Education of Foreign Children in Japan: Local Versus National Initiatives

Education of Foreign Children in Japan: LocalVersus National Initiatives

David Green

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract Immigration has long been a controversial subject in Japan, with thecountry’s historic aversion to foreign populations well noted. This article seeks todiscuss recent developments in Japanese immigration policy, looking specifically athow both local governments and the national government address education issuesfor foreign children. Examining the specific case of Kawasaki City’s foreign studenteducational policies in detail, this article compares local initiatives to national policydevelopments, arguing that Kawasaki has been a pioneer in many cases and that thenational government has ultimately adopted similar resolutions. The national gov-ernment, for its part, has been slow to take up issues addressing immigrants, trailingmore progressive cities like Kawasaki, but has slowly been making efforts to improveforeign student education. In the broader sense, this article argues two additionalpoints: that largely ethnically homogenous countries like Japan are no longer able tocompletely ignore their immigrant populations and that highly centralized states aremoving slowly toward empowering their local governments.

Keywords Japanese immigration . Education . Decentralization . Local autonomy

Introduction

Japan is a country that finds itself at a crossroads. On the one hand, deep-seatedvalues emphasizing the homogeneity of the culture have kept the country insular,loathe to bring in outsiders who may disrupt the harmonious, predictable relations ofthe native populace. Yet on the other hand, Japan aims to maintain its globallydominant position in the face of a stagnant economy along with the unprecedenteddemographic crisis of an aging population and a low birthrate. As an attempt toovercome some of these challenges, Japan will likely have to make some effort toturn away from its perceived ethnic and cultural homogeneity and embrace a morecosmopolitan perspective, whether it wants to or not.

Int. Migration & IntegrationDOI 10.1007/s12134-013-0299-z

D. Green (*)Nagoya University Graduate School of Law, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8601, Japane-mail: [email protected]

The labor market in Japan faces acute shortages, expected to worsen as thepopulation ages and the workforce shrinks. In fact, at its current birthrate, thegovernment predicts that the population will be half of its current size by 2050(National Institute of Population and Social Security Research 2012), meaning thatlabor shortages could potentially be extreme. During its industrial boom of the 1960sand 1970s, the country was able to address shortages in labor through large-scalerural to urban migration. Today’s population is now highly urbanized, with littlechance of the declining rural population being able to provide any further relief forlabor shortages (Sassen 1994, p. 75). Women participate at increasingly greater ratesin the workplace and the retirement age has been continually raised. Some industrieshave been able to export work abroad to cheaper manufacturing centers like China,but other fields, such as the health care industry and smaller scale domestic producers,require workers within the country (Raut 2007; Shimada 1994). A viable domesticworkforce is thus a necessity, one that Japan cannot currently sustain given its currentdemographic situation.

As Japan moves forward, ideas regarding the need of immigration and the treat-ment of foreign residents have seen a gradual shift. Globalization has played a role,where Japanese residents have seen a greater number of foreign faces on televisionprograms and in the popular media (Iwabuchi 2005); have been exposed to an everlarger variety of foreign consumer goods through the likes of Ikea, Costco, Zara,Amazon, and Apple among others (Iwatani et al. 2011); and have fostered greaterinternational exchange through modern technology, especially with the internet.Economic concerns have played a role as well, where many believe that allowingforeign-born laborers to work in Japan can supplement the dwindling Japaneseworkforce, thereby helping to maintain Japan’s economic prosperity (Asakawa andSakanaka 2007). Humanitarian concerns have also had an effect on the perception ofimmigrants in Japan. Not content to ignore the foreigners already residing in thecountry, a number of activists have taken steps to publicize the plight of the country’simmigrant population and offer important services to them (Pak 2000).

The result has been a national policy that remains ostensibly unfriendly to immi-gration, prohibiting the entry of unskilled laborers and offering a minimal array ofservices. However, the national government has permitted a number of exceptions toits prohibition of unskilled labor and has gradually expanded the types of servicesavailable to foreign residents. Local governments, for their part, have lobbied thenational government for more leniency in immigration laws and have worked toimprove the treatment of immigrants residing in the country’s borders. What appearsto be a strict, unfriendly immigration regime in fact has a number of actors workingfrom within to try and enact significant changes to policy.

This article will discuss policies relating to Japanese immigration, focusing pri-marily on foreign student education in this case, looking to see if in fact local actorsoperating outside of the auspices of the national government have been able to bringabout changes in education policy, and if the national government has subsequentlyadopted any such changes. The purpose of this research is to test the commonknowledge regarding Japan in particular and ethnically insular countries in general:that they are only willing to begrudgingly extend minimal provisions to their foreignpopulations. Additionally, this article looks more generally at unitary states, arguingthrough the lens of immigration policy that rather than concentrating power at the

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center, they have been empowering local governments to make decisions. Local andnational efforts at making and changing immigration policy will be considered bycomparing national developments to the particular case of Kawasaki City, a localgovernment that has a fairly large immigrant population and has been notably activein immigration-related policy in Japan.

Japan and Immigration

Although Japan is traditionally regarded as closed to immigration and highly suspi-cious of foreigners (Dale 1986), the country has not only played host to small,indigenous minority populations for a significant period of time, but has had anumber of foreign nationals residing in its borders since its colonial era. The majorityof these foreign residents are the descendents of ethnic Korean and Chineseconscripted laborers (known as zainichi, literally meaning one who resides in Japan).While these groups make up a small fraction of the entire Japanese population, theyhave borne the brunt of Japan’s historically discriminatory immigration policy,fighting hard against limited employment opportunities, forced assimilation, manda-tory fingerprinting, and identification checks (Douglass 2000; Takao 2003).

Japan’s modern immigration system draws its origins from the ImmigrationControl and Refugee Act of 1952, implemented during the postwar Americanoccupation. An alien registration system was established with the law, whichhas been one of the primary means used by the Japanese government to trackforeign residents. Both long-term and newer foreign residents have been re-quired to sign up with the alien registration system since its inception, to notifythe authorities if they change addresses, and to apply for re-entry if they leavethe country (Kondo 2002).

While always present to some degree, immigration from other countries did notbecome a major political issue in Japan until the 1980s “bubble” era (Asakawa andHidenori 2007, p. 12). With the rapid development of the postwar economy and theincreasingly acute labor shortages that accompanied it, the government reducedenforcement of its immigration laws, for a brief time, allowing relatively largenumbers of primarily Iranian and Pakistani manual laborers entry (Kingston 2011,p. 167). As the economy began to fall into decline with the bursting of the speculativeasset “bubble” in the early 1990s, Japan clamped down on immigration enforcementand again closed its doors to unskilled foreign labor.

Yet barring foreign workers from entering the country did little to address theunderlying desire for cheap manual labor. As a solution, the Japanese administrationdecided to open up the country to Latin Americans of Japanese heritage and theirfamilies through a revision to the Immigration Control Act in 1990. It was believedtheir shared ethnic heritage would encourage greater assimilation and they could fillnecessary holes in the labor market (Linger 2001; Suzuki 2009). Japan has alsoexperienced an increase in its legal foreign resident population through intermarriageand issuing visas for skilled workers, students, trainees, and the like. In other words,in spite of a national policy that is officially quite strict regarding immigration,Japan’s immigrant population has steadily increased since its industrial boom andespecially since the 1980s.

Education of Foreign Children in Japan

Japan’s immigrant population currently stands at approximately 2 million people,representing 1.25 % of the entire population. The proportion of the foreign-bornpopulation has doubled over the last 20 years, although the number of foreignresidents in the country is still quite low compared to other developed countries(Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Statistics Bureau 2008). Suchlevels of immigration are unprecedented in Japanese society. As a result, a debatehas been raging in Japan questioning the basic necessity of immigration and whetheror not it can serve to help alleviate some of the problems the country faces.

Considering an issue like immigration, focusing specifically on the education offoreign children, shows the degree to which local governments exercise autonomy onan issue widely regarded to be under the jurisdiction of the central government. Whilenot exhaustive in the sense that there are many other policies local and nationalgovernment is required to address, education policy is deeply important to residents,and it helps to show decentralization in action.

Immigration and Kawasaki

The city of Kawasaki is located in Kanagawa Prefecture, within 20 minutes or less ofcentral Tokyo and Yokohama, and is a notable city in its own right. The city lies close toNarita International Airport, the major international airport of the Tokyo region and theeastern part of the country, and within 15 minutes of Haneda Airport, a large, primarilydomestic airport. The city has its own active industrial and commercial port, neighboringthe ports of Tokyo and Yokohama, with lines connected to other major ports around theworld. It also has railway and highway links to all of the major cities in the country(Kawasaki City 2011b). As of 2010, the city’s population was approximately 1.4million, making it the ninth largest city in Japan (Kawasaki City; Principal Statistics2011a). In essence, Kawasaki is a link that makes up a part of the greater Tokyometropolitan area.

The city is the home base of Kawasaki Motors, NEC, Canon, Toshiba, and Fujitsu.JFE Steel and Ajinomoto, a large food and amino acids manufacturer, are also basedin the city. International companies such as Dell, Tyco, Toys R Us, and Minit AsiaPacific have made Kawasaki their bases in Japan as well (Kawasaki City 2011b).Between businesses in the city and those in Tokyo and Yokohama, there are a varietyof job opportunities available to both local and foreign residents.

Looking first at its governmental structure, Kawasaki is known as an “ordinance-designated city” in Japan: it has a population of over 500,000 residents and is able toretain a number of functions that would otherwise be performed by prefecturalgovernments. The Revised Local Autonomy Law of 1999 stipulates that functionsof ordinance-designated cities include issues such as “affairs related to the relief ofthe impoverished,” “affairs related to the welfare of the aged,” and “affairs related tofood sanitation” (Nippon Foundation 1999). In practice, this means that ordinance-designated cities have a somewhat larger degree of discretion in their actions thanother municipalities.

Prefectures, state-like entities in Japanese government, can often play an importantrole in high-level decisions for municipal governments, although they tend to be lessdirectly involved in the affairs of the ordinance-designated cities. Basically, due to

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their large populations, the largest cities in the country are given more decision-making powers, but can still be constrained by the prefecture to some degree, as wellas by the central government. Kanagawa, the prefecture that houses Kawasaki, isnoted for giving its municipalities comparatively more autonomy than other areas andfor having a high degree of cooperation between the prefectural and municipalgovernments (Izushi 2010, p. 247).

Kawasaki has an elected mayor and a city council made up of 63 elected represen-tatives. In addition to these more typical representative bodies, the city also maintains aRepresentative Assembly for Foreign Residents, a group of 26 members of the foreigncommunity established by city ordinance in 1996 in order to “promote mutual under-standing and create better local communities” (Kawasaki City Representative Assemblyfor Foreign Residents 2011b). While not unprecedented in Japanese local government,but relatively uncommon, the Representative Assemblywas initially founded as ameansof promoting foreign resident participation in local government in lieu of actual votingrights. The Representative Assembly remains an important facet of political expressionfor foreign residents.

The Representative Assembly deliberates on issues of its choice that affect thecity’s foreign community and has the ability to launch formal investigations usingcity resources. It can call in government officials to testify when necessary and makeofficial proposals which are given to the mayor’s office and made available to thepublic (Kawasaki Resident’s Bureau 2008). The Representative Assembly does nothave the ability to implement policy, but the mayor’s office is required to report backto it annually on any proposals that affect foreign residents. The mayor’s office canchoose whether or not to accept the Representative Assembly’s recommendations andthe extent to which it decides to implement any policies the Resident Assemblyproposes. In practice, the mayor’s office usually takes Resident Assembly recom-mendations seriously and has made efforts to implement a variety of its proposals.Developments regarding proposals are reported annually by the Resident Assemblyto the public until they are implemented to the Assembly’s satisfaction (Interviewwith Assembly member; August 2011).

All Representative Assembly members are selected for 2-year terms, with thepossibility of members serving repeated terms. A chair and vice-chair are elected eachterm. Members are designated as civil service employees, receiving remuneration of12,500 yen (approx. US $150) per meeting in 2010. There are typically eight to ninemeetings per year (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents2011a; “Call for Representatives”).

Before considering education for foreign children in more detail, some possibleexplanations as to why Kawasaki is active in immigration policy are warranted. Forone, Kawasaki has been home to a significant number of zainichi residents sinceWorld War II. Kawasaki, along with other enclaves of zainichi residents in Yokohamaand Tokyo, has been at the forefront of the movement to gain greater equality forforeign residents. These efforts became especially strong during the progressivemovement Japan experienced in the 1970s. Kawasaki’s government passed policiesaiming to benefit its foreign residents as early as 1972 when the city enabled foreignresidents to participate in the national, or kokumin, health insurance system (Kawa-saki Resident’s Bureau). Since that time, Kawasaki has maintained a comparativelylarge immigrant population, bolstered by influxes of newcomer immigrants after the


1990 revision to the Immigration Control Act and has actively tried to address theirneeds. With the greater degree of discretion afforded from the prefecture and by beingan ordinance-designated city, Kawasaki is ideally placed to make changes in policywith a greater level of ease compared to other municipalities.

Japanese Education Policy

Public education is an essential government service provided for all residents of alocale, of paramount importance to parents and consequently a highly salient politicalissue. In Japan’s case, addressing whether the government should educate the chil-dren of foreign migrants and the best ways to do so has been highly controversial.While public education curricula has historically done little to address the needs ofnon-native Japanese speakers, there has been progress addressing this demographic inrecent years, mainly at the instigation of local governments.

This review of education policy will focus on local and national efforts to educatethe children of foreign residents in the public school system, concentrating primarilyon compulsory education in elementary and junior high schools. This category of“foreign student,” denoted in Japanese as gaikokujin jidōseito, gives the implicationthat the child is foreign-born, but of compulsory school age. The foreign student isseparate and distinct from other groups such as the “international student,” expressedin Japanese as ryūgakusei, which implies that they are visiting or studying abroad fora fixed period of time. International students enter the country for the purpose tostudy, but do so on a student visa. In contrast with foreign students, internationalstudents do not attend Japanese public schools during the compulsory years, fromages 6 to 15. In fact, student visas may only be given to college and “pre-college”students studying at the high school level, those studying Japanese language inspecialized schools, or students attempting to prepare for university examinations(Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2012).

The analysis here is on policy relating to public elementary and junior high schoolstudents in the country as the dependents of a resident alien. More specifically, thesestudents are the children of any legal visa holders staying in the country for more than3 months (Arudou 2006; “Internationalization”), in other words the foreign studentcategory discussed above. While often not born in Japan, such students spend theirformative years in the country, yet their educational needs are quite different from theJapanese-born population.

Since they are unable to blend in to the predominant group in school, either due topoor language skills, their distinctive appearance, or their ethnic background, foreignstudents often receive differential treatment or in some cases are ignored altogether.Yet the overriding perception of homogeneity in Japan reinforces the assumption thateducation policy should be uniform: that all students share similar backgrounds andlevels of linguistic comprehension.

For much of its history, it has in fact been the case that schools were taught in auniform way, with little allowance made for linguistic or cultural diversity (Maher1997). Japan’s national education policies have worked to perpetuate the impressionof ethnic and cultural homogeneity, where minority groups like the Ainu were activelyassimilated into the majority through schools that promoted a strong sense of Japanese

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national identity and downplayed any unique cultural characteristics. After World WarII, the national government made concerted efforts to try and close schools that activelyencouraged Korean culture and language classes, refusing to accredit schools that used alanguage other than Japanese for instruction (Tai 2007, p. 8). The promotion of Japanesehomogeneity at the expense of minority groups was pervasive as late as the 1980s, forexample, when Prime Minister Nakasone remarked that Japan was educationally supe-rior due to the “absence of racial minorities” in 1986 (Takeda and Williams 2008).

It was not until the 1990s and the revisions to the Immigration Control Act,opening the door to Latin Americans of Japanese heritage, that the national govern-ment became more concerned about educating the children of resident ethnic minor-ities and newer immigrant families. With the large numbers of foreigners taking upresidency in the country, it began to be apparent that government action was needed.Only since that time has the national government begun actively investigating theneeds of foreign residents’ children. Since then, the government officially acknowl-edged the need for Japanese as a Second Language courses and worked to establish acurriculum to teach the language (Okano 2006).

As local Japanese governments learned early on following the revisions to theImmigration Control Act, educating foreign children is extremely important. Asidefrom helping these children acquire basic language skills essential to a future life andcareer in Japan, it also helped to keep these children out of trouble. To illustrate,Nakai (2007) notes the city of Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture, also an earlyrecipient of large numbers of foreign manual laborers, confronted a significantproblem of juvenile delinquency and an accompanying increase in crime beforedeveloping its own school curriculum tailored to foreign students learning Japanese.Where these students were previously faced with very limited opportunities and littlechance of learning the language, they were able to be largely incorporated into thecity’s educational system. Juvenile crime subsequently decreased. Additionally, alarge body of literature exists extolling the virtues of educating immigrant children,where students receiving an education in the host country will be better integrated bylearning the language and norms of the host society, will be more likely to advance tohigher levels of education, and ultimately secure better employment (Portes andRumbaut 2001; Schneeweis 2011; Verdugo and Mueller 2008).

In the case of Germany, a state similar to Japan where immigrant families are lesslikely to have knowledge of the host language compared to English-speaking coun-tries, language acquisition is considered to be of paramount importance in determin-ing the future of immigrant children (Kogan 2010). Those who have a good commandof the language are able to access the labor market more successfully, while thosewho do not acquire good language skills are more likely to be unemployed. Immi-grants to Japan are in a similar situation, where a lack of linguistic and culturalunderstanding will relegate them automatically to society’s lowest rungs. Educationthus remains one of the most important facets of language acquisition and obtainingthe skills necessary to succeed in the host society.

Realizing the benefits of educating foreign children both for the sake of the localeand the residents themselves, municipalities in Japan have begun taking progressiveaction in addressing immigrant education. As we shall see, municipal initiatives aregenerally focused on the compulsory school years, due primarily to the structure ofthe Japanese public education system. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,


Science and Technology (abbreviated hereafter as the “Ministry of Education”), thecentral government ministry responsible for national education policy, establishes thecurricula for all public schools, both primary and secondary, dictating the subjects tobe taught in schools and approving textbooks for use. The Ministry of Education alsoadministers public high schools through prefectural boards of education. Publicelementary and junior high schools, however, are administered by municipal educa-tion boards (Ishikida 2005, p. 3), affording them a greater degree of local control anddiscretion. This system has existed relatively unchanged since the implementation ofthe School Education Law (gakkō kyōikuhō) in 1947, which established the basicpostwar public education framework for the country (Ministry of Education 1980;Kemble 2005, p. 340). Cities like Kawasaki have been able to take advantage of suchflexibility in administering public elementary and junior high schools, in this caseenacting policies that work for the benefit of their foreign students.

Foreign Student Education Policy in Kawasaki

Kawasaki’s earliest policies addressing foreign students date back to its BasicEducation Plan for Zainichi Residents (1986), which was primarily concernedwith resident Koreans, trying to ensure an institutional respect for their cultureand allow them to pursue language and cultural studies without worry ofprejudice. Despite the city’s efforts, however, few ethnic Korean students usedtheir actual names when enrolling at public schools, choosing instead Japanesealiases to avoid discrimination. With the influx of primarily Latin Americannewcomer residents in the early 1990s, Kawasaki again took up the educationissue, focusing on non-native Japanese-speaking students enrolled in publicelementary and junior high schools.

In the mid-1990s, the Foreign Representative Assembly decided to look into thecity’s education policies, noting that although Kawasaki offered consultations andassistance in finding appropriate schools for children who are not native Japanesespeakers, there was no systematic support for their education. Working to provideJapanese as a second language instruction, helping promote multiculturalism inschools and offering support to families have since become some of the primaryactivities of the Foreign Representative Assembly (Kawasaki City RepresentativeAssembly for Foreign Residents 1996). Since addressing education initially after itsestablishment, the Assembly has been actively working to revise Kawasaki’s educa-tional system to make it more accessible to non-native Japanese speakers.

After some debate in 1997, the Representative Assembly worked with the city torevise the Basic Education Plan for Zainichi Residents, changing it to the BasicEducation Plan for Foreign Residents. As a part of this initiative, starting in 1998, thecity began publishing handbooks on the educational system for the parents of foreignstudents in six languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, Chinese,and Korean, giving general information about school enrollment procedures, abreakdown of the academic calendar, grading, and other associated issues. This wasone way of providing basic information to students and their parents in their ownlanguage that had not been previously available (Kawasaki City RepresentativeAssembly for Foreign Residents 1996–2006).

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Another associated problem the Representative Assembly and city wanted toaddress was the question of after school activities. The Representative Assemblynoted that foreign students often have fewer options available to them after schoolcompared to Japanese students, and that as their parents are frequently out of thehouse at work, it can lead to safety and delinquency issues. A Children’s CulturalCenter was established by the city in 1998 where children have the option to go afterschool. The aim was to provide a safe place where children of various nationalitiescould interact with each other in a less formal, non-academic environment. TheCultural Center has the additional advantage of creating further opportunities toexpose Japanese and foreign children to each other, helping to increase multiculturalunderstanding (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents 1996–2006).

Support for instruction in foreign students’ native languages has been another areaKawasaki has actively pursued. Aside from the fact that learning is considerablyeasier in one’s native language, the city wants to ensure that foreign students are ableto maintain proficiency in their own language as well. Students could fall behind inthe development of their native language if they are focusing exclusively on trying tomaster Japanese. To that end, based on recommendations from the RepresentativeAssembly, the city has sponsored volunteer-led Portuguese language classes fornative Portuguese-speaking students since 2001. In addition, from the independentinitiative of local citizens’ groups, Kawasaki’s Education and Cultural Center alsobegan offering classes in Chinese and Korean to foreign students in 2003 (KawasakiCity Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents 2000–2005). These classes areoften useful in bringing truant students back to school, as they are able to receiveinstruction in a less formal academic environment, with the added ease of coursesbeing taught in their own language.

In terms of Japanese language study for the children of resident immigrants, thecity offers additional services. Students requiring extra Japanese language instructionwere able to meet with private, part-time, volunteer tutors as early as 2001. Thesemeetings initially took place once or twice per week for two hours at a time. By 2005,the city itself started training Japanese language tutors and dispatching them todifferent schools, although the tutors were still part-time volunteers. The followingyear, Kawasaki set up five Japanese language classrooms for international students atdifferent schools in the city (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for ForeignResidents 2001–2006). For these specialized classrooms, the city has worked todevelop its own Japanese as a second language teaching curriculum, attempting tobetter match the curriculum to the individual needs of the students. More recently,Kawasaki has further enhanced its tutoring program. It now guarantees Japaneselanguage tutoring to all students requiring additional instruction. Students are entitledto a minimum of 72 meetings per year, where each meeting lasts at least two hours.Additional assistance is given to third year junior high students entering high schooland on an individual basis as necessary (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly forForeign Residents 2007b–2010, 2013).

Kawasaki’s Representative Assembly noted fairly early on in its existence thatonly educating foreign students during their compulsory elementary and junior highschool years was inadequate in terms of their overall development. Compulsoryeducation may be a good place to start, but the assembly felt that foreign students


should be also be able to attend high school in Japan and ultimately move on touniversity. Although this was an issue identified by the Representative Assembly in1998, Kawasaki only started taking decisive action on the topic in 2003, when thecity sponsored a conference discussing the high school entrance process with non-native Japanese-speaking students and their parents (Kawasaki City RepresentativeAssembly for Foreign Residents 2001–2006).

The city has since authorized special accommodations for foreign students tryingto enter high school. When taking entrance examinations, foreign students arepermitted to have the tests given in simplified Japanese1, are given more time to takethe test, and can have examiners speak more slowly using words easy to understandduring the interview portion of the examination. In 2009, the city sent extra part-timetutors to four junior highs for a total of 18 hours per week. By 2010, the number ofschools receiving special tutoring increased to ten. Translators were also sent toschools for counseling meetings, taking time to talk with foreign students individu-ally to explain high school examination and entrance procedures, translate entranceexamination and interview questions into their native language, and provide generalsupport to the students. To further ease the high school entrance process, in 2010,Kawasaki ran provisional tests at ten local schools where entrance examinations andinterviews were given to foreign students entirely in their native languages (KawasakiCity Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents 2007a–2009, 2007b–2010).

It is worth mentioning at this point that these basic provisions offered by the city,including foreign language classes, Japanese language tutoring services, Japaneselanguage classrooms, specialized curriculum, and accommodations on high schoolentrance procedures all occurred through collaboration between the RepresentativeAssembly, city workers, schools, the city’s General Education Center, and localvolunteer groups. Kanagawa prefecture has also had some involvement, permittingthe easing of entrance procedures for high schools in its purview and disseminatingrelevant information. Conspicuously absent is input from the central government,which had little, if any, involvement in the decisions to adopt or implement thepolicies discussed. Rather, community involvement was the impetus to offer theseadditional services to foreign students.

Another, perhaps somewhat surprising development is that Kawasaki has donelittle in regard to measuring the success of its initiatives in addressing foreign studenteducation. While the city has worked hard to implement the policies discussed above,it does not actively or systematically follow the progress of its foreign studentpopulation. The last comprehensive survey of foreign residents in the city was givenin 1993, and although there have been efforts toward arranging a new survey, as ofthis writing, only the initial forays into the construction of questions and schedulinghave been made (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents2013). The city does keep track of educational standards and truancy through itsGeneral Education Center (Sōgō Kyōiku Sentā), but it does not separate foreignstudents from the general population. Likewise, the Ministry of Education alsooccasionally conducts surveys on foreign student issues such as truancy and Japanese

1 Simplified Japanese in this case refers to furigana, phonetic characters placed in smaller text aboveChinese characters (or kanji). This is often useful in pronunciation, although perhaps only somewhathelpful in ascribing meaning to a particular word or phrase.

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language instruction, but either does not include Kawasaki City in its datasets or doesnot aggregate down to the city level. As such, measuring the effectiveness ofKawasaki’s education-related initiatives for foreign students remains largely anecdot-al at best.

In spite of shortcomings in measuring the effectiveness of efforts to educate andincorporate foreign children, it is a target that the national government and cities likeKawasaki have nonetheless sought to address. As we shall see, especially since the1990s, the Ministry of Education has worked in tandem with local governments likeKawasaki to develop new curricula for Japanese learners, to provide translation andtutoring services, and to develop new policies such as the differentiated high schoolentrance examination process for foreign students. In essence, the Ministry of Edu-cation has relied upon innovative local governments to experiment and establishviable policies that can then be expanded out to other public schools in the country.

Multiculturalism in Kawasaki

Aside from straightforward education policy, a major undertaking for Kawasaki hasbeen to promote a more multicultural environment in its schools. Language programsmake up one portion of this effort, which entails not only teaching foreign studentsthe Japanese language and promoting instruction in their own languages as previous-ly discussed but also getting foreign parents actively involved in the school systemand promoting multiculturalism to Japanese students.

City initiatives to foster greater multicultural understanding in schools date back to1997, where it began sponsoring a series of lectures promoting cultural understand-ing, often featuring foreign lecturers (Kawasaki City 2005). The program still con-tinues in city schools. In 2002, all municipal schools appointed a coordinator incharge of “international understanding” (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly forForeign Residents 2001–2006). During 2002 and 2003, these “international under-standing” efforts mainly focused on promoting internationalization at three centralschools, although by 2004 and 2005 the coordinators were researching and promotinginternationalization on a city-wide level. Training programs for instructors workingwith international students began in 2004.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, specialized training had not been offered to cityeducators working with foreign students before this time. Instead, instructors worked withforeign students on a voluntary or appointed basis (Kawasaki City Representative Assem-bly for Foreign Residents 2003a–2006). Of course, it is still the case that the vast majorityof teachers in Japan receive no specialized training for working with foreign students.

Conferences with foreign student parents also began to be held in Kawasaki in2004, where parents were given the opportunity to meet with school officials andaddress any questions or problems they may have, with or without the presence of atranslator. Students also have career guidance meetings at the Comprehensive Edu-cation Center where parents are allowed to attend. Realizing these conferences were agood opportunity to give foreign students and their parents important information notrelating solely to education, the city began distributing a variety of general informa-tion pamphlets and brochures to foreign residents at these meetings (Kawasaki CityRepresentative Assembly for Foreign Residents 2003c–2008).


To further disseminate important information, the city made educational materialsfor foreign students available online in 2008. This also marked Kawasaki’s firstcollaboration with the Tokyo Foreign Language University’s Center for MultilingualMulticultural Education and Research, which assisted in the translation of materialsuploaded to the website (Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Res-idents 2005a–2008). Since 2010, the city has expanded the amount of informationavailable on its website to include information from the Ministry of Education, aswell as local school districts and even individual schools (Kawasaki City Represen-tative Assembly for Foreign Residents 2005b–2010). Information on prefectural highschools and the high school entrance process is also given. Kanagawa Prefecturemaintains its own website for education-related material, although only limitedinformation is posted in languages other than Japanese (Kanagawa Prefecture 2011).

Collaborations with outside groups have also increased in recent years. Aside fromits translation assistance, Kawasaki has been working closely with the Tokyo ForeignLanguage University on developing its classroom curriculum for foreign students aswell as implementing training for its educators and city officials (Kawasaki CityRepresentative Assembly for Foreign Residents 2009). Kawasaki also began jointresearch projects with the Foreign Language University in 2007.

Perhaps more importantly, Kawasaki was designated by the Ministry of Educationas a model for foreign student education in 2006. With the designation, the ministryrecognized the city’s efforts in addressing the foreign student population, and com-mitted to formally study three particular Kawasaki schools for two years, investigat-ing how they support foreign students and promote multiculturalism. The Ministry ofEducation’s designation served to further spur the promotion of multiculturalism inKawasaki, as other schools in the city became more strongly involved. Schoollibraries began purchasing a more diverse array of books, and the city’s educationcenter held an international education research conference again with the participa-tion of the Tokyo Foreign Language University (Kawasaki City RepresentativeAssembly for Foreign Residents 2003b–2007, 2003c–2008).

As time has passed, Kawasaki’s policies fostering international student education,often done in collaboration with local actors, have garnered growing attention. Notonly has Kawasaki offered an array of services to students before the centralgovernment has had the will or ability to act, but it has actually served as a modelfor the government to follow. This is a clear case of a local government innovatingpolicy, and the national government subsequently working to adopt those innova-tions. The central government, for its part, seeing the potential advantages suchactions can bring, has been working to adapt and formalize these policies andultimately bring them to other locations throughout the country.

Developments from the National Government

While Kawasaki, along with a number of other Japanese municipalities, has workedto develop innovative education policies relating to foreign residents, the nationalgovernment has not been completely absent from the field. Education-related issuesfall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, which has played an impor-tant role as a data house since the 1990 revision of the Immigration Control Act. This

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role has been carried out mainly through surveys given to schools. The surveys weredone annually through 2008 and, beginning in 2009, have been done biannually(Ministry of Education 2008a). Looking at the national statistics first, we can see abasic picture of foreign student education throughout the country before delving morespecifically into government policy. Information from the 2008 survey is discussedbelow.

Based on the Ministry of Education’s survey, in 2008, there were 75,403 foreignstudents enrolled in elementary, junior high, and high schools across Japan, althoughonly 28,575 required special Japanese language instruction. At least some of these“foreign” students not requiring Japanese language instruction are zainichi Koreansand Chinese who, while they have lived in Japan for generations in some cases, arenot considered Japanese citizens.

Although Ministry of Education statistics do not breakdown the demographics ofstudents requiring Japanese language instruction according to their visa status or theirparents’, Fig. 1 classifies students requiring Japanese language assistance by theirlevel in school and by year. Two things should be apparent from Fig. 1: that theoverall numbers of students needing Japanese language help are increasing and thatthe vast majority of these students are attending elementary school. Figure 2 gives thebreakdown of these students by their native languages. What is notable here is thatalthough there are much greater numbers of ethnically Korean people living in Japan,it is the native Portuguese, Chinese, and Spanish speakers who make up over 70 % ofthose needing Japanese assistance. The numbers for these students are increasingacross all levels of education.

According to the Ministry’s survey, of the 28,575 students requiring additionalJapanese language instruction, 80 % are currently receiving it. This is the highestpercentage of students actually receiving specialized Japanese language instructionthe Ministry has recorded since it started surveying schools.

One other important thing to note is the distribution of foreign students throughoutJapan. Approximately 80 % of foreign students are enrolled in schools with a total offewer than five foreign students. Figure 3 gives a breakdown on enrollments forforeign students requiring Japanese instruction by enrollments in the top 30 prefec-tures in terms of the numbers of students requiring Japanese language instruction, aswell as the number of schools they are attending in each prefecture. Enrollments ofstudents requiring Japanese language assistance are even lower in the other 17

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Fig. 1 Foreign students requiring Japanese language assistance, by school level and year. Source: Ministryof Education 2008a. Note: “Other” here refers to specialized schools, for example schools for the disabled


prefectures not listed. This shows that the vast majority of foreign students areattending school with very few other foreign students. Many schools lack the abilityto develop a viable curriculum for these students when their numbers are so low.Consequently, it becomes even more important for the government to look to areaswhere there are larger numbers of foreign students to try and develop a nationalpolicy. Kawasaki is a very good example of this. Figure 3 shows that Kanagawaprefecture, the prefecture in which Kawasaki is located, has the highest number offoreign students attending school in the eastern Japan area. Kanagawa actually hasmore foreign students and fewer schools than Tokyo, meaning that there is a higheraverage concentration of foreign students in its schools. Western Japan, especiallyAichi Prefecture, which serves the Nagoya area, also has a large number of foreignstudents and has served as a similar model for national education policy relating toforeign students.

An important aspect of the Ministry’s research function is its designation ofparticular areas or schools as research cases (Suzuki 2009, p. 234). Kawasaki wassuch a research model from 2006 to 2008. These research cases help the ministryformulate basic policies, strategies, and curricula relating to foreign students for otherschools throughout the country. In addition to its research function, the ministryestablishes basic teaching curricula, including mandating exactly which texts schoolscan use2, and manages various education-related programs such as JET andMonbusho scholarships3.

The national government did not begin to address the issue of foreign studenteducation in any meaningful way until 1991, when it sent a notification to localeducation boards acknowledging that “ethnic classes” actually do exist at publicschools, at the discretion of local governments, and formally allowed them tocontinue (Okano 2006). Although Kawasaki was not the first municipality to permit

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Fig. 2 Foreign students requiring Japanese language assistance, by native language. Source: Ministry ofEducation 2008a

2 The Ministry of Education typically approves lists of textbooks from which schools can choose from touse. There has been some controversy with this system, for example, the Ministry’s approval of texts thatlargely ignored Japanese war crimes during World War II resulted in widespread protests in China andKorea. For more information, see Bukh (2007) and Hundt and Bleiker (2007).3 The JET program brings in native English speakers to teach the language in Japanese public schools.Monbusho scholarships are given to foreign students studying in Japan as a means of defraying costsassociated with studying abroad.

D. Green

an ethnic education program in its public schools, it was a part of the movementwhich was later formalized by national policy.

By 1993, the Ministry of Education started working to simplify the admissionsprocess for Japanese “returnee” students, appealing to schools across the country togive special consideration to such students based on their cultural and linguisticdifferences (Ministry of Education 1993). “Returnees” are individuals of Japanesecitizenship who spent a significant period of time abroad before returning to theirhome country. Often, such students require additional Japanese language instructionlike foreign students, although returnee numbers were not included in the statisticsabove. While the policy was intending to make the process of entering school easier

Fig. 3 Numbers of students requiring Japanese language instruction and number of schools those studentsattend, by prefecture (top 30 prefectures shown). Source: Ministry of Education 2008a


for students with limited Japanese abilities, conspicuously absent was any mention offoreign students.

The Ministry began looking more at foreign student education in subsequent yearsas local policy developed. It issued a report discussing the foreign student high schoolentrance process in 1997, where it encouraged schools to make the admissionsprocess easier, this time for non-native Japanese speakers. Yet, the recommendationsare quite vague, saying what the schools can do depend on their individual circum-stances. The Ministry does encourage schools to set up a special admissions processfor foreign students and recommends that information about the process should bedistributed to the parents of foreign students, informing them of admissions require-ments such as entrance examinations and interviews (Ministry of Education 1997).However, no specific guidelines or additional requirements were placed on schools asa result of this report.

As discussed above, Kawasaki has worked to make the high school entranceprocess much easier, collaborating with a number of groups to disseminate relevantinformation on entering high school, providing additional tutoring to foreign stu-dents, and translating entrance exams into other languages. In spite of vague recom-mendations from the Ministry, and without an enforced mandate, Kawasaki was ableto make strong gains in this regard. Other municipalities have likewise adoptedpolicies promoting high school education to foreign residents, although it is not clearif the Ministry policies inspired local action, or vice versa (see Aichi Prefecture 2012;Tokyo Metropolitan Education Consultation Center 2012; Osaka Prefecture 2012,among others).

By 2005, the Ministry of Education began publishing a guidebook on the elemen-tary and junior high school admissions process for students and parents in sevenlanguages, giving general information about registration, the academic calendar,textbooks, fees, and associated issues (Ministry of Education 2005). As noted earlier,Kawasaki began issuing its own guidebooks in 1998 and actually helped the Ministryof Education to put its version together. While it is certainly helpful to have thisinformation available nationally in a variety of languages, this is a clear case of localpolicy innovation followed by national adoption.

The following year, the Ministry of Education increased efforts to publicize itsguidebook by issuing a report promoting foreign student education. The reportreiterated that the Ministry is surveying schools regularly, and that 2006 had beenthe highest recorded year of foreign student enrollments up to that point. Among theitems recommended by the Ministry, but not mandated, was a flexible system forforeign student admission, particularly in regard to individual schools. The Ministryadvised that students be allowed to enter schools as they wish. If another school in thearea had better Japanese language education facilities, for example, they could chooseto enroll in that school instead of the school in their immediate neighborhood. Alsopromoted in the report was the availability of the multilingual guidebook, as well as arecommendation to simplify the schools’ proof of residency requirement. Whensigning their children up for school, parents have to prove that they actually live inthat particular area. Instead of requiring their alien registration card to prove residen-cy, the Ministry recommended that schools use any general documents (Ministry ofEducation 2006), opening the door somewhat for children of dubious legal status tostudy in Japanese public schools.

D. Green

In recent years, the Ministry of Education has increased its support to schools forforeign student education. It has enlarged funding for Japanese language tutoringprograms, additional counseling for foreign students, high school admission outreachprograms, and the construction of foreign student centers. As of 2008, the Ministrybudgeted 2.23 billion yen ($28.6 million) for such projects in 22 areas. For 2009, theMinistry budgeted 3.01 billion yen ($38.7 million) for projects in 19 areas (Ministryof Education 2008a). While the budget contributions on the part of the Ministry ofEducation are substantial, the small number of affected areas limits the extent towhich the Ministry can make a national impact. In the long run, its contributions willlikely prove quite meaningful if they are sustained, although much still depends uponthe initiative of municipalities, particularly in the short to mid-term. With the contri-butions from the Ministry of Education limited to a few select areas, cities have totake it upon themselves to set up a practical system of foreign student education,especially when the national government does not play a leading role in the field andis often dependent on the municipalities for information and assistance.

With the economic troubles facing Japan, the Ministry of Education has issuedreports requesting urgent assistance for foreign students. These reports acknowledgethat many foreign residents are having difficulty finding and keeping jobs. Theshifting job structure can affect family life, where families may change municipalitiesto seek new jobs. Even if they stay in the same place, foreign families are often facingmore uncertainty regarding future prospects. To assist foreign students, aside from theusual recommendations of offering Japanese language tutoring and an easier admis-sions process, the Ministry notes that it has established a Japanese language instruc-tion program meant to supplement any assistance municipalities are already giving.Translation services are also offered by the Ministry to schools across the country,where they can set up lines of communication between schools and foreign parentsand translate any documents as necessary. With municipalities as the first layer ofsupport for foreign students whose parents are unable to pay basic school fees, theMinistry has offered itself as an additional layer of support. Additionally, the Ministryhas set aside funds to establish afterschool programs for foreign students. The job ofbuilding any afterschool centers or programs is left to municipalities and NGOs, butthe Ministry has pledged to provide at least a portion of the funding (Ministry ofEducation 2009).

An interesting conclusion one can draw from the preceding discussion on educa-tion policy is how passive the Ministry of Education has been. There are likelyseveral explanations for this. For one, the Japanese government is only required toprovide education to Japanese citizens. Japan did sign on to the International Cove-nant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1979, which made the provision ofprimary education available and free to everyone living in the country (UnitedNations 2012), yet neither the School Education Law nor the constitution make theeducation of non-Japanese nationals mandatory. In other words, primary educationhas been made free and available to foreign residents, but foreign parents are notrequired to enroll their children in school. Because education is optional for foreignchildren, the Ministry of Education may not prioritize such elective programs. Werethe government to make elementary and junior high school education compulsory forall residents, regardless of nationality, foreign student education would likely be amore pressing concern for the Ministry.


This points to another potential explanation for Ministry passivity in foreignstudent education: assertiveness may make for bad politics. Given Japan’s unfavor-able view of immigration at the national level, policies actively and aggressivelytargeting foreign student education would likely be divisive. Greater scrutiny couldbe placed on the Ministry if it is running unpopular programs and its resources couldbe compromised. Schoppa (1991, pp. 97–98) notes the Ministry of Education’sconflict-averse culture, being reluctant to take action unless there is sufficient politicalpressure to do so. With various stakeholders involved on both sides of the foreignstudent education debate, direct and overt action may be regarded as too potentiallycontentious by the Ministry.

Additionally, because foreign student enrollments vary quite a bit according toregion, there is no clear policy to apply uniformly at the national level, even if therewere popular approval to do so. By giving guidelines and recommendations, localschools can determine what works best given their individual circumstances. Assis-tance in developing foreign student policies and additional resources are available,but local schools are not required to call upon them if they feel they are not necessary.This speaks to the decentralization of education policy in Japan. Although seeminglycontrolled centrally by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry in fact allows localitiesa large amount of discretion, relegating itself a more advisory role.

Instead of dictating policies on addressing foreign students to local governments,the Ministry of Education has taken a passive route, quietly promoting foreignstudent education in the country, developing curricula in collaboration with localpartners, as well as support policies to help non-native Japanese speakers to advancethrough the system. The Ministry has not forced policy on any particular areas in thisregard. It has simply made suggestions and recommendations to cities and schoolboards, allowing them to decide the degree to which they should implement them.Taking this less conspicuous position allows the Ministry to keep a lower politicalprofile in this area and permits the localities to decide what works best in theirjurisdictions. The Ministry, for its part, is then able to focus more of its efforts inother, perhaps more politically salient, spheres such as recent initiatives aimed atcombating bullying, promoting health through dietary education programs, andimproving early childhood education programs (Ministry of Education 2012).

Where does this leave the national government’s policies dealing with foreignstudent education? The Ministry of Education is in many ways dependent uponmunicipalities to develop and implement educational policy regarding foreign stu-dents, often merely suggesting policy recommendations, either through deliberateplanning or the more unintentional development of local expertise. Because foreignstudent enrollments differentially affect individual areas, developing and deploying acoherent national policy has been much more difficult compared to something likethe basic public school curriculum. The national government has had to rely on theexpertise gained from cities like Kawasaki, which have worked to address significantnumbers of foreigners living in their borders, and consequently, comparatively largenumbers of foreign students in their schools.

The tone of Ministry research, reports, and policies has changed considerably overtime, where initially the Ministry was concerned only with returnee student educa-tion, ignoring the significantly larger foreign population. It then began to move intoquestions of high school admission before finally taking a more holistic approach to

D. Green

foreign student education in recent years, providing extra layers of support throughJapanese language tutoring, translation services, financial aid, and the construction ofspecialized education centers. Lobbying on the part of local governments has nodoubt also played an important role in the development of Ministry policies. How-ever, the key phrase here is that the ministry is providing an “extra layer” of support.Local governments still have to take the initiative in assisting their foreign students.The Ministry of Education is offering its assistance, but the responsibility lies with themunicipality.

Japanese culture has likely played a hand in the Ministry’s slow efforts atreforming foreign student education. Given the country’s strong consensus-basedorientation, a ministry offering bold reform proposals, particularly without the sup-port of other bureaucratic agencies, let alone the general public as a whole, would behighly unusual. While Japan is capable at times of enacting dramatic, sweepingchange, the more typical process is slow and incremental. Ministries avoid highlycontentious issues, or work behind the scenes to enact them. Even highly salientissues, like the adoption of tougher nuclear safety standards in the wake of the March11, 2011 disasters, have seen a very cautious, slow movement toward reform (Fackler2012). That the government has been slow to improve the services it offers to foreignstudents is perhaps not surprising given this cultural affinity.

In sum, education policy is an area where local government has had a clear impact onnational policies regarding foreign students, moving it from largely ignoring the subjectto taking a much more accommodative approach. Local governments, including Kawa-saki, have acted as policy leaders, taking specific actions like issuing foreign languageguidebooks, offering translation services, and establishing afterschool programswith thenational government eventually following in their footsteps. This is a clear case wherelocal-level policy innovations have been formally adopted on the national scale.

Conclusions

Kawasaki has been a leader in education-related policy dealing with foreign students,especially those in public schools. The city was one of the first to adopt a multilingualguidebook for foreign students and their parents. Perhaps more importantly, the citybegan offering basic Japanese language education for foreign students early on, offeredclasses to students in their native languages, and has developed a tutoring system foradditional Japanese assistance. Beyond language instruction, Kawasaki has stronglypromoted multiculturalism in its schools, has created after school programs for bothforeign and domestic students to attend, and given additional assistance to foreignstudents trying to enter high school. To that end, recent efforts by Kawasaki involveoffering high school entrance examinations in students’ native languages to see if it canhelp increase admission rates for foreign students. However, while these efforts atassisting foreign students are important, Kawasaki lacks measures of their progress overtime. To be truly successful, Kawasaki will need to consistently follow its foreignstudents to see how local policies have affected their educations and future prospects.

The national government, for its part, has become more involved with educatingforeign students. Although the Ministry of Education made no mention of foreignstudents in its official memoranda as late as the 1990s, the Ministry now works to


promote multiculturalism in classrooms, offering resources to teachers and schools.An important function the Ministry of Education has been performing is research,where it has provided a considerable amount of information to schools and the publicregarding foreign student education based annual and semiannual surveys of schoolsand students requiring additional Japanese language education (Ministry of Education2008b; Suzuki 2009). Beyond this, the ministry has begun offering financial supportto schools to establish Japanese language programs, after school programs, tutoringprograms, and the like which can be of direct benefit to foreign students (Ministry ofEducation 2009).

While theMinistry of Education has been playing a greater role in this realm in recentyears, it is important to note that the pioneers of education policies have largely beenmunicipalities. In Kawasaki’s case, the Ministry directly adopted the city’s multilingualguidebook for foreign students and has been strongly promoting after school programssimilar to Kawasaki’s. Like Kawasaki, the Ministry of Education has been focusing onbetter incorporating foreign students into the school system, promoting multiculturalismin classrooms, and working to disseminate more information to foreign students andparents. Kawasaki actually served as a model for the Ministry of Education, where itspecifically studied Kawasaki schools from 2006 to 2008.

That municipal schools have served as practical examples of policy developmentfor the Ministry of Education may not in fact be a surprise. Due to the diffusion offoreign student enrollments, with the vast majority spread out in small concentrationsthroughout the country, it would be difficult for the government to institute a policynationally without first studying local developments. It is logical for the governmentto look to active cities where foreign student enrollments are comparatively high todetermine what sorts of policies have proven beneficial to the students and how toadequately allocate resources.

In its current state, the Ministry of Education seems to be abdicating the initiativeon foreign student education primarily to municipalities. The ministry is willing tooffer logistical support with translation, expertise, and funding, but only in conjunc-tion with local efforts (Ministry of Education 2009). Basically, the Ministry ofEducation will act as an extra “layer” of support, with the municipalities providingthat first important layer. Ministry policies are currently “recommended,” in that it isat the city’s discretion whether or not it wants to implement such actions, but they arenot required or enforced.

Overall, the Ministry of Education, and by extension the national government, hasbeen playing a greater role in foreign student education in Japan, where it now offersa variety of services previously unavailable. This is important for areas with relativelyfew foreign students, as they do not necessarily have expertise in addressing foreignstudent education the way a more cosmopolitan city can. In these situations, theMinistry of Education can now provide guidance, should that city request it. How-ever, the primary responsibility to address foreign students falls on municipalities,with particular cities like Kawasaki working as leaders in the field and pioneeringpolicies. Efforts initiated by Kawasaki have been taken up by the Ministry ofEducation and recommended for implementation nationwide. This is a clear instancewhere the local, informal efforts of a city like Kawasaki have been recognized andformalized by the national government. In this case, the national government in factdirectly adopted and legitimated Kawasaki’s policies focusing on foreign students.

D. Green

Japan still remains a country with a small percentage of immigrants given itspopulation size. However, as this case of foreign student education demonstrates, thenational government is moving in the direction of greater accommodations. The pace isslow and often instigated by more progressive local governments, but progress has beenmade. This contradicts the more conventional wisdom that ethnically homogenouscountries are unwilling to make accommodations to their foreign-born populations.

The apparent decentralization of education policy in Japan speaks to a large degreeabout the overall decentralization of government functions in the country. While theMinistry of Education does play a role in the formation of the school curriculum, theeducation of foreign-born students is a significant policy area left to the discretion oflocal governments. Instead of the national government dictating policy from above,what we find here is local governments initiating policy as they feel it is necessary,and the Ministry of Education acting to help provide resources to those cities.

This model currently followed by the Ministry of Education is quite different from thatof the traditional unitary state, where the central government would dictate all aspects ofpolicy, including education. By abdicating major powers, such as important decisionsabout education policy and the use of educational resources, to local governments, thecentral government sacrifices a considerable degree of its control. No longer can thenational government have a major hand in all education-related decisions. With theassertion of local power, it is likely that municipal governments will try and push to furtherexpand their influence. On the other hand, the country is able to gain better informed andhopefully more intelligent policy, where those actors closest to the situation, in this caselocal educators, can make the most knowledgeable decisions for their particular area.

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Education of Foreign Children in Japan: Local Versus National Initiatives

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