Pink Shirt Day anti-bullying movement seen to spread in Japan

February 28, 2019

Pink Shirt Day anti-bullying movement seen to spread in Japan

More than 100 people were seriously listening to a small readers' drama performed in front of the west gate to Japan Railways' Yokohama Station in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, eastern Japan, on a sunny day late February. The drama, which formed a part of a campaign aimed at stopping bullying incidents, was played by a group of five youngsters who depicted the sufferings of children bullied at school and elsewhere.
The event was jointly organized by non-profit organizations in support of the Pink Shirt Day Movement 2019 in Kanagawa, at a time when the number of school  bullying cases has been on the increase in the prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, and other regions in Japan.
According to publicly compiled figures, the number of recognized bullying cases at elementary, junior high and senior high schools across the country came to over 410,000 in fiscal 2017 to March 2018, an increase of about 90,000 from the year before.
Of this, the number of cases reported in Kanagawa grew to a record 19,997 in the same year.
The increase in the number of reported cases of school bullying partly reflects a broadened definition of bullying by the Ministry of Education, but the situation is no doubt getting worse, experts say.
The Pink Shirt Day movement spread globally from an incident which occurred at a high school near Vancouver, Canada, in February 2007.
When a ninth grader wearing a pink shirt went to school one day, he was made fun of and attacked. Upon hearing this, two upperclassmen quickly called classmates to take action to stop bullying by wearing pink shirts. Their effort successfully stopped bullying at the school.
The anti-bullying movement has become a global action with various events held in more than 70 countries.
A main organizer for the Pink Shirt Day campaign in Yokohama was the Kanagawa Children's Future Fund,  a non-profit organization established in 2003. Members of the fund and other organizers were on hand to call passers-by to join the event.
"We call people here in Japan to participate in the global action by wearing pink shirts or small items," said an official of the fund at the site.
Pink Shirt Day events in Japan started in Yokohama and other areas individually a few years ago. "This is the second time for us to organize a big event like this" in Kanagawa, he said. 
"We hope that the Pink Shirt Day events in Japan will get bigger and bigger by linking together actively."
The readers' drama was followed by live performances by pop singers and a dancing team, which attracted more spectators on the busy street.
A flyer distributed to passers-by around the stage said, "We are each different in terms of nationality, culture and fashion, and it is quite natural for us to be different, and this must be respected as an important character."