Up until the onset of the world financial crisis, selling higher education to foreign students had become the new global gold rush for universities across the developed countries. Whereas 600,000 students went abroad to study for their degrees in 1975, by 2000 the number had hit 1.8 million, five years later it reached 2.7 million. This year, the number may even pass the three million mark - a 66% rise in less than a decade - unless, that is, the gold rush is about to end.
If it does, it will not be just the wealthy western countries that will suffer. As the international education export market grew, so did the capacity of old and new education exporting countries to attract international students. At the same time, countries such as India and China began providing for their own students who traditionally looked abroad for higher education.
In recent years, US universities used their international standing to deliver more courses through joint or dual degree programmes and through overseas-based campuses. Cornell, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, Michigan State and Georgia Tech were among the big names that other countries with overseas campuses had to compete with.
The US institutions were joined by British universities in booming markets such as India, China, Singapore and the Middle East. Last year, the Canadian government mounted a $2 million challenge to other nations' international education enrolments from China and India.
As part of the Canadian government's strategic focus on these countries, a pan-Canadian education brand was launched at the world's largest international education conference in Washington DC last May.
At the same time, countries such as China, Singapore and Malaysia had started building the domestic infrastructure to service more of the needs of their own students. The dominant countries in the education export market also faced increasing moves by competitors to deliver courses in English in traditionally non-English speaking countries, such as Japan, Korea, Germany and Scandinavia.
The Korean government began a campaign to raise the English level of all Koreans, starting at pre-school. Under the Brain Korea 21 or BK 21 project, institutions were encouraged - and funded in some cases - to offer more courses in English, more study abroad or exchange programmes, dual and joint degrees or articulation courses with overseas institutions to keep their young people at home.
The big question confronting all countries involved in exporting education, however, is how the financial and economic crises will impact on the global movement of students. Nations such as Australia, which now earns more than $14 billion a year (US$10 billion) from selling education to foreigners, has yet to see any sign of an expected fall-off in enrolments.
And Australia has the highest proportion of foreign students in its higher education system than any other country - with more than 19% according to the OECD. By comparison the OECD average is barely above 7%.
Yet the US Chronicle of Higher Education has suggested Australia might be losing its place. The paper reported last week that universities in Asia were facing hefty declines in enrolments of South Koreans. With the Korean currency dropping sharply, its students have found the cost of living abroad has doubled.
What effect this will have on US institutions is not yet clear although, as the Chronicle noted, South Korea remains a hugely important market for American universities which enrolled 70,000 students in the autumn of 2007, up 11% from the previous year.
"The country is an equally important source of students for many universities in Asia. The number of South Korean undergraduates studying in universities in Beijing and Shanghai is down by as much as 50% on some campuses, according to Chinese state media," the Chronicle noted.
"And undergraduate enrolments at some private Japanese universities have plunged to almost zero, forcing the institutions to take emergency measures, including deferring tuition and seeking government assistance. Enrolments are also reportedly down at universities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia, as thousands of South Korean students struggle to deal with the fallout from their country's violent currency fluctuations."
Australian universities, however, are not reliant on Korean students to anywhere the same extent as some US institutions, whereas those from China comprise by far the largest number of any from other nations.
Just as is the case with its importing of Australian raw materials, China will be the key to the financial well-being of many Australian universities which have become increasingly reliant on fees from Chinese students to bolster their declining revenues from other sources.
One reason for that is the fall in the value of the Australian dollar against the US greenback and the euro although how long that effect will last is uncertain. Equally uncertain is the future of the international gold rush in exporting education to other countries.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/
Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles. Show all posts
Bar Risen Jobs At Law School
In April 2004, 68 law schools were established in accordance with the nation's legal reform. Since then, the number has increased to 74. Earlier this month, about 5,800 people enrolled in these schools. Those who have not studied law at undergraduate level will have to complete a three-year course and those who did, a two-year course.
These schools were created to help satisfy a national demand for legal professionals who can provide high-quality services, in particular lawyers. But criticism persists that some of these schools fail to offer high-quality education.
The Japan Law Foundation, the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation and the Japan University Accreditation Association have recently evaluated 68 of the law schools and determined that 22 of them have problems with their curricula and teaching methods.
Problems identified include a shortage of basic subjects, a lack of balance between theoretical studies and practical application, a lack of transparency in the evaluation of students' performances in tests and under-qualified teachers.
The result of the third state bar exam under the legal reform held in 2008 highlights the under-performance of some of these law schools. While 6,261 graduates sat for the exam, only 2,065 of them — 33 percent of the applicants — passed. This is less than the Justice Ministry's target of 2,100 to 2,500 successful applicants and the first time the pass rate has fallen below 40 percent. In 2007, 1,125 students also failed to complete the required courses.
The basic problem with the law schools seems clear. Some of the students they accepted were likely not qualified to study law, and some universities may have rushed to open law schools in a bid to raise their reputation or to bring in more tuition fees.
A special panel of the Central Council for Education has proposed setting a minimal level for entrance-exam scores and reducing the student quota at law schools where the competition for the entrance is less severe. Each law school also needs to review and rectify its weak points, and some should consider reducing the number of students they accept.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
These schools were created to help satisfy a national demand for legal professionals who can provide high-quality services, in particular lawyers. But criticism persists that some of these schools fail to offer high-quality education.
The Japan Law Foundation, the National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation and the Japan University Accreditation Association have recently evaluated 68 of the law schools and determined that 22 of them have problems with their curricula and teaching methods.
Problems identified include a shortage of basic subjects, a lack of balance between theoretical studies and practical application, a lack of transparency in the evaluation of students' performances in tests and under-qualified teachers.
The result of the third state bar exam under the legal reform held in 2008 highlights the under-performance of some of these law schools. While 6,261 graduates sat for the exam, only 2,065 of them — 33 percent of the applicants — passed. This is less than the Justice Ministry's target of 2,100 to 2,500 successful applicants and the first time the pass rate has fallen below 40 percent. In 2007, 1,125 students also failed to complete the required courses.
The basic problem with the law schools seems clear. Some of the students they accepted were likely not qualified to study law, and some universities may have rushed to open law schools in a bid to raise their reputation or to bring in more tuition fees.
A special panel of the Central Council for Education has proposed setting a minimal level for entrance-exam scores and reducing the student quota at law schools where the competition for the entrance is less severe. Each law school also needs to review and rectify its weak points, and some should consider reducing the number of students they accept.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Indentities,Races and Religion Issues In Japan
Japan is a multiethnic society largely in denial about its diversity. Here we can examine the contradictions and consequences of this discourse. This second edition published a dozen years after the first is a welcome update with 10 chapters analyzing, inter alia, Japan's six principle minority groups — Ainu, burakumin, Chinese, Koreans, nikkeijin (Japanese return migrants and their descendants) and Okinawans. Examining contemporary Japan from this perspective offers many insights about identity, ideology, race, ethnicity and the narrative of homogeneity. There may be a better book covering this range of subjects, but I haven't read it.
New to this edition is Gracia Liu-Farrer's superb essay on Chinese newcomers to Japan and their strategies in living and working in a transnational community that enables them to transcend borders and constraints. She traces the evolution of the Chinese migrant community, but focuses on how recent migrants have leveraged their background and skills to embrace transnational life strategies.
They are not just inert targets for Japanese discrimination bemoaning their plight. Instead, drawing on fieldwork conducted 2001-07, Liu-Farrer explains how, "maintaining economic and social ties with the home country and making transnational living arrangements have become strategies Chinese immigrants have adopted, both to circumvent their marginal social positions and to gain social mobility in Japan."
Most of the more than 700,000 Chinese now residing in Japan came after the mid-1980s. Between 1990-2005, 58,879 Chinese became Japanese citizens while as of 2005 there were 106,269 Chinese permanent residents, most gaining this status since 2000. Permanent residency is preferred to citizenship because it offers the advantages of both countries. Typically, these migrants start by working at Japanese firms, but leave to start up their own ventures because they find the rules and regimen oppressive and see "the culture within Japanese firms as depressing." They realize they can't ever really assimilate and don't want to anyway. Instead, they turn their Chinese background into an asset, creating and exploiting profitable niches in the transnational economy.
In recent months, nikkeijin, mostly Brazilians of Japanese ancestry, have been swelling the ranks of unemployed. This is the tragic end of a story for many that began with optimism, but has descended into disappointment and recriminations. Takeyuki Tsuda explains that nearly 300,000 Brazilian-Japanese came to Japan because the government made it easy for them to do so since 1990 by creating special visas without work restrictions for ancestral returnees. Officials created this side-door because of acute labor shortages, especially for unskilled workers, and acted on the assumption that Japanese blood would trump Brazilian culture.
Nikkeijin held similarly unrealistic expectations that confronted the reality of discrimination and marginalization in Japan. Proud of their ethnic background and ancestral homeland, many have been disappointed to discover dingy factories, shabby towns and miserable living conditions.
Nikkeijin suffer from fragmented identities. At home they are an elite ethnic group while in Japan they are stigmatized for being more Brazilian than Japanese. Ironically, here they serve as ambassadors of a Brazilian culture they looked down on back in Brazil.
Tsuda observes that many are first time samba dancers in festivals staged here and few know the proper dance steps or how to make the proper costumes. Even if their performances would be ridiculed back home, in Japan samba enables an assertion of a Brazilian identity that has flowered only after migrating here.
Probing their disaffection, Tsuda writes, "They often complain that the Japanese are cold, unreceptive, and impersonal in social relationships, and that they are unfriendly people." Moreover, most come from the middle-class and find their low status as manual workers in Japan demeaning. Japanese told Tsuda they feel more comfortable with the nikkeijin than ethnic Koreans, but still harbor prejudices. They are looked upon as descendants of losers who fled Japan and now have returned because they couldn't cut it in Brazil. They are also criticized for lacking a strong work ethic and company loyalty.
Tsuda concludes that the nikkeijin's prospects in Japan are bleak due to institutionalized discrimination. Their children are assimilating, but he thinks they will need to mask their identity if they hope to enjoy social mobility.
The "Other Other" by John Russell is another notable new contribution that focuses on the black presence in Japan. He notes, "one of the ironies of transplanted Western anti-black artifacts is that many Japanese refuse to recognize them as 'racist' in Japan, said items having lost whatever racist meanings attached to them in their previous lives by the virtue of the fact that Japan is believed to lack racial prejudice and discrimination." Here, the myth of Japan as a racism-free society is dissected in terms of how it serves, "to reinforce and sustain Japanese notions of difference."
There is much more to savor in this fine collection, one that is ideal for undergraduates and any readers curious about the dynamics of diversity in supposedly "homogeneous" Japan.
Jeff Kingston is director of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan campus.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
New to this edition is Gracia Liu-Farrer's superb essay on Chinese newcomers to Japan and their strategies in living and working in a transnational community that enables them to transcend borders and constraints. She traces the evolution of the Chinese migrant community, but focuses on how recent migrants have leveraged their background and skills to embrace transnational life strategies.
They are not just inert targets for Japanese discrimination bemoaning their plight. Instead, drawing on fieldwork conducted 2001-07, Liu-Farrer explains how, "maintaining economic and social ties with the home country and making transnational living arrangements have become strategies Chinese immigrants have adopted, both to circumvent their marginal social positions and to gain social mobility in Japan."
Most of the more than 700,000 Chinese now residing in Japan came after the mid-1980s. Between 1990-2005, 58,879 Chinese became Japanese citizens while as of 2005 there were 106,269 Chinese permanent residents, most gaining this status since 2000. Permanent residency is preferred to citizenship because it offers the advantages of both countries. Typically, these migrants start by working at Japanese firms, but leave to start up their own ventures because they find the rules and regimen oppressive and see "the culture within Japanese firms as depressing." They realize they can't ever really assimilate and don't want to anyway. Instead, they turn their Chinese background into an asset, creating and exploiting profitable niches in the transnational economy.
In recent months, nikkeijin, mostly Brazilians of Japanese ancestry, have been swelling the ranks of unemployed. This is the tragic end of a story for many that began with optimism, but has descended into disappointment and recriminations. Takeyuki Tsuda explains that nearly 300,000 Brazilian-Japanese came to Japan because the government made it easy for them to do so since 1990 by creating special visas without work restrictions for ancestral returnees. Officials created this side-door because of acute labor shortages, especially for unskilled workers, and acted on the assumption that Japanese blood would trump Brazilian culture.
Nikkeijin held similarly unrealistic expectations that confronted the reality of discrimination and marginalization in Japan. Proud of their ethnic background and ancestral homeland, many have been disappointed to discover dingy factories, shabby towns and miserable living conditions.
Nikkeijin suffer from fragmented identities. At home they are an elite ethnic group while in Japan they are stigmatized for being more Brazilian than Japanese. Ironically, here they serve as ambassadors of a Brazilian culture they looked down on back in Brazil.
Tsuda observes that many are first time samba dancers in festivals staged here and few know the proper dance steps or how to make the proper costumes. Even if their performances would be ridiculed back home, in Japan samba enables an assertion of a Brazilian identity that has flowered only after migrating here.
Probing their disaffection, Tsuda writes, "They often complain that the Japanese are cold, unreceptive, and impersonal in social relationships, and that they are unfriendly people." Moreover, most come from the middle-class and find their low status as manual workers in Japan demeaning. Japanese told Tsuda they feel more comfortable with the nikkeijin than ethnic Koreans, but still harbor prejudices. They are looked upon as descendants of losers who fled Japan and now have returned because they couldn't cut it in Brazil. They are also criticized for lacking a strong work ethic and company loyalty.
Tsuda concludes that the nikkeijin's prospects in Japan are bleak due to institutionalized discrimination. Their children are assimilating, but he thinks they will need to mask their identity if they hope to enjoy social mobility.
The "Other Other" by John Russell is another notable new contribution that focuses on the black presence in Japan. He notes, "one of the ironies of transplanted Western anti-black artifacts is that many Japanese refuse to recognize them as 'racist' in Japan, said items having lost whatever racist meanings attached to them in their previous lives by the virtue of the fact that Japan is believed to lack racial prejudice and discrimination." Here, the myth of Japan as a racism-free society is dissected in terms of how it serves, "to reinforce and sustain Japanese notions of difference."
There is much more to savor in this fine collection, one that is ideal for undergraduates and any readers curious about the dynamics of diversity in supposedly "homogeneous" Japan.
Jeff Kingston is director of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan campus.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Orphanes Students Giving Up
About 40 percent of orphaned third-year high school students from single-mother households who want to find employment have been forced to give up further studies due to living hardships, according to a survey.
The survey was carried out by Ashinaga--a nonprofit organization providing financial support to children who have lost one or both of their parents--on the aspirations of students from fatherless families.
Ashinaga conducted the survey from December to late February on recipients of a scholarship from the NPO.
Replies were collected from 582 students.
On their future aspirations after graduating high school, the survey found a majority of the students, or 44.3 percent, aspired to go on to university.
However, 27.8 percent said they wanted to look for a job, 19.8 percent wanted to attend vocational school, and 6.2 percent replied they planned to go to a two-year college.
A total of 40.1 percent of those polled cited "living hardships" as a reason for finding employment instead of pursuing higher education--with 21 percent citing "it is financially difficult to pursue higher education," while 19.1 percent answering "for the sake of helping out the family finances."
As a result of the economic downturn, the NPO said the number of single mothers losing their jobs also is increasing.
An official from the NPO said, "Due to the worsening economy, there're fears of a rise in the number of those who give up higher education because of financial reasons."
This weekend and next weekend, Ashinaga plans to raise funds at about 250 locations nationwide over the four-day period. For inquiries, contact the NPO at (03) 3221-7788.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/
The survey was carried out by Ashinaga--a nonprofit organization providing financial support to children who have lost one or both of their parents--on the aspirations of students from fatherless families.
Ashinaga conducted the survey from December to late February on recipients of a scholarship from the NPO.
Replies were collected from 582 students.
On their future aspirations after graduating high school, the survey found a majority of the students, or 44.3 percent, aspired to go on to university.
However, 27.8 percent said they wanted to look for a job, 19.8 percent wanted to attend vocational school, and 6.2 percent replied they planned to go to a two-year college.
A total of 40.1 percent of those polled cited "living hardships" as a reason for finding employment instead of pursuing higher education--with 21 percent citing "it is financially difficult to pursue higher education," while 19.1 percent answering "for the sake of helping out the family finances."
As a result of the economic downturn, the NPO said the number of single mothers losing their jobs also is increasing.
An official from the NPO said, "Due to the worsening economy, there're fears of a rise in the number of those who give up higher education because of financial reasons."
This weekend and next weekend, Ashinaga plans to raise funds at about 250 locations nationwide over the four-day period. For inquiries, contact the NPO at (03) 3221-7788.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/
For Japanese Students, Boring Careers Are Looking Pretty Good
Heading en masse to new positions in Japan's major corporations, fresh university graduates in black suits have become as common a sight in Tokyo as April's cherry blossoms. But this year, things are different. According to a closely watched annual survey, the companies that were once synonymous with Japan Inc. — Toyota, Sony, Sharp and Canon — have lost their luster as potential employers. For those seeking secure jobs-for-life, students are instead looking to relatively low-risk industries such as railroads and public utilities.
The survey, a poll of nearly 6,000 university seniors conducted by Recruit Co., a Tokyo-based research and human resources company, revealed that Japan's flailing, export-driven economy has had a profound impact on the outlook of those on the brink of entering the workforce. Toyota's ranking as a preferred employer plummeted from 6th place last year to 96th place this year. Sony fell from 8th to 29th place; Sharp from 14th to 55th place; Canon from 20th to 77th place. (See pictures of the global financial crisis.)
And which companies are the top five dream employers? Central Japan Railway and East Japan Railway Co. rose to first and second place (up from 4th and 9th place last year). Japan Post — formerly the public office that the government began to privatize in 2007 — jumped 357 spots to rank 30th. Chubu Electric Power and Kansai Electric Power both gained more than 50 places each to rank in the top 50.
It's not surprising that automakers and electronic companies are no longer as appealing as they once were. Toyota Motor, which has typically ranked in the survey's top 10, will likely post its second straight operating loss in its 2010 fiscal year — right when the students polled by Recruit will be entering the workplace. The company is expected to report a loss of $4.9 billion when it announces its 2009 results on May 8. Last week, Sharp Corp., too, slashed its outlook for its fiscal year ending March 31, to a net loss of $1.29 billion. (Read "Sony's Woes: Japan's Iconic Brands Under Fire.")
Recruit collected the data between Jan. 30 and Feb. 16, as a series of dire economic indicators painted a dismal economic outlook for Japan and major companies were laying off workers in waves. "News reports about worsened business and manpower conditions came out one after another," says Recruit spokeswoman Yuri Ito. "This survey is done around the time companies announce their recruitment plan for the following year. So some students might vote for those that plan to hire aggressively." Export-driven companies, out. Instead, "Students consider companies in industries like infrastructure and food, which are robust in a recession... companies that are stable and don't go away," says Ito. "Their parents think the same."
Grad students in engineering fields, of whom 1,860 were polled, still chose Panasonic as their ideal employer (followed by Sony), but automotive-related companies dropped in rank, and household products (including cosmetics) and pharmaceutical companies grew in popularity. The largest gains were seen by cosmetics companies Kao and Kose, food company Meiji, and three pharmaceutical companies: Shionogi & Co., Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., and Astellas.
Kevin Gibson, managing director of headhunting firm Robert Walters Japan, says he, too, is witnessing a flight to risk-free industries. "We see a gravitation away from banking and, oddly enough, manufacturing is perceived as insecure now," Gibson says. Robert Walters is placing a large number of executive and management talent into health care and the pharmaceutical industry. "It's getting fantastic people from I.T. and banking — people that [those industries] wouldn't normally be able to employ." But Gibson says the brain drain from old-guard companies may not last. "Media spent so much time beating up on these companies," he says. "They will bounce back."
Yuki Oda-Tokyo
http://www.time.com/time
The survey, a poll of nearly 6,000 university seniors conducted by Recruit Co., a Tokyo-based research and human resources company, revealed that Japan's flailing, export-driven economy has had a profound impact on the outlook of those on the brink of entering the workforce. Toyota's ranking as a preferred employer plummeted from 6th place last year to 96th place this year. Sony fell from 8th to 29th place; Sharp from 14th to 55th place; Canon from 20th to 77th place. (See pictures of the global financial crisis.)
And which companies are the top five dream employers? Central Japan Railway and East Japan Railway Co. rose to first and second place (up from 4th and 9th place last year). Japan Post — formerly the public office that the government began to privatize in 2007 — jumped 357 spots to rank 30th. Chubu Electric Power and Kansai Electric Power both gained more than 50 places each to rank in the top 50.
It's not surprising that automakers and electronic companies are no longer as appealing as they once were. Toyota Motor, which has typically ranked in the survey's top 10, will likely post its second straight operating loss in its 2010 fiscal year — right when the students polled by Recruit will be entering the workplace. The company is expected to report a loss of $4.9 billion when it announces its 2009 results on May 8. Last week, Sharp Corp., too, slashed its outlook for its fiscal year ending March 31, to a net loss of $1.29 billion. (Read "Sony's Woes: Japan's Iconic Brands Under Fire.")
Recruit collected the data between Jan. 30 and Feb. 16, as a series of dire economic indicators painted a dismal economic outlook for Japan and major companies were laying off workers in waves. "News reports about worsened business and manpower conditions came out one after another," says Recruit spokeswoman Yuri Ito. "This survey is done around the time companies announce their recruitment plan for the following year. So some students might vote for those that plan to hire aggressively." Export-driven companies, out. Instead, "Students consider companies in industries like infrastructure and food, which are robust in a recession... companies that are stable and don't go away," says Ito. "Their parents think the same."
Grad students in engineering fields, of whom 1,860 were polled, still chose Panasonic as their ideal employer (followed by Sony), but automotive-related companies dropped in rank, and household products (including cosmetics) and pharmaceutical companies grew in popularity. The largest gains were seen by cosmetics companies Kao and Kose, food company Meiji, and three pharmaceutical companies: Shionogi & Co., Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., and Astellas.
Kevin Gibson, managing director of headhunting firm Robert Walters Japan, says he, too, is witnessing a flight to risk-free industries. "We see a gravitation away from banking and, oddly enough, manufacturing is perceived as insecure now," Gibson says. Robert Walters is placing a large number of executive and management talent into health care and the pharmaceutical industry. "It's getting fantastic people from I.T. and banking — people that [those industries] wouldn't normally be able to employ." But Gibson says the brain drain from old-guard companies may not last. "Media spent so much time beating up on these companies," he says. "They will bounce back."
Yuki Oda-Tokyo
http://www.time.com/time
Less Money Support For Students
The average amount of financial support students of private universities and junior colleges in the Tokyo metropolitan area received from home as of June 2008 was a record low of 95,700 yen, a recent survey has found.
According to the survey by the Tokyo Federation of Private University Faculty and Staff Unions, students' average monthly financial support from their parents in June 2008 was 95,700 yen, 200 yen lower than the previous fiscal year and the lowest amount recorded since statistics were first kept in fiscal 1985.
The amount received from parents left for living expenses after rent had been subtracted averaged 36,000 yen, 700 yen lower than the previous fiscal year, also the lowest in the survey's history.
The ratio of parents struggling with the burden of education expenses from their children's entrance exams to admission was a record high 91.3 percent, a 0.6 point increase from the previous fiscal year.
However, the survey does not reflect the effects of the global recession that began last autumn. The federation believes that parents' capacity to carry the burden of educational costs has reached its limit and that their financial difficulties will escalate in fiscal 2009.
The survey was conduced from May to June last year among guardians of some 4,800 first-year students at 16 universities and junior colleges in Tokyo and four other prefectures in the Kanto region.
The survey focused on the average allowance sent to the students in June, instead of May -- a month in which many spend large sums on educational materials and costs related to students beginning to live away from home. The average monthly allowance has decreased about 23 percent from its peak of 124,900 yen in fiscal 1994, and the average monthly amount left for living expenses after rent was less than half its fiscal 1990 peak of 73,800 yen.
The average rent paid by students was 59,700 yen, accounting for a record high 62.4 percent of the average monthly allowance.
Meanwhile, the average yearly family income, including tax, was 9.229 million yen -- down by 2.5 percent from fiscal 2007 -- and the average yearly income of a family that has one or more children going to school from places other than their home was 9.159 million yen, down by 4.7 percent from the previous fiscal year.
http://mainichi.jp
According to the survey by the Tokyo Federation of Private University Faculty and Staff Unions, students' average monthly financial support from their parents in June 2008 was 95,700 yen, 200 yen lower than the previous fiscal year and the lowest amount recorded since statistics were first kept in fiscal 1985.
The amount received from parents left for living expenses after rent had been subtracted averaged 36,000 yen, 700 yen lower than the previous fiscal year, also the lowest in the survey's history.
The ratio of parents struggling with the burden of education expenses from their children's entrance exams to admission was a record high 91.3 percent, a 0.6 point increase from the previous fiscal year.
However, the survey does not reflect the effects of the global recession that began last autumn. The federation believes that parents' capacity to carry the burden of educational costs has reached its limit and that their financial difficulties will escalate in fiscal 2009.
The survey was conduced from May to June last year among guardians of some 4,800 first-year students at 16 universities and junior colleges in Tokyo and four other prefectures in the Kanto region.
The survey focused on the average allowance sent to the students in June, instead of May -- a month in which many spend large sums on educational materials and costs related to students beginning to live away from home. The average monthly allowance has decreased about 23 percent from its peak of 124,900 yen in fiscal 1994, and the average monthly amount left for living expenses after rent was less than half its fiscal 1990 peak of 73,800 yen.
The average rent paid by students was 59,700 yen, accounting for a record high 62.4 percent of the average monthly allowance.
Meanwhile, the average yearly family income, including tax, was 9.229 million yen -- down by 2.5 percent from fiscal 2007 -- and the average yearly income of a family that has one or more children going to school from places other than their home was 9.159 million yen, down by 4.7 percent from the previous fiscal year.
http://mainichi.jp
Japanese Geisha Lesson By Aussie
Japan's first Western geisha, Sayuki, has revealed she is taking up a new role: lecturing on Japanese cultural studies at Keio University.
Australian-born Sayuki will teach local and foreign students about traditional culture from a foreign perspective and provide foreign perceptions of Japan.
During a recent trip to Australia, Sayuki said she is proud to be associated with the university, describing it as being at "the forefront (of) new and innovative ideas in education."
With some geisha nearing 80 years old, Sayuki believes they have "a lot of knowledge and experience to share with the younger generation."
"Geisha are important custodians of traditional culture in Japan, and I don't think it is surprising that a geisha should be invited to lecture at university," said Sayuki, who gave her first lecture on April 9.
Sayuki has lived in Japan for half her life. She first fell in love with Japan at the age of 15, when she was a high school exchange student. She then returned to study at Keio University.
After graduation, she worked for two years at a large Japanese company before earning her doctorate in social anthropology, specializing in Japanese culture, from Oxford University in England.
Sayuki has published a number of books on Japanese culture and produced anthropological documentaries set in Japan, including one on the cultural significance of some of the country's more dangerous festivals.
Upon her return to Japan, however, she became fascinated by the mysterious flower and willow world, as geisha culture is referred to, and embarked on a yearlong transformation from scholar to geisha.
She initially planned to do a short-term project but soon realized it wasn't feasible because of the time required to train as a geisha. She has since "abandoned all thoughts of finishing."
Sayuki describes the process of becoming a geisha as akin to learning a new language and culture. Trainees must be re-educated on the proper way to sit, stand, walk and wear their clothes.
Sayuki, who no longer uses her Western name, specializes in "yokobue" (flute) but was also required to learn the traditional arts of dancing, drumming and tea ceremony.
The thing she likes best about being a geisha is the access it gives her to the beauty and aesthetic sensibilities of that world.
Listing kimono, flower arrangement, dance, music, architecture and art, which make up the flower and willow world, Sayuki said there is no other area where you can see such a complete package of Japanese tradition.
However, she also warned of the unexpected challenges she encountered in the geisha process, including doing 500 squats in one hour at a banquet and having to remember the correct hierarchical order for addressing her 30 elders.
And then there was the problem of finding black contact lenses to disguise her green eyes.
Sayuki, which means "transparent happiness," debuted as a geisha in December 2007, in the process becoming the first Westerner in 400 years to do so.
She is now based in a geisha house in Asakusa, one of Tokyo's oldest geisha districts, where she regularly attends banquets as a trainee.
Sayuki is one of 45 registered geisha in Asakusa, and as an English-speaker, offers international visitors a unique glance into a subject that has long captivated foreigners.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Australian-born Sayuki will teach local and foreign students about traditional culture from a foreign perspective and provide foreign perceptions of Japan.
During a recent trip to Australia, Sayuki said she is proud to be associated with the university, describing it as being at "the forefront (of) new and innovative ideas in education."
With some geisha nearing 80 years old, Sayuki believes they have "a lot of knowledge and experience to share with the younger generation."
"Geisha are important custodians of traditional culture in Japan, and I don't think it is surprising that a geisha should be invited to lecture at university," said Sayuki, who gave her first lecture on April 9.
Sayuki has lived in Japan for half her life. She first fell in love with Japan at the age of 15, when she was a high school exchange student. She then returned to study at Keio University.
After graduation, she worked for two years at a large Japanese company before earning her doctorate in social anthropology, specializing in Japanese culture, from Oxford University in England.
Sayuki has published a number of books on Japanese culture and produced anthropological documentaries set in Japan, including one on the cultural significance of some of the country's more dangerous festivals.
Upon her return to Japan, however, she became fascinated by the mysterious flower and willow world, as geisha culture is referred to, and embarked on a yearlong transformation from scholar to geisha.
She initially planned to do a short-term project but soon realized it wasn't feasible because of the time required to train as a geisha. She has since "abandoned all thoughts of finishing."
Sayuki describes the process of becoming a geisha as akin to learning a new language and culture. Trainees must be re-educated on the proper way to sit, stand, walk and wear their clothes.
Sayuki, who no longer uses her Western name, specializes in "yokobue" (flute) but was also required to learn the traditional arts of dancing, drumming and tea ceremony.
The thing she likes best about being a geisha is the access it gives her to the beauty and aesthetic sensibilities of that world.
Listing kimono, flower arrangement, dance, music, architecture and art, which make up the flower and willow world, Sayuki said there is no other area where you can see such a complete package of Japanese tradition.
However, she also warned of the unexpected challenges she encountered in the geisha process, including doing 500 squats in one hour at a banquet and having to remember the correct hierarchical order for addressing her 30 elders.
And then there was the problem of finding black contact lenses to disguise her green eyes.
Sayuki, which means "transparent happiness," debuted as a geisha in December 2007, in the process becoming the first Westerner in 400 years to do so.
She is now based in a geisha house in Asakusa, one of Tokyo's oldest geisha districts, where she regularly attends banquets as a trainee.
Sayuki is one of 45 registered geisha in Asakusa, and as an English-speaker, offers international visitors a unique glance into a subject that has long captivated foreigners.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Learning English By Eating
With many Japanese parents pulling their children out of private English language schools to save money these days, I recommend that they try home schooling. There is no reason why parents can't give their kids English lessons at home by leaving the teaching to food.
Yes, there are plenty of edible learning aids in our daily lives that we just need to put to work for us.
So reach into the pantry and pull out this week's English lesson!
• Alphabet soup — This soup, made by Campbell's, features alphabet-shaped pasta in tomato soup and is a perfect teaching aid for kids to learn their ABCs. They can sing the ABC song while eating with this new variation of karaoke (or is it "kara-choke?").
Make sure kids can recognize each individual letter and say it out loud in English before sucking it up.
• Gummi bears and worms — What child doesn't like to eat worms? These gelatin-based candies originated in Germany where the Haribo company first produced gummi bears, and the Trolli company introduced the gummi worms. Children can learn their numbers and colors with these sticky candy treats.
Group the bears and worms together according to colors and then count them, then have different color groups intermingle with each other. Kids will learn their colors and numbers with just a few snacks!
• Lucky Charms cereal — This is an American cereal with an Irish touch, made by General Mills. It is a perfect food to start your child speaking English words, mainly nouns.
The cereal contains toasted bits of oats and marshmallows. The marshmallows are the vocabulary aids as they are different shapes such as hearts, stars and moons. They make up 25 percent of the cereal content. Make your child say the shapes and colors before eating them.
Kids can also use the stars to re-create the constellations and the night sky, all without using a telescope! A quiz of the constellations would get your child off on the right foot in the mornings.
Not only will your child learn some new English words with this cereal, but also some Irish English as the jingle for this cereal features an Irish leprechaun singing: "Hearts, stars and horseshoes! Clovers and blue moons! Pots of gold and rainbows! And me red balloons!"
• Animal crackers — Animal crackers have taken the front role in educating children for over one hundred years. Having started in England, these fun classic snacks were made famous in the United States by Nabisco (National Biscuit Company) in the U.S., and have been exported to over 170 countries. Japan also has its own animal crackers.
Kids love animal crackers and will happily learn the English names of animals while eating horns, antlers, humps and trunks. Surely many kids already owe their extensive zoo animal vocabulary to these crackers. And since many Japanese people believe that hard crunchy food is good for the brain, this teaching method is a no-brainer.
What surprises me about animal crackers, however, is that despite their popularity around the world, they are still pretty basic. I mean, c'mon, couldn't we have some more advanced animal crackers?
Why continue to harp on the same old zoo animals such as elephants, lions, and bears when there are plenty of other animals out there that could benefit by gaining animal-cracker status? How about endangered species animal crackers, or extinct or protected species crackers? Most children will learn the zoo animals in just a few servings and will be eager to move up the animal chain.
Animal crackers Level 2 could include Japanese animals with crackers in the shape of cranes, deer, foxes, wild boars, bears, tanuki raccoon dogs, and Hokkaido red squirrels.
Animal crackers Level 3 would be endangered or protected Japanese animals such as the Okinawan dugong, iriomote cat, Noma horse, the sei whale, the Japanese giant salamander, the togenezumi spiny rat and the Okinawan rail, a flightless bird.
There are so many animals in the world that if we could get the cracker manufacturers to create new series such as the above to use as edible textbooks, we could work right through Japan's "red list" of endangered species. By kindergarten, kids could already graduate with degrees in animal crackers.
More advanced children can move on to grammar crackers, where they have to use the animals in sentences before they are allowed to eat them.
So you see, with a little bit of imagination and help from you and your pantry, your child will love English so much, he'll eat it up!
Amy Chavez
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Yes, there are plenty of edible learning aids in our daily lives that we just need to put to work for us.
So reach into the pantry and pull out this week's English lesson!
• Alphabet soup — This soup, made by Campbell's, features alphabet-shaped pasta in tomato soup and is a perfect teaching aid for kids to learn their ABCs. They can sing the ABC song while eating with this new variation of karaoke (or is it "kara-choke?").
Make sure kids can recognize each individual letter and say it out loud in English before sucking it up.
• Gummi bears and worms — What child doesn't like to eat worms? These gelatin-based candies originated in Germany where the Haribo company first produced gummi bears, and the Trolli company introduced the gummi worms. Children can learn their numbers and colors with these sticky candy treats.
Group the bears and worms together according to colors and then count them, then have different color groups intermingle with each other. Kids will learn their colors and numbers with just a few snacks!
• Lucky Charms cereal — This is an American cereal with an Irish touch, made by General Mills. It is a perfect food to start your child speaking English words, mainly nouns.
The cereal contains toasted bits of oats and marshmallows. The marshmallows are the vocabulary aids as they are different shapes such as hearts, stars and moons. They make up 25 percent of the cereal content. Make your child say the shapes and colors before eating them.
Kids can also use the stars to re-create the constellations and the night sky, all without using a telescope! A quiz of the constellations would get your child off on the right foot in the mornings.
Not only will your child learn some new English words with this cereal, but also some Irish English as the jingle for this cereal features an Irish leprechaun singing: "Hearts, stars and horseshoes! Clovers and blue moons! Pots of gold and rainbows! And me red balloons!"
• Animal crackers — Animal crackers have taken the front role in educating children for over one hundred years. Having started in England, these fun classic snacks were made famous in the United States by Nabisco (National Biscuit Company) in the U.S., and have been exported to over 170 countries. Japan also has its own animal crackers.
Kids love animal crackers and will happily learn the English names of animals while eating horns, antlers, humps and trunks. Surely many kids already owe their extensive zoo animal vocabulary to these crackers. And since many Japanese people believe that hard crunchy food is good for the brain, this teaching method is a no-brainer.
What surprises me about animal crackers, however, is that despite their popularity around the world, they are still pretty basic. I mean, c'mon, couldn't we have some more advanced animal crackers?
Why continue to harp on the same old zoo animals such as elephants, lions, and bears when there are plenty of other animals out there that could benefit by gaining animal-cracker status? How about endangered species animal crackers, or extinct or protected species crackers? Most children will learn the zoo animals in just a few servings and will be eager to move up the animal chain.
Animal crackers Level 2 could include Japanese animals with crackers in the shape of cranes, deer, foxes, wild boars, bears, tanuki raccoon dogs, and Hokkaido red squirrels.
Animal crackers Level 3 would be endangered or protected Japanese animals such as the Okinawan dugong, iriomote cat, Noma horse, the sei whale, the Japanese giant salamander, the togenezumi spiny rat and the Okinawan rail, a flightless bird.
There are so many animals in the world that if we could get the cracker manufacturers to create new series such as the above to use as edible textbooks, we could work right through Japan's "red list" of endangered species. By kindergarten, kids could already graduate with degrees in animal crackers.
More advanced children can move on to grammar crackers, where they have to use the animals in sentences before they are allowed to eat them.
So you see, with a little bit of imagination and help from you and your pantry, your child will love English so much, he'll eat it up!
Amy Chavez
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
One Third Tokyo School Student Using Mobile Phone Filters
Only one in every three Tokyo middle school students has activated filters on their cell phones that block access to sites considered harmful to youth, a police survey has found.
Data was collected from 3,049 middle school students from a total of eight public and private schools in Tokyo last July in the form of a written questionnaire. Some 74 percent of the students owned cell phones, but only 36.6 percent had activated their filtering settings.
Since April 1, cell phone companies have been obligated to provide filters on cell phones sold to youth under 18 years of age. Though parents are not punishable under the law, they are required to inform cell phone companies if a phone they are purchasing is for use by a child.
Police consider parents the key to whether or not cell phone filters are used: Among the reasons given by students for not activating the filters, "Because my parents have not told me to" was highest at 42.1 percent. Likewise, the top reason for activating the filters was "Because my parents told me to" at 64.6 percent.
Filters generally fall under two main categories. "Black list" filters restrict users from viewing sites that cell phone companies have deemed harmful based on information provided by Internet research companies, while "white list" filters permit access only to study aids and other official Internet sites.
Under the "black list" system, users can access social networking site Mixi and other sites that Tokyo police are watching closely as sites that are increasingly being used as dating forums. The juvenile division of the Metropolitan Police Department is calling on parents to choose "white list" filters for their children to protect them from Internet crime.
Original articles
Data was collected from 3,049 middle school students from a total of eight public and private schools in Tokyo last July in the form of a written questionnaire. Some 74 percent of the students owned cell phones, but only 36.6 percent had activated their filtering settings.
Since April 1, cell phone companies have been obligated to provide filters on cell phones sold to youth under 18 years of age. Though parents are not punishable under the law, they are required to inform cell phone companies if a phone they are purchasing is for use by a child.
Police consider parents the key to whether or not cell phone filters are used: Among the reasons given by students for not activating the filters, "Because my parents have not told me to" was highest at 42.1 percent. Likewise, the top reason for activating the filters was "Because my parents told me to" at 64.6 percent.
Filters generally fall under two main categories. "Black list" filters restrict users from viewing sites that cell phone companies have deemed harmful based on information provided by Internet research companies, while "white list" filters permit access only to study aids and other official Internet sites.
Under the "black list" system, users can access social networking site Mixi and other sites that Tokyo police are watching closely as sites that are increasingly being used as dating forums. The juvenile division of the Metropolitan Police Department is calling on parents to choose "white list" filters for their children to protect them from Internet crime.
Original articles
Difficulties For Foreign Student To Find Jobs
Foreign students seeking work in Japan after graduation are facing difficulties in finding jobs as employment conditions deteriorate because of the economic downturn.
More than 120,000 foreign students study in Japan annually. Observers say the government should support the students's job-hunting efforts to keep them from losing interest in Japan and returning to their home countries.
One foreign student looking for work is a 24-year-old graduate student from China's Jiangsu Province who lives in Akita. She is currently looking for full-time work at a Japanese firm for after she graduates. But the search is proving difficult.
"Since I began spending my time looking for work, my standard of living has been deteriorating day by day," she said.
With no financial support from her parents, she is living only on a scholarship and a part-time job to make ends meet. With graduation looming, she decided to quit her part-time job and focus on finding full-time work. By such methods as giving up her trips home to China, she has amassed 300,000 yen in savings. But she has found herself in a hard situation without her part-time income.
On March 8, she traveled halfway across the country to Tokyo, where she attended a job fair for foreign students held near JR Hamamatsucho Station in Minato Ward. Following the event, she stayed for a week with a friend living in the capital so she could call on companies in Tokyo, but she came away empty-handed, she said.
Savings wiped out, she can no longer afford to eat out, and is saving money by cooking and eating at home whenever possible.
"I've made it a habit to seek cheap foods at supermarkets. For example, I decided not to buy enoki mushrooms, whenever they cost more than 100 yen," she said.
The student buys boxed meals at supermarkets only after they become discounted at night and takes them to school the next day for lunch.
Still, she said she is not considering returning to China. "The competition is even more intense in China than here. There are fewer jobs to go around because of the economy. I want to work in Japan to utilize what I have learned in university and graduate school during my stay here," she said.
Similar difficulties have been experienced by a 31-year-old man from South Korea who now lives in Saitama Prefecture. After graduating from a private university here in 2007, he returned home and found employment. However, he returned to Japan after his wife decided to enter a Japanese graduate school, and he began searching for a job here this year. However, he has had no luck.
"There are far fewer companies hiring than there were before. I need to find a job as soon as possible to support my wife and me, but I haven't found a good place to work," he said.
According to the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), the number of foreign students studying in Japan at universities, graduate schools and junior colleges has been on the rise in recent years. As of May 1 last year, a record 123,829 foreign students were studying in Japan, up 5,331 from the previous year. About 60 percent of the foreign students came from China, followed by students from South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, according to JASSO.
Many students from Asia hope to work in Japan. However, only 10,262 students were able to obtain working visas in 2007 after finding jobs. Many students ended up returning to their home countries after failing to find work.
The employment situation for foreign students has gone from bad to worse due to the economic downturn. According to the Tokyo Employment Service Center for Foreigners--a job-placement office for foreign residents--there were 252 job listings targeting foreign students graduating in March available at the center as of Jan. 31, down 54 from the same period last year.
According to the organization, it is mainly small and medium-size companies that seek employees through the center. However, general manager Kazuo Hirasawa said companies across the spectrum are cutting the number of foreign students they hire.
The government has announced a plan to increase the number of foreign students studying in Japan to 300,000 by 2020 to enhance the country's international competitiveness by securing excellent human resources from around the world.
However, the government's measures to support foreign students finding jobs in Japan are limited, even though this is supposed to be an integral part of the government's plan. The government is now planning to host job fairs targeting foreign students and a meeting of universities and companies interested in recruiting foreign students.
But observers say the government measures are failing to keep up with rapidly deteriorating employment conditions.
Mitsuhiro Asada, chief editor of J-Life, a free magazine targeting foreign students published by ALC Press, Inc., said: "Foreign students are integral to the future of Japan. If the government really wants to increase the number of foreign students, it needs to focus its efforts on improving the status of foreign students after they graduate--including setting a target figure for the number of foreign students hired by Japanese companies."
Foreign students receiving more assistance in job hunt
When trying to get a job in Japan after completing their higher education here, foreign students often struggle with the nation's peculiar job-hunting procedures, under which students usually start such activities as early as the latter half of their junior year and submit "entry sheets" rather than resumes to prospective employers for the first round of screening.
Many job-hunting foreign students are uncertain about how to fill in these entry sheets or how they are expected to behave during interviews.
Therefore, some universities have been taking steps to help their foreign students find jobs.
For example, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU), a private institution in Oita Prefecture whose foreign students accounts for 40 percent of the student body, regularly holds events called "Open Campus Recruiting," in which companies are invited to the campus to hold briefing sessions for foreign students and conduct recruitment tests.
During the 2007 academic year, there were about 380 sessions of the Open Campus Recruiting program.
On the other hand, Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo started to offer job-hunting support to its foreign students in October last year. The private institution has asked for help from temporary staffing agency Pasona Inc., which provides advice to these students regarding how to fill in application forms and how to behave during interviews.
In addition to these two examples, many other institutions now offer special job-hunting seminars for foreign students.
In recent years, some companies have been willing to hire more and more foreign students. Starting with new recruits for the 2008 fiscal year, Lawson Inc., for example, has been hiring foreign students under the same working conditions as their Japanese colleagues. For the fiscal year starting this month, the major convenience store chain has about 40 foreign recruits.
"We value diversity [in our workforce]," a Lawson official says of why the company has hired an increasing number of foreign students.
Diversity in the workplace is thought to encourage people to respect different values that come from differing nationality, gender and age. This is also said to enhance their creativity.
"If companies can provide foreign employees with comfortable working systems," says Masato Gunji, senior researcher at the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training, "it would become easier for them to hire other types of workers such as homemakers and the elderly."
Takashi Sakinaga
Yomiuri Shimbun
More than 120,000 foreign students study in Japan annually. Observers say the government should support the students's job-hunting efforts to keep them from losing interest in Japan and returning to their home countries.
One foreign student looking for work is a 24-year-old graduate student from China's Jiangsu Province who lives in Akita. She is currently looking for full-time work at a Japanese firm for after she graduates. But the search is proving difficult.
"Since I began spending my time looking for work, my standard of living has been deteriorating day by day," she said.
With no financial support from her parents, she is living only on a scholarship and a part-time job to make ends meet. With graduation looming, she decided to quit her part-time job and focus on finding full-time work. By such methods as giving up her trips home to China, she has amassed 300,000 yen in savings. But she has found herself in a hard situation without her part-time income.
On March 8, she traveled halfway across the country to Tokyo, where she attended a job fair for foreign students held near JR Hamamatsucho Station in Minato Ward. Following the event, she stayed for a week with a friend living in the capital so she could call on companies in Tokyo, but she came away empty-handed, she said.
Savings wiped out, she can no longer afford to eat out, and is saving money by cooking and eating at home whenever possible.
"I've made it a habit to seek cheap foods at supermarkets. For example, I decided not to buy enoki mushrooms, whenever they cost more than 100 yen," she said.
The student buys boxed meals at supermarkets only after they become discounted at night and takes them to school the next day for lunch.
Still, she said she is not considering returning to China. "The competition is even more intense in China than here. There are fewer jobs to go around because of the economy. I want to work in Japan to utilize what I have learned in university and graduate school during my stay here," she said.
Similar difficulties have been experienced by a 31-year-old man from South Korea who now lives in Saitama Prefecture. After graduating from a private university here in 2007, he returned home and found employment. However, he returned to Japan after his wife decided to enter a Japanese graduate school, and he began searching for a job here this year. However, he has had no luck.
"There are far fewer companies hiring than there were before. I need to find a job as soon as possible to support my wife and me, but I haven't found a good place to work," he said.
According to the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO), the number of foreign students studying in Japan at universities, graduate schools and junior colleges has been on the rise in recent years. As of May 1 last year, a record 123,829 foreign students were studying in Japan, up 5,331 from the previous year. About 60 percent of the foreign students came from China, followed by students from South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, according to JASSO.
Many students from Asia hope to work in Japan. However, only 10,262 students were able to obtain working visas in 2007 after finding jobs. Many students ended up returning to their home countries after failing to find work.
The employment situation for foreign students has gone from bad to worse due to the economic downturn. According to the Tokyo Employment Service Center for Foreigners--a job-placement office for foreign residents--there were 252 job listings targeting foreign students graduating in March available at the center as of Jan. 31, down 54 from the same period last year.
According to the organization, it is mainly small and medium-size companies that seek employees through the center. However, general manager Kazuo Hirasawa said companies across the spectrum are cutting the number of foreign students they hire.
The government has announced a plan to increase the number of foreign students studying in Japan to 300,000 by 2020 to enhance the country's international competitiveness by securing excellent human resources from around the world.
However, the government's measures to support foreign students finding jobs in Japan are limited, even though this is supposed to be an integral part of the government's plan. The government is now planning to host job fairs targeting foreign students and a meeting of universities and companies interested in recruiting foreign students.
But observers say the government measures are failing to keep up with rapidly deteriorating employment conditions.
Mitsuhiro Asada, chief editor of J-Life, a free magazine targeting foreign students published by ALC Press, Inc., said: "Foreign students are integral to the future of Japan. If the government really wants to increase the number of foreign students, it needs to focus its efforts on improving the status of foreign students after they graduate--including setting a target figure for the number of foreign students hired by Japanese companies."
Foreign students receiving more assistance in job hunt
When trying to get a job in Japan after completing their higher education here, foreign students often struggle with the nation's peculiar job-hunting procedures, under which students usually start such activities as early as the latter half of their junior year and submit "entry sheets" rather than resumes to prospective employers for the first round of screening.
Many job-hunting foreign students are uncertain about how to fill in these entry sheets or how they are expected to behave during interviews.
Therefore, some universities have been taking steps to help their foreign students find jobs.
For example, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU), a private institution in Oita Prefecture whose foreign students accounts for 40 percent of the student body, regularly holds events called "Open Campus Recruiting," in which companies are invited to the campus to hold briefing sessions for foreign students and conduct recruitment tests.
During the 2007 academic year, there were about 380 sessions of the Open Campus Recruiting program.
On the other hand, Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo started to offer job-hunting support to its foreign students in October last year. The private institution has asked for help from temporary staffing agency Pasona Inc., which provides advice to these students regarding how to fill in application forms and how to behave during interviews.
In addition to these two examples, many other institutions now offer special job-hunting seminars for foreign students.
In recent years, some companies have been willing to hire more and more foreign students. Starting with new recruits for the 2008 fiscal year, Lawson Inc., for example, has been hiring foreign students under the same working conditions as their Japanese colleagues. For the fiscal year starting this month, the major convenience store chain has about 40 foreign recruits.
"We value diversity [in our workforce]," a Lawson official says of why the company has hired an increasing number of foreign students.
Diversity in the workplace is thought to encourage people to respect different values that come from differing nationality, gender and age. This is also said to enhance their creativity.
"If companies can provide foreign employees with comfortable working systems," says Masato Gunji, senior researcher at the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training, "it would become easier for them to hire other types of workers such as homemakers and the elderly."
Takashi Sakinaga
Yomiuri Shimbun
Teacher Suicides and the Future of Japanese Education
The quality and elan of primary and secondary education have long been regarded as among the achievements of postwar Japan. Journalist Hiratate Hideaki uses the window of increasing teacher suicides to probe recent changes in education that have placed many of Japan's finest teachers on a collision course with their principles, supervisors, and ultimately the Japanese state. The author shows how a combination of the new nationalism, neo-liberal criteria for teacher assessment, and increased demands on teachers have brought about a situation in which large numbers of teachers are succumbing to mental illness, committing suicide, or taking early retirement. These articles appeared in the July 4 and August 29, 2003 issues of Shukan Kinyobi
Part 1: Why Are Teacher Suicides Increasing?
"Yumiko, I'm sorry. I'm a bit tired from work at school."
It was on January 24, 1983 that Kikuchi Akinori, then 29, a teacher at Heita Elementary School in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, left his wife this note and took his own life.
This was the day he was to deliver the final draft of the teaching plan for an open session of a class in moral education that was scheduled for February 4. But when Akinori left his home that morning he did not head for school, but instead went missing. Two weeks after his disappearance, on February 6, he was founded hanging by the neck in a mountain forest in a neighboring town.
In 1987, his wife Yumiko, now 52, filed an application with the prefectural branch of the public employee accident compensation fund to have his death recognized as a work-related accident. She maintained that the cause of the suicide was Akinori's forced participation in the public moral education class, which violated his educational philosophy, and that he suffered from "reactive depression" due to an excessive workload.
However, the following year the death was ruled nonwork-related, and requests for the branch office of the fund to reexamine the case were rejected. Then in 1992, Yumiko filed suit in the Morioka District Court to overturn the nonwork-related determination. This administrative case represented the first time that the courts would rule on whether or not a teacher's suicide from overwork constituted a work-related accident.
Distress over the Open Moral Education Class
Akinori was assigned to Heita Elementary School in April 1982. It was his seventh year of teaching and the first time he had been given a first grade class to teach.
Heita Elementary School had been designated a trial school for moral education by the city board of education, and open sessions of the moral education class had been held during the 1980 and 1981 school years. The principal at the time placed a great deal of importance on moral education and decided on his own initiative to hold open sessions again during the 1982 school year. The session scheduled for February 4, 1983 had been assigned to Akinori.
What distressed Akinori was the approach used in the moral education class. This had been dubbed the "Heita method" and involved dividing the class into groups of "good," "bad," and "normal" children, and then conducting the class with children from each of the groups. Akinori had serious doubts about this discriminatory approach. However, the evaluation of the school depended on the success of the public sessions. Under this psychological pressure, Akinori had begun to suffer headaches and low-grade fevers in the first term of the year.
During the second term, in addition to a daily workload that exceeded eight hours without a break, there were preparations for the school excursion and class performances. On top of this, there were 26 meetings of an in-school study group to prepare for the open sessions, and Akinori led study classes in Japanese and moral education in November. Beginning around this time, he was often up past one in the morning preparing teaching materials, and he was unable to get sufficient sleep. His appetite diminished and his weight fell from 57 kilos (125 pounds) to 52 (114). Yumiko encouraged him to see a doctor but he refused, saying that everything "would have to wait until after the moral education class." He began to show his agony over the class, saying, "Dividing [children] into superior, average, and inferior is something I can't do." When asked about the opening ceremony for the beginning of the third term [in January], he responded with a dull "What?"
Two days before he disappeared, on Saturday, January 22, Akinori had been ordered by the principal to revise his teaching plan. Afterwards he was observed by a colleague, standing alone on a landing of the school stairs. Then on Monday the 24th, carrying the teaching plan he had polished the day before, he disappeared.
Despite the fact that Akinori was missing, the open session took place as planned on February 4, with another teacher in the lead. It is easy to imagine, given the coldness of the school's response, that their sole purpose was to successfully carry off the public class.
In 2001, the district court determined that Akinori's death was work-related on the grounds that he "had been assigned duties against his wishes" and that "he suffered depression and committed suicide as a result of an excessive workload." It was a victory for Yumiko, and an epoch-making decision that recognized the qualitative side of teaching as a profession.
However, in December of 2002, the Sendai High Court overturned the lower court decision. "Teaching plans for moral education classes had been developed even by inexperienced teachers, and this burden was not just placed on Akinori," the court reasoned, applying the "collegial standard." One wonders if the heavy responsibility of a teacher in forming children's character or a teacher's internal anguish is something that can be measured by a collegial standard.
Last year, nineteen years after Akinori's death, a male junior high-school teacher in his 30s hanged himself in the same city of Kamaishi. He had been diagnosed with anxiety depression. Psychological disorders among teachers have gotten progressively more serious.
Victims of Managed Education
According to statistics released by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, the number of teachers on temporary leave for psychological disorders has more than doubled in the last decade--from 1,017 in 1990 to 2,503 in 2001, which represents an increase from 27 percent to 48 percent of all medical leaves.
Meanwhile, since the total number of employed teachers decreased by more than 70,000 over the same decade, the percentage of teachers taking medical leave for psychological reasons has increased even more dramatically (from 0.10 percent to 0.27 percent of the total teacher workforce).
Ota Hiroyuki (a pseudonym for a teacher in his 50s) developed depression soon after being appointed senior teacher [an administrative position] at a junior high school. During his years as a teacher, he had never been depressed, even when his ribs were broken as a result of student violence. Dealing directly with children had always buoyed his spirit.
Ota was a dedicated teacher and, with the encouragement of his principal, he decided to pursue an administrative position. However, in his training prior to his appointment as senior teacher, he was drilled in the proper administrative frame of mind, which included directing teachers to display the national flag and require the singing of the national anthem, and putting an end to teachers' at-home training [a practice whereby secondary school teachers are allowed stay-at-home days to conduct individual research or study]. Ota sensed a wide gap between these directives and his own philosophy of education. As an individual educator, these demands from the administration were the very things he had always had a hard time accepting.
Having assumed the position of senior teacher, Ota no longer had direct contact with students. The senior teacher's job was to take care of all the complicated tasks that were not covered by other job assignments in the administration. He found himself swamped with work, even on weekends, negotiating with the PTA and the district and taking care of office work that had little to do with education. He rarely got a day off.
The anguish he felt increased when, with the introduction of a merit-rating system, he was required to rank the teachers on the school's staff. He was increasingly unable to sleep and began taking tranquilizers.
According to Ota, "I didn't know how I could divide the teachers [according to their performance]. I hadn't actually seen the teachers at work, so it would be just an impressionistic evaluation. It was painful to think that [because of my evaluation] a good teacher could be destroyed."
About two years after assuming his post, Ota became psychologically stressed and began to suspect that he suffered from depression. He lost interest in things, and his smile disappeared. He had no difficulty with mechanical paperwork, but he was entirely unable to perform tasks like writing. He became unable to think. Finally everything he saw began to appear sepia-colored.
He was diagnosed with depression and hospitalized, which only increased his suffering. He began to think, "[It's my fault] that the burden on the principal has increased. It's my responsibility if I collapse." He fell into a state of distraction with anxiety and impatience about returning to work. It took an entire year before he recovered. Today, Ota has been allowed to step down from his administrative position and to return to the classroom as a teacher.
"[Having returned to the classroom,] I feel the pleasure of teaching. Without freedom and responsibility, you can't have good education. But nowadays, everything is supervised . . ." The words of Ota, a man who has struggled with managed education.
With managed education, which robs teachers of their discretion, free education is not remotely possible. This kind of workplace environment is a breeding ground for depression.
Teachers Face Serious Health Problems
"It is a big mistake to label teachers who are on leave [for psychological disorders] as unqualified. Teachers have a strong orientation toward model behavior; they think, 'If I try hard, I'll manage.' [Nearly all of the teachers who come for treatment] think only of the children. They are trusted by the students and their parents. Lazy teachers don't get sick."
These are the words of Nyu Seiji, a doctor at Oita Kyowa Hospital who is knowledgeable about psychological disorders among teachers. According to Dr. Nyu, most of these dedicated teachers suffer from chronic fatigue. That they try to accomplish the physically impossible is not unrelated to an educational system that encourages their exertion. This is the context that results in the most serious and sensible teachers developing psychological problems.
For example, it is not at all unusual for a doctor to prescribe complete rest and tell a teacher, "I'll write you a medical report," only to be told, "I can't rest until I've finished my report cards." In the end, the teacher collapses and has to be hospitalized. These teachers have fallen into a desensitized state, where they are unable to recognize their own exhaustion.
Consequently, treatment also takes longer for teachers. Complete recovery in six months is considered fast, and some take as long as two years. Patients hospitalized with severe cases will, under medication, sleep fifteen hours a day for a month. This is an indication of how much their fatigue has accumulated. Dr. Nyu works at getting the patients to recognize the limits of their physical strength and to develop "the courage to rest when they're in pain."
Behind the spread of chronic fatigue among teachers is the problem of increased workloads. The introduction of the five-day school week last year has meant that work that was accomplished in six days must now be taken care of in five, resulting in the congestion of the class schedule. During the hours children are at school, there are effectively no breaks or rest periods. Teachers are on their feet all day, in some cases unable even to get a drink of water between classes. Paper work, meetings, and planning sessions are concentrated in the hours after school, so the job doesn't end during work hours. As a consequence, the preparation of handouts and grading of papers have to be done at home, and the long hours of work become an everyday matter. Saturday and Sunday are filled with preparing teaching plans and materials for the following week.
According to a survey conducted in October 2002 by the Japan Teachers Union (Nikkyoso), teachers averaged ten hours a week of service outside of regular work hours (not including compensated extra duty for such things as school events), and an additional nine hours of catch-up work at home. Further, 74.4 percent of teachers responded that they were unable to rest during their break time.
Teachers are also unable to obtain sufficient sleep. In an All Japan Teachers and Staff Union (Zenkyo) survey, teachers average six hours, eleven minutes of sleep a night, with about 40 percent reporting less than six hours. In addition, more than 80 percent reported feeling "anxiety, distress, or stress" about their work.
As a result of lack of sleep, there are many accidents such as slipping on the stairs at school and breaking bones. And the reality is that, when teachers' fatigue accumulates they are unable to take time off because of the shortage of substitute teachers. Given this state of affairs, increasing numbers of teachers now retire before retirement age because they reach their physical and psychological limits. The Zenkyo survey reported that 53 percent of teachers think about quitting sometimes or often; the most commonly cited reasons were "I am too busy with work" and "I can't take it physically."
One elementary school teacher (a man in his 50s) reported, "There have been teachers who collapsed in the classroom or in the toilet at school. Last year, among only people I know, four teachers died. It strikes very close to home." In the ZenkyOo survey, some 58 percent of teachers reported feeling anxiety about death from overwork.
A work environment that robs teachers of healthy body and spirit is abnormal. The fact that teachers are worked as if they were pack horses gives us a glimpse of the intentions of a country that wants to have its own way with education.
* * *
Last December, Kikuchi Yumiko appealed, moving the stage for the suit over Akinori's accident compensation to the Supreme Court. "I don't want anyone else to suffer what we have gone through as a family," comments Yumiko, who is herself an active-duty teacher.
The history of the recognition of workers' accidents is, at the same time, the history of many victims. In the effort to sound a warning over the severe working environment that teachers are placed in, Akinori's death must not be in vain.
What is Happening to Education in Hiroshima?
Keitoku Kazuhiro, 56, the principal of Takasugi Elementary School in the city of Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, took his own life on March 9 of this year. It was a suicide caused by overwork.
In March 2002 Keitoku had been brought in from the private sector to work as a principal, as part of an experimental initiative to introduce new leadership in the schools. However, he was subjected to such an arduous workload that he was diagnosed with depression just a month and a half after he assumed his post. According to a survey by the Hiroshima Teachers Union, administrators work more than 150 hours of overtime in most months. At a time when two senior teachers had collapsed from overwork in succession, Keitoku was crushed under a total of 370 reports required by the city board of education. Just before his suicide, Keitoku was working an average of over seven hours of overtime a day.
Keitoku's tragedy was widely reported in the media and is fresh in memory. However, the death from overwork of a junior high school teacher in the same city of Onomichi six months earlier is not well known. Keitoku was not the only one swamped by work under the banner of educational reform.
Collapsing in Front of the Students
Nishikawa Osamu, then 54 and a teacher at Kurihara Junior High School in Onomichi, died in September 2002 of an acute brain hemorrhage. Fond of saying, "Unless you can loosen up, there can't be good teaching," he was well-trusted by those around him. At the same time, he often complained, "You can't raise children on supervision alone. We've lost the flexibility to arrange things so we can nurture." Discouraged about the possibility of teaching according to his ideals, he had decided he would take early retirement in March 2003.
Nishikawa was a home-room teacher for second-year students and taught five Japanese classes. On the side, he also counseled students, supervised the health service, and managed planning for the annual class trip.
A new national course of study was issued in 2002, at the same time that the school week was shortened to five days, and the teaching schedule was compressed. At the same time, Onomichi city school teachers were required to prepare syllabuses and weekly lesson plans, and the preparation of massive numbers of surveys and reports was added to the teachers' heavy burden.
On top of all of this, last year marked the full implementation of a program called Onomichi Education Plan 21. This Onomichi take on educational reform aimed to achieve the top level in compulsory education. Its components, introduced in quick succession, included the "one school, one inquiry" program to build schools with particular characters; a general studies program of making study trips to workplaces; and compulsory open-session moral education classes, along with national academic standards testing to ensure solid achievement. The program encouraged competition among the schools and overwhelmed the schools with work.
It appears that Nishikawa entered the new school year under stress, concerned that the new course of study did not allot enough time for the study of Japanese, while new texts arrived just before school began, allowing him little time to prepare. In addition, there were daily meetings at the start of the school year to wrestle with the implementation of the workplace study trip program.
During the first term, Nishikawa was pressed with preparations both for the school athletic day and for the class trip. Training for the athletic meet took place during an intense heat wave, and around that time he began to complain of headaches and pain in the neck. He brought increasing loads of work home at night, and several days before he collapsed, he had a stack of 200 student essays to read and critique, in addition to planning for the class trip. He took to saying, "I'm tired. Weary." When his family encouraged him to take some time off, he refused, "I can't until after the meeting on the class trip." On his way to class the day before he died, Nishikawa tripped on the stairs. A colleague who saw him picking up chalk soon afterward remembers that his movement was sluggish.
The next day, September 26, the meeting to explain the class trip to the students and their guardians took place in the school gym. Just a few minutes after the meeting began, Nishikawa collapsed suddenly. He was taken to the hospital, but he was already in a coma.
Nishikawa had collapsed in front of a large number of students. It was undoubtedly a great shock to many people. But, according to a colleague, "Within a week, everything returned to normal at the school, as if nothing had happened." This too is an indication of how, pressed to the wall by their work, his colleagues were unable to indulge their emotions.
There Is Not Even Inner Freedom
"I should have quit two years ago. I can't teach the way I want to. Old bones, make way!" Nishikawa spoke this way to people around him. In these words, we can see clearly the state of education in Hiroshima.
The number of young retirees among teachers and administrators in Hiroshima has been steadily increasing. Early retirees, according to prefectural board of education statistics, averaged about 93 per year in the late 1990s, but soared to 162 in 2002. This is because, as Nishikawa said, teachers "can't teach the way they want to." For example, given the required submission of syllabi and lesson plans, teachers can't deviate from the bounds of the national course of study. Further, like corporate competition over business results, everything has been reduced to numerical measures. Schools have become like factories, and education based on the teacher's discretion has become impossible.
The increased supervision of education in Hiroshima Prefecture was begun in response to a reform directive issued by the Ministry of Education in 1998. The immediate cause was the practice of some of the schools in the city of Fukuyama of listing the moral education course as "Human Rights" and kokugo, the "national language," which is how Japanese language and literature classes are referred to in elementary and secondary schools, as "Japanese" in the class schedule. This was a deviation from the national course of study, and the prefectural board of education was directed to report for the next three years on the status of rectification efforts. The reports were required to cover thirteen topics in both educational content and school administration. The items included not only the name and content of moral education classes, but such matters as whether the national flag was displayed at school ceremonies, whether the national anthem was taught and sung, the supervision of teachers' work and their hours, and the management of teachers meetings.
Hiroshima has a long history of conducting peace education, as the site of the atomic bombing, and dowa education, aimed at eliminating discrimination against Burakumin. These programs were developed and approved independently by the educational administration, working in association with a variety of organizations. However, after the reform directive, the prefectural board of education declared that "a variety of compromises were made necessary in the course of negotiations with teachers' organizations, dowa education research associations, and various activist groups, and the neutrality of education was compromised." This represented a 180 degree reversal of the policy. Dowa education was now considered deviant.
To begin with, the authority of the principal as a supervisor was reinforced. Teachers' meetings became an extension of the principal, with a strengthened chain of authority to transmit his directives. There were principals who declared, "Those who don't follow my direction are no longer needed at this school," and democratic operation of the schools became increasingly difficult. According to one teacher, a principal baldly said, "Why don't you just quit?" when he handed out the monthly pay slip. Relations among teachers were strained, as they were made to compete to prove their loyalty to the administrators.
The rectification directive was an authoritarian document that implied that those who did not conform would be punished, and that supervision and control were indications of loyalty to the Ministry of Education. The absolute policy regarding the national flag and anthem at graduation and entrance ceremonies is an example. The report form sent to all school principals by the prefectural board of education required detailed information in response to such questions as, "Was the flag displayed at the front of the stage?" and "Did the singing of the anthem echo across the ceremony hall?" In the "Principal's Handbook" there was even a manual, in question and answer format, for how to deal with teachers who refused to stand for the national anthem. In this manner, 100 percent of public high schools in Hiroshima Prefecture were brought into compliance.
There are reports of a principal who called the parents of a child who remained seated during the singing of "Kimigayo." There were those who took photographs of teachers as they were singing to record how widely they opened their mouths. Someone connected to a PTA came into a classroom one day suddenly and demanded, "You're the teacher who sat during the singing of 'Kimigayo,' and you have the nerve to think you can teach!"--what amounted to a regional surveillance of teachers' speech and conduct. And, in February 1999, Ishikawa Toshihiro, the principal of Sera High School, committed suicide as a result of contention over the national flag/anthem issue.
Managed education has taken hold in Hiroshima Prefecture to such an extent that people have been robbed of their internal freedom, but is this problem peculiar to Hiroshima?
Educational Reform Sans Children
"[What happens in Hiroshima] has become a test case for educational reform in all of Japan. If the government was to move ahead with educational reform, peace education was an obstacle and it was necessary to crush dowa education."
These are the words of Ishioka Osamu, secretary-general of the Hiroshima Teachers Union. Many teachers describe Hiroshima as having been made the laboratory or, alternatively, the breach point for educational reform.
Presently, the government is preparing to embark on educational reform of radical proportions, perhaps encompassing revision of the Fundamental Law of Education. One can sense the government's enthusiasm for reform as a great national movement in its official plan, "Educational Reform for the 21st Century" [issued in January 2002]. Its fundamental perspective is that "there is a spreading tendency to place too much emphasis on the individual while neglecting the 'public'. . . . The standardization of education due to excessive egalitarianism . . . has tended to push aside education geared to fit the individuality or capabilities of children." It seeks to introduce principles of selection and competition into school education. The Onomichi Education Plan 21, with its school evaluation system, can be seen as the vanguard of nationwide educational reform.
What, then, is the situation in the schools themselves? According to Imatani Kenji, secretary-general of the other teachers association, the All Hiroshima Teachers and Staff Union, "The distinguishing feature of the rectification directive and [Hiroshima's] educational reform, is that it is all about the form education ought to take, but children are absent from the discussion. We should be talking about what should be done for the children of Hiroshima."
Teachers are being driven into competition between schools and into a race for meeting numerical goals, and they are increasingly unable to engage their students. And in order to meet their numerical goals, they are increasingly forced to interact with children in mechanical and managerial ways.
At the same time, teachers are swamped with the burgeoning surveys and reports sent down from the prefecture and city. The question of whether teachers can finish their work or not has become one of how quickly they can move children from task to task and perform their many clerical tasks. In the words of the Hiroshima Teachers Union's Ishioka, "With the mountain of paperwork faced by teachers in the classroom, they have no sense that they are actually teaching. It's work performed to the neglect of children."
This has given rise to a situation where, when children come to ask a teacher to clarify something, the response is, "Ask that during the class," or "I'm to busy to look at that."
This situation, where an extreme workload can eat away at teachers' psychological health, is reflected in the number of Hiroshima teachers taking leaves for psychological reasons, which has increased steadily in the years since the rectification directive was issued in 1998: where psychological leaves stood at 69 during the 1997 school year (36 percent of all medical leaves), by 2001 they had increased to 116 (45 percent of the total). Last year, in one elementary school in the city of Fukuyama, six of fifteen teachers took leave for treatment of psychological disorders. One class went through four primary teachers in half a year.
Mr. A, a guidance counselor at a prefectural high school, committed suicide in April of 2001. "Nipping [students] in the bud is not education. What have I been doing [as a teacher] all these years? You're too cold. I quit," Mr. A declared at a meeting to determine whether or not students would pass into the next grade. Several days later he killed himself. During the meeting there had been a confrontation among a number of teachers over failing a particular student. Mr. A's protest was against the application of a hard and fast deadline, when just a day of remedial work would have allowed the student to pass. At this same high school, nine months after Mr. A's death, another teacher who had been on long-term medical leave committed suicide.
According to a Hiroshima Teachers Union survey, twelve educators in the prefecture committed suicide between 1999 and the present. Of these, five were principals, one was a senior teacher, and the remaining six were classroom teachers.
Intensified supervision and control under the rectification directive has lead to numerous suicides and medical leaves. And Hiroshima's educational reform is quickly becoming a test case for "selective, competitive" educational model that the government is trying to implement nationally. It is a frantically driven form of education under the banner of "liberalization." Hiroshima's educational reform--in the absence of children--is the shape of things to come in the near future for Japanese education.
Translation for Japan Focus by John Junkerman.
http://www.japanfocus.org
Part 1: Why Are Teacher Suicides Increasing?
"Yumiko, I'm sorry. I'm a bit tired from work at school."
It was on January 24, 1983 that Kikuchi Akinori, then 29, a teacher at Heita Elementary School in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, left his wife this note and took his own life.
This was the day he was to deliver the final draft of the teaching plan for an open session of a class in moral education that was scheduled for February 4. But when Akinori left his home that morning he did not head for school, but instead went missing. Two weeks after his disappearance, on February 6, he was founded hanging by the neck in a mountain forest in a neighboring town.
In 1987, his wife Yumiko, now 52, filed an application with the prefectural branch of the public employee accident compensation fund to have his death recognized as a work-related accident. She maintained that the cause of the suicide was Akinori's forced participation in the public moral education class, which violated his educational philosophy, and that he suffered from "reactive depression" due to an excessive workload.
However, the following year the death was ruled nonwork-related, and requests for the branch office of the fund to reexamine the case were rejected. Then in 1992, Yumiko filed suit in the Morioka District Court to overturn the nonwork-related determination. This administrative case represented the first time that the courts would rule on whether or not a teacher's suicide from overwork constituted a work-related accident.
Distress over the Open Moral Education Class
Akinori was assigned to Heita Elementary School in April 1982. It was his seventh year of teaching and the first time he had been given a first grade class to teach.
Heita Elementary School had been designated a trial school for moral education by the city board of education, and open sessions of the moral education class had been held during the 1980 and 1981 school years. The principal at the time placed a great deal of importance on moral education and decided on his own initiative to hold open sessions again during the 1982 school year. The session scheduled for February 4, 1983 had been assigned to Akinori.
What distressed Akinori was the approach used in the moral education class. This had been dubbed the "Heita method" and involved dividing the class into groups of "good," "bad," and "normal" children, and then conducting the class with children from each of the groups. Akinori had serious doubts about this discriminatory approach. However, the evaluation of the school depended on the success of the public sessions. Under this psychological pressure, Akinori had begun to suffer headaches and low-grade fevers in the first term of the year.
During the second term, in addition to a daily workload that exceeded eight hours without a break, there were preparations for the school excursion and class performances. On top of this, there were 26 meetings of an in-school study group to prepare for the open sessions, and Akinori led study classes in Japanese and moral education in November. Beginning around this time, he was often up past one in the morning preparing teaching materials, and he was unable to get sufficient sleep. His appetite diminished and his weight fell from 57 kilos (125 pounds) to 52 (114). Yumiko encouraged him to see a doctor but he refused, saying that everything "would have to wait until after the moral education class." He began to show his agony over the class, saying, "Dividing [children] into superior, average, and inferior is something I can't do." When asked about the opening ceremony for the beginning of the third term [in January], he responded with a dull "What?"
Two days before he disappeared, on Saturday, January 22, Akinori had been ordered by the principal to revise his teaching plan. Afterwards he was observed by a colleague, standing alone on a landing of the school stairs. Then on Monday the 24th, carrying the teaching plan he had polished the day before, he disappeared.
Despite the fact that Akinori was missing, the open session took place as planned on February 4, with another teacher in the lead. It is easy to imagine, given the coldness of the school's response, that their sole purpose was to successfully carry off the public class.
In 2001, the district court determined that Akinori's death was work-related on the grounds that he "had been assigned duties against his wishes" and that "he suffered depression and committed suicide as a result of an excessive workload." It was a victory for Yumiko, and an epoch-making decision that recognized the qualitative side of teaching as a profession.
However, in December of 2002, the Sendai High Court overturned the lower court decision. "Teaching plans for moral education classes had been developed even by inexperienced teachers, and this burden was not just placed on Akinori," the court reasoned, applying the "collegial standard." One wonders if the heavy responsibility of a teacher in forming children's character or a teacher's internal anguish is something that can be measured by a collegial standard.
Last year, nineteen years after Akinori's death, a male junior high-school teacher in his 30s hanged himself in the same city of Kamaishi. He had been diagnosed with anxiety depression. Psychological disorders among teachers have gotten progressively more serious.
Victims of Managed Education
According to statistics released by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, the number of teachers on temporary leave for psychological disorders has more than doubled in the last decade--from 1,017 in 1990 to 2,503 in 2001, which represents an increase from 27 percent to 48 percent of all medical leaves.
Meanwhile, since the total number of employed teachers decreased by more than 70,000 over the same decade, the percentage of teachers taking medical leave for psychological reasons has increased even more dramatically (from 0.10 percent to 0.27 percent of the total teacher workforce).
Ota Hiroyuki (a pseudonym for a teacher in his 50s) developed depression soon after being appointed senior teacher [an administrative position] at a junior high school. During his years as a teacher, he had never been depressed, even when his ribs were broken as a result of student violence. Dealing directly with children had always buoyed his spirit.
Ota was a dedicated teacher and, with the encouragement of his principal, he decided to pursue an administrative position. However, in his training prior to his appointment as senior teacher, he was drilled in the proper administrative frame of mind, which included directing teachers to display the national flag and require the singing of the national anthem, and putting an end to teachers' at-home training [a practice whereby secondary school teachers are allowed stay-at-home days to conduct individual research or study]. Ota sensed a wide gap between these directives and his own philosophy of education. As an individual educator, these demands from the administration were the very things he had always had a hard time accepting.
Having assumed the position of senior teacher, Ota no longer had direct contact with students. The senior teacher's job was to take care of all the complicated tasks that were not covered by other job assignments in the administration. He found himself swamped with work, even on weekends, negotiating with the PTA and the district and taking care of office work that had little to do with education. He rarely got a day off.
The anguish he felt increased when, with the introduction of a merit-rating system, he was required to rank the teachers on the school's staff. He was increasingly unable to sleep and began taking tranquilizers.
According to Ota, "I didn't know how I could divide the teachers [according to their performance]. I hadn't actually seen the teachers at work, so it would be just an impressionistic evaluation. It was painful to think that [because of my evaluation] a good teacher could be destroyed."
About two years after assuming his post, Ota became psychologically stressed and began to suspect that he suffered from depression. He lost interest in things, and his smile disappeared. He had no difficulty with mechanical paperwork, but he was entirely unable to perform tasks like writing. He became unable to think. Finally everything he saw began to appear sepia-colored.
He was diagnosed with depression and hospitalized, which only increased his suffering. He began to think, "[It's my fault] that the burden on the principal has increased. It's my responsibility if I collapse." He fell into a state of distraction with anxiety and impatience about returning to work. It took an entire year before he recovered. Today, Ota has been allowed to step down from his administrative position and to return to the classroom as a teacher.
"[Having returned to the classroom,] I feel the pleasure of teaching. Without freedom and responsibility, you can't have good education. But nowadays, everything is supervised . . ." The words of Ota, a man who has struggled with managed education.
With managed education, which robs teachers of their discretion, free education is not remotely possible. This kind of workplace environment is a breeding ground for depression.
Teachers Face Serious Health Problems
"It is a big mistake to label teachers who are on leave [for psychological disorders] as unqualified. Teachers have a strong orientation toward model behavior; they think, 'If I try hard, I'll manage.' [Nearly all of the teachers who come for treatment] think only of the children. They are trusted by the students and their parents. Lazy teachers don't get sick."
These are the words of Nyu Seiji, a doctor at Oita Kyowa Hospital who is knowledgeable about psychological disorders among teachers. According to Dr. Nyu, most of these dedicated teachers suffer from chronic fatigue. That they try to accomplish the physically impossible is not unrelated to an educational system that encourages their exertion. This is the context that results in the most serious and sensible teachers developing psychological problems.
For example, it is not at all unusual for a doctor to prescribe complete rest and tell a teacher, "I'll write you a medical report," only to be told, "I can't rest until I've finished my report cards." In the end, the teacher collapses and has to be hospitalized. These teachers have fallen into a desensitized state, where they are unable to recognize their own exhaustion.
Consequently, treatment also takes longer for teachers. Complete recovery in six months is considered fast, and some take as long as two years. Patients hospitalized with severe cases will, under medication, sleep fifteen hours a day for a month. This is an indication of how much their fatigue has accumulated. Dr. Nyu works at getting the patients to recognize the limits of their physical strength and to develop "the courage to rest when they're in pain."
Behind the spread of chronic fatigue among teachers is the problem of increased workloads. The introduction of the five-day school week last year has meant that work that was accomplished in six days must now be taken care of in five, resulting in the congestion of the class schedule. During the hours children are at school, there are effectively no breaks or rest periods. Teachers are on their feet all day, in some cases unable even to get a drink of water between classes. Paper work, meetings, and planning sessions are concentrated in the hours after school, so the job doesn't end during work hours. As a consequence, the preparation of handouts and grading of papers have to be done at home, and the long hours of work become an everyday matter. Saturday and Sunday are filled with preparing teaching plans and materials for the following week.
According to a survey conducted in October 2002 by the Japan Teachers Union (Nikkyoso), teachers averaged ten hours a week of service outside of regular work hours (not including compensated extra duty for such things as school events), and an additional nine hours of catch-up work at home. Further, 74.4 percent of teachers responded that they were unable to rest during their break time.
Teachers are also unable to obtain sufficient sleep. In an All Japan Teachers and Staff Union (Zenkyo) survey, teachers average six hours, eleven minutes of sleep a night, with about 40 percent reporting less than six hours. In addition, more than 80 percent reported feeling "anxiety, distress, or stress" about their work.
As a result of lack of sleep, there are many accidents such as slipping on the stairs at school and breaking bones. And the reality is that, when teachers' fatigue accumulates they are unable to take time off because of the shortage of substitute teachers. Given this state of affairs, increasing numbers of teachers now retire before retirement age because they reach their physical and psychological limits. The Zenkyo survey reported that 53 percent of teachers think about quitting sometimes or often; the most commonly cited reasons were "I am too busy with work" and "I can't take it physically."
One elementary school teacher (a man in his 50s) reported, "There have been teachers who collapsed in the classroom or in the toilet at school. Last year, among only people I know, four teachers died. It strikes very close to home." In the ZenkyOo survey, some 58 percent of teachers reported feeling anxiety about death from overwork.
A work environment that robs teachers of healthy body and spirit is abnormal. The fact that teachers are worked as if they were pack horses gives us a glimpse of the intentions of a country that wants to have its own way with education.
* * *
Last December, Kikuchi Yumiko appealed, moving the stage for the suit over Akinori's accident compensation to the Supreme Court. "I don't want anyone else to suffer what we have gone through as a family," comments Yumiko, who is herself an active-duty teacher.
The history of the recognition of workers' accidents is, at the same time, the history of many victims. In the effort to sound a warning over the severe working environment that teachers are placed in, Akinori's death must not be in vain.
What is Happening to Education in Hiroshima?
Keitoku Kazuhiro, 56, the principal of Takasugi Elementary School in the city of Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, took his own life on March 9 of this year. It was a suicide caused by overwork.
In March 2002 Keitoku had been brought in from the private sector to work as a principal, as part of an experimental initiative to introduce new leadership in the schools. However, he was subjected to such an arduous workload that he was diagnosed with depression just a month and a half after he assumed his post. According to a survey by the Hiroshima Teachers Union, administrators work more than 150 hours of overtime in most months. At a time when two senior teachers had collapsed from overwork in succession, Keitoku was crushed under a total of 370 reports required by the city board of education. Just before his suicide, Keitoku was working an average of over seven hours of overtime a day.
Keitoku's tragedy was widely reported in the media and is fresh in memory. However, the death from overwork of a junior high school teacher in the same city of Onomichi six months earlier is not well known. Keitoku was not the only one swamped by work under the banner of educational reform.
Collapsing in Front of the Students
Nishikawa Osamu, then 54 and a teacher at Kurihara Junior High School in Onomichi, died in September 2002 of an acute brain hemorrhage. Fond of saying, "Unless you can loosen up, there can't be good teaching," he was well-trusted by those around him. At the same time, he often complained, "You can't raise children on supervision alone. We've lost the flexibility to arrange things so we can nurture." Discouraged about the possibility of teaching according to his ideals, he had decided he would take early retirement in March 2003.
Nishikawa was a home-room teacher for second-year students and taught five Japanese classes. On the side, he also counseled students, supervised the health service, and managed planning for the annual class trip.
A new national course of study was issued in 2002, at the same time that the school week was shortened to five days, and the teaching schedule was compressed. At the same time, Onomichi city school teachers were required to prepare syllabuses and weekly lesson plans, and the preparation of massive numbers of surveys and reports was added to the teachers' heavy burden.
On top of all of this, last year marked the full implementation of a program called Onomichi Education Plan 21. This Onomichi take on educational reform aimed to achieve the top level in compulsory education. Its components, introduced in quick succession, included the "one school, one inquiry" program to build schools with particular characters; a general studies program of making study trips to workplaces; and compulsory open-session moral education classes, along with national academic standards testing to ensure solid achievement. The program encouraged competition among the schools and overwhelmed the schools with work.
It appears that Nishikawa entered the new school year under stress, concerned that the new course of study did not allot enough time for the study of Japanese, while new texts arrived just before school began, allowing him little time to prepare. In addition, there were daily meetings at the start of the school year to wrestle with the implementation of the workplace study trip program.
During the first term, Nishikawa was pressed with preparations both for the school athletic day and for the class trip. Training for the athletic meet took place during an intense heat wave, and around that time he began to complain of headaches and pain in the neck. He brought increasing loads of work home at night, and several days before he collapsed, he had a stack of 200 student essays to read and critique, in addition to planning for the class trip. He took to saying, "I'm tired. Weary." When his family encouraged him to take some time off, he refused, "I can't until after the meeting on the class trip." On his way to class the day before he died, Nishikawa tripped on the stairs. A colleague who saw him picking up chalk soon afterward remembers that his movement was sluggish.
The next day, September 26, the meeting to explain the class trip to the students and their guardians took place in the school gym. Just a few minutes after the meeting began, Nishikawa collapsed suddenly. He was taken to the hospital, but he was already in a coma.
Nishikawa had collapsed in front of a large number of students. It was undoubtedly a great shock to many people. But, according to a colleague, "Within a week, everything returned to normal at the school, as if nothing had happened." This too is an indication of how, pressed to the wall by their work, his colleagues were unable to indulge their emotions.
There Is Not Even Inner Freedom
"I should have quit two years ago. I can't teach the way I want to. Old bones, make way!" Nishikawa spoke this way to people around him. In these words, we can see clearly the state of education in Hiroshima.
The number of young retirees among teachers and administrators in Hiroshima has been steadily increasing. Early retirees, according to prefectural board of education statistics, averaged about 93 per year in the late 1990s, but soared to 162 in 2002. This is because, as Nishikawa said, teachers "can't teach the way they want to." For example, given the required submission of syllabi and lesson plans, teachers can't deviate from the bounds of the national course of study. Further, like corporate competition over business results, everything has been reduced to numerical measures. Schools have become like factories, and education based on the teacher's discretion has become impossible.
The increased supervision of education in Hiroshima Prefecture was begun in response to a reform directive issued by the Ministry of Education in 1998. The immediate cause was the practice of some of the schools in the city of Fukuyama of listing the moral education course as "Human Rights" and kokugo, the "national language," which is how Japanese language and literature classes are referred to in elementary and secondary schools, as "Japanese" in the class schedule. This was a deviation from the national course of study, and the prefectural board of education was directed to report for the next three years on the status of rectification efforts. The reports were required to cover thirteen topics in both educational content and school administration. The items included not only the name and content of moral education classes, but such matters as whether the national flag was displayed at school ceremonies, whether the national anthem was taught and sung, the supervision of teachers' work and their hours, and the management of teachers meetings.
Hiroshima has a long history of conducting peace education, as the site of the atomic bombing, and dowa education, aimed at eliminating discrimination against Burakumin. These programs were developed and approved independently by the educational administration, working in association with a variety of organizations. However, after the reform directive, the prefectural board of education declared that "a variety of compromises were made necessary in the course of negotiations with teachers' organizations, dowa education research associations, and various activist groups, and the neutrality of education was compromised." This represented a 180 degree reversal of the policy. Dowa education was now considered deviant.
To begin with, the authority of the principal as a supervisor was reinforced. Teachers' meetings became an extension of the principal, with a strengthened chain of authority to transmit his directives. There were principals who declared, "Those who don't follow my direction are no longer needed at this school," and democratic operation of the schools became increasingly difficult. According to one teacher, a principal baldly said, "Why don't you just quit?" when he handed out the monthly pay slip. Relations among teachers were strained, as they were made to compete to prove their loyalty to the administrators.
The rectification directive was an authoritarian document that implied that those who did not conform would be punished, and that supervision and control were indications of loyalty to the Ministry of Education. The absolute policy regarding the national flag and anthem at graduation and entrance ceremonies is an example. The report form sent to all school principals by the prefectural board of education required detailed information in response to such questions as, "Was the flag displayed at the front of the stage?" and "Did the singing of the anthem echo across the ceremony hall?" In the "Principal's Handbook" there was even a manual, in question and answer format, for how to deal with teachers who refused to stand for the national anthem. In this manner, 100 percent of public high schools in Hiroshima Prefecture were brought into compliance.
There are reports of a principal who called the parents of a child who remained seated during the singing of "Kimigayo." There were those who took photographs of teachers as they were singing to record how widely they opened their mouths. Someone connected to a PTA came into a classroom one day suddenly and demanded, "You're the teacher who sat during the singing of 'Kimigayo,' and you have the nerve to think you can teach!"--what amounted to a regional surveillance of teachers' speech and conduct. And, in February 1999, Ishikawa Toshihiro, the principal of Sera High School, committed suicide as a result of contention over the national flag/anthem issue.
Managed education has taken hold in Hiroshima Prefecture to such an extent that people have been robbed of their internal freedom, but is this problem peculiar to Hiroshima?
Educational Reform Sans Children
"[What happens in Hiroshima] has become a test case for educational reform in all of Japan. If the government was to move ahead with educational reform, peace education was an obstacle and it was necessary to crush dowa education."
These are the words of Ishioka Osamu, secretary-general of the Hiroshima Teachers Union. Many teachers describe Hiroshima as having been made the laboratory or, alternatively, the breach point for educational reform.
Presently, the government is preparing to embark on educational reform of radical proportions, perhaps encompassing revision of the Fundamental Law of Education. One can sense the government's enthusiasm for reform as a great national movement in its official plan, "Educational Reform for the 21st Century" [issued in January 2002]. Its fundamental perspective is that "there is a spreading tendency to place too much emphasis on the individual while neglecting the 'public'. . . . The standardization of education due to excessive egalitarianism . . . has tended to push aside education geared to fit the individuality or capabilities of children." It seeks to introduce principles of selection and competition into school education. The Onomichi Education Plan 21, with its school evaluation system, can be seen as the vanguard of nationwide educational reform.
What, then, is the situation in the schools themselves? According to Imatani Kenji, secretary-general of the other teachers association, the All Hiroshima Teachers and Staff Union, "The distinguishing feature of the rectification directive and [Hiroshima's] educational reform, is that it is all about the form education ought to take, but children are absent from the discussion. We should be talking about what should be done for the children of Hiroshima."
Teachers are being driven into competition between schools and into a race for meeting numerical goals, and they are increasingly unable to engage their students. And in order to meet their numerical goals, they are increasingly forced to interact with children in mechanical and managerial ways.
At the same time, teachers are swamped with the burgeoning surveys and reports sent down from the prefecture and city. The question of whether teachers can finish their work or not has become one of how quickly they can move children from task to task and perform their many clerical tasks. In the words of the Hiroshima Teachers Union's Ishioka, "With the mountain of paperwork faced by teachers in the classroom, they have no sense that they are actually teaching. It's work performed to the neglect of children."
This has given rise to a situation where, when children come to ask a teacher to clarify something, the response is, "Ask that during the class," or "I'm to busy to look at that."
This situation, where an extreme workload can eat away at teachers' psychological health, is reflected in the number of Hiroshima teachers taking leaves for psychological reasons, which has increased steadily in the years since the rectification directive was issued in 1998: where psychological leaves stood at 69 during the 1997 school year (36 percent of all medical leaves), by 2001 they had increased to 116 (45 percent of the total). Last year, in one elementary school in the city of Fukuyama, six of fifteen teachers took leave for treatment of psychological disorders. One class went through four primary teachers in half a year.
Mr. A, a guidance counselor at a prefectural high school, committed suicide in April of 2001. "Nipping [students] in the bud is not education. What have I been doing [as a teacher] all these years? You're too cold. I quit," Mr. A declared at a meeting to determine whether or not students would pass into the next grade. Several days later he killed himself. During the meeting there had been a confrontation among a number of teachers over failing a particular student. Mr. A's protest was against the application of a hard and fast deadline, when just a day of remedial work would have allowed the student to pass. At this same high school, nine months after Mr. A's death, another teacher who had been on long-term medical leave committed suicide.
According to a Hiroshima Teachers Union survey, twelve educators in the prefecture committed suicide between 1999 and the present. Of these, five were principals, one was a senior teacher, and the remaining six were classroom teachers.
Intensified supervision and control under the rectification directive has lead to numerous suicides and medical leaves. And Hiroshima's educational reform is quickly becoming a test case for "selective, competitive" educational model that the government is trying to implement nationally. It is a frantically driven form of education under the banner of "liberalization." Hiroshima's educational reform--in the absence of children--is the shape of things to come in the near future for Japanese education.
Translation for Japan Focus by John Junkerman.
http://www.japanfocus.org
What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan
The good news is that Japan's education bureaucrats realize that despite six years of middle and high school study many Japanese are still unable to speak English well. The bad news is that the bureaucrats plan to solve this problem by giving us more of what caused the problem.
True, there is nothing wrong with the move to have primary schools provide two or more years of basic English, mainly simple conversation, writing and songs. However, qualified teachers are few and the primary school curriculum is already crowded. But the main problem, teachers say, is that any benefits gained disappear rapidly once students move on to middle school. Children are bewildered by the sudden shift from living English to textbook English.
The bureaucrats focus on high school teaching. They say they want more English vocabulary to be taught, and will require Japan's large army of middle and high school English-language teachers to speak more English in the classroom. But is making Japan's children listen even more to the poor accents and pronunciations of their English-language teachers likely to improve things?
The bureaucrats plan to have these teachers take intensive spoken-English improvement courses. But if as an adult you speak a foreign language badly you tend to stay that way forever. In any case it will probably do little to cure teachers from their bias toward grammar and translation-based learning.
Japan seems not to want to realize the harm caused by having young students spend six years listening to bad English. Some say that if the world is happy with Indian or Singapore English then it should accept Japanese English. But these other varieties of English are standarized and fluent. Listening to them is no harder (sometimes easier even) than listening to the accents and dialects of British English.
Japanese English on the other hand ("Japlish" as some call it) is a hodgepodge of accents and pronunciations thrown together and spoken haltingly. It is hard on both the ear and the patience. More importantly, most Japlish speakers find it very hard to process English spoken at normal speed. Normal conversation is almost impossible.
Many blame problems on alleged differences between English and Japanese — grammar, word order, pronunciation, etc. But Korean is close to Japanese linguistically, and many educated Koreans can handle English well. Ironically, a major reason the bureaucrats are trying to improve English teaching in Japan is the sight of Koreans and other Asians, Chinese especially, able to handle the English of conferences and business negotiations far better than Japanese opposite numbers.
The bureaucrats think they can get the same results by meddling with the school curricula. But ask any foreign national teaching English in Japan and he/she will say the main problem is not curricula but the lack of student motivation. Unlike in South Korea, China and much of the rest of Asia, English ability is not as important for future careers. Motivation is bound to be weak.
Another reason could be the same island isolation and cultural self- satisfaction that makes the British notorious for their poor schoolboy French. For many Japanese, six years of forced English education simply produces the so-called English allergy — a determination to learn no more than is needed to pass exams, and an urge to forget everything once the exams are over. Even those who do try hard to learn can easily end up as damaged products.
Language learning is not like math or history — the mere accumulation of facts and data. With language the memory operates at two levels. One is what I call conscious memorization — mastering enough of the grammar, vocabulary, etc., to be able to translate and put sentences together. But at some stage the language has to be moved to the subconscious and that can only happen with strong motivation and good learning techniques — repetition, realistic conversation, good listening materials and so on. Only at this subconscious level can you retain vocabulary and speak the language naturally.
For most Japanese, however, the language remains at the conscious level, which guarantees permanent poor speaking ability, poor listening ability and poor memory retention. (As confirmation, some very interesting research by a Hamamatsu-based professor once showed that the part of the brain used by Japanese who had learned English naturally was quite different from that used by English speakers educated at Japanese schools.)
Japan should rethink the entire basis of its English education. Does every high school leaver really have to know English to university entrance exam level? A case can be made for having all middle school graduates (age 15) be able to read basic English and handle simple conversation. But at high school, English should be an elective, hopefully limited to only a motivated minority. Freed from the many hours now wasted on ineffectual English study, other students would be able to devote much more time to the many other subjects which teachers claim receive far too little attention — science, math and current history especially.
If Japan wants to match the best in the rest of Asia, English education should be concentrated at university level. Ideally university entrants should be given the chance to study English, or any other foreign language, intensively for four years as one leg of a double major or a major/minor combination. Those who do choose language study will by definition be motivated since they have done so either because they like the language or feel it will be important for future careers. Universities also have access to the best teachers and materials.
Many seem to think that languages have to be learned when one is young, well before university. But as someone who has spent most of his adult life learning foreign languages, three of them difficult languages, I disagree. Motivation and materials are the key. Concentrated study by motivated university students with access to good teachers and materials can give far better results than anything coming out of Japan's middle and high schools.
Graduates from these kinds of combination courses — business and Japanese for example — are coming out of Australian and U.S. universities with surprising ability. They quickly improve even more once they live the language abroad. Many had not even begun the study until they were 18. If they begin earlier so much the better. But it is not crucial.
Needless to say, this scheme would allow Japan's universities to provide combination courses using the other languages equally important for Japan's future but now badly neglected, Chinese especially.
Note: On an Education Ministry committee set up in 2002 to discuss ways to improve English teaching in the schools, myself and some others argued as above — that the focus should be on university rather than high school teaching of English. The bureaucrats not only ignored our ideas; they turned round and made a foreign language, mainly English of course, compulsory at the high school level. When will they ever learn?
Gregory Clark is vice president of Akita International University, where all course study is done in English. A Japanese translation of this article will be at www.gregoryclark.net
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
True, there is nothing wrong with the move to have primary schools provide two or more years of basic English, mainly simple conversation, writing and songs. However, qualified teachers are few and the primary school curriculum is already crowded. But the main problem, teachers say, is that any benefits gained disappear rapidly once students move on to middle school. Children are bewildered by the sudden shift from living English to textbook English.
The bureaucrats focus on high school teaching. They say they want more English vocabulary to be taught, and will require Japan's large army of middle and high school English-language teachers to speak more English in the classroom. But is making Japan's children listen even more to the poor accents and pronunciations of their English-language teachers likely to improve things?
The bureaucrats plan to have these teachers take intensive spoken-English improvement courses. But if as an adult you speak a foreign language badly you tend to stay that way forever. In any case it will probably do little to cure teachers from their bias toward grammar and translation-based learning.
Japan seems not to want to realize the harm caused by having young students spend six years listening to bad English. Some say that if the world is happy with Indian or Singapore English then it should accept Japanese English. But these other varieties of English are standarized and fluent. Listening to them is no harder (sometimes easier even) than listening to the accents and dialects of British English.
Japanese English on the other hand ("Japlish" as some call it) is a hodgepodge of accents and pronunciations thrown together and spoken haltingly. It is hard on both the ear and the patience. More importantly, most Japlish speakers find it very hard to process English spoken at normal speed. Normal conversation is almost impossible.
Many blame problems on alleged differences between English and Japanese — grammar, word order, pronunciation, etc. But Korean is close to Japanese linguistically, and many educated Koreans can handle English well. Ironically, a major reason the bureaucrats are trying to improve English teaching in Japan is the sight of Koreans and other Asians, Chinese especially, able to handle the English of conferences and business negotiations far better than Japanese opposite numbers.
The bureaucrats think they can get the same results by meddling with the school curricula. But ask any foreign national teaching English in Japan and he/she will say the main problem is not curricula but the lack of student motivation. Unlike in South Korea, China and much of the rest of Asia, English ability is not as important for future careers. Motivation is bound to be weak.
Another reason could be the same island isolation and cultural self- satisfaction that makes the British notorious for their poor schoolboy French. For many Japanese, six years of forced English education simply produces the so-called English allergy — a determination to learn no more than is needed to pass exams, and an urge to forget everything once the exams are over. Even those who do try hard to learn can easily end up as damaged products.
Language learning is not like math or history — the mere accumulation of facts and data. With language the memory operates at two levels. One is what I call conscious memorization — mastering enough of the grammar, vocabulary, etc., to be able to translate and put sentences together. But at some stage the language has to be moved to the subconscious and that can only happen with strong motivation and good learning techniques — repetition, realistic conversation, good listening materials and so on. Only at this subconscious level can you retain vocabulary and speak the language naturally.
For most Japanese, however, the language remains at the conscious level, which guarantees permanent poor speaking ability, poor listening ability and poor memory retention. (As confirmation, some very interesting research by a Hamamatsu-based professor once showed that the part of the brain used by Japanese who had learned English naturally was quite different from that used by English speakers educated at Japanese schools.)
Japan should rethink the entire basis of its English education. Does every high school leaver really have to know English to university entrance exam level? A case can be made for having all middle school graduates (age 15) be able to read basic English and handle simple conversation. But at high school, English should be an elective, hopefully limited to only a motivated minority. Freed from the many hours now wasted on ineffectual English study, other students would be able to devote much more time to the many other subjects which teachers claim receive far too little attention — science, math and current history especially.
If Japan wants to match the best in the rest of Asia, English education should be concentrated at university level. Ideally university entrants should be given the chance to study English, or any other foreign language, intensively for four years as one leg of a double major or a major/minor combination. Those who do choose language study will by definition be motivated since they have done so either because they like the language or feel it will be important for future careers. Universities also have access to the best teachers and materials.
Many seem to think that languages have to be learned when one is young, well before university. But as someone who has spent most of his adult life learning foreign languages, three of them difficult languages, I disagree. Motivation and materials are the key. Concentrated study by motivated university students with access to good teachers and materials can give far better results than anything coming out of Japan's middle and high schools.
Graduates from these kinds of combination courses — business and Japanese for example — are coming out of Australian and U.S. universities with surprising ability. They quickly improve even more once they live the language abroad. Many had not even begun the study until they were 18. If they begin earlier so much the better. But it is not crucial.
Needless to say, this scheme would allow Japan's universities to provide combination courses using the other languages equally important for Japan's future but now badly neglected, Chinese especially.
Note: On an Education Ministry committee set up in 2002 to discuss ways to improve English teaching in the schools, myself and some others argued as above — that the focus should be on university rather than high school teaching of English. The bureaucrats not only ignored our ideas; they turned round and made a foreign language, mainly English of course, compulsory at the high school level. When will they ever learn?
Gregory Clark is vice president of Akita International University, where all course study is done in English. A Japanese translation of this article will be at www.gregoryclark.net
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Sexual harassment
Recent revelations of sexual harassment incidents force us to conclude that the sporting world seems to have a lowly view of women's rights.
In a junior high school in Osaka Prefecture, a male teacher overseeing a school club had continuously molested 19 female students. He was finally fired this month.
Reports say that since two years ago, the teacher had regularly told female students to see him in rooms, including the principal's office, and had repeatedly put his hands in their underwear under the pretense of giving them massages. It seems his actions are nothing but criminal.
Also last year, in Kumamoto Prefecture, a male junior high school teacher instructing a school sports club was fired for having continuously instructed about a dozen female students to take off their clothes. He touched their breasts on the pretense of giving them massages.
In Nagoya, a figure-skating coach was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a junior high school girl he was coaching. It is almost unbearable to even think of the horrific physical and emotional damage done to the victim.
The Kumamoto teacher said the purpose of his actions was to "give them gumption."
The figure-skating coach said, "I was drunk." The very fact that people like these were allowed to roam around as teachers and instructors is frightening.
Problems like these are not limited to Japan. In Norway, one-third of the country's 550 top-class athletes said they had experienced sexual harassment in the sporting world.
In Canada, 20 percent of 230 former Olympians said they had physical relations with the upper echelons of their sports associations, and nearly 10 percent said the relationship was forced.
Japan also needs to immediately conduct a full-blown investigation.
In the backdrop, there remains a lingering mood within the sporting world that a coach's use of violence is acceptable. In one women's physical education university, 40 percent of 600 students said they were hit by their coaches during their sports club activities.
There are also many cases of touching that is described as massaging and other things. One-on-one coaching in a private room is also common.
Of course, these things may be allowed if there is a relationship of trust between the coach and the athlete. But we cannot deny that such situations are breeding grounds for sexual harassment.
In Kumamoto, the prefectural school board announced a ban on teachers giving students massages during club activities. This is an appropriate measure; sports massages should be administered only by qualified experts. And this rule should be strictly implemented along with a ban on the use of violence as a way of teaching.
For private companies, systematic measures to prevent sexual harassment were put in place in the late 1990s. The sports world was slow on the uptake and went through a series of sexual harassment cases by famous instructors in track and field. Only seven years ago, preventive guidelines were introduced in the world of athletics.
Many sports associations followed suit with their own ethical guidelines, but in reality, those guidelines are not quite functioning. For starters, only a few women are sports coaches, and there are even fewer female executives in sports organizations and associations. A framework should be set up to foster the recruitment of females as top officials.
As it stands, it would be difficult for Japan to make boasts about being a top sporting nation seeking to host the Summer Olympic Games for a second time. We urge the sporting community to tackle this task aggressively and to make up for all the lost time.
http://www.asahi.com/news/
In a junior high school in Osaka Prefecture, a male teacher overseeing a school club had continuously molested 19 female students. He was finally fired this month.
Reports say that since two years ago, the teacher had regularly told female students to see him in rooms, including the principal's office, and had repeatedly put his hands in their underwear under the pretense of giving them massages. It seems his actions are nothing but criminal.
Also last year, in Kumamoto Prefecture, a male junior high school teacher instructing a school sports club was fired for having continuously instructed about a dozen female students to take off their clothes. He touched their breasts on the pretense of giving them massages.
In Nagoya, a figure-skating coach was arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a junior high school girl he was coaching. It is almost unbearable to even think of the horrific physical and emotional damage done to the victim.
The Kumamoto teacher said the purpose of his actions was to "give them gumption."
The figure-skating coach said, "I was drunk." The very fact that people like these were allowed to roam around as teachers and instructors is frightening.
Problems like these are not limited to Japan. In Norway, one-third of the country's 550 top-class athletes said they had experienced sexual harassment in the sporting world.
In Canada, 20 percent of 230 former Olympians said they had physical relations with the upper echelons of their sports associations, and nearly 10 percent said the relationship was forced.
Japan also needs to immediately conduct a full-blown investigation.
In the backdrop, there remains a lingering mood within the sporting world that a coach's use of violence is acceptable. In one women's physical education university, 40 percent of 600 students said they were hit by their coaches during their sports club activities.
There are also many cases of touching that is described as massaging and other things. One-on-one coaching in a private room is also common.
Of course, these things may be allowed if there is a relationship of trust between the coach and the athlete. But we cannot deny that such situations are breeding grounds for sexual harassment.
In Kumamoto, the prefectural school board announced a ban on teachers giving students massages during club activities. This is an appropriate measure; sports massages should be administered only by qualified experts. And this rule should be strictly implemented along with a ban on the use of violence as a way of teaching.
For private companies, systematic measures to prevent sexual harassment were put in place in the late 1990s. The sports world was slow on the uptake and went through a series of sexual harassment cases by famous instructors in track and field. Only seven years ago, preventive guidelines were introduced in the world of athletics.
Many sports associations followed suit with their own ethical guidelines, but in reality, those guidelines are not quite functioning. For starters, only a few women are sports coaches, and there are even fewer female executives in sports organizations and associations. A framework should be set up to foster the recruitment of females as top officials.
As it stands, it would be difficult for Japan to make boasts about being a top sporting nation seeking to host the Summer Olympic Games for a second time. We urge the sporting community to tackle this task aggressively and to make up for all the lost time.
http://www.asahi.com/news/
Kyoto University not to renew employment contracts of 100 part-timers+
Kyoto University will not renew the employment contracts of about 100 part-time staffers whose five-year contracts will expire in fiscal university officials said Friday.
The step apparently reflects the severe finances of the state-run university amid the deepening recession, said the officials, citing an annual reduction of about 1 billion yen in state subsidies to the university.
The decision has sparked criticism from university staffers, who say part-timers play an important role in enhancing the academic and educational levels of Kyoto University.
Other state-run universities have also been trimming operational costs by terminating part-time employment contracts.
Kyoto University, in the face of the subsidy cut, is being forced to cut its personnel expenses and so the number of its full-time employees. As a result, research work initially assigned to full-time staffers is being shouldered by part-timers.
As of December, about 2,600 people worked at Kyoto University on a part-time basis. Of them, about 1,300 were employed after a maximum five-year-contract rule was introduced in connection with part-timers in March 2005.
The 100 part-timers affected by the recent decision are the first employees whose contracts are to run out under the five-year rule. According to a survey conducted by the university's labor union, at least 90 of the 100 affected people want to renew their contracts.
An official with the university's personnel planning division indicated that terminating the part-time employment contracts will cause no legal problems. The official said people employed in April 2005 or later were fully informed that the nature of their job would be temporary and auxiliary, and that their contracts would end in five years.
Yoshinori Kishimoto, who heads the university's general affairs division, said the university has no plans to change the five-year limit.
"Fewer than one out of five part-time employees work for three years or more," he said.
But Koji Matsunami, chief of the school's labor union, said the termination of the employment contracts is "an act that must not be tolerated" at an educational institution whose aim is to develop human resources.
A 52-year-old part-timer at the university said its research activities would be affected if one after another veteran researcher leaves the school due to holding part-time status.
http://www.breitbart.com/index.php
The step apparently reflects the severe finances of the state-run university amid the deepening recession, said the officials, citing an annual reduction of about 1 billion yen in state subsidies to the university.
The decision has sparked criticism from university staffers, who say part-timers play an important role in enhancing the academic and educational levels of Kyoto University.
Other state-run universities have also been trimming operational costs by terminating part-time employment contracts.
Kyoto University, in the face of the subsidy cut, is being forced to cut its personnel expenses and so the number of its full-time employees. As a result, research work initially assigned to full-time staffers is being shouldered by part-timers.
As of December, about 2,600 people worked at Kyoto University on a part-time basis. Of them, about 1,300 were employed after a maximum five-year-contract rule was introduced in connection with part-timers in March 2005.
The 100 part-timers affected by the recent decision are the first employees whose contracts are to run out under the five-year rule. According to a survey conducted by the university's labor union, at least 90 of the 100 affected people want to renew their contracts.
An official with the university's personnel planning division indicated that terminating the part-time employment contracts will cause no legal problems. The official said people employed in April 2005 or later were fully informed that the nature of their job would be temporary and auxiliary, and that their contracts would end in five years.
Yoshinori Kishimoto, who heads the university's general affairs division, said the university has no plans to change the five-year limit.
"Fewer than one out of five part-time employees work for three years or more," he said.
But Koji Matsunami, chief of the school's labor union, said the termination of the employment contracts is "an act that must not be tolerated" at an educational institution whose aim is to develop human resources.
A 52-year-old part-timer at the university said its research activities would be affected if one after another veteran researcher leaves the school due to holding part-time status.
http://www.breitbart.com/index.php
The purikura king is at PikaPika in Japantown
When Ryan Kimura graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004 with a degree in Asian American studies, he kept running into the same question: "What are you going to do with that?"
He wasn't sure. So he spent two years in Japan teaching English to high school students, who introduced him to purikura - the art of making photos, which are often turned into photo stickers - in a fancy, high-tech photo booth.
Now Kimura, 27, seems to be the king of purikura in the Bay Area. He and his parents own PikaPika in San Francisco's Japantown, which has become a magnet for young Asian Americans.
"It's kind of crazy. I've come full circle," said Kimura, who spent his youth in Japantown.
The recession hasn't affected business, said Kimura, who is bracing for Valentine's Day, the busiest day of the year.
His shop reflects a trend that began in Japan in 1995 and has spread to much of Asia, especially Taiwan.
Purikura, a contracted form of purinto kurabu (print club in Japanese), takes the black-and-white photo booth concept to manic and varied extremes.
Each of the seven color photo booths in PikaPika does different things. Patrons can customize their virtual backgrounds so that they can, for example, sit on an elephant, leap out of a washing machine, turn into a bobblehead or become a sumo wrestler. Then they do a series of poses and move to a digital decorating station to add dozens of individual touches.
Finally, they retrieve the prints, which are the size of a 4-by-6 postcard and can be cut up and peeled off. People slap them on cell phones, wallets, lockers, refrigerators or journals, and use the scanned-in version on their Facebook or MySpace pages.
'The opposite of serious'
"Purikura is the opposite of serious," said Kimiko Ryokai, a UC Berkeley assistant professor in the School of Information. "It is just for fun."
Ryokai, who grew up in Tokyo, said, "It is always a social activity. Nobody really takes purikura by him- or herself."
Much like karaoke, she said, it allows people to be silly in groups.
Duncan Williams, chair of the Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley, said interest in purikura has waned somewhat in Japan in the past two years.
Before that, he said, it was very popular, especially among teenage girls, who would adorn their cell phones and notebooks with group photos of their pals - a quick way to signal to oneself and others who was most important among friends, he added.
It also served as a thing to do for groups and families to document an occasion and have the ability to "sticker" it easily, he said.
Although individual purikura booths started popping up in the Bay Area and elsewhere in the country in 1997, large shops such as PikaPika are generally found in Asia rather than the United States.
The store, on the second floor of the Kinokuniya mall, got its start on the first floor, when Joanne Sato bought a purikura machine 12 years ago and put it outside her photo shop.
"The first day I got it, there was a line going around the corner," she recalled. "We were the first in the Bay Area. I didn't know how to run the thing."
In August 2006, she sold the business to Japantown accountant Lowell Kimura, wife Donna, a computer programmer, and their son Ryan. It opened two weeks later, and now has a mailing list of 3,500 and 80 percent repeat customers, including many Cal students.
Roseville waitress Nikki Barber, 22, has been driving about 100 miles to PikaPika every weekend for three or four years.
"They're super unique," Barber said on a recent Saturday visit. "I just love taking pictures with my friends and always having that memory. It's so enticing."
A Japan buff
Like many purikura fans, Barber is a Japan buff interested in manga, anime and all things Japanese. And, like many others, she keeps her photos in a book.
Her boyfriend, Alameda High senior Simon Li, 18, said, "It's more a girls' thing. If it were all guys, it would look weird."
He was almost drowned out by pounding Japanese music and frenetic shrieks and squeals.
"Once you start you can't stop," said Nancy Dang, 20, who attends City College of San Francisco.
Daly City resident Lisa Situ, 17, said, "It gets addicting."
"I probably have $500 worth of these things," said Jenny Yip, 17, who goes to Lowell High in San Francisco.
The photos machines are imported from Japan and produce prints that cost from $5 to $9 apiece. The oldest machine, with Hello Kitty characters, was the mall original, which Kimura visited in high school. Now there's graffiti on it.
"It's an old warrior," he said.
Connie Ng, 22, bought a photo machine from Kimura for a corner of her new mall, 31 Plaza in Oakland, for one simple reason.
"It's something the Asian market enjoys doing," said Ng, who uses purikura prints on coffee coasters and as thank-you cards.
Kimura said 27 is the record for the number of people in a booth. Besides Valentine's Day, spring break and Christmastime - when families make their holiday cards - are especially busy. Bachelorette parties and high school graduations also bring in customers, along with the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown.
"A big thing in Japan now is to do purikura naked," Kimura sighed. "I hope it doesn't happen here."
When he started, he didn't know how to get a business license, fill out tax forms or do much of anything. His parents told him it was time to learn.
"I had no idea what a business plan was," Kimura recalled.
A fifth-generation American, he said he's a 50/50 descendant - Japanese on his father's side, Chinese on his mother's - and the only one in his family who speaks Japanese. From time to time, one of his former students in Japan will drop by his purikura palace.
"They think it's kind of funny that I was their teacher but now I run this shop," Kimura said.
E-mail Patricia Yollin at pyollin@sfchronicle.com.
Nagoya schoolkids keep it real with hip-hop
NAGOYA--Hip-hop, with its roots in American black and Latino culture, might seem an unlikely dance to see here in the Aichi Prefecture capital. Yet, young homeboys and girls performing spectacular jumps, high kicks and one-handed spins to the driving beat of hip-hop music are no longer an unusual sight at schools around the city.
Hip-hop is cool in Nagoya.
The music and dance of hip-hop was born in the United States, where in 1970s' New York, gangs of young blacks and Latinos evolved alternative moves in music and dance to protest the prevailing pabulum of mainstream pop and disco that filled the radio airwaves.
Today, hip-hop is a strong cultural and economic force worldwide. And here in Nagoya, youths are using the dance to give shape to their own alternative visions.
Teens and older youths are honing their skills, strength and flexibility, hoping to win recognition in the growing number of hip-hop dance competitions being held here.
Even universities and high schools are adding hip-hop to gym classes and club offerings.
Aside from the fun and excitement this exuberant music and dance generates, its popularity can be traced to unique facets: it promotes nonviolence and forges faith in one's hometown.
In October, about 30 people took part in a class on the meaning and history of hip-hop at Nagoya University's Toyoda Auditorium.
The audience, filled mostly with youths in baggy clothes and members of the general public, heard lectures by two professional dancers.
The Nagoya-based dancers--Katsu, 39, and You-Gee, 33--have taught the class together since it began last summer.
"Hip-hop, which has spread worldwide, was started by members of youth gangs (in New York) who wanted to stop fighting. They instead began to compete on the streets by dancing," one said.
Katsu and You-Gee both honed their hip-hop dance skills in the United States. Since returning to Japan more than a decade ago, they have been working as dancers in and around Nagoya.
"It's amazing now. Many people are dancing hip-hop in sports clubs around the country," one said.
Adding to the Nagoya excitement is the annual Dance Dynamite hip-hop contest, which has been gaining more contestants year by year. When it started in 1991, fewer than 20 people entered, but last year's event saw 449 dancers eager to win accolades. Dance Dynamite is now one of the largest dance competitions in the Tokai region, of which Nagoya is the largest metropolis.
Why has hip-hop become so popular here?
Organizers believe it has something to do with the nonviolent nature of the dancing and the way it encourages local kids to stick with their hometowns instead of bolting for bigger cities.
In the States, hip-hop emerged in the poor inner cities, where immigrant and black youths with longstanding complaints against society decided to shun popular culture and instead create their own music and dance forms.
They no longer tried to hide what they were and where they were from.
Rather, hip-hop's originators proudly proclaimed their existence through music and dance. Hip-hop, rap and other forms of alternative music and dance soon claimed the notice of American youths of all colors.
To some extent, that's what is happening in Nagoya, too.
Chukyo TV Broadcasting Co. (CTV), based in Nagoya, has produced hip-hop dance programs since 2004. Producer Eisaku Kuromiya, 39, said, "Nagoya and hip-hop fit well together."
Kuromiya, born and raised in the city, is proud of his hometown. "I like Nagoya," he says.
And hip-hop encourages people to stand tall and feel proud of their roots, Kuromiya says.
Nagoya is home to musicians who have reached wide acclaim, such as nobodyknows+ and Seamo. Both artists have appeared on the prestigious Kohaku song contest that airs every Dec. 31 on Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) to ring in the new year.
They share similar opinions about the culture of hip-hop.
Seamo, 33, appeared in a video message shown during the university lecture led by Katsu and You-Gee.
"Hip-hop represents hometowns. Tokyo is not the only place that spreads culture," Seamo said.
Hip-hop's reach is expanding into classrooms nationwide, too.
Last spring, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology officially announced new school curriculum guidelines for junior high schools that included descriptions of hip-hop dance and music.
Dance has been an elective subject for physical education classes for years. But starting in fiscal 2012, in junior high schools, dance will become mandatory for first- and second-year phys-ed classes, and an elective for the third year.
In addition, the ministry is considering extending dance in senior high school phys-ed classes.
If that happens, the day will come when students nationwide will be learning hip-hop and other dance moves in their gym classes.
The ministry plan is a sign that hip-hop and other forms of dance have reached an unprecedented level of acceptance in Japan, according to Yuki Kumazawa, 37, a teacher at Tokai Gakuen High School in Nagoya who helps lead an unofficial dance club at the school.
In 2002, Kumazawa set up a network of school dance clubs around the area. According to the Aichi prefectural board of education, 20 schools in the region now have official dance clubs.
Hip-hop has come a long way from its rebellious roots on U.S. inner-city streets.
Kumazawa says that the best way to spread hip-hop's positive influences is for teachers to set up exchanges among students to help them learn the moves.
In 2004, he joined other advisers to organize a dance festival that involved 200 students from seven schools in the prefecture. The program was part of the annual Youth Festival sponsored by the Nagoya city government.
The dance program has continued to be a part of that festival, with last year's festival including 400 students from 18 schools.
This year, the event takes place on Jan. 24. At Nagoya's Toho High School, student dancers started practicing their routines in the gymnasium last month.
Saki Tanaka, 18, a third-year student at Tokai Gakuen High School who helps coordinate the dance troupe, is enthusiastic. "I cannot imagine life without dancing," she said.
Keiko Ito, 45, a teacher at Toho High School and an adviser to the official dance club of the school, recognizes the positive gains from dancing.
"Students grow by learning to express themselves through body movements. I thought someday the time will come when dance is a requirement in education," Ito said.
Ito herself is no slouch on the dance floor. Last July, she placed second in the hip-hop category at a national dance competition sponsored by a nonprofit group
BY HIROYUKI MAEGAWA, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Hip-hop is cool in Nagoya.
The music and dance of hip-hop was born in the United States, where in 1970s' New York, gangs of young blacks and Latinos evolved alternative moves in music and dance to protest the prevailing pabulum of mainstream pop and disco that filled the radio airwaves.
Today, hip-hop is a strong cultural and economic force worldwide. And here in Nagoya, youths are using the dance to give shape to their own alternative visions.
Teens and older youths are honing their skills, strength and flexibility, hoping to win recognition in the growing number of hip-hop dance competitions being held here.
Even universities and high schools are adding hip-hop to gym classes and club offerings.
Aside from the fun and excitement this exuberant music and dance generates, its popularity can be traced to unique facets: it promotes nonviolence and forges faith in one's hometown.
In October, about 30 people took part in a class on the meaning and history of hip-hop at Nagoya University's Toyoda Auditorium.
The audience, filled mostly with youths in baggy clothes and members of the general public, heard lectures by two professional dancers.
The Nagoya-based dancers--Katsu, 39, and You-Gee, 33--have taught the class together since it began last summer.
"Hip-hop, which has spread worldwide, was started by members of youth gangs (in New York) who wanted to stop fighting. They instead began to compete on the streets by dancing," one said.
Katsu and You-Gee both honed their hip-hop dance skills in the United States. Since returning to Japan more than a decade ago, they have been working as dancers in and around Nagoya.
"It's amazing now. Many people are dancing hip-hop in sports clubs around the country," one said.
Adding to the Nagoya excitement is the annual Dance Dynamite hip-hop contest, which has been gaining more contestants year by year. When it started in 1991, fewer than 20 people entered, but last year's event saw 449 dancers eager to win accolades. Dance Dynamite is now one of the largest dance competitions in the Tokai region, of which Nagoya is the largest metropolis.
Why has hip-hop become so popular here?
Organizers believe it has something to do with the nonviolent nature of the dancing and the way it encourages local kids to stick with their hometowns instead of bolting for bigger cities.
In the States, hip-hop emerged in the poor inner cities, where immigrant and black youths with longstanding complaints against society decided to shun popular culture and instead create their own music and dance forms.
They no longer tried to hide what they were and where they were from.
Rather, hip-hop's originators proudly proclaimed their existence through music and dance. Hip-hop, rap and other forms of alternative music and dance soon claimed the notice of American youths of all colors.
To some extent, that's what is happening in Nagoya, too.
Chukyo TV Broadcasting Co. (CTV), based in Nagoya, has produced hip-hop dance programs since 2004. Producer Eisaku Kuromiya, 39, said, "Nagoya and hip-hop fit well together."
Kuromiya, born and raised in the city, is proud of his hometown. "I like Nagoya," he says.
And hip-hop encourages people to stand tall and feel proud of their roots, Kuromiya says.
Nagoya is home to musicians who have reached wide acclaim, such as nobodyknows+ and Seamo. Both artists have appeared on the prestigious Kohaku song contest that airs every Dec. 31 on Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) to ring in the new year.
They share similar opinions about the culture of hip-hop.
Seamo, 33, appeared in a video message shown during the university lecture led by Katsu and You-Gee.
"Hip-hop represents hometowns. Tokyo is not the only place that spreads culture," Seamo said.
Hip-hop's reach is expanding into classrooms nationwide, too.
Last spring, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology officially announced new school curriculum guidelines for junior high schools that included descriptions of hip-hop dance and music.
Dance has been an elective subject for physical education classes for years. But starting in fiscal 2012, in junior high schools, dance will become mandatory for first- and second-year phys-ed classes, and an elective for the third year.
In addition, the ministry is considering extending dance in senior high school phys-ed classes.
If that happens, the day will come when students nationwide will be learning hip-hop and other dance moves in their gym classes.
The ministry plan is a sign that hip-hop and other forms of dance have reached an unprecedented level of acceptance in Japan, according to Yuki Kumazawa, 37, a teacher at Tokai Gakuen High School in Nagoya who helps lead an unofficial dance club at the school.
In 2002, Kumazawa set up a network of school dance clubs around the area. According to the Aichi prefectural board of education, 20 schools in the region now have official dance clubs.
Hip-hop has come a long way from its rebellious roots on U.S. inner-city streets.
Kumazawa says that the best way to spread hip-hop's positive influences is for teachers to set up exchanges among students to help them learn the moves.
In 2004, he joined other advisers to organize a dance festival that involved 200 students from seven schools in the prefecture. The program was part of the annual Youth Festival sponsored by the Nagoya city government.
The dance program has continued to be a part of that festival, with last year's festival including 400 students from 18 schools.
This year, the event takes place on Jan. 24. At Nagoya's Toho High School, student dancers started practicing their routines in the gymnasium last month.
Saki Tanaka, 18, a third-year student at Tokai Gakuen High School who helps coordinate the dance troupe, is enthusiastic. "I cannot imagine life without dancing," she said.
Keiko Ito, 45, a teacher at Toho High School and an adviser to the official dance club of the school, recognizes the positive gains from dancing.
"Students grow by learning to express themselves through body movements. I thought someday the time will come when dance is a requirement in education," Ito said.
Ito herself is no slouch on the dance floor. Last July, she placed second in the hip-hop category at a national dance competition sponsored by a nonprofit group
BY HIROYUKI MAEGAWA, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
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