Scott Reynolds <sar@gol.com> wrote in message news:<bed105$qbr$1@newsflood.tokyo.att.ne.jp>...
> On 7/8/2003 8:04 AM, masayuki yoshida wrote:
> 
> > Then, how about this topic - why dozens of school head
> > committed suicide recently in Hiroshima, your prefecture.
> 
> Have there really been dozens of such suicides? That is shocking.

I remember that the figure was fouteen - six school heads, six bosses
and two staff of the educational board.  I saw the figure in a
magazine or newspaper article.
 
> I remember the first such case, a couple of years back when singing 
> Kimigayo at school ceremonies was made compulsory by the education 
> ministry. At the time it was said that the principal who took his own 
> life found himself trapped between the conservative education ministry, 
> whose orders he was compelled to obey, and the leftist teachers union in 
> his district, which was also being obdurate on the issue. He felt he had 
> no way out, and killed himself.
> 
> That incident was widely reported, but I don't remember reading about 
> dozens of other suicides. I wonder why they have not been made more of 
> by the press. Perhaps it's like executions in Texas -- they've become so 
> commonplace that no one seems to notice or care anymore.

It seems that the BLL interfers with the decision-making of changing
school teachers' positions.  They ground the 'chip-in' on a document
which was made in the 1970s.  The involvement is so complex.

Masayuki