Language Policy for Linguistic Minority Students in Japanese Public Schools and Prospects for Bilingualism: The Nikkei Brazilian Case

Abstract

As a result of the recent wave of immigration to Japan, most public schools in Japan are coping with the new challenge of educating the children of immigrant families. I explore the national and local-level responses of the Japanese education system to the problem of language instruction for immigrant children since the mid-1990s. Throughout I focus on the children of one of the largest of the recent immigrant groups, the people of Japanese descent from Brazil. I describe the array of social, structural, and attitudinal factors that have contributed to many of these children entering into a “linguistic limbo ” in which they are in danger of not being able to maintain proficiency in Portuguese nor become proficient in Japanese. Despite the fact that most Japanese continue to see Japan as an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous nation, the reality is that minority groups have always existed in Japan. In recent years older minority groups have begun to assert their ethnic and linguistic identities. The Ainu, a minority group indigenous to Japan’s northern Hokkaido region, have moved to revive Ainu culture over the past several decades. Their efforts have led to the development of a number of Ainu language and culture programs in Hokkaido

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