Belonging and Othering in Japanese Schools: A Classic Grounded Theory Study

Abstract

For the researcher with an eye for social belonging, Japanese schools are something of a paradox. On one hand they foster an environment of formidable collective solidarity; on the other, they give rise to some of the most extensively documented patterns of youth exclusion among high-income countries (MEXT, 2023; Yoneyama, 1999). This paper puts forward the findings of a classic grounded theory (CGT) study into the way belonging and othering mechanisms function within such places. The study examined how inclusion and exclusion are actively negotiated in the Japanese educational system. Data were gathered over an eighteen-month period at the elementary, middle, and high school level through interviews with teachers and school leaders, extensive non-participant observation of school life, and memo-writing, and were put through the constant comparative method. Students were not formally interviewed; their experience is approached through observation, informal conversations recorded in field notes, and educators’ accounts. Adhering to the tenets of CGT, the researcher did not impose a theoretical framework on the field at the outset. Instead, substantive engagement with the literature was put off until a theory had been formed, after which that body of work was used as a point of comparison. What the data reveals is a core social process termed Calibrated Belonging. It is the ongoing and deliberate effort to modulate one’s visibility and social presentation in the face of othering, all in the service of making a real connection. This process is broken down into four categories: Boundary Sensing, Narrative Negotiation, Structural Compliance, and Relational Anchoring. Having arrived at this theory, the study then set it against current scholarship—from the Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) to studies on ijime and tōkōkyohi and the wider culture of Japanese schools, to consider what it might mean for counseling practice and the kind of targeted universalist policy needed in Japan.