Takeshi Asai's Japanese Newsletter - Education

The cherry blossom, Japan's national flower, blooms on trees across Japan in late March and early April. The national news enthusiastically reports the whereabouts of this pink tsunami as it washes across the land, starting in Kyushu, and cleanses the land with the hope and beauty of spring all the way to the northern tip of Japan. The cherry blossoms are not just a national flower. They are a national passion. Thousands of poems and haiku have been written about these delicate blossoms, called sakura. In the past, the frail blossoms were a metaphor for the brief but beautiful life of the samurai, and then in World War II, the blossoms symbolized the soldiers who gave their lives for Japan. In peace time, they represent the beginning of school year.

Every year, on an April morning, proud parents take pictures of their reluctant children under the cherry trees in full bloom. On the first day of school, six-year-old children say good-bye to their innocent childhood, and step into the most disciplined education in the world, and sakura is always there to witness this bittersweet farewell to childhood.

Once school starts, children are under the heavy pressure of a hard curriculum. Even Saturdays are not holidays for Japanese students, as most teachers and students go to school for at least a half day. This one-day weekend continues for six years in elementary school, three years in junior high school, three years in high school, and four years in college. Only the first nine years of education are compulsory in Japan, but almost everyone seems to go to high school today, making Japan the country with the highest literacy rate in the world.

On the first day of elementary school, young students learn that a very important rite must be performed: kiritsu-rei-chakuseki, or stand up, bow, sit down. In Japan, students bow in unison to their teachers at the beginning and end of every class; otherwise class never starts or ends. As you know, in Japanese culture, bowing is extremely important in all aspects of society including business, martial arts such as judo and karate, and family relationships. The first bow to one's teacher of Japanese is the beginning of a long journey toward the mastery of 50 hiragana, 50 katakana, and 2,000 kanji.

During junior high school, two more things are added to their already packed school life: uniforms and English. Some people insist that all Japanese should start learning English earlier so that Japan does not fall behind the international community. In fact, English education is rather lacking in Japan because it just teaches students how to read and translate, not to speak English. If you are studying Japanese, you will probably understand the significant differences between Japanese and English, and you will understand how the Japanese have to struggle to fill the gaps between classroom English and conversational English.

Even though Japan is a homogenous and egalitarian society where over 95 percent of entire population believes it belongs to the middle class, a college education is considered imperative to get a white-color job. This creates an incredibly harsh competition called juken-jigoku, or "entrance exam hell." For those who want to go to some of the top colleges, a normal high school education is not enough. So, special preparatory schools called juku thrive. The stiff competition creates a great number of ronin. This word, originally meaning a samurai who has no master to serve, now signifies the large number of high school graduates who have no college to attend. According to some statistics, the number of former ronin comprises 65 to 75 percent of the student body at some competitive universities in Tokyo and Kyoto.

So, do Japanese students study furiously for an entire sixteen years? No. Once they are accepted to a college, they don't have to study as hard as American students. Finally their hard years of preparation have earned them some freedom. They start drinking (in Japan, college students can drink alcohol even if they are legally a minor), and finally learn what is called shakai-benkyo, or social study, which has a high priority for most Japanese college students. And that's what society expects them to learn before entering into the real world. For most Japanese, the most relaxing time in life is usually college.

However, the "dolce vita" doesn't last forever. At 9:00 AM April 1st, just as a ceremony in April accompanies one's entrance to school, so does an April ceremony mark one's entrance into the work world. Proud parents may not be there this time to mark the new beginning, fragile and beautiful as always, but the cherry blossoms are.

published as Japanese Monthly, August/September 1999 issue
edited by Marcia Allen

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