Every once and a while at work, after classes and cleaning are finished for the day and the students have been ushered off to their club activities, all of the teachers will gather in the teacher's room for a meeting. These meetings are very long and very dull, covering every possible aspect of students and school life, including students behavior, injuries, and activities. I never pay any attention during these meetings since it's all quite over my head. Usually I sneak out about half way through to go home for the day.
I'm not the only one who finds them dull though; quite often I see teachers fighting the battle to stay vertical as they continually drift to sleep.
Today's meeting, however, took a rather interesting turn. The main topic for discussion was "aisatsu", the greetings that take place before every class begins. Greetings always go as follows: the "student of the day" tells everyone to stand up and then he or she looks around to make sure everyone is standing, facing forward, and silent. Once everyone is standing, they say "Attention!" (きりつ！) and finally "Bow". Everyone bows together and says "onegaishimasu", as in "yoroshiku onegaishimasu". Personally I think this is one of the most difficult phrases to translate in Japanese, but I think, in this particular situation, it is essentially, "thank you for teaching us". After bowing, the students must remain standing until the teacher tells them to sit down.
The sheer formality of such a greeting before the start of every single class, even in elementary school, has always amused me. It seems very bizarre and unnecessary to me, though I am fascinated by innate Japanese-ness of it. The teachers obviously take it very seriously, as evident by the extensive discussion they had today.
I was shocked into attention of this discourse by the sudden, recognizable call to "stand up!", nearly leaping to my feet myself. Instead, I looked up to see a few of the teachers, the principal, and the vice-principal acting as students in an impromptu role-play. They went through a round of greetings, and one of the teachers took on the role of a belligerent student. She alternated between refusing to give a full bow and refusing to say "onegaishimasu" as she bowed. The model teacher gave a model reprimand the the "class" continued to go through greetings until she "behaved".
Those of us that weren't participating were enjoying the little play. During the second round of greetings, after being given the command to stand, the vice-principal was a little slow on picking up the fact that they were still role-playing, and the model teacher, true to his role, was quick to respond, "Vice Principal, please stand up more quickly!" He blushed, and everyone laughed.
Afterwards, the teachers discussed the role-play, including exactly how quickly a person should bow, how deep a bow should be, and whether or not they were allowed to sit down afterward. It was a rather fascinating display, from my point of view. I felt like an anthropologist. I asked my teacher why they were discussing this. She seemed almost offended that I even had to ask, "It's part of student discipline. They aren't being polite enough!"
It's junior high school. Go figure.
Cheers,
anthropologist Baer
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