Arashi’s Amateurish Guide to Japanese Life and Culture and How it Applies to Fanfiction

[Kotonoha]

This is pretty neat.

[Milbunk]

^.

[lantzblades]

This is pretty neat.

agreed.

[DreamsRequiem]

Thank God for Arashi, I actually needed this for what I'm writing.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

There's plenty more to talk about, really, when it comes to school life, but I'm not exactly sure what else people would want to know or would even be relevant. Eh.

Section II: School Life

School division: School in Japan is like an odd mix of the American system and the British system, in that it has an Elementary, Junior High, and High School like America but compulsory schooling is not all the way to one’s eighteenth birthday.

Elementary school (Shougakkou, lit. “little school”) is grades 1-6 (ages 6-12), though many kids start with Kindergarten. Schoolchildren wear uniforms and each has leather backpacks that are to suffice them through their entire elementary life. Further good examples on this would be Usagi Drop, which dedicates a lot of time on this, or Strawberry Marshmallow, the elementary equivalent to Azumanga Daioh.

Junior High (Chuugakkou, lit. “middle school”), is the last compulsory form of education in Japan, covering grades 7-9 (ages 12-15). Bakuman. covers the tail end of this, and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun’s main four girls are all in junior high (“Ahh, Biribiri-chuugakusei!”).

High School (Koutougakkou, lit. “senior school” and regularly shortened to koukou) covers grades 10-12 (ages 15-18). It is not a requirement, though significantly important to the culture. The entry into a good high school is as important to a Japanese family as a good university is in the Western world. A good example of this transition process is in Bakuman., where ace student Akito ends up going to a high school “beneath” his stature to be in the same school as his mangaka partner, Moritaka, who doesn’t have the grades to attend at a more prestigious level. There are entry exams for high schools, but once you have been accepted by the school, except for completely dropping out or choosing transfer, they will keep you on-board for the rest of your high school education: see Tomoya Okazaki of Clannad, who entered on scholarship, got injured and could not play, but was kept by the school regardless.

If the Asagami Private Academy where Akiha goes to is prestigious enough, the fact that she can attend there and gets special privilege to commute instead of stay at the dorms is more significant than it is usually harked on…and is also very ojou-sama-ish of Akiha.

Because high school entry is important and going to a prestigious one outside of even the city you normally live in can benefit your future career, some high schools have nearby dormitories for non-resident students, like universities do.

Schools are also sometimes oriented toward certain areas. Some are better equipped to get students ready for a university, while others are better at preparing students for technical jobs. Shiki notes that his school is university-minded. Additionally, students are sometimes arranged into classes depending upon questionnaires they receive in first or second year that orients them into a grouping of students that share interest in the same fields. 3-A might be full of humanities kids, 3-B might be full of mathematics and sciences, 3-C might want to go to technical colleges, ect. Again, this is not universal, but fairly common.

Yearly Schedule: Schools in Japan start in April instead of the August/September route of many in the Western world. They have a summer break of a month or two, though it is shorter in northern prefectures. Summer during junior high and high school often also has a period for students to do extra studying, some because they want to perfect their skills and others because they need the help; such a period is generally not mandatory unless the student is failing miserably. Their Winter break is not centered on Christmas like in many Western countries, though, and sometimes schools meet as late as Christmas; Christmas is not quite the same celebration in Japan, which I’ll talk about in the seasonal entry.

Festivals: Schools, high school especially, usually have festivals that showcase things done by the students. There is usually a cultural festival held in the fall and a sports festival in either fall or spring.

Cultural festivals are where students showcase things they’ve learned, practicing organizational and craftsmanship skills. In elementary and junior high, this might be just a showcase of art, essays, and crafts the students have done, but in high school it is often much more elaborate. In anime and manga, you might see students debating over the default choices of café or haunted house if nobody in the class has a particular idea. Toradora! and K-On!! both depict plays the students put on. Clubs also perform demonstrations, which K-On! somewhat revolves around.

Sports festivals are outdoor games students participate in. Some schools run old-fashioned sort of activities that can be somewhat silly in nature—see Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star—but others are just straight-up games of volleyball, softball, track, and the like. These festivals are competitive between classes, as rankings are assigned based on how well each class did in events.

Years: All schools are divided into the yearly classes, and in junior high and high school it is very common for these divisions to occur where each year’s classes are on an individual level of the school. Each class is then divided: 1-A means “first year, class A” and 2-C would mean “second year, class C.” Shiki and Shirou are both 2nd years and both are 2-C in their respective schools. Akiha and Sakura are a year below, Rin, Shinji, Satuski, Arihiko, Issei, and Ayako concurrent, Ciel a year ahead. The image below shows where you’d normally see “2-C” and the like.



This brings up the senpai-kohai issue: in Japan, seniority is serious business, as age and experience is culturally assumed to be of greater importance than even genius intelligence. One addresses a student in the years ahead of oneself as “senpai.” This carries over into the adult world, where in businesses and companies, anyone who is older or worked at said company longer is addressed as “senpai” if they are of otherwise equal job rank. One usually does not address a younger person as “such-and-such-kohai” though they may reference “my kohai” or the like when talking to a third person.

The senpai-kohai thing is extremely important on a cultural level and can affect relationships significantly. A senpai in any situation to a kohai is always assumed to be the default responsible one, while a kohai is meant to always listen to their senpai. In martial arts, for instance, even if the senpai is of the same “rank” to you, you still listen to their orders if they are a senpai. In return, senpai are often responsible for your behavior or care, and say a bunch of the senpai are going out to dinner together and you the kohai are invited along: a senpai is generally assumed to pay for your bill and to clean up after you if you were to cause trouble or the like. It also often supersedes traditional gender roles as well, so, Shiki not listening to Ciel could be seen as particularly rude.

Also going to bring up something here: one does not refer to themselves with honorifics. Ciel would never refer to herself as Ciel-senpai, even if it is relative to a kohai. If someone asks for an “Emiya-san,” Shirou would not say, “I’m Emiya-san”; he would leave out the –san. Honorifics are exactly that: honor-bearing, and to give yourself one is paramount to being supremely arrogant and self-centered. A common thing that crops up in anime/manga to refer to a very self-important character is for them to say “ore-sama” which is a very casual and arrogant “my esteemed self.” Amidst friends, it could be a joke but in general society, it is a complete no-no. Bak in D.Gray-man refers to himself as ore-sama when talking amidst friends, while Ayane and Chiruzu mock their teacher Pin as an ore-sama in Kimi ni Todoke.

Classes: Students stay in their class for the day (sans gym) and it is the teachers that rotate depending on subject. Homeroom teachers are, obviously, the teacher you start with; Shirou’s homeroom teacher is Taiga and Rin’s is Kuzuki. Depending on the school, lunch can be a mad rush for certain items in the cafeteria; other students bring bento or just eat vending machine food.

There is a class representative and sometimes a vice representative for the class, the former who announces a teacher’s presence so students can stand and bow in respect. Class reps also lead discussions about things like what the class will do for cultural festivals and the like. In traditional senses, the class representative is very much the epitome of the Japanese work ethic, so seeing the sort of “standard class rep” character in anime and manga is pretty common.

Students who talk out of turn, are regularly tardy, regularly unprepared, or are caught doing something wrong are not given “detention” in the Western sense. Instead they are ejected from the classroom and forced to stand outside—old fashioned habits also included them holding water buckets while standing. This is connected to a cultural issue in Japan: in-groups and out-groups. Part of the way society as whole shows unity is to consider itself a united front, and various group hierarchies form within the society to show different levels of unity. A student ejected from a class is shown to be “outside” that unity in shame. Also why there is a lack of detention and being expelled is more common instead. Similarly, at home, if a child is bad, the parents will not “ground” them as is seen in Western culture, but eject them from the house to stand outside until they have seen enough punishment. The closest similarity could be drawn to a group of friends who do not invite another person along to something, ala Satsuki’s “I wanted to play…” in Carnival Phantasm. Otherwise, being kicked out in class is pretty common in anime and manga—now you know why—though a good example of the kicked out of the house one can be seen in Kimi ni Todoke, as Ryuu comments upon seeing Chizuru outside that he thought she’d gotten into trouble again.

Student Duties: Unlike in the Western world, students are very much responsible for maintaining the classroom, not the teacher. Students rotate assigned times that they are to stay after class to do things like clean the chalkboard/whiteboard, sweep, and other cleaning tasks. This carries into gym classes and clubs as well, and students that skive off on their work are not very well thought of by faculty. The class rep is usually in charge of scheduling these sort of tasks.

School Clubs: I’m not sure what all to say on this since so many anime out there revolve around after-school clubs. School clubs are prevalent in Japanese high schools and universities and the beginning of the year second and third year students will slam freshmen with invites to join their clubs. It is literally like a feeding frenzy with club representatives acting like piranhas and first years the food. Probably one of the few times members of the culture get to invade your personal space, as normally a Japanese person is taught to keep everyone at arm’s length, even loved ones.

Clubs run anywhere from bands to mystery novel readers and can be anywhere from a couple of people to an entire class worth of students, and in cases with competitive elements such as sports clubs, the club doubles as the school team. As a student, unless you have a job or home commitments—and jobs are sometimes prohibited by some high schools—it is basically expected of you to join some kind of club since community and networking is an important part of Japanese life and high school life in particular. Classmates and fellow club-members are usually friends for life in Japan, and even if you do not regularly see them after high school is over, one often is expected to keep some form of contact. Talk to the average elderly Japanese person and they can probably recall most of their classmates from their junior or senior years of high school.

Note the Kyuudou ("Way of the Bow") Club in Shirou’s school is noted by Rin as being exceptionally large for their school. While ranges like that exist in large schools from large communities, Fuyuki is not implied to be that huge (though the city it is mostly based on, Kobe, is very large).

Uniforms: The “sailor uniform” that is so ubiquitous to anime and manga is not quite as common as they’d have you think, as much of Japan has modernized from said uniform, which was based on military dress during the Meiji Restoration. Many schools prefer a fairly up-to-date look with a blazer or waistcoat over a button-up during winter and a short-sleeved button-up for summer. Bigger cities obviously have more variety in the range of uniforms you’ll see, though. Shiki’s school uniform is not an uncommon sight; Shirou’s school uniform though looks pretty unique and a bit more like a private academy that once catered to religious Westerners, which makes sense considering the history the Tohsakas have in the area.

Much as the genkan in the house, schools have a large recessed area at the entry of the building with many lockers. There, students remove their shoes and put on a kind of shoe-slipper that they wear inside, returning to the lockers when they leave for home to get their shoes and replace the indoor slippers. There are sometimes baskets where students can leave umbrellas here too, and to avoid mixup either students label their umbrellas or they use very inexpensive and interchangeable ones. Occasionally in the shy or old-fashioned, love letters can get put in here, though that isn’t quite as common anymore. This is also where some bullying can occur, as shoes can be vandalized or stolen.


-The shoe lockers from the school that Haruhi Suzumiya is based at

Unlike anime and manga would have you believe, bloomers are not standard issue gym uniforms for girls. That is all.

Schoolwork: Japanese education is hardly interactive. It is very much expected that a teacher will lecture, and you will copy notes. It is not the kind of culture or system that accepts discussion or discourse; even questions are generally fairly rare in the middle of class. Students that are called upon to read aloud stand when doing so, and in mathematics or science courses they might write something on the board. Additionally, it might be of surprise, but in addition to traditional Japanese sources, many high schools include a wide range of material from around the world that include history and literature from the West. If you watch Akira Kurosawa films such as Stray Dog, you might be surprised at how much men in the 1940s and 50s Japan knew with only a middle or high school education. This works somewhat against the traditional Japanese history and literature model in that a lot of Japanese students find the dry way things are presented as supremely boring and technical stuff. The Last Samurai was popular with the Japanese because, even though it was just a retelling of the Satsuma Rebellion with inaccurate depictions of the samurai of the age, the materials taught in school on the topic are not terribly engaging.


Next time:



City Life in Fuyuki and Misaki

[Five_X]

Thank you, Arashi-sensei!!

I guess that the visual novel ef - a fairy tale of the two is quite a good source for school-life knowledge, then. Also:

Unlike anime and manga would have you believe, bloomers are not standard issue gym uniforms for girls. That is all.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[Arashi_Leonhart]

I guess that the visual novel ef - a fairy tale of the two is quite a good source for school-life knowledge, then.

Any school-born series is, from VNs like ef or chuck-a-stone-at-a-Key-series, or slice of life series based on 4koma, though there will be greater or lesser exaggerations. Of course, what gets confusing with ef is the whole twin city issue...

[Five_X]

But more importantly, no buruma.

[Techlet]

But more importantly, no buruma.

It's okay. Because track suits.

[Five_X]

You know it.




Also important to note: real Japanese schoolgirls don't often wear the miniskirts shown in anime/manga/visual novels. Instead, stuff like the ladies' uniform in F/SN are closer to reality in this regard.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Also important to note: real Japanese schoolgirls don't often wear the miniskirts shown in anime/manga/visual novels. Instead, stuff like the ladies' uniform in F/SN are closer to reality in this regard.

True yet false. Longer skirts are common, but girls in Japan very frequently modify their skirts or double/triple them up at the waist so that they are closer in length to a miniskirt.

[Five_X]

Still, not the kind of "so short it gives panty shots at every turn" kinda short that's often depicted.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Yeah, that really has more to do with the Japanese aesthetic of what looks attractive. Both guys and girls with long legs and shorter torsos are thought to be more attractive, which is one of the reasons why Sailor Moon is such an epitome of anime-girl-group-attractive.

[Techlet]

You know it.

Haru!

[Kotonoha]

It explains CLAMP noodle people.

[Five_X]

Though at the same time, Japanese media doesn't seem to focus on the ass as much as the west. It's a good indicator of the surprising differences in fetishes.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

It explains CLAMP noodle people.

And Takeuchi wtf why are limbs so long torsos so short?

Though at the same time, Japanese media doesn't seem to focus on the ass as much as the west. It's a good indicator of the surprising differences in fetishes.

Though they do focus on the bust a lot in turn. Probably because having a bust in Japan is a little more rare than in America or whatever.

[Five_X]

Funny, 'cause in porn a lot of the really busty girls are Japanese, and vice versa. More often you'll see videos like, "Amazing J-cup Japanese girl!!!" than the same for western women. Probably because of the above, yes, and that maybe we're just so cynical we think every western woman with big boobs has implants.

[Sherrinford]

I read all of Arashi's wall of text.

And I'm proud of it.


Thanks, Arashi. Indeed, these lessons are useful.

[Altima of the Gates]

Though at the same time, Japanese media doesn't seem to focus on the ass as much as the west. It's a good indicator of the surprising differences in fetishes.

There are actually a surprising amount of ass fetish vids as well, catching up quite well to breast fetish vids.



....What?