Black Cloud in Japan

The March commencement ceremony at Japan's Daitetsu High School, a private school near Osaka, was no sooner over than the trouble began. A group of 20 graduates burst into the faculty room, demanded that Commerce Teacher Hisaaki Yoshizawa step into the corridor. The news of what happened next made headlines in Japan.

When Yoshizawa emerged, one boy struck him savagely across the mouth. Other boys began to hit and kick him as he fell. A few of Yoshizawa's colleagues tried to intervene, but they were cursed, pummeled, shoved aside. Then the boys began shouting for Mathematics Teacher Masatomi Yamamoto and Guidance Instructor Tsuneji Katada to come out. Yamamoto appeared, thinking he could quiet things down, but he retreated along with other facultymen under a rain of blows. Finally, with no more teachers around, the boys turned their remaining energies to smashing windows and breaking down walls.

Into the Hospital. Before World War II such an outbreak of student violence in Japan was unheard of. Today the nation is for the first time facing a major problem in juvenile delinquency. In 1954 police reported four times as many juvenile arrests as in any prewar year. The number of students picked up, though not arrested, for vandalism, truancy and drunkenness has jumped from 50,000 in 1936 to more than 435,000 in 1954. To save their reputations, some schools try to keep their student rebellion troubles to themselves. But in the past few weeks, spurred by the Daitetsu incident, the press has been digging up other stories to show just what is going on.

One paper reported another commencement incident at the high school in Horai, near Nagoya. Right after the ceremony, the new graduates got drunk and beat up the teacher in charge of behavior and guidance. The high school in Gifu expelled 35 students for theft, hoodlumism and intimidation of students and teachers. At a high school in Miyagi, a teacher was hit so hard by a student that he was hospitalized for ten days.

Into the Canal. In Kyushu ten high school students beat up a teacher of English for reporting them to the principal. In Shikoku students threw an unpopular teacher into a canal. Last June students at Kyoto University locked the university president in his office for nine hours. Recently. Kobe police rounded up a gang of sixth-graders who specialized in robbing candy stores.

What has happened to Japan, where once a teacher's word was law? Part of the trouble, say the educators, is that U.S. occupation authorities tried to impose a democratic, student-centered system upon the schools before the country was ready. The old courses in morals that taught blind obedience to authority were swept away, and there was nothing to take their place. To the younger generation, freedom has come to mean only freedom to rebel.

Last week Osaka police and schoolmen held an emergency meeting, drew up resolutions urging authorities to: 1) tighten police supervision of such spurs to delinquency as "nude tearooms" (where the waitresses wear skimpy bras and panties under filmy dresses), 2) strengthen parental control of children and 3 ) reintroduce the prewar morals courses in the schools. Says Toshizo Nakai. chairman of Osaka's board of education: ''To Japan's students, the future is a dense, black cloud, and each day they advance in school, they are going deeper and deeper into that cloud. It is our duty to lift the cloud, but it is a formidable task."

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