When the Weak Internalise the Logic of the Strong — A 25-Year Record

Preface

I am currently being told by several doctors that I may have complex PTSD, and I am about to begin an evaluation at a specialist hospital. I have been told that a confirmed diagnosis may take anywhere from three months to a year.

This is a record of the events I believe caused it.

Before writing, I set myself three rules.

First, I use initials for individuals. I name the schools and organisations.

Second, I also write the moments when I stood on the side of the bystander. To leave those out would make this record a lie.

Third, I write the emotions, but not abuse. For twenty-five years, no one has heard this account laid out in order. Setting it down in order, for the first time, is enough for me.

1. Elementary School — Yamagata University Affiliated Elementary School (a national-university-affiliated elementary school in Yamagata Prefecture)

Except for the two years my parents spent in Denmark for their research, I spent the four years of my elementary schooling at this school, bullied the entire time.

In first grade, on a school outing, a sixth-grader in my group said, laughing: "I'll give you a sweet, so pull down your underwear and show me your genitals." I refused. He pressed: "What? You could have a sweet to suck on. You only have to show me." I refused again.

I still don't know why I was able to refuse back then. If I had to say, perhaps it was because I thought of sixth-graders as protective figures and never imagined ill will. Perhaps, after the violence from my own classmates that followed, my thinking changed.

Around the same time, while I was wrapped in a bath towel changing for swimming, a girl beside me, Ms. A, tried to pull the towel off me.

In first or second grade, I was surrounded by several boys including the class ringleader, Mr. Ya, knocked to the ground in front of everyone, struck the back of my head, had my trousers and underwear pulled off, and had my buttocks grabbed. I was examined at a hospital.

Mr. So and Mr. Sh told me to show them my underwear in a deserted corner of a park, and, unable to argue back, I did. When I trusted them with the code to the storage unit at my house, the unit was ransacked. When I went to Mr. So's house to protest, his mother came out and it ended with: "Did my son really do such a thing?"

After a physical education class, when I had changed down to my underwear, Mr. Sh, smiling, put his hand into my underwear, grabbed my genitals and exposed them. It took me about a minute to understand what was happening. The teacher and the girls were in the classroom.

Mr. So and Mr. Sh called me outside and, knowing I was not used to riding a bicycle, pointed to a set of stacked steps and said: "Get on the bicycle and ride down these steps. This is training." I knew the steps were dangerous, and I felt that if I rode down them I might, in the worst case, die. I did it anyway, because I had no choice. The bicycle lost its balance and I tumbled off. Fortunately I was not badly hurt. Watching me, Mr. So said: "Amazing — you've got courage!" I felt a violent wrongness.

My memory is faded, but I think I was examined at a hospital after another instance of violence from them as well.

Later, my parents told my homeroom teacher about some of this and complained. The teacher asked Mr. So to apologise in front of me. Mr. So vomited up what he had eaten at lunch, no apology was made, and the incident "faded away on its own."

A little after that, about a picture of a girl drawn by the girl sitting next to me, not understanding her feelings, I said: "That's manly." She broke down in tears and complained to the same homeroom teacher that she had been "attacked" by me. I was seized with fear. The teacher said to me: "Mr. So and Mr. Sh apologised to you, didn't they? Isn't it your turn now to apologise to her?"

I apologised.

But what I had received was assault, being stripped of my underwear, having my genitals grabbed, and being made to ride down steps that could have killed me. The teacher grasped only part of that, and Mr. So's apology had never actually happened. Even so, the teacher said "they apologised, didn't they?" and treated the one remark I had made to the girl and the whole series of things done to me as "crimes of equal weight." The six- or seven-year-old me felt a violent wrongness at that. That wrongness is the starting point of this record.

This story has a sequel. Mr. Sh, in turn, became a victim of sexual harm. One day he broke down crying in class. In the middle of changing clothes he said he had "been bullied," and told me in a commanding tone: "Don't tell anyone about this." I had sensed the ominous atmosphere beforehand. As he was trying to change, his "friends" had approached, seeming to take an "interest" in the sight. My prediction was correct. On the surface he seemed to be talking happily with his friends, but from his expression, the tone of his voice, and his manner, I thought that in truth he wanted to avoid them. The reason I could sense his inner state was that his reaction resembled my own reactions when I was bullied.

I'll write it honestly. Alongside a certain sympathy for him, I also held a directly contradictory feeling. It was simply his turn now to receive what I had received from him. I felt a kind of relief. And it seemed he had already told the teacher, and the very fact that he spoke to me in a commanding tone meant he still did not see me as an equal. Feeling that, I did nothing in particular afterwards.

This was the first time I saw perpetrator and victim change places.

After I returned to Japan, in fifth and sixth grade, real power in the class had shifted from the boys to the girls. I was made a target by a group of girls centred on Ms. I, and I was isolated. No one seriously tried to help. They targeted other boys too. Seeing the see-through nipples of a boy in his underwear, they said "Gross!" and threw his ballpoint pen to the floor and broke it. Mr. Mi, whom the girls avoided as "disgusting" — inwardly, I too wanted to keep my distance from him. Mr. F, who was himself being bullied, began to bully me as if venting his frustration. While I was using the toilet, he kicked my backside with all his strength from behind, and laughed at me as I cowered.

On the sixth-grade outing, I was harassed by a first-grader in the same group. Although I could have bullied back, I couldn't do it. Watching that, the girls in my class were exasperated: "That guy — he's even getting bullied by the little kids."

The last swimming class of sixth grade. I said I felt unwell and asked my homeroom teacher, Mr. M, to let me be absent. The reason I was absent was that this class required changing clothes. Because of the sexual harm I had suffered in the past, I hated this class. The teacher decided my claim was a lie and half-forced me: "You've been lying all along, haven't you? You never had any intention of taking part in swimming, did you?" In the end I changed and took part. When swimming was over, unaware of my own physiological reaction, I was insulted as "old man" by the girls who noticed it, and Mr. Ya and the others pointed out my genital response.

If the teacher had not decided that the reason for my absence was laziness, I would have been spared this. I remember this scene in detail even now, at thirty-three.

The same year, while I was using a private toilet stall, Mr. Sh climbed up the door and peered in at me. Even in sixth grade, despite having suffered sexual harm himself in the past, he was "the same as ever."

About a month before graduation, Ms. Ma — who should have had no interest in me — said, somewhat forlornly: "You're going to Aichi Prefecture, aren't you. I'm going to a different middle school from everyone else." She often acted together with Ms. I and was someone who felt nothing at seeing me isolated. One day, seeing me using the classroom toilet paper because I had no tissues to blow my nose, she said "You're gross!" and walked away. There has never been a single apology. After entering the working world, I came to interpret her words like this: a person who had always stood on the side of those who select was sensing the fear of standing, in turn, on the side of those who are selected. And she was confiding that anxiety to a person who was "easy to confide in" — that is, a person she did not regard as an equal — only now.

For the sake of fairness, I'll add one thing: the ringleader, Mr. Ya, once apologised to me, a single time, for what he had done to me in the past. That remains in my memory. But I had not forgiven him.

2. Middle and High School — Aichi Prefecture

With my mother's move, I went on to a middle school in Aichi Prefecture. For a long time I thought middle and high school had been peaceful, but that was only me rewriting my memory to suit myself.

A few days after enrolling, a student named Mr. F said, laughing, probably meaning it as a joke:

"I was bullied all through elementary school, so in this middle school I'm going to stand on the side that bullies."

Around the same time, Mr. F, together with other boys, threw the pencil case of Ms. O, who sat next to him, onto the ground. Ms. O, sighing "haah," gathered up the scattered pens and pencils. I merely watched.

In my first year of middle school, my homeroom teacher, who taught English, said this once in the middle of small talk with some of the girls: "There's also a problem on the side of the one being bullied."

I have had unknown boys stroke my cheek and run off. Mr. F, when I was seated, pressed his arm into my crotch with all his strength and said "I felt your thing, you know." I tried to retaliate, but he was stronger and stopped me. In my second year of middle school, that same Mr. F was shot with a toy gun loaded with marbles and shed tears at the pain. Here too I was a bystander. Around the same time, on the way home, another student kissed me on the cheek, and, fearing retaliation, I let it pass.

In my first year of high school, a large "friend," Mr. Sa, said on the way home: "Since I'm keeping you company like this, don't you think you could buy me a drink, or give me some money?" and when I said something he didn't like, he hit me on the head. I gave in to his demands several times. I still felt I was not being treated as an equal.

3. The COVID Years — "The Fault Lies with the One Who Was Slandered"

Over the several years of the COVID period, I lived, in this order: Yamato City in Kanagawa Prefecture; Kameari in Katsushika Ward, Tokyo; a detached house in Shibamata; and my current apartment. I write them in that order.

Not long after the COVID period began, my eyelids swelled and would not open fully — I developed ptosis. I don't know whether it was stress-induced. Perhaps my appearance was a factor: at work, my superior said "how gross," and a colleague and a partner employee (a dispatched worker) sang it as a song, "how gro-oss." The matter reached the ears of the company president, who said to me in an online meeting: "The bullying you've experienced has become a topic within the company. I'm sorry I couldn't make you happy."

It wasn't only at work. On street corners in Tokyo and in Yamato City, Kanagawa Prefecture, passing strangers would look at me and say "how gross," intermittently and repeatedly. And, citing the sounds of my daily life, neighbours at several apartments slandered me as well.

In a three-storey building in Yamato City, Kanagawa, floors one and two were rental units and the owner's family lived on the third. On moving-in day, when the toilet made a sound or I took a shower, a voice would come from the third floor: "how gross." A few days later the intercom rang, and on the screen was an elderly member of the owner's family wearing an eerie smile. A neighbour threw things at the wall while complaining, and, apparently thinking I was unemployed, muttered from the balcony "and you're jobless, too." While I was taking an online lecture from a colleague, the neighbour on the floor below shouted "Shut up!!" and slammed the window shut. When I consulted the management company, I was told: "If you really are working, why don't you go in to the office?" I consulted a lawyer by phone, and when I called again another day, there was no answer. I had probably been blocked.

I moved out after two months. Around the same time, roughly five other units besides mine had residents moving out.

At an apartment in Kameari, Katsushika Ward, Tokyo, immediately after I finished an English-language interview with a foreign-affiliated IT company, the neighbour on the floor above shouted "Shut up!" and dropped something with a crash. Merely because my phone's vibration sounded, I was told "what are you doing?" To add to this, that was only part of what they said.

When I consulted the daily-life consultation section of the Kameari Police Station, asking "isn't this bullying?", the officer said: "But you're the one who did an online interview in an apartment, aren't you!!"

Six months later, I rented a detached house in Shibamata. There were no neighbours and the trouble dropped to zero. When I brought a complaint about the previous apartment to the police station again, the officer in charge said, suspiciously: "Where are you living now? You said you moved, didn't you? And are you being called gross, being slandered, there too?" It was as if he were saying that the cause of the slander lay with me, and that therefore there was no problem. I answered: "I'm living in a detached house now. I don't recall being told anything since."

I would add this: every time I have consulted the police about a problem in this way, I have always been asked for my name, date of birth, contact details, address — and the name of the company I belong to. Name and contact details are presumably needed for the record. But is it really necessary to ask a person who has come to report slander which company they work for? I also have a faint memory of being asked "where are you working these days?" in a way that seemed to be checking whether I was unemployed. That question, which seems to appraise the standing of the person seeking help, strikes me as wrong.

Afterwards this officer said, "I'll ask that neighbour for their account," but he was later transferred to another section, and, moreover, had recorded that "the person consented to closing the investigation" — something I never said. The next person in charge ended the call by saying: "Well, you're living in a detached house now with zero trouble, right? Then isn't that good? Let's forget about this."

When I phoned yet another lawyer, they said in a suspicious tone "Isn't the problem with you?" and "We'll require a consultation fee of several tens of thousands of yen."

If the problem were with me, the same thing would happen wherever I lived. I am someone who has moved about fifteen times, and neighbour trouble began and ended with the collective housing of the COVID period. At the detached house in Shibamata it was zero. I later moved back into collective housing, and after a year, apart from hearing "gross" once from the floor above, nothing has happened.

Through this series of events I moved three times and paid more than one million yen. Lawyers, police, and public institutions did not try to help me. Rather, they said, "the fault probably lies with you, the one who was slandered."

Looking back, noise trouble with neighbours occurred frequently across the country during the COVID period. The 110 emergency calls related to noise received by the Metropolitan Police Department over the two months of March--April 2020 numbered about 24,200, up 28% from about 18,900 in the same two months of 2019 [1]. Recent private surveys, too, found that over 60% had "experienced neighbour trouble," with noise the most common cause [2].

Even now, I listen to music through headphones rather than speakers, and I bought an expensive keyboard and mouse whose quietness is expressly stated, and I am writing this text on them.

4. The Workplace — "The One Who Died Was at Fault"

When I was at an IT company, the president was a thirty-year-old man from Hokkaido. In his school days, he said, he was struck in the face and eyes daily by upperclassmen in a club, and feared he might go blind. An acquaintance his age, he told me, was tied by the body with rope to a car by "self-styled friends," dragged around the town, suffered fatal injuries, and died.

When I said "that's terrible," he said:

"Unlike you, I lived like I was in a slum. And you say 'that's terrible,' but the one who died was at fault. He was at fault for getting mixed up with people like that."

He is strong. He probably could not have survived without being strong. Still, the me of now feels a wrongness in the way he put it. And, for what it's worth, he does not know my past.

Do you remember the case in Asahikawa where a girl in middle school froze to death? That, too, was Hokkaido.

I learned something later. In a tracking survey by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research, over the six years from fourth grade of elementary school to third grade of middle school, more than 90% of children experienced both being a victim and being a perpetrator of bullying. Even over three years, it exceeds 80%. The proportion of bystanders increases the higher the grade [3]. It is not rare for a victim to turn into a perpetrator.

In the Ministry of Education's fiscal 2024 survey, the number of recognised cases of bullying was 769,000 — the highest ever — at 61.3 per 1,000 students [4]. By prefecture, Yamagata Prefecture was first in the nation at 117.7 per 1,000 students, followed by Yamanashi at 102.3 and Hokkaido at 101.4. Yamagata has been the highest in the nation for five consecutive years. The Ministry of Education explains this figure as "a sign of actively recognising bullying without overlooking it." Given that the 2013 law broadened the definition and called for even minor cases to be counted, it is surely true that the more diligently a municipality counts, the more its figures rise. But that explanation cannot account for the fact that, in Yamagata and in Hokkaido, children are dying. In 2025 the number of suicides among elementary, middle and high school students was 538 — the highest since statistics began in 1980. The most common cause or motive was school-related problems, at 251 [5].

Yamagata Prefecture, where I was born, and Hokkaido, where the president was from. In both, children are dying because of bullying.

Let me give one more example of someone on the side of the trampled who ends without anyone noticing. An acquaintance of mine still works at the bottom of the general-contractor-style IT industry. Around 2017, unreasonable demands were forced on him by a client, and for more than three months he was made to work 100--150 hours of overtime a month. He met the deadline, but developed diabetes from overwork. From stress and lack of sleep, he was drinking two energy drinks a day, he said. The doctor's explanation was: "With your metabolism lowered by stress and lack of sleep, you kept drinking sugary drinks without realising it. Your body could not stop the rise in blood sugar, and it was crushed." He has not been certified for workers' compensation.

In 2015, a woman who was a graduate of the University of Tokyo, working at a major advertising company, took her own life from overwork. The reporting was extensive, and workers' compensation was certified. That was the right thing. But there have been any number of people who died the same way in the past, and most of them were not at famous companies, nor from famous universities. For their sake, did the press and the state move in the same way?

The people of Japan will not move unless "a victim everyone can sympathise with" and "a villain anyone can see is a villain" are both in place. In Japan, both the punishment of perpetrators and the protection of victims are thin. And victims and the weak are of one continuous ground. Even without being bullied, there are any number of people in Japan on the side of the trampled. The will to change this fundamentally is not visible.

5. The Structure

Laying out twenty-five years, what I see is one thing.

In elementary school, Mr. Sh, who had been a perpetrator, became a victim. In middle school, Mr. F, who had been a victim, declared "this time I'll stand on the side that bullies." "There's also a problem on the side of the one being bullied," my middle-school homeroom teacher said. "The fault lies with the one who was slandered," the police and a lawyer said. "The one who died was at fault," a business owner who had survived bullying said. "We have no intention of taking the side of the weak," celebrities and politicians on television said.

And this year, everywhere I went for help with a consumer dispute, the answer was the same. "There is no law that protects you." "You will have to find a lawyer." Put another way: you paid the money, so it is on you. I have written up that sequence separately.

The weak internalise the logic of the strong, and trample the next weak.

This is not a conspiracy. People who have been trampled turn to the side that tramples, so as not to be trampled. People who could not turn to the trampling side go on being trampled. In the classroom, in the workplace, in the apartment, in the family, in the state — there is the same structure.

And I, too, was inside it. I wanted to keep my distance from Mr. Mi. I watched Ms. O's pencil case scatter. I watched Mr. F be shot and cry. I was, at once, a victim and a bystander. If I did not write that, this record would be a lie.

Closing

I have no intention of forgiving them.

For the sake of fairness, I'll set this down. As for the people from my school years, it is not that they treated me with ill will every day. There were days they were kind to me. But what I understood, looking back over twenty-five years of memory, is that I had not forgiven them. And I no longer have, in me, the power to distinguish between those who were kind and those who were not.

They received no judgment of any kind, while I, for the sake of treatment, will pay several years and several million yen ahead. That asymmetry is a fact, and I think that making this record public is one of the judgments left to me.

At the very least, I do not know a single case, close to me, in this country, of a perpetrator of bullying or slander being brought to judgment.

Sources

[1] Tokyo Shimbun, "Noise-trouble reports up 30%, Metropolitan Police Department," May 2020 (noise-related 110 calls in March--April: 24,245; same period prior year: 18,864). https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/16648

[2] Furie Sumai Research Institute, "Survey on the reality of neighbour trouble," 2025 (62% had experienced it). https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000059.000052057.html / Mansion Lab, "Survey on condominium neighbour trouble and countermeasures," March 2026 (most common: noise). https://mlab.ne.jp/n/n197668998db2

[3] National Institute for Educational Policy Research, "Bullying Tracking Survey 2019--2022," December 2024. https://www.nier.go.jp/shido/centerhp/sien/tsuiseki2019-2022.pdf

[4] Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, "FY2024 Survey on Problem Behaviour, Truancy and Other Issues in Student Guidance" (recognised cases: 769,022; 61.3 per 1,000 students). https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/seitoshidou/1422178_00006.htm

[5] Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare / National Police Agency, 2025 suicide statistics, finalised figures (elementary/middle/high school students: 538; school problems: 251). Reporting: Nikkei, 27 March 2026. https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUD270TB0X20C26A3000000/