Internationally Mobile Children: The Japanese Kikoku-shijo Experience Reconsidered

Abstract

Children who leave their home country and spend a number of years abroad are deeply affected by that experience. Having learned to position themselves according to a broader worldview, they often feel and are perceived to be different from their "home-grown" counterparts. In Japan, children who lived overseas due to their parents' job requirements are given the label of "Kikoku-shijo" （literally "returnee children"） upon coming back to Japan. With their dramatic increase in number during the 1970s and the 1980s, Kikoku-shijos attracted at first the attention of educators, scholars and policy makers, and subsequently the interest of the media and Japanese society at large. This paper will discuss the process through which Kikoku-shijos emerged as a social phenomenon, and the factors that contributed to the social construction of Kikoku-shijo stereotypes. It will go on to analyze the lingering effects of those stereotypes, and how they impact the current generation of Japanese children who grow up overseas. It is the aim of this paper to suggest a reconsideration of Kikoku-shijo characteristics, in terms that will hopefully "validate" the experience of as many children as possible.

グローバル化時代には珍しくなくなった「国際移動する子どもたち」の中でも、「帰国子女」が注目されるようになって久しい。本稿では1970年代より様々な変遷を経た「帰国子女ステレオタイプ」が2008年現在、どのような影響を依然として及ぼしているのかを分析する。また、帰国子女の体験を枠組の中で捉えなおし、海外で育つ日本人子女の本質的な特徴を従来のステレオタイプから解き放つ形で再考する。