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Chapter eleven summarizes the evidence presented in previous chapters, and extends the findings to broader questions about educational reform, testing, and accountability. First the author discusses the factors that most directly influenced Japanese teachers as they attempted to follow policy guidelines for relaxed education. Next, he connects the behavior of classroom teachers to shifts in the Japanese education bureaucracy. Finally, he considers how the findings of this study could be applied to other education systems attempting to find an appropriate balance between academic rigor and student engagement.

Private higher education is an increasingly significant, ramified, and yet still conspicuously understudied topic. This chapter sets out various established and emerging models of private higher education, explaining key variables such as the relationship with state authority, diversity of institutional structures and modes of governance, and the interplay of social and commercial missions. It then asks where the Japanese system fits within these models and suggests a number of features which Japan shares with other countries. One of these features is the reliance of the state on the demand-absorbing role of private institutions—not one which is peripheral to the public system but rather the dominant mode of higher education provision and especially important in periods of rapid growth in participation rates. The chapter proceeds to develop a more Japan-specific profile of the private sector, establishing the definitional scope of private higher education in Japan and placing the numerical dominance of the private sector in direct contrast with its absolute disadvantage in terms of public investment. It also explains that, despite this handicap, private institutions do enjoy certain privileges in terms of governance structures, taxation, and scope of operations, and also boast distinctive educational strengths. To provide a context for understanding these features, the chapter also provides an in-depth history of the Japanese private university. This is offered as a conscious alternative to more orthodox historical accounts which tend to place national universities in the limelight and treat their private counterparts as a cast of supporting characters.

This chapter describes Japanese educational policies and history related to special education and considers how the recent implementation of special education for children with “developmental disabilities” is situated within the broader historical and educational policy contexts of Japanese education. The special education reform made it possible for children with developmental disabilities to receive necessary support. Yet it also has created challenges for educators, including experienced teachers, who must integrate individualized services with traditional Japanese education within peer groups and minimize the risk of stigmatization to children with developmental disabilities. In particular, the chapter considers how the new category of “developmental disabilities” was culturally constructed. Why was the Japanese government, typically noted as progressive in its early and elementary school education policies, slow relative to other modern societies in implementing formal special education services for children with mild cognitive and behavioral disabilities?

This chapter focuses on educational institutions that actively sought to foster Okinawan-Bolivians as culturally hybrid subjects by infusing them with objectified and naturalized cultures. Specifically, it examines Okinawan-Bolivian schools in Colonia Okinawa, where most Nisei and Sansei children received Japanese language education and learned about the Japanese and Okinawan cultures. In portraying the various school events in Colonia Okinawa, such as the school track meet and Japanese-language speech contest, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which these educational institutions enabled, even encouraged, Okinawan-Bolivian youth to form, nurture, and embody their identities through the terms and images of essentialized and naturalized (Japanese, Okinawan, and Bolivian) cultures. These educational institutions in effect shaped Okinawan-Bolivian youth into transnational subjects who have developed an ambiguous sense of belonging in either Bolivia or Japan.

This chapter discusses the broader implications of the ethnography including enhancement of stigma-sensitive special education practices. Our dual cultural lens allowed us to interpret and understand the experiences of Japanese children with “developmental disabilities,” their parents and educators from cultural insider and outsider perspectives while reflecting on U.S. special education policies and practices. Such “conversation” between cultural understandings of the meaning of children’s struggles and how we support children with disabilities underscored a number of issues of relevance both to the U.S. and Japan. Through reflection on the strengths and challenges in Japanese and U.S. systems, educators, social workers and policy makers in both countries can learn from one another how to balance flexibility in the provision of sensitive and creative educational practices that minimize children’s risk of stigmatization with clear procedural guidelines that assure the delivery of adequate services in a timely manner to all children.

Japanese educators recently created a new disability category, “developmental disabilities” to refer to relatively mild cognitive and behavioral disabilities, such as learning disabilities, ADHD, and high functioning autism. Children with “developmental disabilities” experience unique needs and struggles due to the relatively invisible nature of their disabilities. In many respects, they appear to be typically developing children, and their difficulties can be misinterpreted as resulting from laziness, disobedience, or disrespect. Until 2007 when new educational policies were implemented, Japanese children with “developmental disabilities” were recognized as “slow learners” or “difficult” and educated in general education classrooms without specialized support, in part out of concern for consequent stigma. The chapter approaches the issue of disability in Japan through a sociocultural model of disability. This chapter describes how Japanese people understand disability in relation to Japanese concepts of self and traditional educational and socialization beliefs and practices.

The Japanese are highly educated, extremely health conscious, and feel responsibility for the state of their bodies. Japan is plentifully supplied with physicians, 95 percent of whom are in clinical practice in well-equipped hospitals and clinics, both public and private. However, among the women in the present survey, 60 percent have never talked about kōnenki with a doctor. Whereas they described friends, magazines, and television as reasonably good sources of information, only about 25 percent of the sample said that they had received useful information from their physician. At present, many thoughtful people struggle with a dilemma: to assert that Japanese women's experience at the end of menstruation is somewhat different from what the scientific literature accepts as normal. And yet to follow without reservations behind current scientific authority on menopause is experientially counterintuitive.

This chapter addresses the education experiences and outcomes of children of full or partial foreign parentage who grew up in Japan. It highlights some of their education strategies and practices and discusses how migration channels, parents' socioeconomic situations, and cultural backgrounds affect such practices and children's education achievements. Immigrant parents, regardless of their class and ethnic and cultural backgrounds, share an eagerness to advance their children's education. They strategize among different educational options and choose those they believe can produce better outcomes as well as match their mobility goals. However, the educational outcomes of the children vary widely, across national groups and along class lines. This has to do with the variant cultural, social, and economic resources that can be used to advance children's education. Meanwhile, the easiest educational choice available to them, Japanese public education, falls short in facilitating immigrant children's education mobility. The different choices of educational institutions in Japan include Japanese schools and “foreigner schools.” There is also the option of transnational education.

This chapter discusses some methodological implications of a sociocultural developmental perspective of children’s disabilities, the implementation of the ethnographic research, and the first author’s reflections on her experiences collecting data on a culturally-sensitive topic. This chapter begins with a cultural analysis of Japanese policies relevant to the design and implementation of formal special education services for children with developmental disabilities. Then, the chapter describes the field research, conducted in 2009-2010. The first author conducted participant observation as a teaching assistant for children with developmental disabilities. Educators and parents participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews focusing on their socialization and educational beliefs and practices in relation to the new special education system. In-depth longitudinal study was conducted over two school years with three children as they transitioned into special education.

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book. It outlines the Japanese education system, and describes the research site, including the schools where the main fieldwork was conducted, their school districts, and the city in which they were located. The chapter explains the research methodology used (longitudinal ethnography) and situates the study in relation to other longitudinal ethnographic studies of education.

This chapter describes how special education is understood and practiced by educators at Greenleaf Elementary School, including strategies they utilized in their general and special education classrooms, and how children responded to such support. They supported children through creating a “naturally” accepting social ecology through their everyday activities at school. For example, they created a home-like classroom environment by “staying close to children’s kokoro (hearts/minds),” understanding children’s needs through omoiyari (empathy/sympathy), and “raising” all children to respect diverse abilities and show kindness to others. Educators supported the positive peer relationships of children with developmental disabilities including by involving peers in providing support for them, and helping when peer groups experienced problems. Yet some children with developmental disabilities struggled in their peer groups. Educators attempted to guide these children to develop self-confidence and self-esteem, and to secure their voluntary cooperation in school activities.

Chapter 5 focuses on how educators support the parents of children with developmental disabilities. With the increasing attention on children with developmental disabilities, many parents have read about disabilities, including their neurological bases. Yet their understandings of disabilities were deeply embedded in the social context. They focused on how children’s disabilities impacted their relationships with peers, how the children received educational support, and how children understood and dealt with their differences from peers. Given their focus on the social context, many parents expressed hesitation about placing children in special education classrooms. They were sensitive to “other people’s eyes.” Concerns with stigma made it difficult for some parents to accept that their children have difficulties or disabilities, let alone grant permission for them to receive additional support outside of the peer group. Knowing parents’ concerns, teachers carefully support parents’ gradual acceptance of their children’s need for special education services.

This chapter describes children’s perspectives on their disabilities or “difficulties,” how they experienced the new, formal system of special education, and the challenges and responses of their parents. Dai’s case illustrates the role of educators in helping children and their parents transition to special education. Educators created an environment in which Dai could fully benefit from support outside of his general education classroom, and guided his mother to accept his needs for special education. Kakeru’s case illustrates the importance of parental understanding of their children’s disabilities and provision of developmentally-appropriate support in collaboration with educators. Kakeru’s parents also created a protected environment at home from which he could face the challenges at school. Yusuke, who is older than the other two children, articulated his own understanding of his difficulties. His case illustrates his struggles and the process through which he learned to cope with hardships and understand his “difficulties.”