Origins The earliest
Japanese language instruction in the
United States was aimed at
heritage speakers.
Japanese immigration to Hawaii began in 1868, and to the
United States in 1869.
Issei parents, worrying about the increasing
Americanization of their
nisei children, established
Japanese schools outside of the regular school system to teach the language and culture of their ancestral country. The first school was established in
Kohala, Hawaii by Reverend Shigefusa Kanda, in 1893, and others soon followed, including several attached to Hawaiian
Hongwanji missions. The schools were financed by both the Japanese immigrant community and the sugar planters they worked for, as they provided much needed childcare for the plantation laborers during their long workday. On the mainland, California's first Japanese language school was
Nihongo Gakuin, established in 1903; by 1912, eighteen such schools had been set up in California alone. with nearly 2,000 students attending the school, spending two hours there a day, five days a week following regular schooling. Nihon Go Gakko is the
continental United States's oldest Japanese language school. The schools' perceived connection to Japan and support for labor movements, including the 1909 and
1920 strikes against the
Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, exposed fault lines of religion and class within the Japanese American community, and fed growing
anti-Japanese sentiment from the larger public. Buddhist organizations were heavily involved in the establishment of schools, and, while many Japanese American Christians founded their own competing schools, others ascribing to a more assimilationist view opposed their existence. Furthermore, non-Japanese also took a dim view of the schools, accusing them of indoctrinating Japanese American children and forming part of a wider strategy of the Japanese government to "colonize" the United States; public school teachers and the
Office of Naval Intelligence went so far as to label them "anti-American". In the meantime, California politicians enacted the Parker Bill in August 1921, establishing extensive prerequisites for teacher certification and giving complete control over hiring, operations and curricula in the schools to the Superintendent of Public Education. As late as 1940, there were only 65 non-
Japanese Americans who were able to read, write and understand the language. Even among
nisei graduates of the community Japanese schools, true fluency was rare: a 1941
Military Intelligence Service survey of 3,700
nisei found that 3 percent could potentially become competent after extensive training, 4 percent were "proficient" but still required additional instruction, and just 3 percent were qualified for linguistic work in Japanese. At the same time, Japanese language schools on the
West Coast aimed at heritage speakers were shut down due to the
Japanese American internment. Japanese school instructors and principals were among those
detained by the FBI after Pearl Harbor, so many schools had already closed by the time "evacuation" orders were issued in the spring of 1942. Enrollment in such schools declined compared to the pre-war period; for example, the Moiliili Language School in
Honolulu, which with over 1,000 students in 1938 was the largest Japanese-language school in Hawaii, had only 85 students .
United States Navy Japanese Language School For U.S. and the world to understand Japan and its culture, the United States Navy Japanese Language School, relocated from the
University of California, Berkeley, to the
University of Colorado in Boulder during the
Pacific War, played a major role. Not only did it serve mainly for intelligence activities during the war, but also its graduates, such as
Edward Seidensticker,
Donald Keene,
Otis Cary and others, often called the "Boulder Boys", made important contributions to introducing the Japanese culture in the post-WWII world.
Post-World War II , a
Shiritsu zaigai kyōiku shisetsu Japanese international school in
Peachtree Corners, Georgia in
Greater Atlanta The first program aimed at training
secondary school Japanese language teachers was established at the
University of Hawaii under the provisions of the
National Defense Act of 1958; it initially admitted 20 students. Enrollment in Japanese language courses in US high schools had the fastest growth rate out of all languages during the 1980s, the time of the
Japanese asset bubble. During the 1990s,
The College Board, a United States standardized testing agency, began to offer an
SAT Subject Test in Japanese and conducted the first sitting of the
Japanese Advanced Placement exam in May 2007; these examinations enable high school students to obtain college credit for their prior study of the Japanese language. However, unlike
Chinese, which continued to grow in the early 2000s, the popularity of Japanese declined sharply, with thousands of students dropping the language. According to a survey by the
Center for Applied Linguistics, the teaching of Japanese declined at both the primary and secondary levels between 2006 and 2009. Japanese-language education aimed at
native speakers began later, as the rise of the
economy of Japan resulted in increasing numbers of companies sending employees and their families to the United States for short-term assignments. , the Japanese
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology officially recognized four Japanese
nihonjin gakkō day schools in the United States, in
Guam, the
Chicago metropolitan area, and the
New York City metropolitan area. Several other day/boarding schools are classified as
Shiritsu zaigai kyōiku shisetsu (
私立在外教育施設) or overseas branches of Japanese private schools; as of 2010 there were three such schools in the U.S. ==Current status==