inventive literature in Japanese history. Kimono design, architecture, and music flourished, and a young democratic movement began to stir.
However, only a thin stratum of society breathed the liberating air of the Taisho Renaissance. The great mass of the people were studying in militarist fashion in the schools, with children lining up in rows in the schoolyard and shouting
With the loss of the war and removal of military control and censorship, it was commonly assumed that Japanese education had entered a glorious new era. And, indeed, much of the credit for Japan's remarkable rebirth after the war can be laid to its well-organized educational system. This system is second only to the nation's elite bureaucracy in its appeal to foreign experts, who have devoted many books and articles to the skills that Japanese children master-so many more, it seems, than Americans or Europeans. There is no doubt that Japan's educational system produces a dedicated workforce, and that these «corporate warriors» are the engine behind Japan's tremendous industrial strength. Obedience to authority, instilled in people from the time they are small children, makes Japanese society work very smoothly, with far less of the social turmoil and violent crime that have plagued other countries. All this is on the plus side of the balance. But there is a minus side, which, like so many other modern Japanese problems, has to do with once-good ideas carried too far.
Luckily for us, the psychiatrist Dr. Miyamoto Masao, formerly of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, has put Japan on the couch, and here he can function as our guide into modern Japanese education. According to Dr. Miyamoto, foreign experts have gone wrong when they accept the
Driving through the English countryside, you see many sheep grazing on the hillside, which brings a feeling of peacefulness. This peacefulness is exactly what the bureaucrats want to obtain in Japanese society. But I want to emphasize that they want this peacefulness because their ideal image of the public is one where people are submissive and subservient. With such a group people are easy to control, and the system does not have to change. How do the bureaucrats manage to castrate the Japanese so effectively? The school system is the place where they conduct this process.
Lesson One is the importance of moving in unison. The British writer Peter Hadfield describes accompanying his daughter Joy on her first day to a Japanese kindergarten, which began, as many kindergartens do, with a roll call. After that came a class when all the students had to sit quietly while the teacher taught them how to fold pieces of paper. Only then did she allow the children to go outside:
They scattered outside in different directions, and Joy ran straight for the swings. But no sooner had the children started playing than a barrage of piano music came through a set of loudspeakers, and they all ran like soldiers on parade to the center of the playground. They then went through a series of aerobic exercises to the accompaniment of the music. In other words, they were getting all the exercise they had been getting on the swings and climbing frames, but together, and in response to a set of rules. Finally, the kids were allowed to run around – but not just anywhere. They ran around together, in a circle, in a counter-clockwise direction.
But not all of them. Consternation ensued when Joy started running in the clockwise direction:
The teachers gently encouraged her to run the «right» way, and silently appealed to me for help. I was proud of my daughter for taking a stand, and proud of her for not just following the crowd. But in the end she has to be part of the system or she will suffer for it. «Turn around, Joy,» I said in the end, coaxing her with my hand. «Go the same way as everyone else.»
Lesson Two is to learn that it is a crime to be different. Dr. Miyamoto reports that when one of his friends put her child in kindergarten, the teacher advised her to bring steamed rice for her child's lunch. «Why?» the mother asked. The teacher answered, «If children bring fried rice or sandwiches, some other child may want to have that, and it is not a good idea for children to feel they want something different. If everyone brings steamed rice, then nobody is going to wish for something they cannot have.»
The natural corollary of Lesson Two, unfortunately, is xenophobia. The idea that foreigners are aliens and should not be allowed to mix with the Japanese is an idea for which schools lay the groundwork very early. There are many examples of this, but I'll offer just one: In January 1996, the Iwakuni City Office banned children of U.S. military personnel from the city's nursery schools, because, it explained, the facilities were «getting full.» Yet at that time only three American infants could be found in Iwakuni's sixteen schools.
After kindergarten, students enter Japan's compulsory-education system proper, where schooling takes on the military cast it will have until the end of high school. «Attention!» was the first word that my cousin Edan, age nine, learned in primary school in 1993 in Kameoka. At the beginning of each class, all students must stand up, hands at their sides, «at attention.» Walking in unison, with announcements from loudspeakers, continues throughout the day, and as the children grow, new rules about dress and hair are added, and often uniforms are required.
Teachers assign children to a
The kumi mentality obviously builds within its members a strong feeling of «we and them.» Them, the outsiders, are just that, those outside the group. Japanese children often use a special phrase during play,
The
Their emphasis is on the individuals' own groups – the «we» of the classroom, company, or nation as opposed to the «they» of all other groups. It is somewhat frightening to realize that in the uniformity of Japanese education all the children of a given age group are learning precisely the same lesson in much the same way on the same day throughout Japan, emerging with the same distinctive and often exclusive ideas about their own little groups or the large group of Japan. Broader world interests are given lip service, but in reality very little emphasis is given to the essential «we» group of humanity.
In grade school, subtle distrust of foreign people and things becomes a part of the curriculum. It's not intentional; the schools do not consciously set out to teach xenophobia. But so innocent are Japan's educationalists of the real issues of racism or ethnic bias that they end up teaching a condescending, if not fearful, attitude toward foreigners anyway. Textbooks depict foreign products as dangerous and Japan as the victim of international pressures. A typical lesson reads, «Chemicals prohibited in our country have been used on some of the food imported from foreign countries. It would be terrible if chemicals that harm humans would remain on the food.» Many textbooks feature photos of angry American autoworkers bashing Japanese cars, to impress upon children that the Japanese suffer from irrational foreign hatreds.
Nevertheless, in view of their power in the international economy, the Japanese learn that they must get along with these difficult foreigners. «At first, because of differences in language and culture, work didn't go well,» a character in a textbook states, referring to a Japanese factory abroad. «When we tried to have morning assembly before work, or radio calisthenics [exercising in unison to recorded music], they said, 'Why do all of us have to do this?' When we tried to cut tardiness and waste, they said, 'You're too strict.' » One little girl in a textbook cartoon series concludes, «Working with foreign people is awfully difficult.» The undercurrent: foreigners are lazy and unable to understand our advanced Japanese ways – dealing with them is a painful trial. Perhaps this is not the message that was originally intended, but it is the message that comes across, not only in this example but consistently in Japanese classrooms.
There is one more important lesson to be learned: schooling in Japan involves a surprising amount of pain and suffering, which teaches students to
Life in grade school is wild, heedless abandon compared with what follows in junior high and high school. Hair codes and uniforms become nearly universal, with everything prescribed, right down to the socks. Boys wear military-style uniforms with brass buttons, and girls wear a sort of sailor suit. In 1996, Habikino City, near Osaka, introduced uniforms for teachers as well.
The uniforms and dress codes are intended to enforce harmony. «In my mind,» Dr. Miyamoto writes, «the concept of harmony means an acceptance of differences, but when the Japanese talk about harmony it means a denial of differences and an embrace of sameness. Sameness in interpersonal relationships means a reflection of the other, the basic concept of which derives from narcissism.»
Punishment for dress- and hair-code infringements can be severe. In one case, teachers stopped a student in Fukuoka Prefecture at the school gate and ordered him to go home after he refused to get the regulation buzz haircut. Later, they allowed him back, but he was separated from other students and made to study by himself in an empty room – in solitary confinement. «Psychologically speaking hair symbolizes power,» says Dr. Miyamoto, «and at the same time it is an expression of one's thoughts, emotions and conflicts... As you may recognize, through hair, the educational system demands that students share the illusion that all Japanese are the same.»
From hair and dress, the rules extend in the hundreds to issues that go beyond the schoolyard. Many schools require children to wear uniforms on weekends; others decree that students may not buy drinks from vending machines on their way home from school. And often violence enforces these rules.
Corporal punishment is illegal, but this is often a case of
