Language minority students in Japanese classrooms

Minority (non-Japanese) students can be found throughout the entire Japanese education system. An incomplete list of possible cultural and or language minorities represented in Japanese schools include:

Okinawans and Ainu are considered to be speakers of Japanese, and as a result are not considered language minorities. Descendants of Koreans and Chinese who have lived in Japan for many generations also speak Japanese as their first language. However, other non-Japanese-speaking children, such as the children of Japanese World War II orphans raised in China, who have been returning to Japan in the past decades, have introduced an element of language minorities to schools in Japan since the late 1970s.

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families from the 69th plenary meeting of the United Nations in 1990 states the following:

Despite the presence of large numbers of non-Japanese or non-Japanese speaking students in the Japanese school system, the education system is designed to teach all students equally, despite their abilities, in what is known as the assimilationist model.

Education in Japan is compulsory for Japanese students up through the ninth grade. All children of Japanese parents automatically receive notification when they are about to begin school. However, for children of foreigners living in Japan, only those children whose parents have informed the local town office that they want their children to be enrolled in school receive a notification. As a result, the onus for educating language minorities in Japan falls on the local school or school board and not the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

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