Mr. Kinpachi in Class 3B (1979–2011) User Reviews

Kinpachi's Tales of Horror Continues

[ebiros2 · 7/10 · 29 July 2011]

After 8 years of hiatus, Kinpachi Sensei returns for a short season comprising 12 episodes and one graduation special.

After 8 years since his second season, Kinpachi's life has changed quite a bit. He's now married to Amachi Sensei (Mitsuko Baisho) and has a small son Kosaku and a daughter Otome. He's also assigned to a new school Matsugasaki Middle school. His class have changed quite a bit too. Instead of the rebellious Me generation teenagers, he now has cagey Gen X students to look after.

This was a short season, but it is one of my favorite Kinpachi Sensei season, because situation seems more real than other season of this series.

Kimie (Miyabi Kishi) was mentally brutalized in her previous school and can't come into her class room, so she goes strait to the infirmary and gets private lessons from the nurse. Yuko (Akiko Ura) has a father who's an alcoholic and has to work to support him and herself. Other students have their quirks with varying degrees of odd behavior due to stress from their life.

While Kinpachi saga is supposed to be a home drama, many of the stories are like tales of horror. Kinpachi have traditionally imposed exchange diary with his students. What kind of a society is it that a teacher has to monitor his students to that level ? What is the need for the teacher to have so intimate a knowledge of their students ? If it's for a legitimate concern over their social and mental health, such society must be horribly distorted. What kind of a society is it that the headmaster and the vice principle of the school goes out at night with a flashlight to police students, making sure they are not roaming the streets ? They don't believe that such insane level of control imposed on students wouldn't affect them negatively ? (and in this series it did).

Each of the student shows the duress they are under in their own ways, and although the story ends in a positive note, the life shown is those of strangely distorted individuals. I wouldn't want to live in such a society if I had my choice. What is shown is a very violent society even if overt violence is not evident. It's no wonder that Japan has high suicide rate of teens along with South Korea.

Perhaps being exposed to this level of scrutiny from a very young age that allows the Japanese to produce goods that have such high quality control. But the price kids has to pay from early in life is obviously high as seen in this series.

Kinpachi Srnsei is a digest view of schooling system of Japan, and a drama that reflects life of youth not only of Japan, but to extent of Asia. High sacrifice does have positive side, and it shows why they have such high levels of achievements in academics, arts, and industry.

Seminal Season For One of Japan's Most Famous TV Drama Series

[ebiros2 · 7/10 · 26 July 2011]

This is the first season of one of the most successful TV series in Japanese history that spanned over 3 decades with 8 seasons, and 20 special episodes.

Sakamoto Kinpachi (Tetsuya Takeda) is a newly assigned middle school teacher teaching Japanese at Sakura Middle School. He's in charge of class B in the 9th grade. His class of 32 students are experiencing growth pains, and pains of having to prepare for the high school entrance exam. Kinpachi with his uniquely personable style wins the hearts of each student and changes their lives for the better.

Back in the '70s when this program started, teachers in Japanese school had almost totalitarian control over their students. Their only measure of evaluating students were how well they've done in academics. Students were at bay because unless they received good evaluation from their teacher, they would not be able to enter high ranking school for their high school, and college. The students who didn't fit in were deemed to be rejects, and were receiving sub human treatment from their school. The main character of this program was created to be the great antithesis to this trend. Kinpachi sensei (teacher) champions the well being of each student and befriends them no matter what their problems may be.

This series that spanned between 10/26/79 - 3/28/80 with total of 23 episodes started with Tokyo Broadcasting Station production staff's desire to create a winning TV series for the Friday's 8 O'clock slot which never had a hit program throughout the station's history. Producer for this series Mitsuru Sakurai was recommended to use Mieko Osanai as its writer, but Osanai at the time already was writing for NHK and couldn't take on a new project. But she made a recommendation that she can write a story if it's about middle school students because she had a son that just entered high school and can write on the basis of her own experience. Hence the theme of this series was agreed between the staff, and a relative new comer Tetsuya Takeda was selected for the lead role. The name of the title character Kinpachi comes from abbreviation Kinyo (Friday) Hachi (eight) hinting that it's a Friday 8 o'clock time slot's character, and from a real person named Kingo that the giver of the name for this series Kiichi Iwasaki knew as a neighbor.

The series created many new child star who are still enjoying a long career after this series has ended such as Masahiko Kondo, and Junko Mihara. Kaoru Sugita, and Shingo Tsurumi who were already a child star then were recruited to play the central characters Yukino Asai, and Tamotsu Miyazawa who became parents at a tender age of 15. The series also created new child stars such as Kaori Tsuchiya, Toshihiko Tahara, and Yoshio Nomura who also went on to enjoy successful careers.

The series that TBS staff have created to boost their ratings gained high rating averaging 24.4%, and the final episode received a whopping 39.9% which is a record that still stands today. Kinpachi became an unparalleled success for TBS and many sequels followed. This is a program that you can have an inside look at how middle school students spends their life in Japan. The drama is vivid, and fresh, with views of each youngsters high lighted in each episode. One of the best TV series to come out of Japan, subtitled versions can be seen from time to time at a Japanese broadcasting stations around the world. Take an inside look at the Japanese culture by watching this series.

Kinpachi Sensei takes on hazing and violence in school

[ebiros2 · 7/10 · 29 July 2011]

Kinpachi Sensei returns to his old hangout Sakura middle school after seven years since his third season. He is now 46 years old with changes in his family. His wife passed away, and is now a single parent. His daughter Otome is in middle school, and it's also been 15 years since his first series when Tamotsu Miyazawa (Shingo Tsurumi) and Yukino Asai (Kaoru Sugita) had a child Ayumi (Mitsunari Hashimoto). He is now 15 years old and is now in Kinpachi's class.

The series continues to take on issues of violence in school. It seems that in this society, everyone is out to get one another. In episode 2 a girl is hit with a back fist by a male student. In the fourth episode, when Kinpachi asks the class who had experience of being hazed, almost everyone in the class raises their hands. When he asks who's hazed others, again almost everyone raised their hands. This means everyone is a victim of organized violence, and everyone is an organizer of violence. Either overtly or covertly, this society engages in victimizing others in some act of violence or another. The theme in variation may be there, but this is the same issue that's featured from the very beginning of this series.

One thing that impresses me about this series is that everyone involved is amazingly hard headed. The teachers, the students, and the parents. They are all bent on being "correct" in their own ways, but are perfectly willing to harm those who they believe have violated their code of conduct. Everyone has their own code of conduct, so everyone ends up thinking they have the right to harm the other party. Parents and teachers especially are at near hysterical level.

One of the purpose of this series was to bring out the issues that were somewhat covertly going on in schools of that time. So Kinpachi is like a condensed version of the microcosm of what goes on in Japanese schooling system. This season's theme seems to be on hazing, and violence wielded by students to one another takes center stage of many episodes.

This is a very violent society, and I could see why some students elect not to show up to school. Who would want to walk into a situation that you know you would be victimized ? Worse yet, you're surrounded by not so enlightened authorities who have very limited world views themselves.

Collapse of education system in Japan is not a mystery, but bigger mystery is how it managed to go on for such a long time.

Disintegration of Japanese Educational System

[ebiros2 · 7/10 · 27 July 2011]

This second installment of Kinpachi Sensei starring Tetsuya Takeda is generally recognized as the finest series out of all eight seasons of Kinpachi Sensei series. This is probably due to the fantastic depiction of disintegration of middle school education of Japan shown on episodes 22 and 23.

Masaru Kato (Kiichi Naoe) is a transfer student into Sakamoto Kinpachi's class. He has a shady past of being the boss of delinquent students at his prior school. Not totally unexpectedly, he falls into adversarial relation with Satoru Matsuura (Hiroyuki Okita) who is the delinquent boss of Kinpachi's class on the first day. It turns out that Masaru had good reason to be a delinquent. He's witnessed violence from very early in his life where Yakuza came to collect debt his father incurred, and brutalized him and his parents. He was also treated with disdain by teachers in his prior school. But due to Kinpachi's efforts, Masaru learns that he has full support of his teacher and his class mates and turns color for the better. Unfortunately for him, his past was not yet ready to release him, and his old colleagues comes to ask for his support to boycott the graduation ceremony at his old school. As the ex-boss of their group, he takes on the responsibility to go and speak to the teachers at his old school. But the discussion breaks down, and he gets embroiled in his old colleague's rampage, and the school is under siege by them. The episode turns into a showdown between delinquent students, and the faculty.

This episode is a caricature of declining education system in Japan that was rampant at the time. Teachers were near militant force in their respective schools, and treated their students with contempt and disrespect. They even had the right to use physical violence upon the students to whom they've deemed are not up to "snuff". Many of the schools were run like a concentration camp designed to favor academically adept students, and to pass the high school entrance exam. This in hind sight can be seen as organized violence towards the youth of Japan at the time. The episode depicts the out cry of the youth against the schooling system and the faculties that were only serving their own purpose. Because of the intricate details that were woven into the episodes to depict this unfortunate social system, this series ranks high among its viewers.

Such occurrences are no longer novel in Japan and the tide has turned 180 degrees. Now school is under siege by the students who are uninterested in academics, and have no compunction to wield violence against teachers who they feel are not up to "snuff". This might be seen as a "revolution" by the youth against the violence that were cast upon them. In a sense Japanese education system has failed catastrophically because they hired so many teachers who were not caliber materials to educate the youth properly, and attempted to cram informations that were meaningless to the growth of the individuals (worst yet, used it to discriminate youth based solely on this matrix alone).

Kinpachi Sensei series was meant to be an antithesis to the educational trend of its days, but because the disintegration of Japanese education system have progressed so far, the existence of Kinpachi Sensei itself became meaningless. Writer of this series Mieko Osanai herself admits that she recognized that it was time to pull the plug on this series, and the final episode of Kinpachi's saga was aired in 2011.