Half of Japanese primary and secondary school students have never seen a sunrise or sunset, according to a survey.
The study, conducted last year among 900 children, found that Japanese youngsters spend significantly less time outdoors than previous generations have.
Compiled by Tetsuro Saito, a professor at Kawamura Gakuen Women’s University, the report is the fourth of its kind to be carried out since 1991. It shows that 52% of today’s children have never seen either a sunrise or a sunset. Thirteen years ago the figure was 41%.
‘Today’s parents don’t have a lot of experience with nature,†said Saito, who advocates changing the classroom-bound education system to allow for more time for outdoor learning. ‘But the situation can only improve if parents make an effort to spend more time outdoors with their children.â€
Parents’ groups and other social analysts say several factors have influenced young people’s distant relationship with the environment. These range from an urbanised lifestyle with its emphasis on consumption and few opportunities to spend time outdoors, to Japan’s notorious cram school system.
But Saito and others said young people’s apathetic, sometimes even hostile, attitude towards nature was often shared by their parents. In Dogs and Demons, an account of modern Japan and its relationship with the outdoors, the American author Alex Kerr says Japanese prefer things to be neat, orderly and convenient rather than natural.
‘Thus, many municipalities in Japan cut the branches of roadside trees before the leaves turn in the autumn, because residents find fallen leaves dirty and messy,†says Kerr.
In Kyoto, where temples and gardens symbolise Japan’s traditional reverence for nature, more people have complained about croaking frogs in nearby rice paddies keeping them awake than about the sound trucks of rightwing parties blasting their hate messages in the streets. —