Japan once implemented the old Chinese mutual-responsibility system called Baojia (保甲) in colonial Taiwan. In this traditional system, when one person commits an offense, the group of persons to which the criminal belongs are all held responsible. Of course Japan itself, and indeed most pre-modern societies have had similar practices throughout history. Unfortunately, collective punishment for an individual’s misdeeds remains a practice in many places today. These include some military basic training camps, a few despotic boarding schools for children, and the Komaba International Student House near Tokyo University.
A community of Ministry of Education research students/scholars (adults in their mid-20s to early 30s) live together in this very reasonably priced dormitory run by the AIEJ (Association of International Education, Japan) while they receive a generous scholarship to support their studies from the Japanese government. I lived here too, but moved out after only a few months because I got sick of being treated like a child. I still visit friends from time to time and today I see that things haven’t changed much. The current director is a little bit of an arrogant megalomaniac who believes he is a lord in a kingdom of foreign monkeys.
The most recent incident involves a fire in the kitchen of the first floor of one of the buildings. Many of the students cook in the kitchen and they leave their rice cookers and pots and pans in the kitchen. One person apparently did something that created a fire, filling the kitchen with smoke. The guilty party did not report their crime and no one knows who is responsible. The great lord director, in his infinite wisdom, decided to deal with this by holding the entire floor responsible for the crime. The kitchen, and everyone’s rice cookers, pots, pans – basically what all the students who actually cook their meals every day need to get by, was locked up and a sign today hangs there which reads that the kitchen will be closed, “until the person who caused this comes to the Director.”
Basically the first floor “bao” is being held collectively responsible for one individual’s crime. Perhaps they will talk amongst themselves and a snitch will turn the culprit in, a result that the original baojia system was designed to encourage. The Director explains that he is waiting for another result. Last time he did this, the students all got together and petitioned him to relieve them of their punishment. In his benevolence, he heard their pleas and forgave them, but, he says, by forcing them to band together and beg forgiveness as a group, he got them to admit they were, “a single community” who all had to take responsibility for each other’s mistakes. So this time, he says, he is also waiting for all of the students to together beg their overlord’s mercy.
Continue reading Komaba International Students House, the Baojia system, and Collective Punishment