How a Singapore international school became an immigration flashpoint in Sapporo
A culture war is brewing amid Japan’s transition towards a multicultural society.
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
The site of the defunct Tokiwa Elementary School in Sapporo, where Global Indian Education plans to build an international school.
ST PHOTO: WALTER SIM
- A Singapore-based school operator won a bid to open an international school on the site of a closed elementary school in Sapporo, aiming to revitalise the local community by 2027.
- The plan faced strong nationalist backlash and xenophobic protests, but local lawmakers rejected petitions against it, supporting multiculturalism and the need to attract global talent.
- Sapporo is actively promoting foreign integration to address demographic decline, including recruiting foreign workers and offering language support, despite challenges from rising anti-immigrant sentiment and hate speech.
AI generated
SAPPORO – For 111 years, the carefree laughter of children was woven into the everyday fabric of the suburban Tokiwa district in the south of Sapporo city, a neighbourhood surrounded by dense forests and rolling golf courses.
But the classrooms of Tokiwa Elementary School, which opened in 1910, have sat empty since 2021 in what is a textbook casualty of Japan’s deepening demographic winter. Today, its weather-beaten facade is boarded up and its front yard has been reclaimed by overgrown weeds.
