More and more of Japan’s universities are moving toward teaching their classes in English, not just for those on exchange programs, but for domestic students.

    The University of Tokyo’s graduate school of engineering triggered a wave of online debate earlier this year when it announced that it would be teaching all classes in English “as a general rule” from 2026.

    Many netizens argued that the move was unfair, most Japanese students have studied mostly, if not exclusively, in Japanese their entire lives, leaving them ill-equipped to learn university-level English fast enough, and a lot of faculty members may not be set up to suddenly teach advanced material in English.

    The University of Tokyo’s announcement came just as private universities such as Sophia and Waseda were rolling out quieter, more incremental versions of similar initiatives. “The push has been there for decades,” said Laurie Wesselhoff, a cultural anthropologist and lecturer at Keio University.

    When Wesselhoff started at Keio about 30 years ago, universities were talking about offering more classes in English, but “there wasn’t much standardization or ministry guidance,” she said.

    Instead, schools built English programs for returnee Japanese students and for international students, rather than the bulk of domestic undergraduates. The result, she said, was English tracks that looked international on paper but were socially and academically segregated between international and domestic students.

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11/03/japan/more-japanese-universitiespushing-english-classes/