P T A  CONSCRIPTION AND HOW I MANAGED TO AVOID IT                                          

It is past noon. We mothers of third-graders have just seen our first class observation – half an hour’s worth of an actual class –  and  it is now time for the annual informal chat that traditionally follows this. We have been told that the class observation is for mothers and fathers, but although we have seen a few men about, in our own particular group there are only women. The kondankai, literally ‘informal chat,’  ostensibly provides an opportunity for all of us mothers to get to know each other and to meet our children’s new teacher for the first time, but most of us know that the real reason we are here is because a class PTA representative and four officers must be appointed. We all size each other up, wondering which unlucky woman will be chosen as class representative, the hardest job.  This is my third such meeting, so I am well prepared. I’ve got all my excuses marshaled  (job, language insufficiency, poor organizational skills), so the teacher won’t catch me ill-prepared. And this time I knew not to show up in jeans fresh from cleaning the back porch.

Surprisingly few mothers have bothered to show up – twenty out of a total of thirty-three. Clumsily we manage to wedge ourselves into seats meant for eight-year-old behinds. The tallest mother there, I am sure that I am the most uncomfortable, and I do my best not to fidget, but there is no position my legs can go in that does not begin to hurt after three minutes.

After we have all introduced ourselves to the teacher and the other mothers, the teacher outlines the academic goals for the year, and tells us about the field trips, the special materials, club activities, and sports events planned for the coming year. She points out that in the interest of equality between the sexes, boys and girls are no longer listed in separate columns in the attendance register. While I welcome the idea behind this change, my heart sinks to think of the time it will now take me to sort out who is who when my daughter tells me about some new friend or bully in her class. For the past two years, thanks to what the school now sees as a sexist practice, at least I knew who was a boy and who was a girl.

Finally it is time to elect our class’s PTA officers and representative. Four officers and one representative must be chosen to for each and every class in the school.  For the past two years Hannah has brought home a form for me to fill out, which has only three questions on it. The first, ‘Are you willing to serve on the PTA?’ is straightforward enough. You are supposed to tick one of three boxes: ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes, but only if no one else is prepared to do it,’ or ‘No.’ Underneath the box for ‘no’ is a second question -- ‘If you ticked ‘no,’ state reasons in detail’ -- which always gives me pause. It is when I must answer this question that I feel most like a foreigner. Instead of stating my reasons in detail, I want to write None of your goddamn business. I know that this is not an option, of course, so I always write the same thing: ‘Busy with work-related duties.’  The third question is easy to answer, but always strikes me as being particularly insidious: ‘Have you served on the PTA before? If yes, when?' The message is implicit: like it or not, sooner or later you’re going to have to do it, chump.

The teacher laughs nervously and announces that she is in a quandary:   while a few people have stated that they are willing to be officers if no one else is prepared to volunteer, this year it seems that absolutely no one has volunteered to serve as class representative.  ‘Some of you,’ she continues, shattering my peace of mind, ‘have written that you too busy at work to serve, but that is no excuse. I myself obviously work full-time, but I am currently serving as PTA officer for my daughter’s class.’  At this, several of the women immediately look down at their hands. I follow their cue and look at my hands, but the teacher continues. Four officers and one representative have to be chosen, preferably by the end of this meeting. (Many furtive glances at the clock.) Isn’t there anyone who is willing to do it? More women avert their eyes; some of them look downright shifty. Now the teacher must go from person to person, asking each one of us specifically.

Our filled-out forms have been placed in two piles:  those of us who have no history of having served on the PTA, and those of us who have already done their bit.  I am in the former group, of course, and although the teacher saves me until the very end, I too, get a thorough grilling. Stammering terribly, I decide to stick to the truth: I inform her that I have no organizational skills, no leadership ability. This, however, gets me nowhere. ‘That is totally irrelevant,’ she insists. Next, out of desperation, I cite linguistic incompetence – I am a foreigner, after all! – but again the teacher is unmoved. My Japanese language ability, is deemed perfectly adequate for PTA work. Indeed, the fact that I am able to state my own case so eloquently argues against me, the teacher points out. At this point, I can sense the other women beginning to perk up:  the teacher’s finally got one! But at the last moment, I am saved by a sudden inspiration:  I sometimes have to work on weekends, and I never know exactly when I will have to do so. Pulse racing, I tell the teacher this, embellishing it just a little. This does the trick. ‘Ah,’ she says, like someone who has just found out that their lottery number was one digit away from the winning number. ‘Ah, I see.’ And she sighs deeply and continues to browse through the forms.

Ten minutes later, the teacher has grilled the entire group. Even after asking the mothers who have already done PTA duty –  something she clearly had no wish to do – she has had no takers. The excuses given are varied:  ‘I work on the weekends,’ ‘I’m taking care of my aged mother/father and cannot leave her/him,’ ‘I’m already serving as PTA officer for my youngest child’s nursery school,’ and finally, ‘My oldest son is taking entrance examinations this year.’ This last excuse is immediately rejected by the teacher, but the test-taker's mother stands firm. Having a child taking entrance exams here is a Big Deal. I have known Japanese mothers whose children are taking entrance exams to go so far as to quit their jobs and refuse  social engagements. By the end of our meeting, the teacher is forced to admit defeat:  no one will do it, and that is that. Finally, after seventeen years in this country, I have found the Japan that can say no.

Temporarily let off the hook, we all file somewhat shamefacedly out of the classroom. The meeting has ended on a sour note, the teacher having informed us that if she cannot get any of the absent mothers to volunteer, she will have no choice but to select this year’s PTA officers via lottery.

In Japanese schools, I have discovered, serving on the PTA is only nominally ‘volunteer’ duty. Everyone is expected to have done it at least once by the time their child leaves elementary school. At our school, each class must be represented by four PTA officers, and each officer has a specific sphere of duty. There is the ‘school beautification officer,’ who handles such matters as weeding the school grounds, planting seedlings and setting them in flower beds, laundering the school curtains, and, of all things, the collection of product token stamps. Next are the ‘culture officer,’ who organizes the annual school festival and assists at school plays, exhibits, recitals, and concerts, the ‘information officer,’ who writes up the meetings, issues an annual newsletter, informs all parents of children in her child’s class of PTA events, and finally a ‘safety and lifestyle officer,’ who organizes, among other things, the school ‘patrol corps,’ a group of parents who patrol the streets in the morning and afternoon, as children go to and from school.  But these four officers are not the only ones who ‘volunteer’ their time. All mothers (ostensibly fathers are included in the ‘parents’ of P.T.A., but in practice, 99.9% of the parents involved are mothers) are required to do at least one ‘volunteer’ duty per school year. I have washed school curtains, served at the school bazaar, and ferried groups of children around the town, and both my husband and I have been suckered into giving presentations at the school festival and ‘mini lectures’ for the second grade class. We have served on the school patrol, and my husband amazed me by agreeing to participate in a play put on for the second grade class. In our naïve, foreign way, we had assumed that this labor fulfilled our ‘volunteer’ requirement, but it appears that it does not. 

In the hallway outside, I meet a mother I know and I ask her how it went in her class meeting. Was anyone willing to volunteer for PTA duty?  “Well,” she says, “it was touch and go, but the teacher immediately fell on the mothers of two new students and got them to volunteer.  They didn’t want to, but she told them it would be a good way to get to know people, their being new and all. And then, most fortunately for the rest of us, two other women had answered ‘Yes, but only if no one else is prepared to do it.’  ‘The teacher latched onto them,’ my friend says ‘and once she had them, she wouldn’t let them go until they agreed to do it..”

We file out of the school building and say goodbye. I’ve been in Japan long enough to feel a little ashamed for shirking what everyone obviously sees as my duty, but I also feel profoundly relieved. This is our last year in Japan. Once again I have managed to avoid PTA conscription. I may wash curtains, I may pull weeds, and I will almost certainly patrol the streets, but my weekends and evenings are, for the most part, my own.