How Japan drives academic cheating

One of the top stories in Japan this week is the arrest of a 19-year-old boy who admitted to cheating on a college entrance exam.

The Japanese media are focusing on how the boy was able to cheat in the first place, and calling for schools to update anticheating measures. However, I think it will be more useful to address the societal demands that drove the student to cheat in the first place, as well as examine the cross-cultural understanding of cheating.

During the grueling two-day entrance exam for Kyoto University, the boy, whose name is being withheld because Japanese citizens are legally minors until the age of 20, used a mobile phone to post test questions on Yahoo! Japan’s Chiebukuro. Chiebukuro is like the Japanese version of Yahoo! Answers. The 19-year-old posted math and English questions under the screen name “aicezuki,” a moniker apparently derived from aisu suki, loosely translated as ice cream lover. (See aicezuki’s profile, including the illegally posted questions and their answers, here.) After one long Japanese passage requiring translation to English, aicezuki wrote, “Chōbun de o-tesū okakeshimasu ga yoroshiku onegaiitashimasu.” It’s a rather long passage, and I apologize for the trouble.

News that someone had cheated on the test came to light Sunday, February 27, after an Internet user contacted Kyoto University, triggering an investigation. Aicezuki ran away from his prep school on the night of Wednesday, March 2, and was arrested the following day after police tracked him down using signals from his cell phone’s global positioning system.

Aicezuki could be the first person to be prosecuted in Japan for cheating. He has been arrested for fraudulently obstructing business. If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison or a 500,000 yen ($6,000) fine. However, the charges are likely to be dropped.

While American universities take a holistic approach in screening applicants, considering such important factors as SAT or ACT scores, high school academic performance, or the applicant’s family’s ability to add a new wing to the school’s library, Japanese schools focus primarily on entrance exam results.

The Japanese fixation on passing exams has led to some college-track kindergartens to require entrance exams. College entrance exams are considered to be the most fair method to screen college applicants, and students generally prepare for these tests a year in advance. The problem with relying primarily on a test is that tests can only measure “testable” knowledge. This leads to students memorizing facts, without gaining any real insight into or practical application of academic subjects. This is also why Japanese schools emphasize rote memorization rather than critical thinking. One elderly Japanese man told me, “Us Japanese are not good at thinking; we’re good at memorizing! We say that to know something by heart is the same as understanding it.” I disagreed on that grounds that when I was a Catholic school boy, I could recite the Hail Mary without understanding the prayer’s archaic English.

Another factor that could have led aicezuki to cheat is the Japanese school system’s murky understanding of cheating. Acts that would clearly be seen as cheating in American schools are tolerated in Japanese schools. Turning in plagiarized work is considered “good enough.” The attitude is that if the original was correct, then how could a word-for-word copy be wrong? Students who let their classmates copy their homework are not seen as facilitating cheaters, but as helping their peers–an important value in Japan’s communal society. I once questioned how one of my girls received a 100 percent on a test, considering she got a 0 percent on her previous test (the only part of the previous test she had filled out was her name, which she had misspelled). I later noticed a piece of paper sticking out of her pencil case, which I discovered to have all the test answers written in tiny print. I brought this to the attention of the head teacher, who disregarded it saying that there was no way to know if she had used that paper to cheat, and that having the paper alone didn’t prove intent. In other words, a student would have to be caught red-handed to be accused of cheating. This attitude has precedent in the Japanese concepts of tatemae (facade) and honne (reality). In a country where privacy is virtually nonexistent, having a worldview that facilitates this dichotomy allows one to maintain face, and is not viewed as lying or cheating.

While aicezuki clearly knew what he was doing was wrong, given the amount of emphasis Japanese schools place on passing exams, and the ambiguous perception of cheating, his actions are not so shocking in context.