My Family and Other Globalizers | How to get the kids to clean up? Do as the Japanese schools do

The key to how Japan is such a “clean” society is in the early acculturation to cleanliness undertaken by Japanese schools. The classrooms of elementary schools are filled with rows of fresh-faced children seated behind desks, their jackets slung on the backs of chairs. So far, so standard. What differentiates these from other classrooms around the world, is a hook under the tables from which dangles a cleaning rag, or zokin. Along with stationery and notebooks, this rag is 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, comprises cleaning.

In 2018, I visited a public elementary school in the affluent Tokyo suburb of Kichijoji, as part of a reporting trip. I arrived just in time for the lunch break. The two-dozen or so students in teacher Tanabe’s grade three classroom, which I had permission to visit, packed away their books and pulled out lunch mats and chopsticks. A small group of about five children donned facemasks, hairnets and white coats. They left the room, only to return a few minutes later rolling in a trolley laden with lunches.

The day’s offerings included miso soup, fried chicken, a green vegetable mix and bottles of milk. The children on duty for the day carefully served out the lunches before eating their own food. Afterwards, they cleaned up the leftovers and took the trolley back to the kitchen space.

The next 30 minutes were a flurry of activity as desks and chairs were pushed to the sides. It was time to clean up. Clutching mops and cleaning rags, the children fanned out across hallways, staircases, classrooms and water coolers. Some of them zipped about in a kneeling position, hands placed on the floor over a cleaning cloth, elbows locked straight, and hips wiggling high in the air. Others worked earnestly, meticulously scrubbing away at stubborn stains. Teacher Tanabe pitched in with a broom, occasionally calling out instructions over the bracing marching music that was switched on.

Cleaning activities were formally mentioned in the Japanese government’s educational guidelines, but some discretion was granted to individual schools in their implementation. In the Kichijoji school, for example, the children did not clean the toilets, although some Japanese schools made that mandatory too, dispensing with janitors altogether.

School lunch at Hajime National School in March 1944. (Photo: Umemoto, Tadao via Wikimedia Commons)

In teacher Tanabe’s class, the children finished cleaning and returned their zokin to their desk hooks. They seemed bemused at the presence of an Indian journalist who was so interested in their lunchtime shenanigans. I asked the class what they enjoyed most about cleaning. A dozen hands shot up.

A bespectacled 8-year-old went first. “The more trash I clean, the better I feel, especially when the teacher says, ‘well done!’” he said. I realized my question was fodder for teacher’s pets and so I asked another one. What did the children not like about cleaning?

An equal number of hands shot up. “It’s tiring,” complained one girl. “The water cooler area is too cold,” said another boy somewhat mournfully. But like it, or not, these children were going to clean up after themselves, more or less every day, for the rest of their school lives. On special occasions they would even be sent out to clean the streets around their schools.

These daily cleaning sessions encapsulated lessons that went beyond simple hygiene. Teacher Tanabe elaborated on these: working for others, working together and working seriously. Cleaning helped equip children with basic life skills and instilled in them a collaborative spirit. This was as much a part of education as learning multiplication tables. The result: cleaning was not seen as a punishment. It was not seen as beneath anyone’s dignity. It was not seen as dirty, but as the means to be clean.

My family left Tokyo in 2020, and has been living in Spain since, where cleanliness is not the inviolable rule of quotidian life that it is in Japan. But cleaning up, well and often, is one piece of the Japanese archipelago that I am trying to ensure my boys carry within them always.