Now before I begin I need to state where I come from. I’m from Singapore (no that’s not in China) with a similarly brutal Asian education system. That means that I will probably have a very different perspective on Japan’s education system compared to the other writers. For example, one striking thing to Americans in Japan is perhaps the relatively low school dropout rates. To me however, that’s taken for granted, as is the exam stress of the Japanese system.

But, anyway. As Koichi stated, there was (and still is) a trend to hail the Asian countries’ education system. It may have shifted away from Japan specifically, but US President Obama’s praising of the Korean education system shows that this trend is still going strong.

However, and to be very frank, whenever this happens, many of us on the other side of the Pacific just simply arch our eyebrows. Partly because we don’t know how “bad” it is over on the other side – my friend talking about gang fights in his Los Angeles school was eye-opening to me. But also partly because on the flip side many Westerners have an overly rosy view of Asia and its education – it seems as if the education systems of Asia are praised more outside of Asia than within it.

Some of the stuff in this article is very generalizable to other Asian countries as well – there really are a lot of similarities. Some of it is specific to Japan – read on to find out.

Non-Cognitive Skills

Koichi in his article (I’m very sure I’m not doing it justice by summarizing here) pointed out that the amae as well the ganbare culture in Japanese society are the core reasons why the the Japanese youth tend to stronger non-cognitive skills, which in turn leads in the long run to higher personal performance. This also translates to their ability to endure the punishing stress of the Japanese education system and life thereafter.

This is true in terms of perseverance, stress tolerance and conscientiousness. However, there are also other non-cognitive skills which cannot be lumped together with the above. Consider the following:

Self Confidence: A survey published in 2011 (Source in Japanese) stated that 37.3% of Japanese high-schoolers “somewhat agreed” or “completely agreed” with the statement “I am a human being with worth” (私は価値のある人間だと思う). This is contrasted with 75.3% in South Korea, 88.0% in China and 90.4% in the US.

Furthermore the same survey also asked whether participants agreed with the statement “私は努力すれば大体のことができる” (I’ll be able to do most things if I put in effort) – 44.4% of Japanese participants agreed as compared to above 80% for the other countries. Therefore it’s questionable whether Japanese students work so hard because they really believe they can achieve or because they’re simply being pressured to do so.

Shyness: described as an “overgeneralized response to fear” in this article, Carducci and Zimbardo continue to say that Japan (along with Taiwan) display the highest shyness among surveyed countries and that:

In Japan, if a child tries and succeeds, the parents get the credit. So do the grandparents, teachers, coaches, even Buddha. If there’s any left over, only then is it given to the child. But if the child tries and fails, the child is fully culpable and cannot blame anyone else. An “I can’t win” belief takes hold, so that children of the culture never take a chance or do anything that will make them stand out. As the Japanese proverb states, “the nail that stands out is pounded down.”

Curiosity: An international survey conducted on adults by the OECD over 2011-2012 asked the question “Do you like learning new things”. Japan had 20% of respondents answering “Not at all” or “Very Little”, the highest number excluding South Korea which had near 29% answering so. 36.8% in Japan answered “to some extent”, however the total for “to a high extent” and “to a very high extent” (42%) was significantly lower than other surveyed countries, except for South Korea.

Whether the education system is the main factor in this is unclear. However, rote memorization based exams may disincentivize students from exploring outside the fixed curriculum – after all, extra knowledge does not beget results.

There’s a lot to be said about the interpretation of data because perhaps the above is just reflecting Japanese humbleness. Nonetheless, the margins between countries suggest that in the field of non-cognitive skills the field is rather mixed when you add the above to perseverance.

Curriculum

Moving on to the education system proper, it’s also worth looking at what cognitive skills – and skill sets – the education system imparts. While Koichi stresses that non-cognitive skills play the largest part in a person’s success I think it’s also important to also stress that cognitive skills play a significant role as well. For example, a study by Heckman, Stixud and Urzua in the US (accessible here) suggests that both cognitive and non-cognitive skills play heavy roles in a person’s wages.

As Koichi did argue, non-cognitive skills do tend to lead to cognitive skills, which are important for future successes. Non-cognitive may be the “origin” of my success – working harder at math may improve my math skills enough to qualify me to be an accountant in the future – but without those cognitive skills eventually developing I could not have been an accountant.

Therefore, the cognitive skills taught in an education system are important too. Japan has clear successes in literacy and mathematical ability but there are some drawbacks to the Japanese system as well. These include:

Foreign language skills including English: ’Nuff said. This can be an entire article by itself. Despite all of the years spent studying English, the average Japanese person is nearly helpless when put in an English-speaking-related situation.

Presentation Skills: Actually a mix of cognitive and non-cognitive skills (likeability etc). Not very well taught at all. There’s no data on this but a majority of my classmates say that the first time they’ve ever done a PowerPoint presentation was in University. Body-language, reading-from-a-script and extremely wordy PowerPoints are still very common from my experience.

Written expression: Sumitani and Robert-Sanborn have written an interesting essay here (In Japanese) about the role of essay-writing in education and society. Anyways, essay-writing is not emphasized greatly at the pre-university level given that the University Entrance Examination (センター試験; 2013 sample can be found here) have no essay based component and are entirely multiple choice. Individual universities may choose to add essay-components in their additional secondary entrance examinations though.

IT education: Perhaps a surprise? The PIAAC survey published in 2013 noted that while Japan as a whole scores average among surveyed countries in terms of “problem solving in technology rich environments”, the group aged 16 – 24 years old performed below average compared to the youth of other countries. IT education is a subject in school so it’s not as if they have zero technology education. My view is that the lack of personal research projects, computer presentations etc in other subjects inhibit Japanese youth in developing these skills.

So as with the non-cognitive segment, the cognitive skills segment for the Japanese proves to be mixed in terms of its limitations and successes (reading, writing, numeracy). As you can see, the Japanese education system’s effectiveness really gets hit hard when you step outside the bounds of “facts that you can learn.” Creativity, the ability to take those facts and apply them to something else (language speaking, presentations, written expression, etc) are all what I’d consider weak points of the Japanese education system.

How The Japanese View Their Own Education System

But perhaps one linked (but important) topic that needs to be touched on is how the Japanese evaluate their own education system.

The first thing that needs to be said is that in Japan now, there’s a lot of pessimism about the future. Part of this pessimism is a tendency to blame and criticize the young. Perhaps the pessimism is justified by genuine issues among Japanese youth but then again the general pessimism may tint the evaluation of the youth by the people living in Japan (including me as a resident).

We don’t know how strong the effect of each direction is but any self-evaluative surveys must be qualified by this possible bias. However, one question which I expect many Japanese to ask is: if our education is so good, why is our economy still doing so badly?

There is in general a perception that Japan’s academic standards have been declining. Nakai has written a very complete article here about the debate and its history. Furthermore, there was a survey published in 2004 showing that employers were by and large very dissatisfied with the skills of high-school and university graduates. Given that the Japanese economy has not experienced any significant improvement so far I doubt if the appraisal today would be significantly different.

Given this, it probably would seem odd to many Japanese to hear their education system described in such a positive light. In fact if it were not for widespread dissatisfaction with or fears about the quality of education in Japan, the government would probably not have announced wide ranging reforms last year.

Given The Above…

I really have to caution people about treating Japan, or any other Asian country, as shining beacons of academic excellence. We all have our problems and unless you know a lot about the other side, it’s very easy to fall into “grass is greener on the other side” pitfalls.

So while we may laugh at articles from the Onion titled Chinese third graders falling behind US high school students in Math, Science, let me just end by saying that there’s actually a lot that Asians (at least those that I know) admire about Western education too. Like the high emphasis on debate, discussion and communicative skills, for example.

But not the math, oh no no no certainly not the math standard. But that’s for another article someday.

Other Links:

• Japan Times: Education in 2013: an “A” for ambition but Japan will have to do better
• The Guardian: Why do Japanese children lead world numeracy and literacy
• Higher Education and the Japanese Disease

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Mystery ramshackle boat carrying five rotten bodies washes up in Japan as police probe claims they died fleeing North Korea: Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction, and nowhere is this more evident than North Korea. While there are always weird things happening within North Korean borders, sometimes the bizareness spills over to outside the country. Such is the case with a mysterious, apparently North Korean boat that washed ashore in Japan late last week. We’ll likely never know who the people aboard the boat were, nor how the managed to get all the way to Japan, thanks to the shroud of mystery that has surrounded the DPRK for the last 60 years.
[/threecol_two] [threecol_one_last]Nearly 90% dissatisfied with Japan’s English education: survey: Most people in Japan learn English in school but the results are, let’s say, far from optimal. In a new survey conducted by Rakuten Research, nearly 90% of Japanese parents said that they’re dissatisfied with their child’s English education. This shouldn’t be surprised but, as Daniel Feit wrote, a better headline would have been “13.4% of Japanese Parents Bizarrely Satisfied With Their Kids’ English Education.” [via Daniel Feit]

Saitama couple busted for allowing teens to watch intercourse in car for ‘sex education’:There’s no part of this story that’s not just outlandish and bizarre: a couple with a nearly 40-year age differences lets some kids watch them have sex under the guise of “sex education.” Will this defense work for flashers, streakers, and other exhibitionists? Let’s hope not.[/threecol_one_last]

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[threecol_one]TabletMan is Japanese tech personified: Japanese technology can be unique, interesting, but it’s always first and foremost very Japanese. Maybe no technology is more representative of this than TabletMan, Toshiba’s mascot for their burgeoning tablet line. TabletMan’s cool in theory, but I feel for the buy underneath the tablets. How would you like everybody coming up to touch you?

Seven & i Holdings to offer free wi-fi in 10,000 stores nationwide: In the US, virtually every cafe, hotel, and bar has free wifi, but historically (and by historically, I mean in the last five or so years), free wifi has been notoriously hard to come by in Japan. It looks like this is changing, with free wifi (with registration) is coming to 10,000 Seven & i Holdings convenience stores across Japan. As if you really need another reason to love Japanese convenience stores.[/threecol_one] [threecol_two_last]

The erotic guitars, decaying machines, and soy sauce of Maker Faire Tokyo: The Japanese prove that their among the most inventive people in the world year after year by not only their wacky inventions, but by the sheer number of patent applications. Nowhere was this inventive spirit more apparent than this week’s Maker Fair Tokyo, where amateur inventors showed off their cool, quirky creations. On display were a four-ton mech, a robot made out of a mannequin’s leg that played um, adult sounds, and a “pouring too much soy sauce machine.” These inventions might not change the world, but at the very least they’re damn entertaining.[/threecol_two_last]

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These monster movies, called kaijuu (怪獣) movies in Japan, are some of the most iconic in Japanese history. Besides the most famous kaijuu, Godzilla (who I have a poster of above my desk), there have been countless giant monsters that have terrorized Japanese cinema for decades.

Other places have tried to replicate the formula of success, but no country has been able to harness and combine all of the elements that make kaijuu movies great. No country, that is, except North Korea.

Former ruler of North Korea Kim Jong-il fancied himself a master film maker and critic, which meant that at one point or another, making movies was PRIORITY NUMBER ONE for all of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Among the many movies that Kim Jong-il produce, directed, and guided, was a kaijuu movie that brought together the Japanese and the North Koreans (and, unwillingly, a South Korean). The movie was called Pulgasari (불가사리 in Korean and プルガサリ in Japanese), and had all of the trademarks of a good kaijuu movie; giant monster, lots of destruction, people fleeing for their lives.

RAAAAWWWWRRR COMMUNISMMMMMM

Obviously, the storyline was a little different from your average kaijuu movie so it could fit in with North Korea’s communist agenda, but at its core, Pulgasari is a movie about a reptilian monster that destroys things.

Along with Pulgasari’s director (who was kidnapped from South Korea), the North Korean film crew worked closely with Japanese filmmakers to make Pulgasari as close to the real McCoy as possible. While North Koreans normally wouldn’t be so welcoming of Japanese people into their country, Kim Jong-il made an exception for Pulgasari.

The crew who did the special effects on the 1984 Godzilla movie lent their skills to Pulgasari, and Kenpachiro Satsuma, the man in the suit in a lot of the later Godzilla movies played the monster itself.

The result? Well, watch the trailer and see for yourself:

In 1985 Pulgasari was released in North Korea which, as you might imagine, doesn’t have a huge movie-going population. The director escaped from North Korean captivity the following year, causing embarrassment to Kim Jong-il and the movie to be shelved.

For those reasons, it wasn’t until 1998 that Pulgasari was released to the outside world. First place it was screened outside of Korea? Japan, where Pulgasari has gained a cult following.

Ironically that same year, the American Godzilla movie came out. Satsuma, the guy in the rubber suit, reportedly said that he liked Pulgasari better than the American movie. Ouch. When you’ve made something worse than the North Koreans, you know you’ve messed up.

Pulgasari is an inspirational movie. Not because it’s well-made, original, or has any sort of compelling message; but because it’s probably the only movie in recorded history that had North Koreans and Japanese working side-by-side.

The end result wasn’t great, and the process was a little troubling, but when it comes to North Korea and Japan, you take what you can get.

Read more: The producer from hell, Bulgasari (1985) – IMDb

Boy, was I wrong. While PONPONPON sits at a respectable 40 million views, that funny K-pop video turned out to be Gangnam Style (maybe you’ve heard of it) which as I write this, sits at 600 million views on YouTube. Its creator, K-pop sensation Psy, has danced with the UN Secretary General, taught Britney Spears to dance on network TV, and was signed to the same label as Justin Bieber.

But Gangnam Style never really caught on in Japan the way it caught on in the US and elsewhere. Around the same time Gangnam Style was blowing up, arguments over disputed islands in the Sea of Japan were getting heated between Korea and Japan. The most visible example of this is the South Korean soccer player ran across the field with a sign about the islands during the Summer Olympics.

In the last couple of weeks, big news outlets have reported that the two are related; Japan doesn’t like Gangnam Style based on the sole fact it’s Korean. It’s pretty mind boggling to me that this line of thinking is getting any press, but let me say it right now: it’s completely wrong.

Yes, Gangnam Style hasn’t done as ridiculously well in Japan as it has elsewhere in the world, but most Japanese aren’t petty enough to dislike a song out of spite. Even though the countries in East Asia feud from time to time, they’re still neighbors with more in common than you might be lead to believe.

Besides a lot of common history that dates back thousands of years, and a lot of the same cultural touchstones, countries in East Asia even like a lot of the same food, TV shows, music, and movies.

Conveyor belt sushi has really taken off in Korea, and last year Nikkei Trendy magazine named the Korean rice makkori as one of its top 30 products of 2011.

Korean dramas, similar to Japanese dramas, have done really well in Japan. At one point, even Japanese prime minister Koizumi proclaimed that he was a huge fan of Korean drama actress Choi Ji-woo.

And of course, we can’t have a conversation about Japan and Gangnam Style without talking about K-pop. Japan loves K-pop and it regularly does really well on the Japanese music charts. In fact as Patrick St. Michel points out, as recently as a couple of weeks ago, K-pop group Kara tore up the music charts in Japan with the song Electric Boy.

In fact, before the whole Gangnam Style phenomenon took off, Psy was planning to write a song called “Roppongi Style,” after Tokyo’s ritzy Roppongi district. Unfortunately for us, the song is indefinitely postponed, and I really doubt that it’ll ever be made.

With all that, I think that it’s pretty fair to say that while there might be some quarreling about disputed territory, the Japanese and the Koreans all in all get along pretty well and that Gangnam Style flopped in Japan for completely unrelated reasons.

Ultimately, I can’t really say for sure why Gangnam Style didn’t appeal to the Japanese. Nobody has found the formula to a song that’s a universal hit, although Gangnam Style’s definitely come close. I guess that Psy will have to be satisfied with the ridiculous success he’s found in every other country in the world.

And if you want further proof of the good attitudes between Japan and Korea, the incredible Japanese band World Order (who we wrote about earlier this year) made a whole music video about their commitment to friendship between Japan, Korea, and in all of East Asia. Check it out:

I’m so fascinated by North Korea because it’s just such a weird place — as Shane Smith from Vice puts it, North Korea is a country where nothing normal happens.

As strange as North Korea is for me as an American, it’s much stranger for North Korea’s neighbor, Japan. While there are some bright spots in the relationship between Japan and North Korea (like a mutual love of sushi and Tokyo Disneyland), most of the relationship is pretty sour.

One thing Japan and North Korea can agree on: roller coasters.

North Koreans, for the most part, hate Japan. Japan occupied the Korean peninsula during the early 20^th century, and Japan is close allies with the United States, North Korea’s enemy ^#1. North Korea talks about the evils of Japan in its propaganda all the time, and every few years the North Koreans threaten to shoot a missile over Japan (though it usually explodes before or during launch).

But what’s scariest of all is the reality of North Korean kidnappings. Over the years, Japanese people have been plucked from their home country and taken to the hermit kingdom. Officially, something like a dozen Japanese people have been kidnapped by the North Koreans; but unofficially, there may be hundreds of Japanese kidnapping victims.

Thanks to a summit between Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and Dear Leader (and expert looker) Kim Jong-il in 2002, five Japanese kidnapping victims, along with their children and spouses, have been repatriated. They’ve been able to bring back with them a glimpse into the twisted inner workings of North Korea and here’s what we know:

Why do North Koreans Kidnap Japanese People?

There are a lot of reasons the North Koreans kidnap people, but it all boils down North Korea’s isolationism. Since North Korea has essentially cut itself off from the rest of the world, the country doesn’t have the kind of trade and immigration to get the kind of things it needs.

But more specifically, there are lots of particular reasons North Koreans kidnap Japanese people.

Education

North Korea has a dire lack of people who are educated in anything but loving the Kim family, so when it comes time to educate your people in say, Japanese language and culture, how do you do it?

In any sane country, you would probably hire a Japanese person with experience in education but in North Korea, where logic doesn’t apply, you kidnap a random Japanese person and force them to teach classes full of military officers, soldiers, and spies.

These teachers, taken from Japan, educate their students on how to speak Japanese and teach them the nuances of Japanese culture so they can blend in to avoid any subtle, Inglourious Basterds-type cultural giveaways.

Marriage

Probably the weirdest reason North Korea kidnaps Japanese people is to marry other kidnapping victims. Women from all over the world, including Japan, have been kidnapped and taken to North Korea to marry kidnapped men. This was mostly the case for Hitmoi Soga, a Japanese woman who was taken from her hometown when she was just 19.

What’s really messed up about this (as if kidnapping people and essentially forcing them to marry) is that the children of these marriages are usually trained to become North Korean spies from a very young age.

And while the parents of these North-Korean-born foreign children usually try to protect them from the brainwashing and propaganda, these kids don’t really stand a chance.

Silence

Some Japanese people have been kidnapped not for their value in North Korea society, but to keep them quiet. Slate reports that’s why Megumi Yokota – who was only 13 years old when she was kidnapped and couldn’t really teach, act, or marry – was taken from Japan by North Korean agents.

Even though the last officially recognized kidnapping was close to 30 years ago, there are almost certainly still Japanese citizens being held captive in North Korea.

We’ll probably never know the true extent of North Korea’s kidnappings until North Korea’s government completely collapses, or North Korea and South Korea reunify.

Even though people have been predicting the imminent failure of the North Korean state for close to 20 years now, I’m really optimistic that I’ll see Korean reunification during my lifetime.

Besides all of the obvious benefits to Korean reunification and the end to the Korean War, it might finally bring some closure and peace to Japanese families of missing people who have been wondering for decades to find out what happened to their loved ones.

Read more: Why North Koreans Were Kidnappers, 10 years after, former abductees still trying to erase the horrors of North Korea, Soga calls for abductees’ return

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[threecol_two]Japanese chef discusses abduction issue, ramen with Kim Jong Un : Kenji Fujimoto, Kim Jong Il’s former chef (who we’ve written about before), is apparently still on good terms with the dictator family of North Korea. Despite tricking Kim Jong Il and writing a tell-all book about the Kim family, Fujimoto was literally welcomed back into North Korea with open arms. This emotional moment between Kim Jong-Un and Fujimoto was, of course, followed by hundreds of North Koreans dressed in bright costumes dancing in sync to patriotic music. 강성대국! [via News On Japan][/threecol_two] [threecol_one_last]Doraemon’s -100^th Birthday: This week Japanese icon Doraemon, the time-travelling robotic cat that’s starred in manga and anime for over 50 years, celebrated his birthday. Well, kind of; the fictional hero will be born on September 3, 2112, making this past week’s birthday his -100^th. People celebrated the occasion with tribute videos, and by even declaring the fictional cat as an official citizen. Here’s to another -100 years! Wait.

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[threecol_one]The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business: As an American, it’s strange to me to think that there are companies that have been around longer than my country, but that’s the case in a lot of countries around the world. Unfortunately being really, really old doesn’t protect you from things like bankruptcy. At the very least, they can say that they had a pretty good run.

Why does this Japanese woman send more tweets to Pres. Obama than anyone else in the world?: You’d think that US President Barack Obama would get his fair share of spam on Twitter from political enemies and Horse_ebooks, but apparently the person who tweets @BarackObama the most is a Japanese woman concerned about a free trade agreement. She’s certainly inspired me to tweet at the Japanese Prime Minister to dub Hard Gay a Living National Treasure.[/threecol_two_last]

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