Education of Foreign Children in Japan: Local Versus National Initiatives

Immigration has long been a controversial subject in Japan, with the country’s historic aversion to foreign populations well noted. This article seeks to discuss recent developments in Japanese immigration policy, looking specifically at how both local governments and the national government address education issues for foreign children. Examining the specific case of Kawasaki City’s foreign student educational policies in detail, this article compares local initiatives to national policy developments, arguing that Kawasaki has been a pioneer in many cases and that the national government has ultimately adopted similar resolutions. The national government, for its part, has been slow to take up issues addressing immigrants, trailing more progressive cities like Kawasaki, but has slowly been making efforts to improve foreign student education. In the broader sense, this article argues two additional points: that largely ethnically homogenous countries like Japan are no longer able to completely ignore their immigrant populations and that highly centralized states are moving slowly toward empowering their local governments.