Japanese-Language Schools at a Crossroads: New Regulations Pose Tough Challenge for Unsubsidized Industry

In March 2023, the government of former Prime Minister Kishida Fumio announced a national target of hosting 400,000 international students within 10 years. By the end of 2024, the target had already been surpassed, according to the Immigration Services Agency. A substantial portion of this total consists of students enrolled at registered private Japanese-language schools, often in hopes of securing employment at a Japanese company or gaining admission to a Japanese college or university. At last count, there were about 870 such schools operating nationwide, more than double the number recorded a decade ago.

But controversy has swirled around the schools for years now. Critics charge that they have helped thousands of “fake students” enter Japan in search of low-skilled jobs. There is no question that some of these schools have been habitually lax in both their admissions standards and their monitoring of student attendance. Inadequate faculty and facilities have also been a recurring problem, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, or MEXT.

Tough New Accreditation Law

The Act on the Accrediting of Japanese-Language Educational Institutes is the government’s latest response to such concerns. Enacted in 2023, the law came into effect in April 2024, it gives MEXT direct jurisdiction over Japanese-language education (previously under the Agency for Cultural Affairs), as well as the certification of Japanese-language schools (previously carried out by the Ministry of Justice, which handles immigration). To secure accreditation henceforth, a school must meet detailed standards pertaining to curriculum (tailored to different needs, such as employment or college admissions), staffing, facilities, and finances. Each institution must also be able to show that it is paying reasonable sums for overseas recruiting services and that its founders are respected members of society with adequate knowledge of Japanese-language education and business management.

Under the new law, registered Japanese-language schools will have until the end of March 2029 to earn accreditation if they wish to continue sponsoring international students for student visas. As of the end of March 2025, 120 schools (including newly established institutions) had submitted applications, of which 41 had earned accreditation.

In addition, Japanese-language instructors employed at nationally accredited schools are now required to obtain a new professional certification. For new teachers, this involves passing the Japanese Language Teacher Examination and undergoing practical training in the classroom. (Previously, instructors could earn qualification either by passing the Japanese Language Teaching Competency Test, completing an approved Japanese-language teacher training course, or completing the Japanese-language education course at a university.) Thus far about 18,000 candidates have sat for the new examination, first held in November 2024, and 11,000 have passed.

Language Schools as Labor Brokers

The Japanese government launched its first concerted effort to attract international students back in 1983. Determined to enhance Japan’s international profile and influence, Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro announced an ambitious plan to expand the number of international students in Japan by a factor of 10, from roughly 10,000 to at least 100,000. The idea was to nurture understanding of and friendship toward Japan while contributing to the training of human resources in the developing world.

Pursuant to this policy, the government simplified procedures for obtaining student visas. To attract more privately-financed students, it promoted Japanese-language education while relaxing restrictions on part-time work. One result was the proliferation of profit-driven schools geared to helping young people enter Japan for the purpose of securing work. As it happened, this trend meshed perfectly with the needs of industry in the 1980s—the period of the “bubble economy”—when certain jobs were becoming difficult to fill.

In the 1990s, amid growing controversy, the government cracked down by instituting a certification system for Japanese-language schools and tightening requirements for student visas. As a result, the number of incoming students dropped substantially, forcing some schools out of business. It was not until 2003, two decades after Nakasone announced his initiative, that the target of 100,000 international students was finally reached. Of that number, about 70,000 were Chinese nationals, who continue to make up the largest group of foreign students by nationality.

Policy shifted again in 2008, when the government, alarmed about the impact of demographic aging on the labor force, adopted a new target of 300,000 international students. Once again the screening of student visa applications was loosened, and Japanese-language schools sprouted up. Before long, the influx of “fake students” reemerged as a public issue.

Role of Chinese Capital

Meanwhile, legitimate schools have found themselves under growing financial pressure.

Since the 1990s, registered Japanese-language schools have been required to own their own buildings and grounds. The purpose of this requirement was to ensure stability and continuity in the learning environment. It was a high hurdle that forced a considerable number of operators to shut down or sell their schools.

According to one former school administrator, the influx of Chinese capital began around this time. “The ownership requirement was a heavy burden for Japanese school operators, but for Chinese investors, who have typically done very well with real estate, it may have seemed like a great business opportunity.”

In my own research on Japanese-language schools, I have found that a considerable number are foreign-owned, with Chinese and South Korean operators predominating. In some cases, Chinese and South Korean nationals who came to Japan as international students in the 1980s eventually decided to go into business themselves.

According to some industry insiders, the last few years have witnessed another spurt of Chinese buyouts, as schools have struggled to adapt to a changing environment, including an increasingly multinational student population and the growing needs of Chinese students seeking advanced degrees from Japanese universities. The former school administrator cited above speculates that close to a third of Japan’s registered Japanese-language schools may be Chinese-owned, but there is no way to be sure, since the government does not keep such statistics.

Losing the Recruitment Battle

Another challenge facing Japanese-language schools is recruitment of foreign students, and here Chinese-owned schools have an inherent advantage.

Recruitment is typically carried out either through links with foreign educational institutions or through the services of overseas-based commercial brokers. Schools that rely on the latter must budget for substantial brokerage fees, which can have a major impact on their bottom line.

According to one consultant specializing in foreign human resources, brokerage costs began to soar after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and the anti-Japanese demonstrations that broke out in China (protesting Japan’s nationalization of the disputed Senkaku Islands) the following year. “It became much more difficult to recruit Chinese students, and the brokerage fees recruiters charged per student rose to more than 20 percent of tuition,” he says. Furthermore, schools that want to attract serious students often feel compelled to send their own employees overseas to monitor or supervise the process.

Professor Emeritus Tanaka Hiroshi, who devoted himself to Japanese-language education for years at Daitō Bunka University, recalls the struggles his university had recruiting international students. “A number of Japanese universities, including ours, established permanent overseas offices with full-time Japanese staff in order to recruit international students. I don’t think it was a very efficient approach,” he says. “Most schools seem to have shut down such operations because it wasn’t worth the cost.”

Foreign-operated schools, by contrast, can leverage their local connections, and with no language barrier to contend with, they can communicate more easily with recruiting services. This obviates the need to station staff overseas and leads to substantial reductions in recruitment costs.

Underpaid, Overworked Teachers

It is notoriously difficult to make a decent living teaching Japanese as a foreign language in Japan.

I recently visited a famously conscientious Japanese-owned school in Tokyo and found the instructors up to their ears in work inside and outside the classroom. In addition to teaching, they are expected to monitor and support each student individually, taking note of absences, tardiness, and attitude issues while checking to be sure they understand each day’s homework. The teachers I spoke to said they found their work fulfilling. But their low pay per classroom hour was a source of dissatisfaction and anxiety.

An instructor at a Chinese-owned school in Tokyo told me that the working conditions were better there. “The rate per classroom hour is higher,” she said, “and we’re not required to submit lesson plans, so that lightens the burden.” While she has occasional misgivings about the school’s educational policy and how clean it keeps the facilities, she finds it best not to be too fastidious.

I found that the going rate for Japanese-language teachers in Tokyo was about ¥1,800 per classroom hour at Japanese-owned language schools and between ¥2,000 and ¥3,000 at Chinese-run schools.

Backing up Standards with Support

Thus far, policies to increase the number of international students in Japan have outrun measures to monitor the language schools that sponsor many of those students. Through the new accreditation law, the government is responding to rising pressure to screen out “fake students” and improve the quality of Japanese-language education. The hope is that the law’s requirements will have the effect of weeding out shady operators. But tougher standards alone will not solve the industry’s biggest challenge—hiring and retaining qualified teachers.

As part of its bid to raise the quality of education at Japanese-language schools, MEXT has increased the required number of full-time teachers to one per 40 enrolled students from the previous 1:60 ratio. At present, more than half of the teaching staff at such schools are part-time instructors. Securing enough certified full-time teachers to meet the needs of a burgeoning number of international students will be next to impossible unless schools can offer higher pay along with steady employment.

If, as some believe, high fees paid to overseas brokers are forcing schools to skimp on teacher pay, then the government needs to address that issue. Yet the new law simply calls for “reasonable brokerage fees” without offering clear-cut guidelines.

Since their inception, private Japanese-language schools have had to make do without public grants or subsidies, despite the key role they have played in helping the government reach its targets for international students. They are supported exclusively by student tuition, leaving them highly vulnerable not only to rising brokerage costs but also to sudden business slumps, such as that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

MEXT’s plan is to create mechanisms to encourage private companies, universities, and local governments to support accredited language schools as an investment in the future. The idea is to shore up the fragile finances of those schools and improve conditions for teachers through partnerships with industry, academia, and local government. Under the government’s Specified Skilled Worker system and its new training and employment program, businesses in particular will be expected to support the education of foreign talent to address worsening labor shortages. By creating this sort of environment, Japan may also achieve its long-cherished goal of fostering deeper understanding and friendship overseas.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo © Pixta.)