Six-year-old Shino Katagiri does not start primary school until April, but her mother is already putting her into classes — on how to defend herself against violent attackers.
As an adult self-defence instructor plays the bad guy, the terrified little girl huddles into a chair and refuses to take part in the lesson her mother has brought her to.
It is nearly one hour before Shino musters the courage to try to do as she is asked: kick her skin-headed instructor. After tossing up her foot, which only reaches the instructor’s leg, she breaks into tears.
”I felt tense,” Shino says as she returns to sulking.
But her mother, Yumi Katagiri, has no regrets about putting her daughter into the frightening Sunday-afternoon session.
”Recent crimes have reminded me that things are not the same as in my childhood,” she says.
Japan is one of the safest countries in the world, but this season of cherry blossoms — in which hopeful young people graduate from school — brings back painful memories for some.
Seven girls among the 116 pupils who left Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka this month made no reply when their names were called in the graduation ceremony. They could not because they are all dead.
Japanese media widely reported about the ceremony and its poignant calling of the dead pupils’ names, reminding the nation of the 2001 massacre at the school by a former psychiatric patient who stabbed to death eight children.
As Japan witnesses a steady series of grisly crimes against children, local governments are taking measures ranging from electronic monitoring systems to the distribution of metal pitchforks to teachers for catching assailants.
But some parents are looking for their own ways to protect their children.
Eighteen children including Shino, the youngest, are taking part in the two-hour lesson in Tokyo.
”Kick the shin! It hurts. If you still can’t free your arms from him, kick right in the middle,” instructor Rumiko Yagi says, telling children to smash the assailant in the crotch.
Yagi of the non-profit organisation Impact Tokyo teaches a form of self-defence that originated in the United States in which a teacher, clad in protective gear, plays the bad guy and grabs the arms of children.
In Japan, however, there are cultural issues too. Yagi says she has to break down mental barriers in Japanese children who are reluctant to yell or use force against other people.
Koji Ogawa, who plays the bad guy, says he tries to teach children ”how they can escape, rather than showing difficult counter-attack techniques, as they are physically feeble, after all”.
One parent who has turned to the classes, Yumiko Takagawa, says her own daughter narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt by a pair of men armed with a knife four years ago.
Her daughter Yukiho, now 13, returned home wailing and in panic.
”Child murder isn’t just something that happens to other people,” the mother says.
”I don’t know what sways fate. There may be no perfect measure, but I want to do what I can do,” Takagawa said.
For Shino’s mother, the final straw was the murder of a seven-year-old girl who was strangled in Hiroshima in November allegedly by a serial pedophile.
The Hiroshima killing was followed 10 days later by the discovery of the stabbed, naked body of a girl the same age in Ibaraki prefecture east of Tokyo. Both girls were killed on their way home from school.
”We sometimes sent her to a nearby supermarket but have stopped that altogether,” Shino’s mother says.
”I’m also looking for a karate class” for Shino to attend, she adds.
Shino’s day-care center holds surprise drills in which a man climbs over the walls and enters the playground with a knife, she says, as her daughter knowingly explains that a scary man means children should go inside immediately.
But another parent at the self-defence class, Hideo Kim, admits that the real concern for his eight-year-old son, Eishi, is not adults but other youngsters.
”The real reason we came here was persistent bullying,” the father says. ”Self-defence is important as you never know what will happen to you.”
”You need to strengthen your body … so that you will be able to cope with whatever the situation is,” he says, adding Eishi is also taking karate lessons.
The lesson ends with the children shouting ”No!” together and stomping on the ground.
Japan’s education ministry is to discuss whether to make learning self-protection a compulsory subject at elementary schools, according to a ministry official.
An official in Fujisawa city southwest of Tokyo — which has distributed 750 two-pronged pitchforks to day-care centres, kindergartens, elementary schools and other places where children are — says that concern has grown since the 2001 school massacre.
”Considering that more citizens than we expected volunteered when we set up patrolling units, people are very much interested” in fighting crime, he says.
The mother of one of the seven girls killed in the Ikeda school stabbing told a television network that what is most needed to counter child crimes was ”awareness among parents” that times have changed.
Two days after Ikeda’s school ceremony, Sayano Horimoto (12) who was stabbed to death by a cram school teacher in December, was among 105 students who ”graduated” in a commencement in another western city, Uji. – AFP
