It is 1980. Sadatomo is at a secondary school in a small town. His parents barely take any notice of him. The strict teacher Kobayashi has hung up a 'humanity index' in the classroom, divided into the categories 'delinquents', 'scum' and 'people'. In each category he has hung name-cards of pupils. One day Kobayashi finds out that Sadatomo and his friends have stolen some things from a shop for fun. Their fathers are informed and as punishment, the children have to write a 'self-critical' essay of no less than thirty pages. For the first time, Sadatomo is beaten by his father. Shocked, he writes a piece entitled 'I am an onion', in which the teacher thinks he can detect a first sign of humanity. That is the start of a confusing situation in which it gets hard to distinguish lies, truth, justified self-criticism and opportunist wheeler dealing, even for the boys.
Writing
That onion essay. You'll never forget it.
Direction
Furumaya makes bureaucratic evil feel terrifyingly mundane.
Director
Tomoyuki Furumaya
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Set in 1980, the film captures Japan's Shōwa era education system's obsession with conformity and public shaming—practices that lingered well into the '90s reform period.
The 'humanity index' wasn't fiction; director Furumaya based it on real classroom practices he witnessed, where teachers publicly ranked students by moral character.
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