When the popular Japanese TV program Hajimete no otsukai (My First Errand) debuted on Netflix as Old Enough, it generated a lot of predictable reactions. Japan is such a safe country! Children are so mature and independent! We could never do that in the U.S.! Why can’t the U.S. be more like Japan?

Never mind, of course, that these “errands” are highly staged, and that the children in question are never truly alone while they do them. Yes, children do ride trains and walk to school on their own in Japan from a very young age. But children, their parents, and their teachers still face all kinds of challenges in Japan. Unfortunately, any media depicting Japan for an international audience often falls into either the “Japan is wacky” or “Japan is a utopia” trap, and neither result is very interesting (or based in fact). 

I’m happy, then, that The Making of a Japanese, a documentary that follows first and sixth graders at Tsukado Elementary School in Tokyo for one year, goes beyond a “Japanese schools are a miracle of decorum and achievement” depiction of its subject matter. It gets into the specifics of the ideologies that inform Japanese education. It reveals the conflicted feelings of very devoted teachers. Mainly, it just delves into a lot of idiosyncratic details that will be fascinating to viewers unfamiliar with Japan—how meals are served and eaten, what students are actually taught, what educators believe makes a “good” person, the importance of the group/class system.

As someone who has had only limited experience with Japanese elementary schools, what struck me more than anything was the extent to which every facet of a child’s life must be rehearsed, practiced, and perfected. Before beginning his first year in elementary school, a young boy’s mother has him practice carrying a lunch tray at home (“the classroom is big, so you’ll need to carry it a long way without spilling”). A young girl’s mother helps her practice saying “Here!” in a loud voice when she hears her name called for attendance. In class, the students are taught the right way to raise their hand (arm straight, elbow touching the ear). They must sit up straight, feet on the floor. When a child is seen zigzagging down the hall on his way to class, a teacher stops him and earnestly tells him to “walk normally.” Before their graduation ceremony, the sixth-graders are taught exactly how to receive their diploma (say “here!” in a loud voice, walk forward, stop, bow, receive diploma, make eye contact, bow again). 

This adds up to a world in which nothing is left to chance, and where there is a “right” way to do everything. Very quickly, the children become enforcers as much as rule-followers, telling each other to sit straight, not to run, or to put their spoon in exactly the right spot on the tray after they finish lunch. 

It all feels more than a little militaristic, and while Japan’s current school curriculum was influenced by democratic reforms that sought to do away with unthinking obedience and nationalism, much of the thinking behind Tsukado Elementary’s ideology still focuses on conformity and obedience. A “good” person, it seems, is someone who does things the “right” way, and the right way is whatever the teachers tell you. One teacher talks about the endless struggle between “restraint and freedom,” but it seems like restraint and conformity usually win out. 

But the teachers! Really, another big takeaway from The Making of a Japanese is that whatever Japanese elementary school teachers are being paid, it’s not enough. The teachers at Tsukado are truly devoted to their charges, frequently arriving at school by six a.m., working weekends, and staying into the evening. (The dark side of this reality is unfortunately not explored. In recent years more teachers have begun speaking out about harsh working conditions, and the spouse of a teacher who died after working 53 consecutive days without a single day off sued his school district and won.) The teachers at Tsukado are genuinely driven to help their students become the best versions of themselves, even if they’re conflicted about how to do that. Their own teachers were strict, but parents today want teachers to be gentler. When these teachers scold, they make a point of telling the student exactly why they’re being scolded and encouraging them to do better next time. 

The film also dissects aspects of Japan’s famous group dynamic. From the first day of school, all of the students are part of a “class” and a “group” that will become like a second family for the year. If one person fails, the whole group fails. Nothing can begin until everyone is ready. The emphasis is less on individual pride or achievement and more on group achievement. A telling moment comes when a teacher asks students to “share your opinions and form a consensus.” The goal is not really for everyone to share their individual thoughts, but for everyone to eventually be on the same page (or at least to look that way). This style of discussion will often continue through high school. Anyone who has taught English language classes in Japan will begin to understand why it can be such a challenge to get their students to say anything that they fear might differ too much from the group. 

Needless to say, this puts incredible pressure on very young children to not let the group down, and to think and behave as similarly as possible to one’s classmates. But I was also intrigued to see that even very young students are keen to support and comfort each other. Students who struggle to keep up in P.E. and music are consoled and cheered on by their classmates. Rather than focusing on the ways that this group dynamic can lead to harsh treatment of anyone who can’t keep up, the film instead focuses on the way that students and teachers all support each other, making sure no one gets left behind. 

The Making of a Japanese is a solid film. It clearly moved a lot of the people around me, who I could hear quietly weeping during the graduation scene at the end. But about halfway through, I started to feel uneasy. It’s all just…a little too neat and clean. I find it hard to believe, for example, that during the year that filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki and her team were filming at Tsukado, 1) no student ever hit another student, 2) no student ever bullied another student, 3) no teacher ever lost their temper, and 4) no one ever really failed at anything. Every student profiled in this film is ultimately successful at what they do. Some of the teacher’s methods may be harsh, the film hints, but they work.

But what about when they don’t? What about the children in Japan who buckle under the pressure, who simply can’t thrive in a typical public school environment because they have slightly different learning styles? What about the stories of overworked teachers? What about the students who bully and are bullied, a problem that teachers and administrators often seem to treat as an inevitability? 

Maybe none of this happened at Tsukado Elementary during the year that its students were being filmed. It’s also understandable that students, teachers, and parents who had less than ideal experiences at Tsukado simply opted not to participate in the film. I’m also curious as to whether the school had any control over the final cut—given that the school is actually named and its general neighborhood identified, I would be shocked to learn that school administrators and parents were fine with including footage in the documentary that portrayed the school in a negative light. 

The filmmaking team may have faced all kinds of obstacles to presenting a more nuanced picture of elementary school life. But the end result, then, is a film that, while revealing, only scratches the surface of some of the most confounding issues facing Japanese education today. In the same way that I wish Japanese elementary schoolers had more opportunities to take messy risks without endless rehearsal and preparation, I wish that the film itself had been willing to get a bit messier with its subject matter.