Opinion and Perspective
Neurodiversity in a Quasi-Bilingual
University in Japan
Yasushi Miyazaki
Kwansei Gakuin University
This paper is a self-reflection analysis of a neurodivergent scholar who studied in a quasibilingual master’s program at a Japanese graduate school. An autoethnographic approach
can mine the scholar’s life experiences for insights about pursuing social change. After
finishing a bachelor’s degree in English at a Japanese college, the author entered anotheruniversity in Japan to pursue a master’s degree in policy studies under an English-speaking
professor of linguistics and language policy. The author had a lot of anxiety upon his
entrance to the master’s program; however, positive feedback and encouragement byclassmates helped his immersion in the new academic environment. Despite a lack oforganized institutional accommodation, the author’s classmates’ informal moral support
helped the author’s professional growth. Recalling an analysis of blackness, giftedness, anddyslexia, for analyzing social/cultural norms and neurodiversity, this paper suggests that
accommodations sometimes do not work well for neurodivergent students. Moreover,language teachers should not limit their attention to foreign language proficiency, because
the author’s experience suggests that a language teacher who has a holistic understanding of
neurodivergent students can better support their general communicative growth.

Self-disclosure and Scope

I was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) in 1997, when I
was a high school student suffering from a wide range of developmental issues.
For instance, I had sensory issues, such as being too sensitive to sound, andtime management difficulties, including a tendency to do important tasks last.
Additionally, I had been struggling with emotional issues. In fact, I used to be
anxious and quick-tempered; I could not imagine what emotional management
was like and thought it was a myth. Fortunately, quality education and moral
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support have resulted in my status as a postdoctoral researcher with part-timeacademic jobs and a quasi-bilingual ability.
Despite eventual success, I suffered from my graduate program’s lackof systematic support and structured knowledge about my developmental
issues. Even though a lot of time has passed since my master’s study, it remains
difficult for me to think about my emotional distress at that time. However, I
wish to tell my story, with the hope of informing teachers who may encounter
neurodivergent students and encouraging other neurodivergent scholars who
may be experiencing similar emotional trauma. Now may also be a good time tospeak out on this issue, because a growing number of educators and researchers
are thinking about inclusion in higher education campuses. Boeltzig-Brown(2017), discussing policy development and legislation for supporting persons
with disabilities in Japan, and Kondo et al. (2015), discussing the institutional
support systems, both note that the development of support for students withdisabilities in higher education in Japan is very recent.

Neurodiversity in Japanese Colleges andUniversities

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Version
5 (DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), neurodiversity includes
atypical conditions that can arise in neurological development. A neurodivergent
student/scholar is a learner with these developmental disorders: autism spectrum
disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders, specific learning disorders,and neurodevelopmental disorders not otherwise specified, as a Japanese law
Hattatsu Shogaisha Shienho [Persons with Developmental Disorders Support Act]
( Japan, 2004) defines for hattatsu shogai (developmental disorders).
Students with developmental disorders will become more visible in English
language classrooms in Japanese postsecondary education, such as Aruga (2017),
Lowe (2016), and Young (2019) have suggested. These teacher-scholars arealso concerned about the lack of professional development and intersectional
collaboration about developmental disorders for language teachers. For
instance, Aruga (2017) gathered concrete tips for accommodating students with102

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developmental disorders by gathering experiences from 16 language teachers.
Aside from that, as Lowe (2016) suggests, there is the need for professional
development education of language teachers for accommodating students
with disabilities. Furthermore, Young (2019) argues that language educationteachers need to learn from special education professionals about providing bothlanguage education and special education accommodations to students withdisabilities. Those practitioners suggest that English education as a professional
field has room for improvement in regard to faculty development.
The Japan Student Services Organization ( JASSO), the governmental
entity that is responsible for statistics and professional training of postsecondary
students with disabilities, notes that the number of students with developmental
disorders is increasing. In the 2020 fiscal year, the number of students with
developmental disorders was 7,654 out of the 35,341 total number of students
with disabilities. This number is a marked increase from 589 in the 2019academic year ( JASSO, 2021: 10). Thus, both in the field of language teaching
and with regard to disabilities in general, the accommodation of students with
developmental disorders has become a critical issue.
While the above practitioners provided language teachers with theirobservations about accommodation and practical tips for teaching students
with developmental disorders, there is some room to investigate regarding thestudents’ actual needs and their academic/professional development. With thisobservation, this paper provides a learner’s perspective of language learningand professional development in postsecondary education in Japan with theintent to encourage readers to pay closer attention to learners’ voices. My hopeis that language teachers may better understand the neurodivergent learner’s
perceptions in higher education, including English, and that their better
understanding may help them craft better organizational accommodations.

Methodology

Though not a full multifaceted autoethnography, this essay has been inspired byautoethnography, the ethnography for self, especially as introduced by Carolyn
Ellis and her colleagues (e.g., Ellis & Bochner, 2006; Ellis et al., 2011; Adams et103Miyazakial., 2014) for revealing knowledge of the researchers themselves for social change.
According to Poulos (2021),
Autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of academic writing thatdraws on and analyzes or interprets the lived experience of the author andconnects researcher insights to self-identity, cultural rules and resources,
communication practices, traditions, premises, symbols, rules, shared
meanings, emotions, values, and larger social, cultural, and political issues.
(p. 4)
Because neurodivergency is a social characteristic similar to class or race
in its categorization of persons, an ethnographic perspective can be especiallyenlightening. Upon my analysis, the triple identity theory by Robinson (2015,2017), who is a scholar with dyslexia, inspired me to use a theory to analyze myexperience. As a tool for reflexivity, his basic suggestion and caveat for writers
was that they write their pieces and revise them repeatedly. I employed intensive
memory mining and writing, as well as repetition/revision. Third-person
interview(s), textual analysis, and other data collection methods can be used, but
this paper focuses on the self-reflection of my memories.

Neurodiversity and Autoethnography

Even before recent interest in autoethnography, several memoirs of academics
with developmental disorders gained public attention worldwide (Grandin& Scariano, 1986; Willey, 1999; Shore, 2003). Since the emergence ofautoethnography, many academics with disabilities like myself have publishedon how to survive in higher education, including Hughes (2012) on Asperger’s
syndrome and Skinner (2011) on identity as a “dyslexic” mother and university
lecturer. Their insights bring our attention to the social barriers for neurodivergent
scholars, as well as troubles caused by the interaction of their impairment and theenvironment. With regard to Japan, although this is not an autoethnography perse, Manabe (2014) published her experience about a formerly bullied child who
became a professor at the University of Tokyo, one of the top-ranked universities
in Japan. Having said that, as developmental disorders have not been the subjectof autoethnography in the context of education in Japan, I hope this paper
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will raise important viewpoints for teachers, and especially regarding language
teaching and second language learning that my personal experience informs.

Autoethnography in JapanTo date, autoethnographic works in Japan strongly focus on cultural negotiations
between the society and the individual, but they do suggest applications to English
language teaching. In Japan, emerging autoethnography has revealed power in
identity politics. Kawaguchi (2019) critically analyzed people’s stereotypes
against local Japanese people and offered self-reflection. Kawaguchi realizedthat a person’s difference is not a collective cultural difference, but an individual
difference. Immigrant teachers in Japanese higher education, Gaitanidis and ShaoKobayashi (2020) discussed framing a Japanese Studies curriculum in the context
of “internationalization” of a Japanese university and revealed the dynamics ofnegotiation of different cultures for constructing a new way of conceptualizing
Japanese Studies. According to Davis (2011), disability and neurodiversity
has been rarely considered a part of cultural diversity, especially in university
communities, although this is starting to change in the U.S. For example, Jaeger(2018) urged library designers to consider disabilities when designing in thecontext of diversity and inclusion. Multiculturalism discourse could include a
new idea in social work research that considers impairment in the body of persons
with a disability and its interaction with the surrounding environment to be an“impairment culture” (Matsuoka, 2018). If this concept is feasible for thinking
about cultural diversity, multicultural research on autoethnography would be
fruitful for bridging materialistic points of view and discourse for the societies
where neurodivergent persons live.

Starting My New School Life

I should have been excited to leave behind my undergraduate years, when I had
experienced people’s ignorance and misunderstanding about my disability, beingharassed because of my diagnosis and atypical behavior, and suffering throughmany uncomfortable events. However, as I began life as a master’s student (2005–2007), I was worried about how graduate school would be. My undergraduate
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supervisor had talked a lot about how tough graduate school life was for him, andI worried that I would not be able to get along with my new classmates.
One hopeful note was that, because I had decided to go to a graduate schoolin a different university, I had already agreed via email to work together with mygraduate supervisor. In email, he gave me many constructive comments on myresearch idea, so I was partly confident about writing up my own research.
Still, I had some anxiety about the coursework and relationship withclassmates. I majored in English as an undergraduate, and the study was practicalrather than theoretical. I took practical English courses 10 hours per week, so I
was fairly confident in my English language skills; however, I was less confident
about learning more theoretical social sciences in the Policy Studies program.
My college did not fulfill my desire to study because I merely studied English andgained no additional expertise. It was a kind of a moratorium period, but I am
sure I learned a lot about using languages, although it was not a language school
per se.
My worry about interpersonal issues with classmates remained during theinitial weeks of graduate school. I was too anxious to enter the graduate students’common study room. To work on my assignments and documents, I used theundergraduate students’ computer room instead. It was a part of my coping
strategy to do my assignments. However, I gradually got used to communicatingwith my new peers. Because graduate classes were smaller than undergraduate
ones, I had to introduce myself in the first class meetings of all the courses that I
took. I came to understand my classmates as well as they understood me. Abouthalf of my classmates came from the undergraduate program of my graduate
school, but another half either were from other schools or were mature students
with full-time jobs. Thus, my self-stigma as an outsider gradually disappeared.
The main reason for choosing my supervisor was that he was an Englishspeaking linguist from the U.S. I intended to improve my English language
proficiency to the level that would enable me to actually use English
professionally. I had hoped to study abroad, but I could not because of my healthand finances during my undergraduate years. So, getting the opportunity to use
English as a lingua academica in my social science study in Japan was the next106Neurodiversity in a Quasi-Bilingual University in Japan, OnCUE 14(1), pages 101-117

best thing. Although most classes were offered in Japanese, communicating withmy supervisor and some other professors was in English, so I felt my dream to
study social science subjects in English was coming true.

Struggle with Research

Still, I was wondering about my research topic. I had already submitted a researchplan during my entrance exam, but I soon began to think of a more interesting
topic. My original research interest was on the political and media discourse
regarding people with developmental disorders. However, when I was writing theapplication to the graduate program, I began to feel that I was going beyond myability, because I was suddenly confronted with online criticism about researchon the autism spectrum. An internet post I saw argued that researchers should
not carelessly touch on autism because they would damage autistic people. I felt
like I was being attacked by that writer, because the post connoted that academic
research on autism should be done by only a very limited number of extraordinary
scholars. So, I decided not to study it. Instead, I wrote a research plan about
foreigners in Japan and was admitted to the graduate school I was applying for.
Once enrolled, I encountered two graduate classmates with physicaldisabilities. As a teaching assistant, I also helped an undergraduate student withvisual impairment. Meeting these students with disabilities challenged me toface my own identity. I began to ask myself, “Yasushi, why do you deny yourown identity?” Then, I decided to disclose my identity as a person with PDD to
my supervisor, and I sought his view on my intention to shift my research topic
to something related to autism. My supervisor said, “That is wonderful. Pleasestudy what you are passionate about.” But suddenly, after this conversation, I
began feeling extremely bad: “Can I really do this study?” I changed my mind
again and started exploring a newer research topic for my master’s thesis. Years
later, discussions with this professor revealed that, despite his encouragement
regarding a topic related to autism, he was also willing to accept my change of
topic, because he assumed that the new topic must be something that I waseven more passionate about. My professor seemed to not realize that I needed
extra encouragement to pursue the autism topic, so he did not offer that107Miyazaki

accommodation, i.e., to deny my request for a topic change and to offer extra
encouragement. In retrospect, I could have discussed my feelings more fully withmy professor. Similarly, had he been more knowledgeable about my disability
and personality quirks, he could have provided better guidance.
Also in the first year, I took an intercultural communication class taught inEnglish. I was faced with two traumatic events. When I read a handout in English
out loud for a presentation, one student complained, “I don't understand” inJapanese. In addition, I felt that the professor criticized my pronunciation andcontent more harshly than the other students. As a result, I lost confidence in
my English-speaking skills. A week later, another classmate told me that “theprofessor showed his original criticism because he values your potential.” I
wondered if it was true, but I felt a lack of confidence, too.
Fortunately, my part-time work outside of the university helped me
to function better in the university. Right after my first year, I found an
advertisement for a short-term internship program at a community radio stationin Kobe that was serving many international residents there. I applied and was
accepted, and I helped them with various activities, including assisting the
program director with archiving. The radio station extended the term of my job
until 2007; my supervisor at this radio station encouraged me to work with him
and to apply the experience to my research.
I was also able to strengthen my English proficiency because I was inspired
to use English online. I got accustomed to searching for literature in electronic
databases and reading research papers written in English. Many classmates were
surprised because some of them, especially outside of the school, said they were
not confident using English.

Trying to Hide My Disability

I tried to hide my disability identity from the people around me on campus, andthis worked somewhat organically. However, I made some missteps, which had
bad consequences because I had not disclosed my disability to others.
1. I interrupted a professor in class meetings because he had said “students
can comment anytime.” A few weeks later, other students scolded me to108

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not speak too much. Looking back on that episode, I assume I interpreted
the professor’s suggestion too literally. I did not read the person enoughto be polite to the professor.
2. I made a mistake in scheduling two appointments too closely, and aperson extended the prior one. So, I was late for the second appointment
with a professor (not supervisor) of one of the courses I took in the second
year. He got angry, saying, “You were bad about time management. You
were not a true graduate student.” I knew he assisted his students’ study
about developmental disorders, so I had assumed that he understood mycharacteristics, but he did not. Because I had not disclosed my identity tohim, he might not have understood how to deal with me. I had failed tolearn that I should explicitly explain my need. I had a kind of expectationthat others would understand my need implicitly.
The university policy was to not disclose a student’s medical conditions,
including disabilities, unless the student requested otherwise. This can beviewed as an institutional failure because it makes it difficult, if not impossible,
for the university to provide accommodations for students who do not request
disclosure. Nevertheless, the teacher-student dyad is more important than theinstitutional context, so I feel the student and teacher must try to work thingsout even when there is inadequate institutional support. In my case, it could
be said that limitation of my non-disclosure was explicit, and my hope forunderstanding of my disability brought failure.

Struggling with Job Hunting

Another challenge was job hunting. Many classmates received job offers, but
I could not until the very end of the second academic year. One student upset
me by saying that I should work much harder than other students. He said he
could criticize my ability because he studied psychology, and that enabled him
to evaluate the workability of people. I thought it made no sense, because an
academic discipline should not be used for judging a person’s life so easily. The
director of the office of career services said I did not have to search for a job,
and that instead I should be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital because I am
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autistic. I assume that some professionals at the career services had a sort ofstereotype that those persons with autism could not have regular jobs.
Another classmate said that I would become a person who was “not in
employment, education, or training” (NEET), a term that was used in the media
at the time to describe unemployable people in Japan. I was really embarrassed bythese criticisms, and I cursed my identity and character as a student with PDD.

Achieving Some Success

My motivation to live was boosted when I finally received my first full-time job
offer as a staff member of a nonprofit group serving people with developmental
disorders. As a result, I was happy because I would not be treated as NEET. I was
certainly influenced by the public discourse, which connoted that NEET persons
were lazy or spoiled young persons without any passion or vision to their future.
According to the analysis of Inui (2005) and Genda (2007), this status was notdue to the young people’s mental problems but instead was due to a structuralproblem of education and industry in Japan.
In addition to getting a job, completing my master’s thesis was successful, as
my supervisor was patient and flexible. By finishing writing a thesis in English,
I had achieved my academic goal to successfully study social science in English
in Japan. To make a long story short, the two years in my master’s program wasa pivotal moment to boost my growth as a professional for a number of reasons,but let me list three of them here.
First, I got courage to disclose my neurodivergent identity. Even now, I
hide my identity from certain people, but I have noticed that some people canunderstand me better when I tell them about my neurodivergence. Moreover, in
the academic communities I am involved in, I disclose my identity more often.
Unfortunately, sometimes it does not help, such as with the director of the officeof career services.
Second, I encountered a good mentor, a graduate supervisor. He not
only helped me improve my English, but he also taught me a lot about mycommunication in a general sense. He taught me to not be too humble, e.g.,when asking for help orally, and he offered other advice which I follow. For
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instance, the supervisor gave me advice to give concrete examples when I express
some concerns to others. As he is originally from an English-speaking country(the United States), the supervisor’s opinions focused on clarity and accuracy. I
have maintained a mentor-mentee relationship with him for over fifteen years.
Third, I gradually got accustomed to using English, not as a subject oflearning, but as a medium of communication. In graduate school, professors
assigned students to read content materials, including policy analysis andintercultural communication, which are beyond English as a Foreign Language(EFL) materials. In such an environment, the supervisor encouraged me to use
only English when I communicated with him, so I became immersed in a halfand-half Japanese-English study environment. About a half of my coursework
was taught in English, and even Japanese professors assigned English reading,
although it is historically typical in graduate programs in Japan in general.

Working as a Scholar

After a winding-road journey of employment and scholarship, I landed an
academic job in April 2022. Through July 2022, I worked on evaluating mylanguage teaching at a university in western Japan. Since then, I have taught
English as a part-time teacher at multiple colleges. Also, in one of my projects, I
worked with colleagues in Europe and South America via remote meetings andE-mail correspondences. English is the lingua franca in such meetings, so I am
immersed in it while engaging in work. My boss has often praised my work, andhe has even relied on me to explain our research to the public via TV interviews.
Such feedback has increased my confidence.

Discussion

My experience can be interpreted within a framework of intersectionality interms of intragroup differences. (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Originally developed
from Crenshaw’s discussion of how “black women” can suffer differently fromeither blacks or women, this idea has been applied to disability studies (e.g.,Erevelles & Minear, 2010; Ben-Moshe & Magana, 2014).
Reflecting upon my situation, I feel the intersectionality involved my111

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identity as a neurodivergent and as an English language learner. Based on myhigh scores for written exams, some professors classified me as a capable student,
and they formed high expectations of me for other academic tasks. However,seeing my performance in a face-to-face seminar context, other professors judged
me as incapable, and they formed low expectations of me for other tasks, such as
library research. Overall, my professors failed to look for the differences between
high scorers who were neurodivergent and those who were not, or between lowscorers who were or were not neurodivergent.
Because I was learning academic English in Japan, it is also helpful tocompare my neurodivergency with my Japanese identity. My teachers in Japanknew that certain successes or failures of students could be attributed to their
Japaneseness, i.e., to having been educated in Japan with Japanese as a first
language. However, these teachers were much less aware of how a student’s
neurodivergency might affect that student’s performance. Whenever I showedsome atypical behaviors, such as stuttering, showing nervousness, or making
mistakes in time management, a professor unaware of my neurodivergency
could easily attribute such behavior to poor English, unpreparedness or laziness.
For some teachers, my savant performance on certain tasks led them to havemistakenly high expectations of me for other tasks. For other teachers, my poor
performance on certain tasks led them to have mistakenly low expectations ofme in other contexts. With rare exception, my teachers did not try to understandmy successes and failures in terms of my neurodivergency.
In sum, my PDD behavioral quirks and language savant abilities mademe different in almost all the situations in the master’s program from myneurotypical peers, but my professors did not usually appreciate this difference;
thus, they provided no accommodations. By not disclosing my neurodivergency,
I made matters worse by denying my professors a good reason to accommodate
my atypicality. Still, despite the fact that there was no appropriate official
accommodation, I was greatly helped thanks to organic, informal, and natural
moral support by professors and classmates. This is reminiscent of how Crenshaw(1989) was helped by her black male friend who walked her to the back door of
his exclusive Harvard club. Help and support from our friends is welcome, but a112

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good policy would be better.
Many teachers work in programs without accommodation policies or withinadequate policies; however, all teachers can strive to use informal naturalaccommodations for their atypical students, just as some of my professors did forme, by providing opportunities for their neurodivergent students. This is moreeasily done when teachers try to notice students’ needs, because a student may not
be able to express them. Having developed an ability to notice and accommodate
neurodivergency, those teachers, when they have the opportunity, can thenhelp craft or improve their departmental or institutional policies. Also, whether
a student is being taught first-language or academic language (e.g., English)
skills, the teachers should help students also learn general and transferable
communication skills, which can be very helpful for certain neurodivergent
learners. With or without the backing of an institutional accommodation policy,
the teacher can always strive to be a good mentor regarding communication.

Concluding Thoughts

This paper discussed the role of cultural and social factors in my own learningand use of languages (i.e., English and Japanese) in a graduate school context.
That experience made my impairment in communication obvious, yet good
mentorship and friendship helped me grow as a communicator. Because academic
and professional development is a holistic matter, these findings suggest that
universities should note the importance, not only of teaching languages per se,
but also of accommodation in human communication in general.

Acknowledgements

I thank Dr. Joseph DeChicchis for proofreading the early versions of thismanuscript and giving me a lot of valuable feedback. Additionally, I thankanonymous reviewers and editors who read my manuscript carefully and gave mevery constructive feedback.

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Author Bio

Yasushi Miyazaki is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Intelligent Blockchain +Innovation Research Center, Kwansei Gakuin University. With an academic
background in English, sociolinguistics, and policy science, Dr. Miyazaki’s researchinterests include policy issues in disability studies, discourse analysis, neurodiversity,and technology for people with disabilities. yasushi.miyazaki@gmail.com
Received: October 31, 2021
Accepted: October 8, 2022

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