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Despite the emphasis on academics and school advancement in most Japanese junior high and high schools, schools are the major social arena for most Japanese adolescents. Even at the most highly ranked academic schools like Meiji, many students value school primarily because it provides an opportunity to make contact with peers. Students and teachers at all levels responded in much the same way to the question: "What value does school have for the students?"
School? I guess, a place to make friends. A place to contact others. There is also study but, meeting friends. (Meiji student)
Friends, to be with them. Then study and the clubs. (Shimogawa student)
Well, it isn't a place of learning. It is a place to be with friends. (Chuo teacher)
Although studying or training for work were important to students, it was clear that school also was the major area of social contact in students' lives. With so much of their daily time tied up in classes and clubs, students had little opportunity to meet students from outside school. Nevertheless, parents and teachers were concerned about adolescent friendship patterns, because of a common belief that friends have a strong impact on adolescent attitudes towards studying and school. A mother at Chuo reflected:
He is studying so hard from Monday to Saturday, students really build up a need so on the weekend, they need free time. To do what they want with friends — communication. The rest of the time they study, like before tests, so I let him spend most Saturdays and Sundays as he likes.
A second aspect of this belief is that friends also affect students' motivation to study. For several of our student respondents, competition with friends was an important source of motivation to do well in school and on the entrance exams.
Young adolescents enter a new school along with their friends from elementary school, and these friendships appear to ease the transition to a new and larger social arena. As students go up the schooling ladder, their range of social contacts widens. This is most dramatic at high school where students suddenly come into contact with other students from across the city. While some friendships do continue over a student's school career, the most important sources of friendships are the student's current homeroom class and club.
Classes. Upon entering school, students make their first friends in the homeroom classes in which they are placed. Homeroom classes in Japan spend nearly the whole day together, and there are several times during the day (morning meeting, lunch, cleaning, long homeroom period) where the class meets to discuss, relax, or take care of chores. Each class develops a strong sense of identity. At the junior high school level, students are with each other for the entire day while teachers rotate in and out to teach various subjects. Classes are also the common unit of competition in various school events. For example, some schools have a choral competition in which each class is judged on its singing capabilities. At other school functions, students move as a class, entering and exiting the gym together.
At the high school level, the importance of class as a unit of friendship is still strong but is somewhat weaker than at the junior high school level. Students in high school are more often broken up into ability groups for classes. In schools like Naka Vocational, the students are also divided up by sections such as Engineering or Computing. These section divisions play a large factor in friendship formation at Naka Vocational. At Arata and Meiji, students are regrouped and streamed into different areas of concentration after their first year, and students tend to socialize more with others in the same area of concentration.
The importance of clubs. One source of friendship associations that cuts across class, grade, and section lines at both the junior high and high school level is the club. Japanese schools have both voluntary and mandatory clubs. The mandatory clubs meet once a week, and student participation may be rather lackluster. However, the voluntary clubs take up an enormous amount of student time. Regardless of whether they are athletic or cultural clubs, students tend to put a significant amount of energy into club activities. Quite often teachers must ask students to leave the school in the evening because they are so engrossed in their club practice.
"Students form groups based on clubs," a teacher at Naka Vocational said. A teacher at Arata thought that the clubs were the most significant source of friendships for students. Clubs provide a stable source of friendship relations over the student's 3-years in junior high or high school, and students who do not participate in a club lack these crucial links. Also, clubs have the important function of introducing students into the social hierarchy of the adult world. Third-year students are the leaders of the club and are expected to instruct new members, guide practice sessions and behave in an exemplary manner. As students progress from one grade to the next, their seniority in the club rises. This progression gives older students a stronger sense of identity with the club and school. It is no wonder that many teachers associate lack of club participation with problem behaviors.
Divisions and sections. The texture of student life is determined by what "slice" of the overall high school hierarchy students have entered. Daily patterns of interaction, abilities to participate in certain groups, and the basic attitudes toward academic studies are all determined by where one goes to school. The divisions between schools and between courses within schools revealed remarkably similar effects despite regional differences.
Divisions within the school also has a strong influence on friendship patterns. Particularly at Naka Vocational, where students specialize from their first day in different fields, making friends with other students in the school can be very difficult. One teacher at Naka Vocational said: "Associations within the sections are important, because students are taking the same license. Because we're not a shingaku school, studying is not a factor." By this statement, the teacher meant that students are not drawn together in the way that Meiji students are. Because Meiji is a shingaku school, students who are trying to enter the same college or level of college will tend to group together for study sessions or because they share a common goal. At Naka Vocational, students trying to get the same license (e.g., electrical engineering), will group together because they must study for the same license exam or simply because they have a common vocational interest.
While United States images of Japanese juku generally center around students cramming for entrance exams, parents in Kita, Minami, and Naka City indicated that juku attendance may have a purely social function for some students, as a father of a Chuo student thought:
Juku used to be like school, but for students now it is different. It is a kind of fashion. That is why there are so many of them. They go to juku and socialize.
This friendship aspect of juku is not limited to the more affluent neighborhoods or the higher-ranked academic schools. At most levels, juku is generally an interesting place for students. Because juku are for-profit enterprises, juku teachers must make lessons lively and clear. However, the role of juku as a source of friends and as a "fashion" must be kept in perspective. The overwhelming response of parents and students was that juku was a place to study, a way to prepare for school and the entrance exams.
Kyoso Ishiki: A sense of competition. Most Japanese students don't want to "lose" to their friends by getting lower points on the various tests and quizzes that occur frequently in Japanese schools. However, this same consciousness of wanting to be like friends can also lead students who might have done better to not try their hardest in order to fit in with the group. The two tendencies are not contradictory but stem from the student's desire to be like his or her friends. When friends are interested in school advancement, there will be friendly rivalry over who gets the most points on tests. When students are not interested in advancing in school or, more commonly, when they perceive little chance for advancing, friends may provide the impetus not to study. One father at Chuo described the effect of his son's friends on studying:
On studying? Those who can't, compete to see who can't [laughter]. But I think he really wants to do a little better than his friends. Of course if he is too far above, then he is like a different group. They don't want to lose to other students of the same group or level.
The culture of studying at Meiji is an example of one of intense academic competition among students. Meiji students have been selected from the upper-academic ranks of their respective junior high schools. All of them have shown themselves to be persistent students and excellent test-takers. Students at Meiji noted that competition with friends motivated them to study, but that friends also helped each other to study. I asked one Meiji study how friends affected her studying? She replied: "I don't want to lose to them. So we have mutual competition." A male student at Meiji said that friends: " . . . will help me when I don’t know something. Also, when I see a friend trying (gambaru) then I try hard."
Rather than trying to do better by undermining others, students at Meiji and other advancement schools participate in a culture of mutual striving. While students may be rivals and compete to see who gets the highest test score, this rivalry is secondary to the competition over entrance to high school or college, which takes place on a city, prefectural, or national level and where students do not see themselves in direct competition with classmates. Teachers reinforce the sense of mutual struggle by comparing class grades or averages with city or national averages. Students know their own future will be decided by their performance on the test, but they see themselves not in direct competition with their friends, but competing in a large pool of applicants. Students perceive peer performance as a benchmark for their own work, and they try to stay abreast or just ahead of the group.
At every level, teachers try to instill this mutual spirit of competition and cooperation. Parents hope that their child will make friends with a group of motivated, bright students:
As parents we look and say 'Oh, if he hangs out with that kid, won't his grades go down?' So you hope, you think about . . . . But there are various kids, various abilities. As for my boy, I hope that he will be influenced by clever friends. (Shimogawa parent)
When students reach the upper two grades of junior high school, they begin to associate more with peers who will go to the same high school. Academic achievement appears to become a factor in friendship formation. At junior high school some students may compete to do little, but others may compete to see who can be the best. Overall, at the junior high school level, groups of students who urge each other to do poorly in school or to ignore studying seem to have relatively little effect. For the most part, most students who have just entered junior high school follow the admonishments of teachers and parents to study. But, as they progress in junior high school, some fall further and further behind. These students, who know they will not do well in the coming academic competition, tend to distance themselves from school life and academic competition.
Studying and asobi nakama. In the most serious cases, where students become altogether alienated from school life, friends provide significant negative influences on attitudes toward studying and school. In these situations, teachers commonly refer to groups of students as asobi nakama, which means a group of friends who relax together rather than study. Often these friends are older students who are no longer enrolled in school or who have stopped studying. As such, they have time to hang around, take part-time jobs or engage in other leisure (asobi) activities.
At Arata, where there is a mixture of students, some well on their way to entering elite colleges and others settling for training schools, the effect of asobi nakama can be substantial. While some teachers mentioned that students urged each other on to compete, most expressed fears that friends who were interested in "playing" would pull other students away from studying. One teacher described this situation:
Yes, it is easy to get in with students whose character tends toward making others goof off. [One student may say] 'I need to study,' but his friends want to play. They get carried along with their pals, then they may refuse to come to school or participate in class.
In schools like Naka Vocational a main concern of both teachers and parents was that their son or daughter would fall in with a group of students or adults who have given up on school. Teachers feared that students involved with asobi nakama would never finish their studies. One teacher observed:
These groups have a strong effect on studying. A lot of students have adult friends, and so without studying they drop out [of school]. Their grades get bad. We have a lot of these cases now.
At the junior high school level, the influence of friends who have dropped out of school is even more dramatic. According to the students and teachers with who we spoke, at this age (15 or 16) there are few employment opportunities for students who have dropped out of school. While high school students may find part-time jobs or gradually be absorbed into working-class life, students who become disconnected from school in their junior high school years have nowhere to go. Teachers refer to these disconnected students, even though they may still come to school, as dropouts (ochikobore). At Midori, one teacher said:
For example, there are these special kids. They have no connection to school. That is how they feel; they don't have any concern about studying. This starts around the second semester in the second year [of junior high school]. They are 'dropouts' you see.
While few students in Japan dropout in the sense of failing to attain a high school degree, the number of students who have a sense of inferiority in studying or test-taking increases with each grade. A relatively small percentage of junior high school students (about 1 to 3 percent depending on the area) fail to enter high school and find themselves forced to take on part-time menial jobs or enroll in some kind of training school (Monbusho, 1993). A few of these students in Naka spend their days riding around their former schools on scooters, which they have modified to make greater noise, trying to gain the attention of their former classmates and teachers. Sometimes at Naka Vocational, the roar of scooters would drown out the voices on the tape.
Dating was forbidden at all of the junior high schools in this study, and most parents and teachers believe that few junior high school students date. Parents, teachers, and students alike agreed that dating does not play a part in the lives of the vast majority of junior high students. By definition, junior high students who are dating are junior high students with problems. When I asked junior high school students about dates, I was greeted either with silence or nervous giggles. Junior high school teachers were willing to talk about dating among the students, but virtually all said that only a few junior high school age students go on dates.
At this age, students generally evince an interest in the opposite sex, but have little unsupervised time to meet with potential boy or girl friends. The general disapproval of dating at this age also makes it hard for couples to get together. So, early adolescents express their affection in various ways. At the junior high school level students meet in groups to "chat after school, or go to each other's house for studying." The public libraries in Japanese cities are an excellent place to observe this type of interaction. Both junior high and high school students go to the libraries in great numbers on Saturday afternoons. Large tables are filled with mixed groups of girls and boys. While ostensibly studying, the talk may turn to the latest television show or music group.
Public displays of affection among junior high school students are very rare in Japan. No one on our team observed junior high school students holding hands inside or outside of school. However, young adolescents may exchange gifts to show their affection. One teacher at Shimogawa said:
When they go off to different high schools they give each other things as remembrances. The boys take a button off their uniform. The girls write their name and a message on the collar of their school uniforms.
The fact that dating is greatly discouraged for junior high school students does not mean that boys and girls are uninterested in dating or sex. Many of the magazines and comics that students were observed reading carry stories of love and romantic involvement. Many of these comics (manga) also carry material that would be considered pornographic in other countries. But these materials tend to differ depending upon the age and gender of the audience. In general, our review of these materials showed that comics aimed at junior high school students have less explicit sexual material than comics for older adolescents. Comics aimed at adolescent males also have more violent or sexually explicit stories than comics aimed at females. Many of the comics read by adolescent females tend to focus on complex romantic stories.
In high school years, dating is not uncommon. Dating is still technically against school rules, but because of the increased independence and mobility of high school students, schools can do little to enforce this rule except to forbid public displays of affection within the school grounds. The teachers interviewed perceived students who were more interested in dating or socializing outside of school than in their club activities as less serious students. While many high school students participate in clubs and date, the image among adults is that students who date do not have the kind of concentration it takes to succeed in getting into a good college. However, Japanese high school students appear to take advantage of their independence and increased social contacts to begin to experiment with dating. A young teacher, in her second year at Arata, said that because of her youth the female students would confide in her about their dating woes:
Interviewer: At what age does dating start?
Teacher: Mostly with the first-year students. In their world, anyone will do. [She laughs] They just want a 'special someone.' I am a relatively young teacher, so the girl students sometimes come to talk to me. 'Miss W., I think that guy is nice but what do I do?' 'What should I say?' If they try going out with a boy and it doesn't go, they will report it to me. Then after one or two weeks, they start thinking someone else is nice and they think about him. This keeps repeating itself.
Dating occurs at all types of high schools, but because Naka Vocational is virtually an all-male school, the students there had fewer opportunities to meet dating partners. In a survey conducted by the students at Naka Vocational, about 100 boys said they had a girlfriend and over 550 said they did not. At Meiji, dating seemed much more common, probably because the ratio of boys to girls was much more even.
Even at the high school level, students were rather reticent about discussing their dating life. One high school student at Kita did share his dating experiences with me:
Student: We go to coffee shops and places like that. We talk and have tea, or have dinner together.
Interviewer: Since you don't work, where do you get money to spend on dates or when you go out with friends?
Student: I get an allowance. I make do with that.
Interviewer: How much is it?
Student: 10,000 yen [about $100 per month]
Interviewer: What else do you do on dates?
Student: Well, yesterday, school was over at 3:30. We went home together and had tea. Sometimes we go to my house and study.
The dating behaviors that students and teachers described tend to support the notion that while Japanese students may have easy access to magazines and comics with explicitly sexual material, not many students are sexually active in junior high school or high school. The students surveyed at Naka Vocational listed sleep first and sex third as the things they most wanted. Getting accurate data on students' sex lives is difficult in any country, and it is especially difficult in Japan, given the fact that junior high schools and many high schools forbid dating. The teachers I talked to at Arata and Meiji thought that some students were having sex, but they believed this to be a small percentage. A survey of Japanese high school students in 1987 found that 11.5 percent of males and 8.7 percent of females reported having been sexually active, about the same percentage found in a similar survey found in 1974 (Shimazaki, 1993); 33 percent. At this age, students who had part-time jobs appeared to have more adult attitudes toward dating and sex.
It is likely that students who are on the academic track to college are more circumspect in their dating and sexual behavior. As one young teacher put it:
For example, if a girl did get pregnant, it is a frightening thought, especially for the boys. They have to take care of the baby. They can't depend on their parents. They would have to quit school. If they think about those things, they end up not doing it. I think there are students who are having sex, but it doesn't come out in the open.
Students who are sexually active and in school advancement tracks must risk a good deal. An untimely pregnancy could dash the future hopes of both the male and female. Teachers generally agreed that Japanese students who are sexually active are very careful to conceal the facts from their teachers.
Bullying or ijime is arguably the top concern of educators and parents in Japan today. My arrival in Naka City occurred shortly after a well-publicized case of bullying (ijime) that ended in the suicide of a young boy. This case made national headlines, and stories about it were reported around the world, often linking this suicide with the pressures to conform that children face in Japan's highly competitive system of education. The White Paper on Youth recorded around 155,000 reported incidents of bullying in 1985. The levels of reported bullying have fallen sharply since then with only about 23,000 cases in 1992 (Somucho, 1993: 230).
Bullying has been widely regarded as a problem of early adolescence in Japan, although rates of reported bullying were higher in elementary school than in junior high school up to 1987. Data from 1991 and 1992 indicate that bullying tends to peak in the first and second years of junior high school, but the perception among many Japanese is that bullying is now occurring earlier and earlier. Unfortunately, one of the difficulties for parents and teachers alike in dealing with bullying is that it is hidden. Bullying is carried on in places or ways that cannot be seen by adults.
The hidden quality of bullying makes it difficult for teachers and parents to intervene. One father reported that his son had been bullied in junior high school but he had not known about it until the boy entered high school. The students at Naka Vocational made the same point. One student said that "teachers don't know" when bullying occurs. Another said that "If it comes out, teachers can do something, but it is hidden." A father at Arata expressed his frustration:
Students are good at hiding things. They hide things so that the teachers see the good; so every action has to be interpreted. For example, some time ago there was that incident where kids were playing at "pro-wrestling," but they were really bullying. These two actions look the same.
Junior high school boys often play at pro-wrestling or kung fu during the breaks and after classes. These matches are usually just boisterous forms of play, but the father quoted above was referring to a famous case in which a group of boys disguised their bullying under the pretense of playing at pro-wrestling. Given that so much bullying goes on unnoticed, it is prudent to consider that the rates cited above constitute a low estimate of the frequency of the problem in Japan.
Even for the students themselves, bullying is not easy to define. The students themselves offered insights into how difficult it can be to decide if bullying is going on or not. A group interview with students at Naka Vocational yielded the following statements:
Interviewer: So what do you mean by bullying?
Student: First, fighting words. Then next . . . . If a person is overweight you call them "fat." Then maybe hitting, taking things.
Interviewer: So, if you are called fat, is this bullying?
Student: There's no fine line like that. You say these things when playing . . . it might be half bullying. It all depends on what the person who is called these things thinks. If the person thinks he is being bullied, then it is bullying.
Student: Yes there is (bullying) in our class, but it's in fun. It is hard to say where bullying ends and where fun (asobi) begins. It is a personal decision: 'This is fun, this is bullying."
Who gets bullied is another difficult matter to sort out. The common perception is that students who are socially isolated, have poor social skills, or who are physically weak are often the targets of bullying. These students are not only weakly connected to their classmates, but are often emotionally unable to cope with mild forms of verbal harassment that other students consider "play." Teachers and parents both perceived that in recent years the number of students who were potential social isolates was growing. These students are also likely to refuse to go to school, another problem which concerns educators and parents. As one of the students at Naka Vocational said: "People who are bullied are isolated. They don't talk to friends."
Another reason for bullying, offered by parents and teachers, is that today's children have few playmates. In the urban areas of Japan, many respondents noted that when children reach adolescence they have not been fully socialized and cannot adjust to the demands of school life. Students do not know how to moderate their behavior:
"When I was a student we had many siblings, we had brothers and sisters, we understood the 'rules' (teido) of being a student. Like how far one could go. We didn't know about problems of 'going too far.' But students now, well, there are many forms of bullying. In the extreme there is murder, to be bullied to death. We never had that in my day. It is a problem of knowing the limits, like in hitting and fighting. Nowadays kids don't know about fighting."
[Chapter 4 - The Role of School in Japanese Adolescents' Lives (Part 6 of 6)]