Explore everyday life in Japan
This says Congratulations on graduating in Japanese. It was drawn by a second grade student as a going away present to this class.
March in Japan means goodbyes for many people.
It is a time of work transfers, moving preparations, and school graduations. At the junior high school level, March signifies a big change for third-year students (15 year-olds). They will say goodbye to many of the friends they have known and gone to school with since preschool and separate into different high schools, effectively going their own way and stepping onto their individual paths to adulthood. In a sense, the junior high school graduation in Japan can be thought of as being equivalent to graduating from high school in the United States and moving on to either work or study at college.
In many ways, Japanese high schools are the grooming grounds for the work students will do later in life. A good high school can be a steppingstone into the right college, which can, in turn, become a ticket into a successful company or a specific occupation. And to the contrary, attending a high school with a poor reputation can be a blemish on one’s resume for years to come.
High school in Japan is not something that students just transfer into. They must apply to high schools of their own choosing, pass the entrance exams that those high schools offer, and get accepted into them. Similar to applying to college in the United States, students are told to apply to their top school choices and are also encouraged to apply to a “fall back” school, one that they are sure to get into and can fall back on in the event that they fail the entrance exams to their top schools.
Being that entrance to high school in Japan marks a new beginning in students’ lives, graduating from junior high school is a pretty significant and, for some students, emotional experience.
Generally, during the first week of March, junior high schools across the country decorate their gymnasiums with red and white striped banners, fill their floors with folding chairs, and attempt to disperse the wintry chill (to little avail) that still tends to permeate these gymnasiums with massive gas heaters.
The ceremonies themselves are very formal and silent. In many ways, it is difficult to decide if these graduations are solemn or celebratory. First and second-grade students wearing school uniforms sit in their chairs in the middle of the gymnasium and wait for the ceremony to begin. Parents, dressed in suits and gowns, sit in chairs that line the wings of the gymnasium. Elder members of the community and PTA leaders sit at a table in the front of the gymnasium while the schools’ teachers sit at another table directly across the gym from them.
When the vice-principal announces the opening of the ceremony, the school’s brass band begins to play and the third graders walk into the gymnasium in pairs. Their approach begins at the back of the gym and involves a turn that brings the pairs down an aisle that extends through the middle of the seated first and second graders. From beginning to end, everyone in the gymnasium claps without fail until this promenade is finished.
After the last third-grade student has sat down, the gymnasium becomes abruptly silent. Eyes turn to the podium that is set off in the front corner of the gym and the leader of ceremonies asks everyone to stand up and sing the school song. Then, the music teacher will walk out to the middle of the gym’s floor, signal to the students to correct their posture and turn their bodies slightly inward toward the middle of the gym. Once this has been done, the music teacher will signal to the student who has been designated to play the piano to begin the song, and everyone will sing a very formal school anthem with well-rehearsed, beautiful choral voices.
When the school song is finished, there won’t be any clapping. The gymnasium will fall back into silence, the leader of ceremonies will announce what is next, the teachers who are participating in the following stage of the program will take their places, and the ceremony will proceed, stiffly and formally.
When it is time to receive their diplomas, students will be called up to the stage in the front of the gym in succession, from the first student to the last. They will walk steadily and tall up the stairs of the stage to a table where the principal of the school awaits them with their diplomas. They will receive their diplomas with two hands, bow, turn to the right or left with their diplomas extended before them and their heads still bowed. Then, in a step that is well-practiced, they will tuck their diplomas under their arms, straighten their bodies, walk off the stage, and go back to their seats. All of this will happen without applause or expression. Students names will be called, bodies will move, diplomas will be given.
When the last student has received his/her diploma, the leader of ceremonies will take to the podium, announce the next piece of the program, and speeches will be given: one by the principal, one by the leader of the PTA, one by an underclassman, and one by a third grade student. Before the ceremony ends, another song will be sung and then the third-grade students will march out of the gymnasium in the same way that they entered, to the sound of the brass band and the expressionless applause of everyone in attendance.
Having made it through such a rigid and formal ceremony, the third-grade students and their parents generally gather in front of the school, laugh, smile and cry, take pictures, and begin to celebrate the end of their youth and the beginning of their young adult lives.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.