Short Abstract

Over the past few decades, as Brazilian and Peruvian children have adjusted to Japan's educational system, the system has also adapted to meet the needs of foreign children. This paper aims to demonstrate how inequalities in education interact, adapt, and resist change.

Long Abstract

It has already been more than three decades since the descendants of the Japanese immigrants who had settled in South America, mostly in Brazil and Peru, have “returned” to the land of the ancestors. At home, the second generation employ their parents’ native language, Portuguese or Spanish, to communicate with them, or alternatively basic Japanese or a mix of their home-country language and Japanese, due to the limited Japanese language ability of their parents. For many Brazilians and Peruvians of second generation the lack of Japanese proficiency represents a serious barrier to pursuing high school or tertiary education that it has been possible to circumvent thanks to special entrance examinations for applicants with foreign background who live in Japan. By taking these special examinations, second-generation Brazilians and Peruvians can go on to the next educational levels, in which they can develop their own potential regardless of their scarce competence in Japanese language.

Japanese language education has been a continuum of long-term care that also includes learning school and university cultures in a Japanese setting provided by institutions of secondary and tertiary education. In the last decades, these educational institutions have been offering special entrance examinations for applicants with overseas background and Japanese language learning support, to attract potential students to palliate the serious shortage of students due to the low birth rate in Japan.

Based on semi-structured interviews to six subjects, this research aims at showing the path Brazilian and Peruvian students have gone through in Japan while navigating successfully the Japanese educational system. The sample is composed by students whose lack of Japanese language proficiency have challenged them in different ways as they were faced with several difficulties in their way, but this inadequacy of Japanese competence has not been determinant in their studies and subsequent career building. This research also introduces us to the special admission for applicants with overseas roots and Japanese language support offered by Japanese educational institutions, which is aligned with the changes in Japanese society, low birth rates and the need of welcoming foreign workers and their families.