Three years after the introduction of a law requiring schools to take action to stop the bullying of students, the problem appears to be as serious as ever. The number of reported cases of bullying at elementary, junior high and high schools nationwide hit a record 224,540 in fiscal 2015, and nine of the students who committed suicide that year had been bullied. A government council on the issue has urged the education ministry to revamp the measures taken under the law, including requiring schoolteachers to make the prevention of bullying and suicides by bullying victims a priority in their daily work. Teachers and officials at schools need to be aware that it's their actions that help stop the problem, not the introduction of new laws or rules.

What prompted the 2013 law was the case of a 13-year-old boy in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, who jumped to his death in 2011 after being bullied by classmates. The law made it mandatory for each school to establish a basic policy to prevent bullying and set up an in-house organ to deal with the problem. Cases of bullying in which the victims suffered serious physical or psychological damage — and were forced, for example, to be absent from classes over an extended period — are defined as "grave situations" and require schools and local boards of education to launch an organized probe when they learn of such cases.

A junior high school in Yahaba, Iwate Prefecture, which was attended by a 13-year-old student who killed himself by jumping in front of an oncoming train in July last year, had established an anti-bullying policy and a relevant section as required by the law. The boy submitted a notebook to his homeroom teacher detailing the repeated violence he suffered at the hands of classmates, but the teacher failed to share this information with other teachers and officials so the school was unable to make an organized response to his problem. Weeks after his death, the school compiled a report that blamed his suicide on the bullying and the local education board launched a third-party probe to look into the case. This case shows that mere compliance with the letter of the law does not guarantee that individual bullying problems will be properly addressed in time to prevent tragic outcomes.