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Japan is undergoing an acute demographic crisis, which in coming years will bring an increasingly large number of ‘‘newcomers’’ to this country. The presence in Japan of this new kind of economic immigrants will raise the issue of their integration to greater prominence and will, therefore, lead to a redefinition of citizenship and Japaneseness. This article examines these various topics through various questions relating to the Japanese school system and the Japanese written language. Are Japanese schools ready to welcome a large number of students with limited or no Japanese language ability? What is the main difficulty of written Japanese? How was the current method of teaching reading and writing set up in Japan? Is this method suitable for non-Japanese children? Could learning to read and write in Japanese be a barrier to multilingualism?
