Question

[Fantasy Dreamer]

I'm not sure where to put this thread, but does anyone know about the Japanese class rankings? I don't know what they're officially referred to as, but what I mean is this:

In animes like Fruits Basket and Ouran Host Club, when you see the signs over the classrooms they are designated by the grade number/year and a letter. Ex: 1-D. I know the number is the year they are, like first year, second year, etc. My question is what is the purpose of the letter? Does it have to do with social standing, money, GPA, or what?

Anybody who can answer or perhaps give me some kind of source of information on it so I can read it myself, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

[Kkun]

o.o It's probably just like here in America where there are usually multiple classes for a grade. So, class 1-D probably just means there are A, B, and C classes before it. As well, that might even be the room number.

[minakichan]

Ahahaha, in some anime, the As are higher-ranking students than Ds, but that's probably not what it's really like.

Social standing and money? lawl. Japanese caste system~

[termyt]

Japanese student's don't switch class rooms like American students. The teachers switch instead, so it's probably not all that uncommon for students of similar academic caliber to be placed in the same home room. We do the same in the US, only the students change class rooms every period so it's not as obvious.

But I believe the letter in most cases is just for denoting which classroom you are in and not for denoting your academic level.

[minakichan]

Japanese student's don't switch class rooms like American students.

Eh... but there are some electives that students can take separately, right? Like some people take Chinese instead of English, or whatever.

Wow, we clearly learn everything we know about Japan from anime.

[rii namuras]

[color="Red"](The letter denotes your form group. Form = homeroom. Generally in private schools [speaking as someone who goes to one in an Asian country] this is just random. I'm in 11A, but that doesn't mean that I'm smarter than the kids in 11D [in fact, I know I'm not]. It just means they had more room there when I joined the school.)[/color]

[LadyRushia]

At the school I went to in China, they had S, J, and A classes for the high school students. S classes were the highest level, then J, then A. After the letter, there was a number that just indicated the classroom. I suppose it varies depending on the school. In some anime, I've noticed that the letter after the number does tend to indicate rank while in others it doesn't seem to be a factor.

[EricTheFred]

I suspect the reference to class "A" being higher standing students in some school animes may be similar to American 'Honors' or 'TAG' students. Some schools may divide off the top students into faster paced classes like we do here. There may also be a 'remedial' level class on the other end. (This would explain the occasional references to a classroom full of street thugs, etc. in some series.) If the distribution of students is similar to America, one would think the classes between are roughly equivalent to each other.

[Aka-chan]

At the Japanese high school I attended, the letters had no relation to ranking that I could tell, though there are probably exceptions.

[EricTheFred]

At the Japanese high school I attended, the letters had no relation to ranking that I could tell, though there are probably exceptions.

If you hadn't heard of such, perhaps it isn't so common. Since this practice is almost universal in the anime high school world though, it must have some basis is reality. I wonder if it's a carryover from high schools of the past? I've heard that sailor suits and army jackets are a lot less common in RL than in anime, but they were much more common once upon a time. Perhaps this is another such example, something held over in fiction from the old days?

Here are a few other anime high school standards I've wondered about:

1) The ubiquitous sports and cultural festivals... the anime versions are obviously exaggerations, but are the real ones commonly held, and if so, how big of a production are they?

2) The perennial school trip / class trip. Seems to be the equivalent of an American HS club trip, (like the French club heading to Europe, or the Band going to some music festival out of state) but involving the entire senior class (for the foreign folks, that's American for 'everyone in the highest year'). For real? In my son's school, that would be a heck of a crowd. There's seven hundred kids in his class!

3) Schools having the gall to forbid dating. I've run into this in multiple series, and each time, I end up picturing King Cnut trying to command the tide. Do any Japanese high schools seriously try to have rules like this, and if so, what in the heck are they smoking?

4) Kids living on their own in the big city to attend high school. I'm sure this happens once in a while, but it seems to be a regular occurrence in Anime. This one, I suspect is just a convenience for the writers (no bothersome parents to get in the way of stupid things the kids are involved in) but maybe not. I lived on my own during my senior year, and my wife went to the big city to attend high school in the Philippines, but she roomed with her older sisters, who had jobs there.

[oro!]

In an international school I attended, the letters were for last names of the teachers, although obviously that would not work in this instance, maybe it's the same in some schools. EX: 3F for 3rd grade class under Mr. Fox.

[rii namuras]

2) The perennial school trip / class trip. Seems to be the equivalent of an American HS club trip, (like the French club heading to Europe, or the Band going to some music festival out of state) but involving the entire senior class (for the foreign folks, that's American for 'everyone in the highest year'). For real? In my son's school, that would be a heck of a crowd. There's seven hundred kids in his class!

3) Schools having the gall to forbid dating. I've run into this in multiple series, and each time, I end up picturing King Cnut trying to command the tide. Do any Japanese high schools seriously try to have rules like this, and if so, what in the heck are they smoking?

[color="Red"](2 is true for Asian private schools - senior trips, basically. In my school, it's the Y11s [graduating IGCSE] and the Y13s [graduating IB]. Granted, we're a British school, but I do know it happens in other schools as well. And graduating classes in private schools are much smaller than in an American public school.)

(As for 3, while I've never heard of a school forbidding dating, they do usually forbid PDAs. You can get expelled from my school if you're caught holding hands with someone.)[/color]