In the last twenty years, a growing number of foreign students who were born in Japan or came to Japan during childhood have been going on to Japanese high schools, thanks to a variety of special admission measures instituted by some prefectural Boards of Education. Over the last five years, the number of high-school students in need of Japanese-language instruction has increased by 80.8%, while their nationalities have also diversified. Although Chinese students continue to account for the majority, their proportion has been reduced, while the proportion of Portuguese and Filipino students with non-kanji-related L1 has increased. Though still a minority, some of these students enter college in Japan while still in the process of learning Japanese. They share some common features among them in terms of their native and Japanese language proficiency, and their not yet fully developed academic literacy as a consequence of insufficient language education in high school, both in Japanese and in their nativelanguage, and in quantity and quality. They do not fit into the traditional category of international students who come to Japan to receive a systematic Japanese language education and to earn a Japanese college degree. Unlike international students, many of these students are bilingual, but Japanese may be the only language in which they have academic preparation (though it is often insufficient). American researchers have referred to high-school graduates who enter college in the USA while still in the process of learning English as "Generation 1.5 students", implying that they have been overlooked and need special consideration. Accordingly, the author examined the Japanese language proficiency (grammatical knowledge, kanji vocabulary, reading comprehension, and communication competency) of five foreign and one international student studying in college in Japan. One student from the Philippines showed weakness in reading kanji vocabulary and reading comprehension. One Chinese student, who entered a Japanese high school through an admission system that did not require Japanese proficiency, had difficulty in reading a long chapter of text that included extensive kanji vocabulary because of insufficient instruction in Japanese language at high school. She also failed to utilize her Chinese proficiency, which should have enabled her to infer the meaning of many of the technical terms in the reading material. While these students encounter many difficulties, their potential can be developed through mobilizing a college's potential for offering multimodal resources, such as a multiethnic and multilingual faculty and student body, diversified study programs, the provision of foreign language education both on campus and overseas, and an evaluation system encouraging self-expression by students with originality rather than passive accomplishment of assignments. In short, with the right academic environment the addition of these students to the majority-Japanese student body may provide a breakthrough for Japan's stagnated college education.