…are refusing to go to school and it was thought several years ago when this started happening that there was something wrong with the children. This turns out not to be the case. What is happening is that the Japanese public school system in Japan is archaic and outdated but as far as anyone can tell there won’t be any reform anytime soon. Public schools in Japan can be traced back to Prussia when Japanese bureaucrats went to Germany to study and brought those methods back to Japan and instituted them. Group mentality is alright to a point but in Japan it is extreme and spiritually crushing. Japanese public schools are industrial scale institutions dating back decades to feed Japanese children into Japan’s mercantilist corporations. Japanese children today know instinctively there is something wrong with this system and are increasingly refusing to go to school.
This phenomenon is known as “futoko” and it is not related to any health problems with the children or financial problems in the families of the children. The number of children not attending school in 2017 was estimated at around 144,000 children. In 2023 that number rose to around 300,000 and continues to increase. In some social networking circles, some Japanese parents are now discussing homeschooling for their children that might be a better alternative. The problem with homeschooling and what are known as “free schools” in Japan, is that children won’t receive accepted qualifications. Public schooling in Japan is compulsory between elementary and junior high school.
Most of Japan’s public schools were built during the late 40s and early 50s and are large, cold sterile-looking concrete buildings that take on the look of Soviet-era architecture. In reality, the buildings are rather brooding intimidating looking facilities. There are few if any new school buildings being built in Japan but there are huge facilities being built for Amazon and transport companies. School life in Japan teaches children to be Japanese. Despite what people think, getting an education is not the primary goal of a school. The goal is to indoctrinate students into Japanese society. Families with money who can afford to send their children to juku (cram schools) classes are where the real learning and studying takes place. These juku schools are often partially funded by big corporations that funnel graduates into Japan’s large corporations.
Tokyo Streets From a bd-1 