A former teacher at Takeda Prefectural High School in Takeda City, Oita Prefecture kicked a student at a kendo team practice in August this year. The boy died as a result of the injuries. The original investigation by police in Takeda City determined that the boy died as a result of heat exhaustion during a…
By now, I assume that the big gang rape incident at prestigious Kyoto University (link goes to news story in Japanese) is international news, and I would not like to go into the details of the incident. However, of interest to students of the media and society in Japan are the reasons that Kyoto University…
On January 21 this year, during a free study period at a junior high school in Ibaraki Prefecture, a teacher (and head of the grade level) walked into a classroom to yell at two kids for going home too late the previous day. The two students were in their third year and had just returned…
This story comes out of Chiba City… A 35 year old man, whom I can only assume is a bad teacher and advisor to the volleyball club at Mitsuwadai Junior High School in Chiba, beat up a 14 year old male student during a volleyball practice on March 8th. During practice, the teacher called out…
I used to write a lot about the bad teachers in the new here in Japan. They were all shapes of wacky, evil, and embarrassing, but it got pretty depressing for me so I stopped. I think most teachers have good intentions (even if I don’t think many have been properly trained in education, teaching…
The article found here: Vice Principal Skips School to Play Pachinko in Hyogo gives us a good chance to talk about how the schools work in Japan (for those of you who are more unfamiliar). There is no “substitute teacher” system that most people in the U.S. are familiar with. If a teacher takes a…
Takaaki Obara, a 57 year old high school basketball coach was convicted of raping a member of the girls’ basketball at a hotel when the club was away for a tournament. He was also convicted of punching members of the team in another hotel. The english story on Mainichi points out that he was “highly…
A 53 year old teacher forced a girl to kneel on the floor and apologize in front of the class for having forgotten to give a notebook to one of her classmates. The teacher had asked the girl to deliver a notebook to a classmate who’d had to leave school early one day. This is…
There was another recent case of professor accepting bribes to give a good review to PhD students’ theses… (if anyone’s interested in the details I can dig them up) This time we have a case of a Chiba University professor threatened saying that she would never be able to graduate without his help. In return…
I’ll just give the link. One vice principal was fired for having an affair with a PTA mom. Another teacher at a different public school was fired for having an affair with a mother of one of the students at his school. The story doesn’t tell how they were found out but from the tone…
He was fired but all is good. The principal of Bunkyo Gakuin University admitted to the theft giving the ubiquitous catch-all Japanese reason. He was drunk. He’s since been fired as principal. My comments?He was fired, but probably received his entire severence pay… at age 52, I guess he’s been working and paying into the…
Here’s the article in the Japan Times: “High School Principal’s Office Searched Over Alleged E-mail Threats to Woman“ You have to love the quote, “I can kill somebody in cold blood.” I always wondered why people think that’s going to get somebody to come back to you. Another thought, given that the girl is in…