The Matsumoto Boys Prison in Nagano prefecture is the only punitive facility in Japan with a public junior high school. It has been the subject of two TBS documentaries, and on Monday the network will present a true-life drama that takes place in the school.
In "Hei no Naka Chugakko" ("Junior High School Between the Walls"; 9 p.m.), Joe Odagiri plays Junpei, a failed photographer who has been teaching at a reformatory for five years when he is transferred to the Matsumoto facility as a teacher. His class will consist of five long-term convicts selected from prisons all over Japan. The prisoners range in age from 22 to 76.
Each of the students has his own reason for not having received an education, but the fact is none of them can read or use arithmetic. After the entry ceremony the five men sit down in the classroom and introduce themselves and their crimes. Ken Watanabe stars as one of the inmates. I t's an uncomfortable truth of modern life that the things we throw away immediately vanish from our conscience, and that the technology that makes our lives easier may be destroying the planet. The special "academic entertainment" program "Saigo no Shakaika Kengaku" ("The Last Social Studies Observation"; Nihon TV, Tues., 10 p.m.) reveals what happens to some of those things, but in a way that is both "enjoyable and serious."