Staff writer
Asked if she knows what the lyrics of "Kimigayo" mean, Eri Kamimura replies, "Not at all" and looks puzzled by the question.
"We had to write the lyrics in hiragana during music class at one point in elementary school, right before our graduation ceremony, but we never got into that," the 14-year-old student at an Utsunomiya municipal junior high school in Tochigi Prefecture said. "And I never felt I needed to know."