Multicultural Center Tokyo

Japan, Life, Travel Comments (1)

Day 4 (Saturday): One out of 57 people in Japan is a registered foreign resident; they tend to congregate in Tokyo, where 1 out of 31 is foreign. In order, Koreans and Chinese are the most numerous foreign groups, followed by citizens of Brazil, the Philippines, Peru, and Other.

Children born to foreign residents, whether unregistered, registered, or permanent, remain foreigners. They make up .94% of primary school children in Tokyo, 1.10% of junior high school students in Tokyo, but then — after compulsory education ends — only .67% of high school students in Tokyo. The steep drop is due to the Japanese-language high school entrance exams, which require students to pass subject exams in the fields of Japanese (language and culture), English, and Mathematics. So while 97.7% of Japanese students continue into high school, foreign-born students are barred by the language barrier, becoming a burden on society. The Japanese government refuses to make any allowances for them, however, in terms of offering non-Japanese-language entrance exams or extra tutoring.

That’s where Multicultural Center Tokyo comes in. We visited it on Saturday afternoon, after spending the morning at the Heiseikan building’s exhibit in the Tokyo National Museum. It is located in a battered old ex-high school building in a residential part of Tokyo.

Run by a Chinese-born woman who faced the same language barriers as a child, the Multicultural Center performs outreach to foreign residents, offering after-school and weekend tutoring designed especially to help them pass the Japanese high school entrance exams. Few do. We met the director and several volunteers from Japan and other countries. Japanese volunteer tutor Yukari Watanabe gave us a preliminary lecture and translated some words and exchanges with the director, and UBS Securities Japan Ltd representative Dominique Pang, who also volunteers there and represents his corporation, which donates to the center, also showed us around. His corporation and The Gap are the only two that offer money to the nonprofit center; no Japanese companies or organizations do.

Our students were startled to learn that Japanese culture, in general, places no ideological value on encouraging diversity and does not have a “service” mindset when it comes to helping non-Japanese residents. American students, by contrast, are increasingly encouraged to think in terms of service (volunteering at Habitat for Humanity or doing organized public area clean-ups or working at charity events, for example), and this is especially true at California Lutheran University, where we consider service to the world an important part of educating students to become global leaders.

Our students spent several hours at the center, chatting with a couple of Chinese students attending the center for English class. At least two of our students hope to come back over winter break next year to do volunteer work — they exchanged cards with Watanabe and Pang and were speaking excitedly afterwards about how they might be able to gather textbooks or other materials from the U.S. to mail back. I’m very proud of them, and I hope they follow through! I’ll mention the organization to our Study Abroad coordinator, and perhaps we can encourage our students studying in Tokyo to volunteer there or at least participate in some of the annual charity runs the UBS group organizes, part of which helps fund the center.

drupagliassotti @ May 22, 2010