Reprint Decided Immediately Upon Release! Academy Award-Nominated Director Ema Yamazaki's First Book "Still, I Want to Send My Son to a Japanese Elementary School" is Already Receiving a Huge Response!
Documentary director Ema Yamazaki's first book, which reflects on her diverse international educational background and explores the unique strengths of the Japanese elementary school system, has been reprinted immediately after its release due to popular demand.
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Documentary director Ema Yamazaki's first book, "Still, I Want to Send My Son to a Japanese Elementary School" (Shincho Shinsho). Due to its popularity, a reprint was decided shortly after its release on Wednesday, March 18th.
■ A comment has arrived from Ema Yamazaki upon receiving the news of the reprint!
To have a reprint decided this quickly! I am filled with gratitude, truly feeling that so many people are reading it. I think it is a book that can be read from various perspectives: education, parenting, baseball, documentary production, identity formation, what it means to pursue a "dream," and more. Please do pick it up and take a look.
■ About this book
"Six-year-olds are the same anywhere in the world, but by the time they turn 12, Japanese children have become 'Japanese'."
This is the catchphrase of the feature-length documentary film "The Making of a Japanese" (Elementary School ~ It is a Small Society ~), directed by the author, Ema Yamazaki.
Filmed over the course of a year at a public elementary school in Tokyo, this work has been screened in various countries around the world. As a documentary, it achieved an exceptionally long run domestically, being shown in over 100 movie theaters nationwide. A short film, "Instruments of a Beating Heart," created from the same footage, was nominated for the Short Documentary category at the 2025 US Academy Awards, a first-time monumental achievement for a Japanese director making a film with Japan as its subject.
Documentary film "The Making of a Japanese" (Elementary School ~ It is a Small Society ~)
Documentary film "Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams"
Born to a British father and a Japanese mother, the author was raised with "thorough bilingual education" at home. She has received diverse education in various countries, starting with a British elementary school she attended after leaving her parents at the young age of six, followed by a public elementary school in Osaka, an international school in Kobe, and New York University in the United States.
Although Yamazaki now often conveys the appeal of Japan through her works, she gradually became disgusted with Japanese society, where she had been looked at with curiosity as a "half" since childhood and felt it was highly homogeneous and somewhat closed-off. She says she secretly held the thought "I might never return to Japan again" when she went to study at a university in the US.
After moving to the US, in addition to a severe identity crisis, she struggled with unavoidable visa issues as a "foreigner." However, while overcoming such difficulties, she realized that her "Japanese aspects" were exactly her weapon.
Afterward, the theme she arrived at as she began walking her path as a documentary director was the question, "What is Japanese-ness?"
The first work in search of that answer was "Koshien." She boldly conducted close coverage at powerhouse schools like Hanamaki Higashi High School, which produced Major Leaguers such as Shohei Ohtani and Yusei Kikuchi, and Yokohama Hayato High School, gaining valuable insights. The feature-length work that followed was the "elementary school" she herself had also attended.
However, I do not think everything about Japanese society, including its education, is good.
When I moved to the US at age 19, I felt Japanese society was so suffocating that I thought, "I might never return to Japan again." (From the text)
While saying this, what is the reason she thinks, "Still, I want to send my son to a Japanese elementary school"?
By tracing various episodes from her childhood to the present, she highlights, from her unique perspective as the author, the one-and-only characteristics of Japanese elementary school education that the world is paying attention to, and the "strengths" that can be utilized precisely because of the times we are in now.
■ Author's comment upon release
This book is not a book to present the "correct answer" or conclusion about education or parenting.
Nor is it a book for judging whether you agree or disagree, or whether it is good or bad.
Having experienced multiple educational environments in the UK, Japan, and the US, there have been times when I felt a sense of incongruity with Japanese society or kept my distance from it, yet I have continuously faced it. It is a record of re-examining "how the place called elementary school shapes people and connects to society" while tracing my own memories and experiences accumulated through that process.
You may read it while overlaying it with your own childhood, or you may use it as a time to think about how you will face children from now on.
Ema Yamazaki © Shinchosha
Alternatively, I think another way to read it is to pick it up as an entry point for thinking about how people grow and how society is formed—the origins and present state of Japanese society.
I did not put any assertion into this book that "it should be like this."
The word "Still" in the title is not a simple praise or a definitive statement, but represents the time itself that I have spent hesitating, stopping, and continuing to ask questions.
Precisely because I am now a parent myself, and precisely from a position of having looked at Japanese society from both the outside and the inside, I stopped once again and what I once experienced...
■ A comment has arrived from Ema Yamazaki upon receiving the news of the reprint!
To have a reprint decided this quickly! I am filled with gratitude, truly feeling that so many people are reading it. I think it is a book that can be read from various perspectives: education, parenting, baseball, documentary production, identity formation, what it means to pursue a "dream," and more. Please do pick it up and take a look.
■ About this book
"Six-year-olds are the same anywhere in the world, but by the time they turn 12, Japanese children have become 'Japanese'."
This is the catchphrase of the feature-length documentary film "The Making of a Japanese" (Elementary School ~ It is a Small Society ~), directed by the author, Ema Yamazaki.
Filmed over the course of a year at a public elementary school in Tokyo, this work has been screened in various countries around the world. As a documentary, it achieved an exceptionally long run domestically, being shown in over 100 movie theaters nationwide. A short film, "Instruments of a Beating Heart," created from the same footage, was nominated for the Short Documentary category at the 2025 US Academy Awards, a first-time monumental achievement for a Japanese director making a film with Japan as its subject.
Documentary film "The Making of a Japanese" (Elementary School ~ It is a Small Society ~)
Documentary film "Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams"
Born to a British father and a Japanese mother, the author was raised with "thorough bilingual education" at home. She has received diverse education in various countries, starting with a British elementary school she attended after leaving her parents at the young age of six, followed by a public elementary school in Osaka, an international school in Kobe, and New York University in the United States.
Although Yamazaki now often conveys the appeal of Japan through her works, she gradually became disgusted with Japanese society, where she had been looked at with curiosity as a "half" since childhood and felt it was highly homogeneous and somewhat closed-off. She says she secretly held the thought "I might never return to Japan again" when she went to study at a university in the US.
After moving to the US, in addition to a severe identity crisis, she struggled with unavoidable visa issues as a "foreigner." However, while overcoming such difficulties, she realized that her "Japanese aspects" were exactly her weapon.
Afterward, the theme she arrived at as she began walking her path as a documentary director was the question, "What is Japanese-ness?"
The first work in search of that answer was "Koshien." She boldly conducted close coverage at powerhouse schools like Hanamaki Higashi High School, which produced Major Leaguers such as Shohei Ohtani and Yusei Kikuchi, and Yokohama Hayato High School, gaining valuable insights. The feature-length work that followed was the "elementary school" she herself had also attended.
However, I do not think everything about Japanese society, including its education, is good.
When I moved to the US at age 19, I felt Japanese society was so suffocating that I thought, "I might never return to Japan again." (From the text)
While saying this, what is the reason she thinks, "Still, I want to send my son to a Japanese elementary school"?
By tracing various episodes from her childhood to the present, she highlights, from her unique perspective as the author, the one-and-only characteristics of Japanese elementary school education that the world is paying attention to, and the "strengths" that can be utilized precisely because of the times we are in now.
■ Author's comment upon release
This book is not a book to present the "correct answer" or conclusion about education or parenting.
Nor is it a book for judging whether you agree or disagree, or whether it is good or bad.
Having experienced multiple educational environments in the UK, Japan, and the US, there have been times when I felt a sense of incongruity with Japanese society or kept my distance from it, yet I have continuously faced it. It is a record of re-examining "how the place called elementary school shapes people and connects to society" while tracing my own memories and experiences accumulated through that process.
You may read it while overlaying it with your own childhood, or you may use it as a time to think about how you will face children from now on.
Ema Yamazaki © Shinchosha
Alternatively, I think another way to read it is to pick it up as an entry point for thinking about how people grow and how society is formed—the origins and present state of Japanese society.
I did not put any assertion into this book that "it should be like this."
The word "Still" in the title is not a simple praise or a definitive statement, but represents the time itself that I have spent hesitating, stopping, and continuing to ask questions.
Precisely because I am now a parent myself, and precisely from a position of having looked at Japanese society from both the outside and the inside, I stopped once again and what I once experienced...