2020 Volume 13 Pages 12-31
Nowadays, the term “multicultural coexistence” is well established in Japanese society. However, the historical background of the local practice for multicultural coexistence has not been clarified except in some regions. This paper focuses on public schools in Toyonaka City, Osaka in the 1970s and 1980s, and aims to clarify the efforts of teachers for alternative education for Koreans in Japan, known as Zainichi. Although Toyonaka City was not an area where many Zainichi lived, Japanese teachers made efforts for the education of these ethnic minority children. Learning about preceding ethnic education, Japanese teachers inspected the discourse in official textbooks and created original textbooks for learning Korean culture, besides organizing a summer school in which only Zainichi children participated. The policy “Basic Policy for Education for Foreign Residents in Japan - Education of Korean Children Living in Japan -” was formulated in 1980. This policy was influenced by the social integration education ［同和教育］ and education for children with disabilities that had continued since the 1960s, as well as the contemporary trends of the ratification of the International Covenant on Human Rights. However, the acceptance of this policy by the children and parents was diverse. There were some cases in which teachers’ efforts were rejected, but teachers continued their efforts to foster the ethnic consciousness of Zainichi children. In the 1990s, these teachers also offered help to children of the returnees who had been left behind in China after the defeat of Japan in WW2. It is necessary to continue to clarify the various local practices of education for Zainichi to understand the meaning of the term “multicultural coexistence.”
https://ror.org/035t8zc32 