The neurotypical assumption: how Japanese kokugo education structurally excludes neurodivergent readers

Japanese language education (kokugo) is built on a pedagogical assumption so deeply embed‑ded that it functions as a self‑evident truth: to read literature is to infer what characters feel.This paper argues that this assumption embeds a neurotypical cognitive norm at the structurallevel of curriculum design. The dominant kokugo paradigm — in which students must infercharacters’ emotional states from fragmentary textual cues — constitutes an implicit Theory ofMind (ToM) task that privileges one cognitive pathway to literary engagement while renderingalternatives invisible. Drawing on Milton’s (2012) theory of the double empathy problem, thispaper extends the framework from interpersonal interaction to institutional curriculum de‑sign, arguing that a national educational system organised around a single neurotype‑specificcognitive operation instantiates the double empathy problem at the structural level. The paperintroduces the concept of “implicit boundary ignorance” to explain how evaluative frameworkscan embed exclusionary assumptions without recognising the limits of their own applicability.Against this critique, the paper identifies alternative cognitive pathways — including pattern ac‑cumulation through extensive reading and logic‑first engagement through mystery and detec‑tive fiction — and proposes concrete reforms grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL)principles. The analysis demonstrates that kokugo assessment may be measuring neurotypeconformity rather than literary competence, and that educational systems must interrogatethe cognitive boundary conditions of their own design.