A documentary film that records the daily lives of children at a Japanese public elementary school has lessons for both domestic and overseas audiences.

“The Making of a Japanese,” directed by Ema Yamazaki, has been attracting attention around the world, including Finland, and has been screened at film festivals in several countries.

“Learning about Japanese elementary school is the same as thinking about the country’s future,” Yamazaki, 35, says.

The director said she hopes the film gives people ideas on how best to operate elementary schools for the future of their countries.

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Question: I heard that you filmed a total of 700 hours over a year at a public elementary school in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward. Why did you choose a public elementary school?

Yamazaki: I have a British father and a Japanese mother and graduated from a public elementary school in Osaka. I went to an international middle and high school in Japan and a university in the United States. After that, I started to work in New York.

I was told, “You work very hard,” “You have a sense of responsibility,” and, “You are good at teamwork.” When I think about how I became like this, I realized that I learned the basics during my six years at elementary school.

Q: Your key focus seemed to be times other than the periods when subjects were taught. Why?

A: When I thought about how to convey things that I actually saw, heard and felt at the school, the primary focus naturally became times other than the periods when subjects were taught. The filming coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic period.

There were countries where schools were closed for about a year and a half. But why did Japan reopen its schools as quickly as it did?

I think people in this country believe there are things that children cannot learn without a “place.” I think Japanese concepts toward education and priorities are different from those of other countries.

Q: What about the widely discussed issues of bullying and school absenteeism, and the increasing number of children who are choosing to attend alternative schools?

A: We need to think about the issues, but they are not the ones I can raise in an complete manner. So, I wanted to describe “typical” Japanese school life this time.

What I realized when I went overseas after growing up in Japan was that Japanese people take for granted some incredible things.

So, I wanted to create a cue that leads us to think about these incredible things with confidence, putting these issues aside for the moment.

Japanese people living here have negative feelings that “our education system is bad.” So, I wanted to tell Japanese people about things I noticed while living outside of the country.

Q: How was the film accepted in foreign countries, such as Finland?

A: The film was shown in April at a local theater in Finland. It was expanded from one theater to 20 of them and ran for more than four months.

Our image of Finland is that it is proud of the high quality of its education system. However, this film still made people of Finland think about their future education.

Q: This film again made us aware of important things in Japanese education. But there are scenes where the audience may wonder if the teacher’s instructions are too much, such as ensuring the children’s indoor shoes are put neatly in rows or correcting children’s postures for chorus singing. What do you think?

A: Teachers’ ways of thinking for the benefit of children have turned from white or gray to nearly black at some point. This sort of risk was seen in the Japanese education system. I don’t think the Japanese education system is perfect.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the “mask police” scolded others for not wearing masks properly and those infected with the virus were ostracized not only in adult society but also at elementary schools.

I thought they were two sides of the same coin.

I mean, adults make these systems, and children get absorbed in these systems. I believe it is the adults’ responsibility to think about what kind of systems they should develop for everyone.

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A discussion related to the documentary was held at a Japanese elementary school in Tokyo on Dec. 1, covering issues and the meaning of education.

Erkki Lassila, an assistant professor at Kobe University who graduated from a university in Finland and has school teaching experience, participated in the session.

He said one reason the film was a big hit was that Finland had fallen from its No. 1 status in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which assesses the academic achievements of students in various countries.

Lassila also cited the educational problems of “focusing too much on the uniqueness of each student,” the looseness of schools and the lack of respect for teachers.

Professor Hiroshi Sugita at Kokugakuin University has expertise in “tokkatsu” special activities that children are required to learn at Japanese schools under education ministry’s guidelines, aside from general subjects, such as mathematics or Japanese.

At the discussion session, Sugita noted that parts of Japanese-style education have been adopted in Egypt, Mongolia, Indonesia and other countries.

But he also raised doubts about the strength of “collective nature” in Japanese education.

“Class meetings are a place for consensus building. But depending on the way how they are handled, children learn to follow other children’s wishes and how to ‘read the room,’ which causes the exact opposite of the education ministry’s intention,” he said. “That is why we need to rethink the special activities in Japanese education.”