The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of "ideology" on the mutual actions of both teacher and learners in the classroom. More specifically, this study examined a disproportionate relationship between teacher and learners, which is found to be inherent in the classroom and an important issue in Japanese education. For this purpose, the study adapted the framework of ideological struggle in the classroom from Fairclough (2001b) and analyzed the data obtained from the Japanese classroom discourse of Korean students employing a critical discursive approach. One of the findings of this study showed that ideology increased the differences between teacher and learners in the free talk time and affected their mutual actions in the classroom. Another finding revealed that the ideological struggle was even found among the learners themselves. Thus, it can be said that the ideological struggle prevailing in the Japanese classroom is a critical issue in Japanese education provided by a foreign language institute.
