Tanaka v. the Teachers

Japan's superb postwar school system has given the nation an enviable literacy rate of 99%, but its children are ignorant in other areas that are considered important by many conservative Japanese. Many of the children, for example, do not know the national anthem. The reason is simple: the powerful Japanese teachers' union (Nikkyoso)--whose 600,000 members include 70% of Japan's elementary and high school teachers--thinks that the anthem smacks of emperor worship and pre-World War II militarism. Thus it is rarely played in schools.

That fact has long incensed the right wing of Premier Kakuei Tanaka's conservative Liberal Democratic Party. Tanaka is faced with galloping inflation (consumer prices rose 27.6% last year), his lowest standing yet in the polls (20%) and crucial Upper House elections in July. So he has now decided to increase his popularity with conservative voters by joining the battle against the predominantly socialist teachers' union.

Patient Wait. Among his demands: 1) the mandatory teaching and singing of the national anthem, Kimigayo (Your Majesty's Reign),* in the schools; 2) regular school ceremonies for the raising of the Japanese flag (which currently does not fly over schools and is frequently downgraded by teachers as "our Olympic flag"); and 3) restoration of the prewar teaching of morals, including parts of the imperial rescript proclaimed by Emperor Meiji in 1890.

As if that were not enough, Tanaka's government ordered the arrest two weeks ago of 20 top officials of Nikkyoso on charges of participating last April in an illegal general strike of government workers for higher wages. The arrests were carried out with extreme deference (one police squad waited patiently at the home of a union leader until he awoke from his night's sleep). But other government employees who took part in the same strike were pointedly not prosecuted.

Beyond their outrage over the government attempt to crack their union, the teachers are alarmed over Tanaka's plan to reinstate the teaching of morals in the curriculum. They fear that his program marks the beginning of a return to authoritarianism and emperor worship. At first glance, Tanaka's two-tiered ethics program consisting of the "Five Principles" and the "Ten Subjects for Reflection" (which inevitably became known as Tanaka's Ten Commandments) would not seem particularly controversial (see box). In fact, it rather closely parallels the old imperial prescript on education.

That edict, regarded as the bible for Japanese schoolchildren, stressed the importance of being "filial to parents, fraternal to brothers, trustworthy to friends and harmonious between man and wife." But it also provided the underpinnings for the prewar practice of absolute obedience to the emperor with its admonition: "In case of national emergency, dedicate yourself to patriotism and enhance our eternal imperial institution." It was this dictum, in fact, that shaped pre-World War II education--and indeed the whole country --more than anything else.

Haunting Memory. The old school system is still a haunting memory for most Japanese over 40, including TIME Correspondent S. Chang, who attended primary school in prewar Japan. "Teachers in the main were well trained and the system, on the academic side, did well," he recalled last week. "But it did far better in brainwashing pupils in the cult of emperor worship. The whole six-year compulsory education was dedicated to fukoku kyohei [enrich the nation, strengthen soldiers]. Boys in the class were shaven-pated like Japanese soldiers in their barracks. Like soldiers, too, they were expected to snap to attention each time the teacher dropped that sacred word, tenno [emperor]. They did--like so many Orwellian robots."

Along with the Japanese empire, that school system collapsed on V-J day. But Japanese teachers, more than any other professional group, felt the burden of guilt for having trained their pupils in militarism. When the Nikkyoso was formed in 1947, one of its tenets was a pledge "never again to send our children to war," which teachers still take as a sacred creed.

Last week both the opposition parties and the Japanese press condemned the Tanaka government for making education a political issue. Editorialized the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily: "Nobody in Japan is convinced that our educational system is perfect, but that is no reason for using the issue for electioneering: education should only be discussed calmly--after the election."

* "May your glorious reign be everlasting/ Until pebbles turn into rocks/ And moss form on them."

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