Japanese students' success is built on the imperative of recalling a minimum of 2,000 Chinese characters used in everyday Japanese - known as "kanji".
Competition is tough throughout a child's education, with potential pupils and parents required to attend interviews to get into some of the nation's elite kindergartens - from where they are invariably able to remain in the best schools and emerge from the top universities as very attractive candidates for major companies and the government.
For the others, after-school hours and weekends are often taken up with extra classes at "juku" private cram schools, without which a pupil has little chance of getting into a good university or landing a well-paid job. Children from less well-off families find themselves at a disadvantage from an early age under the Japanese system, while the pressures to succeed is sometimes so severe that a child will commit suicide.
Having experienced a very similar system themselves, Japanese parents are generally very supportive of the ways in which schools instruct their pupils.
Source:NewsOnjapan
