ABSTRACT
Japan in the 21st century is experiencing globalization across many terrains: economic, technological, cultural, as well as the domain of language education. Globalization is not merely the imposition of transnational capitalist structures upon local economies but is also a social relation. Thus, language-a sensitive constant of social organization and human relations has likewise found itself the axis of dramatic change in Japan. This includes the impact of new technologies on the writing system, government reform of language teaching in schools-in particular, experiments with ‘primary English’—and the crossing and hybridization of hitherto linguistically uniform local communities by ‘Other’ (ie immigrant) languages with their own concomitant ideological dimensions and social demands.
