Work Units, Gulags and the Evil A-san Strikes Again!

(This was the first thing I ever wrote online --2008)

As often happens around here, the bad news was delivered by my friend and sometimes mortal enemy A-san, who I found waiting for me when I got home from bicycling my son over to preschool a few weeks ago.

"Here is your menu choice for the neighborhood kodomo-kai welcome lunch (neighborhood children's association), she said with an evil glint in her eye. "I'll be ordering the meatloaf."

OK...  I didn't realize I would be joining a neighborhood children's association.

Instead of saying anything I took the form and stuck it in a file with all the other papers I don't want to think about.

Cut to a few weeks later (last night)-- A-san is wildly emailing me. And sure enough the Children's Association Leader wants my menu choice, and S-san warns me, "She will be calling you shortly..." Not five minutes later, the phone rings. A very officious sort of woman is on the line, "We need your menu preference, what will you be having for lunch?" I sense my impending defeat.

"Well, I guess I'll have the meatloaf, but about this children's association, I really don't know anything about it, so can I decide whether I am going to join or not after I receive more information?"

An annoyed pause was followed by, "Well, actually, everyone must join."

Got it.

See, I wasn't sure if it was like the mandatory river cleanup (that some people can get out of if they have a decent excuse) or if it was like trash duty-- which no one can get out of, even if they die.

**

han 班

The First Emperor of China (3rd century BC), the dreaded Qin Shihuangdi, wanted to solidify his authority, so after burying a bunch of troublesome Confucian scholars alive and burning all the books, he put people into small squads or units, called ban (in Japanese han 班）

If a small village had a hundred people, they could be broken up into 10 groups of 10 han. The beauty of the han system worked like this: if a person broke the law, the punishment would be meted out to the entire han. So if say, Lang Lang stole a pig, the entire han would get slapped in chains.

It must have been very effective since the Japanese still use the system today. It's called "responsibility by association" (連帯責任) My friend M-san went to Kyoto for his high school field trip. His class of maybe two-dozen students were broken up into 5 han, and one of the boys in his han was found smoking so all 5 students had to stay in their room grounded.

It is a brilliant method for ensuring the people keep each other in line. Yes, you are your brother's keeper (especially if you belong to the same han!)

In my son's Dandelion Class there are 30 kids. They are broken down like Tibetan monks into the red hats and the white hats-- which are then further broken down into small groups of five. Our boy is in the Grizzly Bear "han" of the red hat sect....

I will never forget the day, a few years ago, when I became illustrious leader of our neighborhood han-- that is Lady Han-cho san to you! I will never forget it because I was handed the trash duty armband and "trash offender NOTEBOOK" on the same day (of course the only offenders are ever me and the blind man on the corner.... )

So, that is that-- I am now-- it seems-- a member of the Nishiki-cho children's association. In more rural parts of Japan, most women are also in wives associations as well. It is a cure for alienation or depression, I would think, since people always know where they belong. It keeps us in line, but I guess it also makes us feel as if we belong to something bigger than just ourselves-- because we do! It's called a han.

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I thought it would be fun to post the first thing I ever posted online.