Normally I don’t write about a game until I’ve finished it. This way I understand the full scope of its mechanics and gameplay as well as narrative. There are too many games that start out perfectly paced and exciting, garnering positive first impressions, only for the latter stages to fall apart from unreasonable challenges, glitched out levels, dragged out missions, or other disruptions to a previously enjoyable experience. A story’s themes may not fully emerge until its final hours, its true antagonist and their motivations kept hidden until the climactic finale. Or, like The Last of Us, the game’s entire narrative recontextualized by its conclusion.

I will not be doing that for Persona 5 Royal. The first hour of the game thoroughly pummels the player with the core of its thematic conflict, letting the player know that the struggle between young and old generations is at the game’s heart. By the thirtieth hour, it is not only examining this conflict in greater detail through its different characters, but it is beginning to ask questions of the perspective of “right” and “justice” that our heroes have chosen.

This is a game that has so much to dive into I may very well create a video on it some day. However, given my current rate of production in that regard, I’d rather not wait however many years until that opportunity arises. Instead I will be posting my thoughts as a series here on the blog, perhaps to be used as an outline for such a video in the future.

I don’t know for certain how many posts I will write, nor do I know what sort of subject matter each one shall focus on. There are individual characters whose situations could garner an entire essay themselves, such as Makoto Niijima or, in time, assistant to the heroes Mishima. There’s something to be said of the method in which our protagonists “steal hearts”, the wishy-washy nature of public opinion, and even the potentially inevitable failure of the rebellion and reform they seek.

Before I delve into any of those topics, however, I’d first like to establish the “plausibility” of the predicament our heroes find themselves in. Not their supernatural abilities, of course, but the very systems that cause them to feel trapped. The plausibility of, say, a sports coach being permitted to physically and even sexually abuse his own students.

The first villain in Persona 5 Royal – from here on abbreviated to P5R – is Suguru Kamoshida, an Olympic Gold Medal winner hired on as Physical Education teacher and coach of Shujin Academy’s volleyball team. No one speaks out against Kamoshida despite being aware of the severity of his training regimen and abuse to his team. Students endure the pain in hopes of receiving a College recommendation from Kamoshida, their bruises ignored by parents hoping for their child to secure a bright future or fear of rocking the boat.

Ryuji and Ann, the game’s first two additional members to the party, are both victims of Kamoshida’s manipulation. Kamoshida had coerced Ryuji into throwing a punch towards him, an act that brought disgrace to the entirety of the track team and resulted in their disbanding. He then promised Ann a starting position for her best friend on his volleyball team in exchange for dates and the hope of sexual favors.

Some of the screenshots in this series will likely be from the original game’s release, and thus the original translation. Apologies for any inconsistency.

P5R begins its journey in a school in order to provide a smaller-scale model of Japanese society as a whole. The three factors that enable a character like Suguru Kamoshida to get away with his crimes are the nature of hierarchy in Japan, the notion of “face” and the gaining, saving, or losing thereof, and the ever-important Wa, or communal harmony.

I want to highlight these factors because, while scandals and conspiracies occur in the Western world, they often play out rather differently than the complacency that can occur in Japan. For example, if you follow the timeline of the Penn State Abuse Scandal, you’ll see that a variety of reports and investigations had been made, be it from staff at the Campus, children, or parents themselves. Also comparable is the USA Gymnastics scandal in 2017, where the USA Gymnastics officials treated any accusations of abuse from a third party as hearsay, requiring the allegation to come from the victim or victim’s parent.

The slight difference I intend to highlight is that, even if those in charge dismissed, buried, or failed to respond to accusations or reports in a timely manner, reports were still being made. In comparison, the student body, faculty, and parents of Shujin Academy remained silent despite overwhelming evidence and suspicion of Suguru Kamoshida’s conduct. This silence is what may come off as unusual or perhaps unrealistic, but is, in fact, completely plausible due to the three aforementioned factors.

Hierarchy is, perhaps, the factor which Western culture has the most in common with Japan. Nearly every organization contains ranks based on experience, performance, and accomplishments. This includes a hierarchy of institutions themselves, where certain schools and universities are often ranked based on performance. The Principal of Shujin Academy yearns to increase the position and status of the school, hence hiring a former Olympic athlete to coach their volleyball team. Due to that coach’s accomplishments, he himself is given special treatment.

Each of these combine with that notion of “face”, a concept that will no doubt seem familiar but can result in problematic scenarios between Westerners and Japanese. The best way I can illustrate this subtle difference is actually in the game Gears of War. There’s a moment where senior ranking Marcus Fenix orders his group to split up only for Cole to casually and honestly voice his disagreement. Marcus responds with “I’ll take it under advisement,” but orders Cole and Baird to split off nonetheless. Cole responds with an aggressive “Yes, sir!” expressing his own displeasure with the decision. There is still a clear hierarchy present, and the disagreement has clearly resulted in some slightly raised tempers, but there is no insult to rank or station. The differing opinions are out in the open, but no faux pas has been committed.

In Japan, Cole’s statement would have been seen as an immense display of disrespect for both Marcus Fenix and his position. You do not question someone of a higher rank in front of others. To do so opens up the possibility of them not only being wrong, but not deserving of their title.

We must then consider that Japan is not as individualistic a society as America is. This is where that notion of Wa comes in, the communal harmony which encourages its citizens to act in the interest of the whole as opposed to that of the self. The problem is that this nature of hierarchy and face create a conflict to that desire. If one with a high social standing is in some way shamed, then that shame would resonate to everyone that placed them in such a position. If, for example, Suguru Kamoshida were to be outed as an abusive teacher, then it would mean Shujin Academy itself had made a mistake and would be shamed for having hired him. Kamoshida losing face would mean not just the Principal, but the entire school, would lose face as well.

This does not mean those in a higher position cannot be questioned. It just means they must be questioned in private, where they have a chance to publicly change their stance in a manner that permits them to maintain “face”. The question, then, is whether the individual in power would be willing to change their ways at all.

Which is how the situation at Shujin Academy is able to get so bad. The powers that be are not willing to step in because it would admit making a mistake. The longer the problem festers, the worse that mistake becomes. As such, it is preferable to let the lie linger on.

Is that really enough to keep the students and parents quiet, though? Well, perhaps, and for this I’ll rely on the knowledge I’ve obtained from You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting. I had just about finished this book by the time I began playing P5R, and there were a number of scenarios outlined within the text that seemed relevant to the game’s first obstacle. Towards the end of the book the author discusses the annual National High School Baseball Summer Championship Tournament, often referred to as Koshien, the location the event takes place. Its popularity is comparable to that of the Super Bowl in the United States, or the World Cup in Europe and Latin America. It may even be more popular, truth told.

The book had already established the grueling hours of training that the Japanese players endured in the name of “fighting spirit”. However, it was in the eleventh chapter “Schoolboys of Summer” that Whiting revealed how early these painful regiments begin.

Those playing high school baseball are committed to a system so austere it would tax a samurai’s resolve. At most schools in Japan, players are expected to practice every single day of the year, before and after school, rain or shine, except for a brief respite at the New Year. During summer and winter vacations, they are sequestered at special baseball camps where the program might include marathon all-night workouts and other excruciating exercises designed to hone fighting spirit. Teams in the frigid regions of Hokkaido and the Japan Alps often practice in the snow using an orange ball for better visibility.

...

Little Jiro liked to play softball. And on a very hot day in July of 1986, he showed up for a game with the rest of his school’s team in Funabashi, Chiba, near Tokyo.

The boys’ pregame workout alone would have exhausted most adults. It consisted of twenty 160-yard dashes, a 2-mile run, a Japanese running drill in which players run back and forth in front of a coach at full speed for several minutes trying to catch a ball tossed up in the air, and a fielding session of one hundred ground balls. Jiro and the other boys were not allowed to drink water during practice.

This was, according to the weekly Asahi Journal, which wrote an article about the event, a standard pregame workout for any young boys’ ball team.

Jiro’s team lost the game, so the manager ordered a postgame workout. This one consisted of ten 30-yard dashes, ten 60-yard dashes, ten laps around the field (310 yards), ten sprints up and down the stadium stairs, and, finally, three 60-yard dashes to wrap it all up.

It was, said the Asahi Journal again, not an unusual postgame workout for a young boys’ ball team.

It was estimated that the boys ran a total of ten miles all told and when it was all over, little Jiro, who had apparently been in good health, keeled over and died of heart failure.

Persona 5 is a role-playing game whose dungeons are a manifestation of an individual’s psyche rather than physical, literal dungeons. The first “Palace”, as these manifestations are referred to, belongs to our first villain, Suguru Kamoshida. When the protagonist and his new companion Ryuji stumble upon depictions of their classmates running on treadmills, a wall of spikes behind them and a pot of water dangling before them like a carrot before a horse, my mind immediately jumped back to that tragic story of young Jiro.

How Suguru Kamoshida views himself, the school, and the female students.

While the parents did ultimately sue the school, author Robert Whiting emphasized the insistence of newspaper publication Asahi Journal that it was an average high school work out. This insistence is done to clarify how normal and expected this regimen was.

So, too, was the allowance of coaches to occasionally implement physical abuse to their students.

During the 1987 games, the manager of the team from the Saga Prefectural High School of Technology and Engineering discovered several of his players up late at night talking in the kitchen of the ryokan (inn) where the team was staying. He whacked each of them over the head with the grip end of an aluminum bat, cutting the scalps of two of them.

As a result of the late-night whacking, the team played listlessly the next day and was eliminated from the tourney. Saga Manager Yasuhiko Kugimoto, forty-five, apologized for his actions, but said he could not hold his temper because the boys were so noisy.

The Saga High principal thought it all a bit much. He delivered an apology to the Japan High School Baseball Federation and suspended Kugimoto for a year. But Saga’s captain and ace pitcher, who was among the whackees, was mortified. “I don’t blame the manager,” he told reporters, “Because I was the one who was really bad. And my parents agreed with that. I just feel sorry that this happened. It’s all our fault.”

While the school here did hold the manager responsible, it is just one of many examples of coaches or managers inflicting physical violence upon their players. However, in all other chapters of the book, those examples are physical beatings inflicted upon adults rather than students.

This chapter was largely compiled for the book’s original publishing in 1989, and there certainly have been improvements in that time. However, the 2009 edition of the book includes an Afterword with some updated information regarding how the sport had changed twenty years later.

Once in Japan, (Trey) Hillman tried to implement the American brand of baseball he had employed for years. He tried to rein in some of the excesses characteristic of the Japanese game that he believed were harmful, like the so-called “guts drills,” and the tendency of coaches to haul off and punch their players on occasion, a violent legacy of Japan’s martial arts—and the traditional approach to high school baseball they had spawned. For example, Nippon Ham’s minor-league manager, a man named Tetsushi Okamoto, slugged a rookie shortstop for making an error that let in two runs, knocking him to the ground. As the player curled up into a ball on the dugout floor, the farm-team manager continued to beat him.

The youth, as others before, had simply accepted it, because that was the way of things.

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High school baseball appeared to be the place of greatest resistance (to change). The star of the 2006 Koshien tourney, Yuki Saito, of Waseda Jitsugyo High School, who gained fame when he pitched all six of his team’s games in the two-week affair, including four complete games in a row from August 18-21, for a record total of sixty-nine innings, said he practiced two to three hours a day throughout the calendar year, throwing a maximum of sixty pitches a day in practice and starting in the weekly Saturday and Sunday games. In 2008, Motonori Watanabe, the manager of Yokohama High School, for whom Dice-K Matsuzaka had toiled—once throwing a seventeen-inning, 250-pitch game—had his pitchers throw 120 to 130 pitches everyday, insisting that with proper form, they would not injure their arms. This was, it should be noted, half of what Watanabe had demanded in earlier years. Even so, 130 pitches was an American high school pitcher’s weekly practice quota.

If you’re as unfamiliar with sports medicine and fitness as I am, then you may be unaware that the very motion of pitching is an unnatural one that our arms are not built for. Damage can be done to the elbow without enough recovery time and too much repetition of the motion. Yet despite such an injury nearly ending the career of a Japanese pitcher in the 80’s, a high school manager is still insisting that no injury would occur “with proper form”.

What I had hoped to illustrate with this essay is that the conditions which the students suffer in the beginning of P5R is certainly exaggerated, but not nearly as much as one might expect. Even the notion of suffering for the sake of a college recommendation is a reality for Japanese high school students.

To these players, baseball represents a way of circumventing Japan’s infamous “examination hell” education system which forces junior and senior high school students to study seven days a week, almost year-round, both in and out of the classroom, so as to pass stiff university entrance exams. Qualifying for admission to a prestigious university guarantees entry to one of Japan’s top companies and a good position for life.

Playing in a Koshien tournament, however, can be a virtual ticket to success in that national recognition and stardom can instantly be achieved. Over half of the players on Japanese pro rosters have been scouted at Koshien tournaments. Even those who don’t gain lucrative professional contracts can still wind up as well-paid employees of corporations that maintain teams in Japan’s industrial leagues. Just the fact that a man has appeared in Koshien means he will be honored for life in Japanese society.

You may recall how I mentioned “examination hell” during my analysis of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. Coincidentally, that game featured a prodigious baseball player that actually hated the sport. He was a rebel that, out of season, sported long hair, a beard, and even a pierced tongue: each of which is a trait that goes against the trim appearance demanded of most baseball teams, be it high school or professional.

Granted, the quote above discusses baseball being a way to avoid “examination hell”, but my purpose was to illustrate the importance of entry to a prestigious university. After all, the sport in which Kamoshida specializes and coaches is volleyball, not baseball.

Hopefully the above links, quotes, and resources are enough to clarify the plausibility of P5R and the actions of the students and faculty of Shujin Academy. The game itself acts as a sort of window into Japanese society similarly to how the Ace Attorney games are a window into Japan’s justice system. While I would hardly refer to any of the Phoenix Wright games as “realistic”, the manner in which the prosecution can withhold evidence from the defense is factual. Judgment itself dabbles in the lop-sided nature of the court system, its protagonist Takayuki Yagami choosing the life of a detective in order to seek out truth once it becomes clear he cannot do it as a lawyer.

There’s still plenty to discuss, however. Though the ritual sacrifice of seppuku is an outdated one, the idea of the “honorable death” and taking of responsibility is core to the manner in which our heroes the Phantom Thieves “steal hearts”. I hope to go into that next time.