The Language Teacher
October 2001
Choosing to be Ronin
Tsukada Mamoru
Sugiyama Jogakuen University
It is said that yobiko1 is viewed as one of the necessary social evils produced by Japan's notorious entrance examinations. Stereotypical ronin2 students are viewed socially as "losers" who failed in their college entrance examinations and wait to take the examinations again the following year. The media tends to describe them as poor young people who might be prone to committing suicide -- even though there is no systematic correlation between the suicide rate and the intensity of the college entrance examination (Rohlen, 1983). A popular image of the Japanese entrance examination is still represented by the phrase, examination hell, an ordeal leading Japanese young people through a hell of rote memorization in which they sacrifice their youth without learning academically. To represent Japanese teenagers' attitude toward study, a recent American college sociology text (Thio, 2000, p.309) still uses the outdated expression, "Four you score, five you die" meaning "If you sleep five hours a night instead of four, you won't pass the exams." Actually, not all high school students in Japan take the entrance exams, but approximately 50% of the age group will. In addition, because of entrance exams by recommendation3 and a recent declining college-bound age group, college entrance seems to be becoming easier and easier. Only those highly motivated students, then, who aspire to the admission of a higher ranked university tend to intensely prepare themselves for college entrance. Moreover, because of the difficulty to enter these universities, these students are also likely to become ronin.
This paper argues that the above description of ronin students is a misrepresentation. Ronin students in yobiko do not necessarily experience their yobiko life as an examination hell. Instead, they defy their yobiko life and make meaningful experiences out of it. Drawing upon my one-year fieldwork in a yobiko4 I will describe the perspectives shared by ronin students and, unlike the popular image of ronin experiences depicted above, will discuss their experiences not negatively, but positively.
Japan's Meritocracy and Yobiko
Okano and Tsuchiya (1999) state that in Japanese schools children are supposed learn to follow the school routine of punctuality and to maintain cooperative relationships with peers. By the end of schooling, these students are supposed to have learnt that selection to higher schools is based on merit and is therefore fair, that equal opportunity of education enables everyone who works hard to achieve their goals; and, by implication, that those who fail at school and beyond have only themselves to blame. Takeuchi (1995, 246-247) takes a stronger approach. He characterizes Japan's meritocracy as a selection system, which singles out the ideal-type of human model. He stresses the visibility of the selection process as a characteristic of Japan's meritocracy. Japanese tracking involves the visible hierarchical ranking of the schools. Promotion patterns in careers are also visible owing to the new college graduate employment system and to the uniform pace of promotion for an entry group in a given year. Once individuals are selected, then they are re garded as having ability. One's ability is a reality constructed by selection. In this sense, meritocracy in Japan is based upon a constructed fiction of ability.
The ideal-type created by Japan's meritocracy pursue their survival in immediate competition without any specific long-term goals. Their ambition is thus a limited orientation and is concerned with the immediate goal of entering prestigious schools at each consecutive stage. Entrance examinations promote a tactical mentality. This entrance exam referent human model corresponds to the model of salary men who constantly make routine efforts without any personal meaning or passion.
The Entrance Exam and Yobiko
The college entrance examination is designed to evaluate applicants' academic achievement by testing their knowledge of the subjects and topics covered in the high school curriculum. Historically, several aptitude tests were tried out to evaluate applicants' academic and scholastic ability in the entrance examinations at different levels of schooling. The aptitude test, however, did not become established in the entrance examination system in Japan. This circumstance is related to the general cultural value placed on effort in Japanese society, that is, one's ability is considered to be one's actual accomplishment.5
The education industry (i.e., yobiko and juku), thereby, developed to help college applicants identify their chances of entering a university by providing hard-to-get objective or comparative data. As well as evaluating the individual student's academic ability, the standardized value of the mock exam6 functions to evaluate the rank of each department in each university throughout Japan. Each student receives his or her raw test score on each subject, their standardized value, and the total scores with some comments on the potential of successfully entering the specific university departments of their choice. Comments are written in a standardized statement with expressions such as "Your test scores are within the boundary of success, so study hard at this pace," "Your test scores are on the boundary between success and failure, so study harder to reach within the range of success," or "You need to reconsider your choice of university department and to rethink your way of studying." After receiving their standardized value on the mock exam, students consult the pamphlet to see which department of which university they are likely to enter. In this way they acquire a clear sense of the relative ranking of university departments throughout Japan. As a further consequence, the standardized test score value of each mock exam is now so institutionalized that it has become the criterion to evaluate the rank of a department of a university.
The core of the college entrance examination, then, is the visibility of ranking the university departments and the relative assessment of students' ability measured by a series of mock exams administered by the education industry. In other words, the standardized values measured by the mock exams become proven ability to students themselves as well as to others. This constitutes the fundamental identity of those students who are intensively involved in the college entrance examination competition. Additionally, ronin students seem to challenge the standard sorting process itself. If they examined their test scores or standardized scores from the series of the mock examinations during their third year of high school, they would have identified a university department that was suitable to their academic record. However, most likely, they intentionally applied to a university department with an entrance exam above their cumulative test scores and were aware that they were likely to fail. In this sense, these students have chosen to become ronin.
Ronin: The Fourth Year of High School
When students in high school apply to the university department of their first choice and fail in the entrance examination, they become stigmatized because they could not meet what they as well as others had expected of them. This is true even though for students aspiring to the higher ranked universities, being a ronin can be regarded as the "fourth year of high school." In fact, up to one-third of any high school class may become ronin. Despite this high figure, students who failed in the college examination cannot help but feel stigmatized simply because their failure spoils their self-identity as students of good academic standing in their high schools. The comments of a female ronin student illustrates this well:
In our high school it is quite common for female students to become ronin. So I took becoming a ronin as natural. But I felt uncomfortable walking in my hometown although it was okay to walk around in Hiroshima.After becoming a ronin I commuted to Hiroshima by taking an earlier train than in my high school days, in order to avoid meeting my juniors from high school.
Ronin students feel such stigma because they themselves had a negative view of ronin students when they were at high school. Consequently, rather than take responsibility and blame themselves as Okano and Tsuchiya (1999) suggest they have been taught to do, students justify their failure as accidental or at least as not being the true expression of their ability. In order to avoid the loser label, they attribute the cause of failure to something other than their true ability. When asked why they failed, students may respond evasively with, "I did not use all of my ability in the entrance examination this year," or "I enjoyed my high school campus life too much and did not prepare myself for the college entrance examination enough." These students, then, who bear a sense of loss of worth because the educational competition proved too much for their abilities -- but who still aspire to a prestigious university nonetheless -- recreate a new self-identity at yobiko and give it a positive meaning by forming new hopes there.
Early in their yobiko life, ronin students are full of hope and enjoyment. They might say, "I am having a good time now," or "I can freely attend classes as I like, unlike in my high school days." Ronin students tend to be impressed by yobiko teachers and their energetic, effective instruction. In order to realize their dream, these students orient themselves as challengers to their previous results and consequent social labeling.
During the later stages of yobiko life, however, anxiety about failing the following year entrance examination begins to prevail over hopes of success. By the time the high school summer break has come, as high school students attend the special summer sessions at yobiko, ronin students tend to wonder how much progress they have made in comparison with the high school students. In the autumn, ronin students become serious, unlike in the initial period when they were generally cheerful. When they are alone, they are so anxious that they might doubt their ability to pass their chosen entrance examination. With such anxiety, they may start questioning their study methods, and also their decision to become a ronin. Moreover, they may even question their way of life, sense of direction, and identity, further eroding their confidence in succeeding at the upcoming entrance examination. Being outside7 the socially recognized norm now leads them to question for the first time the entire arrangement of their lives and the message of the system that they cannot be anybody if they fail in these examinations, although up through high school they had subscribed to it and were on the right track along with their classmates. Through this questioning of the system, then, they come to discover their philosophizing self.
College students reflecting on their ronin experiences often regard their ronin period as a time of "gaining a sense of perseverance," "growing-up," and "precious and unforgettable experiences." One ronin student wrote:
... I was always working hard, just like climbing up step by step to the top of the mountain. Compared with my boring campus life now, ronin life was enjoyable. It was a happy life[o]Once I began studying for the entrance exam, I realized that I would not change my life without doing something. I found that I could do it. I think that I experienced hardship during my ronin life but the degree of hardship turned out to be a meaningful experience. I now understand that the entrance exam was not everything. But if there is a university that you desire, then you should risk your life for it. Without such an experience, I believe, our life would be boring. Ronin life is a miniature experience of my whole life.
His letter and others' reflections on ronin experiences suggest that, because the students were situated in socially stigmatized position for a long time, they have attained consciousness enlightenment about their personal situation. In other words, their ronin position provided them with an opportunity to question the value of their life and to mature psychologically (Tsukada, 1999, 162-169).
The "Enlightened Self" in Yobiko Life
Shifting demographics have dispersed the bottom of the university-ranking pyramid and the college entrance examinations have become less competitive. Nonetheless, many students are still striving for the pinnacle (i.e., a higher position in the ranking of the standardized value scores) with each mock exam of their yobiko life. This indicates that, since yobiko students choose to spend another year studying in the belief that entering a higher ranked university will be worth the effort, many Japanese people believe the education system is meritocratic. Yet, the establishment of the entrance examination system in Japan has resulted in a peculiar kind of meritocracy in which one's ability appears as one's achievement, which in turn becomes a socially constructed reality as a consequence of the selection process. The achieved position in ranking is a proven ability that is the basis of evaluating students in the college entrance exam system. Thus, yobiko life is a life of constant striving for competition in a series of mock examinations and ronin students are likely to experience a stressful life, fluctuating between hope and anxiety in the process of studying for the next year's college entrance exam. Depending on one's perspective, this can be considered either an examination hell or a challenging life of the student's own choosing.
Ronin students have been affected by Japan's unique meritocracy, which emphasizes tactical mentality without any long-term vision. But there is also a positive aspect to yobiko life that encourages students to reflect about themselves, stemming from their outsider position, not recognized as having socially legitimized status. Partly because of doubts about yobiko or entrance exam culture, but more importantly because they are outside any officially recognized status and perceive negative societal views toward themselves, ronin students gain a greater awareness of their life. This cognitive development allows them to go beyond the tactical human model of salary men (who are less likely to question the status quo and try to stay safely within the established life course) and may lead them to form a more independent life course in a more creative and integrated manner. In this sense, yobiko life might not be indicted altogether as a necessary social evil but might be recognized as one modern ritual of maturation for Japanese youth.
References
Donlon. T. (1984). The College Board Technical Handbook for the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Achievement Test. College Entrance Examination Board, New York.
Okano, K. & Tsuchiya, M. (1999). Education in contemporary Japan: Inequality and diversity. Cambridge: CUP.
Rohlen, T. (1983). Japan's High School. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Takeuchi, Y. (1995). Nippon no Meritokurashi (Japan's Meritocracy: Structure and Mentality) Tokyo: Tokyodaigaku Shuppan.
Thio, A. (2000). Sociology. Needham Hights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Tsukada, M. (1991). The yobiko life: A study of the legitimation process of social stratification in Japan. Berkeley: The Institute of East Asian Studies.
Tsukada, M. (1999). Roninsei no soshioroji (The sociology of ronin students). Okayama: Daigakukyoiku Shuppan.
Zeng, K. (1999) Dragon gate: Competitive examinations and their consequences. New York: Cassell & Continuum.
1Yobiko are specialized private schools dedicated to preparing their students for success on college entrance examinations. High school graduates who did not succeed in their first try at the entrance to the university of their first choice and will wait to take the college entrance examinations again the following year are called ronin students. Students in yobiko are not only ronin students but also junior and senior high school students who attend classes there after their regular school, whereas ronin students attend the yobiko as full-time students from morning to afternoon, usually five days per week.
2 The name ronin derives from the term for master-less samurai in the feudal era of Japan. The ronin students belong to neither a high school nor a college and thus are similarly master-less.
3 Private universities select a list of high schools and ask the high schools to send their students to them by the school recommendation. The general guidelines set by the Ministry of Education and Sciences suggest that the maximum ratio of accepting students by recommendation should be within thirty percent of all the entering students and if a university has an attached high school, the ratio could be within fifty percent. Private universities make use of this system to secure students even though this system is becoming less and less popular among high schools.
4 My fieldwork began with a two weeks' trip to Hiroshima in late April 1985, as a pilot study and a way to contact staff members at one of yobiko in Hiroshima. I was employed as a teacher of English in the middle of July to teach summer sessions and taught there until August 1986 on a one-year contract. I conducted unstructured interviews with 71 students while using other data collection methods such as administering questionnaires, diaries, and an analysis of compositions by ronin students. The ronin students in this paper may seem to be outdated simply because they were in the middle of the 1980's when the number of college applicants was still increasing. But in this paper I will discuss unchanging characteristics of yobiko life and the psychology of ronin students. For a detailed description of the methods used see the appendix in Tsukada Yobiko Life (1991).
5 Zeng (1999) argues that the tradition of competitive entrance examination is related with the common cultural heritage, geographical proximity, and many parallels in cultural and educational values, concepts, and practices among Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. In these countries the entrance examination achievement test is embedded in the concept of meritocracy. By contrast, in American education, the SAT is used as one means to evaluate students' innate ability or aptitude while emphasizing its generality, equal opportunity, and fairness (Donlon 1984). In this sense, in theory, the American education pays more attention to individuals' innate potential than academic achievement shown in the entrance examinations though it pays equal attention to G.P.A. or students' class rank in high school, school extra-curriculum activities, all of which are cumulative achievements in schooling.
6 The mock exams are administered by the education industry such as yobiko or publishers, which specialize in the college entrance examinations. The questions in the mock exams are similar to those in the college entrance examinations as well as in the Center Test (daigakunyushi). They cover all the subjects required or selected in the college entrance examinations, including Mathematics, English, Japanese & Japanese literature, Social Studies (e.g., Geography, Politics and Economics, Japanese History, World History), Sciences (e.g., Physics, Biology, Chemistry). There are different types of mock exams according to the type of university departments test takers want to apply for (National university-oriented, Private university-oriented, Multiple-choice question type, etc). Each type of mock exam is administered more than three times so that each test taker will see their test score relative position in the type. Usually, more than 300,000 students (both high school juniors and ronin students) will take each mock exam so that there is a certain statistical reliability of the relative position of each test taker's score in the mock exam.
7 High school dropouts and free part-timers are literally outside of society, and they are likely to deny the importance of a college education or the entrance exam itself. Whereas ronin students value their entry to the university of their choice and they have to wait for the next year's entrance exam without being within official institutions that can issue a desired certificate or diploma once the period of study has been completed there. Personally as well as socially, ronin students feel outside the official system and regard yobiko life as the means to enter their university.
Tsukada Mamoru is Professor of Sociology and American Studies at Sugiyama Jogakuen University. He received his Master's degree in American studies from Hiroshima University and earned his Ph.D. degree in sociology from the University of Hawaii in Manoa (1988). His interests include the entrance examination system, life histories of teachers, and gender and minority issues in Japan. His main books and articles on education are "The Institutionalized Supplementary Education in Japan" in Comparative Education (1988), Yobiko Life (1991), and Jukentaisei to Kyoushi no Raifu Kousu (The Entrance Examination System and Teachers' Life Course) (1998).
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