Foreign tourists wearing school uniforms listen to a woman playing the role of a teacher in a classroom during a Japanese high school experience in Junjin, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, April 23,2010. (Reuters)
Not familiar with Japanese primary school students, with their parents moved to Japan six months later, suddenly took a Japanese“Germ man.”. The counselor asked, only to know that boys were bullied by classmates.
School bullying is a serious problem in Japan, with 732,568 cases reported last year, up more than 50,000 from the previous year. Many children who immigrated to Japan with their families have been bullied because of their different languages and living habits.
Kobayashi, who has worked as a counselor in many public schools in Japan, has noticed that there are more and more children from different countries in the school, some of whom are struggling to adapt to the environment. “Schools have Lianhe Zaobao counselors in different languages, but with the increase in immigration to Japan, cases of bullying are piling up,” she told the Daily Mail
Kobayashi has been in coaching for 20 years. In the interview, she mentioned a 10-year-old boy she tutored. The boy came from northeast China’s Liaoning province and moved to Japan with his working parents. “Although he had been here for six months, he didn’t know Japanese and didn’t say a word in or out of class,” says Kobayashi
“I tried to communicate with him in Chinese, and one day he opened his mouth and said ‘germ man’ , a Japanese cartoon character. I thought he learned it from cartoons, but he said that’s what his classmates called him. When I pressed him, I learned that a Japanese classmate had given him the nickname when he saw him spitting.”
According to the latest data released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in April, the number of foreign students attending Japanese public elementary, middle and high schools has increased by about 80 percent over the past decade, from about 77,000 in 2014 to 139,000 in the 2024. Among them, the largest number of primary schools, there are more than 90,000 foreigners.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology bullying data do not break down the nationality of victims. But a 2022 poll by Survery research, commissioned by Japan’s judicial authorities, found that 60 per cent of foreign residents in their 20s who had attended primary and secondary school complained of bullying at school. As for the reasons for being bullied, more than half of the respondents who had been bullied (55.6%) said it was due to different living habits, and 48.1% said it was due to“Different hair color”(48.1%) , thirty-seven percent said they were being bullied purely“Because I’m a foreigner.”.
Although the Japanese government has placed foreign-language teachers in some schools to help foreign students integrate, the results have been limited. The inability to speak Japanese is considered a key barrier to the integration of foreign children into school.
Fussa City, a city of just 58,000 people west of Tokyo, is a magnet for foreigners because of its relatively welcoming foreign culture, thanks to an n military base. According to statistics, there are more than 6% of the local residents from China, Vietnam, Nepal, Thailand and other places, is rare in Japan, “Multi-ethnic village.”. YSCGS, a nonprofit organization Japanese language school, helps about 100 foreign students a year who are struggling to adapt to Japanese schools.
“At present, very few Japanese schools, whether public or private, can provide a proper education for foreign children,” Miho Tanaka, founder of the Cram School, said in an interview. There are a lot of foreign kids who don’t speak Japanese and go to school. Statistics show that Japanese kids go to high school at a rate of nearly 100 percent, while foreigners’ Kids go to school at a rate of about 60 percent.”
Chinese girl Ruoxi (14) , who was supposed to be in the first year of middle school this year, refused to go to school because her classmates teased her about her Japanese. Worried about her daughter being bullied at school, Ruoxi’s mother gave her a Japanese name, Ruoshan Mi-hye, but she couldn’t stop the bullying.
“I was very lively and talkative when I studied in China,” said Ruoxi, who has lived in Japan for three years. Did not expect to come to Japan, took a Japanese name, I dare not speak. . . … I didn’t speak because I was laughed at the first time I spoke Japanese in class Since then, no one has heard me speak, and I’ve been afraid to do so for fear of making another mistake and being laughed at.”
Ruoxi declined to give his Chinese surname for fear of being identified.
Parents feel helpless and choose to put up with it
In addition to the students’ inability to communicate effectively with classmates, Tanaka points out that many parents of foreign students also don’t speak much Japanese and are helpless to defend their children’s rights.
In fact, even Japanese parents often choose to swallow their pride for fear that exposing bullying will make their children even more ostracized. The“Daily News” reported the other day that a student at an elementary school attached to Japan’s famous National Tsukuba University had been bullied for six years, students often with“You really stupid”, “You really annoying”, “Go to Hell” and other verbal abuse against him, but the school has never taken action.
It wasn’t until the student frequently missed classes and gave up taking the entrance exam that his mother revealed the truth. She pointed out that the affiliated primary school entrance competition is fierce, the child is not easy to enter, so I have been hoping that children can endure. “I’m also worried that if I report it, even we parents will be ostracized.”
However, counselor Kobayashi warned that both schools and parents should face up to bullying at school, otherwise it will have a negative impact on their children’s future development. “There are immigrant children who have nowhere to go and slit their wrists,” she said. Some give up their studies and eventually go astray. Their parents are so busy working that they ignore their children’s state of mind. “The worrying thing is the consequences of not addressing the issue.”