Students and parents at a public junior high school in Tokyo have been in an uproar since the school banned hip-hop dancing and forced the dance activity club to perform creative dance instead.
In late May, 46 parents of students at Kojimachi Junior High School submitted a letter of protest to the Chiyoda Ward board of education.
The letter stated that the dance activity club members had lost their opportunity to perform hip-hop routines in front of an audience and that the students had suffered emotional distress.
According to the parents, for the past several years, the school’s dance activity club had performed hip-hop routines at the school’s annual sports festival in May and cultural festival in October.
In preparation for these performances, the club members had been receiving lessons twice a week from a dance coach specializing in hip-hop.
However, in 2023, the school decided that “the dance activity club would no longer perform hip-hop at the sports festival.”
Furthermore, in March this year, the school decided the club would not perform at the fall cultural festival and notified the members.
The school also decreed that, starting this April, the club would study and perform creative dance rather than hip-hop, and the previous coach was replaced by a creative dance specialist.
The 30-or-so club members were shocked, and tearfully appealed to the school authorities that they “wanted to dance hip-hop.” However, the decision has not been reversed.
A parent recalled, “The club’s second- and third-grade members had been practicing their dances hard to the tunes of artists like Chanmina and Ariana Grande. Many of them began to cry when they suddenly had no opportunity to show off their hard work.”
Dance became a compulsory subject in junior high schools in Japan as part of health and physical education in 2012.
Hip-hop, along with creative dance and folk dance, is listed as a “dance of contemporary rhythmic expression” in junior high school health and physical education materials, which are based on the education ministry’s curriculum guidance that defines education standards.
Typically, creative dance taught at junior high schools has no fixed choreography and is danced with free expression—very different from hip-hop styles taught at schools.
The club members are upset because they feel that the school made a unilateral change and forcibly put them in a very different club, the parent explained.
As a result of protests, the school allowed club members to practice hip-hop on their own once a week until July, the end of the first semester, when third-year students “retire” from school clubs.
But the school said it will not allow the members to practice on their own after the end of the first semester.
Some students have quit the club because of this decision.
Asked in an interview why the school has placed a de facto ban on hip-hop, the school’s principal said, “There were various opinions about the dance activity club performing hip-hop at the sports and cultural festivals.”
“Since the dance activity club is (categorized as) an athletic club, we thought the club should aim for official competitions held by the Nippon Junior High School Physical Culture Association, and therefore changed (the focus) to ‘creative dance’,” the principal added.
The principal also said, “I don’t think hip-hop needs to be a club activity,” insisting that the school has no intention of changing the decision.
According to its parent-teacher association, this is not the first time that the school unilaterally changed the content of a club’s activities without consulting the members, and a sense of distrust toward the school authorities is spreading among students and parents.
The 46 parents pointed out that the school’s handling of the dance activity club violates the Chiyoda Ward’s guidelines for athletic club activities at schools, which stipulates that club activities at schools are conducted through voluntary and spontaneous participation of students.
They are demanding that the ward’s education board respond by July 12.
When asked for a comment by The Asahi Shimbun, a representative of the board of education stated, “We are not responding to anyone other than the parties involved.”
NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
Previously, Kojimachi Junior High School has been known for its emphasis on “student autonomy.”
The school’s former principal, who was appointed in 2014, implemented educational reforms that encouraged students and administrators to discuss and decide on school management policies together.
For instance, mandatory standard school uniforms were abolished, allowing the students themselves to choose appropriate clothing for the time and place.
Periodic examinations were also abolished, and a new system was introduced in which all teachers could advise all students, rather than responsibility falling on an assigned homeroom teacher.
However, after that principal retired in 2020, things started to change.
The current principal, who took up the post in 2023, has been reviewing and overturning many of the predecessor’s reforms.
For instance, standard school uniforms were reinstated for new students starting in fiscal 2024, and a change was made in the homeroom teacher system.
A PTA member said that under the current principal, the school has been strengthening guidance for students by imposing detailed rules, such as restricting students from entering classrooms besides their own, restricting them from taking routes to and from school other than pre-reported routes, and restricting them from using the school’s sickroom during classes.
Mitsuko Isoda, an education professor at Saitama University who wrote a book on how to use hip-hop and rap music in school curriculums, said that there may be a gap between the older generation’s image of hip-hop and the image held by the students’ generation.
“It is not good to ignore students’ feelings and unilaterally impose teachers’ values on them,” Isoda said.
