Attendance is (apparently) optional

After graduation last March I was at a party with all of my junior high teachers. I was discussing graduation with the English teacher and an interesting point came up.


I had noticed throughout the year that in my third grade class (American 9th grade) there was always one empty desk. It had a nametag on it. So it belonged to someone. There was also a cubby in the back where the students keep their bags that had the same name. And was always empty.

Now I just assumed that a student had transferred out of the school, or worst case scenario possibly died, during the first term of the school year and that the desk and such had been left to keep the records straight. All the students in a class are assigned numbers for the year. So I could kinda see how removing a student from the records for the year could be complicated. It made sense to me. Which of course means I was wrong.

On graduation day there were too many names in the program. Exactly one too many. Although at the ceremony it was still the same kids I had seen every day at school. And during the party that followed my teacher made the comment, “We had one student receive his diploma in the library today.” I immediately made the connection to the perpetually absent student. I asked why that student had never come to school.

My teacher thought about it a moment in a way that I have come to recognize as his trying to figure out how to explain something very Japanese to me in English. The interesting thing was I was already pretty sure I knew the answer. He tried to explain, “I do not know. He was not bullied…” But there was more to it, something he was having trouble finding the right English for. So I helped out. I asked, “Was he hikikomori?”

I’ll explain what that is before I move on. A hikikomori is a sort of voluntary shut it. It is an interesting phenomenon here in Japan where some people, and often students, just decide that they aren’t going to leave their house anymore. The availability of home delivery for just about everything makes this more possible than it would seem. And not all are completely against leaving the house. Some are just tired of work or school for whatever reason. Often with students it is a result of a student being bullied and pulling away from their schoolmates to the point that they no longer attend school.  For more on the subject wikipedia has the answers.

My teacher looked surprised that I knew this not exactly common Japanese word. “Yes,” he said. “Where did you learn that word?” “From manga,” I admitted. I had probably seen a few characters who were hikikomori before I made a connection to the word. But the manga Rozen Maiden very nicely provided me with an explanation of this term. Here in Japan, all you would have to say to someone is, “He’s hikikomori,” and that tells you a lot about the character. America doesn’t have an equivalent term, so it requires a little more explanation. Thankfully the editors realized this and used the opportunity to inform the readers about this bit of Japanese culture.

He had trouble explaining it because this hikikomori was not bullied. A child in that situation is fairly easy to explain in English. He stays at home because he was bullied at school. Easy enough. My teacher ran into trouble because we had an exception. He’s still considered hikikomori because of what he does, but he doesn’t have the normal reason to explain it. He just did, and no one really knew why.

Here’s the thing though. I had never, ever seen this student at school. And yet, he received his graduation diploma the same as anyone else. I have no idea if he was doing his school work and turning it in without actually coming to school. But I know he wasn’t there for any tests. Or any of the activities we did in class. I asked my teacher, “Is he going to high school?”

I was expecting a no, because to get into most high schools here you have to pass the entrance exam for that school. High school is not compulsory, but most kids still go. The high schools are very specialized, and where you go to high school has a huge effect on where you go to college. Basically, all my kids have to know what they want to do with the rest of their lives before they graduate junior high (for more on this see my previous blog entry here).

But to my surprise he informed me that yes, he was going to a small public high school. One that had a very easy entrance exam. I wondered, though I didn’t ask, if he actually planned to show up to classes there. But it still blew my mind that this student had received a diploma at all. I assume he must have been provided with the study materials, and since they don’t seem to ever fail students or hold them back a grade here (blog entry on that here) I guess as long as he was a registered student he can graduate. I still don’t know the technicalities of the situation, but it certainly is different.