there is a season (turn, turn, turn)
and a time to every purpose under heaven...
...A time to laugh, a time to weep..."
--The Byrds (Ecclesiastes)
March Nineteen Ninety-Eight, Japan....It's been building up for weeks, the countdown before my san-nen-sei (third year) students were to graduate from Otsukadai Junior High School. I've recounted past graduations and student "turnovers" in previous writings, but this year, this class in particular, was really special to me. When I arrived at Otsukadai in January 1996, they were ichi-nen-sei (first year) students, kids, little and goofy and lots of fun and incredibly welcoming to me. We became instant friends, and our friendship has continued to grow over the past two years, as they got bigger and more mature and we held more conversations and joked around and experienced school events and life together. I knew the separation would be difficult. Last week I spent countless hours signing school albums and talking to kids about where they would be going to high school (all but six out of 236 were accepted and will be attending senior high school).
The big day, Friday, March 13th (ominous indeed) came and all the teachers came to school dressed to the nines, including me. The graduation ceremony is extremely formal, and as I've previously written, it's a day on which it's entirely acceptable and expected that all the emotion that's seemingly withheld in interactions and relationships in this country is suddenly released and outpoured during and after the ceremony. I revel in that glimpse of "freedom" as grown men (teachers) and women, as well as seemingly tough boys and girls weep together. Of course I was no exception.
We (teachers) were seated in two rows on the left side of the gymnasium/auditorium, perpendicular to the stage. The san-nen-sei teachers were seated in the first row, and although I am technically a ni-nen-sei teacher, I was privileged to be asked to sit with them as I had taught san-nen-sei in the first term of the school year, and I also had an elective English class with them. The audience of mothers (fathers could be counted on one hand) were dressed in dark suits and some in kimono (some girls professed their embarrassment that their mothers were wearing kimono), and selected students from ichi-and ni-nen-sei were also in attendance. The PTA and local community representatives, including surrounding elementary schools' principals, filed in and sat in special seats directly opposite ours on the right-hand side of the auditorium. Just before the ceremony, one of the mothers came up and introduced herself to me (her daughter was in my elective English class and I had helped her practice and prepare for her high school entrance exam) and thanked me for everything I'd done to help her daughter. Other mothers smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. At exactly 10 a.m. the procession of san-nen-sei students filed in two-by-two, as applause filled the room and continued until every student was seated, boys turning off to be seated on the left, girls to the right, facing the stage.
The vice-principal opened the ceremony and everyone stood and sang the national anthem, and soon began the business of presenting diplomas. The principal took the stage and podium and students lined up to receive their diplomas. When their names were read, they answered with a hearty, pre-rehearsed "Hai!" (yes!), took the certificate in both hands, bowed to the principal, turned and marched off stage. There were no hoots or dances across the stage, and the audience remained relatively still and quiet. But one san-nen-sei boy, who stopped coming to school when he was ichi-nen-sei, accepted his diploma and then waved it high with one hand as he was coming of the stage--a flagrant display of rebelliousness which elicited slight gasps and giggles from the students and parents. The teachers were none too impressed but I thought it added some life to things. There are always a number of students who "drop out" of junior high school, for reasons of emotional instability, or just plain rebelliousness, but nonetheless, the teachers remain responsible for them throughout the three-year tenure of junior high school. The students are still assigned to a homeroom class, and in the case of this "bad boy", he showed up for various school events such as Sports Day, and Culture Day, and had comrades in his class. On the numerous occasions that he got in trouble with the police, for things like smoking, or riding a motorbike, or vandalizing a school playground, his homeroom and other san-nen-sei teachers were the first ones on the scene to talk to him, work things out, lecture him, whatever.
After the last students had shuffled back to their seats, everyone was subjected to a lengthy, boring speech by the principal, and then the guest speaker. Unlike in the States, where the guest speaker often speaks of their own memories and feelings of expectation when they were of graduation age, the speaker recounted the things the san-nen-sei students had done together over the last three years, and finally, words of encouragement and congratulations. We all stood and sang the school song, and then came the heart-wrenching moment we'd all been waiting for: the farewell speech delivered by a san-nen-sei girl; "Miss Kitagawa", to me. Everyone shifted in their seats and pulled out their handkerchiefs as she approached the stage and unfolded her speech, which she delivered with her back to the audience, facing the principal still standing at the podium. A few sentences into the speech, the innocent, tinkling, music box music began to play in the background as Makita recounted the memories and events and experiences of three years with her classmates, her school and teachers. It wasn't long before she choked, and when she choked, everyone else started to choke. The speech went on, and at times I had my eyes closed, tears streaming down my face, just praying in my head that she could get through the speech. I was seated near the back row of the san-nen-sei boys so I watched them most of the time, saw their heads go down, their eyes close, the tears forming in the corners of their eyes. Some boldly held their heads up, unaffected by the emotion in Kitagawa's voice and words, while others, surprisingly many of the "bad boys", cried without shame, sniffled, snorted, tears drenching their uniform collars. Of course the minute I see a man cry...
I could feel the teachers around me sniffling and silently weeping as well. It got more and more intense as Kitagawa began to list individual teachers, and what each teacher had done for them, and thanked them...she even included me and thanked me for fun, interesting classes over the last two plus years. She finally concluded her speech and we all sat down, huge sighs released, and I glanced at Yoshihara, a san-nen-sei boy, my pretend "boyfriend" and he looked over at me with tears in his eyes and we smiled at each other. The graduates then stood and sang a farewell song, the words something along the lines of friendships and thanks to our teachers for always being there for us, and the further along the song went, the more voices that choked up and dropped out of the harmony. I looked around at all the faces and again so many heads bowed down, or some still strained to belt out the tune while the tears ran down. Then they turned and faced the audience and sang a final farewell and thanks to the underclassmen and parents.
In the final moments of the ceremony, all the san-nen-sei teachers (not including me this time) went to the front of the auditorium and were each presented with flowers by mothers, members of the PTA, in thanks for three years of "raising" their kids. The applause was thunderous and only died down momentarily as the music began to play in the background..."Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again..." The first row (class one) stood up to face the teachers, bowed in unison and shouted "Arigato gozaimashita!" before filing down the aisle after their homeroom teacher. The applause heightened. "Because a vision softly creeping..." Class two bowed and thanked and filed out. "Left its seeds while I was sleeping..." Class three. "And the vision, that was planted in my brain..." Class four. "Still remained..." Class five. "Within the realm of silence..." Class six. The "bad boys" collaborated and instead of "Arigato gozaimashita" shouted "Graduation!" which sounded faintly similar. "And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people maybe more...people hearing without listening..." We applauded and cried and sniffled until the last teacher and class had filed out.
At twelve sharp we gathered outside the school and applauded as each class paraded by with their homeroom teachers and underclassman rushed out to hand presents, flowers, memory books to their sempai (seniors), in thanks for teaching them so many things, in helping them in various sports and club activities, for friendship. As the students paraded by some lifted their faces and smiled and yelled "I love you!" as they passed by me, others had tears still burning in their eyes and couldn't say anything. The bad boys were still crying as they walked. One big kid, "Mr. Higashi" shouted "I wanted you!" as he went by, and we both burst out laughing. ("I want you! I need you! I love you!" are amusingly used in Japan, and chances are the kids understand the full meaning but it's not so embarrassing or unacceptable to say because it's in English, not in their native tongue.) The students then paraded by all the parents and PTA, then out the gate and into the streets where they went off to separate locations, local parks and shopping areas, to take photos and say final goodbyes to one another. I ran around from spot to spot taking photos with all my kids, hanging out talking, and all the while shouting back and forth "I love you! I'll miss you!" Every graduation, each year that I've been here, has been tearful and emotional, but this time I felt it so much more intensely as these kids, so many of them, I can honestly say almost every one of the 236 in the class, were my "friends" and they've never had another foreign teacher in junior high school besides me.
The week before graduation I prepared a goodbye letter/photo collage with my address in Japan and the USA, as well as my "Top Ten Advice for Life" and the words in English and Japanese to Bob Dylan's "Forever Young." The fact that I'm changing schools in a few weeks, coupled with the fact that I'm soon to leave Japan, added to the intensity of the emotion of saying goodbye to them, many for the last time ever. I know the feelings were mutual. Some of the girls and boys will be coming to my house in a few weeks for a graduation party, and others I plan to meet with over spring vacation, go out for lunch, take pictures, hang out. But for the most part, it's the end of an era, for them as well as for me.
The afternoon at school was so quiet after all the graduates had gone, and all the underclassmen had stayed home that day (except for the representatives), and all the teachers were free to leave by 3 p.m. I walked out into the sunshine (the first time in three years it hadn't rained on graduation day) and I turned left to walk through Otsukadai Park, hoping to glimpse a stray student here or there. I saw one san-nen-sei boy getting ready to go out bowling to celebrate with his family, and then...no one. The streets and neighborhoods were empty and quiet and it felt like the same melancholy I always felt in the last days of summer in Ocean City, Maryland, when all the kids had gone back to school and the tourists had left and it all suddenly seemed so sad without them.
I met up with some friends in Kobe that afternoon, saying goodbye to more of my fellow teachers who are leaving Kobe. There's a huge turnover this spring and I look around at our teachers meetings at the Board of Education and see fewer and fewer familiar faces; a sign that my time, too, has come to leave Japan.
I got home Friday night and cried, my heart aching for those kids and wondering, hoping, that they'd always remember me as I remembered them. I dreaded the return to school on Monday, coming back here and their not being here anymore. I love the others as well, and I have some friends in ni-nen-sei (mostly girls), and a lot of the ichi-nen-sei are kids that I also taught at elementary school so I know them pretty well and we have a "history" together. Yet sometimes there are truly exceptional classes, where the positive energy and mood and attitude are so infectious it permeates the entire grade. That's what those san-nen-sei were like, and the fact that they're gone makes it a little easier to move on from this school, to say my goodbyes and spend my final term in Japan at a new school, where I will be greeted and welcomed anew, and will see many new faces and learn new names and will appreciate them as they'll appreciate me. "A time to every purpose under heaven..."
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