Stress factors and mechanisms to coping in modern Japan

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Table of Content

Introduction

Part One. Stress Factors in Modern Japanese Culture

1.1 Socialization and Social Control

1.2 Educational Sphere

1.3 Labor Sphere

Part Two. Mechanisms of Coping in Modern Japanese Culture

2.1 Ijime

2.2 Kireru

2.3 Hikikomori

2.4 Amae

2.5 Ibasho

Conclusion

Sources

Introduction

The topicality of my work derives from dramatic transitions that Japan faces nowadays. Due to economic turbulences the country experienced in the 1990s, the stability of a number of vital social institutions, i.e. school and work, was jeopardized. New, external for traditional Japanese culture patterns of social relations were created, modifying the process of socialization and social reality. Respectively, this transition deeply influenced Japanese individuals and society as a whole. It introduced new possibilities for development of Japan, renewing the perception of itself and the surrounding world. Nevertheless, a necessity to adapt to unexpected changes, the destruction of accustomed norms and practices and the vagueness of future generated a certain amount of stress, the elaboration on which occupied a vivid part of statistics, researches and mass media articles on Japan. In general, the issues of social exclusion, bullying, truancy, depression, suicide and etc. were reinforced or received unforeseen content. Therefore, to fully comprehend the structure and possible locus of development of Japanese society and culture, such stress factors and mechanisms of coping with them should be concerned as they directly affect the behavior of modern Japanese individuals and the society they form, and the culture they postulate.

Regarding the sources of my work, a number of reliable documents were applied for current research. Primary sources are represented in English and Japanese languages. English language sources are publically open articles on stress-related issues in modern Japan from eminent mass media agencies: The Guardian, The Independent, The Japan Times, etc. The majority of Japanese language sources are divided into two categories. Firstly, newspaper articles from Asahi and Sankei Newspapers. Both are the pillar news agencies in Japan, the viewpoints and investigations of which are recognized worldwide. Though news agencies in Japan has specific nature of being indirectly influenced by Japanese government by the means of so-called kisha kurabu (�L�҃N���u) or journalist clubs, Asahi and Sankei maintains the reputation of trustworthy sources, applicable for this work. Secondly, official government statistics on stress-related issues from Cabinet Office, Ministry of Education, National Police Agency, etc. The access to these sources is publically open, while the statistics is confirmed by corresponding data. It is problematic to claim that current statistics exhaustingly represent the state of affairs of Japanese society, however Japanese government is rarely caught falsifying official data, which makes such sources trustworthy as well. Nevertheless, a critical perception of them is demanded, as some tend to embellish reality. For instance, an official proclamation of Prime Minister Abe �Let the Women Shine in Japan� (�������P�����{��) proposes the idea that women in Japan have prominent opportunities for self-realization, while in reality those opportunities are heavily suppressed by traditional sexism.

Furthermore, most of the secondary sources are presented in English language, however the significant part of them is written by Japanese researches. These sources are scientific articles, published on the basics of well-known universities like Oxford and Harvard, or by prominent academic publishers like Routledge and Springer. All of them regard affairs in economy, society and culture of modern Japan that are connected to the problem of stress. Among them the author wishes to mention a study by japanologist Alex Kerr from Yale University, �Dogs and Demons. Tales from the Dark Side of Japan�. This book was published in 2001 as a reaction to the first decade of thrilling transitions in Japan. In his scientific research Kerr tried to overlook the core elements of Japanese reality, including family, work, education, bureaucracy, attitude to environment, education, etc. in terms of occurred changes, their degradation and modernization. Though the field of Kerr's study was truly colossal and sometimes in his investigations he occasionally demonstrated over-emotional style of narration, this book has firm methodology and decent reputation, along with far-reaching findings. The current study was deeply inspired by this work and was bethought to further develop its findings.

The core timeline of current research is the era of post-Bubble Japan, i.e. 1990-2016.

Considering the methodology of my research, my work rests in the domain of socio-cultural psychology and I applied both elements of qualitative and quantitative analysis to it. Regarding the first one, my work was deeply rooted in the issue of understanding the human behavior, the intentions it follows and sources that postulates it, therefore, the employment of qualitative analysis happened to be inevitable for me. It goes without saying that I unfortunately lacked the opportunity to visit Japan and to conduct the qualitative analysis �on the ground�, therefore I had to investigate the data from secondary sources, i.e. the results of studies in focus groups, behavioral experiments, etc. For example, the experiment of Ujie and Miyake on the Japanese child autonomy issue helped me to draw the connection between the notion of maternal intimacy and stress generation. Moreover, I studied a variety of interviews, predominantly in the field of school and work life to measure the state of affairs in these realms. Alongside this, I also frequently applied the content analysis to evaluate the connections between the current speech practices and notions that from Japanese cultural reality and the influence they have on particular individuals. Moreover, as you can judge from a massive corpus of statistical sources of my work, the quantitative analysis was executed through the means of elaborating on these statistics and interpretation of the data collected.

As a ground of my hypothesis I present the suggestion that deep changes in the socio-cultural sphere of Japan from the 1990s till nowadays had a massive impact on Japanese individuals, forced them to face new, unprecedented factors of stress and, as a contraction, produce new mechanisms of coping. Main stress factors were postulated by the transitional condition of Japan, between new socio-economic reality and outdated mass life perception and ethics. The country could not successfully fulfill such transition and Japan found itself living in the post-Bubble world with numerous impractical institutions and orientations, aimed at the reality that no more exists and the future that probably would not happen. It seems not to be a coincidence that the first recorded incident of karoshi (death from overworking), i.e. the fatal stress accumulation caused by exhaustive, inefficient actions occurred the same month the Bubble collapsed. Respectively, not only the sources of stress, but also the way people cope with it, the nature of such coping mechanism have met a significant degeneration due to such transition. Some of them were still rooted at the group activities and the feeling of belonging and intimacy with vivid connection of the primal stage of socialization to adult life. Nevertheless, the current degradation of the notion of collective, the decay of labor and domestic institutions in Japanese socio-cultural sphere introduced coping mechanisms based on escapism and stress reduction through individual aggression against group, which appears to be a striking phenomenon of current Japan.

In order to investigate the issue of these socio-cultural phenomena, I propose the following structure. The first part of my work is dedicated to the problem of contemporary factors of stress in modern Japan, how they affect individuals, what forms do they take and, which is more important, why they introduced themselves after the post-Bubble era. In the similar way the action causes counteraction, the appearance of stress leads to a necessity to cope with it. Thus, in the second part of my work I will elaborate on the issue of coping mechanisms, practically in the same pattern as with the sources of stress: how they affect, what forms, why now. Each part is divided to a number of chapters: three in the first part and five in the second; each dedicated to a primal factor of stress or mechanism of coping.

I hope that you would enjoy reading my work no less than I enjoyed writing it.

Part One. Stress Factors in Modern Japanese Culture

1.1 Socialization and Social Control

The vulnerability to stress among Japanese individuals is deeply rooted in their perception of reality which is generated by the consequences of their socialization.Walter Tubbs. The Roots of Stress-Death and Juvenile Delinquency in Japan: Disciplinary Ambivalence and Perceived Locus of Control. - Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 13, No. 7. 1994, P. 507-512. Though Japanese authorities generally try to represent the country as a safe place for its citizens, from the beginning of 1990s Japan faces an unsettling rate of social disturbance, especially among youngsters. The number of children who demonstrate apathy and absenteeism is stably growing from the 1960s and already surpassed the mark of one hundred thousand individualsThe Japan Times. Student Absenteeism on the Rise. August 16, 2014. URL: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/08/16/editorials/student-absenteeism-rise/, while numerous cases of Japanese teen suicides attracted worldwide attention.ABC News. Kids and Laughing Teachers Bullied Suicide Teen. July 6, 2012. URL: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/kids-and-laughing-teachers-bullied-suicide-teen/ The Guardian. Japanese School Pupils Threaten to Kill Themselves Over Bullying. November 10, 2006.The Guardian. Japanese School Pupils Threaten to Kill Themselves Over Bullying. November 10, 2006. URL: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/10/japan.schoolsworldwide

In order to explain this sick tendency Japanese government proposed the concept that antisocial behavior of Japanese youngsters was connected to their widespread depravity and overindulgence. When the first incidents occurred in the mid-1980s former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone directly pointed on the spoiled children and their parents to blame for the overindulgence of children by parents that became the greatest cause of young crime in Japan.Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. A History of the Liberal Democratic Party. Chapter 11: Period of Nakasone's Leadership. URL: https://www.jimin.jp/english/about-ldp/history/104291.html In other words, some parents used to treat their children too gently which ends up in the degradation of their moral principles and stimulates their criminal propensities. This concept was visually strongly correlated with the image of yanki (�����L�[): a violent and indifferent teenager, commonly speaking, the Japanese equivalent of the British punk who started to appear on the streets approximately in the beginning of 1980s.John Clammer. Vision and Society. Rethinking the Sociology of Japanese Visual Culture. - Routledge, 2015. P.181. Aggressive yanki became the constant subject of concern for authorities which led to the reinforcement of control management in public institutions, basically in schools where the number of police officers who supervise student's actions was enlarged.Mitsuru Taki. Basic Knowledge of Bullying Issues. - International Conference on School-Bullying Prevention, August 20-21, 2011. P. 1-2.However not all the troublesome Japanese youngsters were this aggressive to be called indulgent or spoiled. Most of them behaved rather as exhausted victims, whether it was bullying or school absenteeism and especially suicide.

In these terms Dr. Walter Tubbs from the Stanford University proposed the theory that Japanese pattern of antisocial behavior and its stressful content is not related to indulgent relationships between particular parents and children, yet much stronger depends on general social practices of child-bring among the majority of Japanese families. According to his theory, Japanese society emphasizes the external locus of individual control (by the means of rules, regulations, authority figures, etc.), while the aspect of self-(internal) control is merely neglected. Indeed, Japanese youngsters who hurt others and commit suicide are out of control, but not in the Western connotation, because control has never practically belonged to them. Respectively, the concept of self-control is extremely important, as Tubbs states further in his article that whether people believe that they can determine their own fates, it will be the critical importance to the way in which they cope with stress and engage in challenges, as well as give service and to enjoy life.Walter Tubbs. Op.cit. P. 507-512.

Regarding Japanese individuals, what they basically acquire through socialization is far from the skill to determine their lives, but rather a learned helplessness to follow their will and inability to change conditions in which they live. Such helplessness along with the external locus of control are determined by Tubbs as the key factors of nervous breakdown and stress formation among Japanese youngsters. Moreover, the reason why Japanese child can dare to commit suicide while being bothered by apparently ordinary issues like receiving poor grades at school or unfulfilling their parents' tasks is also connected to the control problem. When the locus of control is completely external, and when the act of self-esteem and self-approval is grounded only on external sources, and when this approval has been withdrawal enough times, the individual can gradually accumulate the powerful sense of self-rejection. In such conditions for Japanese person feels that his or her sense of worth completely depends on the opinions of the others, and if this opinion is getting too critical (which is quite common in achievement-oriented Japanese society) a person can easily slide to the nervous breakdown.Ibidem. In terms of the post-Bubble Japan, when social reality is constantly changing, such pathological dependence on the approval of the others may significantly limit the freedom of actions of individual, lock him or her into traditional, yet already impractical pattern of behavior.

Another aspect of the stress-bounded Japanese socialization is, surprisingly, the role of the mother. On the one hand, Japanese mothers take a significant part in creating the feeling of self-confidence of their children. In various researches on this subject was found that on average Japanese mothers spend more time with their children than their counterparts in the rest of the world.Masako Ishii-Kuntz. Sharing of Housework and Childcare in Contemporary Japan. - United Nations, Division for the Advancement of Woman, 2008. P. 63.

While Japanese fathers are mostly bothered with work and appear at home quite rarely, apparently leaving early in the morning and coming back lately at night, when their children are already asleep, mothers, on the contrary, are literally soldered together with their children. Rothbaum's research found out that Japanese mothers form an outstandingly firm connection with their infants on the emotional, verbal and physical levels, nursing the atmosphere of extreme intimacy with each other.Fred Rothbaum. The Development of Close Relationships in Japan and the United States. - Child Development, Vol. 71, No. 5, September/October 2000. P. 1126-1127.In addition, in a more mature age they can act as a mediocre between child and schooling authorities, watching over the good record and positive grades.

However, on the other side, such deep intimacy when mixed with overestimated importance of education may cause a major stressful flaw in Japanese socialization. Specific negative element of Japanese mothers' child-bringing strategic was mentioned for the first time by Perry Garfinkel, a New York Times journalist, who coined the phrase that �Japanese mothers are the best `Jewish mothers' in the world�.Perry Garfinkel. The Best `Jewish Mother' in the World. - Psychology Today, September 1983. P. 56.A stereotypic Jewish mother pays a lot of attention to her child, practically trying to control and, eventually, dominate in every sphere of his or her life. This passively aggressive intervention is advocated by the prominent scale of affection and proximity toward the child, in conjunction with a constantly raised feeling of guilt which is used as a weapon to suppress possible resistance (this `castration effect' of Jewish mothers is frequently mentioned in Woody Allen's movies).Reuven P. Bulka. Critical Psychological Issues: Judaic Perspectives. - University Press of America, 1992. P.23.

The Asian analogs of Jewish mothers are exactly Japanese mothers or, more specifically, kyouiku mamas (����}�}). Kyouiku mama can be translated as an �education mother�. As was mentioned, the striking feature of Japanese society is the emphasis placed on achievement, and kyouiku mama plays the role of the mentor and, eventually, a profound stress-catalysis in the process of studying.Takie Sugiyama Lebra, William P.Lebra. Japanese Culture and Behavior: Selected Readings. - University of Hawaii Press, 1986. P.339. Those mothers are neurotically overinvested in their child's education and possibly can become obsessed, paranoid and even in the desperation to see the infant's success.Merry White. The Virtue of Japanese Mothers: Cultural Definitions of Women's Lives. - MIT Press, 1987. P. 149-193.Such concern on the child's future results in huge amount of emotional pressure as a consequence of tempestuous studying taken after the school under the mother's control. The tragedy is that unlike social conditions of pre-bubble economy, in modern Japan active studying does not obligatory guarantee full-time occupation, which often symbolizes a successful career. Thus the child falls into an unresolved situation, where an excessive amount of diligence dedicated to studying may lead to no particular result.David Flath. Japanese Economy. - Oxford University Press, 2014.P133-135.

Nevertheless, kyouiku mamas, standing by traditional Japanese (and Asian) respectful view on education, continue to occupy the majority of child's leisure time with studying, implementing the idea of unreachable perfectionism into reality. Regardless the possible nervous exhaustion, this method causes additional damage, a more defective one, as it operated on the level of socialization that forms a further child's outlook on life. Under mother's pressure, a child learns to comprehend his will and private interest as selfish ones, while external expectations on his life are artificially imposed as his own. Likewise, in a Jewish experience, a feeling of guilt and unfulfilled duty to mother is forced by the mother herself in order to minimize the child's independence, leading to the feeling of self-loathing and fatalism among the children throughout the socialization process.Walter Tubbs. The Roots of Stress-Death and Juvenile Delinquency in Japan: Disciplinary Ambivalence and Perceived Locus of Control. - Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 13, No. 7. 1994, P. 511-512.

In addition to socialization, the society itself, its environment creates certain conditions for stable generation of stress. The significant proofs for this can be found in the vivid social practice of public announcements, one of the most intrusive methods of control-empowerment, the effect of which practically involves every Japanese citizen. Alex Kerr, a japanologist from Yale University was stunned by the omnipresent potential of such messages. He complains that Japan as a social space suffers from the heavy case of inter noise. An absolute majority of popular public spots like train stations, department stores and hotel lobbies literally vibrate with taped messages advising people not to forget things, walk on the left, be careful of this and beware of that, etc. In other words, public announcements can be heard practically everywhere in Japan.Alex Kerr. Dogs and Demons. - Hill and Wang, 2002. P. 309.

Still the pressing role of public announcement is not the situation that can be discovered only in this country. One cannot argue that public announcements are appropriate elements of every city's life. Depending on the situation they can be very functional, explaining people the basic rules of operating in the city, or, in broad, the mechanisms of co-existing in the society. Thus such announcements can be found scrolling in all over the world, from West to East. However, in Japan the characteristic figures of public announcement are noticeably different. As was described in Kerr's study, it is hard to find a social spot in Japan not dominated by these announcements. Alex Kerr complains that in the West and in Southeast Asia countries (so far) they are mostly limited to public transport and it is practically impossible to hear loud announcements on every escalator, in gardens, parks and churches, repeated not once but endlessly.Ibid. P. 309-310.Considering this viewpoint it is possible to say that in Japan it is a case of excess, of announcement cared far beyond the reasonable limit.

From the existential perception public announcement as the social phenomena correlates with the form of indirect public control over society and individuals living it in. Those announcements are basically the subspecies of the widespread regulations that constitute Japanese social discourse. From the viewpoint of the writer Nakano Koji, these invisible rules in Japan had grown everywhere. And the sustainable feature of them is that though none of those rules are required by law, nearly nobody dares to disobey them. The younger Japanese people are, the more strongly they seem to be attached to those rules.����F���B���n�̎v�z (Nakano Koji. The Idea of Honest Poverty) �B - ����:���t���ɁA2006. P. 212. Alex Kerr even calls this situation �the addiction to the announcements� without which modern Japanese citizens feel themselves lonely and abandoned. Alex Kerr. Op.cit. P. 309.

Nonetheless such announcements are not only omnipresent and addiction-tolerate, they also bring a certain idea of menace in terms of functioning in the daily life of Japan. Regarding their content, the two most common words in them are abunai (��Ȃ�, dangerous) and kiken (�댯, hazardous). Such a pressurization of the threatening atmosphere result in the conviction that daily life is full of peril, unless you follow the rules.Ibid. P.310.This attitude sound rather conspiratorial, yet a number of Japanese scholars and authors share the anticipation that Japanese social control by announcements and rules has become too harsh. For example, the writer Fukuda Kiichiro is concerned by the fact that social control is invading the private realm of Japan to an extreme degree. However such a broad control cannot easily develop if there are only people who want to control the others. In order to prevent the possible resistance in masses, the necessary condition is - and this condition is extremely pictorial for modern Japanese social mentality - to have a majority of people who wish to be (or tolerate being) controlled.���c���Y�B�Â����Ƃ͉���(Fukuda Kiichiro. What Is Tranquility?) �B- ����:��O���[�A1996.P. 24-46.

In common sociology this behavior pattern is called �voluntary subjugation�. It occurs when people who wish to ne controlled are struggling to bring control over themselves. Respectively, the need to be controlled derives from the person's inability to determine his own fate and take direct responsibility for his actions.Tommy Lee Lott. Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy. - Rowman& Littlefield, 1998. P. 105-107. Voluntary subjugation as a fear to step over the line and question social norms is more inherent to infants than to adults, and in Japanese case it demonstrates the consequence of traumatic socialization mixed with constant social control - an infantilizing of Japanese nation. As Alex Kerr points out that the freezing of infant's emotional development (in socialization) at the scale before he or she faces adult responsibility results in massive national nostalgia for childhood. Alex Kerr. Op.cit. P. 312-313.

Socialization and social environment postulate a certain ground for generation of stress among Japanese individuals. From their socialization they receive the idea that locus of control over their lives is predominantly external which leads to the learned helplessness to change surrounding conditions along with the complete dependence on the opinion of others. Individual self-esteem and self-approval derives from these external expectations that can directly influence person's mental health and push him or her to the brink of nervous breakdown. Concerning the socializing role of Japanese mothers, they basically generate intimate relations with children, however simultaneously may transform such intimacy into severe feeling of guilt, resulting in self-loathing and fatalism. Respectively, another powerful version of external control in Japanese society is public announcements that are literally omnipresent. They regulate practically every aspect of social affairs and tend to imply the concept of potential danger in the daily life. The majority of Japanese individuals demonstrate voluntary subjugation to them which may be regarded as a form of infantilism, a fear to independently determine own life and take responsibility for own actions, in a broad meaning, to behave as an adult. These peculiarities of socialization and social control were not generated solely in period of post-Bubble Japan; yet they heavily worsened the ability of Japanese individuals to adapt to changing social reality, causing a greater outburst of frustration. Consequently, current stress and fear catalysts are gradually empowered at the further social institutions - school and workplace.

1.2 Educational Sphere

The institution of school plays a vital role in individual's development. According to Yuko Honma, a researcher of Japanese schooling system, schools are among the most influential means of socialization, the effect of which extends to the student's entire life span. Adjustment to school is a crucial predictor of psychological outcomes through both adolescent and adult periods. Moreover, for children school represents a proto-social group that gradually displays family in the terms of belonging. For most of the students school provides a context in which first relationships outside the family group are formed. Thus, during the greater part of early childhood and adolescences school presents a primary environment for social relationships and various opportunities to satisfy needs for belonging.Yuko Honma, Ichiro Ushiyama. Emotional Engagement and Social Adjustment in Late Childhood: The Relationship Between School Liking and School Belonging in Japan. -Psychological Reports (114), 2014. P. 496-497.

Nevertheless, despites positive outcomes for socialization and the development of personality, school as a social construction may not be as safe for Japanese students as it should have been.

On the one hand, though Japanese society is generally peaceful, sometimes schools do not manage to protect their children from external threats. One of the most startling examples is so-called Ikeda incident of 2001. On 8 June 37-old man entered Ikeda Elementary school attached to Osaka Kyoiku University. He stubbed eight pupils and injured 15 students and two teachers. The dead victims were one 6-year old boy and seven 7-year old girls. In additions, many children witnessed the scene and they were thought to suffer subsequently from the deep psychological trauma.Naoyasu Motomura. School Crisis Intervention in the Ikeda Incident: Organization and Activity of the Mental Support Team. - Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (57), 2003. P. 239-240.

On the other hand, criminal rate of Japanese schools is recently on the increase. According to 2014 Police White Book of Japan, the number of bullying-related issues in schools steadily declined before 2012. Yet in 2013 it rocketed to 260 issues that demanded police attention, and in 2014 peaked to the rate of 410 issues, an absolute record in the last 25 years. The number of children who were arrested due to bulling grew as well: in 2013 it was 511 pupils, while in 2014 the trend achieved the digits of 724 students.�x�@���B�x�@���������Q�U�N��(National Police Agency. The White Paper on Police 2014). URL: https://www.npa.go.jp/hakusyo/h26/index.html

The murder assault and police intervention are abnormal realities of Japanese school, the existence of which is disturbing, yet does not exhaust the notion of schooling institutions because of their relative fewness. However what determine the sources of stress for Japanese schools is not the deviant occasions, but the very daily routine of them, their structure and atmosphere, mentally torturing and psychologically traumatic elements of which are accepted by the majority of students and teachers.

To start with, from the first class teachers gather children in kumi (�g) or groups within which they will stay until graduation. All class activities are perceived through the kumi prism, while the child regards himself as an inseparable part of the collective. This practice correlates with traditional group-based structure of Japanese social system and teaches pupil to self-identify by the bounders of kumi. At the same time, this practice gives birth to the sever fear of group rejection. This fear is represented by the concept of nakama hazure (���ԊO��). Nakama hazure means the specific feeling of not being part of the intimate group and being rejected by it. Stepping into the line of nakama hazure leads not only to mental stress of being ignored by fellow classmates, but also to complete failure in the school progress, because school systems proposes group activities as a curriculum's core, when the individual model of studying has only an additional status. Therefore most students make maximum efforts to be accepted by the group and remain securely within it.Alex Kerr. Op.cit. P. 287-288.

Teachers who lock children up in the kumi represent another source of nervous disturbance. Traditionally, Japanese culture tends to idealize the concept of sensei or a person who is older and more experienced, in broad sense, a teacher. Consequently, a role of teacher in Japanese pupil's life and teacher's attitude towards the student plays a major role in child's mental condition. At the same time, if students recognize their teachers negatively, it is inferred that considerable mental conflict will occur.Yuriko Takata. Research on Psychosomatic Complaints by Senior High School Students in Tokyo and their Related Factors. - Psychiatry and Child Neurosciences (55), 2001. P. 8. And Japanese teachers indeed provide a certain ground for such conflict. Sometimes teachers may behave violently towards students, which can possibly lead to the lethal conclusion. In 1990 a teacher in Takatsuka High School of Kobe crushed a skull and occasionally murdered a 15-year-old girl pupil while trying to punish her for late attendance.Linda. L. Arthur. Do or Die: School Violence, Teenage Suicide and Educational Pressure in Japan. -Yearbook of American Reading Forum, 1991. P.46. Sometimes teacher's violence may reveal sexual intensions. In 2005 another teacher from Shikokuchuo city school gymnasium of Ehime province forced his eight girl pupils to run naked as punishment.Japan Times. Girls Say Ex-Coach Forced Them to Run Nude. - November 12, 2005. URL: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2005/11/12/national/girls-say-ex-coach-forced-them-to-run-nude/#.VRk1ifmsXnA

All in all, teacher violence in form of taibatsu (�̔�) or corporal punishment is officially prohibited by Japanese law since 1947.�w�Z����@�P�P��(Article 11 of Japanese Education Law), 1947. URL: http://law.e-gov.go.jp/htmldata/S22/S22HO026.html However despite the prohibition the survey by Ministry of Education found out that in 2012 educational year 6721 teachers applied corporal punishments to their pupils, among which 4208 children received physical injuries.�����V���B�S���̔������A�O�N�x�̂P�V�{�A�U�V�Q�P�l�Ɂ@���ȏ�(Asahi Newspaper. Ministry of Education: 6721 Teachers Apply Corporal Punishments All Over the Country, 17 Times More Than in Previous Year). - August 8, 2013. URL:http://www.asahi.com/edu/articles/TKY201308090165.html Aaron Miller, a researcher of taibatsu phenomena suspects that regarding the low rate of sentences for teachers who apply corporal punishment (30-45%), taibatsu in Japanese schools is far from being discouraged and sometimes is even encouraged.Aaron Miller. Taibatsu: Corporal Punishment in Japanese Socio-Cultural Context. - Routledge, 2011. P. 234.This situation is advocated by the fact that teachers play an important role of in the disciplining of children because Japanese schools more explicitly prepare students to conform the roles they will later be expected to play in adult life.Ibidem.P. 241.Respectively, a professor Sanuki Hiroshi from Hosei University points out that taibatsu functions to form a submissive personality which never complains and always follows the existing order.���э_�B�w�Z�Ɛl�Ԍ`��(Sanuki Hiroshi. Character Formation and the School). - Hosei University Press, 2005.P. 183. In these terms, psychological stress received from teacher's violence is undermined in compare to submissive and socio-valid skills of students.

The aspect of neglected psychological stress corresponds with observation made by Alex Ker that schooling in Japan requires a surprising amount of pain and suffering, especially in the form of gambare (�撣��). Gambare is a specific Japanese notion, which can be perceived as a keystone not only of schooling system, by of the society as a whole. Gambare means to �persevere, endure and surpass one's usual potential�. In common sense, gambare is a powerful tool for individual's development as it teaches to ignore pain and frustration, while bringing person to a more powerful state of body and mind. Nonetheless, in connotations of modern Japanese school, gambare goes beyond rational limits, representing itself in an overwhelming educational pressure and complicated system of regulations that involve personal space as well (in some schools teachers require students to wear class uniform even at home).Alex Kerr. Op.cit. P. 289-290. At this point, the concept of gambare acts rather as destructive, than positive practice.

The destructive influence of schools is proved by data on emotional condition of Japanese students. Research by Tanaka and Tamai discovered existence of at least one psychological complain (morning blues, abdominal pain, headache, etc.) among elementary Japanese school children (years 6-12).Tanaka Hidetaka, Tamai Hiroshi. Psychosocial Factors Affecting Psychosomatic Symptoms in Japanese Schoolchildren. - Pediatrics International (42), 200. P. 354. Simultaneously with the enforcement of rules and educational pressure at schools, stress was getting more severe as children were growing older. The research found out that the older group of children (10-12 years) showed more depressive symptoms and anxiety (slow before going to school, unwilling to attend, nervous breakdowns at home, etc,) than the younger group (6-9 years). Therefore, the older group had more psychological distress associated with daily difficulties of school life.Ibidem.P. 358. Furthermore, a study by Kanae, Miwa and Toshihiro provided information that mature Japanese students who were studying in college suffered from a significantly more developed form of depression than their American counterparts.Kanae Yamashita, Miwa Saito, Toshihiro Takao. Stress and Coping Styles in Japanese Nursing Students. - International Journal of Nursing Practice (18), 2012. P. 490.

Alex Kerr sums up this alarm data with the idea that Japanese schools are training students instead of teaching them.Alex Kerr. Op.cit. P. 293-294. Japanese students do show notable records of studying, especially in the sphere of exact sciences, however such achievements are commonly backed by a tremendous number of class activities that have little to do with real education which should be a prime aim of every school. Instead of it, what is practically taught in Japanese schools are basics socialization concepts that are imposed in the brutal form of authority pressure and self-exhaustion. Kerr additionally suggests that parents know about all the severities students have to come through during school years; however, they do not try to ease their children's frustration, because emotionally and sometimes physically painful schooling is regarded as a tool for personality building and not as a source for mental disturbance.Ibidem.P. 291.

Last feature of Japanese schooling system elaborated on in Kerr's study is a principle of keeping student busy every second which is tightly linked to the previously mentioned phenomena of self-exhaustion. Japanese children are literally buried under hours spent inside doing homework and preparing for the class. Saturation of them is increased in the great scale on January and February, when students are setting gambare to critical limit while training for the exams.Ibidem.P. 296. The schooling conditions may get even harder, if child (or rather his parents) decides to go to a juku (�m) or a cram school. The graduation from juku seriously increases chances to enroll into prestigious high school, however entry test is vividly complicated even for the Japanese school system. Thus, preparing for juku leads to an unavoidable sacrifice of the leisure time. A private pool by Inagaki of six-grades (12-year olds) in Tokyo illumined the situation that one of three preparing students went to sleep at midnight, at the earliest, because they were studying for juku.Inagaki Emiko. Exam Hell Explodes Bright Children. - AEN, 1996. P. 1-3. Hence that constant fatigue and sleep deprivation are common issues among Japanese pupils.

Respectively, a lack of leisure time and, especially, sleep deprivation promotes negative consequences for children as well. Suwa and Takahara in their work on sleep habits of Japanese students confirmed an unbalanced ratio of work and relaxation in Japanese children, likewise a suggestion that less sleep proposes a more vulnerable response to stress.Suwa Sachiko, Takahara Madoka. Sleep Bruxism and its Relationship to Sleep Habits and Lifestyle of Elementary School Children in Japan. - Sleep and Biological Rhythms (7), 2009. P. 93-102. At the same time too much stress caused by the lack of sleep can evolve to physical and mental degradation, reduce student's self-esteem and may affect pupil's academic achievements. Kanae Yamashita, Miwa Saito, Toshihiro Takao. Op.cit. P. 489. As a result, Japanese students get caught into a following vicious circle: at school they generate stress under omnipresent rules, teachers' coercion and persevering gears of gambare. At home instead of trying to ease the received frustration they exchange their leisure time on further studying to be prepared for the next day at school. However such tactics may develop into a gradual deterioration process of nervous conditions, which is accelerated by ongoing pressure of school's authorities.

The influence of this vicious circle reveals itself in the study on psychometric complains of Tokyo senior high school students by Takata Yuriko from Tsukuba University. In her cross-cultural research Takata found out that in US the main source of stress is located outside school affairs. American students mostly feel nervous discomfort in terms of family quarrels and major social problems like poverty and crime. In Japan, on the contrary, children in majority feel stress due to the school problems or, more specifically, daily school routine. Such problems include academic competitions, especially exams, interpersonal relations with classmates and teachers, rules, etc.Yuriko Takata. Op.cit. P.3.

Therefore it is possible to suggest that school represents a main factor of stress for Japanese students. And still this problem is even worsened by general inability of Japanese adolescents to cope efficiently with frustration formed by school system. Kanae, Miwa and Toshihiro's research showed that in conditions of hostile environment that accumulates nervous disturbance the most common pattern of coping behavior for students is sleep, perhaps, the most passive one. Respectively, the most common approach to disturbing aggravators is acceptance and self-distraction.Kanae Yamashita, Miwa Saito, Toshihiro Takao. Op.cit. P.492-495. In other words, when stressful situation occurs, Japanese students prefer to act passively, tolerate frustration and blame themselves, instead of trying to improve their lives.

Inability to solve their problems leads to logical and dramatic conclusion. According to Kawashima and Ito, in Japanese adolescents aged 15-19 suicide remains the prime source of death. While the development of medical service eliminates the majority of child-affected illnesses and effective police monitoring lowers crime rate, the emotional condition of a child, his or her nervous state becomes the most vulnerable part of a person, as it is not protected, but rather destroyed by the school authorities.Kawashima Yoshitaka, Ito Takao. The Characteristics of Serious Suicide Attempters in Japanese Adolescents - Comparison Study Between Adolescents and Adults. - BMC Psychiatry (12), 2012. P. 1-2.Evidences to blame school authorities are presented in statistics by Cabinet Office of Japanese Government. In 2014 the number of adolescents (up to 19 years) who committed suicide reached 483 children, while the key suicide cause (167 children) for them was school issues (�w�Z���, gakkomondai). Concretely speaking, those children were basically troubled by problems with exams and academic progress.���t�{�B�����Q�U�N���ɂ����鎩�E�̏󋵁B�N��ʁA���� (Cabinet Office of Japanese Government. State of Affairs with Suicide through 2014. Separation by Age, Cause). URL: http://www8.cao.go.jp/jisatsutaisaku/toukei/h26.html It is hard to claim that exams and academic progress by their nature have something specifically suicide-prone in them, as they practically exist in every school system of every state. Yet in Japan they act as the central motive for children to kill themselves, representing the extremely stressful content of Japanese school system.

Hopefully, suicide is only a radical measure, while a much bigger number of students prefer different behavior pattern when they cannot cope with school any more. From the begging of the 1990s Japan saw a rapid increase in numbers of students who refused to go to school. This phenomenon was called futoko (�s�o�Z) which literary means �school non-attendance�. Futoko is officially defined by Japanese government as a failure to attend school for more than 30 days in a year due to social reasons like psychological and emotional disturbances, excluding illnesses and economic reasons.�����Ȋw�ȁB�s�o�Z�̌���Ɋւ���F�� (Ministry of Education. Information on Futoko Present Situation). URL: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/futoukou/03070701/002.pdf In 2013 the number of children who committed futoko among junior and middle school students reached the digits of approximately 120 000 pupils. This made at least one futoko student in every class of middle school throughout the country.�Y�o�V���B�����w���̕s�o�Z�P�Q���l�@�U�N�Ԃ葝���@���w�ł͂P�N���X�ɂP�l�@�w�Z��{�����Ŕ��� (Sankei Newspaper. In Basic School Survey was Revealed that 120 000 Pupils of Junior and Middle School Commit Futoko. A Rapid Grow in Last Six Years, One Student in Every Middle School Class). - July 7, 2014. URL: http://www.sankei.com/life/news/140807/lif1408070033-n1.html�@

When futoko was investigated for the first time by government officials in the beginning of the 1990s, the blame was eventually set on children. Futoko was regarded as a fault of the students, stemming from laziness, idleness and selfishness. The solution of this situation, therefore, was in increased discipline, training and punishment. At this time in noticeable number of schools a tougher policy was adopted in order to cure the futoko.Shoko Yoneyama. Student Discourse on Tokokyouhi (School Phobia/Refusal) in Japan: Burnout or Empowerment? - British Journal of Sociology of Education (21), 2000. P. 83.

At the same time from concerned teachers, parents, counselors, lawyers and psychiatrics was formed a Committee to analyze futoko.Instead of futoko Committee applied an older term tokokyohi (�o�Z����) - a �refusal to attend school� that has almost the same connotation as futoko, but with an emphasis on student's feeling of unwillingness. The Committee claimed that futoko was specific Japanese behavior pattern that differed from Western truancy. In case of truancy students rarely express feeling of self-hate and somatic discomfort, perceiving their actions as something deviant, but still rather joyful and adventurous. On the contrary, futoko students tended to humiliate themselves for their non-attendance and gradually lowered their self-esteem.Shoko Yoneyama. Op.cit. P.78. Moreover, a separate research by Iwamitsu and Ozeki discovered that futoko students were close to be an opposition to rebellious Western truancy students. Conversely, futoko children demonstrated high level of self-criticism, showed little aggression, seldom complained and were prone to suppress their emotions.Iwamitsu Yumi, Ozeki Yuji. Psychological Characteristics and the Efficacy of Hospitalization Treatment on Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome Patients with School Refusal. - Sleep and Biological Rhythms (5), 2007. P. 21. In fact, such characteristics described them as perfect products of Japanese school system that could not endure the school system anymore. As a number of children from Committee's research complained that they wanted to attend school, but just could not do it.Shoko Yoneyama. Op.cit. P. 87. Their inability to attend was sourced not in their will, but in the school environment that critically jeopardized their nervous state.

Japan may be called a �mass education society� where it is commonly believed that one's level of well-being correlates directly and almost exclusively with one's academic achievements.Ibidem.P. 80.However being successful in Japanese school is not a simple task, as studying is often accompanied by a vivid amount of nervous disturbance. Though Japanese society is generally safe, serious dramatic affairs occasionally occur in Japanese schools, while crime rates among the pupils are on the increase. Japanese schools are functioning in the form of solid kumi groups and a fear to be rejected from them proposes submission in children. Teachers commonly apply violence to students, sometimes in the corporal way or taibatsu which is officially prohibited, but generally tolerated, as it is thought to efficiently create discipline. A practice of gambare or �self-surpassing� dominates in school curriculum and occupies most of the student's leisure time. It leads to a generation of psychological frustration that is getting severer as children grow up. In comparison to foreign countries (US) Japanese students also suffer from a more complicated form of depression. Another consequence of gambare is pupil's constant fatigue and sleep deprivation that proposes vulnerable response to frustration. As a result, statistically school represents the biggest source of stress for Japanese children. Japanese pupils lack ability to cope with such hostile environment and frequently push themselves to suicide, the main source of which is also defined as troubles connected with school. A bigger number of children prefer to completely avoid school attendance in the form of futoko. Futoko is extremely common nowadays: approximately every middle school class has one student who misses studying with no physical or economic reason. This practice is not similar to truancy, because futoko-prone children are generally non-aggressive, submissive and experience self-loathing for their inability to cope with school stress.