Learning to Bow

by Bruce Feiler

  After lunch we walked around the shores of Nikko’s famed Lake Chuzenjiko. At first the path was flooded with bikers, birdwatchers, and small bands of uniformed schoolchildren, but as we continued farther around the lake, the crowds thinned and we were able to behold the atmosphere in a rare moment of privacy. As we wandered in the woods, Cho explained the evolution of the momijigari. Certain natural phenomena, because of their splendor and singular beauty, developed almost a religious significance in ancient Japanese culture, where Shinto beliefs held that nature was the home of spirits who lived in the water, the land, and the trees. The mysterious transformation of green leaves into fiery reds and frosty yellows around the time of the harvest every year inspired awe among superstitious farmers. Just as a protocol evolved around making tea (Sad, the Way of Tea) or painting calligraphy (Shod, the Way of the Brush), so a proper form for viewing nature eventually evolved. Modern science has only enhanced this obsession. Every night in autumn on the evening news, the major television networks show a map of Japan in a color code, forecasting which part of the country will soon see yellow leaves, reds, browns, and so on. In spring, this map appears again to mark the progress of cherry blossoms from south to north, reversing the process of the fall.

  According to the Shinto code, the viewer on a proper leaf-viewing excursion should try to achieve a personal communion with the leaves, in a bond akin to the private communication between man and god at the heart of many Western religions. As Prince Genji once wrote to a lover, “A sheaf of autumn leaves admired in solitude is like damasks worn in the darkness of the night.” By entering nature, one hopes to internalize the beauty of the leaves in one’s heart. Man enters nature, and nature, in turn, enters man.

  When one achieves this spiritual union, one is said to have learned the wabi-sabi: peaceful thoughts, peaceful action. This spiritual oasis is so fragile and difficult to attain that most young people do not even try. I learned this word not from Cho but from Kato-sensei, who, though nearing sixty, still regularly studied how to perform a proper tea ceremony. He lamented that young people no longer searched for such age-old dreams. Indeed, the few times I mentioned this term to younger friends, they laughed off my question as another example of the foreigner overzealous about things Japanese.

  Still, I sensed an enduring legacy of wabi-sabi in the cycling and hiking of young people today. The bikers who had come to view leaves achieved that sense of escape into the outdoors, albeit with a little less respect for the sanctity of nature than their forebears showed. They had simply incorporated motorbikes into the modern “way of leaves.” The same held true for us. Cho, Chieko, and I did not actively hunt the wabi-sabi when we climbed up tree trunks, swung from branches, and tossed leaves at one another, but unwittingly we had ended up on the same path as generations of leaf-viewers who had come before us.

  After our day in the sunlight, Cho and Chieko and I returned to our classrooms, far removed from our momentary outdoor bliss. In time, the glow of Nikko began to dim. But then, as autumn approached its apogee, the wind picked up around Sano, blowing a torrent of twisters every day and stirring the branches of the chestnut trees. As promised, the wind was strong in Tochigi.

  And the tempestuous Susano even delivered an unexpected gift with his gales. On a crisp November morning, as I rode across the narrow river on my way to Sano Junior High, the god of the Wind whisked away the clouds from the sky, and I spotted above the tile roofs and empty fields around town the familiar quiet face of Mount Fuji. The faint white mask of snow that shone above the hills was a reminder that even in Tochigi, deep in the hinterland, separated from the mountain by one of the largest, most modern cities in the world, we were still connected intimately to the most enduring symbol of ancient Japan. As Bash wrote in 1676,

  My souvenir from Edo

  Is the refreshing cold wind

  Of Mount Fuji

  I brought home on my fan.

  7

  FROM BLACKENED SCALPS TO BOBBY SOCKS: THE ANATOMY OF A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL UNIFORM

  Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;

  Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

  Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

  But not expressed infancy; rich, not gaudy;

  For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

  —Shakespeare, Hamlet

  THE EARLY MORNING FOG had not yet lifted when the students gathered on the baseball diamond in back of Sano Junior High. A mid-November chill hung in the air and elicited grumbles from the anxious students shivering in the cold. Boys and girls lined up according to class, with the ninth graders flanked by the underclassmen. A thin ninth-grade boy with black-rimmed glasses, who had been crowned the fastest runner in the und-kai, stepped onto the pitcher’s mound and began reading down a list.

  “Cap. Who has forgotten their cap today?

  “Scarf. Do all girls have their scarves?

  “Gloves. Who is missing their gloves?”

  As each item was called, the offenders squirmed in shame and meekly raised their hands while the teachers who patrolled the lines jotted down names on tiny notepads.

  “Shirt. Whose tail is not tucked in?”

  When the boy finished his inventory, he assumed his place in line, and the physical education instructor, Mr. Yamamoto, a square, well-built man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut and angry eyes, took the mound and began berating the students through a megaphone. How dare they not check their uniforms before they left home in the morning, he said. How could they expect to study in class if their jackets were not buttoned properly? How did they think their school looked to outsiders when so many had forgotten their nametags? At the end of his lashing, Yamamoto-sensei, the Bad Cop, stepped down and Sakamoto-sensei, the Good Cop, appeared.

  “Attention,” the sports teacher barked from the field, and a gentle shuffling ensued.

  “Ready.” The students faced forward.

  “Bow.”

  “Autumn is here,” the principal said with a smile, glancing from one row of students to the next and trying to assure them that he meant no harm. “Now is the season to take special care of ourselves. Now we must work harder to maintain our orderly world.”

  When he talked to the students the principal tended to speak indirectly, through metaphor. But sometimes he took action to reinforce his authority. Several weeks before this assembly, about the time of the annual change from summer to winter uniforms, three young boys had come to school with narrow parts shaved into their already shortened hair. The principal called the boys into his office, took a wide felt-tipped marker from his desk, and blackened the shaved portions of their scalps. The students knew that behind his veil of politesse the principal wielded a sword.

  “Winter is coming,” he continued. “The sky becomes darker every night. We must begin to adjust. Starting today we must all leave school by five in the afternoon, not six o’clock. Please remember to wear your jackets and bicycle helmets on your way home. You must be careful not to catch a cold. Our wind is very strong.”

  Sakamoto-sensei believed that clothes were a good indicator of character. He regularly monitored the shoe racks in front of the school to see which students were stepping on the heels of their sneakers instead of slipping them on all the way. This behavior, he said, was an early sign of delinquency. To drive his point home, he hung an old student uniform outside his office decorated with various warning signs: “DON’T SHORTEN YOUR LEGS”; “DON’T WEAR PLEATS”; “DON’T PUT PURPLE LININGS IN YOUR POCKETS.” On the rope above the limp body, he had written his Shakespearian motto in script: “A CLEAN UNIFORM MEANS A CLEAN HEART.” Finally, the principal required that all students carry a copy of the five-page school dress code with them at all times, in the shirt pocket across their hearts.

  The first articles in this turquoise book covered clothes. All students, the code said, must wear the “standard-type” school uniform. For boys, this consisted of black pants and a tight-fitting black blazer with brass butto
ns and a high neck that scraped the chin like a clerical collar. Girls wore a matching navy blue skirt and blazer. Both boys and girls were required to wear a white shirt, but not just any white shirt would do. The code specified: “The white shirt must be pure white, with no wrinkles, no decoration, and no buttons on the collar.” It must have a pocket big enough for a tag with the student’s name written in large black letters. The code went on to say that the collars and cuffs of the shirt must be six centimeters long. In winter, students were allowed to wear sweaters over their shirts. Blue and gray were acceptable; pink and yellow were forbidden. V necks were allowed; turtlenecks were not.

  The “standard-type” male jacket dates back over one hundred years to the Prussian military academies of the late nineteenth century. In the early months after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, a group of Japanese educators traveled to Europe to study pedagogical techniques and were so impressed by the discipline of the Prussian army that they adopted its austere military uniform as a model for their own schools. Despite all the changes in Japanese education over the last hundred years, the uniform has remained virtually unaltered. The only difference is that today the jackets are made of polyester, not wool.

  In addition to the formal uniform, each student was required to own a set of “sports clothes.” Boys’ gym suits were royal blue, girls’ were fluorescent orange, and both sported twin white racing stripes that ran down the sides. These clothes were used for physical education and other activities that required less formality. Each activity in the school day had an assigned uniform, and students changed between their formal wear and casual wear at least four times a day. It was not uncommon for students to come to school in formal wear, change to casual wear for lunch, back to formal wear for afternoon classes, casual wear for cleaning time, and finally formal wear for going home. To expedite these changes, students wore the T-shirts and shorts of their sports outfits underneath their formal uniforms.

  Just as each activity required special outer wear, so each required special footwear. Every student was required to own at least four pairs of shoes: one pair of all-purpose sneakers to wear to and from school; one pair of slip-on shoes to wear in the classroom; a pair of slip-on shoes to wear in the gymnasium; and a specialized pair of shoes for club activities—cleats for soccer, hightop sneakers for basketball. In addition, the school distributed special plastic slippers for the bathroom and padded slippers to ease the anxiety of a visit to the principal’s office. The code devoted several lines to describing the shoes that students were asked to wear to and from school. These shoes must have laces—no Velcro—and must have a “notched, mountainlike tread” suitable for negotiating potholes and slippery bridges. On these shoes, one brand mark or cartoon character was allowed as decoration; more than one was not.

  Finally, every student must own a bookbag to tote his or her belongings to school. This bookbag, the code insisted, must be carried on one’s back, so as not to interfere with bike riding. Sportswear could be carried in a sports bag, but books must be carried in the bookbag. To avoid any confusion on this issue, the code advised: “Even if you have other bags, it is ideal to bring all things in your bookbag. In fact, it is better not to bring many things at all when you come to school.”

  Although they may be masters of control, the Japanese did not invent the notion of discipline in school. Indeed, many of the regimental ideas used in Japanese schools could have been lifted line by line from the annals of Western philosophy. In the Ethics, Aristotle described the need to teach good working habits to young people through a strict regimen. “The mind of the pupil has to be prepared for the inculcation of good habits,” he wrote a thousand years before the opening of the first Japanese school. “For this reason the nurture of young persons should be regulated by law, for hard conditions and sober living will cease to be painful when they have become habitual.” The Japanese recognized the value of this Western tradition when they established their own modern school system in the late nineteenth century. The same expeditions to Europe which uncovered the German military uniforms returned with other ideas as well. From the French, the Japanese borrowed the idea of a centrally controlled authority, and from the British, they seized on the idea of moral education in school. They even adopted Western hair styles, encouraging all respectable men to cut off their old-style topknots.

  These Western imports were blended with more “native,” Confucian ideas to make a Japanese ethic of discipline. The Confucian model contributed the notion of a well-ordered family controlled by a father, with service by his wife and loyalty from his children. This ideal of the proper family was reflected in school, where teachers, like fathers, dominated their students. Confucianism is not a religion per se but rather an orthodox set of guidelines outlining how people should relate to one another, including the etiquette of conflict. Military skills were always taught in Confucian schools along with academic proficiency, and this emphasis on martial training became even more important in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1939 Emperor Hirohito issued a call for all children to prepare themselves to defend their country. “We command you to put honor above all things,” he said in the Imperial Rescript on Young People. “You should cultivate your literary power, learn military discipline, and muster the spirit of fortitude.” This philosophy of combining selected Western institutions with traditional Eastern ideas has remained at the core of Japanese schools ever since.

  Today, despite a brief period of liberalism following the Second World War, hard-line discipline is once again standard. The current policy marks a deliberate turn away from Western permissiveness, which many Japanese feel undermined their national culture. In the late 1960s, Japanese university students, like their counterparts around the world, erupted into riots against the government, demanding more individual influence over their education. These riots, bloodier than similar outbursts in the United States and Europe, became so intractable that in 1969 Prime Minister Eisaku Sato closed the prestigious Tokyo University for an entire year. Outraged that a group of dissident students could cripple the pinnacle of the nation’s education system, the government cracked down on elementary and secondary students across the country to make sure that “alien Western notions” of individuality no longer polluted Japanese youth.

  Sakamoto-sensei was a secondary school teacher during this time, and like many others he was disgusted that Japanese university students were letting their hair grow long, strapping riot helmets onto their heads, and storming their classrooms. Students were not supposed to attack their teachers, he thought, but respect them and follow their example. The solution, he concluded, was to pressure children when they were young to learn the value of discipline.

  “Good schools have strict rules,” he explained to me. “If the rules are stern and the students understand, then this school is okay.”

  But some of the younger teachers resented the way the principal imposed his stern will on the school. Machida-sensei, a handsome young math teacher who sat near my desk, told me that the principal had asked him to follow a teachers’ dress code. “He said that I had to maintain a certain appearance. I should wear a tie but shouldn’t put my hands in my pockets. He also said I shouldn’t walk around the classroom but should remain behind the podium. I don’t listen to him, so I don’t expect my students to listen either.”

  Several days after the outdoor inspection a ninth-grade girl wore a pair of Mickey Mouse socks to school. Unsettled by this breach of conduct, the principal summoned all the teachers after school one Friday afternoon to discuss the problem of whether to permit students to wear socks decorated with commercial emblems. The meeting broke up after a short time, however, because the principal refused to accept the arguments in favor of name-brand socks.

  “The other teachers say the principal is running the school too strictly,” Denver confided in me after the meeting. “They say he is just like a ‘one-man.’ ”

  “Is that good or bad?” I asked.

  “A �
�one-man’ is someone who doesn’t listen to other people but just makes decisions on his own. In Japan, it is not a good thing.” Denver looked around the room to make sure no one was listening. “He has a lot of authority and keeps everyone under control, but if something ever goes wrong in school he will have to take the blame himself. He alone is making the rules.”

  Although the regulations may seem relentless to an outsider, students still manage to create fashion trends within the limits they face. Fashion, however, is too important to be left to individual whim, so every year the ninth-grade students take matters into their own hands and devise a parallel, unwritten dress code that further regulates appearance, known in the halls as the sempai, or senior, code. The school code tells students what to wear; the sempai code tells them how to wear it.

  Take socks, for example, which teachers thought so controversial. The school code stipulated that all students should wear white socks in winter but could wear mesh socks in summer. Yet mesh was considered such high fashion that the sempai code insisted that only ninth-grade students could wear these socks. The older girls also insisted that younger girls not fold down their tops in bobby-sock fashion, as this was deemed too suggestive for their age.