Graduation Season

Right now, Japan is thick in the Graduation Season.  Up and down the country, schools of all sizes and levels are seeing off their leaving students in a great flourish of formal pomp.

The world at large perhaps became very familiar with the Japanese Graduation ceremony last year, as the Tohoku Earthquake happened during the midst of that season.  Graduation is an emotional time for students as it is, but for those schools heavily effected, it was a truly heartbreaking time.

The traditional ceremony is highly standardised, and anyone who has attended one in, say, Kyushu will likely tell the same story as someone from Hokkaido.  It's a very formal, stiff-backed ceremony.  Everyone is dressed in their finest suits or kimonos, and there is a lot of bowing and speeches.  That being said, it usually takes place in the largest building in the school: the sports hall.  Nevertheless, the airy hall is dressed up for the occasion with great curtains of red and white, and a stage heaving under the weight of flowers.  There is usually a sign denoting what number graduation ceremony this is in the school's history (again tying it heavily with tradition), and each and every graduating student will make their way slowly and solemnly up to where the Principal stands to bow, collect their certificate, bow, leave the stage, bow to the teachers...an then promptly drop their certificate back onto a table.

Then come the speeches.  Of course, there's the Principal, but there are also members of the PTA and the BOE, people who the students may only ever meet at ceremonies like this.  Near the end comes the singing: the 1st and 2nd year students sing farewell, then the 3rd years get their own goodbye song.  Then they exit in double file to polite applause.  The whole ceremony takes about 2 hours.

Now, I know I've made the whole thing sound very long-winded, ostentatious and boring.  And it is, to be honest.  But I do like it.  As I said in a previous post, it seems like the UK is deeply against anything that isn't deemed absolutely neccessary.  There's some pros to this mindset, of course, but then again I spent 7 years in one school.  I knew people there for 7 years.  And yet we never had a proper sending-off.  Yes, we had an informal party, and a prom.  But this was all manic fun, where everyone segregates off into their usual gangs and there aren't really any goodbyes - and of course, you don't really get to say farewell to the rest of the school, either.  Your time at school just kind of...fizzles out.  The Japanese graduation ceremony, on the other hand, gives a very clear-cut ending to your time at that school, and is a chance to say goodbye to everyone, familiar or not.

It's not perfect, though.  My biggest problem I have (and I'm not alone in this) is the lack of any real meaning in a Junior-High or Elementary School graduation.  But it's not graduating in the sense we know it: it's not about passing test results (and if it is, they are tests where the bar is set deliberately low so everyone will pass), and it's not really a Big Send-off into the wide world - all Elementary School kids go on to Junior High, usually the same one, and effectively all Junior High School students go on to High School or other studies.  With this is in mind, all the pomp and bluster and speeches and "Omedetou"s (Congratulations) seem oddly hollow and lack any real sense of acheivement.

But I do like the ceremony.  Yes, it may not be very meaningful, but it does give students a point in their school life to build to, rather than petering out like I did after 7 years.  And it gives one last chance to say your farewells - and for some schools around the country, that gained true poignancy last year.