Nonaka Shogakko

Last friday was the closing ceremony for one of my favorite elementary schools, Nonaka Shogakko. Nonaka is a very small mountain community halfway between Tokamachi and Shiozawa. The entire school has 8 students. I have a great relationship with the school and hold it very close to my heart, as I've always enjoyed the students and the honest inaka atmosphere, plus I took my mom their for a visit and they welcomed her with open arms.

Nonaka is the latest casualty of Japan's rural population decline. The school is closing for good after something like 130 years. At one point in the late 1800's, the school had over 120 students from Nonaka and other surrounding mountain rice farming communities. I didn't know it but at one point after the Meiji Restoration, Niigata was more populous than any place in all of Japan, including Tokyo and Osaka. Now, Niigata has become that broken-down but good-hearted area that won't ever reach it's bustling days of long ago, like an old gold mining California ghost town. Rice and kimino production are more mechanized, young people are fleeing for the cities, and the population is just simply fading.

Hence the closing ceremony of Nonaka, done for good. It was a special event and the national television stations were there, but I attended the ceremony just as I'd attend any other...thinking I'd sit with the teachers or the parents. But for whatever reason, probably just because of the mutual respect that I've developed with that school, they included me as a special guest of honor. There is a special table for such people at all school ceremonies...it's on the left side of the stage as you walk in, in front of the red and white banners hanging throughout the gym. It always has a large white tablecloth, and it's always full of old, suited, occasionally distinguished men. So, they put me 3rd in line with the Board of Education cronies, the head of the PTA, and other community leaders. Seating order at such events is a crucial indicator of prestige and community status level, and somehow I ended up 3rd in line. Like I said, I guess the school really respected me, or just thought it was super cool to have an American dude at their special ceremony, but either way I thought it was pretty kind of them. I didn't get the sense that they were trying to show me off as their foreigner arm candy, I really felt like they were proud that I had been part of their community and educated their kids.

Here's a picture with the 8 last Nonaka students and their parents and community. It's a great school with a great history and it's sad to see its doors locked up forever.