Republic or Death! (17 page)

A few months later, the student council polled all final-year students about whether they wanted the anthem at their graduation. Over two-thirds responded, 93 per cent saying they did not. The council decided to hold its own graduation festival and ignore Tatsuo's. In March 1998, only eighteen students attended the official event and sang ‘Kimigayo'.

This display of student power was almost unheard of in Japan and the way people reacted to it, you'd think it was the Japanese equivalent of the American civil rights campus fights. It was news across the country for weeks. TV crews parked outside to report on developments, while newspapers ran editorials asking, ‘Is this school a problem or are these students just what Japan needs?' One of the country's most famous manga artists even drew a comic strip about it, featuring cross-dressing students raping each other while shouting, ‘Sex is my human right' – the idea being, if you let children refuse the anthem, this is what's next.

Today, Tokorozawa's students do sing ‘Kimigayo' – ‘They don't care about history any more,' one teacher told me, ‘and all the teachers stand because they want to keep their jobs' – but people still worry about the school. Its image is still tarnished.

It was a year after the Tokorozawa incident that Toshihiro Ishikawa hanged himself. The two events were so close together and so dramatic that the government couldn't ignore them, and within months it had passed a law making ‘Kimigayo' Japan's official anthem, and
Hinomaru
– the ‘circle of the sun' – its official flag. They had never been officially recognised before. The government hoped that by passing the law, fewer people would argue against them. The country's foreign office must have breathed the biggest sigh of relief: its civil servants would no longer have to spend time calling Olympic committees to tell them that ‘Kimigayo' was the anthem ‘for Japan' rather than the anthem ‘of Japan', begging them to use the correct wording if a Japanese athlete won gold.

*

Kimiko says the law had an immediate effect. Every school she taught at from then on played the anthem. However, every time they did so, she stayed sitting. She was not standing for that song. Never. No one actually said anything about her small act of defiance until 2003, when Tokyo's governor, a man called Shintaro Ishihara, announced that any teacher who refused to stand would be punished. The decision was not out of character for him. Ishihara is an intellectual – a prize-winning novelist who made his name writing a book about a high school boxing team who spend their days getting drunk and chasing girls – but he's also nationalistic, to an almost ludicrous degree; the sort of person who says the Nanjing Massacre never happened and who once tried to buy the Senkaku Islands – a few tiny rocks in the Pacific – to end China's claims on them.

At the next entrance ceremonies, hundreds of Tokyo's teachers ignored Ishihara and refused to stand, and over 300 of them were disciplined, including Kimiko. A lot of them could not take being punished and so fell into line, but Kimiko didn't. She had her salary cut for one month, then six; she was suspended for one month, then three. By 2007, she was being suspended without pay for six months every year. She only once capitulated, standing for the anthem after a principal spent a year begging her to do so. He appeared to have lost weight every time she saw him, becoming sicker and sicker, and so she agreed to stand, fearing he would kill himself if she didn't. The moment she stood, every student in the hall turned to face her, gawping in amazement. She started hallucinating, picturing a soldier ordering her to kill. It was as though her body was breaking down under the stress. She made it through ten seconds before collapsing into her chair.

About this time, Kimiko also became the face of a 500-strong lawsuit against Ishihara's rules, arguing they breached teachers' freedom of thought. Tokyo's highest court agreed with her, but Japan's Supreme Court didn't, its judges admitting the anthem requirements were ‘an indirect limitation' on freedom, but ruling they were still constitutional. Rules are rules: stand up or face the consequences.

In the middle of all this, even Emperor Akihito had a say. He bumped into a member of Tokyo's education board at a garden party and asked what the man did.

‘It's my job to get all schools to sing the anthem,' the man proudly said.

‘It's desirable no one's forced,' the emperor snapped back. No one seemed to listen.

*

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Kimiko carries on talking about everything she's had to go through because of her resistance to the anthem. She explains exactly how it's possible to live on only six months' salary if you grow enough vegetables, and what it's like being followed everywhere by right-wing protestors who shout at you through megaphones to ‘go back to North Korea' (‘Did they ever play the anthem at you?' I ask. ‘Of course!' she laughs). She talks about the emotional reconciliation she had with her father after he'd been diagnosed as terminally ill, when he showed her his war records proving he had not killed anyone (he had in fact spent most of the war refusing orders). And she says she would not change her views even if Japan got an entirely new anthem. ‘I can't agree with using symbols to make people look in the same direction,' she says.

But then I get to a rather difficult point: I ask if she feels like all her objecting has been worthwhile. I mean, she's retired now, spending her days helping the handful of Tokyo teachers who still refuse to stand. There's only two or three left. Most young teachers either cannot see any problem with the song, or simply do not want to destroy their career prospects by sitting down. ‘Haven't you lost?' I say. ‘Do you ever worry that it was all pointless?'

‘Of course there are times when I can't find any meaning in what I do, when I feel weak and want to give up,' she says. ‘But just when I think they've won, someone else – someone new – pops up and refuses to stand, and that gives me the energy to carry on.' She starts listing other cities where people are protesting: Hiroshima, Okinawa, Nagasaki. For a minute, it feels like she's going to list every city devastated during the Second World War. But then she asks if I've been to Osaka.

*

Osaka is Japan's second metropolis – a place everyone in the country ridicules for being envious of Tokyo. Osakans, of course, deny it, but they'll then spend ten minutes telling you exactly how their city is
nothing
like the capital. ‘Tokyo people are stuck up. They can't laugh at themselves,' one man said to me at a baseball game. ‘Osakan people …' He drifted off to a proud smile, the difference clearly not needing to be spelled out.

Osaka is a far smaller city than Tokyo – only 2.6 million people compared to Tokyo's 13.5 million – and it feels friendlier, the breeze coming in from the sea seeming to make everyone more relaxed. But you can't help feeling a little sorry for it. Tokyo's not the only city to overshadow it; the old imperial centres of Kyoto and Nara do too, and they're virtually next door. People go to those cities to wander awestruck through temples and to drown in imperial opulence. The only people who really visit Osaka are food tourists: budding restaurateurs who want to see the home of
okonomiyaki
(stuffed pancakes slathered in barbeque sauce) and
takoyaki
(octopus balls). You can usually tell if a place is selling the latter by the ten-foot-tall plastic octopus suckered to its entrance.

Osaka is the home of one other thing right now, although it's not something that's likely to draw in many more tourists: anthem rows. Where Tokyo once led, Osaka is now dominant. In 2011, its regional government passed a law saying teachers
had
to stand for ‘Kimigayo'. It also introduced a ‘three strikes and you're out' rule, meaning teachers could only sit three times before they were sacked. Oh, and there's the small matter of the lip-syncing scandal.

In 2012, a school principal, Toru Nakahara, caused outcry when he spent a graduation ceremony checking whether his teachers' lips were moving while they stood for the anthem. It's not quite as bad as it sounds. He did it from afar; he didn't walk up to them and place an ear to their mouths. But anyone whose lips weren't moving was hauled into his office and asked why. The Japanese press ridiculed him for it, but somehow mocking headlines didn't affect Nakahara one bit. In fact, he was promoted to become Osaka Prefecture's education chief and almost immediately issued a directive ordering principals to follow his lead and undertake a ‘visual inspection' of lips at ceremonies. The rule was supposed to come into force in 2014, but was mysteriously dropped – perhaps because someone realised it was unlikely to help Osaka lose its role as Japan's punchbag.

When Kimiko suggested I go to Osaka to look into these issues, I was actually one step ahead of her, having somehow talked its government into letting me attend one of that year's entrance ceremonies. They had been reluctant to let me anywhere near them at first, but in the end relented as long as it was one school: Tamatsukuri Elementary, one of the best in the city. I knew instantly there would be no chance of any teachers protesting the anthem there. Every one of them had been marked to become a principal; they wouldn't risk that. But I had to see one of these ceremonies for myself, to try to get some insight into what happens and to understand just why this anthem is so controversial, so, of course, I said yes.

*

It was a beautiful April morning when I arrived at Tamatsukuri's hall and right on 9 a.m., dozens of six-year-olds rushed into the school's hall in dark blue outfits and prim hats, most of them smiling, excited about their first day; a few nervously looking around for their parents, hoping they could go home soon. Some of the mothers were in kimonos, while most of the fathers were wearing suits. Grandparents had come along too and everyone had cameras, desperate to capture the moment. Then the headmistress walked in and with barely a hello, asked everyone to stand for the anthem. The pianist immediately started playing the gentle, solemn melody of ‘Kimigayo' before most people had had a chance to stand, and I found myself fumbling through my pockets trying to find my phone to film it, then started running my eyes up and down the rows of teachers to see if any were sitting – none were – then back across the hall to see what the children and parents were doing too. Most of the children looked as though they didn't know the tune, but some were shouting it out, as if they'd been coached by their parents beforehand. Most of the parents themselves were just beaming at their children, oblivious to the song. And then before anything had really even got going, the music stopped and everyone rushed to sit back down. I don't know why I'd been expecting more: there's not much that can happen in fifty-five seconds.

A couple of hours later, I left wondering what all the fuss was about. How could anyone get worked up over something so simple in such a harmless context? But equally, how could anyone get angry about people sitting down during it? A lot of the other songs played during the ceremony were far more offensive than ‘Kimigayo', especially a cover of the Pet Shop Boys' ‘Go West', which had been reimagined to teach English. During that, all the children tried to open their eyes as wide as possible as if imitating Westerners, proving racism is alive and well in schoolchildren the world over. Outside, I asked a parent how they would have felt if some teachers had stayed sitting during ‘Kimigayo'. ‘I'd probably have thought they were tired,' he said.

*

It doesn't take much effort to find teachers who are refusing to comply with the anthem laws in Osaka. I made one call to a teachers' union and was soon in a room with five of them. There was a Christian who refused to sing a song that worships the emperor (‘Only Jesus is God'), a peace activist, and a communist who kept telling me that all anthems and all nation states had to be abolished. But the two most interesting had more personal and emotional reasons for refusing to stand.

There was Toshimichi Masuda, a man in his early fifties whose father died due to radiation from the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima, and who saw Japan's militarism as ultimately responsible for that tragedy. ‘That was my motivation to become a teacher,' he said, ‘to tell children what really happened because of the war – so obviously I could never stand for the anthem.'

And then there was a sixty-something woman, Hiroko Tsujitani, whose mother had gone to school during the war and become so wrapped up in emperor worship that she wrote her brother letters telling him, ‘Please die for this country. It would be an honour for us all.' After the war ended, horrified she'd ever done such a thing, she warned Hiroko that education and politics must never mix. ‘I had to make sure nothing like that ever happened again,' Hiroko said, explaining why she became a teacher.

As I heard their stories, I became convinced these teachers were right not to stand. If they believed the anthem was really tied in with militarism and family tragedies, how could they? And why would anyone force them? But I also realised I was talking to the wrong people. I needed to meet the men behind these laws to find out why on earth they were passing them – and I needed to find out why the Japanese public were seemingly happy for them to be in place.

*

T
ō
ru Hashimoto is the Mayor of Osaka. He's a huge figure in the city, admired by many for being a straight-talking antidote to traditional Japanese politics, hated by others for the inappropriate comments he seems to make at every opportunity (on the day I arrived he told a group of businessmen to take mistresses, then buy them flats downtown in order to revitalise the city's economy). If you talk to people about him here, they either adopt a look of awe or stick two fingers down their throat and pretend to vomit.

In political circles, he's respected nationwide for overcoming an appalling background – involving the early death of a Yakuza-connected father – to forge a successful career. But in right-wing circles, he's more respected for being an ardent nationalist. He once set up a political party called the Japan Restoration Association, named after the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s, the time when Japan tried to become a superpower. That choice of name should tell you all you need to know about his character, but he's also made a habit of denying Japan's wartime problems – ‘When soldiers are risking their lives by running through storms of bullets and you want to give these emotionally charged soldiers a rest … it's clear you need [comfort women],' he once said – and he's also the main reason for Osaka's anthem rules. Hashimoto has defended those rules many times to Japanese journalists, jabbing his fingers at them, shouting at them, telling them that they do not understand the real issues and that civil servants have to do as they are told if they want to keep their jobs.