Japan and the United States have agreed to help increase the number of licensed Japanese language teachers and roll out various measures to step up education cooperation, officials with knowledge of the matter said Thursday.
In addition to working together to stem the decline in Japanese language courses in the U.S., the measures include those aimed at promoting exchange programs and developing people in Japan to work in the technology industry, according to the officials.
Senior officials of the two countries discussed priority issues in Washington in October and they are now finalizing the details of the agreement before a formal announcement.
According to the Japan Foundation, there were 1,241 institutions teaching Japanese in the U.S. in fiscal 2021, marking a 14% 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 U.S. are aging.
As part of efforts to provide more opportunities to learn the language in the U.S., they will publicize information on areas in the country where Japanese teaching licenses are preferentially treated.
To make it easier for Japanese teachers to move to the U.S., Japan is also seeking visa relaxations, according to the officials.
They said the next meeting of their high-level dialogue on education will be held in Japan.
The launch of the dialogue 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.