This article explains the purpose of the special theme session at the 2020 Annual Conference of the Intercultural Education Society of Japan. The theme is “Re-Imagining/Re-Creating ‘Japan’: The Experiences of Border-Crossing Youths”. The aim of the session is to understand how border-crossing youths re-imagine and re-create “Japan”. At the same time, we examine how researchers of Intercultural Education attempt to re-imagine and re-create “Japan” through interaction with border-crossing youths.

We focus on the experiences of border-crossing youths, since their experiences to move between various regions and nations indicate critical points of view and alternative ways of living. We do not adopt, however, the dichotomous framework which considers border-crossing youths as minority and Japanese researchers as majority. Rather we attempt to reflect our positionality and emphasize the interrelationship between border-crossing youths and researchers.

We put Japan in brackets, since we doubt essentialist idea of Japanese people and Japanese culture. We insist that the border between majority and minority is socially constructed in the particular context in which a researcher is also involved.

Imagination is linked with creation. We attempt to imagine alternative and to create something that does not exist up to the present date. We keep imagining and creating better alternative. Thus we title this special theme session “Re-Imagining/Re-Creating “Japan””.

In the session, three researchers present their research on the experiences of border-crossing youths. They listen to and collect the voices of border-crossing youths who have often been ignored. During their research, the researchers themselves cross various borders and observe unequal relationship of power. They attempt to indicate various ways of negotiating with border-crossing youths and to develop critical imaginations for creating alternative “Japan” where diverse others can live together.

This article reports a series of studies that aimed at creating an optimal Japanese workplace for both international and Japanese employees.

In the first study, the author interviewed international alumni who are currently working for Japanese companies, and examined meaningfulness, challenges, and growth through their work. The result of this study showed that their immediate Japanese bosses, particularly based on their empathy and intercultural competencies, have great impact on their work adjustment.

As a result, the second study was conducted to examine developmental processes of Japanese bosses who have worked with international employees, focusing on their intercultural competencies. The findings of these two studies indicated that it is imperative for both international employees and Japanese bosses to develop their intercultural competencies through mutual collaboration in order to create an optimal workplace for both parties.

Thus, in the third study, the author developed an educational program where Japanese employees and international students cultivate their intercultural competencies through multicultural group project and collaboration. As a group project, they were first instructed a few unique methods for organizational/societal change by the author. Then, by using these methods, they were expected to design and conduct a one-day experiential workshop called “Global career dialogue” to envision optimal Japanese workplace diversity in the future. Diverse stakeholders were invited to this workshop, including university faculty, staff, students, alumni, and business professionals, to enhance dynamic interaction among participants and their social impact for the future workplace.

A dichotomous view of essentialism and constructionism is gaining ground in the Intercultural Education Society of Japan. However, this view makes it difficult to understand the experiences and practices that are important in the lives of border-crossing youths. In order to suggest perspectives to overcome this problem, this study aims to depict the process of imagining/creating diverse “Japan” by border-crossing youths, approaching their lived experiences.

Specifically, based on a seven-year ethnographic study of three Shin-Nisei (second-generation post-war Japanese immigrants) youths raised in Guam, this study examines how they experience Japan, what kind of “Japan” they imagine/create, and what it means for their lives.

Revealed in this study was that the Shin-Nisei youths, connected and torn by multiple societies, kept imagining/creating various types of “Japan” in their temporal and spatial mobility in order to better their lives. They negotiated structural and institutional constraints and historical contexts in multiple societies, such as Guam (U.S.A.) and the Japanese community in Guam, Tokyo, and Okinawa, while imagining/creating various “Japan.”

Finally, based on the findings of this study, the perspectives on understanding “Japan” for border-crossing youths are discussed. These are that we should not immediately criticize essentialist events or seek answers to constructivist ideas, and attention should be paid to the possibility that re-imagined/re-created “Japan” may lead to the creation of new divisions and boundaries.

This article, based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Japan and the United States, examined the ways in which Filipina women in Japan, Vietnamese women in the United States and I collaboratively re-imagined and re-created “Japan,” the “United States,” and “Asia.”

While Filipina women in Japan had a romanticized image of the “United States” through consuming media prior to migration, they re-imagined the “United States” as a country that has freedom and ibasho(places of comfort, safety, and acceptance) as they experienced structural marginalization, sexualization, and oppression in Japan. In the midst of alienation and isolation in the United States, Vietnamese woman imagined “Japan” as a place with a sense of community through consuming J-pop, and re-imagined “Japan” as a possible country to “return” temporarily as she gained citizenship and established her life in the United States. Another Vietnamese woman consumed Asian popular culture, including kawaii goods, and re-imagined deterritorialized “Asia” where youth dispersed globally could belong.

My role changed in this process, sometimes becoming their resources through my “Japaneseness” and “Americanness” and other times distancing myself as power dynamics and hierarchy among us became salient. Though I was aware of the “impossibility” of solidarity under the name of sisterhood, I attempted to engage with these women through dialogues, eating, exchanging souvenirs, going shopping, visiting their homes, and walking around the neighborhood. Through deep engagement, we impacted each other’s perception of “Japan,” the “United States,” and “Asia,” which was a collaborative process of producing “knowledge.”

This study suggests border-crossing researchers become aware of the shifting and dynamic nature of positionality, including moving beyond the dichotomous understanding of majority “Japanese” and minority “foreigners” in a Japanese context. Furthermore, this study recommends researchers to cross multiple countries, languages, disciplines, and associations, become reflexive of one’s positionality, and develop “research imagination.”

The author was a discussant of the special theme session at the 2020 Annual Conference of the Intercultural Education Society of Japan. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is also to re-read the theme of “Re-Imagining/Re-Creating ‘Japan’: The Experiences of Border-Crossing Youths” and provide comments.

The bold theme of “Re-Imagining/Re-Creating ‘Japan’” provides various images to those who receive it. However, to simplify the aim of this theme, it does not attempt to criticize the current situation or provide policy recommendations, but it is a call for each person to “freely” imagine and create a multicultural co-existence society (tabunka kyosei shakai),“a society where diverse lives can co-exist,” which is the goal of this association. A unique feature of the special theme session is that it took three different approaches by examining the “experiences of border-crossing youth.”

If “Japan” that is assumed when one claims loudly from a particular position or criticizes the status quo, is the capitalized single “Japan,” then “Japan” that is re-imagined and re-created by “border-crossing youths,” who are seemingly positioned outside and at the margin of “Japan,” is the lower-case plural “japan” created through their voices. It is not only a resistance to the status quo, but is also what Ghassan Hage describes as alter-politics. People do not only live their lives by strongly resisting unjust reality but also by re-imagining and re-creating “humane lives” for individuals in their daily lives.

However, the researchers’ mission will not be achieved by simply listening to individuals and collecting their voices. Researchers also re-imagine and re-create “Japan” through listening to the voices and crafting research, which requires them to continuously develop critical imaginations.

This manuscript summarizes the public symposium of the 41st Annual Conference of IESJ, which was held on June 14, 2020 by ZOOM webinar with approximately 200 participants. Community contribution and cooperation became a crucial part of the university’s role, together with education and research. The development of cooperation with the local community is especially important for the host institution of this conference, because of its position as a public university in Akita, which has one of the lowest birthrates and fastest aging populations in Japan. Accordingly, various community cooperation activities are promoted both inside and outside of the classroom, but we, the planners of this symposium, often wonder whether these activities are truly contributing to the community or they are just an act of complacency of the university and researchers. The symposium, in response to these concerns, considered the role of university education and regional cooperation, using as an example the festival “Namahage” in Oga area, which was recognized in 2018 as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Since it has been difficult to continue this traditional event, some hamlets are trying to invite outsiders for the festival. However, there are various opinions about making “Namahage” as a tool of the tourism. Universities get engaged to solve these problems of communities. There is, of course, no one right answer of how to cooperate with the community. This symposium was intended to share experience of these various regional cooperation efforts, their challenges, and to discuss the ways of possible community cooperation.

From a sociocultural and interactional perspective, this study examines the ethnic authenticity negotiation by Janet, a “fourth-generation Japanese” and a graduate of Japanese Saturday School (JSS) in Los Angeles, California. In particular, analytical concepts, “transvocality” and “translocality,” are introduced to provide a framework to understand her life-story narrative by attending to shifting voice, place, and time. I analyze the content and dialogic structure of Janet’s life-story from four different angles: 1) her “there and then” positioning within her narrative about JSS; 2) Janet’s reflection of “here and now” self with the researcher at the interview context; 3) ethnic authenticity negotiation between Janet and her partner Bob in a conversation in front of the researcher; 4) the implicit and explicit impact of changing racialized/ethnicized geography on Janet’s life-story. The analyses showed how the meanings of the category “Japanese” differ in each local context, while they are interconnected.

Ethnic identity is not essential but interactionally negotiated across time, place, and contexts. A researcher’s use of plural categories is not a solution as long as the underlying view of essentialism remains in each category. This paper demonstrates multiple analytical angles to approach an identity category “Japanese” to capture its contextual and alterable nature.

This paper attempts to show how critical educators hear “students’ voices” by examining the first-person narrative of Mary Cowhey’s multicultural education. The findings of this study indicate that Cowhey is responsive to the children’s negative reaction and she criticizes her customs and values continuously. Her practice enables her students to make their voices (internally persuasive discourse). In addition to that, students’ voices which are not dependent on her, are expressed independently in her first-person narrative. Moreover, she avoids essentialism by not considering her students’ voices in connection with their identities directly. Finally, there is a dialogue without her intervention between her students in her narrative on educational practice. Such dialogue can be an opportunity to understand children’s feelings of alienation or being suppressed that teachers can’t recognize. Also, the dialogue can show another model of emancipation that is different from the social change model on critical pedagogy.

This study investigates the challenges in supporting newcomer students, particularly seen in secondary education. The findings are based on a comparative analysis of different supportive practices between elementary and secondary schools.

The key findings are as follows. First, the support practices to ensure students’ academic ability and recognition towards them are seen in both educational stages. However in the secondary schools, the targets and purposes of those supports are more limited as compared to its counterpart. This stems from the challenges specific to junior high-schoolers such as entrance exams for high schools and different friendship-building from the elementary schools. These eventually lead teachers to deliberate more carefully about the possibility that teachers actions in secondary schools can to cause negative impacts on students more than teachers in elementary schools do.

Second, in secondary school, where academic ability is weighted heavily in their education, information that teachers primarily refer to from elementary school centers on students’ learning levels than on ethnicity-related issues. This implies that if schools in different educational stages share information more on students themselves, including their expression of ethnicity, educational hurdles can be mitigated to support for students’ obtaining recognition.

The findings form the analysis indicate that it is worth examining the support practices for newcomer students in light of the institutional situation surrounding teachers’ images. Collaborative information sharing implications for newcomer student support, especially to tackle the challenges related to their ethnicity is essential.

Japanese Americans who emigrated to the United States after the 1880s concealed that they were Japanese while they endured difficult circumstances such as internment camps, poverty, and discrimination. They compelled their children to speak English and tried to assimilate into American society. As a result, they have established a social status as “successful minorities.” Conversely, the inheritance of Japanese language and culture is not common, and it is said that they exhibit an Americanized behavioral style. Furthermore, the number of exogamies with Asians is expanding, and they are increasingly considered as Asian American.

Under such circumstances, some 4th generation Japanese-Americans have become interested in exploring their roots and studying Japanese language and culture at university. In this paper, interview surveys were conducted with six 4th-generation Japanese-Americans in order to clarify the meaning of their roots-searching. The results indicate that their identification as Japanese-Americans becomes ambiguous because they are free from discrimination and indulge in wide-ranging exchanges. From this, their consciousness as individuals wanting to explore their roots through Japanese language and culture is revealed. Within this background, the society aims to restore diverse voices by promoting multicultural education. Such education emphasizes individuals and recognizes and respects identities that are formed historically, socially, or in relation to each other and gives young people a positive feeling when speaking a language besides English and expressing their roots.