Tokyo School Adds U.S. Campus : Move Is Aimed at Meeting Needs of Japanese Executives’ Children
Sweetwater, Tenn., will soon be atwitter with the children of Japanese executives learning in their native tongue at the site of a former military school.
one of Japan’s oldest Christian schools, said Tuesday that it is buying TMI Academy, formerly the Tennessee Military Institute, for $2.5 million and converting the 145-acre campus into a secondary school offering an academic curriculum in Japanese. As the number of Japanese-owned companies in the United States has grown, so has the need for special schools for the children of the Japanese executives at those companies.
The Tennessee facility will be the first high school in the United States to be fully accredited by the Japanese government. Until now, special educational programs for children of Japanese nationals working in the United States were limited to elementary and junior high school levels and available only in large cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
The school’s opening--scheduled for April 1, 1989--signals a major move to address the educational concerns of Japanese parents who often find that their U.S.-educated offspring cannot effectively compete in the school system upon return to Japan. Many executives opt to leave their families behind in Japan so that their children’s education can continue there.
“There is no Japanese high school in Southern California,” said Takatsugu Watanabe, business manager at International Bilingual School, known as the Kokusai Gakuen, in Hermosa Beach. “So it might help the parents and kids.” His private school offers a Japanese curriculum daily from grades kindergarten to 9th.
Parents also send their children to Saturday schools run by the Japanese government and local Japanese businesses.
Tennessee claims to have the second largest number of Japanese companies--61--after California, with at least 155. The southern state’s best known Japanese firms are Nissan, Sharp, Matsushita and Komatsu. Hiroshi Jo, managing director of Meiji Gakuin University in Japan, estimated that there are about 400 Japanese school-age children in Tennessee and Kentucky.
The opening of the school “is a reflection of the dilemma that Japan faces because of the large number of business types that have their families abroad, and then their children face an impossible situation when they get to Japan,” explained Hans Baerwald, professor of political science and director of UCLA-Japan Research and Exchange Program. “At a traditional Japanese university, good knowledge of English won’t get you a cup of coffee or tea. They are interested in how much nihongo (Japanese) you know.”
The new school, located 40 miles southwest of Knoxville, will be renamed Tennessee Meiji Gakuin (TMG Academy). It originally opened in 1874 as a boys’ military school but changed its name a few years ago when it went co-educational in order to drum up enrollment when interest in military schools declined.
However, financial troubles finally forced the school, which historically has had a small enrollment of 150 to 200 students, to close last May. Sanford Gray, TMI Academy owner and president, wanted the facility to be sold to another educational institution.
Meiji Gakuin, the parent of TMG, was founded by American missionaries James Hepburn and Samuel Brown in 1859 as a Presbyterian Bible school in the Tokyo area. By 1886, the school offered a four-year general arts course, a three-year theology course and a two-year preparatory course. Middle school and high school studies were added by 1920.
Hepburn authored the first Japanese-English dictionary, developing the romanji method of phonetically spelling out Japanese words in English.
Jo of Meiji said the school will accept 70 first-year high school students next April who will be able to live at the school if necessary. Tuition will cost more than $12,000 a year. Asked if students will have to compete for those slots, Jo said in a telephone interview: “If there are too many (applicants), there will be some selection and I’m afraid there will be some tests.”
After the first year, Meiji plans to add an international learning center.
