Resources and Mobilization & Learning at Mother’s Knee

 

In White, The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children. New York: The Free Press, 1987. Pp 11-19, 95-109.

 

In Japan the care of children is not regarded as just a domestic concern. Indeed the entire nation is mobilized behind children and their education. This national obsession may well be responsible for children Western parents and educators would be proud of, children whose lives and future prospects meet our standards of approval. In short, the Japanese national engagement in child development is some­thing we should envy.

What has fueled the drive to maximize the life chances of children? How does the intense commitment to children mirror the nation's conception of its past, present, and future?

 

THE SCARCITY SYNDROME

 

Japanese have several phrases that roll smoothly off tongues to "explain" their society to others. Prominent among these are: "a narrow island country," "low in natural resources," "vulnerable to enemies, earthquakes, and fires." The self‑conscious insistence on Japan's fragility and accompanying low profile has in recent years met with some foreign criticism as trade officials and international aid agencies ask Japanese business and government to take a more responsible role in the world economy and in developing countries. Japanese business, no longer completely self‑effacing, has to some extent responded with greater confidence, while Prime Minister Ya­suhiro Nakasone is hardly a shrinking violet. Nevertheless the urgency that drives the

Japanese "path of pure endeavor" is still based on a sense of precarious deficiency. And this is more than a historical residue from times when Japan suffered real scarcity. Among the Japanese a conviction that they are living on the very edge is a driving cultural force that shapes not only industrial process and international negotiation, but also lies at the core of household management and parent‑child relationships.

 

Japanese scholar Sumiko Iwao demonstrates historical perspective on the "scarcity syndrome" when she analyzes women's strategies for family and business management. A century ago, at the time of the Meiji Restoration, 80 percent of Japan's population worked and lived on farms. Agricultural practices and development were con­strained by limited arable land, given the high proportion of mountain­ous terrain. Hence the arable coastal areas were densely populated by farmers who had to operate small‑scale farms, utilizing every square inch of available land. Furthermore, agricultural production could not be counted upon since Japan's climate is marked by dramatic and damaging typhoons, flooding during the rainy season, and unpre­dictable, unseasonable changes in temperature. In sum, the traditional Japanese farmer was tied to a precarious venture, and success required extreme industriousness to overcome the sometimes catastrophic losses incurred during periods of hardship.

 

Hard work was accompanied by a need for short‑term and long-term planning, by a continual, adaptive refinement of strategies and alternatives, and this mind‑set has persisted to the present. One strategy that Iwao cites as especially evident among women is that of self­-abnegation, denial, and sacrifice, in service not to masochism, but to a greater long‑term good for themselves and their families. Going without (and letting others know about it) is of course a common way for women everywhere to acquire virtue. But Japanese women have developed the production of guilt in others into a transcendent cultural art form.

 

Using arts of sacrifice and management women acted as the chief distribution agents in the household. As lwao says, "their ingenuity

and creativity in controlling and husbanding the family's resources gave women a sense of responsibility, freedom and self‑expression which was unique to their situation."

 

Making a virtue of necessity may well have been the crucial skill in Japanese development. The cultural choices made that allowed people to see advantages in scarcity meant that Japanese did more than cope with deprivation. Mothers and national leaders alike em­ployed a consciousness that scarcity imperiled, and vigilance had to be constantly maintained‑lest a deadening fatalism replace energies aroused through the agency of impending doom.

 

Meanwhile children were seen as a scarce resource, since infant mortality rates were very high. Moreover, children were greatly valued because they represented the continuity of the family and the security of parents in old age. They also provided labor for the family, and by the age of twelve were able to participate fully in agricultural and domestic chores. They might finally enhance the family's virtue and status in the community by becoming students who did well in school.

 

Education itself was regarded as a scarce resource, since it was not universally available and since most children of farm families would attend school for only a few years. Needs of the farm took precedence over education, and at certain times of the year there were few children in rural schools. As in China, the culture of origin for much of Japan's pre‑modern education, learning did not provide occupational credentials because work was inherited along with land and interclass mobility was slight. Nevertheless, learning and the moral advantage it symbolized was hard‑won and greatly valued.

 

That moral advantage has today been largely superseded by the power of academic credentials to secure an occupational future. Still, school achievement is seen to confirm a high level of virtue in the student and his supporting family. This Confucian‑based virtue, an important social resource itself, is now available to all, but the road to it is difficult: in fact, if anything comes easily in Japan, it does not confer virtue. As we will see, one important result of a child's educational experience is the ability to commit intense effort to a task, and that devotion to hard work itself is the mark of virtue.

 

Accordingly, deep parental investment in children begins early and continues through high school years. Mothers are intensely commit­ted to their children from the onset of pregnancy and see their major life's task as the rearing of successful children. Mothers are always looking for innovative ways to enhance their children's life chances. For example, in Riverdale, New York, where there is a sizable Japanese population, school administrators recently noticed that Japanese fami­lies were purchasing two sets of textbooks for each child. They soon discovered that one set was for the mother, who would study one or more lessons ahead of her child to help him or her in schoolwork. The result was that Japanese children who entered school in September knowing little or no English often finished in June at the top of the class in all subjects.

 

JAPAN AT RISK

 

The Japanese see themselves at risk not only from scarcity but from cataclysm, and doomsday is a recurrent cultural symbol. The plot of a recent best‑selling novel, Nihon Chinbotsu (The Sinking of Japan), is based on the ultimate disaster. Thanks to a succession of earthquakes and tidal waves, the main islands of the Japanese archipe­lago are sinking gradually into the sea. Soon to lose their motherland, the population is mobilized by the government to emigrate—in a su­premely well planned exodus, of course—to several other parts of the world. Some choose (or are forced) to go down with the ship, but most find themselves tussling with the complexities of social and technological engineering. This is a suggestive disaster novel, which tells us much about how the Japanese view the fragility of their national identity.

 

And this fragility is as frequently invoked or implied as disaster or scarcity. Racial purity, though not explicitly apostrophized, is an important concern, as is cultural homogeneity. Koreans and burakumin, the former outcast group, are ghettoized and restricted—though racially hard to distinguish from "pure Japanese." Those away overseas for extended periods of time are highly suspect, and upon coming back to the country must prove themselves true, in some cases, with exagger­ated expressions of their Japaneseness: industriousness, self‑efface­ment, and the observance of behavioral and interpersonal niceties. Meanwhile, foreigners, regularly checked and fingerprinted, have great difficulty acquiring Japanese citizenship.

 

Marginality is easy to come by and hard to lose in Japan, and that hazard is a powerful disincentive to be in any way "different." Those so marked of course don't want their children to suffer the same stigma. While intellectuals and critics may look for the social climate to change so that their children can be more independent, the adults themselves will limit the risks of differentness to the maxi­mum extent possible. What this means is that education is a force for reducing cultural variety‑thereby patrolling the predictable con­formity on which Japanese society depends.

 

JAPAN IS UNIQUE: THE NIHONJINRON PHENOMENON

 

Although individual Japanese incline toward conformity, the nation as a whole believes itself to be utterly unique; there is no other place in any way like Japan. Hence we have a kind of "national individual­ism. " The insistence on Japan special and apart has deep historical and cultural underpinnings, beginning, as most tales of national identity do, with a creation myth. The Japanese version goes like this: Izanami and Izanagi, brother and sister deities, gave birth to the islands of Japan along with a number of other deities. Ninigi, the grandson of Amaterasu, one of these gods, descended to the islands bringing the Three Imperial Regalia, symbols of power and legitimacy. And Ninigi's descendants became the first emperors.

 

The story of heaven‑created islands dropped into the sea, Japan's myth of origin, is like many others which contend that a people and place were set into the world by divine intervention and thus bear the qualities of godhood. Some places of myth, like Mount Olympus in Greece, were to be the abodes and playgrounds of gods and marvelous human beings. Other places, like the Judeo‑Christian paradise, were to be the scene of divine creativity and the moral testing of god-­created beings. Still others, like holy places in India, were sanctified by accident, when gods in battle dropped a trident or when the bodily parts of gods who were dismembered fell to earth.

 

Japan was presumed to be the locus of an eternal line of divine rulers, Ninigi's offspring, a line that persists to the present. Therefore, one of the elements of the sense of Japanese uniqueness is mytho­historical continuity, which is regarded as both means and end for the society as a whole.

 

The uniqueness of being Japanese, the fact that one cannot become Japanese (Japan was not created by immigrant gods), is part of ongoing scrutiny in Japan‑the nihonjinron, or "what it means to be Japanese," debate. In 1985 the matter was institutionalized in the form of an Institute of Japanology in Kyoto, where scholars, social commentators, and "cultural persons" (bunkajin) are able to muse on the Japanese character and its place in the modern world. Having engaged academic and media attention for over a hundred years, nihonjinron is really an attempt to define Japanese culture in the face of threatening contact from other societies—a conscious effort to "know who we are" so as not to be swallowed up by Western influences. Indeed, during the Meiji period, nihonjinron developed the urgent tone of national security issues. While a sense of Japanese uniqueness is still intrinsic to the concern, the tone today is slightly less intense, and sometimes seems only a narcissistic parlor game. Still, as Hidetoshi Kato points out, "There is the inclination to emphasize that the Japanese are ‘unique' in developing nihonjinron. "3

 

Japanese education reflects the need to maintain a special identity. Education, during the Meiji period, was developed in part to institution­alize and perpetuate Japanese cultural identity. Thus, the centrality of Japanese history and culture in the curriculum has to be tied to the rise of modern nationalism. But a more benign reading of the Meiji and Taisho (1912‑1926) period curricula shows that the develop­ment and perpetuation of national identity were used to forestall cultural colonization by the West, not to create aggressive national aggrandize­ment.

 

The modern curriculum is seen to provide a unique experience for the Japanese child that cannot be duplicated, or substituted for, by education anywhere else in the world. What the overseas Japanese child learns that he has missed, upon returning to Japan, is not only more math, Japanese language, social studies, and science, but forms of behavior, sets of influences, and social manners—what one teacher called "Japanese common sense"—without which his competence and identity are deeply flawed. This "common sense" is a moral construct, and contains both ways of relating socially to others and a "physical common sense" learned in school.

 

JAPAN'S MORAL "COMMON SENSE"

 

Japanese common sense, taught along with Japanese history and culture, is most evident in what is called "moral education." In its current manifestation, a child studies behavior and relationships within the family and community. A 1983 official description of the elementary school course of study states:

Moral Education . . . is aimed at realizing a spirit of respect for human

dignity in the actual life of family, school and community, endeavoring to create a culture that is rich in individuality and to develop a democratic society and state, training Japanese to be capable of contributing to a peaceful international society, and cultivating their morality as the foundation thereof.4

 

Thus, the distinction that Western societies make between "social" and "personal" morality is rarely made in Japan: a moral dilemma is almost always regarded as a social or interpersonal problem, not one to which prescriptive or proscriptive abstractions can be applied.

 

Among the goals of the school syllabus are those which a Westerner would recognize, such as "respect for another's freedom" and "acting according to one's own beliefs." Then there are some that are very Japanese: "it is desirable that, in the lower grades, one should learn to bear hardship, and in the middle grades, to persist to the end with patience, and in the upper grades, to be steadfast and accomplish goals undaunted by obstacles or failures." Furthermore, "in the lower grades, one should learn to listen to the opinions of others and admit frankly one's own mistakes or faults, and to behave unselfishly, and in the middle grades, to live a life of moderation, and in the upper grades, to reflect always on one's words and behavior, to act with prudence and to live an orderly life. " Zeal, striving, and self‑abnegation are to be combined with cheerfulness and sensitivity to others—all within the context of learning "to love one's hometown and to protect the land, culture and traditions of the motherland, and . . . to be aware of one's responsibility as a Japanese. "5

 

These high‑sounding desiderata are inculcated through very con­crete stories and exempla, which are usually presented as cases of social dilemmas. Human relationships and interdependencies form the central focus of these tales. A conflict of loyalties, a case of temptation to bad behavior, a story of strife in a family, are given to the children as problems to contemplate. And through open discus­sion a solution or analysis is developed by the entire class. As in other such instances, the solution is not valued unless it is generated by the class itself—and unless it has unanimous support.

 

In other words, the real agenda of the morals class lies not only in the content of texts, but in the means by which the class reaches an understanding. This process, which is slow and delicate, is called nemawashii, or "digging around the roots." Just as one doesn't try to pull up a tree stump without accounting for all the roots, one doesn't try to impose a perspective or solution on a group without eliciting the (wholehearted) consent of each individual; even a single unloosened root can prevent the release of the tree stump. Nemawashii represents more than an example of Japanese pedagogy and social ritual. There is a strong value placed on agreement and harmony, on the unity of purpose, which is at the very core of Japanese morality and which is accordingly the central agenda of Japanese education. This, along with other cultural values, is what is learned in a Japanese school and what is seen as uniquely Japanese.

 

SOUND MIND IN SOUND BODY

 

Japanese schools and parents are also especially concerned about the child's physical development, which is integrated with other forms of learning far more than it is in Western school curricula. To be a good child in Japan is to be strong, and the means by which such strength is developed is self‑testing—pushing oneself as hard as one can—and also the ritualized exercises of the school day.

 

Physical education involves both morning exercises done by the whole school at one time and the more specialized classes in gymnas­tics, swimming (many schools have their own pools), and team sports. Knowledge of the right way to do the group exercises is important. Children coming from non‑Japanese schools feel shame for not knowing how to do them properly, and teachers and parents will soon enough help them to get things right. The exercises, like those beginning a business day, are regarded as a way to get children into an energetic and positive frame of mind, and to dispel extra energy. Exercise is not usually undertaken to develop athletes—there are few "jocks" in a Japanese school—but to learn how to push oneself and develop unity with others.

 

JAPAN LOOKS TO THE FUTURE

 

Felt continuity with the gods and emperors of the past does not run counter to the Japanese preoccupation with planning for the future. Futurology is a game Japanese play too, but thanks to resource scarcity and an accompanying sense of risk and dependence, Japanese planners play the game with deadly seriousness. What they feel is the primary and most dependable resource, Japan's well‑educated and hardworking population, is the focus of the most intense planning. And children, because they are the future, get top priority in the exercise.

 

Moreover, social consensus has restricted births to an average of less than two per family. This has also helped to channel attention to the future of valued offspring. Parents of course worry most about their own children. But the society at large also understands the clear relationship between the Japanese educational and occupational worlds. Hence the school must both equalize opportunity and sort by ability. This latter principle of meritocracy further ensures that parents, teach­ers, and society carefully attend to each child's development, to maxi­mize his or her "merit" in the race for society's rewards. In Japan one cannot inherit position, and, at least ideally, one has no assured ascribed route to success. As in the United States, a meritocratic system and individual psychic anxiety go hand in hand.

 

Yet while the pressure on Japanese parents and teachers is especially intense, the child is shielded. His ability, character, and identity are, to the maximum extent possible, protected from the onslaughts of worry about the future. Things will be fine, the child is continually assured, if he learns to persevere, to possess sincerity, and to show good cheer—the lesson of the morals course. A corollary here is that in Japan eventual success is not assumed to depend on one's innate capacities but on virtuous characteristics one can develop. Hence potential is regarded in Japan as egalitarian—everyone has it, but some work harder to develop it than others. In the United States potential is usually thought to be a bottom‑line capacity that varies from person to person and that cannot finally be exceeded—you can only "do your best." Our kind of individualism implies a finite and ultimately restrictive notion of capacity; Japanese "potential" is acces­sible to all, though it may never be fulfilled by even the most able.

 

How the Japanese child's potential is to be maximized is society's responsibility, not the individual's. For the past forty years, the means for getting the most out of life have been very tightly tied to the educational system, and how well the child does in the schoolroom is felt to be the most important determinant of Japan's place in the future.

Japanese mothers and teachers both rely on sensitivity, intimacy, and shared goals as the means by which they can shape a child's growth. The closeness, physical and psychological, of the relationship with a child is the measure of the success of Japanese mothering. Close physical proximity gives the mother a chance to develop an intuitive understanding of her child's character, behavior, and feel­ings‑an understanding that she uses to shape the child's development. One of my students, who has a Japanese mother, wrote a paper describ­ing his relationship with her. His epigraph for the paper is a poem:

 

I am

like the clay

always being molded

into different shapes

by two firm hands

 

The Japanese mother intuits the desires and needs of the child's inner self and fulfills them without expecting the child to verbalize his own. She responds to his unexpressed signals and encourages his reading of her cues as well, thus creating an atmosphere of mutual sensitivity to mood and subtle body language. The child is thus con­stantly taught to avoid situations in which he causes trouble or discomfort for others (meiwaku o kakeru). This encourages the child to reflect upon the consequences of his actions for others, as well as to expect from them the same kind of consideration. In the end, Japanese child ­rearing develops a sensitivity and inclination to respond to the subtle mood states of other people.

 

Japanese mothers can "cooperate" in this way with their children without risking their own "authority" because, as Lanham has pointed out, they are "free of ego‑based assertions of authority over their own children, even responding to their criticisms of their own behavior with ready apologies."

 

Using her relationship with the child as a model, the mother trains the child in the ways of interpersonal relationships, but with the differ­ence that between mother and child behavior is permitted that is no­where else allowed. In other words, to develop in the child a need to be dependent, the capacity to reciprocate dependency, and an ability to read subtle emotional cues to others' moods is the mother's most important responsibility.

 

As she teaches, the mother attempts at all times to avoid open confrontation with the child. By constantly repeating her requests and showing enthusiasm and support for the child's successes, she encourages the child a step at a time down the path toward her goals for him. The expression Haeba tate tateba ayumi no oyagokoro (If he crawls, encourage him to stand; if he stands, have him walk—­such is the parent's way) indicates the way goals are set by the mother. If the child rebels, she attempts to protect her relationship with him rather than forcing the issue at the expense of alienating him. In this way, as we saw earlier, she trains him not only to the style of interper­sonal behavior valued by her and society at large, but also to the daily tasks (e.g., brushing his teeth or dressing himself) that he needs to be able to perform to become responsible for himself. Thus, the Japanese child is not confronted with a set of inflexible demands, but with constant suggestion and encouragement and an unworried expectation that he will eventually conform.

 

THE HOME CURRICULUM

 

To ensure that their children receive the grounding for successful school careers, most mothers train the child in school‑related activities during the preschool years. The gradual shift in emphasis from the mother's role in fostering "good breeding" (shitsuke) to an emphasis on home training to prepare for school (yoji kyoiku) occurs around the age of three. Teachers do not encourage the training that goes on at home, but most middle‑class mothers continue the practice. Most mothers in urban areas teach their preschool children to read and write the phonetic alphabet, and most children can count to one hundred and work simple computational problems involving amounts under ten before they reach first grade. They can also sing or recite several songs and poems. Most preschools do not teach these abilities systematically, and it is largely due to the efforts of the mother that the child develops the skills before he enters first grade.

 

What do Japanese mothers do in the home to teach their children? What do they do to foster cognitive development, in particular, since that is what interests Americans who envy Japanese test scores? The data on mothers' use of teaching aids, on hours spent teaching a child to read, write, compute, and do other educational activities of the kind we would recognize, is very impressive.

 

Japanese mothers take the education of preschoolers at home very seriously indeed, providing a curriculum that is consciously and sensi­tively managed. But most of the activities are informal. Mothers spend many hours in cooperative games and pursuits with their children, such as drawing, reading storybooks, and playing writing and counting games. Parents also buy many supplementary aids and materials such as workbooks and children's magazines. Even at the playground, where an American mother usually spends her time monitoring a child's physical safety and his social interactions, the Japanese mother uses the time to teach: "How many stones does Taroo have? Let's take one away . . . . " The Japanese mother's didactic interventions usually involve activities through which she can engage herself with the child, while American mothers are more likely to buy games and toys adver­tised as providing "hours of happy and educational independent activ­ity."

 

Besides increasing a child's store of information and cognitive skills, the mother tries to train the child to concentrate. The importance of single‑minded effort, of intense dedication, is very clearly imparted to the child. The mother keeps the youngster doing only one thing at a time; everything else is left aside. In Japan some teenagers are called nagarazoku: members of the "tribe of ‘whilers' "—doing one thing while doing something else. This mothers discourage ardently. They even feel that when their children are watching TV, they should do that and nothing else.

 

A program of intensive learning at an early age is a fully conscious strategy on the part of the mother to improve her child's chances in competitive examinations to come. But what fuels her energetic efforts is not finally a drive for advantage: rather, it is her desire to engage her child actively, and the cognitive content of that activity is simply the current vehicle for that engagement. Of course, she realizes that it might serve him well, but she also feels wholehearted pleasure in the interaction through which the advantage is being developed.

 

THE MOTIVATING BOND

 

The psychodynamics by which the mother carries out her awesome responsibilities hinge upon the development of an emotional closeness between the mother and child. To form the bond, the child needs the mother as the object of his seeking for indulgence (amae), which she has encouraged. By indulging the child and by explicitly training him in the distinction between behavior appropriate to such an "in­dulged" relationship and that appropriate to the outside world, the mother preserves the intimacy of the mother‑child relationship and reinforces the necessity for "social graces" in dealings beyond the family. At the same time, she gauges her demands for more mature behavior on the child's part to his ability to meet expectations. By showing that she is hurt when the child refuses to fulfill her reasonable demands, she implicitly threatens to withdraw affection. In the end, the mother gradually shapes the child's behavior toward greater matu­rity. If the child flatly refuses to go along, she typically backs down, and while displaying hurt, reaffirms the emotional bond with the child. However, she will continue to look for the opportune time to reassert her desires, confident that through her understanding of the child's inner self, she will finally triumph.

 

Although this description of the mother's manipulation of the relationship's psychodynamics makes her appear extremely Machiavel­lian, most Japanese mothers are not overtly conscious of their psycho­logical methods, and do not feel that there is anything underhanded about them. On the contrary, they feel that what they do naturally supports the child. Moreover, what we might call manipulation is seen as completely appropriate management of the child, who is in any case not seen as an independent unit. What the mother is "manag­ing" is a relationship, not a person. Outside observers also feel that from a long‑range perspective, the patient, child‑focused socialization methods are probably less damaging or manipulative than techniques used in other cultures, including our own.

 

Throughout, the mother wants to prepare her child to succeed in the world outside the home—the child's success is her success. But she is concerned about much more than this. Early on, she wants to develop a relationship with her child that will last a lifetime. Accord­ingly, her long‑term perspective on mothering very definitely takes into account not only present but future mutuality. By providing under­standing, nurturance, and sensitivity to the child's needs, and by train­ing the child to reciprocate, the Japanese mother finds herself within a relationship that she hopes will last until the day she dies.

 

LEARNING THE WAY

 

What other social and psychological skills does the mother encour­age? For her, the "good" child is one who participates wholeheartedly in the pursuit of the adult's goals, who in fact has taken them on as his own. That wholeheartedness is at least as important as the success that may result from the child's internalizing adult objectives. In other words, the way in which a child does something is more the measure of the child's character than the outcome of what he does. American children tend to be judged by the latter.

 

In Japan at any age, one's attitude is integral to one's performance. Thus, any task is composed of appropriate attitude, energy, patience, and attention to detail. The priority of process over product is fully shown in traditional apprenticeships and the acquisition of certain traditional crafts and skills: if you learn how to do something very carefully, and pay exquisite attention to every step needed to make it, the finished product will naturally be a good one. As indicated in the popular book Zen and the Art of Archery, all skill and art lie in preparing to loose the arrow. If this is done well, the archer needn't think about whether the arrow will fly true or not. Similarly, in the tea ceremony, in origami, in gardening, and in the construction of automobiles, understanding "the way" is more important than the "perfect" product itself. In short, the moral force of method is greater than quantifiable result. Thus, even small children are taught that you fold the paper "exactly so," you cut precisely along the line, you place your shoes exactly parallel and in just the right spot near the door.

 

What we see as compulsive, competitive "perfectionism" the Japanese see as a satisfying completion of a set of detailed tasks. When a Japanese child learns to do something, he is taught to do it in tiny steps, each one seen as very important and eminently do­able. The mastery of one discrete step is greatly applauded, with the child experiencing a moment of clear accomplishment. Michael Kirst notes that "Japanese children are taught that each repetition of a process always contains something new. They learn to discriminate tiny variations in routines as they are repeated." He goes on to conclude that this "probably helps the Japanese perfect and improve new technol­ogy that other countries develop. "4 But in my view the Japanese trait means much more for child rearing and cognitive development than it does for economic development.

 

A Western therapist might consider Japanese behavior as so ob­sessed with control that it masks suppressed aggression. In fact, our lack of attention to detail, and the delay of gratification until the completion of a large task, provide us with less mundane, moment­to‑moment satisfaction. This in turn keeps us feeling frustrated and incomplete, as we value only the final, sometimes unobtainable end product. We have talked earlier about the differences in the meaning of creativity in the two societies, which also have to do with how the two differently regard task completion. Suffice it to emphasize here that what counts, in a Japanese home and a Japanese school, is a child's commitment to work hard within a fully supportive ambience; what does not count are gifts or talents with which a youngster is endowed by God or nature. Thus, the mother's and teacher's most significant contribution to a child's future is a capacity to instill the importance of engagement, the same engagement they themselves show‑positive, wholehearted, energetic commitment‑while at work on a task to produce a result.

 

JOINING THE GROUP: THE USES OF PRESCHOOLS

 

If the environment of the home provides so much intensive learning, what is the place of nursery schools and other preschool forms of activity? Who uses them, and why? Masaru Ibuka, the head of the Sony Corporation, wrote a best‑selling book, Kindergarten Is Too Late, in which he claimed that the most profitable time to engage a child in formal learning is the very earliest years. As a result, parents intensified a commitment to the cognitive development of their children, enrolling them in greater numbers in nursery schools and special pro­grams and spending even more money on educational games and toys. Ibuka, like many teachers and educational policymakers, wanted parents to spend more time and energy educating the "whole child," making him more "well rounded," as Americans say. Instead, parents continue to regard formal schooling as absolutely essential to a child's future academic success, and go so far as to prepare not only their children but themselves for entrance examinations into the most highly rated preschools.

 

In a recent study conducted by the Nishinomiya Pre‑School Educa­tion Study Group, preschool mothers were polled for their attitudes concerning preschool education. They were asked general questions on child rearing and learning, and on teaching and training in formal institutions. As for the answers, most mothers agreed with the proposi­tion that a child's nature and character are not given at birth and that his development is externally influenced. They also felt that pre­schools should provide a safe environment for physical development and that cognitive learning is not to be emphasized‑they wanted the school to stress socialization and deemphasize preparation for elementary school.

 

Furthermore, when asked what sort of teacher they preferred for their children, they ranked gentleness and caring first, then patience and liveliness (akarui). Less important were discipline, rigor, and technical knowledge.

 

Preschools include yochien and hoikuen (nursery schools and day­care). The ministry of education reported in 1979 that 65 percent of five‑year‑olds, 50 percent of four‑year‑olds, and 7.5 percent of three­year‑olds were enrolled in nursery school or kindergarten. Half of each percentage figure was probably enrolled in daycare, which meant five‑year‑olds' enrollment was close to 100 percent. Furthermore, the overall percentage of enrollment in either nursery school or daycare was 63.8 percent for three‑, four‑, and five‑year‑olds when averaged together. Moreover, from 1965 to 1979 the number of institutions serving preschool children had doubled to over 15,000 such schools serving almost 2.5 million children. Of these children, over 74 percent were enrolled in private preschools, which charge substantial tuition and other fees.

 

Since preschool has become an almost universal experience for the Japanese child, its environment and characteristics have become a significant formative influence. What is a preschool like? In some important ways, it is like the child's home. First, some 96 percent of all preschool teachers are women. In general, the younger the pupil, the more likely his or her teacher is to be female. The atmosphere, as described by Catherine Lewis 7 and others, is warm and nurturant, basically nonacademic and play‑oriented. In spite of parental desire to push cognitive development, most teachers devote themselves to the social and behavioral. Meanwhile, daycare teachers prefer to en­courage children to tend to their own needs whenever possible.

Japanese teachers, according to Lewis, assume that children want to be good, which governs their management of the classroom. Bad behavior, in other words, stems from "not understanding" rather than willful misbehavior. In any case, children seem to comply volun­tarily with a teacher's request, making defiance and insubordination rare. Children typically immerse themselves enthusiastically and re­sponsibly in self‑directed activity, exhibiting long periods of concentra­tion, and soliciting and requiring little attention from teachers. And a single child's behavior is indulged even to the point where the entire group might be inconvenienced.

 

As previously mentioned, nursery schools (and kindergartens also) in no way encourage a mother's program for cognitive development. In fact, as observed by Lois Taniuchi,g schools prefer to regard the child as a blank slate, trainable in the specific behavior and skills seen as appropriate to a specific educational environment. But like the mother, the school feels a child has no discernible preexisting abilities, and as a new recruit to school, he is raw material to be molded and formed by the teachers.

 

Every Japanese group or institution seems to feel the same way: to see any newcomer as totally malleable, carrying no identity-­conferring baggage of skills or predispositions. Hence a bank trains its college‑graduated new recruits as if they had had no training for their new jobs.' The bank, like all Japanese companies, tries to hire I 'generalists" who have studied no technical trade making them special­ists. This means that a mid‑career job changer must begin again at the bottom, to be "born again" in the new life the shift of group brings. In private life the practice is particularly telling for a new bride, who enters her husband's family to be trained "from scratch" in the methods and habits of the new group. The kafu, or "ways of the house," are seen to be completely unique‑the way grandmother makes pickles, the schedules and rituals of the day. By extension, the school is a new family, having both the child's best interests at heart and representing a whole world of new expectations.

 

What does the small child as new recruit learn in his new life? What is considered important, whether in kindergarten or the early years of elementary school, is not drastically different from what is valued at home. But the context is quite different: instead of learning through the mother's persuasive, engaged, and constant attention, the child at school learns through more impersonal, though still en­gaged, direction. So the first lesson learned is that he is only one child among many, and that the others must be attended to as well. This is not so different, of course, from the same lesson learned during the early years in American schools, but the Japanese message goes much further. In Japan not only does one wait one's turn for highly valued personal attention, but one also learns that there are clear rewards for being attentive to other people and sensitive to their ideas and concerns. In other words, "getting along with others" is not just a means for keeping the peace in the classroom but something which is a valued end in itself.

 

The second lesson learned, early on, is that there is a right way to do things and that it is worth all the time it takes to get to know that way. Slowly teachers encourage children to listen and concentrate, as a first step toward doing things the right way. Similarly, other school customs and habits are inculcated quietly, with attention paid to "the way we do it."

 

Nursery school is not regarded, at least by teachers, as the first step on the road to the entrance examination. Integrating oneself into the life of the group, emotional sensitivity to others, and learning the right way to do something are the important lessons. The stated goals, which are typical, of Sakuranbo Nursery School in Saitama­ken are to raise children full of sensitivities, competence, physical strength, sympathy with friends, and the capacity to respond well in various environments. At Sakuranbo four‑year‑old children built a rabbit hutch together as a long‑term project, but they first went to a zoo to observe rabbits in hutches, then made drawings and developed a model, and finally built the actual hutch. The school says that children "need the confidence they can derive from cooperation."

 

Japanese teachers strongly believe, and act on the belief, that the "group life" of the class is the entirely natural outcome of children's predilections to play together, to become friends. And so they say, as Catherine Lewis and Lois Taniuchi Peak report,1° that children who don't feel that group activities are "more fun" than individual ones don't yet "know the happiness of playing together."

 

Turning to American middle‑class mothers, what do they want from a nursery school? Usually they would like it to provide cognitive enhancement for the child or free time for themselves, or both. Neither of these is given as an explicit reason by Japanese mothers. Why, then, do their children attend? Some, of course, are sent because the school, even though it provides no explicit academic training, does provide the illusion that children enrolled have an advantage in the race to college. Yet a recent survey showed that even private kindergar­tens, widely thought to provide accelerated academic programs, do very little to push cognitive development. In fact, only 13 percent of the elite kindergartens help children to develop an acquaintance with a few written characters, and only 8 percent provide any work with numbers. Public kindergartens offer no training at all in reading or counting. Teachers say that they like to inspire interest in reading and computation but do not like to teach either. And they don't.

 

There are, however, preschool juku that explicitly try to impart academic skills to help the children pass tests to get into private kindergartens and elementary schools. The attendance at these schools is limited to a very small part of the urban population. During the preschool years, most urban middle class children do receive some sort of private instruction besides the preschool. But this is not usually given over to academic subjects and the choices here are often influ­enced by fads (music lessons, drawing and painting, swimming, and English are currently popular). In any case, the purpose is basically enrichment.

 

In one type of preschool, the daycare center, the schedule is usually arranged for the convenience of working mothers. Yet some mothers who do not work prefer to send their children to daycare centers, even though admission preference is given to children of working mothers. These nonworking mothers say they like the emphasis placed on self‑reliance within an atmosphere less achievement‑oriented. There are also working mothers who send their children to nursery schools despite problems with the schedule and pressure on the mother's time. In general, both nursery schools and daycare centers are play‑oriented, though the former usually draw pupils from a slightly higher socioeco­nomic group. Accordingly, the nursery school implies "an advantage. "

 

If the home is an indulgent environment, it is no wonder that Japanese parents feel that social and other training must take place

outside it. We already know about the pre‑modern tradition of sending children to be apprenticed in another family's household, because the child, the Japanese believe, can be better trained in a home not his own, or at least away from the tolerance of mothers and grandmoth­ers like Masa's. This was particularly true among families practicing the crafts and trades, when the child was heir to the family business. This custom seems to belie the Japanese principle that the only useful forms of knowledge are those acquired within the environment where they are used and applied. In this case it seems that the threat to learning from an overindulgent intimacy is stronger than the need to train someone to the practices of a particular socioeconomic unit.

But in general for the Japanese there is, as we have seen, a comple­mentarity and not a contradiction between the social and emotional conditioning of training at home and training in the school and other environments. To see how this merging occurs, let's now look at a day in the life of a three‑year‑old Japanese boy.

 

KENICHI'S DAY

 

Kenichi is three and lives in Senri New Town near Osaka. He has a ten‑month‑old baby sister, and his father, Ryusuke Watanabe, is a lower‑level manager in an electronics company. Ryusuke graduated from Osaka University, and Kenichi's mother, Keiko, from a junior college for women in Kobe. They live in what is known as a "2DLK" (two rooms plus dining/living/kitchen area) apartment in a large danchi, or "apartment complex" which has two eight‑mat rooms (rooms are measured by the number of three‑by‑six‑foot tatami mats making up the floor), a large kitchen with dining area, a bath, and a toilet room. One of the tatami rooms is the living area by day and the parents' sleeping area by night, the low table and pillows being stowed away and the futons being laid on the matting. The baby sleeps with the parents. The other room is also all‑purpose, and usually Kenichi sleeps there, in a child's bed. The room has been carpeted in Western style and the bed is Western also. His toys are everywhere, spilling out into all the other rooms. Sleeping arrangements are far from fixed, and often the mother moves her futon into Kenichi's area with the baby, especially when Ryusuke sleeps late or when one of the children is ill.

 

The apartment is on the fifth floor, and there is a community playground in the open area between Kenichi's building and the next one. The entire neighborhood apartment complex is relatively new, with various shops providing all basic necessities within a five‑minute walk. Buses also pass nearby to take residents to Osaka and to the major shopping areas of Senri. The Watanabes hope someday to own their own single‑family house and have a savings account for the purpose, into which they put as much as they can of Ryusuke's twice­a‑year bonuses and anything else they can squirrel away. They know that the money for the house may be depleted or reduced by expenses they may incur for their children's education.

Kenichi's day begins with his sister's cries to be fed and changed. Kenichi himself burrows under the quilt and tries not to wake up, but finally rouses himself. It is a spring day, in early March, and he is to visit his new nursery school with his mother and sister. The school year begins in April in Japan and ends in March, and so now young children like Kenichi are being gradually introduced to their new life as school‑goers. He isn't sure how he feels about the idea, and reassures himself by remembering that today will be just a visit and his mother has promised not to leave him there. He is excited by the prospect of being "a big boy."

 

His mother is already up, and has laid out a bowl of cereal, a glass of milk, and a piece of toast and butter for him. He is too excited to eat, and his mother yields‑and adds chocolate to his milk to ensure that he takes something. He watches a cartoon on television while his mother bustles about tending to the baby, putting away the futon, making his bed, cleaning the dishes, and generally tidying up. All this time, his father has been eating breakfast and quietly getting ready to go to work, not much involved in the early‑morning routine of the rest of the family. He leaves, after telling Kenichi that he should be proud of being "a big boy" and going to school, and that he hopes he will be good.

 

With the baby strapped to her back and with Kenichi at one hand, Keiko leaves the house and walks through the streets until they reach a small, one‑story building made of cement blocks and surrounded by a fenced‑in play yard. Other mothers and children are converging on the scene, most looking tentative or even anxious. But a few clearly are veterans of the process, and they are more relaxed, arriving just at the appointed hour.

 

Kenichi begins to clutch more tightly at his mother's hand and grabs her leg as well, trying to pull her away from the school. A

few other children are crying and one is even lying on the ground, kicking and screaming. Mothers pull out candies, toys, whatever might divert the children, and bring out the moistened towels they always carry to tidy up disheveled offspring.

 

Kenichi is fascinated by one little boy who has begun to hit his mother furiously, and he forgets his own fears watching the tantrum. Just then the head of the school comes to the doorway to invite everyone to come in. Mothers and children enter.

 

The head of the school then greets the assembled newcomers, and, paying no attention to the miserable cries of some of the children, speaks of the happy times to come, and of the love the teachers already have for their new charges. She admonishes parents to be sure to prepare the children for the experiences of school, and to be extremely careful traversing the crowded city streets. She tells them that the goal of the school is to provide children with a cheerful and cooperative group experience, and that parents should not expect this to be the first step toward entrance to a prestigious university. She reminds them that children need support and that they are too young to be pressured by the future. She hopes that parents and teachers will be able to work together to provide a good environment for their children's happiness.

 

The children are then seated in a circle‑at least those who can be lured away from their mothers. Some of the mothers join the circle, sitting just behind their children to encourage them to participate. For many of them, this is the first time they have experienced organized play with other children. Earlier age mates engage only in "parallel play" or simply observe each other from a distance at a playground. The principal introduces all children to the teachers, who begin a clapping hands game. They chant a simple song, and ask the children to sing too. The teachers then tell the children about all the activities they have planned, and show them the rooms, the washing and toileting facilities, and the collection of toys and materials. Then the teachers

hand out snacks juice and crackers‑and while the children are eating, the parents begin to loosen up and talk with each other. After that, it is time to go home, and by now almost all the children want more school. Some begin to cry because they do not want to leave.

 

On the way home, Keiko feels like celebrating and takes Kenichi to an ice‑cream store. She buys three ice creams on sticks. After these are eaten, they go to the park and let the baby play in the sandbox. Keiko feels relieved that Kenichi did not seem to mind school terribly, and yet she also wants him to know that she is still the one who indulges him with treats.

Kenichi tells a child he meets on the way home that he has just gone to school, and the child, a little older, mocks him and tells him he's only visited nursery school, not real school. With the wind knocked out of his sails a little, Kenichi begins to whine a bit and wants to be carried. His mother half‑drags him home, and after feeding the baby and putting her down for a nap, she reads to Kenichi and then prepares lunch. Then, after Kenichi's nap, his mother takes the two children shopping for groceries and allows them to play in the apartment playground for a long time. Kenichi appears to have forgotten all about school. But when the next morning at breakfast his father asks what happened, Kenichi swells with pride and proceeds to narrate a very long winded version of the previous day's sixty‑minute episode, with special attention given to the tantrums of the other children.

 

There are several things to point to here. First is the centrality of the mother in the child's life. We rarely see the father at all, and he rarely sees Kenichi awake. He is home on Sundays, and that day is usually "family day." A popular children's book treating the rela­tionship of father and child is called Nichiyoobi no Tomodachi (My Sunday Friend). On Sundays the family may go together to a park or zoo, or go shopping in the large downtown department stores‑if the father isn't sleeping off an exhausting week or playing compulsory golf with a client or superior. Time spent with one's family is sometimes ironically referred to as "family service" (in English) by some men.

 

The second aspect of the Watanabes' life to be noted is the isolation of the mother with her children. Keiko lives in a very large apartment complex and knows her neighbors only slightly. There are several families from her husband's company in the building, but an occupa­tional connection does not bring the wives together; on the contrary, because of problems from jealousy and indiscreet revelations potentially harming the husbands' relations at work, the women whose husbands work together tend to politely avoid each other. Keiko has become friendly with some other mothers in the playground, but their children play together only there, and members of the age group rarely visit each other at home, with or without their mothers.

 

The adults to whom Keiko speaks regularly number only a few: the fish store lady and the vegetable seller, and the people who come to her door to sell magazines ("to enhance your child's chances in school") and birth control devices (most condoms are sold this way,

to wives). Keiko does talk on the telephone a lot, to her sister, her mother, and sometimes an old school friend who lives on the other side of Osaka. In general, though, her daily relationships are confined to her children.

 

Another feature of life is the predictability of the day's events. While Keiko doesn't rigidly schedule them, and maintains a rather leisurely pace, her tasks are regular and her geographical arena rather constrained. There is not much of what an American middle‑class mother would call outside "stimulus" in the child's day.

 

The school orientation visit itself was also rather unstimulating, and its very occurrence is regarded as enough to acquaint the child with the idea of school. The meeting was short, the messages were simple. In fact, the brevity of the session was intended to whet the child's appetite. This is very similar to the enticements programmed into the Suzuki violin teaching method," in which the child is initially not allowed to handle the violin, but simply watches others play; when he finally is allowed to try his hand, he is given the instrument only for a very short time, leaving him wanting more.

 

Finally, one must note the positive tone that suffuses all the interac­tions with children. Rarely does one hear threats, warnings, or pro­nouncements, not to speak of character denunciations; nor do teachers or parents confront children directly. Over the sound of crying children, the principal tells them what a happy day it is, while mothers cajole and persuade through love, not war. Direct punishment is rare: mothers and teachers express displeasure in subtle, oblique ways (by American standards) and work strenuously to create an environment in which the child cannot help but wholeheartedly comply.

 

The approach here, which Americans might see as a sophisticated version of "behavior modification," is tied to more traditional prac­tices. There is the story about the goal of Zen training. A disciple, it seems, has achieved mastery when he can keep a bird from flying off his arm simply by giving way every time the bird attempts to take off. Without resistance, the bird can get no purchase on the arm and cannot fly away. By analogy, the child is always on the arm of the teacher, whose "passivity" prevents him from rebelling. While we cannot believe that mothers and teachers never allow them­selves to be angry, to punish openly, to express frustration with chil­dren, the model remains that of the mother with the newborn infant: to work toward merging rather than separating.