Brazilian Workers in Japan and Public Policies for Promoting Their Social Integration with a Focus on Basic Education for Children

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to find an efficient way to improve the educational environment for the children of Brazilian residents in Japan. The secondary objective is to identify a better way to improve the social and economic positions of these residents through further integration into Japanese society. We believe that the potential for them to become a vital bridge between the two countries in the near future is significant, but that potential is not yet being tapped sufficiently. Therefore, the goal of this analysis is more than simply improving working and living conditions, but of promoting career development in Japanese society. To that end, educational background is highly important, especially education and acquisition of the Japanese language beginning in primary school is of utmost importance. For this reason, our paper focuses on the basic education (especially Japanese language education) of Brazilian children in Japan. We conclude that the style of “afterschool” is most efficient as well as socially equitable. We propose a public policy to be adopted by the Japanese government to induce Brazilian families to adopt the hybrid afterschool education system.

1 Recent Trends for Brazilian Workers and Their Families in Japan

1.1 Short History of Brazilian Immigrants to Japan

The population of Nikkei Brazilian residents¹ in Japan started to increase dramatically in 1990, but there were already Brazilian residents living and working in Japan at that time. Most of them were first generation Nikkei people, which meant that all of them were Japanese citizens. As Japanese nationals, there was no legal barrier to enable them to enter Japan. Some came to Japan for a short stay to deal with the economic difficulty they faced in Brazil.

In 1990, the Immigration/Emigration Control Act was revised to create a new visa category: “Teijusha.” Its literal meaning is “long stay resident,” but it does not carry a specific period of time that the individual may stay in Japan. This category refers to the “status” of the applicant; Teijusha refers to third generation Nikkei persons in Brazil, Peru, the US, and other parts of the world. The revised law gave these individuals the qualification to freely enter Japan regardless of their skill and occupation, although they did need to renew their visa every three years. This resulted in a rapid increase of Nikkei Brazilian immigrants to Japan as shown in Fig. 6.1. Many second-generation Nikkei in Brazil still held Japanese nationality without any legal barriers to enter Japan. At the same time, the number of people with other nationalities living and working in Japan also increased, as indicated in Fig. 6.2.

Fig. 6.1

(Source Data for the years between 1988 and 1991 are from the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan [URL: https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/latinamerica/kaigi/brazil/data.html]. Data for the years between 1992 and 2008 are from Table 1 in Yamazaki [2015]. Data after 2009 are from the website of Immigration Services Agency of Japan [URL: https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/publications/press/13_00017.html])

The number of Brazilian residents in Japan from 1998 to 2021

Fig. 6.2

(Source Website of Immigration Services Agency of Japan. URL: https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/publications/press/13_00017.html [last access: March 14, 2022])

The number of foreign residents in Japan according to the origin country/region after 2011

As Fig. 6.1 shows, in the 2000s, the number of the Brazilian Nikkei population in Japan was constantly increasing; researchers questioned if they were long stay or short stay types but were not able to determine the point because of lack of data and information at that time. After the global financial crisis of 2008 triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the number of the Brazilian residents in Japan dramatically decreased from 300,000 yearly to 200,000 as many returned to Brazil in the aftermath of the crisis. This sudden reduction of migrant workers is rare, compared to other host countries. Those who did not return to Brazil in 2008/2009 started to acquire Permanent Resident visas; as of 2020, more than half of the Brazilian residents in Japan are in this category.

Why did so many Brazilians decide to return to Brazil after 2008? In fact, few researchers have made large-scale, detailed investigations on the behavior (stay or go home) of Brazilian residents in Japan. But the following characteristics can be pointed out:

• 1. Many Brazilians regarded their stay in Japan as a short-term stay to increase their savings. Therefore, there was a very limited level of incentive for them to acquire the Japanese language. When the financial crisis hit Japan in 2008, they thought that their stay in Japan was no longer effective for increasing their savings.

• 2. Many of the Brazilians who decided to stay in Japan after 2008 chose to change their visa category to permanent resident. Some of them may harbor a clear vision of their life and career development in the Japanese society.

• 3. Therefore, the typical characteristics of the residents before 2008 and after 2009 may be different. A greater share of the Brazilian residents in Japan today can be considered oriented towards a long stay.

This created a potential demand for language education. The importance of acquiring the Japanese language became more important both for adults and their children, with public and private schools playing crucial rolls. Tables 6.1 and 6.2 offer basic statistics on school enrollment of children of foreign² nationalities, excluding higher education such as universities. Table 6.2 clearly demonstrates that public (municipal) elementary, junior high, and high schools are where the research on education should be focused.

Table 6.1 The number of foreign students enrolled in public schools in Japan

Table 6.2 The number of foreign students according to the levels and types of schools as of 2014

How many children should be targeted for the support programs³ of Japanese language education at primary and secondary schools in Japan? As Table 6.3 shows, the total number of children of all nationalities was about 30,000 in 2014, with about 19,000 elementary school students. It should also be noted that the number of children in this group increased between 2004 and 2014.

Table 6.3 The number of foreign students enrolled in public schools who need instructions on the Japanese language learning

One recent challenge at schools is that both foreign children and Japanese children who were born and raised in other countries and have returned to Japan now face the same challenge in learning the Japanese language. Table 6.4 shows a rather significant number of children in this situation. This is why the children of our focus are often referred to as “Children with connections to other countries” instead of “foreign children” by those who work in this field, such as civil servants of local governments, NPO staff, volunteers, and so forth. Some of such Japanese children spent their early childhood in foreign countries. We will study this issue in greater details later in Sect. 6.2. Before delving into this aspect, let us study a few more basic points related to Nikkei Brazilians’ immigration to Japan.

Table 6.4 The number of Japanese students enrolled in public schools who need instructions on the Japanese language learning

1.2 Difference Between Brazilian Workers and Other Nationalities

Generally speaking, there is a problem of de facto low wage work which often pays between JPY 300 and JPY 400 per hours, less than half the minimum wage. This poses a problem of basic human right violations as widely reported by the Japanese mass media. Minimum wage varies from prefecture to prefecture in Japan. In 2020, the lowest wage was JPY 792 in Oita Prefecture and the highest was JPY 1,013 in Tokyo. This low wage employment is possible and legally accepted under the system of skill training (gino jisshu); because the participants in these training programs are regarded as trainees, not workers, payment is not regarded as wage and labor laws are therefore not applied. Most low wage workers are from Asian countries. It may be safe to assume that very few Brazilians are involved in this type of human right violation because there is no need for the Nikkei Brazilians to apply to this visa category (skill training) as the Teijusha category is applicable to them.

One labor problem which the Brazilian workers do face in Japan is the issue of being laid off during an economic crisis. Generally speaking, many Brazilians are employed by factories which manufacture industrial products in high price brackets such as automobiles, automobile parts, electronic appliances, and so on. These are expensive commodities whose income elasticity of demand is rather high; in other words, during a recession when income of the customers goes down, demand for their products shrinks substantially and sensitively. This is exactly what happened during the 2008 financial crisis. Then, the one-year (or short-term) employment contracts of many Brazilian temporary workers were terminated. After this crisis, the total number of Brazilian residents in Japan decreased from 300,000 down to 200,000 individuals, as mentioned before. Some Brazilians work in factories which produce cheaper commodities with less income elasticity of demand such as foods, lunch boxes and food products that are shipped to family restaurants and convenience stores.

1.3 Labor Market Analysis

Researchers from the areas of labor market and migration analyses are interested in the following issues:

• 1. What are the characteristics of workers who returned to Brazil after the 2008/2009 crisis and of those who decided to stay in Japan? Which variables (age, sex, occupation, educational background, skill level, etc.) best explain their behavior?

• 2. After April 2009 to March 2010, the Japanese government offered a subsidy to those who decided to return to Brazil on the condition that they would not seek re-employment in the Japanese labor market with the same Teijusha visa. The amount was JPY 300,000 per worker and JPY 200,000 for his/her family member.⁴ What type of people applied to this subsidy and used it to go back to Brazil? No impact study of this subsidy program has been conducted so far.

• 3. Many international studies on the return of the immigrants to their home country show that: (i) there is a wage premium from their overseas stay; (ii) education and skill level affect their behavior (stay or return) significantly; (iii) a high rate of unemployment in the host country promotes the decision to return to their mother countries; (iv) in the case of a country with a large population of immigrants, 20–50 percent of the immigrants return to their mother countries within 10 years.

• 4. We can assume that the average attributes of the Brazilian residents in Japan changed around 2008 but studying this empirically is difficult as no data is available about detailed attributes of the Brazilian residents in Japan.

Hashimoto Yuki’s recent work is one of the attempts to tackle these research questions. She matched the Japanese national census data of Brazilian residents who stayed in Japan after 2008 and the database of NIATRE, São Paulo. NIATRE is a center to provide for information and consultation services to those Brazilians who returned to Brazil from Japan. Some of the basic questions her study covers are: (i) what is the difference between the group who returned to Brazil in 2009 and the group who returned after 2011? Does the “early return group” include those who are younger and less fluent in the Japanese language? (ii) What are the characteristics of the people who used the “return subsidy”? What are the reasons for using this subsidy program? (iii) Do the workers who returned from Japan to Brazil seek the same jobs in Brazil that they had during their stay in Japan? How do their experiences of working in Japan help them find a new job back in Brazil?

Hashimoto hypothesizes that the experiences Brazilians gained while working in Japan’s production processes are not useful in Brazil and that their stay in Japan does not lead to good evaluation of their career in Brazil. Therefore, she concludes that the wage premium from their stay in Japan may not materialize.

2 Challenges Faced by the Children

2.1 Ten Thousand Children to Target

Many children face difficulty in learning and acquiring the Japanese language as well as the Portuguese language both at school and at home. Children who struggle to learn both languages (mother tongue and foreign language) are called “double limited”. Among these children, how many are Brazilians? Table 6.5 shows that almost 10,000 children in elementary and junior high schools speak Portuguese as their mother tongue. The primary focus of this research, therefore, are these students. But we also need to pay attention to the Japanese children who returned from Brazil. How many are there? Table 6.6 shows 564 children are identified as students (elementary and junior high schools) who are Japanese nationals and who regularly speak Portuguese in their daily life. They also need assistance in learning the Japanese language even if it is their mother tongue. This double limited issue seems to make the work of the helping volunteers and NPO staff harder according to what we learned during the interviews (see the interview list at the end of this chapter).

Table 6.5 Mother tongues of the foreign students in public elementary and junior high schools who need instructions on the Japanese language learning as of 2018

Table 6.6 The daily languages of the Japanese students enrolled in public elementary and junior high schools who need instructions on the Japanese language learning as of 2018

2.2 Difficulty in Entering High School

Due to the limited level of learning, the rate of successful entry to high school and to universities remain low. One hurdle is the selection process to advance to high school from junior high school. In Hamamatsu City,⁵ according to a recent study (Hamamatsu City Education Committee 2021), 88.8 percent of the foreign students in junior high school advance to high school (see Fig. 6.3), but Hamamatsu Foundation for International Communications and Exchanges (HICE), a half public, half private administrative entity (see Sect. 3.5 of this article for details), estimates that about 40 percent of them choose nighttime schools, as their learning level is not high enough to pass the entrance examination to enter daytime schools. A HICE staff whom we interviewed estimates that about 50 percent⁶ of the students in nighttime schools in Hamamatsu are foreigners.

Fig. 6.3

(Source Hamamatsu City Education Committee [2021], p. 8)

Growth of the percentage of foreign students in junior high schools who advance to high schools in Hamamatsu City

Another hurdle is a qualification rule regarding Gaikokujin Gakko (‘foreign schools’ or international schools) located in Japan. According to School Education Law of Japan, the basic rule is that only those students who have graduated from Japanese junior high schools qualify as participants in entrance examinations to high schools in Japan while the students from foreign/international schools located in Japan do not qualify (see Fig. 6.4). One way to overcome this institutional hurdle is for the junior high school student enrolled in a foreign school to take and pass the “Test of Lower Secondary School Graduation Certificate”. Those students who have passed this Test qualify as participants in entrance examinations to Japanese high schools.⁷ As to entrance examinations to universities, 41 ‘foreign (international) high schools’ (or high school divisions of foreign schools) located in Japan are designated as high schools which correspond to regular Japanese high school.⁸ The students enrolled in these 41 foreign (international) high schools in Japan qualify as participants in entrance examinations to universities in Japan.

Fig. 6.4

An institutional trap regarding an entrance examination to a high school

The HICE staff whom we interviewed stated that foreign students are often livelier and more energetic at nighttime schools than Japanese students and that the president of students’ self-governing association (which exists in all schools in Japan) at a nighttime school is often a foreign student. Foreign students are highly communicative although their academic performance is insufficient to enter day-time schools. This signifies that these foreign students have high potential and that more assistance programs can effectively and efficiently enhance their capabilities.

One challenge for the high school students is that after entering a high school, the official support for studies that was offered by junior high school is no longer available because high school education is not compulsory. This may be a specific issue for foreign students who enter high school. Without these supports, academic success becomes difficult. HICE staff speculates that Brazilian students’ drop-out rate might be rather high, but there is no data about the issue currently available. One policy challenge for HICE is how to offer educational support to the foreign students who successfully entered high schools but face academic hardship there. HICE also faces the challenge of collecting information and developing a database regarding the reality of foreign students’ learning and educational needs in high schools in Hamamatsu City.

2.3 The Problem of Truancy (“evasão escolar”)

One important challenge that many cities face is the problem of “evasão”, the habit of children’s not going to school or the problem of staying home without receiving school education. A possible cause of “evasão” is a necessity for a student to quit a foreign school, such as a Brazilian school, due to his or her parents’ economic troubles. Foreign schools often have a higher tuition fee than Japanese public (municipal) schools, but changing to a less expensive Japanese public school can still be difficult due to the language barrier or other academic and cultural barriers (see Fig. 6.4). This was a common problem during the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, but there seem to be fewer cases of this type during the current crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hamamatsu City launched an “Evasão Zero” project in 2010 to reduce the number of students connected with foreign countries who refuse to go to school. In September 2013, the city achieved the target of “zero truancy” through various support activities including consultation service to the children and their families with this problem.

2.4 The Problem of Family Communication

Living in a foreign country creates additional potential conflict due to a possible loss of communication between parents and their children. For example, if the parents work long shifts in jobs that do not require them to learn Japanese, they do not develop local language skills. If their children go to Japanese school exclusively, they tend to lose their Portuguese language skills, especially if the long daily shifts of their parents reduce the time they spend together. In that case, it may become increasingly hard for the children to communicate with their parents in Portuguese.

This problem is known in the literature as the “emotional rupture” problem: since the child cannot communicate well with the parents, they cannot be helped in their academic studies, which may increase the probability of failure in a Japanese school. According to Connexion. Tokyo (2015a), “It is a not uncommon situation where children cannot enter and finish high school (Koko) and cannot keep a dialog with their parents due to the language barrier” (free translation).

Our interviews (see the List of Online Interviews at the end of this chapter) suggest that emotional rupture increases truancy and makes parents highly hesitant about sending their kids to the Japanese school. This problem of communication loss has been debated in the literature, but has not been formally modelled, as discussed in Sect. 6.4.

3 Public Intervention

3.1 National Level: A New Law

Faced with many new issues arising from the rapidly increasing Brazilian population in many communities across the country, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan organized symposiums by inviting Brazil’s Ambassador to Japan, academics, lawyers, officials of local governments, businesspersons, NPO staff, and others to speak. The first meeting was held on February 1, 2001, about ten years after the start of a rapid increase in Nikkei Brazilians’ arrival. The top researchers on Brazil, including Prof. Kotaro Horisaka and Prof. Chiyoko Mita of Sophia University and Prof. Masato Ninomiya of USP, Brazil (law professor, lawyer) were among the speakers invited from the academic community. The second meeting was held on March 10, 2004, this time with a focus on children’s basic education. Various problems related to school education and Japanese language learning were covered in this second meeting.

Along the way, the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunka-cho, hereafter referred to as ACA) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (hereafter referred to as MEXT) was indicated as an organization responsible for the public policies and subsidies related to programs designed to help Brazilian and other foreign residents in Japan. In addition to the regular responsibilities of ACA, including promotion of cultural events and activities such as theatrical performances and music concerts, they organized the extension of assistance to foreign residents after the number of foreign residents started to increase in the 1990s. It is not clearly known why and how ACA was chosen as a responsible governmental entity to take care of this policy area, which does not seem related to their main duty of promoting culture, music, and art. At any rate, ACA offered a variety of subsidies to promote activities of teaching the Japanese language to foreign residents, especially adults.

In 2014, ACA called for comprehensive research on the problems faced by many communities across the country regarding language education. In March 2015, Learn-S Co. Ltd, who won this project, published a detailed report (Learn-S. Co. Ltd. 2015) on the results of their large-scale research. As many as 38 organizations including NPOs, local governments and international exchange associations in many parts of Japan were covered by this study and the needs and challenges faced by all concerned entities were summarized.

One important, recent action by the central government was the enactment of a new law, i.e., the Law to Promote the Japanese Language Education (hereafter referred to as LPJLE). This law is intended to enhance the programs that help foreign residents in Japan. Its purpose is not necessarily limited to language education; it covers a broad area of public policies to ease the life and work of foreign residents in Japan as well as to promote social integration of foreign residents in Japanese society. The Law is under the jurisdiction of ACA/MEXT of Japan. It is important to note that this Law does not target school children; therefore, the ACA’s responsibility does not include school education of foreign residents. School education is undertaken directly by the main body of MEXT and by the local Education Committee (hereafter referred to as EDUCOM) which is attached to both city and prefectural governments.

In Japan, the EDUCOM at the municipal level is fully responsible for important policies for primary and junior high schools in the municipality (including choice of textbooks) while the EDUCOM at the prefectural (provincial) level is responsible for management of public high schools in the prefecture (province).

One positive impact of enacting LPJLE is that cities and prefectures started to prepare a strategic plan to develop policies for foreign residents living and working in their locality because the law made this a requirement and precondition for receiving subsidies from ACA. These subsidies were then used to help local governments promote programs that could help foreign residents. This is regarded as a new trend which was not recognized over the past 30 years.⁹ One future challenge regarding this law is how business corporations that employ many foreign workers can make a social contribution to the community in the future as LPJLE does not make these responsibilities clear. We can see Japanese firms “free-riding” on many public services offered by local governments towards foreign residents because the firms employing foreign workers do not shoulder the administrative costs of the programs.¹⁰

LPJLE is necessary because the need for assistance to foreign residents are starting to exceed the capacity of volunteers and local NPOs. Their needs are also increasingly diversified in terms of volume, quality, and nature. One example is a need for assistance to foreign residents who are looking for affordable houses to purchase for a longer or a permanent stay in Japan. In order to provide for these diverse needs, co-production projects are gaining importance.

Regarding school education, subsidies to NGOs/NPOs who work in this policy field from the central and local governments remain limited as of today. The number of assistants in classrooms remain limited too. We can assume that LPJLE is unrelated to the task of increasing the quality of educational service to foreign students in school as it does not focus on school education.

3.2 Nation-Wide Reaction of Municipal Governments

Faced with the challenge of meeting the needs of the increasing foreign residents in the municipal territories for the first time in Japan’s modern history, many local governments set up a division within their municipal government to deal with the task of “multicultural co-living” (tabunka kyosei). This may roughly correspond to the concept of social integration of foreign residents in the community.

Some municipalities have formed a national consortium to exchange information and ideas about how to deal with the challenge of internationalization at the local level called the Conference of Cities with Concentration of Foreign Residents (CCCFR). The first national meeting was held on May 7, 2001 in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture.

The member cities of CCCFR as of 2021 are: Ota, Oizumi (Gunma Ken), Ueda, Iida (Nagano Ken), Hamamatsu (Shizuoka Ken), Toyohashi, Toyota, Komaki (Aichi Ken), Tsu, Yokkaichi, Suzuka, Kameyama (Mie Ken), Soja (Okayama Ken) (Total: 13 cities).

During the national meeting held in Ueda City, Nagano Ken (Prefecture), the Ueda Declaration was adopted (see the column). This statement emphasizes the importance of offering assistance to foreign residents in Japan in the area of the Japanese language education.

Column 6.1 Ueda Declaration (Adopted in 2019 at the National Meeting of 2019 of Conference of Cities with Concentration of Foreign Residents)

Conference of Cities with Concentration of Foreigners have promoted various efforts including the task of finding solutions to the various problems that have surfaced in our local communities to realize a convivial society with foreign residents. Regarding the issues related to the development of laws and institutional arrangement, we have made and forwarded recommendations to the national Ministries and related organs of the central government.

Currently, the number of foreigners residing in Japan exceeds 2.8 million, the highest number ever, and in recent years, the number of immigrants from Asian countries has been increasing. The number of the residents of a long stay type is on the increase too. This year (2019) will be a turning point in which the country will take a major step in accepting foreign human resources who are instantly ready to contribute to our productive activities. One example of such a step is the creation of a new status of residence called “Specific Skills” from April in order to cope with a serious labor shortage in Japan. The central government formulated a policy package of “comprehensive measures for acceptance of and co-living with foreign residents” to contribute to the realization of a society in which Japanese and foreigners can live in peace and safety. The central government announced that they will now strongly promote the measures.

One of these measures is “enhancement of Japanese language education”. Under these circumstances, the “Law to Promote Japanese Language Education” came into effect in June this year (2019). It is an undeniable fact that strengthening the environment for Japanese language education is important for foreign children to develop their own career in the Japanese society in the future. Both local governments and the national government must jointly take the responsibility for the education of children and must work together with educational institutions and their parents. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also states that all children must receive mandatory primary education free of charge. It is our duty to guarantee all children the right to education, regardless of nationality or age. It should also be remembered that for many foreign children, the right to education can be fairly guaranteed only when we provide them with the support for learning Japanese and their mother tongue. The importance of supporting Japanese language learning and of taking into consideration their mother tongue is specified in this law.

In addition, regarding instructors in charge of Japanese language education, the qualities and abilities required for teaching children in the development stage of acquiring a language are completely different from those required for teaching adults. The central government should take this into consideration when they put effort into the training of instructors of the Japanese language education. The government should develop a system that will lead to improvement of the working environment and the salary/wage of such instructors so that they can live a stable life.

So that we can step forward with this Law as our foothold, we request that the central government design a system and offer support to us to help local governments strengthen the Japanese language education and improve the working conditions of the language teachers.

For the national government to fulfill its responsibility for developing and implementing the policy measures for the promotion of multicultural co-living, they should collaborate with other Ministries, local governments, business firms, educational institutions and other institutions, should learn effective methods adopted by many communities so far, and should develop policy measures of multicultural co-living targeting all generations which are wanted by the local governments.

The Conference of Cities with Concentration of Foreigners aims to build a society where each person can consolidate his/her own life while utilizing the individuality and ability regardless of nationality or age. It will undertake one project after another at a steady pace while enriching the policy measures for multicultural co-living.

December 26, 2019

The Conference of Cities with Concentration of Foreign Residents

Translated by Keiichi Yamazaki.

3.3 Policies of Individual Local Governments in Shizuoka Prefecture

Hamamatsui City offers a subsidy to the parents for buying school textbooks for their children. The city is credited with having achieved “Evasão Zero” (Zero Truancy) for more than ten years consecutively and ranks first or second among the Government Ordinance Designated Cities (GODCs)¹¹ in Japan for having a low rate of evasão.

In Sanarudai Elementary School of the City, the instructions to the pupils about the measures to prevent COVID-19 infection are offered in five languages on their official website including Japanese, Tagalog, Portuguese, Chinese, and English.¹² The first official motto of the school is to help children to become “persons who will live in a better way and promote a society of multicultural co-living.”

Hamamatsu Foreign Resident Study Support Center was established in 2010 to offer general educational supports to foreign residents, especially in the city. Their official website lists three objectives on its front page¹³: [citation] “As a city with the most Brazilian residents in Japan, the Center strives to be a place that offers general educational support for foreign residents of all ages. […] Acting as a base, the Center dispatches Japanese language teachers to international schools in Hamamatsu, and with the cooperation of the foreign community, conducts a number of Japanese classes throughout the area. […] In cooperation with the Hamamatsu Multicultural Center that opened in 2008 (10 min’ walk from the Hamamatsu Station’s north exit), the Center works to promote Hamamatsu as a multicultural city making it its unique feature”.

The EDUCOM of Hamamatsu City cares for children who regularly attend school by offering additional tutoring at school or by providing private lessons through local NPOs on Saturdays to students who are struggling. Regarding assistance in Japanese language education, Hamamatsu City secured a budget to cover the cost of offering tutoring and instructions to the children in 2019. The program is named as “Gaikokujin Kodomo Kouiku Suishin Jigyo (Program to promote education of foreign children)” with the budget of JPY 122 million, out of which about 26 million is the subsidies from the central and prefectural governments to the City.¹⁴ We can consider it as an important first step forward.

Iwata City of Shizuoka Prefecture is another city with many Brazilian residents. As of March 2016, about 3.6 percent (6,169) of the population were foreign residents, making it the city with the third most foreign residents in the prefecture, after Hamamatsu City and Shizuoka City. At a peak year before 2008, about 80 percent of the foreign residents were Brazilians, while Philippine residents have been increasing in recent years. In accordance with the “Plan to Promote Multicultural Co-living in Communities” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Somu-sho), Iwata City prepared “Iwata City Plan to Promote Multicultural Co-living” in March 2007. In 2017, the city launched the “3^rd Iwata City Plan to Promote Multicultural Co-living” to cover the years until 2021. It is noteworthy that not only big cities such as Hamamatsu but small cities such as Iwata are faced with the challenge of promoting multicultural co-living.

3.4 Kanagawa Prefecture and Yokohama City

Kanagawa Prefecture, part of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, is another region with many foreign residents, with 226,766 people (2.45% of the total population) as of January 1, 2021.¹⁵ The biggest city in the Prefecture is Yokohama City with 99,646 foreign residents (2.64% of the total population) as of October, 2021.¹⁶ Table 6.7 shows the numbers of residents by nationality in both Kanagawa and Yokohama.

Table 6.7 The number of foreign residents in Kanagawa prefecture and Yokohama City as of January 1st of 2021

In Kanagawa Prefecture, we assume that the foreign residents are generally more integrated into the local communities than in other prefectures in Japan due to the historical background. There is a long history of co-living with so-called “old comers” (mainly Chinese and Koreans) there. Therefore, both the foreign residents and the Japanese residents are more prepared to live in a harmonious way than in other regions. Another feature of Kanagawa is the high correlation between the concentration of Brazilians, Peruvian, and Vietnamese in terms of chosen residential districts as shown in Table 6.8. In other words, in cities and towns with many Peruvian and Vietnamese residents, we can find many Brazilian residents. This could mean that there might be social networking to help each other not only between Japanese and foreign residents but also among foreign residents of different nationalities.

Table 6.8 Correlations between nationalities, two by two (Kanagawa prefecture)

Figure 6.5a–d indicate that there is no correlation between the number of foreign residents and the liveability score (deviation value of the index from a private housing information firm called Iiheya Netto [good apartment network] of Daito Trust Construction Co., Ltd. of the district, city, and town in Kanagawa Prefecture. This can be interpreted as a reflection of a significant level of integration of the foreign residents in the communities in the Prefecture. In other words, a great number of foreign residents regardless of the nationality seems to have no impact on the livability. “Many foreign residents” does not mean a low quality or high quality of the living environment of the district and there may be no prejudice or discrimination against foreign residents. This is an important element and precondition for promoting ‘after school’ for the children, as it depends on the support from the community.

Fig. 6.5

Number of foreign residents in districts in Kanagawa prefecture and ‘liveability’ (deviation value of the ‘liveability’ scores) a Correlation between the number of residents and liveability index (deviation value) [All foreign residents], b Correlation between the number of residents and liveability index (deviation value) [Brazilians], c Correlation between the number of residents and liveability index (deviation value) [Chinese], d Correlation between the number of residents and liveability index (deviation value) [Americans]

3.5 Co-Production and NPOs

Some of the big prefectures and cities with concentrations of foreign residents have instituted half public, half private associations to promote inter-exchange and cultural interaction between Japanese and foreign residents in the local community. This entity is another example of co-production between the local civil society and the local public administration in the field of promoting multicultural co-living, a major public policy in the age of globalization at the community level. This association of Shizuoka Prefecture is called SIR (The Shizuoka Association for International Relations). There are currently four full time staff in SIR.

Hamamatsu City’s association similar to SIR is called HICE (Hamamatsu Foundation for International Communication and Exchange). About twenty people work for HICE including part-time staff. In the headquarters, two individuals work for the municipal government while five are directly employed by HICE on a full-time basis. In addition to these staff, there are several counselors who work for HICE on a less regular basis. Ninety percent of the revenue comes from the budget of commissioned works. This means that HICE regularly applies for public funds proposed by the municipal government. At the moment, there are no rival organizations with the same level of expertise to help foreign residents in Hamamatsu; therefore, the selection process is based on single participant bidding, which is a legally accepted form of public bidding when rival firms are non-existent due to the nature of the business.

YOKE, the Yokohama Association for International Communication and Exchanges, is “an extra-departmental body of Yokohama City to promote creating multi-cultural communities with both Japanese and foreign residents” (citation from their website). It is an association similar to SIR and HICE. YOKE functions as the secretariat of 11 international exchange lounges in the City of Yokohama; one of them is in Tsurumi-ku (administrative district) with the lounge conveniently located in the building attached to JR Tsurumi Station.

ABC Japan¹⁷ is a nation-widely known local NPO in Yokohama City. Its office is located in Tsurumi, one of the liveliest districts out of the 18 in the City of Yokohama in terms of multicultural co-living. One very important activity of ABC Japan is to help children enter a high school. Entering a high school (at the age of 15 or 16) is a significant challenge for Japanese students as well as foreign students, with some considering it to be the biggest event of an individual’s life before the age of 20. Many foreign children fail in this selection process and give up the plan of advancing to a high school and university. One’s future career becomes very limited if their educational background stops at the junior high school level.

Japan’s high school selection process is complex; the scores of entrance examinations as well as evaluations from teachers of students’ day-to-day behavior are taken into consideration. The frequency of submitting reports and homework to the teachers as well as the clothes are important. As to the latter, school children should not look so fashionable at school to gain good evaluation from their teachers, but there may be a cultural conflict element involved in this fashion regulation. What looks regular or low-key appears too fashionable in the eyes of the Japanese people and teachers. ABC Japan alerts the parents and children about these issues of cultural conflict to prevent unnecessary friction at school. It holds a guidance meeting for the parents and children to remind them of this peculiar reality of Japanese society.

Tsuruminho is an activity to help primary school children do their homework together with their friends in the library of their school after all classes of the day are finished. It is run by ABC Japan (NGO) in collaboration with Irifune Elementary School, a municipal school of Yokohama City. The volunteer participants help them learn Japanese and basic mathematics. It is held two or three times a month on Tuesday afternoons.¹⁸

3.6 Private Business Sector Initiative

• 1. Brazilian schools: There used to be 7 Brazilian schools in Hamamatsu City, but there are currently 3. They are not officially authorized by the MEXT as “schools” in the Japanese education system. Due to these institutional constraints, graduates from the Brazilian junior high schools do not qualify as participants in the entrance selection process towards high school in Japan.¹⁹ If they are authorized and categorized as “miscellaneous schools,” they are entitled to subsidies from Hamamatsu City as well as from Shizuoka Prefecture.

• 2. Driving school: There is a driving school which employs a bilingual instructor who speaks both Japanese and Portuguese. A driving school is a training center where almost all Japanese people go to acquire their driver’s license. On paper, it is possible to study traffic rules and to learn the driving skill alone and take the exam to acquire the license, but the pass rate is extremely small. Most people spend a few months at a driving school, taking classes and lessons after work, to acquire a driver’s license. Acquiring a driver’s license is another big hurdle for foreign residents to be integrated into the Japanese society. Therefore, introduction of bilingual instructors is a very important step forward to promote multicultural co-living.

• 3. Businessperson’s initiatives: One notable case is a social contribution activity by Mr. Walter Saito, a second generation Brazilian (Nisei) of Japanese–Brazilians who was born in 1967 in the State of Parana. After graduating from the State University of Londrina, he became a physical education teacher (educação física) in Brazil. He came to Japan in the early 1990s to work as a dekasegi worker. After achieving saving of about 6 million yen (about USD 50,000), he established a staffing firm (temporary staff service) in 1995. When the firm faced a severe crisis after the economic shock of 2008, Saito turned to agriculture and started to produce green onions (called negi in Japanese). Now he is known nation-wide as the “King of Green Onions” (Rei da Cebolinha, in Portuguese), selling a high-quality fresh produce whose value is double the standard market price of regular quality green onions in Japan. The brand name is the same; Negi Oh (King of Green Onions). As the demand for his green onions is larger than the amount which he can produce in his farms (totaling 50 hectares), he allocates almost no efforts for sales. His firm TS Farm has no sales department. In addition to his highly successful agricultural business, Saito devotes a great deal of his resources, both time and money, to his social contribution activities, helping the Brazilian and non-Japanese children living in Japan. First, he established one of the first Brazilian primary and secondary schools in Japan for the Brazilian children in the country. Second, he established a nursery school to take care of smaller children where education is conducted in three languages: Japanese, English, and Portuguese. Third, Mr. SaitoSaito, Walter has recently launched a scholarship to help the Brazilian high school students advance to universities to continue their studies.²⁰

Considering all the points discussed in this section, we conclude that enactment of a basic law to promote the society of multicultural co-living is imminent. Laws have been proposed by CCCFR as well as Hamamatsu City with promotion from scholars like Prof. Keizo Yamawaki of Meiji University. As early as in November of 2002, Prof. Yamawaki published his opinion to promote such a basic law in Asahi Shimbun (one of the five biggest national newspapers in Japan) according to his short essay (Yamawaki 2009). In fact, a bill titled “Basic Law for the Society of Multicultural Co-living” with 21 articles was introduced to the Lower House in 2019 for a parliamentary debate.²¹ As of today, it is still under discussion. Creating such a basic law will work as a strong drive to many entities involved in the efforts to support foreign residents and their children in Japan.

4 Formal Modeling: Schooling Choices and Government Intervention

There is a large body of literature discussing the challenges and hardships faced by Brazilian families (and those of other nationalities as well) living in Japan. That literature focusses either on migration, labor, or sociological instruments for analysis.²² More limited is the literature that uses incentive theory instruments to analyze foreign families’ decisions, especially regarding children’s educational choices. To the best of our knowledge, Bugarin (2017, 2018) is the first attempt to build a formal decision-theoretic model to better understand the trade-offs that Brazilian families face when deciding what strategies to use for their children’s education.

This section first briefly presents the main findings in Bugarin (2017, 2018). Next, it stresses that the existing literature did not include an important variable that parents take into consideration when deciding their children’s educational strategy, namely, the concern with a possible communication loss between parents and children when the children attend Japanese school. Then, it extends the original analysis by building a mechanism design model that includes the “communication loss” variable, aimed at inducing Brazilian parents to send their children to Japanese elementary school and, furthermore, to Brazilian after-schools, at the lowest possible cost for the Japanese government.

4.1 The Decision-Theoretic Approach: The Brazilian Families’ Schooling Decisions

This subsection briefly describes the findings in Bugarin (2017, 2018). The reader is invited to read the original papers for details on the decision theoretic model underlying the results presented here, as well as the careful motivation of the modelling hypothesis.

The mentioned works suggest five choices Brazilian families have regarding education for their children in Japan.

First, they can decide to keep their children out of school, at home. This strategy avoids all psychological costs associated with going to the Japanese school, which include bullying, the feeling of failure due to lack of achievement, difficulties of communication, etc. That strategy, however, strongly reduces the likelihood of future professional success both in Japan, if the child remains in the country, or even in Brazil, if the child returns.

Second, parents can decide to enroll their children in a regular Japanese (elementary) school. If the children are successful in adjusting to the Japanese school system, in spite of the psychological cost discussed above, the children will more likely have access to better paid, higher status jobs in Japan.

Third, parents may enroll their children in a full-time Brazilian school. In that case there will be no psychological adjustment cost.²³ However, the children will not be able to acquire the language and academic skills necessary to have access to better paid, higher status jobs in Japan. In addition, many Brazilian full-time schools tend to deliver insufficient academic content in Portuguese language, which will make the students unfit to access better jobs in Brazil. This is the phenomenon of the “double limited” child, unable to muster the Japanese or the Brazilian language, which we discussed earlier.

Fourth, parents may enroll their children in a full-time bilingual school, that would teach both the Brazilian and the Japanese academic curricula. This would also reduce the psychological costs of adaptation and better prepare the student for a successful future career in Japan or in Brazil. However, such schools tend to be quite expensive and only the most elite Brazilian families can afford them; they are not available to the majority of Brazilian families living in Japan.

Fifth, the parents may enroll their children in regular Japanese schools, but complement their education with a Brazilian, part-time, afterschool. The Brazilian afterschool would have three main goals. First, to preserve the Portuguese language as a heritage language for the Brazilian students thereby reducing the likelihood of communication loss between Portuguese speaking parents and their children. Second, to help students acquire the academic level required in the Japanese school, as the typical jukku does for Japanese students. Finally, this option maintains the students’ psychological stability by offering professional support, to help them cope with the psychological costs of attending Japanese schools. This model highly increases the chances of success in Japanese schools and of acquiring a better paid, higher status job. This model may also be less expensive than attending a full-time traditional Brazilian school.

The original research suggests that the most suitable strategy for the families is to choose this last hybrid model: Japanese school followed by part-time Brazilian afterschool. That model increases the chances of academic success as well as future professional success, while reducing the psychological challenges of adjusting to the Japanese school. Therefore, that model should be stimulated and, one would expect that it would flourish naturally.

As Prof. M. Bugarin presented in the Workshop “Inclusão de alunos brasileiros no sistema educacional japonês”, organized by the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo in February 2017, a survey of 28 (out of 39) Brazilian schools in Japan revealed that 18 of them, i.e., 64% of respondents, either already have afterschool programs, or are interested in implementing such a model.²⁴

Therefore, one would expect the hybrid Japanese school + Brazilian afterschool model to become dominant. However, it may take some time for that change to occur for several reasons, as discussed in Bugarin (2017, 2018). Two potential reasons are: (i) risk-aversion, i.e., the fact that many Brazilian schools are used to the full-time model, including the higher fees, and don’t feel comfortable with the risk of changing; and (ii) the fact that the only enduring scholarship for Brazilian students, organized by the Mitsui Company, is targeted toward full-time Brazilian schools.

One important reason why Brazilian parents may be concerned with enrolling their children in Japanese schools appeared frequently in our interviews and has not been modeled in the cited literature. Our interviews revealed that parents fear that their children may lose their Brazilian identity and that communication between parents and children may be jeopardized because the children may not retain their Portuguese speaking skills. Combined with the concern about the adaptation cost of attending a Japanese school, this may explain why many Brazilian parents may prefer a fulltime Brazilian school.

The next subsection introduces the mechanism design approach to assess what the Japanese government can do to induce parents to opt for the hybrid educational model.

4.2 The Mechanism-Design Approach: The Japanese Government’s Intervention

Elementary and middle school attendance in Japan is mandatory for Japanese children. However, the current government interpretation of the Japanese constitution, which states that basic education is mandatory to all “kokumin”,²⁵ excludes foreign children from this mandatory character. In other words, foreign children may attend Japanese schools but are not required to.

This interpretation of the constitution has been a delicate diplomatic issue. The Brazilian embassy in Tokyo, for example, argues that if foreign children were required to attend Japanese public schools, then the problem of truancy would be resolved. However, the Ministry of Education may be concerned with the cost increases associated with such a change in policy.

Thinking in the long-term, demographics are an important, related concern in Japan. As Japanese fertility rates are insufficient for populational stability, many argue that foreign workers and their families may help cope with the aging population problem Japan presently faces (Sakamoto 2014; Bugarin 2017). This is one of the main reasons the Japanese government changed the immigration control act, first in 1990, to allow for third generation Nikkei to work in Japan, and then in 2019, to allow foreign citizens to receive working visas in 14 job categories. The legislation is currently being revised further to allow indeterminate visa renewals and to expand the categories that allow foreigners to bring their families to Japan (see also The Japan Times 2021).

Considering the permanent and increasing need to import labor, from the point of view of Japanese government, it is not only a matter of social welfare, but a long-term strategic choice to ensure that the foreigners and their families are able to integrate properly into Japanese society. In particular, a fundamental tool of integration is making sure that foreign families’ children enroll in the local schools. Under that perspective, while the constitutional interpretation remains unchanged, the Japanese government may find it within its best interests to take actions aimed at inducing parents to enroll foreign children in the Japanese educational system.

Suppose, therefore, that the Japanese government wishes to induce parents to keep their children in Japanese schools. However, foreign families might not be willing to enroll their children due to the psychological and the loss of communication costs discussed earlier. To create the right incentives, the government could offer financial support $g$ to the foreign family, as long as a child remains in a public Japanese school. The purpose of this subsidy would be to countervail the negative effects of the psychological cost $p$ of going to a Japanese school and the possible loss of communication cost $l$.

Note that there are, actually, several possible levels for this communication cost $l$. If a child goes to a fulltime Brazilian school, then the chances of communication loss is very low because the child speaks Portuguese at school all day long. For simplicity, we set that cost to zero. If the child goes only to a fulltime Japanese school that cost is high, because the child listens to Japanese language all day long and may completely lose his Portuguese language skills. Let $l = \overline{l}$ be the loss of family communication in that case. If the child follows the hybrid system, i.e., goes to a Japanese school and a Brazilian afterschool, then the loss of communication cost exists, but it is lower than in the previous case. Let $l = \underline{l} < \overline{l}$ be the loss of communication cost in that case.

Similarly, there are several psychological costs of adjustment to the Japanese school. If the child goes only to a Japanese school, that is when the psychological cost is at its highest: $p = \overline{p} > 0$. If the child goes to a Japanese school first and then to a Brazilian school, given the psychological support structure in the afterschool, the psychological cost is lower: $p = \underline{p} < \overline{p}$.

Finally, there are no fees for attending the Japanese public school, but there is a (high) fee $c = \overline{c}$ for attending the fulltime private Brazilian school and a (lower) fee $c = \underline{c} < \overline{c}$ for attending the (halftime) afterschool Brazilian school.

Note that, since both the psychological and the communication-loss costs are reduced when a child goes to a Brazilian afterschool, it is potentially cheaper for the government to induce the parents to enroll their children in a Japanese school if they also attend the Brazilian afterschool. Hereafter, we build a mechanism design program to induce parents to enroll their children in the hybrid system.

Suppose the government offers subsidy $g > 0$ to the family that enrolls a child in the hybrid schooling system. For simplicity, we only consider four choices for the families²⁶: (i) truancy, i.e., keep the child out of school; (ii) fulltime Japanese school only; (iii) fulltime Brazilian school only; (iv) the hybrid system.

The corresponding utilities are:

• i. Truancy: in this case, there are no financial not psychological costs, but the expected future income, $r_0 > 0$, is very reduced. The net utility is:

  $$u_0 = r_0$$

• ii. Fulltime Japanese school only: in this case, the expected future income $r_j > r_0$ is higher, but there are two costs: the psychological adaptation cost, $\overline{p}{ } > 0$ and the loss of communication cost, $\overline{l}$. The net utility is:

  $$u_j = r_j - \overline{p} - \overline{l}$$

• iii. Fulltime Brazilian school only: in this case, there is neither a psychological adjustment cost nor a communication loss cost, but there is a financial cost (the private school fees) and the expected income $r_b$ is lower than when going to the Japanese school: $r_0 < r_b < r_j$. The net utility is:

  $$u_b = r_b - \overline{c}$$

• iv. Hybrid schooling: in this case the psychological adjustment cost, the communication loss cost and the school fees are all lower and the expected future income $r_{jb} > r_j$ is highest. In addition, the family receives the government subsidy $g$. The net utility is:

  $$u_{jb} = r_{jb} - \underline{c} - \underline{p} - \underline{l} + g$$

Considering all these alternatives, the Japanese government problem is to choose the optimal subsidy to solve the following program:

$$\mathop {\min }\limits_g g$$

Subject to:

$u_{jb} = r_{jb} - \underline{c} - \underline{p} - \underline{l} + g \ge u_0 = r_0$	$IR$
$u_{jb} = r_{jb} - \underline{c} - \underline{p} - \underline{l} + g \ge u_b = r_b - \overline{c}$	$IC_b$
$u_{jb} = r_{jb} - \underline{c} - \underline{p} - \underline{l} + g \ge u_j = r_j - \overline{p} - \overline{l}$	$IC_j$

The objective function is the financial concern and states that the government aims to keep the expenditure as reduced as possible. Condition $IR$ is the individual rationality condition or the participation constraint. It says that the family must prefer to enroll the child in the hybrid system rather than keeping him/her home and out of school. The $IR$ condition could also be called, in this context, the “No-truancy condition”.

Condition $IC_b$ is the incentive compatibility condition for the fulltime Brazilian school. It says that the family must prefer to enroll the child in the hybrid system rather than enrolling him/her in a fulltime Brazilian school.

Finally, condition $IC_j$ is the incentive compatibility condition for the Japanese school. It says that the family must prefer to enroll the child in the hybrid system rather than enrolling him/her only in a fulltime Japanese school.

Rewriting the above conditions yields:

$IR:$	$g \ge \underline{c} + \underline{p} + \underline{l} - \left( {r_{jb} - r_0 } \right)$
$IC_b:$	$g \ge \underline{p} + \underline{l} - \left( {\overline{c} - \underline{c} } \right) - \left( {r_{jb} - r_b } \right)$
$IC_j:$	$g \ge \underline{c} - \left( {\overline{l} - \underline{l} } \right) - \left( {\overline{p} - \underline{p} } \right) - \left( {r_{jb} - r_j } \right)$

Let ${\Delta }c = \left( {\overline{c} - \underline{c} } \right); {\Delta }l = \left( {\overline{l} - \underline{l} } \right);{\Delta }p = \left( {\overline{p} - \underline{p} } \right)$. Then, the solution to the government minimization problem

$${g =}{ } {\max\left\{ {0, \underline{c} + \underline{p} + \underline{l} - \left( {r_{jb} - r_0 } \right),\underline{p} + \underline{l} - {\Delta }c - \left( {r_{jb} - r_b } \right),\underline{c} - {\Delta }l - {\Delta }p - \left( {r_{jb} - r_j }\right)}\right\} }$$

The above expression presents the cheapest way for the government to align the incentives of Brazilian families with the government’s goal of stimulating the hybrid schooling system.

Ceteris paribus, the subsidy necessary to award the families that choose the hybrid educational system is lower:

• i. The higher the difference in their children’s (expected) future wages when they follow the hybrid system, compared to the alternatives.

• ii. The higher the difference between the financial cost of the fulltime Brazilian school and the part-time Brazilian afterschool.

• iii. The higher the difference between the loss of communication perspectives when the child enrolls at the Japanese school only and when he/she follows the hybrid system.

• iv. The higher the difference between the psychological adjustment cost for attending a Japanese school when the child goes only to a Japanese school and when the child adopts the hybrid system.

In sum, the more efficient the Brazilian afterschool, the less expensive it is for the government to induce the adoption of the hybrid system. Higher demands for the afterschool will induce competition for students and higher efficiency; therefore, the cost of the proposed public policy shall reduce in time.

Furthermore, since this policy induces parents to enroll their children in a Japanese school and a Brazilian afterschool, the likelihood that those students will succeed is increased; therefore, in the medium run this policy will yield more productive citizens, who will contribute to increasing Japanese GDP, which in turn will increase government tax revenues. Therefore, in time, this policy will become financially self-sustained.

5 Conclusions

The legal framework to promote education of the Japanese language to adults is being developed, but there is still a long way to go for a system that will help school children. The new LPJLE is welcome. It covers a broad area, but we conclude from our field study that, at this time, the law is insufficient to focus on the challenges (drop out, failure in entrance exams, truancy, etc.) of children in school.

From our theoretical study as well as interviews, the best style seems to be the provision of a complementary Brazilian afterschool. Co-production between local governments and local NPOs would be an effective form of strengthening the system to promote an afterschool to consolidate the Japanese language learning of about 10,000 Brazilian children in schools.

As the integration of foreign families into Japanese society is highly desirable in all points of view, including the population deficit in Japan, we find it advisable that the Japanese government takes active policy initiatives to induce Brazilian families to enroll their children in the Japanese public education system as well as in a Brazilian afterschool, which we have called the hybrid educational system. We find that a subsidy to the families that choose to enroll their children in the hybrid system may be the cheapest way for the government to attain the integration goal. A mechanism design calculation shows how to set the minimum subsidy, which will decrease as the afterschool becomes more efficient. We should note that a Basic Law to Promote the Society of Multicultural Co-living is needed to boost support both from local administration and the civil society to the local community faced with the challenge of achieving harmony among all residents.　[Part of this work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18K11810.]

Notes

• 1. Nikkei refers to the Japanese immigrants and their descendants who live in the countries outside of Japan. The total number of Nikkei people living and working in Brazil today is estimated to be around 1.6 million according to an introductory report available at the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (URL: https://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/pr/wakaru/topics/vol115/index.html [last access: February 6, 2022]).

• 2. The phrase “foreign residents” is employed at many places in this article although our main focus is on the Nikkei Brazilian residents. The issues related to the Brazilian residents are often inseparable from the issues related to foreign residents in general in Japan; many supporting organizations we interviewed target and support not only Brazilians but also other nationalies living in Japan. To clearly identify some of the distinctive issues related exclusively to the Nikkei Brazilians is to be reserved for our next research in the near future.

• 3. “Support programs” here mean a variety of activities incluging suppelemantary classes offered by school teachers and collaborative educational activities undertaken jointly by school teachers and local NPOs.

• 4. See the discussion in Tobace (2009). The official announcement (in the Japanese language) about this return travel subsidy from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is available at the follwoing website: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/houdou/2009/03/h0331-10.html (last access: February 6, 2022).

• 5. Hamamatsu is one of the most important cities as a research target of this theme for several reasons. First, there are many Nikkei Brazilian residents living there with a high demand for assistance on multicultural co-living. Second, the city is one of the leading local governments to tackle the challenge of social integration of foreign residents in Japan as a principal member of the CCCFR. Third, the serious situation of Brazilian children in the region is familiar because of the popular documentary film Lonely Sparrows or Kodokuna Tsubametachi (first shown in 2011 across Japan). Thanks to this publicity, the city is a symbol for the issue of children who dropped out of formal primary and secondary education. Our interviews around this time suggested that the difficult situation faced by the children described in the film can still be observed in Hamamatsu City today.

• 6. We are not certain if this estimation of 50 percent can be applied to other cities and prefectuers in Japan, but there are other information sources more or less compatible with this figure. A news article published online on January 29 of 2019 at the website of Asahi Shimbun Digital entitled “Gaikokujin Kyouiku ‘Teijisei Danomi’” (Education to foreign students depends on nighttime schools) written by Yusuke Saito and Nao Hidaka reports that a nigthtime course of Gamagori High School in Aichi Prefecture had 41 foriegn students out of the total 97 students as of Janaury 2019 (URL = https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASM1X6D87M1XOIPE01Q.html [last access: February 6, 2022]).

• 7. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) regarding entrance examinations to high schools are available at the following website of MEXT: https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/kaikaku/sikaku/1311012.htm (last access: March 4th, 2022).

• 8. The list of these forty one high schools is available at the following webiste of MEXT: https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/shikaku/07111314/003.htm (last access: March 4th, 2022).

• 9. The central government of Japan does offer a variety of earmarked subsidies as well as non-earmaked ones (revenue sharing type) to both prefectural and basic level governments, but as far as the policy area of multi-cultural co-living is concerned, the central govenment has been inactive in assisting local govenments for the last thirty years. One reason for this lack of action on the part of the central goverment might be that there was no national law related to the promotion of multi-cultural co-living.

• 10. One exception of a private firm’s shouldering the cost of multi-cultural co-living is a case of Mitsui & Co. Ltd, known as Mitsui Bussan in Japanese, one of the largest trading houses in Japan. Mitsui Bussan commits itself to the social contribution activity of helping the Brazilian children. The company created a scholarship program for the Brazilian children in Japan in 2009. It has supported 4,266 students by 2021 (see their website at https://www.mitsui.com/jp/ja/sustainability/contribution/community/index.html [last access: February 6, 2022]).

• 11. In the context of the study of Japan’s local administration, GODC and big and important cities are almost synonymous. Technically speaking, a GODC is a city with more than 500,000 residents designated by the central government and given additional administrative authorities as stipulated in Item 19, Article 252 of Local Autonomy Law. There are 13 such special functions and powers which otherwise belong to the upper prefectural government.

• 12. URL of Sanarudai School is this: https://weblog.city.hamamatsu-szo.ed.jp/sanarudai-e/.

• 13. URL of the website is here: http://www.hi-hice.jp/u-toc/en/center.html.

• 14. Suorce: Hamamatsu City’s offical website at: https://www.city.hamamatsu.shizuoka.jp/zaisek/budget/budget31/detail/d_157.html (last access: February 6, 2022).

• 15. Source: Kanagawa Prefecture’s official website at: https://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/docs/k2w/prs/r3998085.html (last access: February 6, 2022).

• 16. Source: Yokohama City’s official website at: https://www.city.yokohama.lg.jp/city-info/yokohamashi/tokei-chosa/portal/jinko/gaikokujin/r3gaikokujin.html (last access: February 6, 2022).

• 17. The Chairperson of the board of ABC Japan is Ms. Michie Afuso, who received Ordem do Rio Branco from the Brazilian Government in 2018 for her long-time contribution to help the Nikkei Brazilians in Japan and Gaimu Daijin Sho (Foreign Minister’s Commendations) of the Japanese Government in 2019 for her long-time contribution to promote the mutual understanding of the two nations and to realize the society of multicultural co-living.

• 18. The session starts from 14:30 to 15:00 for Grades 1 to 4 and 15:00 to 15:30 for Grades 5 and 6. About three to seven volunteers participate while two schoolteachers come as responsible persons from the school. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsuruminho was suspended for most of the period between 2020 and 2021.

• 19. This means that Brazilian students enrolled in Brazilian junior high schools face two different problems for entering a Japanese high school: they are limited academic performance (including language barrier) and the institutional barrier discussed in this paragraph.

• 20. Mr. T. Saito received the Ordem do Rio Branco in 2020 for his contribution to the development of Brazil–Japan relationship in the field of basic education to the Brazilian community in Japan. He also received Gaimu Daijin Sho (Foreign Minister’s Commendations) of the Japanese Government in 2018 for his long-time contribution to promote the mutual understanding of the two nations.

• 21. For the full text of this bill, go to the official website of the Lower House at the following link: https://www.shugiin.go.jp/internet/itdb_gian.nsf/html/gian/honbun/houan/g19805028.htm (last access: December 2, 2021). This bill is a positive and important step forward, but Article 18, which stipulates the central government’s duty to promote the education of the Japanese language to school children, still looks incomplete in our view in the sense that it only refers to the children from the age of 6 to the age 15 and does not cover high school education after the age of 16 where the drop-out rate seems to be high according to our research this time.

• 22. See, for example, Balago (2019), Connexion. Tokyo Team (2015a and 2015b), Cornelius (1995), Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão. (2010), Fuji (2021), Hatano (2010), Hashimoto (2020), Inaba and Higuchi (2010), Ishi (2010), Kanasiro (2011), Learn-S Co. Ltd. (2015), Nakaema (2014), Ohphata (2016), Sakamoto (2014), Sasaki (2006), Yamazaki (2015), Yamazaki and Uchida (2007), among many other references.

• 23. There may always be some psychological adjustment cost entering school; however, that cost is negligible in Brazilian schools in comparison to Japanese schools and, for simplicity, is normalized to zero in the models.

• 24. The complete presentation is available upon request.

• 25. The word kokumin can be translated either as “citizens”, i.e., all people living in the country, in a wider view, or as “nationals”, in a narrower view, which excludes foreigners and is the present interpretation of the Japanese government. The official English version of the Constitution of Japan uses “the Japanese people” for nihon (=Japanese) kokumin and “the people” for kokumin, leaving room for these two different interpretations. Article 10 of Chapter III (Rights and Duties of the People) stipulates: “The conditions necessary for being a Japanese national shall be determined by law”.

• 26. The possible choice of the bilingual school, as discussed in the literature, is reserved for the financial elite and, therefore, is not the concern of the Japanese government.