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Language and Education in Japan: Unequal Access to Bilingualism. Yasuko Kanno. Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave, 2008. 240 pp.
Kanno's ethnography examines the nature of bilingual education in five schools serving various populations in Japan. Her work is guided by Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities" - futures projected onto the students by their schools, and Pierre Bourdieu's "cultural reproduction" - the socialization processes taking place therein, which prepare students for their expected outcomes. Introductory chapters frame the study, both in terms of the theoretical concepts just mentioned and in the context of Japan's linguistic and demographic diversity. Following this, she takes us through each of the five field sites, discussing students' socioeconomic contexts and the schools' varied educational goals and strategies.
The five schools she examines reflect very different student populations in terms of nationality, social class, and status in Japan. In one case, wealthy English-speaking temporary expatriates and the well-to-do Japanese parents who send their college-bound children to a private Japanese-English bilingual school with high academic standards hold the cultural capital to affect administrative decisions. These parents' expectations for the school are matched by the school's demands on them. Such behaviors...