Montreal Hoshuko School

The Montreal Hoshuko School (French: École Hoshuko Montréal Inc, Japanese: モントリオール日本語補習校 Montoriōru Nihongo Hoshū Jugyō Kō) is a Japanese supplementary weekend school in Montreal, Quebec. The members of the Montreal Shōkōkai (モントリオール商工会; Japanese Association of Commerce and Industry) manage and assist the administrative and financial aspects of the Montreal Hokusho and have done so since the school's founding. The Montreal Hokusho serves both Japanese nationals and Japanese Canadians. Classes are held at the Trafalgar School for Girls, where the weekend school rents space.

Due to requests from Japanese national parents, the Montreal Hokusho School opened in 1972; the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho) and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs assisted the school's development. This opening was one of the factors that caused Montreal's Japanese population to increase. The Japanese school initially had a mission entirely focused on the expatriate population. The Japanese national population of Montreal increased in the 1970s and 1980s due to the expansion of the Japanese economy, and this caused the hoshuko's enrollment to increase. Larger numbers of Japanese Canadian children, sons and daughters of immigrant parents, began attending the school in the mid-1980s. Some Japan-born parents feared that the admission of non-Japanese nationals would cause the school to water down its curriculum and complicate their own children's entry into prestigious Japanese universities.

The hoshuko's peak enrollment, with 95 students, was in 1989. Because many Japanese corporations and other corporations removed operations from Quebec, enrollment decreased after the 1980s. As fewer Japanese nationals attended, the Hokusho School increasingly began to accommodate the Canadian students. By 2003 the numbers of students who each have one Japanese parent and one non-Japanese parent have increased, and as of that year the school now admits non-Japanese Canadians. Mary H. Maguire of McGill University stated that the school became a Japanese community gathering center, a "place of relaxation," and more open to cultural and ethnic diversity.

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