9 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring 1999 Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT RYUKO KUBOTA The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Some of the recent applied linguistics literature on teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students has presented pedagogical argu- ments by drawing on cultural differences between ESL students and the target academic community. In these arguments, authors tend to create a cultural dichotomy between the East and the West, constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural representations such as groupism, harmony, and deemphasis on critical thinking and self-expression to depict Japanese culture. This article takes Japanese culture as an example and attempts to critique these taken-for-granted cultural labels. The article argues (a) that the essentialized cultural labels found in the applied linguistics literature parallel the constructed Other in colonial discourse; (b) that cultural uniqueness is also appropriated by the Other itself as seen in the discourse of nihonjinron (theories on the Japanese), which represents cultural nationalism and a struggle for power against Westernization; and (c) that emerging research is gener- ating new knowledge on educational practices in Japanese schools and a new understanding of concepts in cultural contexts, challenging the essentialized notion of Japanese culture. Finally, this article offers another way of understanding cultural differences from a perspective of critical multiculturalism and presents a perspective of critical literacy that supports both cultural pluralism and critical acquisition of the dominant language for social transformation. Language (in Japan) “is viewed less as a tool for self-expression than as a medium for expressing group solidarity and shared social purpose” (Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989, p. 189). . . . Language teaching encourages children to express what is socially shared rather than what is individual and personal. Choral recitation and memorization are pedagogical techniques for accomplishing this. (Carson, 1992, pp. 41–42) When I was in the third grade in Japan, I wrote a description for my journal entry about how I cleaned a bathroom as a daily chore. My teacher commented, “You