High School Japanese Language Elective Courses to Shift from Four 4-Unit Subjects to "Two 'II' Subjects Plus Four 2-Unit Advanced Subjects": Draft Proposal from Japanese Language Working Group for Next Course of Study Released

Explanation

A draft summary from the Japanese Language Working Group, which is examining under MEXT's Central Council for Education how to revise the Japanese language curriculum for the next course of study, was released on August 4, 2026 (a version revised after the meeting). The 96-page document includes a revision of the high school subject structure.

Currently, high school Japanese language consists of required subjects "Contemporary Japanese" and "Language Culture" (2 units each), and elective subjects "Logical Japanese," "Literary Japanese," "Japanese Expression," and "Classical Inquiry" (4 units each), created under the course of study announced in 2018. The draft summary states that this structure of four 4-unit elective subjects has problems. Three issues are cited: the large number of units makes it difficult to fit into timetables; Japanese Expression is rarely chosen at college-prep schools because it is seen as "not connected to university entrance exams"; and there are many cases where public/national university science-track students take only Logical Japanese and Classical Inquiry, and private university science-track students take only Logical Japanese, creating an imbalance between logical and sensibility-based learning.

Under the draft, the required subjects would keep their framework as two subjects, tentatively named "Contemporary Japanese I" and "Language Culture I." For elective subjects, a 4-unit "Contemporary Japanese II" and "Language Culture II" (tentative names), combining standard content extracted from the current four subjects, would be established as subjects taken by the large majority of students. On top of these, four new 2-unit advanced subjects — tentatively named "Argument and Criticism," "Dialogue and Expression," "Literature and Creative Writing," and "Classics and Culture" — would be newly created. When the required subjects are split across the first and second years, students would be able to take the "II" subjects concurrently in the second year.

The document also cites, as a present-day issue, the reality that students copy and paste AI summaries that appear at the top of search results without thinking for themselves. It states that emphasis will be placed on teaching students to verify the reliability of information before forming their own thoughts.

This is still a working group draft, and all subject names are tentative. It will subsequently go through deliberation by the Curriculum Subcommittee before being officially announced, and actual use in high schools is still several years away.