>the hierarchies here are unnaturally strong, they are inhuman and
>they are very explicit
Explicit, because Japan experienced neither the Jacobin Revolution (the Meiji Restoration was a classic instance of the "passive revolution" that Gramsci discussed with regard to Italy) nor the homegrown Enlightenment (= philosophical struggles between science and religion -- pre-modern Japan was not religious in the sense that Europe & the Americas were -- hence no significant clerical or peasant resistance to _Yosai_ imposed from above).
Cruelty expressed in _ijime_ in Japan combines the worst of homosocial public school culture of hierarchy in England (explored in _Another Country_ [1984], directed by Marek Kanievska) and the worst of American school culture of cliquishness (portrayed in _Welcome to the Dollhouse_ [1995], directed by Todd Solondz; _Heathers_ [1989], directed by Michael Lehmann; etc.).
Yoshie