At a little past 2 p.m. on a recent day, pupils exited the Shinjuku Ward-run Yotsuya Elementary School in Tokyo under the hot sun, cheerfully saying goodbye to their peers and teachers.
A building under construction just 10 minutes by subway from Tokyo Station and situated near Tokyo Metro’s Myogadani Station was seen one recent day covered with a blue tarp.
A teacher in her 50s at a ward-run elementary school in Tokyo heard the school’s principal utter something surprising at a staff meeting in early April.
Some schools across Japan are relaxing their COVID-19 restrictions and have resumed school gatherings while taking measures to prevent infections and allowing face-to-face lunches in classrooms.
Senior high school textbooks for social studies were revised in several places to match the government’s view, including the removal of references implying that all wartime Korean laborers were forcibly brought to Japan.