Exploring Japanese Culture: "So What's With the School Uniforms?" and other Pedagogical Mysteries.
Monday, March 21, 2011
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| Seriously, real schools don't actually have giant robots, not to say that it wouldn't be totally awesome if they did! |
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| As if running around the plains of Musashi fighting demons with sacred jewel fragments wasn't enough, Kagome's got the placement exam for high school to worry about too. It's enough to make you're head spin. |
Well, the short answer could probably apply to most countries. This being that going to a good school and doing well increases the likelihood of you finding a job, generally. However, it is no secret that the Japanese emphasize this to obsession. And what is the center of all this hullabaloo? Think of them as college specific Japanese SAT's. The mindset is that if you manage to get into a good school then you can get a nice secure job working your way up the corporate ladder as a salary man. The problem comes because there are so many other students competing for the same spot in many of these colleges and same ideal, that competition is insane. As a result, much of the emphasis and curriculum in earlier levels is geared towards preparation for this critical exam. It is most heavily pushed in high schools, but according to some sources, such as Wiki and educationjapan.org, the emphasis has created so much competition for college that students are even vying for placement in the right high schools in some parts of the country. As a result, we have the institution called cram school, or Juku to use the Japanese word. Now for those of you who don't know what that is, think of it as the Japanese version of a tutoring center. Basically, it's a private company built around helping students prepare for entrance exams, though many will also handle other curricular activities such as language assistance, liberal arts, science and, depending on the company, various other things parents might want their children to have help with. There are many social pressures that often drive parents to send their children to these cram schools in order to improve their preparedness for these exams. . Knowing this, it makes a lot more sense that Kagome is always freaking out about being absent from school due to her time-traveling adventures in the series Inuyasha. Even though she's spending all this time trying to help her friends back in feudal Japan, she's still knows that she's falling behind in school and therefore when she returns to her family in the present, much of the show's drama reverts to her trying her hardest to at least catch up, even if she isn't keeping up. Poor girl.
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| Considering Kappei Yamaguchi (Shinichi's voice actor) has a really strong accent, he really didn't do so bad. I've heard worse. |
The short answer is yes. Does that mean fluent English? Well... not so much. Anyone who watches anime regularly should be able to figure that out. This is why we have Engrish, or Japanisized English. According to Mike Dejong, English is taught primarily in areas of theory over there. In other words, most Japanese students only learn it out of textbooks with a focus on grammar and vocabulary and very rarely have the chance to put it socially or communicatively into practice. As a result, even though the study of English is required from 7th grade through the end of high school, most Japanese are not going to be fluent speakers unless they converse with foreigners often, or have a job that requires them to use English regularly. Anime, anime fans know that even if most Japanese don't speak English, it is still in vogue. Which is why we get some of these wacky, hard-to-understand phrases that anime characters will sometimes belt out with gusto, such as "Oh mai gah!" used in a scene is Azumanga Daioh! or weird attack names such as "Shining Finger!" from the series G-Gundam. Much of the English that is used in anime and manga is grammatically correct, such as in this scene here from episode 162 of Detective Conan, where there's only a couple of slip-ups. (By the way, if you want to watch it to listen to the voice track, there's a youtube video with this scene you can check out. I love this anime but it's so long you'd be watching forever if you tried to find them yourself because it's going on over 600 episodes now.) But you can tell that the voice actors are not used to speaking English and therefore the intonations and pronunciations sound totally weird, making words like "thank you" sound more like "sankyou" and whole sentences in general seem very off. Almost as though they came out of a voice synthesizer.
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| As you can see by comparing the gakuran and the suit with the blazer below, it's rather plain, but plenty of young heroes still manage to make it work as a fashion statement. |
It's a traditional thing. Japan is known for encouraging conformity, and it shows in the fact that many of their schools still insist on wearing uniforms. Today, most Japanese school uniforms vary depending on the school. More traditional schools tend to favor the gakuran style for the boys and sailor suits for the girls. These designs were derived from Meiji military dress, which themselves were designed based off of the uniforms worn by the Prussian Military. The gakuran, which is that tight-collar jacket with the pants gets its name from the term rangaku, which meant Dutch learning. Before the Meiji restoration, the Japanese only traded with the Dutch and so they equated the Dutch with the West, therefore the translated name of the outfit means "A western student" somewhat ironically considering where this uniform is exclusively used now. The sailor suit is obviously derived from the navy and you can definitely see it in this shot here from the anime, Shakugan no Shana (Top image). There's also been a trend more recently to go for uniforms like the ones often worn at western parochial schools which generally entail a nice shirt, a blazer, tie, and skirt or nice pants depending on whether the person is male or female. The men's version is shown here in this scene from Ouran Host Club. (Bottom picture. By the way, if you want to find out more, check out Wiki and I'm sure you can find more on the web or at the library.) |
| This isn't actually the school uniform Usagi wears on a daily basis, but if you compare it with Kagome's uniform higher up, the sailor scout costume is clearly influenced by school uniforms. |
From a female perspective. I am glad the answer is a resounding no. Although I know that there are plenty of guys who may at least privately beg to differ. (Perverts! ><) The really short skirt is much more common in anime comedies where perversion is one of the selling points, (such as in Tona-Gura! which I reviewed a few months back *shivers*) than in reality. Having actually seen some of these students walking around when I went to Japan, I can safely say that the actual uniforms over there are very conservative, and you'll only find the short-short skirts in places you probably wouldn't want to show your mother. There is a bit of a catholic school girl factor involved in this as male otakus seem to find something alluring about a pure young flower that has yet to be plucked... I'm not going any further. Although I have heard that there is a significant population of male anime fandom that regularly collects Sailor Moon merchandise. Considering what she wears when she's off playing superhero... Well, you don't have to take my word for it, she's standing in the picture for this paragraph.
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| As you can see not an outside shoe in the mix, but still, poor Negi, those girls might eat him alive if he lets them. |
From preschool age up to some colleges, students are not permitted to wear their regular shoes inside the buildings. This is clearly a holdover from back when all buildings had this regulation in Japanese custom. However, because of the sheer size of a building like a school, there's still going to be some dust and dirt getting kicked around, and so, schools require that you leave your street shoes at a recessed room with lockers called a genkan, and put on a pair of white indoor shoes called uwabaki. It's so that the stuff that does come in or falls on the floor, doesn't ruin everybody's socks. Each student will have their own pair of uwabaki that they purchase with their own uniform and is generally granted their own locker to keep it in. Teachers also generally have them, although they're probably allowed to be a bit nicer than the typical white shoes such as the ones we see in this scene from the anime, Negima. You'll also see this in private homes, where often the house shoes are slippers (in that case the owner of the residence will usually have spare slippers for guests, and in very old office buildings or converted apartment offices. There are exceptions at some more modern or western colleges and in places where such things would be impossible like department or convenience stores, or very public places like malls.
So there you have it. I'm sure there's questions I haven't explored, but if you can think of a topic you'd like to hear more about, feel free to put it in comments. I certainly don't mind suggestions. Until next time!
Images taken from Code Geass, Detective Conan, Inuyasha, Negima!, Ouran Host Club, Sailor Moon, and Shakugan no Shana