As often happens around here, the bad news was delivered by my mortal enemy Atsuko, who I found waiting for me when I got home from bicycling Adonis over to preschool a few weeks ago.
"Here is your menu choice for the welcome lunch for the neighborhood kodomo-kai" (neighborhood children's association), she said with an evil glint in her eye. "I'll be ordering the meatloaf."
OK... I didn't realize I would be joining a neighborhood children's association...
I took the form and promptly stuck it in a file with all the other papers I don't want to think about.
Cut to a few weeks later (last night)-- Atsuko is wildly emailing me and sure enough the Children's Association Leader wants my menu choice, and Atsuko warns me, "She will be calling you shortly..."
Not 5 minutes later, the phone rings. A very officious type is on the line, "We need your menu preference, what will you be having for lunch?" I sense my impending defeat.
"Well, I guess I'll have the meatloaf, but about this children's association, I really don't know anything about it, so can I decide whether I am going to join or not after I receive more information?"
An annoyed pause was followed by, "Well, actually, everyone must join."
Got it.
See, I wasn't sure if it was like the mandatory river cleanup (that some people can get out of if they have a decent excuse) or if it was like trash duty-- which no one can get out of, even if they die.
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The First Emperor of China (3rd century BC), the dreaded Qin Shihuangdi, wanted to solidify his authority, so after burying a bunch of troublesome Confucian scholars alive and burning all the books, he then put people into small squads or units, called ban (in Japanese han 班）
If a small village, let's say had 100 people, they could be broken up into 10 groups of 10 han. The beauty of the han system worked like this: if a person broke the law, the punishment would be meted out to the entire han. So that, if say, Lang Lang stole a pig, the entire han would get slapped in chains. It is probably true that it was an effective way to keep people in line.
It must have been since the Japanese still use it today. It's called "responsibility by association" (連帯責任) Makoto went to Kyoto for his high school field trip. His class of maybe two dozen students were broken up into 5 han, and one of the boys in his han was found smoking so all 5 students had to stay in their room grounded.
It is a brilliant method for ensuring the people keep each other in line. Yes, you are your brother's keeper (especially if you belong to the same han!)
In Adonis' Dandelion Class of 30 kids, they broken down like Tibetan monks into the red hats and the white hats-- which are then further broken down into small groups of 5. Our boy is in the Grizzly Bear "han" of the red hat sect....
I will never forget the day I became Illustrious leader of our han-- that is Lady Han-cho san to you! I will never forget it because I was handed the trash duty armband and "trash offender NOTEBOOK" on the same day (of course the only offenders are me and the blind man on the corner.... )
So, that is that-- I am now-- it seems-- a member of the Nishiki-cho children's association. In more rural parts of Japan, most women are also in wives associations as well. It is a cure for alienation or depression, I would think, since people always know where they belong. It keeps us in line, but I guess it also makes us feel as if we belong to something bigger than just ourselves-- we do! It's called a han.
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