This paper explores the historical development and current status of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian (BCMS) language teaching in Japanese higher education. While no university in Japan offers a major in BCMS studies, several institutions have provided facultative courses for over half a century, beginning with a Serbo-Croatian course at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in 1968. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the emergence of distinct national standards led to shifts in teaching approaches—from unified Serbo-Croatian instruction to courses reflecting individual BCMS standards, especially Serbian. The paper identifies four types of course organization: (1) instruction focused exclusively on one of the BCMS standards; (2) simultaneous instruction in both Serbian and Croatian; (3) integrated instruction covering multiple standards equally; and (4) a practical approach that emphasizes one standard with reference to others.