In Traditionally Insular Japan, A Rare Experiment in Diversity

HAMAMATSU, Japan -- Five years ago, in this coastal city southwest of Tokyo, Mari Matsumoto sank her life savings into building a school for the children and grandchildren of immigrants coming to Japan. But at Mundo de Alegr¿a (World of Happiness), the students aren't what one might expect: Children with Japanese faces and names like Haruo and Tomiko dart around the two-story building chattering in Spanish and Portuguese.

The school is the result of an unusual social experiment. Faced with labor shortages, the Japanese government opened the doors in 1990 to allow immigrants to come to the country -- so long as they were of Japanese descent. Government officials thought they would blend into the country's notoriously insular society more easily than people from other ethnic backgrounds.

But many found they didn't quite fit. Their names and faces were Japanese, but they didn't speak the language. They didn't understand local customs, such as the country's stringent system for sorting garbage into multicolored containers. In cities such as Hamamatsu, where many settled, government officials and Japanese neighbors didn't know what to make of newcomers who seemed familiar but foreign at the same time.

Despite the frictions here and in other communities, pressure is building in Japan to take in more immigrants, forcing the country to reconsider its traditional bias against outsiders. Its population is aging and shrinking. Analysts say Japan must find new sources of labor if it is to preserve its economic power and support its retirees.

Hamamatsu was a natural magnet for the newcomers because its many factories offered entry-level employment and required virtually no language skills. Officials here like to brag that their community became the most "international" of Japan's cities. About 30,000 of its residents, or 4 percent, are foreign-born. That's almost twice the proportion of foreign-born residents in Japan as a whole. (About 13 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born.) Most newcomers are from Brazil and Peru. They are offspring of Japanese who immigrated to South America in the early 1900s to work in coffee fields and take other jobs.

The new arrivals here brought Latin culture with them. In Hamamatsu's downtown, billboards in Portuguese advertise cellphones and air conditioners. In a popular market, Brazilians who long for a taste of home can buy a platter of bolinho de queijo -- cheese croquettes -- fresh from the fryer or rent DVDs of popular Brazilian shows.

Other parts of the city have Brazilian and Peruvian churches. One enterprising woman has built a small catering business making box lunches for homesick Peruvians.

But even as officials here tout their international credentials, they struggle to manage the diversity. That's where Matsumoto, her life savings and the school come in.

For years, Matsumoto, a Japanese who learned Spanish and Portuguese in college, worked for Suzuki Motor, where she trained foreign workers from South America.

She soon grew alarmed by the number of immigrant children who were dropping out of Japanese public schools. Because many didn't understand Japanese, they were falling behind in their studies. Others were bullied because they didn't look Japanese (some of them are biracial, having Latin parents). Even though some schools hired aides to help the children, many were left to flounder, she said.

The parents urged Matsumoto to open a school for their children. Unable to get funding from government or school officials, she sank her savings into the enterprise. She began recruiting teachers willing to work for very little pay.

One recent day, as she watched her spirited charges dash around the makeshift classrooms in an office building on the city's south side, Matsumoto said she wouldn't have had to do this if the government had made an adequate effort to accommodate immigrant children. "That's the root of the problem," she said.