koreans, who have long been Japan’s primary Other (Maher 1995). How can one

imagine oneself in this context of, depending on your background, visibility and invisibility?

There are the original first peoples, too, Japanese minorities like the Hisabetsu Burakumin,

Japan’s invisible inner Other (Neary 2003) and the Hokkaido Ainu, Japan’s First People

(Akino et. al. 1998), as well, people whose voices are finally being heard. The stories of

dignity, discrimination, and resistance of all of these groups, oldcomers and newcomers alike,

echo loudly in the education system, which until now has been designed with a “one-size-fits-

all” approach to curricula, instruction, and organization (Inoue et. al. 1996). Memory, power,

and resistance are all invoked as these groups position themselves in the Japanese nation state.

New identities are being formed and new relationships are being established.

Transnational and transcultural flows in Japan thus mean a range of new problems and

prospects in the Japanese landscape. There are indeed roots of prejudice in the exclusion of

Others by the Japanese, but these practices are now giving way to border crossings, the

fragility of new identities (even for young Japanese), and the transience of Creole

communities in Japanese society. This is no longer a monoethnic Japan alone.

This new multiethnic Japan often goes beyond issues of marginal versus multicultural

towards narratives of hybridity. The transcultural borderlands of transnational Japan mean

that border spaces are now even more important, especially in terms of citizenship and what

has recently been called denizenship, one way of getting around the problems of nationality

for people who are long-term residents. Globalization, hybridization, and creolization all exist

in Japan now, making for what Homi Bhabha (1997) calls minority manoeuvres and unsettled

negotiations taking place at what could be seen as frontline/border posts. This contested

terrain represents a new Japan, a transnational Japan.

Preparing Japan for Diversity

Public discourse in Japan has been resistant to what has been seen as a divisive approach of

multiculturalism, one of multiple and competing ethnicities (Ishi 1999; Maher 1995, 2002;

Graburn et. al. 2007). A liberating theory of culture and multiculturalism, a theory about

process and dialogue, not about reified tribes, nationalist religions, and communalist

conformity, is what is needed now (Willis and Murphy-Shigematsu 2008). This processual

approach versus a materialist (identity as property) approach is therefore something new in

the debate about multiculturalism. It moves beyond the divisive rhetorics of a homogeneous

Japan and a Japan of multiple ethnic groups.

Culture, we should remind ourselves, is not just something we have and are members of, but

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also something we make and shape. All identities are identifications and thus situational.

Flexible, imaginative, and innovative approaches to culture and cultures are thus especially

needed in educational systems. Differences are thus relational rather than absolute. They are a

flexible, crisscrossing set of multiple identifications. Thinking about cultures can then be seen

as multi-relational rather than one-dimensional.

This is especially true for Japan, which continues to be a highly ethnocentric, gendered

society, as my work with Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu (2008) recently demonstrates,1 and as

Ted Howe has noted (personal communication, November 30, 2008). Why is it, as Howe

notes, that Japan ranks last among developed nations in the number of foreigners and women

in higher education (OECD 2009)? The typical university in Japan has a faculty where

around 10 percent of the professors are women. There are even smaller numbers for

foreigners, of course, who are often seen as necessary tokens. Positions for foreigners in

Japanese universities seldom break an invisible barrier of one to two non-Japanese per

department. The reality is that most departments do not, in fact, have any foreigners, with

those positions still seen in the light of eigo-ya, as those who are seen as “jack-of-all-trades”

teachers of English whose only real qualification need be that he or she is “a native speaker.”

Appointments to teach in subject areas other than English, Anglo-American culture or history,

or cross-cultural studies, are rare indeed.

While this is not so surprising given that less than five percent of Japanese society is of

diverse backgrounds, what is truly shocking are these figures concerning women in higher

education. Even the elite universities barely break 20 percent in terms of women professors,

and the upper ranks of administration in Japanese universities seldom see any women.

Although Japanese universities should lead by way of example to reach gender equality,

diversity and global citizenship, as Howe points out, they instead demonstrate by example

their disdain for women, diversity, and Others.

Equality in Japan is all too often a codeword for sameness and harmony. Diversity and

difference, traditionally anathema for Japanese society and Japanese educators, are now

begrudgingly given a stage of sorts by an emphasis on tabunka kyosei (multicultural

symbiosis). This is not, it should be pointedly noted, tabunka kyoiku (multicultural education),

the fashion for which is said to have passed in Japan just as many other nations are forming

multicultural education policies, research agendas, and university courses. Japan is still mired

in discourses of ibunka, of Otherized “outside cultures.”2

1 This book, Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender, and Identity (2008), provides a criticalexamination of being Other in Japanese society, portraying multiple intersections of identities and structures ofpower, race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Understanding the ways the transcultural, transnational borderlands ofJapan reflect globalization was an important goal for the two of us and our co-authors when we began the book.2 The Iibunkakan Kyoiku Gakkai, or Society for Education Concerning Outside Cultures, of which I was amember for many years, takes this tack. Indeed, I often felt that I was an “outsider” in this society. While theynow call themselves “The Intercultural Education Society of Japan”, the only English or language other thanJapanese on the home page is this particular title. The goal of the society seems to continue to be how tounderstand and “manage” difference within the Japanese context. Ironically, of the 26 officers of the societylisted on the home page, 17 are women and nine men, highly unusual for Japan.

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With the so-called Third Opening of Japan, the rush of globalization, and a concern for what

national cultural identity means and how to promote it in Japanese society (Jung 1996),

courses for citizenship have recently been promoted in Japanese schools with titles such as

Education for International Understanding (Kokusai Rikai Kyoiku), Ethnic Education

(Minzoku Kyoiku), Education for Newcomers (Newcamaa no Kyoiku), and Global Education

(Gurōbaru Kyoiku), among others. Courses which have long been in the schools such as

Civics (Komin, or “public person-hood,” a word made up by the Ministry of Education to

teach this subject), Values Education (Dotoku Kyoiku, sometimes called Morals Education),

Human Rights Education (Jinken Kyoiku) Dowa Kyoiku, (Dowa Kyoiku, recognizing the

struggles of Burakumin), and Returnees’ Education (Kikokushijo Kyoiku) could also be

considered as belonging to the realm of citizenship education in Japan.3 What distinguishes

all of these courses from those concerned with citizenship education in other countries,

however, is their marginalization. Sited on the peripheries of the Japanese curriculum, almost

as an after-thought it seems rather than at its core, these courses have targeted specific

constituencies other than “mainstream” Japanese. They are also nearly always found only in

urban areas with significant diversity.

This is now about to change as serious political and demographic challenges involving

immigration and gender equality face Japan and other nations (Stromquist and Monkman

2000). There will most certainly be a major change with regard to the “Other” in Japan.

Immigration will begin on a larger scale, and women will come to play increasingly

important roles in the society. The greying of the population and subsequent massive

retirements mean a serious loss in the numbers of workers. In order to maintain the present

standard of living, new workers will have to be brought into the labour force. In 1999 the UN

and the Japanese government estimated a shortfall of 600,000 workers a year beginning in the

early 21st century. The only viable way to address this need is more immigrants, what the UN

calls replacement migration, and more women in the work force. 4 The implications for

education, especially citizenship education, are serious and far-reaching.

Debates on curriculum, which have been focused around global competition and national

identity, are increasingly being impinged upon by race, language, and ethnicity. The model of

assimilation is being seriously questioned and multiculturalism, with its twin needs of respect

and inclusion, has appeared throughout Japan in various forms.

Two surges, one of an awareness of a diverse, multicultural Japanese society, and the other of

an apparent neo-nationalism, have at the same time been noted in the mass media. So far

these have been seen as happening in parallel, but the reality is, that for Japan as well as for

3 Otsu Kazuo has recently written on this in Otsu (2008). Other Japanese scholars who have written on theseissues include Nakagawa (1997); Nishioka (1996); Uozumi (1995); Otsu (1992); and Minoura (1997).4 See Nishihata (2001). Scenarios call for between 10-30 percent of the Japanese population to be composed ofimmigrants by the year 2050. For the UN Report, see the United Nations (2000). See also Koshiro (1998);Kajita (1998); and Douglass and Roberts (2000).

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other advanced societies, the two surges are meeting and will be/are in a dialectical

relationship. The first speaks for a compelling drive for more openness in Japan and is

outward looking, democratic, and inclusive in its conceptualization of citizenship. The second

is exclusive, inward looking, and based on images of a homogeneous canon for Japanese

culture. Both have been introduced into school contexts, resulting in considerable tension and

dissonance.

Concern has been raised about the dilution of Japanese identity, manifesting itself in enforced

singing in schools of the national anthem and required national flag-raising at ceremonies, not

to mention on-going controversies about the contents of school textbooks. Dilemmas for

citizenship education abound in Japan, indicating possible future directions for the roles of

educational institutions in this key component in the transmission of values for the Japanese

cultural identity.

What is a citizen? What is citizenship? These two questions are not so easily answered in the

Japanese context. The words themselves, those words ostensibly used to describe citizens and

the concepts of duties, rights, and responsibilities associated with individuals, are fraught

with divisiveness, oppression, and considerable historical baggage (much of which has been

conveniently forgotten, in an impressive amnesia). Those Western ideas so dear to the

concept of democracy have simply fallen on fallow ground, at least if we expect to see them

being enacted in ways similar to those of Europeans or North Americans. What is needed is a

careful analysis of the historical antecedents, of the compelling concepts, to determine which

concepts resonate and why in the Japanese context.

We need a new look at the radical challenges to the Japanese educational and political system,

especially with the advent of neo-nationalists adored by at least some of the masses such as

the Mayor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, who has warned of the dangers of foreigners in the

midst of Japanese society. It is a new culture in Japan, but one not nearly as simple as the

mass media portray it.5 Like many nations and societies in the world today, Japan is depicted

as grappling with a wrenching transition, either to a new/old national system or to a global

system of dissolved cultures and vanished traditions. The reality will likely be far more

complex, as we shall see.

Educating The Other in Transnational Japan: Citizenship, Denizenship, and Beyond

Prospects for Minority Education in Japan

Being Other in Japan means finding one’s place in terms of education, as well as

economically and politically. Ethnic schools have been, until now, separate but not equal.

Korean schools (North and South: see Sugihara 1998 and Okano 2004), Chinese schools,

European schools, and, more recently, Brazilian and Filipino schools, all fit this marginalized

5 Ishihara has been called Japan’s Le Pen. See Lim (2002) and Shimazu (1998).

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definition. Their struggles are juxtaposed against those older international, overseas schools

whose elite tracks have catered to difference in a privileged manner. There are now many new

international schools, too, reflecting the Japanese/global boom for international education.

There has literally been an explosion of “international schools” designed to appeal to well-to-

do Japanese parents who see the necessity and advantage of their children being bilingual.

These international schools have been the subject of my fieldwork and are sites of

increasingly transformative encounters. Creolization and hybridization, new concepts in

education and the social sciences, help us imagine such sudden transformation, mobility,

flows, and interconnections. Transnationally experienced people and transnational schools

like the Columbia Academy of Kobe, Japan, which I have studied since 1980, are focal points

of the long-term impacts of such transformations.

Starting with idealistic assumptions about who was “international”, a reflection partly of the

raging discourse in Japan on “internationalization”, and drawing on my previous research on

expatriate returnees, our study team (Willis, Minoura, Enloe et. al.) constructed an extended

longitudinal study with the support of the Toyota Foundation of what seemed to be a unique

population, the alumni of an international school located in Kobe, Japan (1913-1983). What

our study has shown us is at once more revealing and more challenging than we had expected.

These people do indeed think globally and act locally, but they also show us that there is

much cultural flux, especially at points of departure and arrival. Culture for Transnationals or

Transculturals is clearly not a place or state of mind, but what Appadurai (1990) has called

“an arena for conscious choice, justification and representation”. Though they may not be

allowed legally as “citizens,” they are certainly “denizens”, living with and working with

others in Japanese society.

As a new diaspora, Transcultural/Transnational people act here as agents who, to paraphrase

Appadurai, continuously inject new meaning-streams into the discourses of their landscapes.

They also bring a central force to the modern world: deterritorialization. Their experiences

and views can perhaps teach us about the conditions of growing social disjunctures. They

may show us how the globalization of culture is not the same as its homogenization. For them,

the shapes of cultures are less bounded, more fluid—and more of a daily challenge. They

demonstrate the importance of a key skill for a new world: the flexible re-negotiation of

mutual understandings and spatial arrangements. In a word, they are radically context–

dependent, indicating possibly both the results of and directions for the future study of

identity and behavioral development. And in our case this context is Japan.

At the same time, the increasing numbers of Brazilians in Japanese schools, the Nikkei

Burajiru-jin, represent a large and growing problem, not least of the reasons for this being the

age-specific nature of what is happening and the invisibility of the Nikkei in Japanese society

and schools (Ota 2000, Onai and Sakai 2001, Onai 2003). There is a parallel question for

Filipino children, for those who have one parent who is Japanese as well as those whose

parents are both from the Philippines.

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Challenges in Schools

1) Education for international consciousness

2) Recognition and appreciation of diversity at the local level

3) Human rights education

4) Multicultural education

5) Budgets, time, resources

There are, moreover, the struggles of oldcomers like the Zainichi Koreans and Chinese, the

Burakumin, and others as they simultaneously deal with the old hegemonic Japan and

newcomers who bring new global approaches to society. Often located in the poorest districts

of cities like Osaka, these people, as Okubo Yuko (2000, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) has so

carefully reported, find the new directions have often resulted in their further marginalization,

especially in the education system. This has led for many to establish their own schools,

including a Korean International School (The Japan Times 2007; Soo im Lee, personal

communications, 2007-2008), but these have often floundered because of inadequate

financial support or the departure of key personnel (Ota Haruo, personal communication,

November 7, 2008). They are the counterpart to the elites I have been studying in the

international school communities, people with access to resources, mobility, and power.

Okubo’s dissertation, “‘Visible’ Minorities and ‘Invisible’ Minorities: An Ethnographic Study

of Multicultural Education and the Production of Ethnic ‘Others’ in Japan” (2005), is an

important exploration of these issues in public schools as constructed around the slogan and

metaphor of tabunka kyosei (multicultural co-existence, which she refers to as

“multiculturalism”). How are ethnic Others constructed within educational institutions and

minority communities, for oldcomers and newcomers? Okubo sees race, ethnicity, and

nationality translated into everyday practices in schooling, which re-creates and re-inforces

minority and ethnic status. She notes that it was only after local governments began

promoting “multiculturalism” from the 1990s that it became a topic of interest in Japan, and

even that, in local areas alone initially. Her ethnographic research examined a Buraku and

Korean community in Osaka and special policies for the support and production of difference,

just as new immigrants from Vietnam and China began arriving in the area.

Minority education then became a contested space, with newcomers further marginalized as

they did not fit into the narratives of colonially oppressed oldcomers. Similar work has been

carried out at the Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, as noted by Tai (2005), though in this case

with a thrust towards newcomers and away from oldcomers, who are regarded more as

Korean-Japanese or Dowa-Japanese. Who then are the global citizens or cosmopolitan

citizens? What kind of citizenship is really needed?

There are other cultures that can be seen in the landscapes of Japanese education, too. These

struggles concern the construction of identities and individual personalities of those who are

Japanese but who are different. This is an issue taken up, for example, by Roger Goodman

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with his studies of returnee school children (1990) and more recently by Stephen Murphy-

Shigematsu in his work with mixed Haafu (2008). What does passing or disappearing mean

for identity construction and the construction of a socially just society in cases like these?

Minority Education in Japan: An Outline of a Research Agenda on Educational Apartheid

What might an outline of a research agenda on the educational apartheid that is the education

for minorities in Japan look like? To begin with, we should note the history and complexity of

what have essentially been “separate but equal” ethnic schools for minorities. These include,

but are not limited to, schools for Zainichi Koreans and Koreans (North, South, and, more

recently, even a combination of these two), schools for Chinese (formerly Republic of China

and People’s Republic of China, but more or less integrated today), schools for Brazilians,

schools for particular religious groups, schools for Europeans, schools for South Asians, and

international schools.

The latter are in many ways treated as a different, privileged track. These elite international or

overseas schools have been identified in the Japanese eye as for foreigners only, at least until

the late 1980s, when many kikokushijo (returnees) whose parents had been working abroad

began coming back to Japan. They often did not find Japanese schools appropriate given their

skill sets, which Japanese schools attempted to literally “peel off of them”, to find their “true

Japanese essence”. International schools were the logical alternative. Some of these schools

are old schools that been around more than one hundred years. Others are new schools,

reflecting a boom in international schools, especially for younger children, and the enhanced

popularity of programs like the International Baccalaureate (IB). This Japanese/global

“international education” boom may well indicate a future direction for Japan, but it is also

one fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is their cost, putting them out of reach

from all but the most affluent families. This of course raises the question of, yes, a

“cosmopolitan education,” but for whom? Again, those with resources seem to have an even

greater possibility of raising their social and cultural capital.

Brazilians in Japanese schools, the Nikkei Burajiru-jin, are perceived as a large and growing

problem, especially because of the age-specific nature of their student population. These

children are often older and have little knowledge of Japanese. Local schools in the many

rural areas where their parents have found work do not know how to cope with this influx of

second language learners, resulting in neglect and a high drop-rate (Shimizu and Shimizu

2001; see also Sato 2007 for a larger look at the problems of children in an at-risk society).

The problem is exacerbated because many of them look Japanese, having Japanese ancestors,

thus rendering the invisibility of Nikkei in society and in schools (Ota 2000, Onai and Sakai

2001, Onai 2003).

Other cultures in Japanese education and the construction of their identities are only recently

becoming visible. Mixed children or Haafu, most of whom do not fit the media stereotype of

12

Haafu being half-white and half-Japanese (from their fathers and mothers, respectively), are

now predominantly children of Japanese fathers and Chinese, Korea, Pilipino and other South

East Asian mothers. There are also now considerable numbers of Chinese children as those

people with Chinese passports have now surpassed the number of Koreans. Other new

immigrants from all over the world appear on Japan’s streets today, some predominant

examples being Africans who sell hip-hop clothing in trendy areas of Tokyo and Osaka,

South Asians who open Indian restaurants, and Russian used car dealers. Passing or

disappearing has become less problematic for those who look Japanese. What does all this

say about identity construction and the creation of a socially just society? One thing is for

sure, that we are entering an era when Korean Japanese, Chinese Japanese, English Japanese,

Thai Japanese, Filipino Japanese, and American Japanese will be more and more common in

Japan.

What to do with the curriculum? That is the next question if Other children are both to

receive an appropriate education and be incorporated into Japanese schools and society. Thus,

programs such as those for ethnic education; Dowa education; education in Human Rights;

and programs in language(s), literacy/illiteracy, and communication, will need to be re-

oriented, not only for “mainstream” Japanese children but for all children who are part of the

society. Gender(s) and Global Literacy are two particularly pressing needs.

What to do with teachers? The role of the media? What is to be done in terms of equity and

social justice? Are these minorities in Japan and their children citizens? Denizens?

“Subjects”? What other possibilities are there? This series of questions of course points to the

central truth that there are different kinds of citizenship: cultural citizenship; polysemic

citizenship (Miller 1993:12); multicultural/polycultural citizenship; flexible citizenship;

citizenship as resistance and dissent; what in Japan are called shimin or kenmin, citizens of

the city and the prefecture, or denizenship in fact; and transnational cultural citizenship. All

of these deserve exploration and research agenda.

There are then certain implications for Japanese education and Japanese society when we

become cognizant of the changes taking place in this major society.

Educators in Japan thus have the following challenges:

1) To recognize how globalization is changing the nature of schooling

2) To recognize the growing interconnection between knowledge and power

3) To understand when education is a silent partner or conscious opponent

4) To create active citizens who are educated for transcultural global values

Minority Education and Japanese Society: Other Choices

These are thus serious and important challenges to Japanese education, if less than visible in

what is a powerfully hegemonic and almost monolithic society. They include problems of

13

economics, reform, and human rights. Following the recent work of Kariya Takehiko (2001,

2002, 20036) and Nomi (2006) on the end of egalitarian education in Japan, my research

explores the implications of minorities in Japanese society and larger questions of

transnational citizenship.

As Tarumoto Hideki (2003) has noted, there are other choices than traditional citizenship

based on monoculture, including multicultural citizenship based on the coexistence of

multiple cultures and equality before the law, residence-based denizenship, and post-national

citizenship based on human rights, all of which are being considered in different localities in

Japan. General trends concerning immigration in England, France, and other European

societies as they have faced these questions are particularly relevant to the Japanese case, as

we note that the diversity in Japan now is similar to Italy and to France, Germany, and the UK

in the early 1990s. There has also been research in England and elsewhere on global or

cosmopolitan citizenship education that might inform Japanese directions (Marshall 2005,

2007; Osler & Starkey 2003, 2005). Issues of class and race are of special interest in the

European context, especially as they are positioned around questions of the politics of identity,

social spaces, and transnational economy. This helps us reflect on what is happening in Japan.

Power, its uses and abuses, identities, and relationships are all being transformed by this

cosmopolitan moment we are all now experiencing, in ways unexpected and, at least in some

spaces and places, profound. Some examples in the Japanese education system, the main

vehicle for Japan’s cultural transmission from one generation to the next, can be seen in

questions such as “What to do with the curriculum/curricula in the Japanese education

system?” This is an especially important question, and one that is being addressed recently at

the local level of city and prefectural school systems.

While there are programs for ethnic education, Dowa or Burakumin education, human rights

education, an education for international understanding, and increasing attention to languages

and communication, these do not fully address the problems of immigrants (nor of gender, for

that matter, another huge issue for Japanese society that has parallels with the situation of

immigrants and Others who are discriminated against). What to do with teachers, the role of

the media, and equality and social justice? These are all critically important dimensions to the

new challenges facing Japan and other global societies.

What is needed now is dialogue in Paulo Freire’s sense of dialogue as praxis, as a praxis

constituted by both reflection and action (Freire 1985, 1996, 2000, 2006; Horton and Freire,

1990). Ending the silences of Japan is an especially important task. Praxis can transform the

world. It is action and reflection, making us capable of this transformation (Freire 1985: 154-

155). The need for deliberative democracy is a call for a dialogue in Japan as the encounters

between peoples both inside and outside Japan. At the local level, this means finding the

6 Kariya Takehiko recently joined the Nissan Institute at the University of Oxford and now has a jointappointment with Oxford and the University of Tokyo. His work will be available in English translation in 2009.

14

spaces where we can begin to see the transformation of Japanese education.

As Freire has strongly emphasized, those denied their primordial right to speak their word

must first reclaim this right. Preventing the continuing dehumanizing aggression of elite-

directed mass education means bringing a new dialogue on centrality and marginality to the

context of education. This can be seen as a need for critical resistance education or what

might be called “Border Pedagogy”. Educating for a planetary consciousness and educating

the global citizen are now pressing requirements for educational systems. We begin with a

new transcultural, multicultural Japan at the local level in schools and communities.

This is a call for citizenship in Japan as cosmopolitan citizenship, a call for a flexible and

activist orientation. Global warming, the spread of nuclear weapons, and environmental

destruction are pressing on us like never before. It is now time to re-invoke that famous Latin

saying for educators and students: Carpe Diem! — Seize the Time! In order to seize the time

effectively we have certain critical issues that need to be addressed. First among these is that

the era of singular national survival is no longer viable, that we now need to reach for a

cosmopolitan education.

In order to do this we will need an education system no longer tied to one nation state alone,

to one body of citizens and consumers only, without regard for the global. Of course the

nation and the local society must be protected and nurtured, but the education system will

need to proactively engage the global in order to thrive, too. Paradoxically, becoming

immersed in the global will enable a deeper understanding and appreciation of local Japanese

culture and language. This is not a zero-sum game, as envisaged at the beginning of so many

of the conflicts of the 20th century. It is, not the “tragedy of the commons,” but instead a

“celebration of the commons.”

As Jennifer Chan and her co-authors have proclaimed in the title of their recent book:

Another Japan Is Possible (2008). To engage with the global and local, and to create “another

Japan,” Japanese students will need the following skills:

Global Skills Needed for a New World

1) Empathy and Love for Others

2) An Understanding of the Global System

3) Analytical, Creative Thinking within and between disciplines (inter-disciplinary)

4) Knowledge and Respect for One’s Own Culture and Language

5) Ability to Express and Articulate Deeply in Writing and Speech

6) Knowledge of Other Cultures and Languages

7) Communicative Abilities and Empathies for Other Cultures

8) Hybrid, Blended Identities

Social justice and peace will need to be seen as principle core values (Willis 2005). Critical

thinking, questioning abilities and the ability to engage in dialogue need to become central to

the goals of the curriculum and its enactment. In our age of global interdependence, where

15

boundaries are easily crossed and re-crossed, even in a single day, we need new thinking and

new approaches to our common humanity, as exemplified in the peace education work for

young teachers of Nakamura (2008).

Teacher educators and teacher education programs will now need to focus on certain themes

as they develop the skills mentioned above. One of the most important is fostering the

following values in students, teachers, parents and the community: 7

Global Values Needed for a New World

1) A Spirit of Awe, Wonder, Mystery—Examination And Contemplation

2) The Process of Meaning Making (The Creative Process)

3) Community, Interdependence, Democracy

4) Justice, Compassion, Caring

5) Outrage at Injustice and Oppression

6) Love And Joy

How will we act responsibly and decisively in moving towards an era of hope, liberation, and

possibilities that are bright and compelling? Towards an era where these values are

commonplace in schools? For our students and their future, we need to heed the call of

Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, when he and his supporters so often

said, with joy and affirmation: “Yes We Can!!!” Yes We Can reach for this future, developing

cosmopolitan citizens for all, not just some special elite, as in the past.

Conclusions: Cultural Identity and Globalization

Globalization discourses are often oriented to the concept of cultural relativism and cultural

identity, especially how globalization might or might not protect “ethnicity” and “cultural

identity” from the invasion of predatory economic and cultural capitalism. Satoshi Yamamura

has pointed out that while “cultural relativism” has helped counter the hegemony of a

Western-centered mind-set theoretically and socially, it has also long in fact been a shadow of

the “nation state” as the categorizing unit (Yamamura 2002, 2007; Willis, Yamamura and

Rappleye 2008). We still need to be aware of the dangers of essentialism in discussions of

cultural identity, especially in Japan. Yamamura notes (2002, 2007) that, “Essentialism” has

temptingly suffused the Japanese with the dualism of “purity” against “being mixed or

polluted” and generated such concepts as “pure ethnicity” and “pure Japanese,” which have

often been used as powerful jargon in politics.

For the discourse of globalization, the duality of “purity” and “being mixed or polluted” can

be studied together with the concepts of “specific” and “universal” to avoid a particular

concept from gaining a universal position. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of “family

resemblance” is a useful concept here for discussing two key words for interpersonal and

7 Fostering is a special skill of teachers. It involves simultaneously cultivating, nourishing, and developingstudents.

16

intercultural dialogue: “pluralism” and “Otherness”. This concept helps us look at and live

with similarities and differences that are not clearly defined and to stand against ethnic,

cultural, and racial essentialism (see also Horio 2005 and Ninomiya 2007). Will Japanese

society and conservative educators now be able to transform their unconscious mind-set of

racial and cultural homogeneity and nurture insight toward real “dialogue”? This, perhaps, is

where Japan is really “A Nation at Risk” and where the opportunity lies to become at least in

some ways a “Global Model” for our common future humanity.

Japan is in fact both a Global Model and A Nation at Risk, depending upon the standpoint of

the observer. In this way, the central question of globalization also becomes an appeal to the

importance of critical self-reflection. We might begin with reflection on what political

processes have created our notions of Japanese education in the first place. For observers who

feel that Japanese education is in a dismal state, one might ask: what and who has created

these ideas? Are problems such as bullying and school violence really problems or simply

narratives to direct our attention away from other problems such as the increasing class gap or

lack of acceptance and support for increasing numbers of Others within Japanese society

(Willis and Murphy-Shigematsu 2008)?

Answers to this question should be empowering and productive. It is here that we find those

frontiers where educators are pioneers, defending their territory of transformation to the

business or political world and their control of the mass media. Themes of globalization then

take on special salience as the questions “What can the world learn from Japan?” and “What

does Japan need to learn from the world?” become windows of opportunity leading to

innovation and renewal for diverse local and global communities in their pursuit of

educational excellence.

17

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Commission 6 Special Congress Issue, International Education Journal. 3(5).

Published Online and Hardbound. ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v3n5/

CONTENTS.HTM).

Willis, David Blake and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, eds. 2008. Transcultural Japan: At the

Borderlands of Race, Gender, and Identity. London: Routledge.

Willis, David Blake, Satoshi Yamamura, and Jeremy Rappleye. 2008. Frontiers of Education:

Japan as “Global Model” or “Nation at Risk”? International Review of Education 54:

493-515.

Yamamura, Satoshi. 2002. The Origins of State-oriented Mentality: National Education

Policy and the Masses in Modern Japan: A Long Detour to a New Form of Citizenship

Education. International Education Journal 3(5): 5-15.

———. 2007. Japanese Higher Education: Transformation in Japanese Universities. Paper

presented at the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies. Sarajevo, 4

September.

Working Paper Series

No.1 (2005)James R. Simpson, Future of the Dairy Industries in China, Japan and the United States: Conflict

Resolution in the Doha Round of WTO Agricultural Trade Negotiations

No.2 (2005)K. Palanisami, Sustainable Management of Tank Irrigation Systems in South India

No.3 (2006)Nobuko Nagasaki, Satyagraha as a Non-violent Means of Conflict Resolution

No.4 (2006)Yoshio Kawamura, and Zhan Jin, WTO/FTA and the Issues of Regional Disparity

No.5 (2006)Shin’ichi Takeuchi, Political Liberalization or Armed Conflicts? Political Changes in Post-Cold War

Africa

No.6 (2006)Daniel C. Bach, Regional Governance and State Reconstruction in Africa

No.7 (2006)Eghosa E. Osaghae, Ethnicity and the State in Africa

No.8 (2006)Kazuo Takahashi, The Kurdish Situation in Iraq

No.9 (2006)Kaoru Sugihara, East Asia, Middle East and the World Economy: Further Notes on the Oil Triangle

No.10 (2006)Kosuke Shimizu, Discourses of Leadership and Japanese Political Economy: Three Phallus-centrists

No.11 (2006)Nao Sato, The Composition and Job Structure of Female-Headed Households: A Case Study of a Rural

Village in Siemreap Province, Cambodia

No.12 (2006)Takuya Misu, The United States and the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC)

No.13 (2006)Om Prakash, Asia and the Rise of the Early Modern World Economy

No.14 (2006)Takehiko Ochiai, Regional Security in Africa

No.15 (2006)Masahisa Kawabata, An Overview of the Debate on the African State

No.16 (2006)Kazuo Takahashi, The Middle East, the Middle Kingdom and Japan

No.17 (2006)Tomoya Suzuki, Macroeconomic Impacts of Terrorism: Evidence from Indonesia in the Post-Suharto

Era

No.18 (2007)Kenichi Matsui, International Energy Regime: Role of Knowledge and Energy and Climate Change

Issues

No.19 (2007)Kazuo Takahashi, Not the Most Popular Decision: Japan’s Ground Self Defense Force Goes to Iraq

No.20 (forthcoming)Gyanendra Pandey, The Punjabi Village Community: in Violence and in Resettlement

No.21 (2007)Yoshio Kawamura, Participatory Community Development and a Role of Social Statistical Analysis:

Case of the JICA-Indonesia Project-Takalar Model

No.22 (2007)Takashi Inoguchi, The Place of the United States in the Triangle of Japan, China and India

No.23 (forthcoming)Ruby Lal, Colonialism and the Debate on Muslim Respectability

No.24 (2007)Kosuke Shimizu, Human Security, Universality, and National Interest: A Critical Inquiry

No.25 (2007)François Debrix, The Hegemony of Tabloid Geopolitics: How America and the West Cannot Think

International Relations beyond Conflict, Identity, and Cultural Imposition

No.26 (2007)Naomi Hosoda, The Social Process of Migration from the Eastern Visayas to Manila

No.27 (2007)Chizuko Sato, Forced Removals, Land Struggles and Restoration of Land in South Africa: A Case of

Roosboom

No.28 (2007)Michael Furmanovsky, Reconciliation, Restitution and Healing: The Role of Vietnam Veterans in

Facilitating a New Era in U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1985-2005

No.29 (2007)Hiroyuki Torigoe, Land Ownership for the Preservation of Environment and Livelihood

No.30 (2007)Kokki Goto (Edited, Annotated, and with an Introduction by Motoko Shimagami), Iriai Forests Have

Sustained the Livelihood and Autonomy of Villagers: Experience of Commons in Ishimushiro Hamlet in

Northeastern Japan

No.31 (2007)Kazuo Kobayashi, The “Invention of Tradition” in Java under the Japanese Occupation: The

Tonarigumi System and Gotong Royong

No.32 (2007)BenedictAnderson, Useful or Useless Relics: Today’s Strange Monarchies（加藤 剛訳『有用な遺制か

無用な遺物？現代における君主制という不思議な存在』）

No.33 (2008)Pauline Kent, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: The Use of Radical Comparisons to Enhance Mutual

Understanding

No.34 (2008)Naomi Hosoda, Towards a Cultural Interpretation of Migration in the Philippines: Focusing on

Value-Rationality and Capitalism

No.35 (2008)Anan Ganjanapan, Multiplicity of Community Forestry as Knowledge Space in the Northern Thai

Highlands

No.36 (2008)Shinji Suzuki, The Increasing Enclosure of Mangrove Wetlands: Towards Resource Management in

Development Frontiers

No.37 (2008)Akiko Watanabe, Migration and Mosques: The Evolution and Transformation of Muslim Communities

in Manila, the Philippines

No.38 (2009)Acharawan Isarangkura Na Ayuthaya and Senjo Nakai, The Emergence and Development of Interfaith

Cooperation: A Case Study of the Theravada Buddhist Advocacy for People Living with HIV/AIDS

(PWA) in Upper Northern Thailand

No.39 (2009)Jeremy Rappleye, Decline of the Tokyo Technocrats in Educational Policy Formation? Exploring the

Loss of Ministry Autonomy and Recent Policy Trends with Reference to ‘Globalisation’ and

Educational Transfer

No.40 (2009)RobertAspinall, The New ‘Three Rs’of Education in Japan: Rights, Risk, and Responsibility

No.41 (2009)Takehiko Ochiai, Personal Rule in Nigeria

No.42 (2009)Toru Sagawa, Why Do People “Renounce War”? The War Experience of the Daasanach of the

Conflict-ridden Region of Northeast Africa

No.43 (2009)Aysun Uyar, Political Configuration of Thailand’s Free Trade Agreements within the Framework of Southeast

Asian Regional Economic Cooperation

No.44 (2009)Kosuke Shimizu, Nishida Kitaro and Japan’s Interwar Foreign Policy: War Involvement and Culturalist

Political Discourse

No.45 (2009)Julian Chapple, Increasing Migration and Diversity in Japan: The Need for Dialogue and Collaboration

in Education, Language and Identity Policies

No.46 (2009)(Forth coming.)

No.47 (2009)Nakamura Hisashi, Social Development and Conflict Resolution; as Seen by an Unorthodox Economist

Afrasian Centre for Peace and Development StudiesRyukoku University

1-5 Yokotani, Seta, Oe-cho, Otsu, Shiga, JAPAN ISBN 978 4-903625-82-9