Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Bad is School Truancy in Japan?
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3622 Location: Finland |
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The part about the odd not fitting in, I wonder how much the school itself might play a part in it aside from the social circle of schoolmates and friends/family? I've sometimes read in manga, and even sometimes read a news story, about Japanese schools requiring light-haired pupils to dye their natural hair. That conforming mindset, especially combined with Japan's notorious lack of mental health faculties, does present huge issues...
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4744 |
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I've seen some anime do things like introduce a new character who was chronically absent, and shows up because they were looking at repeating a grade. I can see schools getting lax with attendance due to it not being compulsory. Basically, it's treated as the kid's/family's problem if they don't make use of the enrollment, and no longer the school's problem because the student doesn't have to be there by law.
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2539 Location: United States |
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I'm more surprised that parents would be okay with their kids just skipping school all the time. Children in countries like America and Canada are pretty much forced to go to school, and the school would penalize them for having more than one absence on their record. I'm also curious if Japanese kids can be truants as early as elementary school age. I watched Look Back and was surprised that an elementary school aged kid was allowed to just not go to school yet still be able to graduate.
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LukaTheLancer
Posts: 97 |
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Back in 7th grade i was absent a lot, my dad made a deal because i was so unfit in a special needs class (it can be boil down to right class, wrong classmates, i am a misfit toy among misfit toys)
I was allowed to be home for 2-3 days per week. I think the reason Parents would allow it is because they can see the toll it has taken on their child and they want there child to be happy of at least not sad or scared to be going to school |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4887 |
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I used to laugh while watching Inuyasha back in the day, because Kagome and her family would make up these increasingly-ridiculous excuses to explain away her long school absences while she was running around the feudal era fighting demons. "My rheumatism flared up and triggered my lumbago!" and other fun stuff like that. I never stopped to consider that it might be a lighthearted version of a real issue.
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dm
Subscriber Posts: 1537 |
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The first series that came to my mind was Call of the night, where the protagonist has just stopped going to school and taken to wandering the streets at night.
There’s the assistant producer’s V-tuber little sister in Oshi no Ko, too. Last edited by dm on Mon Mar 03, 2025 4:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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lemurs
Posts: 114 |
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The Rascal series' recent "Sister Venturing Out" movie is another recent example covering this very topic. And a bit surprisingly, the film posits remote learning as an alternative for those with social anxiety instead of just "toughing it out" and getting over it.
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1616 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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One of my favorite little bits in Yashahime was the reveal that Sota picked up his grandpa's habit of using old man health problems as excuses, and used one to explain away Towa's extended absence from her school. Another way in which he's the true winner of the original series' cast in that canon. |
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non8noninfinite
Posts: 30 |
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Oddball = neurodivergent in most cases
This is what happens because society didn’t create society standard for neurodivergent people. In actuality, 20% and more population is thought to be neurodivergent, which is too much to conform to neurotypical society norms. If every 2 people in ten are ND, I think they deserve environment for education accommodated for them. Society can accommodate smokers, pregnant women, seniors, lgbt community, so why not neurodivergency as well? |
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omiya
 Posts: 1870 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Surprised that there was no mention of Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window.
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2639 Location: Germany |
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The characters in Jujutsu Kaisen and some others explicitly go to a vocational school. Them going out on assassination missions at midnight is the job. They get paid a wage and are provided with housing no different from the military. That´s where the protagonist´s money to go gamble off-screen comes from. The older sorcerers accompanying them is the schooling. The anime simply made it look more like a school than the manga. YuYu Hakusho is an example of a teen dropping out of high school to become a superhero. Kuwabara does the opposite and chooses to live as a human instead, so he drops out of the plot and prepares for university. Yusuke ends the manga as a private investigator and stands no chance of graduating but that´s only in the manga. The protagonist of Takehiko Inoue´s Real also drops out in the first chapter but the manga doesn´t take his side, to put it mildly.
High school not being mandatory is rarely brought up in anime. It´s simply too mainstream a medium to say that you don´t have to participate in society the regular way around the age of 15, so you end up with full-time job demon hunters, mech pilots and so on who waste away their days on algebra instead of learning military tactics. The manga version of Bokurano features a middle schooler´s decision to forget further schooling after graduation but it´s a Seinen work published in an art house magazine. There are also all sorts of Seinen manga, like the recent The Fable or Under Ninja, that have protagonists who never went to school and were instead brought up in Guantanamo-esque re-education camps. Their adaptions had a buck 50 to go around. |
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omnistry
 Posts: 1022 |
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I currently teach at a private school in Tokyo. Sometimes the kids who can’t fit in either don’t show up at all or they do absolutely nothing but sleep in class. I often wish I could do something to help them to fit in, but — sad and true — I’ve been told any attempt to help would actually worsen the situation.
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MagicConan14
 Posts: 22 |
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The character's name is Shoko. |
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