darkflame21 wrote:
TV Nihon
Jyouou no Kyoushitsui—‰¤‹³Žºj
@@@Saturday Nights 9:00pm Starts July 2nd
http://www.ntv.co.jp/jyoou/
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Courtesy of Daily Yomiuri On-Line:Televiews/ 3 cheers for 6th-grade boot camp
Wm. Penn / Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Move over, Kimpachi-sensei! Maya Akutsu-sensei of Joo no Kyoshitsu (Saturdays, 9 p.m., NTV network) is vying for a place next to you in the small-screen teachers' Hall of Fame, and she is obviously a woman who gets what she wants.
The series was the first prime-time drama out of the gate this quarter and it has yours truly eating crow already. My "stale doughnuts" analogy of last week does not apply to Joo no Kyoshitsu. It is about as crisp as a Japanese drama can get.
Yuki Amami plays Maya Akutsu, a sixth-grade teacher who dresses all in black and is repeatedly referred to as "oni sensei" (the teacher from hell), when, in fact, she seems to be an ultrarealist at heart. The drama focuses on a year in her classroom and, particularly, the effect it has on 12-year-old Kazumi--a nice but mediocre student whose parents want to send her to a private secondary school.
And what a surprising change of pace this classroom is! There is no slouching, talking back or disregard for the rules here. The teacher is actually in charge, and she takes no whining from the kids, who are shivering in their chairs, fearful of her wrath.
Akutsu-sensei accomplished this feat by introducing a test-based rank and privilege system on the first day. The highest scorers on the Monday morning test get their choice of seats and other perks while the two lowest scorers are burdened with all the chores for the week from blackboard and toilet cleaning to serving lunch. The system also disallows toilet breaks during class because this reflects an inability to manage one's own schedule.
Kazumi gets the first week's work assignment along with the class clown, a warmhearted boy who is not nearly as silly as he acts. The child actors in the series are all likeable pros who give realistic portrayals of the wide spectrum of an average classroom from the isolated serious students to the sophisticated girls who think they already know what life is all about. Akutsu-sensei lets them know immediately that they do not have a clue.
When the students protest her system and call it unfair, she tells them to open their eyes. In Japanese society, she lectures, those who work hard or have influence get all the privileges, and the lazy or less affluent end up with the leftovers. She says only six in 100 people can expect to be happy and the elite already have most of the advantages and access to the best medical care. She tells them that, as products of the public school system, they will have to scramble to get anything at all, and most of them will end up as "bonjin" (ordinary people), to whom those on the top will be happy to leave the soldiering and service-sector jobs.
When the kids counter that grades aren't everything and the sports and entertainment worlds still beckon, the teacher argues an even smaller percentage will make it in those fields. She may just be telling it as it is, but it is a pretty bleak message for the first day of sixth grade.
In another scene, the servers overturn the curry pot and are about to go to the cafeteria for more when she stops them. Serve what's left to me and those at the top of the class pecking order, she says. The others will have to go without. In the real world, she notes, Japan ranks 124th in food production, and without the United States or China would die of hunger--yet we still throw 20 percent of our food away. We can't really afford to waste food.
A week on the work team has Kazumi putting in a heroic study effort for the second week's test but she is so busy studying, she forgets to go to the bathroom. She is in obvious distress but the teacher will not excuse her. This leads the smartest girl, the teacher's favorite who has been receiving extra guidance, to stand up for Kazumi in front of the class and point out life can't always go by the rules. Akutsu-sensei tells her she can escort Kazumi out but she will be sacrificing her own test score for her.
Out in the hall in tears, Kazumi can't make it to the toilet in time. The classmate, until then not one of her friends, cleans it up for her and vows silence. When they return, the teacher punishes the girl who was brave enough to speak out by assigning her to the next week's work detail.
Not exactly the most relaxing way to spend a Saturday night, but this is definitely a drama where viewers are going to be asked to think--a great rarity on Japanese TV. I suspect we are supposed to think the hardship, the harsh reality and the cold severity of authority figures can also end up creating solidarity, social consciousness, communication and compassion among the students and maybe even, like icing on the cake, lead to an improvement in their grades.
But perhaps it is not quite that simple either. Akutsu-sensei obviously has a few other tricks up her sleeve, and if we stay tuned we may all learn something interesting. If nothing else, we should find out the secret of why Akutsu-sensei has been away on a sabbatical for the last two years.
Like Yukie Nakama of Gokusen and Takashi Sorimachi of GTO, this TV teaching gig may be the role for which Amami becomes best-known. The script is by Kazuhiko Yukawa, who also gave us the TV adaptation of GTO and the ultrarealistic, posttraumatic stress disorder drama Mahiru no Tsuki in 1996, and it looks like he won't disappoint this time either.
Joo no Kyoshitsu earned a perfect score in the first week's test--but can it maintain that high standard over the next 10 weeks?
(Jul. 7, 2005)
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