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Conscience and a Music Teacher's Refusal to Play the National Anthem

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Conscience and a Music Teacher's Refusal to Play the National Anthem Volume 3 | Issue 1 | Article ID 2167 | Jan 13, 2005 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Conscience and a Music Teacher's Refusal to Play the National Anthem Nobumasa Tanaka Conscience and a Music Teacher's Refusal her ears. Sato lost all strength and was to Play the National Anthem overcome by a sense of utter helplessness. Unable to walk another step, she crouched and by Tanaka Nobumasa sat down amid the darkness. "Kimigayo" lasted about forty seconds. The singing of Japan's national anthem Kimigayo, an ode to the emperor, and the flying "I was immobilized. 'Kimigayo' played on the of the Hinomaru flag, both evocative of Japan's piano has been increasingly incorporated into colonial era, have become flashpoints of school life like this. Why, you might ask, conflict in recent years as the Japanese wouldn't I play the national anthem?" government presses to reincorporate these controversial emblems in a variety of public A large Japanese flag (Hinomaru) hanging in events. Nowhere has the conflict been more front of the stage came into her mind. Prior to intense than in the public schools. The struggle April 6, 2002 the entrance ceremony held in by music teacher Sato Miwako to preserve her the gymnasium of Number Two Elementary conscience in the wake of a 1999 national flag School of Kunitachi City had left an unbearable and national anthem law offers insight into taste in the mouth of Sato, a music teacher who issues of colonialism, war, and historical memory as well as contemporary nationalism. had always declined to provide piano It also addresses both ethical and constitutional accompaniment to "Kimigayo." issues. This article appeared in Sekai, November 2003, pp. 38-46. Tanaka Nobumasa In April 1999 Sato transferred to the school is a Japanese journalist. from another elementary school in Kokubunji City within the greater Tokyo area. In the years since her initial hiring in April 1977, she had The underground passage (known as the become a veteran teacher guiding children in "Abyss") beneath the central stage in the the appreciation of music. In August 1999 a gymnasium is so narrow people can barely pass national flag and national anthem law was by one another, and they often line up twelve or enacted, and thereafter the pressure and thirteen deep. Soon after playing the opening attacks on public schools which did not fully piece, Sato Miwako (b. 1957) switchedimplement this new law became fierce. The positions with a newly hired teacher and found promise in the Japanese Diet not to make it herself walking through the underpass. When compulsory was ignored, and the Japanese she had walked about halfway through the constitution, which ensured freedom of passageway, she heard "Kimigayo" (thethought, conscience, and religion, was national anthem praising the emperor and effectively subordinated to the 'Guiding emblematic of wartime nationalism) with piano Principles in Education.' There emerged here accompaniment echoing from the front stage and there on the horizon a situation resembling above, and the voices of adults singing reached "legal insubordination." 1 3 | 1 | 0 APJ | JF Kunitachi City became engulfed in this torrent equally fearful that an order will be issued for and, in no time at all, the Hinomaru and there to be piano accompaniment with "Kimigayo" were brought to all eleven of its 'Kimigayo.' In other words, I fear that I myself elementary schools. In the process, human will be crushed under foot." rights were smashed. Sato chose to understand the words of Pastor "My feeling was that the Hinomaru and Suzuki as saying: There is nothing to fear when 'Kimigayo' had been made mandatory which the power of the state is a creation of men. was unthinkable. Postwar Japan was supposed "Perhaps it was self-conceit, but his words gave to be a country of laws. This was unbelievable." me extraordinary courage. I, too, began to feel And, yet, the realization of the "impossible" as though I could go on living." Sato's delicate advanced inexorably. For Sato, "it was as if my voice became as thin as a single thread. life was being crushed." For the next three years, Sato adamantly In this gloomy atmosphere, two days later on refused to bow to pressure from her principal April 8, Sato went to attend the entrance to play the piano accompaniment to ceremony at Aoyama Gakuin University where "Kimigayo." For this reason, she was on her eldest son had passed the entrance occasion criticized by name by some in the examination. The ceremony was carried out media and by individuals who took the state as like a missionary school's prayer service supreme and ridiculed her stance of beginning with instrumental organ music and conscience. Nonetheless, Sato remained firm -- the singing of hymns. There was no Hinomaru unimaginably so when you actually see her and no "Kimigayo." The daughter of a Christian delicate frame and serene voice -- that she pastor, born and raised in the church, Sato had "would not play 'Kimigayo.'" In the summer of undergone baptism during middle school; 2003, she came upon something which made whenever "Kimigayo" was played at theher even more resolved. This was a transcript entrance or graduation ceremonies for the of the testimony of the fourth son of Pastor Su elementary or middle schools of her two Ki-ch'ol who had died in prison after refusing to children, they always took their seats. Making pray at a Shinto shrine during Korea's colonial "Kimigayo" mandatory was intolerable; as a era. Christian, it marked a "negation of her life," a "denial of her individuality." Arrested by the police in P'yongyang, Pastor Su was "tortured by being beaten with a bamboo At her son's entrance ceremony, Sato heard sword" in front of his wife, son, and mother. words that sank deeply into her heart. This After being beaten severely, red water -- water occurred during a prayer by Pastor Suzuki into which fine red pepper had been dissolved - Yugo of the Religion Department and brought - was poured into his nose and mouth. The Sato a ray of hope. police sat on the pastor's stomach, forcing a thick red water to spout up from his mouth, "I am not one who fears corcion from powers nose, and eyes. Then they proceeded to torture that I can see, but I do fear that power which I his wife. Compelled to watch the torture of cannot see." This was Pastor Suzuki's general both of his parents, his son lost his ability to point. speak. Until the bitter end, Pastor Su refused to pray at a Shinto shrine, and after seven and "Inasmuch as I was opposed to the compulsory one-half years in prison he died in April 1944. enforcement of the Hinomaru and 'Kimigayo,' I was very fearful of sanctions. I have been When she read this document, Sato thought of 2 3 | 1 | 0 APJ | JF a pianist by the name of Ch'oe Son-ae, a Korean At that meeting, the principal stated that the in Japan who had fought and refusedflag would be raised on the roof at 7:30 a.m. compulsory fingerprinting for twenty years, the following morning. Sato and others felt they whom she had come to know through the had no choice but to question why and for Hinomaru and "Kimigayo" issue. "At that time, whom this was being done. "If you insist that Sato came to the realization that the root of the we raise the flag, you must at least explain mandatory prayers at Shinto shrines and of things to the graduating students tomorrow compulsory flying the Hinomaru and playing morning." To the demands of Sato and her "Kimigayo" were identical. Thus, her resolve colleagues, the principal replied in effect: "It not to play the latter was strengthened. "I will will be a chance for the students to learn just never play 'Kimigayo' -- under nowhat the Hinomaru is." By 11:30 that evening, circumstances." no conclusion had been reached. "Violation of the Obligation to Persevere in At 7:00 on the morning of the graduation Work" with a Single Ribbon ceremony, a provisional staff meeting convened with growing numbers of people standing on a On August 23, 2000, Sato Miwako wasnarrow public street outside the eastern gate of summoned before the Kunitachi Board of Number Two Elementary School. It was late in March, and spring was in the air, although the Education and received a written admonition. cherry blossoms in the school courtyard had yet to bloom. In addition, it was a chilly, At the graduation ceremony on March 24, Sato melancholy morning with a light rain falling. had "violated the obligation to persevere in her Entering the school, the principal locked the work" which constituted item 35 in the law teachers out. A few moments later, the governing local public servants by virtue of Hinomaru rose over the third floor roof. It was "doing such things as wearing a ribbon on one's now around 8:00 a.m., as Sato remembers it. In clothing expressing opposition to" the hoisting fact, this very day was the elementary school of the Hinomaru. Six teachers at Number Two graduation ceremony for Sato's eldest Elementary School and two teachers at daughter. From the previous day, the young Number Five Elementary School were similarly girl had been agonizing over whether or not to reprimanded. In all some seventeen teachers take her seat during the playing of "Kimigayo" including Sato were punished in 2003. Cases in which had become part of the ceremony. which teachers were punished for the wearing However, because of the problem of the school of a ribbon have clearly been exceptional.
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