'No singing, eat in silence': How Japanese schools have stayed open despite the pandemic

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‘No singing, eat in silence’: How Japanese schools have stayed open despite the pandemic

Students at Funabori Elementary School in Edogawa Ward, Tokyo, clap their hands during a music class in March. Singing is not allowed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. | TOMOHIRO OSAKI

By Tomohiro Osaki
Staff writer

Apr 4, 2021

This is the first in a two-part series on how the nation’s schools continued with in-person classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The upbeat theme song of popular anime series “Lupin the Third” reverberated throughout the building of a Tokyo elementary school on a recent balmy afternoon. The music came from a courtyard where a bevy of sixth graders had taken center stage and were playing accordions, metallophones and keyboards — instruments that don’t generate droplets — under the mesmerized gaze of an audience of hundreds of schoolchildren.

The performance by the final-year students at Funabori Elementary School in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward took place under the state of emergency in early March — just weeks before their graduation — as a way for them to say thank you to the younger pupils and teachers they would leave behind.