In September 2016, the Twitter hashtag "Tsukamotoyochien" attracted a series of comments on the practices of the Tsukamoto kindergarten, where three-to five-year-olds are educated "according to prewar ideals" (Ha 2016).Apparently, the pupils at the kindergarten are taught to recite the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) and to bow to the Shōwa emperor's (r.1926-1989) photograph in the hallways; they are also routinely taken to military bases-all with the explicit aim of preparing them to "protect their nation against potential threats from other countries." One tweet pronounced Japan's democracy to be dying.Another expressed concern that these children were being groomed for direct recruitment into the Self-Defense Forces.Many other comments highlighted a new urgency surrounding issues of children's education and their relationship to the nation-state, all the while commenting on how "sweet, " "innocent, " and "pitiful" these kindergarteners were.Since the early 1980s, Japanese media have teemed with intense debates about bullying at schools, child poverty, child suicides, violent crimes committed by children, the rise of socially withdrawn youngsters, and, most recently, forceful moves by the Abe Shinzō administration to introduce a decisively more conservative educational curriculum (Ogi 2013).While the Twitter storm mentioned above was partly informed by Japan's widely noted right turn, signified in part by the introduction of new security legislation, it also speaks to issues debated in global conversations about the nature of children and how to raise them, the forces and pressures impinging on children, the rights that should be accorded to them, and the responsibilities with which they should be entrusted (Cunningham 1998(Cunningham : 1195;;