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By the end of 2024, the number of foreign nationals residing in Japan had exceeded 3.76 million — a record high [1]. Roughly one in thirty people living in Japan holds a non-Japanese nationality. Many of those people are raising children here, navigating the universal work of parenting within Japan's institutions, language, and cultural norms.
Zainichi Koreans, families from China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, households whose religious practices differ from those of the majority — these "cultural minorities" face parenting challenges that look quite different from the "standard household" presupposed by most Japanese parenting literature. The issues go beyond language. They bear directly on children's sense of self, their identity formation, and their long-term psychological well-being.
This article draws on research into ethnic identity development to examine what the evidence shows about raising children in minority-culture households in Japan.