Article 11 of the School Education Act of 1947 allows principals and teachers to discipline pupils and students when they find it educationally necessary. The article ends: Tadashi, taibatsu o kuwaeru koto wa dekinai. However, they may not inflict corporal punishment. The law sets no penalty for breaking this rule.
After Sakuranomiya
In December 2012, the captain of the basketball team at Sakuranomiya High School in Osaka took his own life after corporal punishment by the team’s coach. On March 13, 2013, the Ministry of Education issued a notice on the ban on corporal punishment. It cited the suicide of a high school student at the end of the previous year, against a background of corporal punishment in club activities.
The notice lists examples of corporal punishment. One is making a pupil hold a posture, such as formal kneeling or standing upright, for a long time. It also lists measures that are not corporal punishment, among them warnings, scolding, keeping a pupil after school and making a pupil stand up.
Death at a Sumo Stable
On June 26, 2007, Tokitaizan, a 17-year-old wrestler in the lowest division of professional sumo, was reported to have died during morning practice at the Tokitsukaze stable. His death was first given as acute heart failure. Bunshun later reported that the stablemaster himself had struck him with a beer bottle.
The Japan Sumo Association dismissed the stablemaster. It found that, as master, he had failed to keep his stable safe and had gravely damaged the association’s trust and honor.
Scolding in Private
Japanese management advice repeats one rule for scolding: not in front of others. An article in President Online says that scolding is basically one-on-one. A career guide by Mynavi Agent says that being scolded in front of others hurts a person’s pride, even when there is a reason for it, and suggests a private room where voices do not carry.
Scolding, Not Anger
Shikaru (叱る): to scold. Okoru (怒る): to get angry. Japanese advice on raising children keeps the two apart. A parenting article in the magazine Oggi says the decisive difference is whether one wants to convey something to the other person. Getting angry is taking out one’s own irritation on them.
A school document puts it briefly. Getting angry is throwing one’s feelings at the other person. Scolding is giving them advice.
Do Not Rage When Others Differ
Article 10 of the Seventeen-Article Constitution, traditionally credited to Prince Shōtoku and dated 604, begins: Ikari o tachi, ikari o sutete, hito no tagau o ikarazare. Cut off resentment, cast away anger, and do not rage when others differ.
Challenge at Toshiba
In July 2015, a third-party committee published its report on Toshiba’s accounting. According to press reports of its findings, the president had shown the heads of the company’s divisions profit targets called charenji, challenge, and had pressed them hard to meet them.
The committee found that at Toshiba “there was a corporate culture in which one could not go against the wishes of one’s superiors.”
Sakura Sōgorō
Sakura Sōgorō was a village headman of the early Edo period. According to the legend, he appealed directly to the shogun against his lord’s heavy taxes, and he was executed for it.
In 1851, his story was staged at the Nakamura-za theater in Edo as the play Higashiyama Sakura Sōshi. He became the best-known gimin, a man who gave his life for the people. Little about him is historically certain, and some have argued that he never existed.
Stealing the Skill
In Japanese kitchens and workshops, newcomers are told waza o nusume, steal the skill. The expert does not walk the newcomer through the know-how step by step. He keeps working where the newcomer can watch, and expects the newcomer to master the skill over a long time. Cooks, craftsmen and technicians are among the trades that train this way. Sushi chefs say meshitaki sannen, nigiri hachinen: three years cooking rice, eight years shaping sushi.
In 2023, a debate on social media asked whether the method is outdated. A worker in the shipping industry wrote that those who say it do not teach because they have no theory of teaching.