The Wave People

As every fan of Japanese movies knows, the hordes of feudal samurai warriors who lost their masters and sought a new place in society were called ronin--literally, "wave people." The people that modern Japan calls ronin wear not swords but the black caps of students. They are high school graduates who fail to survive the staggering competition for entrance to top universities--100,000 this year--and go on to study on their own or attend high-priced cramming colleges to prepare for another feverish try. Ronin who have made three or four yearly attempts are not uncommon, and the despair of constant rejection often leads to suicide, the leading cause of death among Japanese between the ages of 15 and 24.

In a new White Paper, the Education Ministry bewails the plight of the ronin--and passes the blame on to Japanese social rigidity. The country has 72 states and 188 private colleges, but the ronin aspire chiefly to get into only four of them: the state universities of Tokyo and Kyoto and the two leading private universities, Waseda and Keio. Because old school ties at these colleges are so strong--stronger than in the U.S.'s Ivy League and even than at England's Oxford and Cambridge--graduation from one of the four is a ticket of admission to good jobs in government and industry.

Tokyo University averages nine job offers for each graduate, who is thus assured a place on the escalator that produces the nation's leaders; Premier Hayato Ikeda himself was a two-time ronin. Yet Tokyo now turns down four applicants for each one it accepts, and some ronin have been trying to get into that school for as much as eight years. Michio Nagai, a former visiting professor at Columbia who teaches sociology at Tokyo's Institute of Technology, proposes a law limiting the percentage of graduates that a company can hire from topflight Tokyo or Kyoto universities. He also suggests a nationwide system of entrance exams, like the U.S. College Boards, which would rank students by ability so that the less qualified would accept admission at less-than-Ivy schools, thus giving every roaming ronin a home.

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