Tokyo Medical University Scandal and a Broken Social Contract

Image from https://twitter.com/BFJNews/status/1026697347856838656

Even if you don’t usually follow Japanese news, you’ll have no doubt read about the Tokyo Medical University scandal by now. In summary, women were outperforming men on the entrance examination, so the university began docking the scores of all female applicants in order to maintain a male majority in both the program and in the profession. The sexism of all this has quite rightly attracted indignation from around the world. However, I haven’t yet seen anything insightful written about the further ramifications of entrance exam tampering. Not only were all women’s scores reduced, but the scores of some male candidates were inflated in exchange for (or the anticipation of) monetary donations from their parents. Men who had failed the test and returned to try again the following year had their scores decreased.

Sexism is par for the course in Japan, sadly. I think if the case only involved women facing higher hurdles to enter medicine the outrage would blow over fairly quickly. What will not blow over is the knowledge that entrance examinations are not the objective measure the social contract requires them to be. That is earth shattering.

In order to pass entrance examinations, children and young people attend cram schools (juku) or other forms of tutoring. It’s a sector worth tens of billions of US dollars. Families make enormous sacrifices to pay for it. A teacher I worked with estimated that it cost her about US$400,000 to get her son through the exams for a mid-level university (starting from elementary school). When I went to register my pregnancy at city hall I was given an information booklet about creating a savings plan for the foetus’s juku. Family life (and size) is organised around juku. Most middle-class Japanese kids don’t do chores. Their job is to study, and the family does what it has to do in order to support that. It’s kind of the foundation of the later stages of childhood.

Because if you pass the exam to get into a good school and then a good university, you’re set for life.

That’s the deal. That’s the social contract.

Now we know that has been broken.

In some ways, it was the last really strong contract that was left. It used to be, you got a job with a company and you’d be employed for life. You spent all your time working, and moved all over the country away from you family at a week’s notice, but you endured that because you were safe for life. That deal is gone. The top end of the contract was broken and we’ve had decades of upheaval and national soul searching about it.

The bottom end of the same ladder was still strong though, we thought. You might not be employed for life, but if you study hard you can pass the exam. Pass the exam and your status as a graduate from a good school means you will get the best of the jobs that are out there.

The whole ladder is gone now.

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Shower Slugs

2015 was the worst year for mould yet. Dealing with a little baby and the mould during rainy season was a nightmare, and I was desperate for anything to help. I commented to my sister that it would be great if there were something like aquarium snails that would just hand out in the bathroom eating the mould for me, and she said "maybe there is" and immediately googled this. It sounded good, so we went out to the garden and collected some slugs.

I had bought this mini flower pot as a hide for Tiger's pet snails.

There was plenty of mould for them to feast on :/

They only really took to the grouting, but that's OK, it's the hardest part to clean anyway.

The difference between the slugged side and the not slugged side is pretty amazing. Also amazing: a "gluten free" label on BUBBLE BATH. For all the people with Celiac disease who like to drink soap, I presume.

Sadly the experiment had to be cut short because we had so many textiles go mouldy that the bath had to be used to soak them in very unfriendly solutions for a few weeks so the slugs were evacuated back to the garden. One eventually found its own way back though. It made a little home under a shampoo bottle and sneaks out to help with the cleaning at a leisurely pace.

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I didn't fight the law, and the law won.

Chikako Kobayashi shared this image to facebook
Left, from top: Asahi, Mainichi, and Tokyo newspapers Right, from top: Yomiuri, Sankei, and Nikkei newspapers

You probably saw images from the August 1st protests in Tokyo (unless, of course, you read Japan’s more pro-government papers, which had strikingly different front pages the next day). It was actually a national day of action, and Tiger had wanted to attend our local protest. After a very upsetting “peace education” experience last year (he came home having learned that Japan was just sitting around peacefully minding its own business when America suddenly dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and therefore Japan should kill all Americans. None of which was specifically said by his teacher, but she didn’t interject when children made these statements in presentations to the class) we talked a lot about war. We talked about what happened in Okinawa, in particular, and about how the people who decide to start wars are rarely the ones who actually suffer and die in them. He got very excited about signing a petition against constitutional revision, and then wanted to attend the rally as well. I was very happy to take him, until…

Until I heard about the intimidation and harassment of protesters at previous rallies. I work at a university, and I hear things that aren’t getting reported on the nightly news or discussed in the newspapers. Students talk about police photographing them at rallies, then calling their parents: “Did you know your child was creating a public nuisance? Who is paying for their education? Is this the lifestyle you planned to fund?” Others had their landlord called by police as part of “routine inquiries”: “Do many radicals gather at the building you own? Do you rent to any foreigners? Do you know if political meetings are being held on your premises?”

My visa was up for renewal two days after the protest. As a foreigner, attending a political rally is a valid reason for my visa renewal to be refused. I thought about the consequences if it was declined before we had a valid visa to take Tiger to Australia. In fact, I was even cautious about publishing this post, which is why it is appearing so late. I told him that we couldn’t go to the protest. This is, of course, the exact response the intimidation aims to elicit. Every person who attended was risking something. A promotion, their living allowance, getting into the university of their choice, something important. That might be hard to grasp for readers for whom political engagement is a natural part of democracy, but it’s just the reality in “democratic” Japan. Yet, tens of thousands took the risk.

Meanwhile:

http://www.japan-press.co.jp/modules/news/index.php?id=8616

The Education Ministry on October 5 announced its plan to issue a notice putting restrictions on high school students’ political activities as a measure to respond to the implementation of the 18-year-old suffrage.

The planned notice will impose a ban or restrictions on political activities which senior high school students are engaged in outside of school. Students will be prohibited or constrained from demonstrating in political movements within school-bounds even on holidays and after school. In addition, any such action will not also be allowed in student councils and school club activities.

This notice will not only cause students to hesitate to take part in political activities, but also restrain students from even thinking about and discussing political matters.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-20/japan-dumbs-down-its-universities-at-the-wrong-time

Essentially, Japan’s government just ordered all of the country’s public universities to end education in the social sciences, the humanities and law.

https://www.rt.com/news/317653-japan-number-law-privacy/

A controversial new Japanese personal identification system came into effect on Monday. My Number IDs will unite personal tax information, social security and disaster relief benefits, but critics worry about possible leaks and invasions of privacy.
...
Protester Hitoshi Ogawa said he is concerned My Number might be abused by the government to collect the most sensitive details of citizens’ lives, from health records to political ideology.

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Creepers and Life Lessons Learned at the Pokemon Store

A Pokemon store opened a couple of months ago in our little backwater, and Tiger has been dying to visit. First I put him off until the summer holidays, then until payday, then just a few more days, then eventually yesterday I promised we'd go after some running around we had to do in town. It was 33 degrees, the chores took forever, we ran out of time to go before his gymnastics lesson but I promised ABSOLUTELY after gymnastics. He was incredibly patient and good about it, and when we finally made our way towards the shopping center he was literally jumping with excitement. As we searched around in the maze of new shops for the Pokemon store I noticed a British guy trying to engage passing school girls in conversation using loud, aggressive-sounding English. "What a creep" I thought, but having the kids in tow I didn't want to start anything so I just ignored him. He noticed us, however, and followed after us yelling "HELLOOOO" at the top of his lungs. I tried to ignore him, but he ran ahead and then blocked our path and began a rambling and largely incoherent conversation about how we didn't know each other but our friends had probably met each other so we should be friends. He reeked of booze. He was being friendly enough but he was swaying and touching me and the baby and kept poking his finger into the baby's face saying "beautiful eyes, beautiful blue eyes" and I was terrified he was actually going to stick a finger in those eyes. I tried to extract us from the situation in the usual ways, but he continued to follow us, block our path an get in our personal space. I took the kids to the toilet and we hid there. Poor Tiger, after his long wait he was close enough to smell Pikachu and some jerk was ruining it for him. We checked a couple of times but the creeper was lurking, waiting for us. I spent thirty minutes in the toilets with an increasingly upset Tiger before eventually calling the husband to come and get us. He came in a hurry and parked in a spot we couldn't use for long, so in the end our poor little boy got a five minute run around the store and a frustrated promise that we'd come back another day. For us, it was a scary situation with a stalker. For the creeper, he probably saw it as a friendly encounter.
As we hid in the toilet Tiger ran through our options.
"Get angry and tell him to leave us alone?"
"He'll say 'why are you being like that, I'm just being friendly' and then he'll still follow us around but he'll be angry and yell at us a lot."
"Ignore him and tell him we're in a hurry?"
"He'll just follow us into the shop."
"Ask the staff for help?"
"It'll turn into a big scene and we'll be dragged into it."*
As we ran through each scenario I realised that what I was relating to Tiger were not hypothetical outcomes but rather the results of years of my own experimentation with dealing with street harassment. I've tried every variation imaginable to extricate myself from drunks, creepers and perverts and I am well aware of the dangers inherent in each one. The safest course, in my experience, has always been to avoid confrontation. In the end though, this leaves the creepers blissfully unaware of the havoc they cause.

Clementine Ford wrote recently about an experience at a restaurant in which the owner stuck his fingers into her friend's meal:

He acted like I was being incredible tedious and said that I didn't understand that this was a "fun" place and that it wasn't a big deal. (Yeah, because it's always so "fun" when someone puts their fingers where they're not wanted.) I pushed the point and he grudgingly said that he would get a new meal for my friend (who also said to him explicitly, "I need you to know that I wasn't okay with that.")
He then returned to the table and further tried to press his point. That I didn't "get it", that no one else ever has a problem with that kind of behaviour, that I was being difficult and "fucking unreasonable". At that point, we stood up to get our money refunded and he followed us to the bar and actually tried to stop the bar staff from refunding our money....
We got our refund and then as I turned to leave, the owner said "fuck off, you cunt". 

This is what happens when you tell creepers they are being creepy. They get aggressive, insist you are misunderstanding them and in my (extensive~ I was barely eleven the first time an adult man on the street commented on my breasts) experience they often follow it up with physical intimidation and violence to drive home the point that they are a nice guy and you are just a fucking ungrateful lesbian bitch. Much as I would have loved Tiger to see me standing my ground, when you have a four month old baby strapped to your chest facing into danger just isn't the right thing to do. It wasn't the right thing to do when I was trying to get the bus home after work when I was sixteen and alone either. The more I think about it the angrier I feel that I'm sitting here feeling guilty for letting the guy get away with it as though his behaviour is my responsibility to stop... but then, that's always how we treat these things, isn't it? Jill should have worn sensible shoes. I say "creepers" because that's how I think of them, but even my dad does the same thing. My parents had a high school student do a home stay and my father made a joke about her electric toothbrush doing double duty as a vibrator. She asked me to help her deal with it. When I told my parents it had made the girl uncomfortable the usual happened. He wasn't a creep, it was just a joke, she was over-reacting. I patiently tried to explain that maybe her feeling uncomfortable was a good enough reason to avoid such conversations whether or not HE thought they were creepy but no, it just didn't compute. Then my mother, who as so many women do staunchly supports a patriarchal social order, jumped in with "well she clearly provokes such comments and young girls all secretly love attention from older men." In frustration I ended up snapping at them both: "she's a CHILD and she is in YOUR CARE, get over yourselves!" They sulked with me for quite some time.
Anyway, to look on the bright side, when I need to talk to Tiger about these issues we now have a convenient short-hand: "Don't be the guy at the Pokemon store."

*This being Japan, we would have been implicated by our shared foreignness. I doubt the guy spoke Japanese so I would probably have been dragging in to interpret. The staff would have freaked out and the whole situation then called the police. The police require ID and statements from anyone "involved" in an incident... a friend was fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken when she reported being the victim of a mugging. I doubt they would have accepted that I didn't know the guy and I felt it would have made the situation worse for us.

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Breastfeeding in Japan (the Bad)

Have boobs, have baby... NOW WHAT?!

"Are you breast feeding?" is one of the first questions I am always asked, following "how old" and either before or immediately after "boy or girl". What depresses me is been the number of women who have then continued on to say "it's best, but sadly I couldn't make enough milk." Being actually unable to produce enough milk is incredibly rare and usually linked to a medical condition, but after my experiences with medical authority figures it makes depressing sense that so many women think they couldn't. I'm actually surprised that anyone manages to successfully feed given the awful advice and out-right sabotage.

Having established breast feeding, everything has been great. Getting established, however, was a nightmare. I had very poor support during the hospital stay, and having spoken to a number of other women I think my experience was pretty normal. Here's what the nurse-midwives instructed the new mothers in the clinic where I gave birth:

1. At first, feed for only 5 minutes per breast then supplement with formula until the baby has consumed a set amount (about 60 ml per feed). Feeding longer will cause cracked nipples, and if that happens you will have to stop feeding completely until they heal.
2. Weight baby before and after each feed and supplement with formula to make up the proscribed weight.
3. Feed when the baby cries.

This is exactly the advice I would give if I wanted someone to fail to establish a breast feeding relationship and to ensure they did not produce enough milk. Seriously, I can't think of anything else to add if your objective was to ruin all chances of someone breast feeding.Not a single bit of advice on that list is correct, NOT ONE THING. Furthermore, the most important thing that new mums really do need help with, getting a good latch and position, there was no help offered for. I struggled for a month with latching problems that any nurse-midwife worth her salt should have spotted immediately, then when Cricket hadn't gained "enough" weight at his one month check the pediatrician told me to start giving formula with no attempt to help me breastfeed better, and followed this recommendation up by sending a representative from the formula company who sponsor both the pediatrician and maternity clinic to lecture me while we were trapped waiting for the checkup to finish. Yes, sponsor. Did I forget to mention that? When I was very clear that I wasn't going to give him formula she then tried to tell me I should give him barley tea! A one month old baby who is gaining weight slowly. Tea. I kid you not. Thankfully I got help from a lactation consultant who does skype appointments (thank you Blue Sky!), and she spotted the latch problem right away and within three days Cricket was gaining weight at such a rate that the pediatrician (who insisted I go back the following week to make sure I wasn't killing the baby with my crazy tea-refusing ways) said with a big smile "so, you started using formula then?"

It all ended happily here, but I'm furious everytime I think about all the women who want to breast feed, and carefully follow the advice of the people they trust to tell them how they should do it, and then feel that they have failed because they aren't producing enough milk.

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