About the Project

This web map provides contact information of Japanese heritage language schools and hoshuukoo in the U.S. 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 these schools was to educate the children who moved with their families from Japan and would return to Japan after a few years of temporary residence in the U.S. At present, however, hoshuukoo also enroll many children who will stay in the U.S. permanently.

We felt the need to take both heritage language schools and hoshuukoo into consideration. No comprehensive list of heritage language schools in the U.S. has been available to the public. In addition, information about these two types of the schools has not been put together in one place. This project aims at merging the data on these schools and making the information available to the public.

The information on the webmap that we have created was as accurate as we were able to make it at the time the map was created, in 2004-2005; however, some of the information is outdated as well as incomplete. Some schools could not be reached at the given telephone numbers, which made clarification of the information difficult. A few schools for which we had information could not be identified as profit-making or non-profit organizations,so they were not included. (Profit-making business organizations are excluded from this map in principle.)

We will update the list and add more information as we are able to collect it. If you notice that information about the schools you know is missing, please contact Masako Douglas at: mdouglas@csulb.edu.

This project is a collaborative effort. We 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 on hoshuukoo, except that on programs for children who permanently reside in the U.S., was obtained from Japan Overseas Educational Service:
http://www.joes.or.jp/

We are grateful to the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) for a start-up grant, and to the Alliance of Asociations of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ), which hosts the project and hired Keiko Schneider to design the map.

Masako O. Douglas California State University, Long Beach

Go to the WebMap