Jason

Japanese Civilization

A topic that has always fascinated me, and that I greatly enjoyed researching, about Japanese society is the differences between their school system and the one in place here in America. I can’t even begin to attempt to cover such a vast system in the limited space that I have to work with, but I hope to provide at least a brief glimpse into it.

Since the end of World War Two, and the subsequent United States occupation, schooling in Japan has undergone many changes in an attempt to make it more like those found in the West. Despite all this, it still retains many aspects that date back to before the turn of the century.

Like many other parts of Japanese life, it can seem incredibly rigid, consisting of many spoken and unspoken rules. Ranging from a uniform code, to a code of conduct, to how one is to spend their free time, schooling is more of a full-time affair, unlike in the United States, where once the bell rings the student is now free to do as they please. It’s far from uncommon for schools to assign rules and limitations on what the student is allowed (or not allowed) to do after school is out. To enforce these rules, teachers are often on the lookout for transgressors; some schools even employ individuals to spy on the students and report them. Despite that most public high schools are coeducational, many forbid classmates of the opposite sex from socializing after school.

Confucianism still plays a large role in Japanese society, especially in school. In it, it’s said that the segregation between male and female children should start at the age of seven. Though they may no longer be physically kept apart, the segregation still remains as a state of mind, enforced through peer-pressure and school rules. Instilled at a very young age, males are taught that associating with females is for sissies. An increasing number of youths are going out in mixed groups now, though it’s still rare enough that it can warrant the term konpa, which is a contraction of loan words meaning “mixed company”. Even under those circumstances, the males generally end up on one end of the table with the females on the other end.

There have been many educational reforms since the end of the United States occupation, but despite this, females are still versed in domestic sciences and womanly duties in the hopes of making them good wives and mothers. Most females are still confined to subordinate roles in the home and workplace, primarily in careers of secretaries, tour-bus guides, shop attendants and the like. To quote Nicholas Bornoff, “Careful training results in the human equivalent to the bonsai tree with its limbs wired to cramp its growth.”

Students and young people are the first to deny these sexual stereotypes, yet the ‘pretend’ girls (or burikko) seem to suggest otherwise. They consciously go about retaining the image of a little girl, with frilly clothing and oversized ribbons and bows, with the goal to attract a male. In this sense, it seems that Confucianism may have less of an influence. Males seem to prize youthful appearance and a child-like disposition in females, even amongst older men. From high-school girls to women in their late twenties, females seem to make themselves appear younger through various means in order to lure a male. It isn’t too uncommon to find a telephone call-girl dressed up in a high school uniform when meeting a male client. Though age is traditionally prized in society, it seems that at least in regards towards attraction, youth holds the appeal.

Females aren’t the only ones pushed towards sexual stereotypes during their schooling, though. Unlike their females, however, the males learn these things less through the classroom and more through sports, where camaraderie and stoicism are heavily impressed. In baseball, for example, they undergo extremely difficult day and night training in extra-curricular baseball camps, throwing and catching balls until they drop. Through these clubs, the senior/junior relationship is heavily enforced. For example, in a mountain-climbing club the junior members are expected to carry heavier loads and to set up the tent when they arrive at the campsite while the senior members supervise. After that task is finished, they start cooking and serving dinner to the senior members, not eating until that is finished. This behavior is seen as an admirable trait and a sign that someone is aware of their place within the group, which is held in high regards. The strong rank consciousness seems to reflect the attitudes and practices of the former Japanese army.

The home-life of a typical Japanese student can be very stressful as well. Not only are there hours of homework and studying to be done, but there is often the parental (or, more accurately and often, mother) factor to push her child further. She often has her child’s best intentions in mind, though her means of achieving it seem to add fuel to the fire when it comes to the pressure the child is under. Driven by a need for her child to succeed in the world, the “education mama” will go to nearly any ends to give her child an upper-hand. It’s not completely without reason, though. The Japanese school system is built up and around tests. To get a good job, a child needs to go into a good university, or one that a certain company looks for in the history of a prospective employee. To get into a certain university, the child needs to have attended one of a few high schools. This system can continue down all the way to the kindergarten level, where if you didn’t rank well enough on exams in kindergarten, you won’t be able to make it all the way up the system to a certain university. To get into a certain school, a student has to take a placement test. The most critical one typically is the one from junior high to high school, where your future could literally be set depending on how well you score. Due to this constant testing system in place in the school system, a good portion of the education is preparing the students for the next series of tests. To supplement this, students will often attend a juku (cram school of sorts devoted to further studies) after school that runs as late as 9PM. Sometimes a tutor will even be hired to force the student to strive even harder, especially in preparation for shiken jigoku, or “examination hell”. Some mothers have even been known to present their child’s teacher in the hopes that it may gain them a good word towards the future senior high school or university. An intense rivalry can exist between women and their neighbors when it comes to their children’s success, so a sad fact is that it isn’t often their child’s personal welfare that concerns them, but that her child outdoes the other child across the street.

All this pressure from both outside and inside the home often causes a pressure-cooker-like environment. Failure isn’t well received in society, both on an internal and external viewpoint. Quite sadly, suicide amongst students isn’t all too uncommon. After the results of the high school and university entrance exams are posted, some of the students who didn’t make it resort to stepping in front of the bullet trains they used to ride daily to school. Suicide has been known to happen at ages as young as nine. Peaking around the start of the autumn term, every year of the last two decades has brought about five-hundred juvenile suicides a year. The suicide letters they leave or they’re final conversations all cite depression over not being able to keep up with curricular obligations and join in sports, hobbies, and play activities all at the same time. Academic pressure has been known to break down shy teenagers enough for them to violently assault, or in more extreme cases, even murder parents chiding over poor performance at school. These circumstances are incredibly rare, ranking one within millions, though the factors they share with the much more common absentees and those inflicting lesser violence on parents, teachers, and classmates tend to be the same.

Another problem that comes out of all this pressure is high school gangs, bullies, and rebels. Striving to get out of the closed world they find themselves in, they dress differently or commit minor crimes in order to differentiate themselves from everyone else. Males will wear clothing not unlike the clothing of the “greasers” from 1950’s America while females wear long skirts with florescent socks, bleaching their hair and/or streaking it with gaudy colors. The police publish pamphlets and posters with pictures of people dressed like this and hand them out at local schools, listing this as a sign of delinquency. Many police departments have prompted schools to further tighten restrictions on dress. While keeps incorrectly dressed students out of school pictures, or out of school altogether, the tighter the restrictions are, the further to the extremes people go.

Despite these facts, Japan still has the lowest crime rate in the industrialized world. Whatever a handful of students may do, drug-abuse is still low and the streets are still relatively safe at night. Although serious crime constituted only a third of the total, juvenile offences accounted for almost half of all crimes committed during the 1980’s. The violence doesn’t end on the streets, and bullying plagues many high schools. It can become so intense that some students have committed suicide. The trend started to lessen after 1986, however, as parent-teacher associations became more involved and police set up a telephone hot-line for the benefit of victims and their parents. It’s predicted that the cases reported are no where near the actual number, though, as the bullied typically prefer to keep silent not only out of personal fear, but also to avoid embarrassing social exposure that may cause both them and their parents loss of face.

The bullying can range from playground extortion rackets to gratuitous classroom humiliation. The bullying isn’t always done by males, as is traditionally thought. Accounting for around twenty percent of all juvenile crime, female bullies are known to be often just as vicious as their male counterparts. These females are often called sukeban, coming from the gangster words suke (moll) and bancho (boss). The word is typically used to describe tomboys and rebellious girls, or those leading a gang, usually with a female membership.

This driving need for individualism doesn’t always come out in violent or socially unacceptable ways. These, like the suicides mentioned earlier, are rare cases, though still worth consideration. The media, in fact, fills this need quite well in the younger market by fulfilling their need for individuality by offering consumerism in it’s place. New products are marketed heavily to students and young people, all claiming to make them stand out and be an individual. Nearly every new product that comes to market, whether it be a new watch, bicycle, or clothing, is marketed as the newest and latest status symbol. Those who can’t afford these things resent their inaccessibility, for without them, they have no identity. Though this in itself can cause a problem because it can, in some cases, drive students to supplement parental-provided spending money with theft and other such crimes.

Though these are all the extremes, for the most part the need for individuality comes out in fairly harmless ways. From rampant consumerism, which plagues Japanese society as a whole, to simply dressing outrageously on the weekends, most find safe ways to let it out. This is, however, a direct impact of such a rigid society, and an especially strict schooling system. After a student completes high school, they finally head off to that university they have spent their entire scholastic career striving for. Once there, the pressure lessens considerably, and they are generally allowed to live a much easier lifestyle. Those four years of their life are often thought of as a buffer between high school and the continuation of those stresses upon entering the workplace.

The life of a typical Japanese student is one of considerable stress. They live in an incredibly strict system, and one that focuses on spending many of the critical formative years intently absorbing information. The lessons they learn, however, are lessons that will serve them throughout their life. The same Confucian philosophies that have such a strong hold over the schooling system also have a strong hold on the workplace, where they will spend many more years following the same lessons they learned during their youth.

The Japanese school system is incredibly different from that practiced in the United States. However, I believe it is necessary. Just as the United States practices individuality and thinking away from the books, Japan requires something completely different to succeed in society.

Bibliographic Information

Title: Japanese Society

Author: Chie Nakane

Publishing Information:

Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1970

Title: The Japanese Mind

Author: Robert C. Christopher

Publishing Information:

Ballantine Books, 1983

Title: Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage & Sex in Contemporary Japan

Author: Nicholas Bornoff

Publishing Information:

Pocket Books, 1991

Title: The Japanese Times

Author: N/A [Newspaper]

Publishing Information:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp