Sugino Public Elementary School

Abstract

Sugino Public Elementary School is located in a large subsidized housing project. Because of its location and the subsidized apartments, the school has an unusually high proportion of foreign-national students for a public school. Of the 226 students, 99 (or 43 percent) are language minority students (66 are of foreign nationalities and 33 naturalized Japanese). Fifty-three percent of the foreign-national students are Chinese, and the others are mostly the children of war refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The majority came to Japan at a young age or were born in Japan. The Chinese children are mostly family members and relatives of war orphans, who are given priority in settling in the housing project. The high concentration of refugees — a small portion of the foreign population in Japan — in the housing project has to do with the existence of a refugee settlement center in the vicinity. Although the center closed several years before, many of the Indochinese refugees, who spent their first days in Japan at the center, have since settled and found jobs in the area. Many of Sugino’s children, both Japanese and non-Japanese, come from single-parent homes and families on welfare, since eligibility for the housing project is limited to low-income families. The first time I walked to the school from the nearby train station, I wondered why I was passing by so many people in wheelchairs.