The Enigma of Japanese Power (13 page)

The education system is one of the most criticised elements of the System. A former vice-minister of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) contends that ‘our present educational system only seems to be able to turn out inferior versions of robots’.
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One of Japan’s most versatile essayists thinks it turns out trained seals.
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The public at large habitually decries the
shiken jigoku
, literally ‘examination hell’, and the social type it has brought into being, the
kyoiku mama
, or ‘education mother’, who deprives her children of a normal childhood while pushing them up the educational ladder. The
kyoiku mama
is driven by powerful motives. To a great extent the mother is held responsible for the performance of her child, whose successes or failures in examinations have a great effect on her status in the neighbourhood.
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The family feels that it has invested a great deal in the youthful scholar, and sometimes behaves as if a life were at stake in the period leading up to the exams. Failure in an exam can be psychologically devastating, and not only to the candidate. The often superhuman effort exacted from the child and the tensions affecting the whole family in connection with
shiken jigoku
provide much of the drama of middle-class family life in Japan.

Children who want to demonstrate their earnestness are expected to give up hobbies, sports and a social life in order to devote themselves totally to the approaching exam, often for two years in advance. Preparation entails cramming till very late at night after school and
juku
hours. One
juku
holds cramming classes for twelve-year-olds from 9 p.m. on Saturday to 6 a.m. on Sunday. Some children are made to undergo physical endurance training reminiscent of the army-camp approach. Fourteen-year-olds who are still at their desks at 1 a.m. are not unusual. That they absorb next to nothing after a couple of hours of cramming is immaterial; they show the world that they are in earnest and have the required endurance.

Such a selection system can continue to function only as long as the children put up with it, and their disciplined behaviour cannot be understood without considering their relationship with their mothers. In a typical Japanese upbringing, ideas of proper conduct are instilled into the child less by reference to a universal scheme of how the world works than by manipulation of the child’s emotions. He or she learns to recognise good or bad behaviour generally by its effect on the mother’s disposition. One result of this is that the
kyoiku mama
is able to instil in her child very strong feelings of guilt, which she uses as a spur.
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Stories about suicides in connection with examination worry or failure receive much publicity and create the impression that
shiken jigoku
is a major cause of death among school-age children. It is not, but aberrations in personality development and difficulties in parent-child relations are undoubtedly aggravated by chronic exam anxiety.

Even though practically every Japanese will agree that the exam system is cruel and ought to be abolished, most people realise that nothing will ever be done to change this method of selection. On the whole, it suits the System admirably. Even if the masses of facts pumped into their heads are largely useless, even if (as with English) the students have picked up bad habits difficult to unlearn, the people selected to reach the top will be very tenacious and have extremely good memories. Officialdom and the business world value persistence, dedication and memory much more highly than inventiveness.

These observations are not new. One of the first foreign teachers in Japan, the American missionary William Griffis, wrote of Japanese teachers in 1874 that their ‘chief duty was to stuff and cram the minds of . . . pupils. To expand or develop the mental powers of a boy, to enlarge his mental visions, to teach him to think for himself, would have been doing precisely what it was the teacher’s business to prevent.’
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The school system fosters a high degree of consistency in family background among members of the administrator class. Although the ladder of success is in theory accessible to all, poor families cannot afford the expensive private schools and can rarely provide the environment needed to prepare for the famous government establishments. The meticulously pre-sorted ‘members’ of Japanese corporations will maintain contact with former classmates who may be of value to the company through their positions in other parts of the System. The importance of non-contractual and extra-legal ties in Japanese corporate and bureaucratic life has given this finely woven network the function of a nervous system. It enables important information to reach relevant segments dispersed over the entire System literally within minutes. It helps to soften friction among system components. Within the business conglomerates, communication is heightened by informal groupings often derived from the schools that top employees have attended.

An education system geared almost entirely to the production of experts in taking multiple-choice tests does not select original thinkers. Moreover, since intellectual curiosity can become a threat to convention it is actively discouraged, rendering the Japanese learning environment extremely inhospitable to creative thought. Some segments of the business world and the bureaucracy have in recent years been voicing concern over the generally acknowledged low level of creativity in Japan. When a Japanese resident of the United States won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1987, many press comments pointed out that he would never have won it without the stimulation of decades of study and laboratory work abroad. Scientists at Japanese universities are hampered by an extremely rigid academic hierarchy that keeps talented researchers in subservient positions, and by excessive regulations decreed by education bureaucrats.

For three post-war decades the creativity problem did not worry anyone much, since many basic inventions were in the public domain and technology could be bought cheaply. But as Japanese industry begins to reach into areas in which no one else is ahead, and as foreign patents threaten to become less simple to obtain than in the past, the need for Japanese inventors increases. This concern is reflected in the regular reports that MITI devotes to the creativity problem, as well as in the so-called fifth-generation computer project, whose unusually young researchers are being encouraged to behave more like relaxed Westerners, in the hope that creativity will follow.

In the summer of 1985 an
ad hoc
council for educational reform, established by then prime minister Nakasone and consisting of academics, intellectuals and businessmen, issued a preliminary report which could only be read as a rebuke to the entire educational system. The council characterised the products of Japanese education as stereotypes without clear individuality, unable to think properly and form their own judgements. It also spoke of barriers to creativity. In short, it summed up much of the discontent that has been voiced by the liberal segment of the intelligentsia for years. Yet in its suggestions as to remedies the report showed the imprint of the council’s less liberal-minded members – the representatives of the Ministry of Education and the educational reform lobby in the LDP. (This led the private Women’s Council for Education to release its own report, accusing Nakasone’s club of ignoring the real wishes of parents.) In further reports issued in 1986 and 1987 the council back-pedalled still further, showing signs of hedging on the need to produce individual thinkers.

The economic overlords may complain about the creativity problem, but they must take considerable responsibility for the style of present-day schooling. In the early 1960s representatives of the business federations suggested measures for a partial reshaping of national education to turn schools into ‘places for training a disciplined, high quality labour force’ in the interest of optimal economic development.
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Two years later the education committee of Nikkeiren (the Federation of Employers’ Organisations) came up with more specific advice concerning the role of middle schools.
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Following this, other large business institutions also presented their advice, and proposals were incorporated in an outline prepared by the government’s central education committee.
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Translated into concrete plans by subsequent committees, these proposals were reflected in the gradual curriculum changes made by the Ministry of Education in the 1970s.

The result of these changes, according to statistics compiled from teacher estimates, has been that 30 per cent of elementary schoolchildren, 50 per cent of middle-school pupils and 70 per cent of high-school pupils cannot keep up with the learning pace. Adjustments on behalf of slow learners are not possible in the government schools – which roughly nine out of ten pupils attend – since their entire curriculum, as well as the speed at which it is to be covered, is prescribed by the Ministry of Education.

As part of the same set of plans suggested by the business world, education authorities have begun to divide all pupils into five rankings, based on performance, in order to determine which higher-level schools they could be ‘promoted’ to. The pressure on pupils further increased in the mid-1980s with the introduction of the related
hensachi
system, whereby pupils take regular mock-tests, sometimes every month, to monitor their chances of achieving the levels allowing them to sit for the exams of choice schools.

Nearly all pupils will pass to higher grades and graduate, as this is normally automatic in Japan. But most of the large body of pupils who lack the outstanding memories favoured by the education system are, by the time they are twelve years old, fully aware that they will have to spend the rest of their lives on the middle or lower rungs of the social ladder. Nikkyoso, the teachers’ union, believes that the sense of hopelessness this engenders is the direct cause of the increased unruliness and delinquency among middle- and high-school pupils. Aggravating the problem of keeping order is the huge size of the normal class – 40 to 50 pupils – which makes personal contact with the teacher nearly impossible. On the other hand, the new ranking system has given teachers much power to control pupils indirectly.
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In the first half of the 1980s the Japanese public was constantly reminded of the shortcomings of the educational system in connection with violence at schools. For several months in 1983 newspapers were full of stories of teachers being attacked by their pupils. Some teachers were ambushed by vengeful students after their graduation. Others had school lunches or scissors thrown in their faces. The stories that reached the ears of the police and the press most probably represented only the tip of the iceberg, since Japanese schools are extremely worried about their reputations, and irregularities are largely kept secret. Then, in 1985, a much more serious problem surfaced in the form of
ijime
, the bullying and organised teasing that takes place on a large scale in Japanese schools. Reports were devoted to it by the National Police Agency and Ministry of Justice, followed by the Ministry of Education, which for the first time in its existence decided to investigate violence in 40,000 elementary and secondary schools. A national Nikkyoso conference discovered that about half its membership thought that keeping order sometimes required corporal punishment. A group of lawyers found that at a majority of the 985 schools they investigated pupils were beaten or kicked by teachers nearly every day. This form of disciplining was seen as closely connected with
ijime
.

Setting the tone, the
Asahi Shimbun
carried an editorial that gave examples. A middle-school teacher visited the home of a girl who had been caught smoking and suggested she commit hara-kiri with a kitchen knife, then kicked her head when she prostrated herself on the floor to apologise. The newspaper concluded that, since studies reveal many more incidents than are reported in the press, corporal punishment in schools must be assumed to be an everyday matter.
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Investigating authorities discovered that teachers often take the lead in group punishment of those they consider misfits, and often consent to ostracism of a pupil who violates unwritten rules. Although conformism is highly appreciated in Japanese society, press commentators concluded that
ijime
as a means of promoting it could not be tolerated. Liberal-minded members of the aforementioned committee for education reforms went so far as to suggest, in conversations with press representatives, that the problem reflects a disorder of Japanese society in general – thus revealing an awareness of the seldom acknowledged fact that mild (and sometimes not so mild) forms of intimidation help maintain the hierarchy of power within that society.
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In fact, the teacher abetting the bully is almost paradigmatic of how the System works.

The bullying problem provided the press with sensational copy and opportunities for indignant editorials; but its significance went far beyond this. It is a symbolic issue, with profound moral implications, between two camps struggling for control of the methods whereby upcoming new generations of Japanese adapt to the System.

To some extent, every such problem serves the purpose of the disciplinarian Ministry of Education and a group of education-minded LDP politicians, both of which want to create a climate of opinion favourable to the reintroduction of pre-war practices. They are opposed by activist teachers and groups of concerned intellectuals and parents. The administrators believe that the main problem with the education system has been its lack of proper ‘moral’ instruction ever since the US occupation purged it of nationalistic teachings. Official opinion, as voiced by former prime minister Nakasone, sees the source of the problem in individual homes and a general lack of discipline.

The Japanese federation of bar associations, Nichibenren, has concluded that the real trouble, on the contrary, is too much discipline. The increasing unruliness at public middle schools and high schools, which Nikkyoso attributes to the inability of pupils to maintain the pace and to the recently introduced ranking system, has caused many schools to react by tightening the rules. School regulations have proliferated considerably since the end of the 1970s and in many cases have become absurdly restrictive.

The lawyers’ federation has compiled a report concluding that serious violation of the human rights of children is widespread.
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A majority of the schools investigated prescribed to the smallest detail how pupils must sit, stand and walk, and to what height and at which angle they should raise their hands. The route to be travelled from school to home is often laid down as well. Some schools have rules forbidding classmates to talk with each other in the street. The order in which school lunches are to be eaten is sometimes prescribed. School rules apply even at home and during vacations: it is generally forbidden to go out after six at night; it is decreed at which time the pupil must rise, even on Sundays. Only selected books may be read. The schools, and not the parents, decide which TV programmes may be watched. Some schools demand that permission be asked even for vacation trips with the family.

That all pupils at the spartan schools must wear their school uniform at all times goes without saying, but hairstyles must be identical as well. The girl with naturally curly hair or hair that is not deep black is well advised at the beginning of the school year to bring a note from her mother verifying this, since heavy punishments await girls who perm or dye their hair.

It is clear that many of these rules were designed on the principle that more rules mean fewer disciplinary problems. This was, at least partly, a miscalculation. The lawyers and Nikkyoso see a direct connection between meaningless rules and pupils who resort to violence against their teachers and each other.
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The increased discipline and its appeal to society’s assumed need for ‘productive’ members are throwbacks to the Meiji period, when there was a similar reaction to liberal ideas concerning the right to a general humanistic education.
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The new retrogressive trend appears unstoppable as the power of Nikkyoso diminishes. The lawyers register the excesses but are not equipped to fight them. The Japanese press sounds occasional alarms, but adopts no consistent stance and hardly bothers with searching analysis. The same editors who seem to disagree with the approach of the educational bureaucrats also appear to endorse the official attribution of unruliness to a lack of discipline in the home. Their position on the right of the administrators to lay down educational priorities and patterns of discipline is, at best, ambivalent in a way that typifies the Japanese press.