About the Project

This web map provides contact information of Japanese heritage language schools and hoshuukoo in the U.S.. The Japanese heritage language schools were established by first generation Japanese-American parents for maintenance of their mother tongue and culture among their children. The original educational goal of Hoshukoo is to educate the children who are from Japan and will return to Japan after a few years of temporal stay in the U.S.. Presently, Hoshuukoo have many children who will stay in the U. S. permanently.

When we consider Japanese language education for the children who stay permanently in the U.S., we need to take both heritage language schools and hoshuukoo into our consideration. The comprehensive list of the heritage language schools in the U.S. has not been available to the public. Also the information about these two types of the schools has not been put together in one place. This project aims at merging the data of these schools and making the information available to the public.

I tried to put all the information as accurately as possible, however the data is not complete and exhaustive yet for some reasons. Some of the schools could not be reached at the given telephone numbers, which made clarification of the information difficult. Some other schools could not be identified whether they were profit or non-profit organizations. (Profit organizations are excluded from this map.) Therefore I did not include these schools here at this time. I will add the schools later when I obtain more information about them.

The project is still on-going. If you see the map and notice that the information about the schools you know is missing, I greatly appreciate if you would contact me at: mdouglas@csulb.edu.

This project is an outcome of a collaborative effort. Taking this opportunity, I would like to acknowledge the following people for their time-consuming hard work, gathering school information.

Collaborators (alphabetical order):

Web map design: Keiko Schneider
The information of hoshuukoo, except programs for permanently staying children, was obtained from Japan Overseas Educational Service:
http://www.joes.or.jp/f_gaiyou.htm

Lastly, but not least, I extend my gratitude to the National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages for their grant, and Alliance of Asociations of Teachers of Japanese which enabled the hiring of Keiko Schneider to design the map.

Masako O. Douglas California State University Long Beach

Go to the WebMap