Japan and the United States join hands to increase the number of licensed Japanese language instructors and launch various measures to strengthen education cooperation, officials stated. In addition to working together to prevent the downfall of Japanese language courses in the United States, the measures include those aimed at facilitating exchange programs and developing people in Japan to work in the technology enterprise, according to the officials.
Senior officials of the two countries discussed important issues in Washington in October and they are now concluding the details of the agreement before a formal statement. According to the Japan Foundation, 1241 institutions were instructing Japanese in the United States in the financial 2021, observing a 14 percent fall from fiscal 2018. Concerns are rising over the downtrend among officials who have been trying to make the language more popular as many Japanese language teachers in the United States are old.
To provide more options to learn the language in the United States, officials will publish information on areas in the country where Japanese teaching licenses are preferentially treated. To make it more comfortable for Japanese teachers to move to the United States, Japan is also pursuing visa relaxations, according to the officials. The next meeting of their high-level discussion on education will be held in Japan. The launch of the conference was agreed between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Japanese education minister Keiko Nagaoka in May in Hiroshima on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit.
