Hierarchical Socialisation in a Japanese Junior High School: The Formation of a Sense of One’s Place

This ethnographic study examines how students are sorted through sophisticated grading and tracking in a Japanese junior high school, thereby acquiring a sense of their place in society, as well as in school. Through the sorting processes, they are socialised to think about where they are likely to fit within the society relative to their academic standing in school. While most low-achieving students come from working class families, they blame themselves rather than their family backgrounds for their academic failures in school. Despite conscious efforts by teachers at Shōbun Junior High School to revise the Ministry of Education’s tracking system to provide more support to remedial students, tracking still served to sort students on the basis of family background. By illuminating the manner in which one Japanese junior high school in a Buraku neighbourhood contributes to rationalising social reproduction, this article explores the psychosocial mechanisms through which class identity is constructed.