FIVE months after the tsunami that led to his family’s evacuation from Fukushima, the boy enrolled at a new school in Yokohama. His new classmates were pitiless. They called him “germ boy”. They stole his things. They punched and kicked him and threw him down the stairs; they took him to a “study” room and beat him some more. He was eight years old.

The abuse went on for nearly three years before the bullies added extortion. In 2014 they told the boy to hand over any compensation his family may have received after their evacuation. His parents were in fact not eligible for any recompense, but relatives had lent them ¥1.5m ($13,000). They kept it in cash at home, fearful that they would again lose access to bank accounts. The boy gave all the money to his classmates. After the cash ran out he stopped going to school altogether.

The boy, now 13, is one of hundreds of evacuees to have been bullied at school. And they are part of a broader problem. Bullying may or may not be more common in Japanese schools than elsewhere, but it is unusually intense when it happens. In 1986 a boy killed himself after classmates, egged on by the teacher, topped months of mental torture with a mock funeral. Since then, thousands of articles and hundreds of books have been written on the subject. Yet there is no sign that the bullies are laying off. In 2015 nine bullied pupils killed themselves, according to government figures. Suicide is the biggest cause of death for Japanese aged 10 to 19, and the first day of school the most common date for it.

According to Mitsuru Taki of the Ministry of Education, bullying in other countries tends to involve two or three pupils picking on another. In Japan, in contrast, most cases involve a big portion of a class inflicting insistent psychological (and occasionally physical) torment on a single victim. “Bullies in Japan are not rotten apples,” he says. “It is a group phenomenon.”

There are many reasons for this idiosyncratic form of bullying. “A characteristic of Japan is that you should not stand out,” argues the head teacher of a secondary school in Tokyo. “Pupils have to lead a collective life when they are at school,” adds Koju Matsubayashi, an official in the anti-bullying department at the ministry. Erika, an 18-year-old who left her school in Tokyo after being bullied, agrees. “I was told by teachers to adapt or quit, so I quit.”

The way Japanese schools are organised adds to the pressure to conform. Children learn in a “homeroom”: teachers of different subjects come to them. School activities, such as cleaning, eating lunch and studying, are organised in groups. Pupils must often adhere to exact rules about their uniforms, hairstyles and grooming. Individuals who do not kuuki wo yomu (roughly translated as “read the vibes”) can be shunned by other members of the class.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial test run by the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, suggests that Japanese students are among the top performers academically. They also have among the lowest truancy rates. But they say they enjoy school less than nearly everyone else. Shoko Yoneyama of the University of Adelaide argues that Japanese schools are “dysfunctional communities”.

Backing the bad guys

Teachers rarely help. They are renowned for their pedagogical prowess, especially in maths. But most are not trained to spot bullying. There are few incentives to notice or deal with it, notes Kanae Doi of Human Rights Watch (HRW). Teachers who do not achieve harmony, she says, are seen as poor performers. One survey suggests that around 12% of teachers have taken part in bullying. A quarter of high schools allow corporal punishment.

Since the 1980s various task-forces have tried to curb bullying. But the local school boards that interpret the national curriculum and hire teachers have neglected the problem. In the case of the boy from Fukushima, the school board in Yokohama for months tried to blame him for what had happened, suggesting he had handed over his family’s savings voluntarily, before changing its mind after much public criticism.

An anti-bullying law passed in 2013 requires schools to report cases of bullying. It has led to a sharp rise in the number of known cases, from a few thousand a year to 224,450 in 2015. Yet there are suspiciously wide disparities between regions. In 2015 Kyoto prefecture reported 90.6 cases per 1,000 pupils; Saga prefecture, in southern Japan, recorded just 3.5. Mr Taki reckons that even Kyoto underestimates the scale of the abuse.

The law has prodded teachers to report bullying but it has done little to change how they deal with the problem. Bullies are rarely punished: in 2014 there were 188,057 reported cases and just two suspensions. The law also assumes that conformity is the way to stop bullying. It says teachers should “cultivate recognition…among students that they are part of a group”. But some pupils are simply more likely to be victims and need protection—like evacuees.

Or gay pupils. A report last year by HRW concluded that bullying of gay children in Japanese schools was “nearly ubiquitous”. It cited a survey by Yasuharu Hidaka of Takarazuka University that found that 44% of gay teenage boys were bullied. One told HRW that teachers said his sexuality broke the harmony of the school. Separate research by Mr Hidaka suggests that roughly one Japanese teacher in three thinks homosexuality is a mental illness.

The government has said it will review its anti-bullying policies. But laws alone will not curb it. That requires policymakers and teachers to recognise that too much conformity plays a part. In November the 13-year-old from Fukushima issued a message for evacuees enduring similar ordeals. “It is painful,” he said through his parents, “but please do not choose to die.”