Transmitting information from an involved-party perspective for 20 years that directly involves children struggling with school refusal

The NPO Zenkoku Futoko Shinbun Sha is Japan's first information and exchange paper to transmit information directly involving children struggling with school refusal. Futoko Shinbun celebrated 20 years in May 2018. It publishes stories from children refusing to go to school and permanently staying home themselves as well as people with such experiences. They publish a physical paper and an online edition twice a month, thinking about social withdrawal and how society works from the perspective of involved parties.

In the summer of 1997, a child thought to have hesitated about going to school for the second term committed suicide. On the same day, some children set fire to their schools because "We thought we wouldn't have to go to school if it burned down." These successive incidents became the reason for the current administrative officer Keiko Okuchi to start the newspaper in 1998 centering on her wish to "change situations where the only choices are going to school or dying."

The editing policy reflects the importance of it being a participatory newspaper that assumes an "involved-party perspective" of people currently in relevant circumstances or with experiences of such. Besides the full-time staff, there are about 130 persons in their 10s-30s either with experiences of school refusal or currently withdrawn from society from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south who are involved in planning and editing material as volunteers in the Children and Young People's Editorial Department, motivated by the idea that persuasive contents requires collecting data from people who are actually going through the struggles. Current editor-in-chief Shiko Ishii has experiences of school refusal and has been involved in planning and editing at the Children and Young People's Editorial Department since age sixteen.

Due to aliteracy, they went from publishing a maximum of 6,000 copies at the time of the paper's founding to 820 in 2012, forcing them to announce impending suspension. However, the members thought that "It would be too much of a pity to close down this work." So they fundraised and discussed suggestions like "How about an online version?" and "How about we make it into a magazine?" In this process, they also received many comments from readers, saying that they "want to hear authentic voices and authentic information from involved parties." It was based on this demand that they started revising the paper. As a result, their paper reforms and adoption of an online version bore fruit so that circulation recovered enough for publication to go on. At present, they publish about 3,500 copies.

The physical paper introduces not only the children themselves, but also mothers of children who refuse to go to school. Moreover, many members of the editorial staff have been part of planning interviews with people they look up to, saying "That experience gave me the power to live, it saved me." Appearing in the interview articles are numerous prominent figures, including Kirin Kiki and Mizuki Tsujimura. A total of more than 1,000 persons with experiences of school refusal have also been involved in conducting interviews and writing articles so far, so that both editorial staff and readers have obtained hints about various ways of life.

Directly conveying the thoughts of involved parties, supporting the hearts of children refusing to go to schools, and changing how we view the world

I believe that children refusing to go to school were previously viewed with prejudice. Yet the steady efforts of Futoko Shinbun over 20 years have perhaps not only saved children refusing to go to school, but also changed society's perspective. What makes it so great is that the planning and editing is done by involved parties. That is how they can convey the feelings of persons involved fully and straightforwardly.