The Making of an Underclass: Japan’s Neglect of Immigrant Education

22 comments

1. Rules number one, never read and take at heart yahoo comment

   It’s the den of netouyo

2. Interesting article in Japanese, but your big mistake was to scroll down to the comments to take on the crazies. Japan is a giant aged care facility so while all these problems are valid and real, the decision making speed can be explained largely by the age of the people in charge.

3. They don’t want long term immigrants at that level. The fact they have kids is an inconvenience.
   Look at the big picture here. State sponsored slavery under the “trainee” system and the newer “specific skill visa” 5 years in total and you CAN NOT BRING YOUR FAMILY.

   Those kids you worry about. Once they reach age of majority unless they apply to become Japanese they will need jobs and to work toward permanent residency. But surely that will be tough without Japanese skills. <am I bothered?> emoji from the J-Gov.

   So yeah. Rather that trying to actively help they are aiming to have fewer such kids in the future.

4. Well bit of truth here and there obviously but the way I see it it’s also due to lower/almost non-existent English skills of general public in Japan.

5. Yahoo comments are Scheiße. You should ignore them.

   In my opinion, Japan must learn what Germany experienced when they introduced what we call Gastarbeiter. However, people in this country has not learned from foreign countries these days. This seems to me really unfortunate and worrying. As for human rights, though Japan certainly has the constitution which includes wide-range human rights, its actual meaning or role is quite weak if compared to European countries. This is partly because there is no constitutional court in Japan and the ordinary courts are too conservative. On top of that, Japan has not ratified the optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which allows people to claim individual complaints to the UN (All European countries ratified this). I believe that Japanese should improve situations regarding human rights, but this might be hard task.

6. * Yahoo: Japanese first!!
   * People: Let’s make education free until university!
   * Yahoo: NO, why should I pay for other people’s children’s education ?!
   * People: At least until high school ?
   * Yahoo: NO!
   * People: Japanese first ?

   * go back to top

7. at the risk of sounds dismissive: Capitalism gonna Capitalism…?

8. I feel like the Japanese government neglects a great many demographics. Immigrants are certainly one of them. Dual citizens another. The LGBT community too. And most of all, women are in an especially bad position (just look at the gender equality rankings, they’re humiliating). Put all these groups together, and you would clearly have a majority of the population. Yet there seems to be very little pressure for change. If there is one thing those at the reins of society have succeeded in, it’s creating a status quo wherein no one feels confident enough to try to change anything.

9. A note on the constitution—it doesn’t list “human rights”. The English translation says “all people”, but the Japanese, which is the only version that matters, says 「すべての国民」, and the Japanese government and courts have set strong precedent that foreigners and non-citizens are not counted among the 国民.

10. I know some brazilians who grew up in Japan and I for the most part can confirm this. They all went to these seperate schools for foreigners and didn’t even learn Kanji. What a horrible system.

11. Some of you are talking about English and international school and the western expat experience. But this is not what the article is about.

    The linked article recommends basically three things:

    1. mandating foreign homeschoolers to integrate;
    2. integrating *ethnic* schools with MEXT;
    3. and requiring these schools to allow Japanese children to attend.

    As for **1**, homeschooling is vaguely illegal in Japan. School attendance is mandatory for Japanese citizens. It is encouraged for non-Japanese citizens and free Japanese-language learning support and *very basic* educational assistance is usually available. But foreigners generally are not *forced* to go to school.

    Basic information for **2**: *Expats* in Japan are mostly from China, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Brazil. There are also a fair number of *second and third generation Japanese* from Vietnam, Thailand, and Brazil, via the Guest Worker programs in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. There is an even larger community of *descendants* of Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, and North Koreans.

    In the 1950s, Japan subsidized and helped build Chinese and Korean schools all over the country. *Ethnic* schools in this context usually refers to these schools, and older Chinese and Korean schools that predate WW2.

    The Zainichi Korean ones are frequently in the news.

    * Chongryon schools are based on Juche sasang, or Kim Jong-il’s ideological writings. They are usually operated directly by North Korea. Between 2010 and 2014, it became politically acceptable in Japan for cities to stop subsidizing them entirely, and they did;
    * Some Mindan schools are *now* partially funded by the South Korean government. Because they toe the South Korean line in most disputes, the Japanese far-right often see them as an easy target.

    There are also a few (5 or 6) notable Brazilian schools in Japan. Small, private, unlicensed Brazilian schools have recently been cropping up all over the country. A few of them are licensed in Brazil.

    Though it wasn’t originally, the Kobe Chinese School is now affiliated directly with the PRC. For the most part, they accept Chinese children and Chinese-Japanese who qualify as Chinese *enough*. I wonder if the author beings up point **3** because they stopped accepting most ethnically Japanese students in 2010.

12. Japan is ruled by old people stuck in old (racist) ways. This will not change in the near future either.

13. I don’t know man, in my country, the rich France that continually boasts its respect of equality, liberty and shit and acts all generous because it lets in millions of poor refugees all the time, these same immigrants are literally legions begging in the streets with their unschooled children. We have full tent villages of them even in Paris’ parks and forests (on top of the hookers and drug dealers) and you can’t stop at an intersection without them swarming your car to forcibly wash your windows in hope you have a coin to spare.

    When I see groups of immigrants from Nepal or the Philippine for example taken in charge and provided with such good japanese lessons that within a month they are able to operate a cashier like it took me 5 years in a french university learning japanese, to be able to do, well it’s quite obvious to my eyes that the japanese system works much better than the total LACK of plan my own country shows when it comes with immigration and immigrants education.

    You don’t see them roam the streets begging and every time you meet one, they are able to express themselves in Japanese and work among japanese people? It means they can survive here in humanly decent conditions. Not like in France where anyone can cross the borders but gets nothing, no job, neither a place to live. And about some kids not going to japanese schools, well I’m sorry but *in France schooling is supposed to be mandatory for all, but it still all depends on the parents and if they want to cite a ‘religious reason’ to school their kids themselves, you can do nothing*. The law **existing** doesn’t mean it’s going to work. Again, immigrants in Japan aren’t living in tents villages neither begging. It means the japanese system WORKS.

14. I love this post. I’m Japanese but I was born and raised in Germany, so having someone look at this and compare it to the situation in Germany with Gastarbeiter was a great read!

15. It’s typical of the far right attitude in any country. Think only in 2 dimensions of hit nail and hammer goes in even if it means you then just have to hit it back and forth through a very thin bit of wood.

    See also the rabid hate of refugees… But also being opposed to do anyrhing to stop there being refugees in the first place.

    I suppose there could also be an aspect of knowing in this. They know an uneducated underclass of immigrant kids is more likely to turn to crime and this plays well for them.

16. Sure my son went to an Elementary school in Japan and was ostracized. My wife pulled him out of the school. He’s being taught at home. He’s only a quarter Japanese and looks western blue eyes and the rest. She didn’t want the bastards to grind him down. He’s been homeschooled for 5 years speaks 3 languages fluently, plays the piano, skateboards and is an extremely happy kid. If he’d been left in the system who knows what would have become of him? He interacts with Japanese in the park but he’s always treated of something as an oddity but his personality wins them over every time. As soon as they realize that he can speak Japanese and Skateboard a hell of a lot better than any of them. He’s accepted but during his first year at the elementary school he complained a lot about the teachers and their unkindness. He’s a good kid and doesn’t make things up so we gave up on educating our son in a Japanese school. It wasn’t too long ago that Japan had schools for Koreans only. It’s sad but outward appearances really matter in this country.

17. Migration is often abused as a crutch to surpress wages. Meanwhile the local population and migrants are increasingly played out against each other.
    Labor shortage is always just a sign of too little compensation for demanding jobs. Importing people for unsustainable wages in shit jobs is not a future proof model, because employers are shifting the social costs to the public while raking in the profits in private.

18. The problem is that it lists at the bottom of the article(eg: not having Rights and health protected) sounds eerily similar to what happens to unprivileged kids in America.

19. How about we not tell another country how to run their affairs?

20. excited for the daily western netizens bashing on Japan thread.

    If only there was a way for immigrant children to attend school with Japanese children by enrolling at a non international school. If only that was not illegal. Oh wait.

21. Sorru but Yahoo Japan can’t be accessed in Europe for the time being…

22. wow reddit talking about ヤフコメ is so so… cringy?

    thats a word?

    maybe pathetic is more better yo