Abstract
A student at Sakuranomiya Senior High School in Osaka who was a member of the basketball team committed suicide at the end of 2012 because he could not endure the severe corporal punishment meted out by the advisory teacher of the basketball team. This suicide brought corporal punishment in school sport club activities to the attention of the public and gave it a social dimension.
From the legal point of view, the Japanese education system has prohibited corporal punishment since the “Education Order” was enacted in 1879. Nonetheless, corporal punishment has been used as a means to discipline students. Particularly, corporal punishment was discussed with the assumption that it was necessary for education before the Second World War. In the postwar period, however, discussions have focused on why corporal punishment prohibited by law is carried out in schools, and corporal punishment is depicted as deviant behavior by teachers. In the 1990s, the notion that corporal punishment is tantamount to violence, which is not allowed for any reason whatsoever, grew dominant.
Emile Durkheim asked more than 100 years ago why a school that plays the central role in human training has inevitably to become the center of barbarian behavior. He attributed the occurrence of corporal punishment to two points: schools need forcible interventions instead of letting students grow naturally, and teachers unknowingly cherish the habit of expansive delusion in the course of contact with students who are inferior to them in knowledge and skills. His discussion, however, did not necessarily explain the sufficient conditions for the occurrence of corporal punishment, though it did explain the necessary conditions. Making up for this shortcoming, Yoshiaki Kameyama applied the triangle of desire proposed by Rene Girard to the explanation of the occurrence of violence in schools. What is ambitious about his model is that it fully considered three kinds of violence: corporal punishment; violence against teachers; and bullying, all of which take place in schools. Although corporal punishment and bullying are different problems, they have significant similarities.
It is possible to explain a large part of corporal punishment in the classroom by assuming the decreasing authority of teachers. However, it remains questionable even now if the same background can explain corporal punishment in club activities.
