Korean Minorities in the Japanese Educational System

An educational system is very complex and dynamic, that is why there are many differences in systems between countries, but it can also differ from school to school. Nevertheless, what most countries have in common when it comes to education is that they are aiming for educational equality. They want for everyone to have equal educational opportunities and to be able to make the best out of their education. Japan is no exception and has educational equality as a goal. Japan’s educational system in the period before World War II was different from the current one. School was used to create and strengthen a sense of nationalism and to produce the kind of people to develop Japan as a nation state (Okano & Tsuchiya 1999, Rohlen 1983). After World War II the Allied occupation of Japan changed this. The Allied Forces wanted the nationalistic society replaced by a democratic one and saw education as one of the best way to do so. Japan’s educational system had seen many changes and...Show moreAn educational system is very complex and dynamic, that is why there are many differences in systems between countries, but it can also differ from school to school. Nevertheless, what most countries have in common when it comes to education is that they are aiming for educational equality. They want for everyone to have equal educational opportunities and to be able to make the best out of their education. Japan is no exception and has educational equality as a goal. Japan’s educational system in the period before World War II was different from the current one. School was used to create and strengthen a sense of nationalism and to produce the kind of people to develop Japan as a nation state (Okano & Tsuchiya 1999, Rohlen 1983). After World War II the Allied occupation of Japan changed this. The Allied Forces wanted the nationalistic society replaced by a democratic one and saw education as one of the best way to do so. Japan’s educational system had seen many changes and improvements towards educational equality ever since (Okano & Tsuchiya 1999). Education of the individual became important and compulsory years of schooling were increased to nine years to give more people a chance at a better education. Japan also improved the educational equality by making it a law that everybody should get equal educational opportunities, creating a national curriculum for public as well as private schools and making education accessible for everyone, regardless of one’s sex or ethnicity. However, even with such improvements, the goal of educational equality is still yet to be reached. Educational equality proofs to be difficult to acquire as inequality exists in many different forms, even some which are yet to be fully recognized and maybe some that have not even been recognized at all. In this thesis the focus will be on the inequality in educational opportunity as well as in educational attainment and outcome, that ethnic minority groups in Japan face because of their ethnic identity. Even though minority groups are technically able to have the same education, a significant difference in educational attainment and outcome exists between minority groups and majority Japanese (Okano 2011, Boocock 2011, Okano & Tsuneyoshi 2011). In this thesis I look more into this and answer why, despite the fact that Japanese education has become more accessible for everyone, a lower educational attainment and outcome exists among minority groups in Japan. To answer this question I will start in the first chapter with examining what the general existing explanations are for these educational inequalities that ethnic minority groups experience when it comes to attainment and performance. In the second chapter I will discuss the general situation of minority groups in the Japanese education and the educational equality they might be facing. Thereafter, in the third chapter I will try to look at it from the perspective of students themselves to identify factors related to their ethnicity that may have an impact on their education. I will use case studies from Yasunori Fukuoka’s research (2000), on young ethnic Korean people in Japan and their ethnic identity, and look at their school experience. I chose for this ethnic minority group because it is an invisible minority group as they physically do not differ from the majority Japanese and thus blend in well. Another reason for this group is, the fact that it is one of the largest minority groups in Japan and for a long time had been the largest group, and also because there are Korean schools in Japan. This can be used to compare the school experience at a Korean and a Japanese school and to get a better picture. Lastly, with the outcome of the previous chapters, I will come to a conclusion to answer the research question of this thesis.Show less

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Korean Minorities in the Japanese Educational System