Not as blissful as it looksFIVE months after the tsunami that led to his family’s evacuation from Fukushima, the boy enrolled at a new school in Yokohama. His new classmates were pitiless. They called him “germ boy”. They stole his things. They punched and kicked him and threw him down the stairs; they took him to a “study” room and beat him some more. He was eight years old.
The abuse went on for nearly three years before the bullies added extortion. In 2014 they told the boy to hand over any compensation his family may have received after their evacuation. His parents were in fact not eligible for any recompense, but relatives had lent them ¥1.5m ($13,000). They kept it in cash at home, fearful that they would again lose access to bank accounts. The boy gave all the money to his classmates. After the cash ran out he stopped going to school altogether.
The boy, now 13, is one of hundreds of evacuees to have been bullied at school. And they are part of a broader problem. Bullying may or may not be more common in Japanese schools than elsewhere, but it is unusually intense when it happens. In 1986 a boy killed himself after...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2oaG2Td
EmoticonEmoticon