BY MASAHIRO SHIBATA

On January 8th, 2001, the first coming of age day ceremony of the twenty-first century was held for about one million fifty-seven thousand young men and women throughout Japan . Those of us who watched some of the ceremonies on television were confronted with many scenes in which some of the new adults behaved so badly that the guest speakers were infuriated. When a group of five young adults heckled Kochi Governor Daijiro Hashimoto and shouted at him to go home, he furiously ordered them to leave the hall. In another incident, another group of five young people disrupted the address of Takamatu mayor Syozo Masuda with crackers, while in all parts of Japan drunken groups made merry at the ceremonies. We are not surprised that a large number of people were grieved to watch these scenes on TV.

The Coming of Age Day only became a habitual event during the postwar period. Originally, it was a ceremony to mark young people's jointing the community or to act as a rite of passage from child to adult. The present Coming of Age Day ceremony, however, is far from being what it truly ought to be, firstly because the administration changed the date of the ceremony to suit its own convenience, and secondly it established a new system whereby those who are early with their applications to join the ceremony will receive special invitations: this was done because the number of participants has been decreasing, although all new adults are supposed to participate in the ceremony.

When we look at every Coming of Age Day ceremony in all parts of Japan, we can no longer deny that changes in the times are destroying the solemn atmosphere and the strict order of the ceremony. We cannot, however, justify outrageous behaviour of some of the new adult at this year's ceremony. Nor can we fail to wonder what, in these days, led these young people to show only the minimum of the good manners that are expected of a man.

The new adults at this year's ceremony all belong to a generation that has, in elementary schools, taken a class in ethics and has had some ethical training. Despite this, some of the young people behaved so badly that we cannot but wonder whether school education is able to cultivate, even at the simplest level, such virtues as industry, endeavour, integrity, and devotion. The root of the problem of how to cultivate the virtues must lie, basically, in training at home, while various social factors will also have their effects.

Each of the virtues I have mentioned no longer exercises any authority over the Japanese people. Instead, the people place a disproportionate emphasis on academic achievement at school. At the same time, many TV programmes have a harmful effect on children, while, every day, the newspapers and the television inform us that to be a member of the Diet has become synonymous with entering into a life of vice and crime. It is quite understandable, therefore, that young people should be at a loss what to do. From this, we can assume that Japan as a whole is heading in the wrong direction.

Nevertheless, not all the young adults at the Coming of Age Day ceremony misbehaved or made a noise. Only a small number of people did so. We therefore hope that a large number of young people have a sense of kindness, civic responsibility, and better manners than those who made such a noise at the ceremony. Nor is it too late to mend our ways. We should hasten to correct a public tendency towards overconfident arrogance, and if we take the attitude that we can discover new things by standing the past, then we ought to be able to take back the sense of morals that was common in the good old days. And we should, at the outset, consider afresh what a Coming of Age Day Ceremony ought to be.

We should proceed to establish a nation where parents trust the younger generation while the young should respect their parents' generation. Although it is unforgivable that the new adults made such a noise at the Coming of Age Day ceremony, we should meditate on the way of thinking that led to such behaviour, and we should wonder whether they behaved badly just for the purpose of being conspicuous, or simply to enthuse the audience gathered at the ceremony ― or if there were deeper, less casual reasons for their conduct.

An increasing number of local governments are leaving it to the new adults to plan their own Coming of Age Day ceremonies, both in terms of organisation and management. We can assume that this will be a good opportunity for the young people of the present day to consider what it means to be an adult. It ought to be possible for us to satisfy the wishes of all parties―the young, their parents and local governments―if they can co-operate to re-examine the ceremony to ensure that young people are given a chance to use up their excess energy in an appropriate way. Now is the best time for us to do this. If we do, then we can hope that next year a variety of methods will be employed improve the management of the ceremony so that everyone, throughout Japan, can be satisfied with the ceremonies.

We can also hope that these methods will be the first step towards the day when Japan can take pride in being a warmhearted country where warmhearted people dwell.