Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan ─ An Interactive Perspective

This volume examines how Japan’s increasingly multicultural population has impacted on the lives of minority children and their peers at school, and how schools are responding to this trend in terms of providing minority children with opportunities and preparing them for the adult society.

The contributors focus on interactions between individuals and among groups representing diverse cultural backgrounds, and explore how such interactions are changing the landscape of education in increasingly multicultural Japan. Drawing on detailed micro-level studies of schooling, the chapters reveal the ways in which these individuals and groups (long-existing minority groups, newcomers, and the ‘mainstream Japanese’) interact, and the significant consequences of such interactions on learning at school and the system of education as a whole. While the educational achievement of children of varying minority groups continues to reflect their places in the social hierarchy, the boundaries of individual and group categories are negotiated by mutual interactions and remain fluid and situational.

Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan provides important insights into bottom-up policy making processes and consciously brings together English and Japanese scholarship. As such, it will be an important resource for those interested in education and minority issues in Japan.

Ryoko Tsuneyoshi is a professor of comparative education at the Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo.

Kaori H. Okano is an associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Australia.

Sarane Spence Boocock is an emeritus professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University.