When I first set eyes on "So Can You," I wasn't sure what kind of book to expect. On the cover was a photo of a kind-faced, bespectacled woman in a plaid blazer who could easily pass for a door-to-door evangelist, while the title sounded like something from a multi-level marketing tract. With some misgivings, I opened the book and began to read.
As it turned out, "So Can You" is the heartrending autobiography of a junior high school girl who survived a nightmare of cruelty and betrayal at the hands of her classmates. Mitsuyo Ohira, former junior high school dropout, juvenile delinquent, yakuza (gangster) wife, divorcee and bar hostess, walked away from her past to become a lawyer -- and in a country where it is notoriously difficult to do either of these things.
Her story begins in junior high school where she became the target of an "ijime" (bullying) campaign led by one of her classmates. Parents and teachers, either unaware or in denial about the extent of the problem, were ineffective in protecting her. Feeling alone, betrayed and beyond hope, Ohira attempted a suicide that was widely publicized in the media. After hospitalization, she was forced to return to school where the bullying continued in earnest. In addition, her teachers now regarded her as a troublemaker, and her parents felt an intense shame that overshadowed their ability to parent her. Before long, she became defiant, refused to go to school, fell in with a crowd of delinquents and thugs, married at 16 and, finally, a few years later ended up a divorced, embittered bar hostess.