All or Nothing

Been thinking about attrition rates in karate recently. My elder son went to Kumamoto for a friendly soccer match early this morning. Every time I go to his practice, it seems the number of kids on the field has been getting bigger and bigger. Meanwhile, although the number of kids at the dōjō has increased, every year there are fewer and fewer of the older kids. And it's not just our dōjō. At last week's tournament, for instance, there were 27 third graders among the boys, 20 fifth graders, 11 seventh graders (中1), and only 2 thirteenth graders (中３).

I think there are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is that it ain't fun getting punched and kicked in the head on a regular basis. The biggest factor, though, has to be the all-or-nothing, total commitment mentality to your chosen hobby here. The notion of a season for a sport doesn't quite translate.

When I was a kid in the States, I played baseball in the summer, soccer in the fall, basketball and skiing in the winter, and track and field in the spring. Each season was just long enough to help you improve your skill, but short enough to keep you from burning out. If you wanted to take a break from sports for one season, there was no penalty. Thanks to that, a healthy active kid can continue playing the sports he likes all the way from elementary school through high school.

Here, it's the opposite: you join a soccer team or swim team or whatever and you do it all year long. If you are bumped up into a higher class, like my sons with karate, then you are doing it two, three, four, even five times a week all year long.

My wife and I used to have arguments about this. She'd get upset that our boys weren't doing better in tournaments or weren't focusing during practice. I would counter, "They're only five and eight. There's no hurry. Let them enjoy it and later on they can take it more seriously. I mean think about it: nobody is going to be impressed by a twenty-something-year-old who boasts: 'I was a karate baddass when I was seven years old!' It won't matter in the end. Continuing, however, will."

I wasn't very convincing, I'm afraid, but she eventually gave in and let them practice at their own pace which is twice a week rather than fourth. More before a tournament.

The other day, my wife and I were talking about what our sons will do when they start junior high school. She said she was thinking of letting them quit karate. Again, I said, "Why does it have to be all or fucking nothing all the time? I want them to continue. They don't need to go to the dōjō five times a week, but they should try to go at least twice a month to blow off steam. Jump into a tournament every few months where all they have to do is win one bout to bring home a trophy because everyone else has quit and there's no competition."

It was like an epiphany. "Oh, I hadn't considered that option."

So, my elder son is contemplating joining kendo when he enters junior high. I guess it looks like Star Wars to him. I'm hoping he'll try to stick to a team sport, like his soccer, so that he can have a good cadre of friends throughout his junior high school years.

Sparta, it ain't

I have been corresponding with the sensei of the karate dōjō in Central Oregon I took my son to while we were there.

As I noted here in my State-side Observations below, I felt that teachers/instructors in America (the ones I had observed, at least) were . . . shall I say gentle? with the students. Lessons were shorter, less physically demanding than what my sons normally have to deal with in Japan. Teachers spoke in calm voices, never yelled or criticized harshly.

In Japan (again in my experience), Spartanism rules. At my sons’ dōjō, practice can sometimes go on for two or three hours. Some kids go four times a week throughout the year. The air conditioning is rarely used in summer; the heater, only sparingly in winter. The kids spar and spar and spar, sometimes to the point of becoming black and blue. Yet, when the Japanese sensei praises a student, it’s genuine praise and the kids take great pride when they do a good job. That is often the first thing my sons tell me when they come home from practice: "Sensei-ni homerareta!"

When I mentioned this to the karate sensei in Oregon, he replied that American kids wouldn't be able to endure such training. "It's a difficult balance with east vs west philosophy in karate training since our students have western upbringings. I was raised training on the eastern methods and greatly appreciate the value but most Americans wouldn't accept it. There lies the quest for balancing the two sides."

Woman Kinder-rupted

My wife dashes out the front door, our six-year-old son, half-dressed in his karate "dogi," scurrying behind her. “We’re going to be late! You can tie the obi in the elevator.”

It’s Tuesday again, which means my wife had to pick our two boys up at their kindergarten bus stop at 2:40 p.m., then drop the older one off at his 3 p.m. "soroban" (abacus) lesson at the local community center. Fifty minutes later, she fetched him so he could have a quick bite at home before shuttling him back to the center. Like many of the other mothers, she will observe the entirety of his karate lesson, dutifully taking notes and occasionally videoing. Once home, she will go over what our son has learned that day, and admonish the boy if necessary, before putting him and his younger brother to bed with a book or 10. Tomorrow it is soccer practice. The day after that, “Play School.” Fridays are for English and, once again, karate.

Although Japanese women are said to be some of the most highly educated women among OECD countries, their participation in the labor force, at 48.7% in 2014, is much lower than the average, and falling. Part of the decline is due to Japan’s aging society — male participation in the labor force dropped from 78.2% in 1993 to 70.1% in 2014 — but the main reason that comparatively few Japanese women work is due to societal demands on mothers. According to The Economist, “When [Japanese] women have their first child, 70% of them stop working for a decade or more, compared with just 30% in America. Quite a lot of those 70% are gone for good.”

To address this, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced in 2013 that raising the female participation rate and allowing women to “shine” in the workplace would be one of the most important aspects of his Abenomics growth initiative. While I applaud any effort to support working mothers, my courtside perspective on parenting in Japan has me doubting how successful his proposal will be in the end.

Japanese corporate culture — the dominance of males in the workplace, "sabisu zangyo," i.e. unpaid overtime, "matahara" (maternity harassment), etc — is often cited as the one of the main obstacles holding Japanese women back. I find, however, that rather than this oft-maligned “honne"culture, it is the demands of the home culture — namely, the daily imperative of rearing and educating one’s own children — that has so many mothers in this country shunning full-time work.

Although the percent of Japanese children left at daycare peaks at 42.6% when children are three years old, from the age of four (the age at which kids enter kindergarten), 52.9% are in kindergarten, compared to 39.4% at daycare. By age six, 62.3% of kids are enrolled in kindergarten; and only 37.7% at daycare.

You might think that with the little ones parked in “kindy” all day, a mother would have a sudden windfall of free time — and so did I when our second son was also enrolled — but think again. For one, most kindergartens in Japan only keep the children for three to five hours a day, compared to seven or eight in the U.S. And, two, the typical kindergarten places great demands upon parents, the bulk of which falls upon the mother. Duties include serving lunch, taking part in excursions, attending monthly social gatherings for guardians (read mothers), event-planning, sitting in on lectures, serving on the executive board, and on and on.

Then there are the extracurricular activities to which mothers must ferry their young children to and from. The typical Japanese child attends two to three lessons a week, some as many as five or six. Many mothers believe that these lessons, which run the gamut from swimming and soccer to piano and cram school, are necessary to ensure their children’s future success and can spend upwards of ¥30,000 a month on them.

Many Japanese women so feel strongly that it is their role to not only raise, but to also discipline their children, that they are loath to leave much to chance. I can’t help but wonder how many mothers with young children would be willing to return to the workplace no matter how brightly they were permitted to shine.

I’d love to ask my own wife what she thinks about all this, but she’s scrambling out the front door again: it’s her turn to put the kindergarten’s library in order.

For some reason, Japan Today has taken my name off of my articles.