If you’ve watched more than a few anime series, you’ll know that clubs are an important part of life in Japanese schools. Clubs are more than just a fun thing for students to do, they’re tools of society building, and in junior high school (also known as “a machine for turning open-minded, creative kids into straitlaced Japanese adults who conform to everyone else”) it’s required that students join a club to build character. Since Japanese students study only with students of their same grade, clubs are the only setting in which students will interact with their senpai and kohai, or upperclassmen and underclassmen, in social settings. In high school (which is not part of compulsory education, and is usually more flexible than junior high), clubs are not required, and students can opt to join the kikaku-bu, or the “going home after school club” if they want. I recently visited my son’s high school, and the posters advertising the various clubs (light music club, etc.) made me smile. In my own high school life, there were almost no clubs, unless you were on the football team or the cheerleading squad or in brass band. I wish I could go back in time and re-live high school over again — I’d create an awesome Genshiken (Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture) club that would rock.
If I could do high school or university over again, this would be my life. Oh wait, it is.
