By taking an interdisciplinary approach covering education, cultural studies, linguistics and policy-making, the chapters in this book raise certain questions of what constitutes contemporary Japanese culture, Japanese identity and multilingualism and what they mean to local people, including those who do not reside in Japan but are engaged with Japan in some way within the global community. This book explores Japan-in-transition from internationalization to globalization from the perspectives of language and identity. The chapters address how national identity as faced the shift from hard to soft power, offer critical analyses of multilingual practices, and investigate what teaching, learning and using Japanese mean in the context of increasing mobility.