MARCH 24, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 11

Family Values
Movie's wry view of priorities
By MARIA CHENG

ALSO IN ASIAWEEK Cover: Creative Destruction City The choice is tough: should Singapore jettison its safe old ways in order to prosper in the age of globalization? • Report Card: What Singapore is doing right • The Press: How free - and on what topics? • Society: The highs and the lows of being Singaporean Editorial: U.S. President Bill Clinton can help defuse tensions between India and Pakistan - but not much Editorial: Manila must clean up its stock-market mess THE NATIONS China: What the NPC yielded • Security: Why Beijing is getting deeper into blue water Malaysia: Behind the attacks on Astro India/Pakistan: Clinton is going to South Asia. Is that a good idea? • Interview: Cohen says the U.S. will not mediate Kashmir Thailand: The central bank's burden - prevent another Crisis Indonesia: How Wahid became his country's strongest power • Military: Call it "de-Wiranto-ization" • Prejudice: Why Malaysia's media are tough on Gus Dur Viewpoint: False fears about globalization ARTS & SCIENCES Education: A child's murder rouses a debate about parenting • Burdened: Japanese moms on the frontlines • Movie: Beating the exam odds in reel life • Dream School: Innovations in Okinawa Design: Activists' fashion statement in the Philippines Newsmakers: Courtside scorecard for Malaysia TECHNOLOGY The Net: South Korea's online stock-trading mania Cutting Edge: IBM enters a new eon BUSINESS Investing: The power of brokers on the Manila bourse IPO Watch: Sunevision will begin life at a premium stock price Business Buzz: All is not well in Dotcomland

In a nation where to succeed is to conform, a little individuality can go a long way. That, at least, is the underlying message of a recent Japanese film. The Exam ostensibly focuses on the trials of a family preparing their six-year-old daughter for a school-entrance test that will likely change her life. Nonetheless, the film by director Takita Yojiro also chides Japanese society's slavish devotion to a prescribed order.

Onetime champion runner Togashi Masumi is preparing for a major race when he unexpectedly receives a job promotion. The attendant status so thrills his wife, Toshie, that she decides their daughter must strive for a place in a prestigious school - something previously beyond their means. The Togashis sign up with a cram school, which puts them through punishing mock interviews to prepare for daughter Mayumi's big day. Deftly transforming the traditional elitism of the sessions into comedic farce, The Exam challenges the Japanese desire for pedigree. Force of circumstance soon transforms the Togashis. Their ambitious plans for their daughter quickly unravel when Masumi's company is declared bankrupt, leaving him jobless.

Desperate to hide the disgrace of unemployment, Toshie tells cram-school officials that she is the breadwinner and her husband, the homemaker. This reversal of gender roles, she says, will teach little Mayumi to adapt to life in modern Japan. Surprisingly, the ruse works. To keep up appearances, Toshie gets a job selling gravestones. Her husband finds unexpected satisfaction in keeping the house spotless, relishing his freedom from the drudgery of workaholic Japan. Mayumi, once a sullen recipient of her mother's overbearing brand of nurturing, blossoms under her father's care: She becomes the star of her cram-school class.

Enter yet another spanner in the works: Mayumi's exam is scheduled for the same day as her father's last chance at athletic glory, a major marathon. To his wife's dismay, Masumi decides to take part in the race rather than attend a concommitant school interview. The family's obsessive campaign to enrol Mayumi in the elite institution, Masumi says, is simply not worth it. In other words, personal growth is important too.

Perhaps predictably, Masumi bows to his parental responsibilities, leaves the marathon mid-race and rushes to the school, where he manages to overcome the objections of stuffy board members. In the end, the Togashis' triumph is not that they have ensured the education of their dreams for young Mayumi, but that they tried to do so on their own terms. That this could happen to this unusual family undermines faith in paper qualifications. While not a scathing indictment of Japan's status-driven society, it is an invitation to reconsider its priorities - one that parents are beginning to take up.