A spot at high school

Imagine, you are fourteen. You have been brought up hearing the tragedies of the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. Your parents tell you of the screams and the flames and the fear. You’ve resolved to be prepared, to be trained.

Now, at your junior school you hear of a high school that specializes in teaching youngsters these very skills. You are very excited. No longer will school be the painful drudgery of a prison, it will be the ship carrying you to your fulfilling adult life. Unfortunately, this ship only has place for 40 passengers, so you will have to earn your passage. With three of your like-minded junior school friends, you set about studying every night. Each night the hours roll past and your eyes grow heavy, but you are determined.

The exam day arrives. You are prepared. 69 other students sit around you in the high school’s examination hall. There are only 40 places. Their pens swiftly move from one question to the next. Their ease makes you uneasy. You go home worried that your efforts, your ability, will not suffice. For 4 days you worry.

Finally, today you will know. You arrive at school, frazzled: excited and nervous every time the clock’s rotation brings the minute hand closer to lunchtime. In your teacher’s car with your three classmates, you make your way back the examination hall. You stand in the courtyard before the building. Icy winds lash your bare legs, you are hardly able to clutch onto your examination number. Parents and teachers watch from the side, watch you and the other hopefuls huddle, exposed, in the centre of the courtyard. With the stress, anticipation and tiredness you start to sob. Try to look up at the second floor balcony. Try to blink those tears away before the numbers are revealed. Try to breath.

This story has one of two outcomes, either your number appears and you drop to the floor in a fit of free-flowing ebullient tears, or stoically you dry your eyes on your sleeve, bow your head and quietly leave the courtyard. Unfortunately, for 40 of the students the latter was their outcome. Unfortunately, for one girl as her three classmates cried with joy, she left the courtyard alone.

I hear mental illness and suicide is a problem here in Japan.