Crime and Punishment

Just as class finally settled down, Seiko strolled up to the front. She was holding her head. Mr. Hirogashi wrote her a pass, no questions asked. He’s just as happy to get rid of her as she is to get rid of him. Her hand was glued to her forehead, but only figuratively. It’s not a migraine, but rather a bad hair day. She’s been having a lot of those ever since her father lopped off her prized bangs as punishment for misusing a vending machine.

He should have trimmed her tongue instead. While waiting for the pass, Seiko couldn’t help but be a nuisance. She looked up from the floor to crack jokes at my expense. They’ve become so repetitive that I can now understand almost everything she throws my way. I counter with squinted eyes.

Discipline is deteriorating at Kanokita like the paint flaking off the walls. Some behavior qualifies as bad even for public schools in America. Fourteen-year-old girls, Seiko included, were caught red-faced after drinking beer (from a vending machine) in the bathroom in between classes. Not that they attend those classes, but the school nurse solved the mystery of their suddenly flush complexions.

Several boys, meanwhile, uploaded pictures of lighting up on school grounds onto their homepages. Word spread quickly. Enforcement of rules has not. The usual morning staff meeting at other schools is held in the late afternoon at Kanokita, probably to take stock of the day’s carnage and to make sure all teachers are accounted for.

In between classes one day, I returned to the teacher’s room to get more pencil prizes. I didn’t understand an announcement on the PA system, and empty chairs greeted me the next period. Class was cancelled. An emergency assembly was held instead because papers spontaneously combusted in the bathroom for the second time in four days. The fire department knows the route here well. Alarm pulling, or paper burning, has proved effective in postponing class.

Walking out of school one afternoon, I approached a girl shivering in the cold. Her skirt bopped up and down as she sang along to the J-pop playing on her cell phone speaker. She congregated with a group of boys on the steps near the gated entrance.

Their eyes radiated mischief. This group also hangs out on the fire stairs in front of the building. A boy sporting a mini-mohawk smiled suspiciously. As I walked by, he opened his uniform jacket and pulled out a gun. His grin exploded into laughter as he fired blanks at a student peeking out from behind the gate.

The kyoki (murder weapon) fooled me at first. But this is Kanokita where anything is to be expected, and so long as the gun’s not real, it’s not threatening enough to take meaningful administrative action. Try telling that to the special ed students caught in the crosshairs and rushing through the gate to reach the safety of waiting vehicles.

Seeing a policeman with the principal in the corridor doesn’t raise eyebrows. Last year the school made national news when a dozen girls were arrested for fighting. The melee unfolded on an embankment where they were trying to throw (drown?) someone in the river. The only thing that sunk was the school’s reputation.

The headlines never seem to fade for nearby residents. Sometimes I meet people who grew up or now live in the ward. While not an alumna, Carrie at Hollywood Models was well aware of Kanokita’s reputation. She cited breaking windows and casting a teacher’s chair into the pool as less criminal mischief.

What it boils down to is that these kids are just naughty by nature…To be continued.