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Japanese language education in the United States began in the late 19th century, aimed mainly at
Japanese American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...
children and conducted by parents and community institutions. Over the course of the next century, it would slowly expand to include non-Japanese as well as
native speaker Native Speaker may refer to: * ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee * ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids * Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue {{disambigua ...
s (mainly children of Japanese expatriates being educated in
international school An international school is an institution that promotes education in an international environment or framework. Although there is no uniform definition or criteria, international schools are usually characterized by a multinational student body an ...
s). A 2012 survey of foreign-language learners by the Japan Foundation found 4,270 teachers teaching the
Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...
to 155,939 students at 1,449 different institutions, an increase of 10.4% in the number of students since the 2009 survey. The quality and focus of dialogues in Japanese textbooks meant for English-speakers has changed since the 1970s.


History


Origins

The earliest
Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...
instruction in the
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was aimed at
heritage speaker A heritage language is a minority language (either immigrant or indigenous) learned by its speakers at home as children, and difficult to be fully developed because of insufficient input from the social environment. The speakers grow up with a ...
s. Japanese immigration to Hawaii began in 1868, and to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
in 1869. ''
Issei is a Japanese-language term used by ethnic Japanese in countries in North America and South America to specify the Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate there. are born in Japan; their children born in the new country a ...
'' parents, worrying about the increasing
Americanization Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of American culture and business on other countries outside the United States of America, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, ...
of their ''
nisei is a Japanese-language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the ethnically Japanese children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants (who are called ). The are considered the second generation ...
'' children, established Japanese schools outside of the regular school system to teach the language and culture of their ancestral country. The first school was established in
Kohala, Hawaii The districts of the Big Island. From Northernmost, clockwise; North Kohala (highlighted), Hilo,_ Hilo,_South_Hilo,_Hawaii">Hilo,_Puna,_Hawaii">Puna,_ Hilo,_South_Hilo,_Hawaii">Hilo,_Puna,_Hawaii">Puna,_Kau,_Hawaii">Kaū,_South_ Hilo,_South_Hilo, ...
by Reverend Shigefusa Kanda, in 1893, and others soon followed, including several attached to Hawaiian Hongwanji missions. The schools were financed by both the Japanese immigrant community and the sugar planters they worked for, as they provided much needed childcare for the plantation laborers during their long workday. By 1920, the schools enrolled 98% of all Japanese American children in Hawaii. Statistics for 1934 showed 183 schools teaching a total of 41,192 students. On the mainland, the first Japanese language school was California's ''Nihongo Gakuin'', established in 1903; by 1912, eighteen such schools had been set up in California alone. The schools' perceived connection to Japan and support for labor movements, including the 1909 and 1920 strikes against the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, exposed fault lines of religion and class within the Japanese American community, and fed growing
anti-Japanese sentiment Anti-Japanese sentiment (also called Japanophobia, Nipponophobia and anti-Japanism) involves the hatred or fear of anything which is Japanese, be it its culture or its people. Its opposite is Japanophilia. Overview Anti-Japanese sen ...
from the larger public. Buddhist organizations were heavily involved in the establishment of schools, and, while many Japanese American Christians founded their own competing schools, others ascribing to a more assimilationist view opposed their existence. Furthermore, non-Japanese also took a dim view of the schools, accusing them of indoctrinating Japanese American children and forming part of a wider strategy of the Japanese government to "colonize" the United States; public school teachers and the
Office of Naval Intelligence The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) is the military intelligence agency of the United States Navy. Established in 1882 primarily to advance the Navy's modernization efforts, it is the oldest member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and serve ...
went so far as to label them "anti-American". Anti-Japanese prejudice had grown with their population, and nativist groups spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries lobbying to limit Japanese immigration, create race-based restrictions on citizenship, enact discriminatory property laws, and otherwise combat the "
Yellow Peril The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter) is a racial color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia as an existential danger to the Western world. As a psychocultural menace from the Eastern wor ...
"; by the 1920s, the focus had shifted to Japanese language schools. A 1920 report by the Federal Commission of Education declared that the 20,000 students of Hawaii's 163 Japanese schools were being "retarded in accepting American customs, manners, ideals, principles, and standards," and recommended the schools be taken over by the public education system. The territorial legislature had already passed a series of laws regulating who could teach and how often students could attend classes, and in April 1923 the Clark Bill imposed a per-student tax, forcing many schools to close when they could not (or would not) pay the tax.Niiya, Brian. ''Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present'' (1993), p 190. In the meantime, California politicians enacted the Parker Bill in August 1921, establishing extensive prerequisites for teacher certification and giving complete control over hiring, operations and curricula in the schools to the Superintendent of Public Education. Late in December 1922, sixteen Hawaiian schools banded together to file a lawsuit challenging the restrictions. The legal case was controversial within the Japanese American community; its more conservative members saw the lawsuit as yet another unnecessary wedge between Japanese Americans and whites, and argued that it would only exacerbate anti-Japanese prejudice. 88 of Hawaii's 146 Japanese schools eventually joined the suit, and Farrington v. Tokushige worked through several appeals before landing in the Supreme Court, where in 1927 the Justices found the regulations unconstitutional.


World War II

Interest from
foreign language A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a given country, and that native speakers from that country must usually acquire through conscious learning - be this through language lessons at school ...
learners was limited prior to World War II, and instruction for non-heritage speakers was established more slowly. One 1934 survey found only eight universities in the United States offering Japanese language education, mostly supported by only one instructor per university; it further estimated that only thirteen American professors possessed sufficient fluency in the Japanese language to use it in conducting research. As late as 1940, there were only 65 non-
Japanese American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...
s who were able to read, write and understand the language. Even among ''nisei'' graduates of the community Japanese schools, true fluency was rare: a 1941
Military Intelligence Service The Military Intelligence Service ( ja, アメリカ陸軍情報部, ''America Rikugun Jōhōbu'') was a World War II U.S. military unit consisting of two branches, the Japanese American unit (described here) and the German-Austrian unit base ...
survey of 3,700 ''nisei'' found that 3 percent could potentially become competent after extensive training, 4 percent were "proficient" but still required additional instruction, and just 3 percent were qualified for linguistic work in Japanese. Due to this shortage, the military's need for personnel competent in Japanese even before the US entry into World War II drove the MIS to establish its own specialized school aimed at training specialists to serve as interpreters, interrogators, and translators, the Military Intelligence Service Language School; initially based at the
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, it was later moved to
Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
, first Camp Savage, and then later
Fort Snelling Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint A ...
. Most of the 6,000 graduates were Japanese American. At the same time, Japanese language schools on the West Coast aimed at heritage speakers were shut down due to the
Japanese American internment Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
. Japanese school instructors and principals were among those detained by the FBI after Pearl Harbor, so many schools had already closed by the time "evacuation" orders were issued in the spring of 1942. Even in Hawaii, which was not affected by
Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...
but was instead placed under martial law, authorities forced Japanese community schools to dissolve and liquidate their assets; however, after the war, the schools were revived with the support of ''issei'', ''nisei'', and non-Japanese community members. Enrollment in such schools declined compared to the pre-war period; for example, the Moiliili Language School in
Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of H ...
, which with over 1,000 students in 1938 was the largest Japanese-language school in Hawaii, had only 85 students .


United States Navy Japanese Language School

For U.S. and the world to understand Japan and its culture, the United States Navy Japanese Language School, relocated from the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, to the University of Colorado in Boulder during the
Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the Theater (warfare), theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, ...
, played a major role. Not only did it serve mainly for intelligence activities during the war, but also its graduates, such as
Edward Seidensticker Edward George Seidensticker (February 11, 1921 – August 26, 2007) was an American noted post-World War II scholar, historian, and preeminent translator of classical and contemporary Japanese literature. His English translation of the epic '' Th ...
,
Donald Keene Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japane ...
, Otis Cary and others, often called the "Boulder Boys", made important contributions to introducing the Japanese culture in the post-WWII world.


Post-World War II

The first program aimed at training
secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
Japanese language teachers was established at the
University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
under the provisions of the National Defense Act of 1958; it initially admitted 20 students. Enrollment in Japanese language courses in US high schools had the fastest growth rate out of all languages during the 1980s, the time of the
Japanese asset bubble The was an economic bubble in Japan from 1986 to 1991 in which real estate and stock market prices were greatly inflated. In early 1992, this price bubble burst and Japan's economy stagnated. The bubble was characterized by rapid acceleration of ...
. During the 1990s,
The College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...
, a United States standardized testing agency, began to offer an SAT Subject Test in Japanese and conducted the first sitting of the Japanese Advanced Placement exam in May 2007; these examinations enable high school students to obtain college credit for their prior study of the Japanese language. However, unlike
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
, which continued to grow in the early 2000s, the popularity of Japanese declined sharply, with thousands of students dropping the language. According to a survey by the
Center for Applied Linguistics The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1959 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to promote language learning and cultural understanding. Its president and chief executive officer i ...
, the teaching of Japanese declined at both the primary and secondary levels between 2006 and 2009. Japanese-language education aimed at
native speaker Native Speaker may refer to: * ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee * ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids * Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue {{disambigua ...
s began later, as the rise of the economy of Japan resulted in increasing numbers of companies sending employees and their families to the United States for short-term assignments. , the Japanese
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology The , also known as MEXT or Monka-shō, is one of the eleven Ministries of Japan that composes part of the executive branch of the Government of Japan. Its goal is to improve the development of Japan in relation with the international community. ...
officially recognized four Japanese ''
nihonjin gakkō , also called Japanese school, is a full-day school outside Japan intended primarily for Japanese citizens living abroad. It is an expatriate school designed for children whose parents are working on diplomatic, business, or education missions o ...
'' day schools in the United States,Tsukuda, Yoko. "Japanese American Transnational Families." In: Zhao, Xiaojian and Edward J. W. Park. ''Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History volumes An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History''. ABC-CLIO, November 26, 2013. , 9781598842401. Start p
602
CITED: p
604
in
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, the
Chicago metropolitan area The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hint ...
, and the
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. Several other day/boarding schools are classified as ''
Shiritsu zaigai kyōiku shisetsu ''Zaigai kyōiku shisetsu'' ( 在外教育施設 "Overseas educational institution"), or in English, Japanese international school or overseas Japanese school, may refer to one of three types of institutions officially classified by the Ministry ...
'' ( 私立在外教育施設) or overseas branches of Japanese private schools;私立在外教育施設一覧
().
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology The , also known as MEXT or Monka-shō, is one of the eleven Ministries of Japan that composes part of the executive branch of the Government of Japan. Its goal is to improve the development of Japan in relation with the international community. ...
. Retrieved on March 1, 2015.
as of 2010 there were three such schools in the U.S. In addition, as of 2010 there were 79 weekend/supplementary schools; in 2006 29 of them were supplied with at least one teacher by the Japanese government.


Current status

Currently, Japanese is not a widely-available college major in the United States, as only 132 U.S. colleges (including in U.S. territories) offer Japanese as an undergraduate major, while this number drops to 123 when excluding 2-year institutions.
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language o ...
, another
East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Kore ...
n language, is taught in 129 4-year universities as a major subject. (This increases to 133 when taking 2-year colleges into account.) As for Japanese postgraduate programs, there are 23 in the U.S. (with 44 programs for Chinese, in comparison). This is out of the 4,726 degree-granting institutions in the United States that the
National Center for Educational Statistics The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the part of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance ...
recorded in 2012-2013. However, according to the
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...
, there has been a 10.3% increase in enrollment in Japanese classes in colleges and universities from 2006 (at 66,605 enrolled) to 2009 (at 73,434 enrolled). According to the Japan Foundation, the increase was 19.7% in the same period. Japanese in pre-collegiate education has not seen the same growth rates. In 2011-2012, there were 129,189 public and private primary and secondary schools in the US. Of this number, 30,861 were private and 98,328 were public (including charter schools). In 2007-2008, these numbers were 132,446, 33,740, and 98,916, respectively. In 2008, the
Center for Applied Linguistics The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1959 and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to promote language learning and cultural understanding. Its president and chief executive officer i ...
found that the number of Japanese classes taught in primary and secondary schools dropped from their numbers in 1987. The organization did not specify the exact numbers of any year in their executive summary of their national survey of foreign language teaching in U.S. schools, however. The number of foreign language classes in total dropped in this time period. Pre-collegiate institutions are increasing optional Japanese testing. The Japanese Language and Culture AP test was offered at 666 secondary schools and 329 participating colleges in 2016; 2,481 students, from earlier than the 9th grade to the 12th graders, took the test in total, which was a 2% increase from 2015’s total of 2,431 students.


Evolution of textbook pedagogy

Dr. Eleanor Harz Jorden, the author of ''Beginning Japanese'', Parts 1 and 2, wrote the first pedagogical grammar of Japanese written by a linguist. She also coauthored the widely used ''Mastering Japanese'' textbook, along with the Foreign Service Language Institute, and Hamako Ito Chaplin. Colleagues in the field of Japanese pedagogy, such as Professor Mari Noda, say that Dr. Jorden was unusual in her time in that she insisted on the use of audio recordings to supplement the text-based grammar and vocabulary in her work. She considered social interaction and vocal language the focus of her research. Noda remade ''Mastering Japanese'' into ''Japanese: The Spoken Language'', which is part of a larger series on Japanese that also focuses on other aspects such as the written language. Japanese textbook dialogues have changed since the 1970s. Dialogues from the 1970s were thought to be less natural and practical than they should be by educators like Jorden. After Dr. Jorden’s time, the trend of Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) has been to focus on reading, writing, and grammar chapters arranged by themes based on pragmatic, real-life situations. Some emphasis is also placed on communicative, “real” language. For instance, in each of the two ''Genki'' textbooks, published by the '' Japan Times'', the content is split between a Dialogue and Grammar section and a Reading and Writing section. In the Dialogue and Grammar section, the chapters have themes such as “Asking for Directions” or “Finding a Part-Time Job”. The chapter has a long conversation, or two shorter ones, recorded on the accompanying
CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comp ...
, and a transcript and English translations of the conversation. Then, there is a vocabulary list with relevant definitions, grammatical lessons, and several problems (which may or may not have vocal narration in the CD). The Reading and Writing section has simple stories written in Japanese, comprehension questions about the stories, kanji with space provided for writing them, and some short cultural explanations. Junko Mori, Kimberly Jones, and Tsuyoshi Ono believe that use of cultural and discourse knowledge may be lacking in classrooms, making it so that students aren’t totally prepared for real-life interactions with native Japanese speakers. Mori used the example of ''doushite'', a Japanese word for “why” that is frequently used in Japanese textbooks and exercises. It is a convenient counterpart for the English “why,” but has more forceful, negative connotations for Japanese speakers than “why” does for English speakers. The required sentence structure for answers to “why”-questions is more complicated, and requires that a creative explanation be formulated. Thus, according to her, ''doushite'' needs to be placed in
social context The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educate ...
more so than other grammatical terms, but often isn’t—the exchanges are used primarily as exchanges of information rather than social tools. In conversations between Japanese speakers that Mori compiled, ''doushite'' was rarely used at all to elicit information. A survey of dialogues in modern textbooks found that they are, on average, short and decontextualized, involve only two speakers, are contextless, arranged in neat question-answer pairs that are complete sentences, and are without many conversational linguistic devices.


See also

* Japanese Language School of Greater Hartford *
Hoshū jugyō kō , or are supplementary Japanese schools located in foreign countries for students living abroad with their families. ''Hoshū jugyō kō'' educate Japanese-born children who attend local day schools. They generally operate on weekends, after scho ...
* Kinmon Gakuen * Nihon Go Gakko (Tacoma) *
Language teaching Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: ...
* Farrington v. Tokushige


References


Further reading

* Arnold, Bruce Makoto
"Pacific Childhood Dreams and Desires in the Rafu: Multiple Transnational Modernisms and the Los Angeles Nisei, 1918-1942"
* * Fujimori, Hiroko (藤森 弘子;
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies , often referred to as TUFS, is a specialist research university in Fuchū, Tokyo, Japan. TUFS is primarily devoted to foreign language, international affairs and foreign studies. It also features an Asia-African institution. History The Uni ...
, Japanese Language Center for International Students (留学生日本語教育センター)).
The Current State of Japanese Language Teaching in the U.S.A. : Report on Visits to a Saturday Japanese School for Japanese Students and Japanese Classes at Secondary Schools in the U.S.A.
(米国日本語教育事情調査 : REX派遣先校と日本語補習授業校を視察して
Archive
. ''Bulletin of Japanese Language Center for International Students'' (留学生日本語教育センター論集) 30, p. 139-152, 2004-03. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
See profile at
CiNii CiNii () is a bibliographic database service for material in Japanese academic libraries, especially focusing on Japanese works and English works published in Japan. The database was founded in April 2005 and is maintained by the National Institu ...

See profile at
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Prometheus-Academic Collections (東京外国語大学学術成果コレクション)

. * {{Japanese as a second or foreign language Japanese-language education in the United States