The Teacher Drama

3-nen B-gumi Kinpachi-sensei (Mr. Kinpachi of Class 3-B) began in 1979 and continued through eight series. The script was by Mieko Osanai. What the programme did was to use the classroom, exactly as it is, as the site of social problems. The best-known instance is "the equation of the rotten mandarin" from the second series, broadcast across two episodes on 31 October and 7 November 1980. The school tries to exclude a student who has come from a juvenile facility, on the logic that one rotten mandarin rots the whole box, and Kinpachi argues back. The second series averaged 26.3%, and its final episode drew 34.8%. The lines from that episode are still repeated today. This map, though, does not place their wording here as a quote: no primary material that can be checked word for word — a script, or a broadcast archive — has been reached. The episode numbers and the dates agree across several sources, so that much is written down. The form of borrowing a classroom to portray society is carried on right through the school dramas that follow (→ School and Youth Drama).