QUOTE
Flirting with skirt-length rules
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Aera (Oct. 13)
"Animals," says Sophia University animal behaviorist Kiyoshi Aoki, "have an instinctive desire to project their genes into the future." True, but startling, given Aera's question, which was: Why do high school girls wear such short skirts?
"Humans," Aoki continues, "have the same urge. But boys today seem to be acquiring feminine traits. Young men dye their hair, pierce their ears . . . Consequently, girls are under intensifying instinctive pressure to assert their own femininity.
"Of course," the professor adds, "humans differ from other animals in their capacity to repress their instincts. But this requires a strength of will few children have." That would be true even if adults set a better example. "These girls" -- the short-skirted ones -- "are surrendering to their instincts, becoming animalized."
Is it as bad as that? Worse, maybe.
"It's moral breakdown," fumes a Tokyo high-school vice principal Aera speaks to. "But nothing is being done about it, and it's come to seem normal."
That in itself represents a significant evolution. Thigh-high skirts at school were anything but normal a few years ago, when regulations demanded knee-length coverage and got it. The rules haven't changed but are now almost universally disregarded, by teachers and students alike. The amplified sexiness of school uniforms -- symbols of grim social repression or necessary discipline, depending on how you look at it (nearly 90 percent of Tokyo public high schools require uniforms or other standard dress) -- is one of the jarring ironies of youth culture.
"Short skirts are cute," says a girl in a teenage throng Aera encounters in Tokyo's Shibuya. "They make your legs look long."
"Aren't you embarrassed?" asks Aera.
"No, why? Everybody's dressed the same."
"It's wearing a long skirt that's embarrassing," comments another girl.
"My mom shortened my uniform skirt for me," grins a third.
This breeziness might seem a refreshing departure from the benighted past, when school rules imposing mass conformity were liable to be enforced with blows. Think again, warns Aera. Conformity has, at best, become neoconformity -- sunnier maybe, but not much less rigid than the old kind.
"The kids seem to be affirming their individuality," says Meiji University sociologist Asao Naito. "Actually they're not. This is an extreme form of 'groupism.' They're living what the education system teaches them -- that it's not permitted to disengage from the group and live independently."
To Naito, the short-skirted girls are slaves to their peers; to Aoki, they are slaves to an overdeveloped instinct. Both hypotheses are in sharp contrast to the free-and-easy airs the girls exhibit.
Maybe the kids are right. Could it be the disapproving adults are just wringing their hands over their own lost youth? It's not that simple. In Mito, Aera finds a rare high school that enforces its skirt-length regulations. The long-skirted students must run a daily gauntlet of harassment and mockery from the local short-skirted tribe.
"It's a sad reflection on Japan," concludes Aera.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...0031019tc.htm#2
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Aera (Oct. 13)
"Animals," says Sophia University animal behaviorist Kiyoshi Aoki, "have an instinctive desire to project their genes into the future." True, but startling, given Aera's question, which was: Why do high school girls wear such short skirts?
"Humans," Aoki continues, "have the same urge. But boys today seem to be acquiring feminine traits. Young men dye their hair, pierce their ears . . . Consequently, girls are under intensifying instinctive pressure to assert their own femininity.
"Of course," the professor adds, "humans differ from other animals in their capacity to repress their instincts. But this requires a strength of will few children have." That would be true even if adults set a better example. "These girls" -- the short-skirted ones -- "are surrendering to their instincts, becoming animalized."
Is it as bad as that? Worse, maybe.
"It's moral breakdown," fumes a Tokyo high-school vice principal Aera speaks to. "But nothing is being done about it, and it's come to seem normal."
That in itself represents a significant evolution. Thigh-high skirts at school were anything but normal a few years ago, when regulations demanded knee-length coverage and got it. The rules haven't changed but are now almost universally disregarded, by teachers and students alike. The amplified sexiness of school uniforms -- symbols of grim social repression or necessary discipline, depending on how you look at it (nearly 90 percent of Tokyo public high schools require uniforms or other standard dress) -- is one of the jarring ironies of youth culture.
"Short skirts are cute," says a girl in a teenage throng Aera encounters in Tokyo's Shibuya. "They make your legs look long."
"Aren't you embarrassed?" asks Aera.
"No, why? Everybody's dressed the same."
"It's wearing a long skirt that's embarrassing," comments another girl.
"My mom shortened my uniform skirt for me," grins a third.
This breeziness might seem a refreshing departure from the benighted past, when school rules imposing mass conformity were liable to be enforced with blows. Think again, warns Aera. Conformity has, at best, become neoconformity -- sunnier maybe, but not much less rigid than the old kind.
"The kids seem to be affirming their individuality," says Meiji University sociologist Asao Naito. "Actually they're not. This is an extreme form of 'groupism.' They're living what the education system teaches them -- that it's not permitted to disengage from the group and live independently."
To Naito, the short-skirted girls are slaves to their peers; to Aoki, they are slaves to an overdeveloped instinct. Both hypotheses are in sharp contrast to the free-and-easy airs the girls exhibit.
Maybe the kids are right. Could it be the disapproving adults are just wringing their hands over their own lost youth? It's not that simple. In Mito, Aera finds a rare high school that enforces its skirt-length regulations. The long-skirted students must run a daily gauntlet of harassment and mockery from the local short-skirted tribe.
"It's a sad reflection on Japan," concludes Aera.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...0031019tc.htm#2
QUOTE
Lecherous lecturers take feel
trip with Japanese students
By Ryann Connell
Staff Writer
October 15, 2003
Hanashi no Channel (11/20) lists the signals that let you know when a married woman is responding positively to your come-on attempts.
Dacapo (11/5) turns ecstatic somersaults over things that reflect favorably on Japan and the Japanese.
Yomiuri Weekly (11/2) looks at the real motives of Japan's rice thieves.
Weekly Playboy (11/4) asks why members of the Democratic Party of Japan just can't seem to excite Japan's female voters.
Ladies employed to clean offices whisper to Shukan Taishu (11/3) about their embarrassing encounters with amorous couples during late-night cleanups.
An insider on the Yomiuri Giants reveals to Shukan Gendai (11/1) that the team treats its promising young players in a "heartless" manner.
Shukan Asahi (10/31) provides referrals to the 28 best divorce lawyers in Japan.
A writer tells Sunday Mainichi (11/2) why he's leading a campaign to halt construction of a commuter line through a Tokyo suburb.
Do you have a hidden propensity to go after jail bait? Asahi Geino (10/30) lets you test yourself to determine if you have a Lolita complex.
Aera (10/27) wonders if the new high-tech IC tags will prevent shoplifters from plundering bookstores.
Dime (11/6) introduces the nation's best sports bars at which to swill drinks while watching the Japan Series.
Shukan Jitsuwa (10/30) introduces the nations' most unique love hotels.
As more scandals regarding the Japan Highway Public Corporation come to light, Shukan Bunshun (10/23) runs five pages of photos showing unwanted and unneeded road projects.
Shukan Shincho (10/23) looks at a 73-year-old man who may have been involved in two sensational unsolved 1995 crimes -- the attempted assassination of National Police Agency director general Takaji Kunimatsu, and the slaying of three female supermarket employees during a Hachioji City robbery attempt.
(Compiled by Masuo Kamiyama)
The English teacher from the prestigious women's university sauntered over toward the JR Tateyama Station privy he had just seen a schoolgirl enter. Perhaps he looked around to see if anybody had noticed. He slid his digital camera under the gap in the door and began filming while the schoolgirl used the Asian-style squat toilet, as she remained oblivious to the fact her privacy was being invaded in the most appalling manner.
"This case may have been a university lecturer, but nobody would have been surprised if the guy arrested was your average teacher. It just shows that lecherous teachers have become an everyday matter. For ages now, at least one teacher a month has been arrested for some sort of indecency," a national daily reporter tells Shukan Taishu (10/27).
Thanks to these twisted teachers, Japanese schools have been transformed from the hallowed halls of learning they once were into hellholes of uninvited sex education. Teachers aren't merely seducing their students, they're groping them, catching footage of them using concealed cameras, and worse.
And they're just as bad when out on the streets. So lewd is the behavior of some and so strong their obsession with the nether regions of strangers, it seems they've forgotten the "l" in public.
Take the case of the elementary school teacher flasher who thought the young woman sitting opposite him in a train carriage would be thrilled and appalled if he exposed himself. What a delight if she had told him that his displayed appendage "looked like a penis, only smaller." Instead, she simply reported him to the police.
Other teachers in recent months have, like the university English instructor, been caught filming women's privates in private, while some have taken students into classrooms for romps, at least one using a video camera set up behind him to capture his posterior for posterity. Some teachers have also forced their pupils into playing along.
"Most of these cases are exposed after girls tell their parents what happened and a complaint is filed to the school," an educational affairs counselor tells Shukan Taishu. "Finally, in the past few years, all these indecent incidents teachers have caused have turned attentions toward the problem of school sexual harassment."
Though many Japanese women make false sexual harassment claims, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology figures show that during fiscal 2000, there were 122 reported cases of teachers sexually harassing their pupils, a fivefold increase on a decade earlier. Some of the cases have been horrifying, like the Osaka girl who sought out her school counselor after a sick groper fondled her while she rode the train to school. Instead of trying to put the shaken girl at ease, the counselor blamed her for wearing a flashy bra and inciting the groper.
"He then dragged her out into the corridor, ripped her blouse open and made her stand there in her bra in front of everybody, telling the girl that if she wanted to show off her fancy brassiere to everybody, she was free to do so," an Osaka reporter who covered the case says. "The poor girl was being violated all over again."
Another teacher in Nagasaki Prefecture decided to instruct his pupils in the ancient Japanese tradition of yobai, where men sneak into women's sleeping quarters and seduce them, with the educator deciding his fifth graders would be better off with an actual demonstration. He fondled the fully-clothed girls in what was, as he later told the police, "a show of affection."
"He's trying to get out of trouble by telling society he was only showing his affection for the kids, but this is a blatant case of school sexual harassment," Yoshiko Miya, a lecturer at Saitama Women's University, tells Shukan Taishu. "Even if the teachers only see their acts as being instructions or expressions of love, it is sexual harassment and it is criminal."
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0310/1015teacher.html