Despite declining membership, Japan’s teachers’ union still exerts disproportionate influence in schools.
This article exposes how political neutrality in education has been openly rejected by union leaders and opposition politicians.

March 5, 2017
Yesterday, while traveling to Kyoto by train, I was reading the Sankei Shimbun.
The front-page column, Sankei Sho, was a truly orthodox and principled editorial.
As of October 1 last year, the Japan Teachers’ Union’s organizational rate had fallen to 23.6 percent, the lowest level ever recorded.
This marked the fortieth consecutive year of decline, and although the union is clearly losing ground, its influence should not be underestimated.
In the closed environment of school staff rooms, a vocal minority often seizes control.
The majority either obediently follows that minority or silently tolerates its behavior.
In January of this year, leaflets from a Democratic Party lawmaker who had emerged from the teachers’ union were distributed to children at a municipal elementary school in Kanagawa Prefecture.
At the teachers’ union’s research conference in February, reports were made that stirred fears by claiming that students would be sent to the battlefield under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s security policies, and that criticized Abe’s statement marking the seventieth anniversary of the war’s end.
When discussing the teachers’ union, one must also mention its “boss,” former Democratic Party Vice President of the House of Councillors, Azuma Koshishi.
“At times we will even help bring about a change of government. Even if people talk about political neutrality in education, such a thing does not exist.”
This was a greeting delivered by Koshishi at a teachers’ union meeting in January 2009.
It was an honest admission that conflicted with the Fundamental Law of Education’s prohibition on support for specific political parties in schools, as well as with the restrictions on political activities imposed on teachers by the Special Act for Education Public Servants.
During the period of Democratic Party rule, Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers repeatedly questioned the government about this issue.
However, neither Prime Minister Naoto Kan nor Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda offered proper answers, and the matter was left unaddressed.
Meanwhile, in the case of the Moritomo Gakuen school corporation, its emphasis on patriotic education and alleged political bias have been heavily criticized.
In Diet budget committee deliberations, Democratic Party lawmakers even accused the school of engaging in political activities prohibited by the Fundamental Law of Education.
The Sankei column notes that while it may feel some discomfort with Moritomo Gakuen, it is ultimately a single private school, where freedom of thought and conscience must be respected.
By contrast, ignoring the far more pervasive problem of the teachers’ union throughout the entire school system while attacking Moritomo Gakuen alone appears deeply unnatural.