Local News

In 2002, a part-time teacher in a primary school in Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, grabbed the shirt front of a second-grader to scold him. Two lower courts ruled that this constituted physical punishment prohibited by Japanese law and ordered the city to pay compensation to the student’s family. The Japanese Supreme Court, however, overturned both lower court rulings and vacated the order for compensation, saying that it did not overstep the limits of educational guidance and was not corporal punishment.