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Educating Children from Cross-Border Marriages: Understanding Japanese Heritage Transnational Families in Singapore PDF

137 Pages·2023·3.158 MB·English
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Educating Children from Cross-Border Marriages Understanding Japanese Heritage Transnational Families in Singapore Glenn Toh Educating Children from Cross-Border Marriages Glenn Toh Educating Children from Cross-Border Marriages Understanding Japanese Heritage Transnational Families in Singapore Glenn Toh School of Humanities Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Singapore ISBN 978-3-031-22535-2 ISBN 978-3-031-22536-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22536-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Sakiko, Nobuyoshi, and Megumi A cknowledgments I wish to thank Professor Watanabe Yukinori for being the energetic and dedicated educator, researcher, and leader that he is. His deep insight into mixed marriages in the East and Southeast Asian region was what inspired me to learn more about Japanese-Singaporean marriages. I also wish to thank Professors Sachiyo Fujita-Round, Sun Wonsuk, Watanabe Osamu, Masuko Takehisa, Qiu Xiaolan, Ryu Seungho, Jiraporn Chompikul, and Petcharee Rupavijetra for their invaluable insights and inspiration during our online meetings and seminars. Our work on mixed marriages in the different parts of East and Southeast Asia was generously supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (Kakenhi Project Area Grant Number JP20H01648, related to sociology of education). I wish to thank Alice Green of Palgrave Macmillan for her patience and professionalism from the time we first started discussing the possibility of this book. My sincerest thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers of my book proposal, whose comments and suggestions were invaluable in helping me shape my thoughts and argu- ments. Last but not least, I wish to thank the love of my life, Sakiko, who, apart from giving me her unstinting support, has been the key to building a safe and Christ-centered home for our two children. vii c ontents 1 Backgrounding Japanese-Singaporean Families: Discourses, Histories, and Ecologies 1 2 Japanese Identity Discourses: Homogeneity Versus Heterogeneity 19 3 Singaporean Identity Discourses: Narratives and Questionings of Racialization and Cultural Diversity 41 4 Navigating the Japanese and Singaporean Systems of Schooling: Challenges, Choices, and Enigmas 57 5 Families of Japanese Heritage Mixed Marriages in Singapore: Educational Trajectories and Lived Stories 83 6 Conclusion: Enabling the Imagination and Anticipating the Future 113 Index 129 ix l t ist of Ables Table 5.1 ‘Murata-Wong family’ consisting of Ryoto (Japanese husband); Mei Lin (Singaporean-Chinese wife); Rui (six-year-old daughter entering elementary school) 95 Table 5.2 ‘Nosaka-Nuli family’ consisting of Ken (Japanese husband); Bea (Malaysian wife); Jun (14-year-old son in a Japanese- medium junior high school; subsequently in an international school) 97 Table 5.3 ‘Chan-Sato family’ consisting of Mie (Japanese wife); Beng (Singaporean husband); Chip and Choc (14- and 12-year-old sons in a local Catholic school) 98 Table 5.4 ‘Thong-Tanaka family’ consisting of Honoka (Japanese wife); Khim (Singaporean husband); Sonji and Kenji (four- and eight-year-old sons, one in a local government primary school and one in a neighborhood kindergarten) 101 Table 5.5 ‘Kwong-Itoh family’ consisting of Inoli (Japanese wife); Simon (Singaporean-Chinese husband); five children, Akane (17, daughter, in a public high school in one of Okinawa’s bigger cities); Akira and Asahi (13 and 15, sons, in a public junior high school near the family home); Aoi and Aimi (7 and 10, daughters, in a public school near the family home) 103 xi CHAPTER 1 Backgrounding Japanese-Singaporean Families: Discourses, Histories, and Ecologies Abstract Issues relating to Japanese interests in Southeast Asia and in particular the city state of Singapore are examined as a preamble to under- standing Japanese-Singaporean marriages. The first Japanese to be domi- ciled in Singapore arrived in the British colony in the 1860s. During World War II, Japan occupied Singapore for three years and eight months before the return of the British forces in late 1945. Japanese interests in Singapore are revealed to be currently of a commercial as well as strategic nature, with the Japanese population numbering some 35,000. Forming a subset of this population are the Japanese nationals married to Singaporean spouses. The purpose of this book which concerns the educational aspira- tions, cultural dispositions, as well as life and identity trajectories of Japanese-Singaporean families is described in this chapter. Such aspirations are seen to involve negotiations of a discursive and reflexive nature, imbri- cating language, identity, and cultural dispositions. Given the complex and multilayered nature of these negotiations, it will be revealed that the chal- lenges and struggles therein are influenced, more frequently than not, by the workings of different local and transnational trends and tendencies as well as by dominant ideologies and prevailing cultural political discourses. Keywords Japanese living overseas • Mixed marriage • Migration © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1 Switzerland AG 2023 G. Toh, Educating Children from Cross-Border Marriages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22536-9_1 2 G. TOH The setting of this book is the cosmopolitan city state of Singapore where I was born and now work as a university lecturer, and to which I returned after living for almost nine years in Japan with my wife and two children, all of whom are Japanese nationals. I seek in this book to examine the ways in which transnational marriage families with Japanese spouses, much like mine, are engaged reflexively in negotiations involving language and identity positionings and disposi- tions. Given the complex and multilayered nature of these negotiations, I am particularly conscious that the challenges and struggles therein may be influenced, more frequently than not, by the workings of different local and transnational trends and tendencies as well as by ideologies and cul- tural political discourses prevailing at any one time or place. As is typically the case with the way they operate, the workings of such ideological forces are likely to be subtle and dissimulated in the way they regulate or influ- ence possible outcomes of struggles with issues concerning language and identity (see, e.g., Kuramoto, 2019; Hammine, 2020; Toh, 2020, 2021), in this case, among the transnational families whose stories are retold later in the book. In all of these struggles, it will be seen that issues relating to education—particularly children’s schooling—feature prominently as ones which intersect with perennial concerns to do with language affiliations and identity dispositions. Whether they may be attributable to trends, ten- dencies, predispositions, or even ideologies, it will be seen that the stories told about language, identity, and schooling choices are ones that imbri- cate questions of aspirations, sociocultural imaginaries, as well as life and identity trajectories—here with reference to children of Japanese- Singaporean transnational families. On their part and in their role, it will be seen too that the parents of these children routinely engage with mat- ters relating to educational choices and pathways regarding their children. Writing about the idea of how people are typically ‘unfinished beings’ with a ‘distinctive ability to see themselves in an historical light’ following the work of famed educator, Paulo Freire, Roberts (2022, p. 6) captures how parents in this case will likely ‘look back at the immediate or more distant past [and] ponder the present’ to ‘imagine possible futures’. The issues surrounding such imagination and decision-making stem undoubtedly from the need for these families to negotiate aforesaid beliefs and dis- courses liable to have a bearing on the sorts of imaginaries and possibilities which typically shape schooling and life trajectory choices. Such beliefs and discursive frameworks are again typically sociocultural in nature and are characteristically complex and multilayered in the ways in which they

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