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Japanese Education in a Global Age pp 117–136Cite as

Are Children Who Do Not Go to School “Bad,” “Sick,” or “Happy”?: Shifting Interpretations of Long-Term School Nonattendance in Postwar Japan

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Part of the book series: Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects ((EDAP,volume 46))

Abstract

This chapter examines postwar debates in Japan around long-term school absence at the level of discourse and practice. The chapter begins by unpacking postwar official statistics and policy discourses on long-term school absence in relation to competing medical and citizens’ discourses, with a particular focus on changes in terms used to refer to school nonattendance. I show how moves toward the medicalization of absenteeism as an individual “sickness” in the 1980s were met with criticism from citizens promoting alternative school movements, leading to encouragement for noninterventionist approaches at policy level. I then outline the “emergence” of hikikomori (social withdrawal) as a youth social problem in the 2000s, which prompted a revision of these approaches, shifting the blame back to the individual children and their families. This chapter reveals how policy and popular discourse have resonated with each other and how various stakeholders of education have led competing discourses and practices on long-term school nonattendance, both positive and negative, shedding light on a larger question of whom education is for. The chapter concludes by introducing the latest debates and issues around school absenteeism and by highlighting the diversification of alternative schooling opportunities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (Monbushō) changed its name to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT; Monbukagakushō, abbreviated as Monkashō) in January 2001. Here, I will use the abbreviation MEXT for both.

  2. 2.

    As Shimizu (2011: 179) finds, MEXT had started using the term futōkō in its policy documents in 1990.

  3. 3.

    Orihara et al. (2005) point to the possibility that children previously categorized under “sickness” were recategorized under “dislike of school” in the 1970s.

  4. 4.

    While the term tōkōkyohi (school refusal) has not been used in MEXT’s annual statistics of long-term absentees, as in the case of popular discourse since the 1960s, it was used extensively in its policy documents (see Shimizu 2011: 173–80).

  5. 5.

    See Shimizu (2011) for a detailed review of how MEXT has framed school nonattendance in the postwar period.

  6. 6.

    School-based bullying (ijime) has been discussed as a social problem in Japan since the mid-1980s particularly in relation to “bullycide” cases. Sociologists have associated patterns of bullying with the school climate, including power-dominant human relationships and conformity (Yoneyama and Naito 2003). See Yoneyama (2008) for a structural analysis of school-based bullying and its relevance to post-1990s sociopolitical climate of Japan.

  7. 7.

    Totsuka Hiroshi, the leader of Totsuka Yacht School in Aichi Prefecture (1976~), a privately run organization for troubled children and youth, including futōkō children, was arrested in 1992 for deaths of children in the institution (Goodman 2002: 142–3). After serving 3 years in prison, Totsuka returned as director, and this institution has continued to be one of the last resorts for parents with troubled children and youth (see Miller and Toivonen 2010).

  8. 8.

    Hida’s paper (2001) is one of six contributions by educational sociologists in a special issue dedicated to the topic of futōkō in The Journal of Educational Sociology (Kyōiku Shakai-gaku Kenkyū) with an introduction by Kano (2001).

  9. 9.

    Yamazaki (1994) examines how futōkō was medicalized and subsequently de-medicalized and pointed to the tendency to ignore family problems associated with futōkō. Later in 2006, Kudō (2006) problematized this dichotomized shift from medicalization to de-medicalization and critically analyzed a number of cases where children and parents who assert that futōkō is not a sickness in fact consult “good, understanding” medical doctors and do not exclude the option of psychiatric treatment.

  10. 10.

    Yoneyama (1999) categorizes postwar discourses of school absenteeism into four types: (1) psychiatric discourse which treats it as mental illness, (2) behavioral discourse which views absenteeism as laziness requiring discipline and punishment, (3) citizen’s discourse which puts the blame on the schools rather than the children, and (4) sociomedical discourse which also places the schools as the cause of the problem but describes nonattenders as burnouts suffering from chronic fatigue.

  11. 11.

    See Tajan (2015) for the role clinical psychology (and its expansion) has played in the treatment of school nonattenders.

  12. 12.

    See Horiguchi (2012) for an overview of how and why hikikomori came to be discussed as a social problem.

  13. 13.

    In this survey (Gendai Kyōiku Kenkyūjo 2001), follow-up questionnaires and interviews were conducted in 1998 with youths who were futōkō in the final year of middle school in 1993 (5 years before). The results showed that 23% of the respondents were neither in education nor employment.

  14. 14.

    Kido (2004: 26–7) notes that there are two potential criticisms against tōjisha-gaku. First is the line of argument that points out the ideological nature of tōjisha-gaku and its lack of “objectivity.” The second is “exclusivism” of tōjisha-ism in that it perpetuates the idea that tōjisha are the only ones who understand the real issue. Both arguments, Kido (2005:27–8) suggests, may be countered by finding merits in allowing tōjisha to speak for themselves and its contribution in questioning the “objectivity” of studies done by so-called “professionals.”

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Acknowledgments

Part of the research conducted for this chapter was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 22720333). I would like to thank all the individuals and institutions that have supported me during the course of this research, including the tōjisha, the practitioners and scholars, with special thanks to Shimizu Katsunobu for his invaluable assistance.

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  1. Temple University Japan, Tokyo, Japan

    Sachiko Horiguchi

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  1. Sachiko Horiguchi
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  1. International Strategy Office, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

    Akiyoshi Yonezawa

  2. Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yuto Kitamura

  3. Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Beverley Yamamoto

  4. Faculty of International Communication, Gunma Prefectural Women’s University, Tamamura, Gunma, Japan

    Tomoko Tokunaga

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Horiguchi, S. (2018). Are Children Who Do Not Go to School “Bad,” “Sick,” or “Happy”?: Shifting Interpretations of Long-Term School Nonattendance in Postwar Japan. In: Yonezawa, A., Kitamura, Y., Yamamoto, B., Tokunaga, T. (eds) Japanese Education in a Global Age. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 46. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1528-2_7

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