"The Test Must Go On"

By Ellie McGrath

Japanese students are driven by shiken jigoku

Most Western nations, including the U.S., envy Japan the benefits of its rigorous educational system. More than 90% of Japanese students graduate from twelfth grade (in contrast to 75% in the U.S.), despite a demanding academic agenda. By the end of third grade, children must master 881 of 2,000 essential Japanese ideograms; by sixth grade they should know 1,000 more. During high school, the Japanese must cover far more math and science than their American counterparts. By the time they take their college entrance exams, students are prepared to handle questions in English grammar, as well as Japanese, and in subject matter not generally approached until college in the U.S., such as calculus, probability and statistics.

The system has served Japan well. Since World War II it has produced a highly literate and mathematically capable population. It also prepares students for smooth entry into an overcrowded and competitive society that sets a high value on the virtues of discipline and cooperation. In a carefully ordered culture like Japan's, high educational achievement is virtually the only guarantee of a successful career. More than 65% of high school students stick with college entrance courses. Says one: "When you go into a technical course, it's very bad. Everyone knows you couldn't make it." Notes Shogo Ichikawa of the National Institute for Educational Research: "We keep long-term relationships, so we must select group members very carefully. The Japanese industrial and occupational structure requires the Japanese education and selection systems."

Industry begins early. From the time children first set foot in school, at age six, they are faced with seven hours of classes a day, 240 days a year -- and twelve years of unremitting pressure. Twice a year they must take exams -- to get into the next grade, to get into a respected high school grade, to get into a respected high school or, ultimately, to gain entry into one of the very few prestigious public universities. Students devote almost all their waking hours to studies. In addition to regular classes and half-days on Saturdays, they often spend up to five additional hours at special cram schools called juku (private academies). This cramming is not just for high school students. A recent survey of Tokyo-area youths found that 75% of fourth, fifth- and sixth-graders were enrolled in some sort of juku in order to pass early exam hurdles and get a head start on becoming one of the 96,000 students accepted each year by public universities. The last years are the hardest, says Jin Watanabe, a tenth-grader. "On the first day of tenth grade the teachers will tell you how many days you have left till the final university exams begin."

Japanese students have a name for that annual examination rite: shiken jigoku--"examination hell." Each year some 700,000 students (32% of Japanese high school graduates) go on to college, but a candidate may apply to only one top university. Because government ministries and top firms all recruit from a handful of universities, having to settle for a low-ranking institution is an almost irreversible disaster. The thousands of students who do not get accepted at the one university of their choice spend a year, sometimes even two, in cram schools preparing to try again. These crammers are called ronin, a word used to describe the masterless, wandering samurai of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ultimate measure of success: acceptance by the 14,000-student Tokyo University (Todai), for which final qualifying exams took place last week. Since all the national universities have a single standard exam, academic security is taken very seriously. Says Todai Physics Professor Steve Yamamoto, who has served as an exam proctor: "I asked the higher-ups what to do in case of bomb threat. 'Use your head,' they told me. 'The test must go on.' "

Preoccupation with exams leads the Japanese to emphasize memorization rather than analytical thinking. The pedagogy is simple: the teacher talks, the students listen. Says Taeko Yamato, an English instructor at a private school outside Tokyo: "The school system doesn't let teachers teach well." Admits Twelfth-Grader Ayutaro Kogure: "For the tests you only memorize, which you forget as soon as the exams are over." Some students are beginning to take an uncharacteristically disrespectful course: open rebellion. Youthful crime has jumped 12.4% in the past year, with juveniles accounting for almost half of all criminal offenders in Japan. Violence on school grounds has increased 42% since 1980, and most of the crimes are committed against teachers. In January at Yoshikawa High School near Tokyo, a gang of 20 students surrounded a group of teachers in the school courtyard, accused them of inflicting pain on one of their number and began to beat them up. It took 20 patrolmen to subdue the boys, but not before ten teachers had been injured.

Most students agree that surviving years of "exam hell" provides one common experience, a bond that lasts through life. But there are those who do not survive. The pressure to do well can become so intense that some students commit suicide, even before attempting college entrance exams. The teen-age suicide rate in Japan is 17.6 per 100,000 (in the U.S. it is 10.9), and almost all of it is thought to be related to academic stress. This January one ronin electrocuted himself because he was afraid to take the college entrance exam a second time. Indeed, the universities do not offer much consolation. One sent this message to a rejected candidate: "You cannot go on living unless you are tough."

--By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Thomas Levenson/Tokyo

With reporting by Thomas Levenson/Tokyo

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