Politics of education for Japanese returnee children

Abstract

Business expansion in the 1960s and its associated international strategies have meant that many Japanese company employees and their families were sent abroad on long‐term assignments. The children who accompanied their parents on such assignments and then returned to Japan were first described as ‘educational refugees’ and were regarded as culturally ambiguous, socially marginalized and academically disadvantaged. The Japanese government considered that special measures were needed for these children, as they had missed out on the standard education that they would otherwise have received. Consequently, it introduced various educational options so that they could reintegrate smoothly into Japanese society and its educational system. Later, in the 1980s, when ‘globalization’ became vital to Japan, the attributes associated with such children were recast and they began to be regarded as ‘valuable national assets’ for their supposed rich cross‐cultural awareness and bilingual abilities, the very qualities the government sought in the new generations of Japanese. They were now seen as a barometer of Japan's globalization and, with their new high‐flying, global image, universities and companies began to actively enrol them. However, were these variously ascribed attributes based on fact? My research in the UK into their English and Japanese abilities has demonstrated that the claims, whether of disadvantage or of ability, were exaggerated or misleading. Furthermore, with the rapid increase in people's mobility, information and technology and with the multicultural orientation that many host communities, including the UK, now adopt their sojourn lifestyle has become increasingly Japanese, making the gap between assumption and reality even greater.