Being Black and Japanese in a Japanese School

Safarii. Vocalist Sophia is half Japanese, half Ethiopian. Image from their website via this this blog.

Allow me to clarify, since the title is misleading. I am writing my observations from one school district in Japan. I am neither Black nor Japanese. I have done no comprehensive survey or research. I’m not claiming that these vignettes represent a universal experience or even a representative one.

A group of thirteen year old girls are standing in a circle, chatting between classes. Another girl walks over and tries to join them, hovering awkwardly over their shoulders when no one moves aside to include her in the circle. “Hey” she says, lightly touching the arm of the girl in front of her. “Ewww, gross!” The girl who has been touched recoils as though burned. The other girls cover their mouths and giggle in a mixture of shock and hilarity. They disperse back to their desks but continue talking to one another, still excluding the Other girl.

Words like disgusting, smelly and dirty are standard bullying weapons between girls here in Japan. This incident felt slightly different though. The excluded girl has a Japanese mother and a Kenyan father. The name on her uniform is written in the Roman alphabet rather than any of the Japanese scripts. She speaks Japanese and Swahili at home. Her figure, facial features, hairstyle, family name and Christianity are the target of considerable negative interest. Let’s call her B. I also taught her older brother, A, who graduated last year, and I have taught their younger sister C since she was in kindergarten. A is handsome, gregarious, outgoing and good at sports. He had a large group of friends and I never observed any nastiness directed at him. When racially loaded comments were made he usually turned them into a joke. He spent an inordinate amount of time in 2009 saying “Yes We Can!” This is not to say that his way is the “right” way to deal with that kind of situation, just to observe the difference that personality (and I think probably gender) can make. B is quiet and shy. She likes art and music. She does not fit Japan’s narrow ideal of female beauty. When she is bullied she becomes visibly distressed, and her loneliness is palpable. I think, given the wolf-pack mentality of the kids at her school, that she would have been bullied irrespective of her race. Those kids see weakness and attack. Even so, the history of seeing black skin as unclean gives her bullies a ready-stocked arsenal. Women in particular go to extreme lengths to protect their skin from the sun so that they don't "become black".

The message is implicit in children’s stories and TV variety shows. This article talks about a Black Japanese child crying in the bath as he tries to scrub his skin “clean” after being bullied at kindergarten. One day when C was in kindergarten the kids were doing a pre-literacy exercise and she made a mistake that many of the other kids also made. The teacher singled her out though, repeatedly asking her “Did your father tell you that? Is that something you learned at home? He’s Black; don’t listen to his Japanese because it’ll definitely be wrong.” From time to time Junior High English textbook feature Black characters (who, as the kids notice, never gets to say anything important). Whenever they see such a character B’s classmates will yell “Look, B is in the text book!” and laugh hysterically. There isn’t much I can do for B, but her situation has made me very aware of the lack of visual representations of Black women (some more detailed discussion can be found here). Advertisements feature Japanese or Korean models, occasionally Chinese, often white and almost never middle-eastern, South Indian, south-Asian or Black models. Sometimes sports magazines or music posters feature Black men, but I don’t recall ever seeing a Black woman prominently depicted anywhere. This is a subjective observation, but judging by the students’ reactions I guess their experiences are similar. So although it isn’t much, every flashcard I make from now until my contract ends is going to feature non-white, non-East Asian faces. They’ll have to get bored of laughing eventually.

*I wonder if the capitalisation is appropriate for non-American people with African heritage? If anyone can advise, please do.

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Japanese Kindergartens

Excuse the poor quality photos, I only had my phone camera handy

A couple of times a year I get to teach at kindergartens. It’s chaotic, scary and absolutely amazing in every way. Kindergarten is an invaluable gateway between the comfortable, pampered world of home, which is the only life most children have ever experienced, and the structured, self-reliant atmosphere of elementary school. Children learn to be separated from their mothers, to work in groups and to deal with conflicts with other children. The emphasis is on physical development and social behaviour, with very little attention to academics in the public kindergartens I have experienced.

Stilts, hula-hoops, balance walk and mattress to jump onto. What more could a five year old want?

One principal told me that she tries to teach the hiragana syllabry to the children before they go to school, but every other principal I have talked to seemed to think that this was inappropriate. Large picture books are always available and pre-literacy skills are taught, but any specific of reading and writing seem uncommon, as is numeral recognition. Instead the day consists of free play, structured play, crafts, singing and dancing, story time, music lessons and lunch. When it comes time for lunch, the kids are expected to set up tables and chairs. The tables are often the kind with legs that fold down flat. They are too heavy for five year olds to set up alone and the metal clips for the legs are too rigid for their little hands to release. They have to work together as a group in order to erect the table (preferably without catching their fingers in the workings). This is done largely unsupervised because the adults prepare tea or additional snacks during the set up time. The kids have to organise themselves and cooperate, and they do.

The teachers have buried objects in the sand box for the little archaeologists to excavate

Bare-foot play is not a problem

Whenever possible the kids are encouraged to play outside. This inner city kindergarten has various activity stations the children move between at will.

Restaurant corner. The knives have rounded tips but are serrated and cut nicely. 

A kindergarten on the fringes of a remote suburb interrupted free play to put the kids through a sort of obstacle course challenge designed to improve strength and coordination and including monkey bars and pogo-sticks. That kindergarten also had free-range chickens. Every morning the kids would run around looking for eggs and if they found any they got a mid-morning snack. A rural kindergarten I visited once included a stroll in the forest to collect pine cones and acorns to use in craft activities. Many kindergartens have rabbits or hamsters so that children can experience taking care of animals and learn to be gentle. I like pretty much everything about the kindergartens I have worked at (the exception being the expectation that the kids wear t-shirts and shorts all year round).

This is harder to balance on than it looks...

I saw a segment on "super preschools"* on TV the other day. Each of the featured pre-schools had a special focus, whether English lessons, kanji or athletics. Skip to around 3:00 in this video to see the very small children tackling an impressive hill.

My personal favourite was the "playing in the dirt" pre-school http://www.doronko.biz/index.html (have a look, there are some gorgeous photos).

The children are encouraged to test their physical limits playing freely outside: climbing tall trees, splashing in mud, and caring for goats and chickens. Between energetic play the children are taught　座禅、seated zen meditation. The idea is that they learn to self-regulate their emotional arousal, a vital skill for elementary school. Being excited during exciting activities is important, but so is the ability to quickly change focus to an activity that requires calm concentration. The panellists on the TV show talked at length about the tree climbing. Many parents are afraid of their child getting hurt these days, they said, so children aren't being allowed to fully explore their physical capacities. An Olympic medallist observed that children can't come to properly control their bodies if parents and teachers are always controlling it for them, imposing restrictions from the outside (I think that's what he was saying, my Japanese isn't great). They then showed statistics about a massive increase over the past thirty years in elementary school kids injuring themselves and others. I think they were saying that childhood has been getting less physical, and as a result children don't understand natural consequences or their own limits. I find this fascinating. 

I love the way children in my area are free to engage in unsupervised "dangerous play". They learn to assess risks, understand their own boundaries through experience, and if they do hurt themselves adults expect them to take responsibility for whatever stupid thing they did that they should have known better than to try. Yet, while I like it in theory, I know with absolute certainty that I couldn't control my own fear enough to sit back and watch my five year old climb an 8 foot tree. After decades of removing anything that could cause a boo-boo from playgrounds in Australia and the US, it seems that the pendulum is swinging back and the advantages of letting children take risks are being promoted again:

After observing children on playgrounds in Norway, England and Australia, Dr. Sandseter identified six categories of risky play: exploring heights, experiencing high speed, handling dangerous tools, being near dangerous elements (like water or fire), rough-and-tumble play (like wrestling), and wandering alone away from adult supervision. The most common is climbing heights.
“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and they will then progressively learn to master them through their play over the years.”
Sometimes, of course, their mastery fails, and falls are the common form of playground injury. But these rarely cause permanent damage, either physically or emotionally. While some psychologists — and many parents — have worried that a child who suffered a bad fall would develop a fear of heights, studies have shown the opposite pattern: A child who’s hurt in a fall before the age of 9 is less likely as a teenager to have a fear of heights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html

In Japan this is just common sense; but in Japan, too, there seems to be a tenancy for contemporary parents to be more risk-averse in their parenting style than previous generations were.

When we asked Director Kumagai if she thought that families and children have changed in the past twenty years, she responded: 'Yes. Everyone is running scared. Parents overprotect children and themselves. They fear the world. They fear forming relationships with others, fear that a relationship they might get into will become strained, so they don't form relationships, and as a result are isolated. They fear germs, so they keep their children away from others. They fear dirt, so they keep their kids away from dirt, sand, and nature. They are afraid of encountering problems in life. But if there were no problems, that would be the real problem. Life is full of problems. Our job as early educators isn't to protect children from problems, but instead to put them in situations where they can experience problems and struggle to find solutions.'
Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited: China, Japan, and the United States, Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa, 2011.

*There is a distinction between day-care/preschools and kindergartens, but the lines is very hazy, with many pre-schools offering a kindergarten year for the older kids and some kindergartens offering day-care services for younger kids. Consequently I'm not bothering to make a distinction, although I am aware it will annoy some people.


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Dividing of the Seasons 節分

A very scary ogre

 Today is Setsubun, one of my favourite seasonal festivals. Unfortunately I am stuck under the kotatsu blowing my nose and can't enjoy it much this year though [/selfpity]. I was going to write a nice educational post all about what Setsubun is and how to celebrate it, but there are so many good posts on the topic that you should really read those instead. Like Fran-Japani's. Or Gaijin Wife's.
 In summery, dried soybeans are thrown while saying “ogres out, fortune in”. This is meant to both ensure a safe and fortunate year and also to bring spring on. I say “ogre” here for the Japanese “oni”. Some people translate oni as devil. I think that’s because they are often red and have horns. Otherwise it’s a silly translation. The oni live in mountains, carry clubs and dress in tiger pelts. They carry off and eat children. My perspective is skewed because I first encountered oni in the picture book “The Red Ogre Who Cried”. It’s a beautiful book about a gentle oni. Anyway, it’s traditional for someone to dress as an oni so that really little kids can throw beans AT THEM, making the whole thing more exciting. This isn't some kind of morality tale where kids get to triumph over the oni though. It's all about the age-honoured Japanese tradition of scaring the crap out of tiny children. In all seriousness, I think it's great. This video is from a kindergarten. As you can see, the Oni don't hold much back. Notice that the boy who repeatedly tries to stand up to the Oni and throw his beans at them gets particularly targeted, eventually getting "abducted". This is a common "Oni" tactic. Can't have the kids being too brave!

In years past my delightful partner got to play the role of oni at the preschool where he worked. The staff prepared a hit-list of children for the oni (including the girl who had told everyone she “wasn’t afraid of ogres”). The kids (some of whom are as young as two) were gathered in a room and sang a song to cheer themselves up. The Mr and his fellow oni came stomping down the hall, banging on the walls; at first in time with the song but gradually increasing the tempo until the song could not drown out the sound. They burst into the room and began terrifying the children, throwing the targeted kids over their shoulders and dragging them away to a store room. One kid remembered his beans and valiantly flung them with all his might, trying to rally his friends into defensive formation, but it so happened that he too was on the hit-list and he was promptly dragged away. The reduction of tiny children to terrified sobbing messes is a much beloved part of the pre-school experience here. I’m sure they’ll laugh about it one day… The terror didn’t stop there, however. The staff kept it up for weeks. A group of kids went to the toilet and some came back before another; the Mr was furious with them for “abandoning” their friend “when you know there are ogres around”. They were tearfully bracing themselves to go back out into the newly terrifying corridors to secure their friend when he returned in one piece. The sound of road works nearby was designated as “ogres beating their clubs”. Any staff member who hadn’t been seen for a while was presumed eaten. Hilarious fun for all the adults and probably only mildly scaring for the kids. In all seriousness though, I think the mixture of terror but suspicion that it's probably actually completely safe makes for a good experience for the kids. They get the exhilaration of the adrenaline but they can "check in" with their caregivers and see that they aren't genuinely panicking at the same time. It's like a safe way to experience a real fright. Much better than roller-coasters. Setsubun isn't the only occasion that kids get terrified by the way, just the only time they are given ammunition to fight back with. This "kidnapping" was during an Obon dance.

One of the tiny elementary schools (a total of ten students at the time I taught there) I taught at held a summer "camp" at the school (it's between a river and a forested mountain) where the kids were challenged to climb the mountain in the dark with flash-lights. The teachers and enthusiastic local sadists hid in the forest and stalked them (rustling the bushes and making weird noises) or even jumping out at them. Not a single kids made it all the way up the mountain without freaking out and running for his or her life back down to the school!

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No Blue Stockings for Her

My grandmother was the top of her class at school. She loved to learn. When she was fourteen her father insisted that there was no need for a woman to be educated any further and that it was time she “earned her keep”. Despite the fact that she had won a scholarship, he sent her out to work. She didn’t let that stop her though. She squirreled away a little money of her own, worked furiously hard and eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree without having disobeyed her father. The sepia-tone graduation picture hung in her front room until her life ended, and her pride at her achievement and her resentment of her father’s behaviour did not fade as decades went by and the millennium ticked over. Such is the power parents have.

My father had a very different influence on my educational trajectory. While he was doing his PhD my little sister and I lived with him in an ex-ambulance parked on campus. We showered at the university swimming pool, ate at the refectory and built doll’s houses out of discarded volumes of Hansard.* We went for epic adventures roaming through the archives and reading random books on arcane topics. We celebrated blue stocking day** on campus, remembering the not-so-long-ago first admission of women to higher education. I decided then that I was going to do my own PhD, and Dad thought that seemed like an excellent idea.

According to a recent report Japanese girls face no discrimination in their education. In fact, slightly more women than men are graduating from university. In terms of employment, however, Japan is firmly segregated by gender and recently came in 101st in the World Economic Forum's 2012 global gender equality rankings. I have two bachelor degrees, both with majors in Japan studies. I studied gender relations in Japan quite thoroughly before moving here. Very few of the negative things I studied are apparent in my daily life. I’m not a Japanese woman, which obviously makes a big difference, and I am certainly not suggesting that Japan is a post-gender utopia. The reality is just not as obvious as my studies indicated. I was asked in my JET interview, for example, how I would respond if I were instructed to make tea for my male co-workers. Nothing even remotely resembling that situation has ever occurred. That might be because the levels at which I teach are actually dominated by female teachers (especially elementary), but anyway, the point of this is just to set the scene that I don’t observe or experience that much sexism in my daily life. It was quite a shock, therefore, to hear about what happened to one of my husband’s former pre-school students.

The little girl in question is extraordinarily bright, and picked English up very quickly. For over a year she was studying for the entrance examination to an exclusive and world-class private elementary school that teaches in English. Yes, there are entrance examinations for first graders. The little girl travelled to another prefecture to take the test, and she passed with flying colours. The usually strict and no-nonsense older lady who is the backbone of the school broke down in tears. Everyone was so proud of her, they even got in touch with my husband to let him know about it, despite the fact that he hadn’t been working there for almost a year. A big party was planned to celebrate, with a custom made banner and balloons and tons of food and general gaiety. And then… just before the party, her father decided that she would not be attending the exclusive private school. He decided that it was too expensive just for a girl. There was still a chance that they might have a son, after all, and they should save for his hypothetical education.  

Of course I don’t know what actually happened behind closed doors in that family, but that is the reason the school was given. Maybe the little girl didn’t really want to go school away from her friends. Maybe the school was her mother’s dream, not hers. I think it is more likely that the reason was exactly as it was stated, however. Getting into that elementary would have guaranteed the girl entry into the junior high and high schools connected to it. Graduating from that kind of high school gives an immense advantage in university entrance. Passing that one exam could have set her up for life. Would have set her up for life. But why bother? She can just get married, right?

*Hansard is the transcript of the proceedings of Australia’s parliament.

**Blue stocking celebrations were one of the first causalities of the Howard government’s assault on campus culture in the late 1990s, but have recently made a comeback. You can read more about them here.

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