On why Japanese society is "cleaner" than the rest of us

Off to school with pencil box and cleaning rag

Hola Global Jigsaw amigos,

Today’s post is about Japanese schools and the role they play in teaching “cleaning” as a subject akin to language or science. The first third of this post is free to read to all, with the remaining two thirds behind a paywall exclusively for subscribers. So, if you ever wondered how to make cleanliness a cornerstone of society to subscribe right away :-)

We all have different priorities as parents. For some, having children who eat every kind of food is on top of their list. For others, it is ensuring their child becomes a piano prodigy. For me, imparting a sense of cleanliness – for I do hold it to be next to Godliness - has been a major preoccupation. In making cleanliness a cornerstone of how one lives, I believe there are several other values, from empathy to discipline, that become inculcated as side effects.

This was driven home to me when we lived in Japan. The centrality of cleanliness in Japanese metaphysics was evident from the language itself. Kirei, meant clean, but also pretty, while fuketsu, or unclean, meant hideous. Kitanai (literally dirty) meant nasty, mean and calculating.

The key to how Japan was such a “clean” society was in the early acculturation to cleanliness undertaken by Japanese schools. The classrooms of elementary schools were filled with rows of fresh-faced children seated behind desks, their jackets slung on the backs of chairs. So far, so standard. What differentiated these from other classrooms around the world, was a hook under the tables from which dangled a cleaning rag, or zokin. Along with stationery and notebooks, this rag was an essential part of a child’s school supplies. Because in addition to reading, writing and math, a major part of the educational curriculum in Japan, comprised of cleaning.

Bag with zokin (cleaning rag) dangling from study desk hook. Pic cfedit: Pallaci Aiyar

In 2018, I visited a public elementary school in the affluent Tokyo suburb of Kichijoji, as part of a reporting trip.