Rising Sun over Sweetwater

By Susan Tifft

Sweetwater, Tenn., is so small (pop. 5,300), Southern and sedate that local teenagers consider it sport to ogle the traffic on Friday nights. Last week, however, residents had something unusual to engage their attention: Tennessee Meiji Gakuin, the first fully accredited Japanese high school in the U.S.

T.M.G. officials hope that the newly opened school will provide a way for Japanese families assigned to the U.S. to get their children an education similar to that offered in Japan. Until now, Japanese executives have either left their children behind or supplemented studies in American schools with special Saturday classes run by the Japanese government and local Japanese companies.

Neither alternative has been satisfactory. American schools, for instance, are often a year or two behind their Japanese counterparts in critical subjects such as math and science. This handicaps U.S.-based Japanese students when the time comes to compete for spots at Kyoto University and other elite institutions back home.

Last summer Toyko's Meiji Gakuin University found a solution. For $2.4 million it bought Tennessee Military Institute, a defunct boarding school in / Sweetwater, and spent $2 million restoring the property. The site was no accident: a large number of the 7,696 Japanese-affiliated firms in the U.S. are east of the Mississippi River, and almost 60 are in Tennessee.

Although only 24 students showed up for T.M.G.'s orientation session last week, a near capacity enrollment of about 200 in grades 10 through 12 is expected by 1991. For an annual price tag of $17,000 (for boarders), Japanese parents can rest assured that their children will get a typical 35-hour-a-week Japanese high school curriculum, including five classes each of English, math and Japanese and four of science and social studies. American students are welcome, but most of the classes will be taught in Japanese. Language was still a bit of a problem for T.M.G. tenth-grader Junich Hasebe, 15, who nonetheless seemed eager to learn about his host country. "I like America very much," he said in halting English. "Large country."

T.M.G. students may be allowed to pierce their ears and wear trendy hairstyles -- acts of individual expression forbidden in Japan's lockstep education system. But former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander hopes the Japanese will teach Americans something too. Speaking at the school's opening ceremonies, he bemoaned U.S. students' poor test scores and low high school graduation rates. "The Japanese have been careful to learn from us," he said. "Perhaps we can learn something from T.M.G."

Some Sweetwater residents are wary of the newcomers. "A lot of people still go back to World War II," explains Otha McGaughey, who left her job at a local restaurant to work as T.M.G.'s food-service manager. But most seem open to learning about another culture. Says hosiery-mill owner Jackson Jones: "Both sides are trying hard to put their best foot forward."

At the school's inauguration, T.M.G. chancellor Nobumichi Hiraide fostered goodwill by flawlessly crooning the Tennessee Waltz. This fall the school hopes to open a cultural-enrichment center where Sweetwater citizens can view sumi-e (Japanese ink paintings) alongside examples of American art.

The future appears bright for schools like T.M.G. In 1990 Keio University of Tokyo plans to open Keio Gijuki New York Gakuin, a school for grades 9 through 12, on the campus of Manhattanville College, north of New York City. The setting will be more cosmopolitan than bucolic Sweetwater. But for students accustomed to the bustle of Tokyo, that should pose no problem.

With reporting by Don Winbush/Sweetwater