Third-grade students at Osaka municipal Kita-Nakajima Primary School get insights into culture on the Korean Peninsula that many others do not.

Their homeroom teacher is Lee Chi I, 31, a third-generation South Korean living in Japan. Lee’s grandfather came from South Korea’s Gyeongsangnam-do, but she was born and raised in Aichi Prefecture.

Students at the school in Yodogawa Ward include children of Koreans living in Japan, but Lee introduces musical instruments such as the chango, a Korean drum, to all the pupils in her music class.

Lee is one of an increasing number of foreign nationals teaching at public primary, middle and high schools across the country. An estimated 200 non-Japanese teachers, mainly Koreans living in Japan, teach at schools in 25 prefectures, including Osaka, Hyogo, Kanagawa and Kyoto.

The government approved the hiring of teachers with a foreign nationality at public schools in 1991.

According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, foreign national teachers can be “full-time lecturers with unlimited tenure,” but they are not eligible to hold management positions, such as being the senior classroom teacher. They have the same educational authority as Japanese teachers, and can be homeroom teachers.

The Osaka prefectural and municipal governments started hiring foreign national teachers on their own accord in the 1970s. Although they stopped this practice in 1982 in line with an instruction from the central government, they resumed hiring non-Japanese in 1993 following the abolition of the Japanese nationality requirement. This academic year, 135 non-Japanese were teachers in the prefecture.

Lee had gone by the Japanese name Chisato Miyamoto until she graduated from university.

“I felt deep down as if I was hiding my true self,” she said of those years.

Lee decided to identify herself by her real Korean name following advice from members of the Osaka Municipal Board of Education and the principal who hired her as a teacher six years ago.

“They told me children who have roots on the Korean Peninsula would be encouraged if I used my real Korean name,” Lee said.

Lee now teaches children about Korean culture and has explained her ethnic background to students and their parents.

An estimated 60 percent to 70 percent of foreign national teachers in Osaka Prefecture have revealed their ethnic roots in their schools.

Fifty-two foreign national teachers from 11 cities in the prefecture shared their experiences at the inaugural meeting of a network of teachers with roots in foreign countries, held in Osaka on Nov. 7. They plan to hold meetings to discuss their ethnic backgrounds and educational issues.

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Are kindergarteners racist? Do they discriminate between children with different skin colors?

“Children are too innocent,” one Japanese mother told me in a survey of parents’ views. Her conclusion: “They do not hold racial prejudices.”

As innocent as children may be, extensive research conducted in the United States and Europe has shown that children as young as three have the capacity to discriminate against others based on race. However, little research on this topic has been conducted in Japan, a more culturally homogeneous society than most in the West.

The issue of prejudice among children is particularly relevant for Japan, a country projected to have the world’s oldest population by 2025. With this demographic reality looming, there are concerns the Japanese economy will be unable to sustain itself without the help of millions more immigrant workers. Some economists believe it will be necessary to allow 610,000 immigrants into the workforce per year for the next 50 years to counter the effects of the declining birthrate. With unprecedented diversity in Japan looking increasingly inevitable, issues of racial prejudice are bound to bubble to the surface more often — even among young children.

All this begs the question: to what degree are Japanese children racially biased? Are there differences in the attitudes of Japanese children attending international schools and those that study in less diverse environments? If a kindergarten-age child is prejudiced, how did this come to be? Understanding the answers could suggest ways of reducing bias and preparing Japan to meet the challenges of demographic change.

I worked with over 60 children, and amidst long stretches of answers that extended no further than “yes” or “no,” there were occasional moments when students opened up and elaborated expressively on their answers.

“This boy has dark skin. I’m scared of that,” said one child.

“I want to play with everybody because everyone is my friend,” said another.

While these individual comments were enlightening in themselves, the overall results were much more intriguing. Children from different types of schools did have different attitudes.

In the U.S., people of all different races identify themselves as American and not an eyebrow is raised. But in Japan, people who look or speak differently are often labeled a “gaijin,” an outsider. No matter how “Japanese” a person might feel, this label acts to set them apart from the Japanese people at large. This is harmful and unfair.

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