Teaching about “Japanese Privilege” in Higher Education: Contextualizing Privilege to the Japanese Context

Educators in higher education who teach diversity and social justice courses face the challenging task of engaging students in the dominant group who exhibit disinterest and indifference toward prejudice, discrimination and various injustices in society. This paper presents research findings on Japanese university students’ awareness about race and ethnic categories, Japanese students’ experience with the racial ‘other’ as well as two course designs at the undergraduate level to teach about privilege awareness: the first, a course dedicated to privilege awareness in different domains; and the second, a several-week section in a teacher training course. The application and generalizability of the white privilege construct to the Japanese context, the differences in teaching about privilege in the U.S. and Japan, and some of the unique challenges about Japanese culture and society, were discussed. The authors suggest that adopting a privilege awareness pedagogy is an effective method for teaching about diversity and inclusion, because students in the dominant group recognize that they are accountable in maintaining an oppressive system and thus can be are encouraged to reevaluate their privilege and their potential role as allies to minority group members.

Presented at the Conference Does “Invisible Privilege” Travel?: Looking Beyond the Geographies of White Privilege, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, May 2, 2019, with Megumi Shibuya (Department of Education and Child Development, Meiji Gakuin University).