Speaker
Description
Universities in Japan are seeing an ever-increasing number of students from diverse cultural backgrounds (Mamiya, 2024). For students including international exchange students, returnees, and Third Culture Kids, university is thus a time not only to prepare for their future career, but also explore their identity and where they belong. In other words, do they view Japan as just a temporary stop or their permanent home? Unfortunately, universities rarely provide courses in which students can openly discuss such issues with classmates with similarly nontraditional upbringings. In order to provide students from diverse cultural backgrounds with the opportunity to discuss their identity and sense of belonging in a multicultural environment, the presenter created a course entitled “A Passion for Japan: Living, Working, and Thriving in Japan” at a large national university. For course content, students read a series of personal narratives by long-term foreign residents of Japan (Rucynski, 2022), with the common theme of how a passion for a specific aspect of Japanese culture (e.g., festivals, Japanese calligraphy, tea ceremony) helped with the acculturation process and made the writer feel at home in Japan. Rather than merely viewing Japan through rose-tinted glasses, however, the authors also shared their struggles along the way with issues including cultural differences, gender roles, and the language barrier. These personal narratives served as a springboard for class discussions about themes such as intercultural communication, cultural identity, and the pros and cons of long-term residency in Japan. Whether or not respective students see Japan as a permanent home, the course provided ample opportunities for examining and discussing real-world stories about finding the place where you belong. The presenter will summarize the course objectives, content, and student reactions (gathered from reading reflections and final presentations).
