This article aims to describe a nature of multicultural society in Japan by analyzing the recognition of schoolteachers for newcomer children about the adaptation and maintenance of “culture”. It argues that Japanese school culture is culturally assimilative and ignores ethnic differences of children (Tsuneyoshi, 1998 etc), Further, it highlights that the people in Japan exclude ethnic minorities and try to maintain the “pure” Japaneseness by favoring the idea of maintaining diverse culture (Nagayoshi, 2011 etc). Castles (2004) states that multiculturalism is an idea that expects the minorities to adapt to certain key values, while guarantees the equal rights with the majority without giving up the maintenance of the minorities’ culture. The result of the analysis indicates that many schoolteachers expect the minorities to follow the “rules” embedded in daily lives of the majority, in addition to the values expressed by the law, and expect them to maintain their “culture” such as first languages, food customs and traditional events, unless they break the “rules”. Such dimensions of “key values” (Castles, 2004) may be one of the characteristics of Japanese multicultural society and a new expression of cultural nationalism in Japan.
