* This essay column is written by a longtime foreign resident of Japan.

During the past year I have been able to add at least one more Japanese word to my vocabulary -- it is juku. And for those of you who have yet to fully master and appreciate all the subtleties and nuances of Nihongo, or for those of you who have fallen foul of Japan's education system, it means HELL.

I thought we were a pretty normal family. We had our up and downs, our good times and our bad times. My wife and I scratched and spat about the normal things that normal married couples lock horns about. But we -- and of course I mean my wife as the decision-maker in the family -- couldn't resist temptation. We had to taste the forbidden fruit and we went straight to hell. We decided to send our son to juku, or cram school.

My wife will tell you until she is blue in the face that it was Tom's decision. But can 11-year-olds make such decisions or do they do what they think will please their parents?

Ask Tom and he will tell you that he enjoys going, which of course is completely the wrong attitude. Life is not about enjoyment. You don't go to juku to enjoy it, you go to work, to sweat. You don't go to meet up with your friends or make new ones, you go so that you can stay up until midnight and beyond studying, and not have time to see your friends. And juku has nothing to do with the thrill of being allowed to travel on trains by yourself, manage your own money and delight in your growing independence.

No. Juku is about too many late nights ending in tears or raised voices, or worse silence, as an 11-year-old struggles to balance the demands of juku, gako, shuji lessons and piano lessons with the need just to be a child.

Our life has been consumed by juku. Every waking hour is a juku hour: if Tom is not at juku he's doing juku homework or benkyo; if he's not studying, we're talking about his progress. Is he working hard enough? Should he stop going? Is it worth the money? Should he change juku? Is going to two enough? (He goes three nights a week to a juku in Gotokuji and to a two-hour one-on-one lesson at a juku in Shimokitazawa on Saturdays.) Juku ring to offer their services and bombard us with mail; home tutors are coming out of the woodwork promising salvation. Mothers ring us to compare juku notes. I attend juku seminars for parents. The treadmill just goes on and on, and on.

Which tormentor came up with the idea for juku -- Lucifer, Torquemada?

When I was growing up schools taught what children needed to know to take examinations. Education and teaching was their role in society. They were not simply repositories that kept an eye on kids while their parents were off somewhere doing something else.

What devils decided to light the fires of this inferno and cook up the need for cram schools? Was it the result of some deal hatched in the smoky backroom of a luxury Ginza, Tokyo, restaurant just a stone's throw from Nagatacho? Did some sleazy entrepreneur cozy on up to a slippery Education Ministry bureaucrat and suggest that even more money could be screwed out of parents if state schools simply stopped teaching examination curricula and left education to the business community?

My wife tells me, and it is hammered home time and again at juku seminars, that Tom's last year at elementary school is the most important of his life. But what kind of screwed up society and perverted perception can decide that an 11-year-old with his whole life in front of him is about to face the most important year of his life?

Of course what is really important is that the juku sign Tom up now and secure their investment for the next seven or eight years.

I'd welcome any comments or opinions, in Japanese or English, about my column. You can write or fax me at The Weekly, or e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: March 20, 2004
(C) All rights reserved