A touchy subject

The proposed introduction of patriotism into the national curriculum has provoked fear among Japanese schoolteachers, reports Justin McCurry

Conservatives in Japan would no doubt take issue with the English writer Samuel Johnson. Far from being the last refuge of the scoundrel, patriotism is the ideological weapon with which they are bludgeoning the country's schools into submission.

By the time the current parliamentary session ends on June 18, the ruling Liberal Democratic party and its allies should have completed the biggest overhaul of state education since the US occupation authorities drew up the Fundamental Law of Education in 1947.

The proposed revisions leave no corner of the Japanese classroom untouched, but it is the policymakers' insistence that patriotism be made part of the national curriculum that has most exercised the minds of editorial writers, and instilled fear into the teaching profession.

Critics of the 1947 law say its stress on individual freedoms has led to a breakdown in classroom discipline and produced children devoid of any interest in their country's history or culture. Teaching them what it means to be patriotic would be the perfect antidote. Couched in those terms, it is hardly surprising that two-thirds of the public support the reforms.

The prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, himself no stranger to making provocative patriotic gestures at Yasukuni shrine, sees no harm in forcing schoolchildren to add love of country to their academic credentials.

"The law has never called for the evaluation of things that involve the freedom of the inner minds of children and students," he said recently. "That will not change with the revised bill. We are not intending a law that would draw us into war."

But it isn't just the risk of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s, when patriotism in the classroom was simply militarist propaganda by a different name, that so troubles opponents of the bill now being debated in parliament. It is also the notion that love of one's country is a discipline that can be taught and evaluated.

That is why even reformists loyal to Koizumi have encountered so much trouble agreeing on a workable definition of patriotism, a word that in Japan comes with unpleasant historical baggage.

That much should have been obvious to the LDP when it needed 70 rounds of negotiations before agreeing on a definition with its Buddhist-backed coalition partner, New Komeito.

The result was a horribly disfigured compromise. Pupils will, according to the reform bill recently approved by the cabinet, learn to develop "an attitude that respects tradition and culture, loves the nation and homeland that have fostered them, and contributes to international peace and development". Teachers can only guess what that will mean in terms of lesson content.

The Democratic party has stopped short of outright opposition to the bill. Instead it released its own marginally more palatable version, whose preamble states that the aim of education is to "cultivate the heart to love Japan". In a depressing reflection of the political zeitgeist, only the largely impotent communists and social democrats have come to the defence of the existing law.

The media, meanwhile, have jumped onto the bandwagon, their only objection being the manner and pace of reform, not the reform itself. The centre left Asahi Shimbun contented itself with saying that "love for the nation is a feeling that grows spontaneously ... We are concerned that codifying a call for patriotism in the law could lead to imposing on children a uniform way of loving the nation."

The rightwing Yomiuri Shimbun was less circumspect: "There is nothing coercive about encouraging students to have a healthy interest in their nation's tradition and culture and understand the importance of loving their country," it said in an editorial. "If a teacher cannot properly teach students about what it means to love their own country, he or she deserves to be criticised."

Not just criticised, but treated like a criminal. If that sounds unlikely in modern Japan, consider the case of Katsuhisa Fujita, a 65-year-old retired teacher who this week was fined 200,000 yen (£950) for committing the heinous crime of reminding parents of their constitutional right to remain seated during the national anthem at a graduation ceremony at a high school in Tokyo in 2004. In one sense Fujita was lucky: prosecutors had demanded that he be jailed for eight months.

Making an example of a veteran teacher in that way would have been almost unthinkable until 1998, when the then prime minister, Keizo Obuchi, ended decades of ambiguity surrounding Japan's national flag (Hinomaru) and anthem (Kimigayo) by giving them legal status.

Four years later, the Tokyo metropolitan government, led by the ultra-conservative governor Shintaro Ishihara, ordered teachers at public high schools to stand for Kimigayo and observe the raising of the Hinomaru at school ceremonies, or face punishment.

To date, more than 300 teachers have been reprimanded, suspended or made to attend "re-education seminars" for their refusal to obey the order.

In fact, patriotism has already forced its way into many Japanese schools. In Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, pupils at about 50 primary schools are awarded marks for their "love of nation", calling into question Koizumi's claims that the new education law would not grade children for their patriotic fervour.

Children aged 12 take home social studies report cards that judge their "willingness to study our nation's history and politics as well as Japan's role in international society, while trying to love the country and wish for world peace".

Yet many teachers, either unable or unwilling to make sense of such convoluted nonsense, are sabotaging the scheme by ignoring the curriculum's patriotism clause altogether.

Their resistance will probably prove short-lived as long as Japan's conservative MPs equate patriotic education with the end of the despised basic Education Law.

But unless Koizumi's aim is to drag Japan down the road to prewar militarism (which, he insists, it isn't), he must have realised the futility of attempting to force patriotism down the throats of 12-year-olds. Only a scoundrel would do that.