Bob Sanchez’ BS

The fair name of our beloved vocational school got dragged through the mud this week in several newspapers and on television.

A 39-year-old science teacher in our ranks was arrested last week for taking voyeuristic pictures and video of high school girls at a local mall. The ensuing investigation revealed that he had collected ninety such upskirt shots and had begun to sell them on the Internet.

Perhaps the most embarrassing part of it all was that he was caught during working hours; it was after school at around 4:30, but the teachers’ contracts stipulate that they are to be at school until 5:15.

It was kept out of the press until he was arraigned yesterday, one week after being caught, and then it appeared on the evening news and the following day’s newspapers. He had already been fired from his post at school.

The effects of this “scandal,” as it is being called, are far-reaching. Starting with the offender, he may have jail time ahead of him, but at the very least his career as an educator or any kind of public employee is finished. He will be required by law to detail his termination on his resume and will likely get passed over everywhere he attempts to find work.

His family will suffer for years both economically and emotionally. The neighbors will whisper, point, and tsk-tsk. His young children will grow up and face bullying and taunting as offspring of the guy who peeped at high school girls. The teachers will not do much about it because naka is all up to the students.

I can see all of this, minus the naka part, happening in the United States. Teaching involves trust. Betray that trust, and endure castigation and ostracization. Lose your job. Hurt your family.

Here is where it started to get Japanese.

The timing of the press release interested me. The incident occurred on a Thursday and we teachers knew about it on Friday. The principal called an emergency staff meeting, which was easy because students had finished final exams and returned home at midday. We got who, where, when, and a little what, but not much else.

We were instructed to sit on this information and await the press release. I wondered when that would be; a teacher caught doing something naughty with a sexual flavor to it certainly makes the evening news that very night in the States. You might even expect to see some handcuffs, grim expressions, and flashbulbs.

In Japan, however, people seem much more worried about what others think about them and the entities to which they belong, and they take exhaustive measures to protect and project positive images. Our school’s reputation was going to take a dive, and I think that the media threw us a bone by waiting for the arraignment.

The story ran in the local paper and cracked the back pages of a couple of West Japan regional papers. No headlines or subheads contained the name of our school, and the articles seemed carefully crafted to minimize the damage to the school, mentioning the name in the second paragraph well after the meat of the story was uncovered in a long lead.

A generic pronoun for “that school” followed rather than an abbreviation of the school name, however that is a fairly common practice in Japanese newspaper writing.

The principal called an emergency assembly first thing in the morning of publication, and all 800 students gathered in the second-floor gym. I took my usual place at the very back of the gym and immediately noticed some differences from the normal procedure.

As always, a low, ornately-carved table sat on the distant stage, a microphone protruding from its center. This day, however, there were no lights on the table or anywhere else on the stage.

The principal, vice principals, department heads, and various others who give long-winded speeches at frequent assemblies do so from behind that table on the stage. It appeared from the outset that that would not happen on this day.

The principal appeared and shuffled wearily to the front of the gym, shoulders stooped and head bowed. The warm air hung above our heads and seemed to choke us with our own expectations, and indeed the air had an unseasonably moist, heavy feel to it.

He paused at the stairs leading up to the stage, and very conspicuously chose to continue walking along the floor, on the same level as the seated students. The students stood rigidly and bowed in unison to the principal, as is custom at every assembly.

Out came the grisly details, and an excited buzz zipped across the crowd at the first mention of the word “skirt.” The student body, about 80% boys, was obviously not as solemn as the principal and teachers.

Then, the principal apologized to the students and faculty, bowing deeply at the waist and holding his head down for a full second before rising up slowly. I could see an American principal apologizing to students for the grief and stress of such a situation, but our principal’s apology carried with it a sense of his personal responsibility.

In the break room after the assembly, the art teacher and I sifted through the day’s newspapers. I was about to ask her about the principal’s choice to deliver the message from the floor when he himself walked into the room. I decided to ask him directly.

I phrased the question to him as respectfully as I could, yet casual speech still tumbled from my mouth. I quickly fixed the mistake but saw that there was some damage done.

The principal took a long look at me, sighed deeply, and explained that it wouldn’t be right to report such news from under the lights and behind the grand table. This was a disgraceful event in the history of our school and he could not bring himself to talk about it in the same place from which he handed out awards and diplomas.

The art teacher shot a sideways glance at me and mentioned right then and there that I should not have asked the principal such a brazen question. I began to play the foreigner card, saying that I merely wanted to confirm what I had guessed about the symbolism, but I gave up halfway through the lame explanation.

The principal’s body language told me that he agreed with the art teacher. She was right. It was an easy question, and I believe in asking the easy questions, but I had not considered that answering that question would dig up the humiliating feelings for the principal.

However tactless my inquiry, I got an answer and learned more about just how much I have to consider what others think and feel in Japan. It’s never a bad thing to empathize or think about the person across from you, but the rules are stricter in this country.

What stands out to me is that Japanese people are so mindful of what others think about their actions and appearance. There are many ways to describe the “others” whose opinions and perceptions shame a person into behaving a certain way. Ideally for them, if a person is thinking about doing X, then it is all about what X looks like to those around that person.

The case continues with our annual end of the year party. Japanese companies, schools, and clubs hold parties in December, and a direct translation of the name of these parties is “forget-the-year gathering.”

We were all ready for a rootin’ tootin’ good time, a real shindig, a big blowout. On the Monday following the upskirt incident, we found envelopes in our desks containing the money we had put down on the party.

I hung around teachers all week trying to hear opinions about the cancellation, and gathered that we, as teachers of this disgraced school, cannot be seen whooping it up in large numbers so close to the scandal. Heavens no, those mysterious “others” would not have it.

“What are those teachers thinking about?” the “others” would scold. “They should show more remorse.”

Japan is a society that apologizes for everything. You apologize for knocking someone off their feet, for surprising them, for bothering them even though it is their job to serve you, for receiving something from them no matter how piffling, for things that you don’t think are your fault, and for things that are most definitely not your fault.

Things like a co-worker spying on young girls at the mall.

What that has to do with the rest of us having a good time and celebrating our work in 2008, I do not know. It certainly sends a strong message that one person’s actions drastically affect those around him. It is foreign to me because we operate more on personal guilt in the United States while shame is at work in Japan.

Either way, one man’s actions have destroyed a career; ruined life for a family of four; deprived a school of a science teacher, field hockey coach, and school newspaper advisor; caused harm to that school’s good name in the community; caused undue grief to fellow staff members at that school; compromised the privacy of at least ninety high school girls; and caused a loss of thousands of dollars to a local banquet hall.

Other opportunities have sprouted from the ashes of this calamity. A part-time long-term substitute teacher is getting work and getting paid, and a local Italian restaurant is getting some much needed business from the remnants of a nameless school’s forget-the-year party courtesy of string-pulling by a nameless English teacher.

Perhaps there are more developments in the making. I am certainly taking advantage of this bizarre situation to learn as much as I can about the society in which I live and work.