This post probably isn’t for the faint of heart.
In a strange concurrence of many different events, I’ve been hearing a lot of about sex lately, mainly related to high school students. The other day I received my monthly ALT newsletter (which is unauthorized by the government, by the way) and there was an anonymous article in there about a female ALT and her reactions to being a sex object to some of her students.
It was a fascinating read, especially since it was from the female perspective. Since it was anonymous she could go into a fair amount of detail. The point of the article was this:
It’s very natural when you teach so many students that some of them may develop a crush on you. She pointed out that it was quite normal to have a crush on a teacher when she was in high school. She discussed how she deals with it, how she felt about it, and how other ALT’s that she knew have dealt with it.
She mentioned some interesting things. Apparently the ultimate Japanese high school boy fantasy is to sleep with a female teacher. It is not rare for a teacher to marry a student after they graduate – usually it’s a male teacher-female student relationship.
I’ve met some students and some teachers that are involved in this kind of situation. It’s a dangerous game to play, and maybe that’s why they are doing it. Why does this go on? Kuniko and I had an interesting conversation about this, and I was a little surprised by this particular cultural difference.
For one thing, the ideas about acceptable age difference between two people in a relationship are very different here in Japan. It isn’t such a big deal for there to be a big gap in ages. Is it because one person is seen as the provider? I’m not sure. Ideas on this are generally pretty conservative, moving slowly in typical Japanese fashion over hundreds of years.
Most of the ALTs in Japan are younger than I. Most are only a few years older than their third year high school students. Also, some ALTs might not have a lot of real-world experience outside of college – and you just have to trust that they are making the right decisions.
I’ve had my share of students that have a crush on me – some I know about, and some I’m sure I don’t. Kuniko has also gotten lots of attention from students that she has taught. The interesting thing about the article was that it explored just a little into how that makes you feel. The author said that of course she would never date or return the affections of any of her students, she did tend to look forward to teaching his class, or felt a little thrill seeing them in the hallway. Another special factor in all of this is that foreign women here often aren’t seen as desirable by Japanese men, mainly because they are considered a little too “aggressive”. The author admitted that maybe the idea that there was somebody out there that DID find you attractive made you enjoy the attention that much more.
There’s lots of exceptions, and I’m just briefly addressing this, but it’s an interesting topic. If you asked me two weeks ago if this kind of thing happened in Japan, I’d say never. It’s a good illustration of much of this society is flying under my radar, and I’m sure there’s lots going on that I know nothing about.
