Shanghai kindergarten punished for playing Japanese war song at graduation
School suspends officials and apologises after teacher mistakenly used battle march at ceremony
Education authorities in Shanghai have punished a kindergarten teacher and its principal, and ordered the school to apologise, after a Japanese wartime march song was played at its graduation ceremony.
The Warship March, the official marching music of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force and its former Imperial navy, was used as the background music by the Shanghai Zhendan Foreign Language Kindergarten during the June 27 ceremony.
The education department of Zhabei district in Shanghai confirmed this in a statement on Thursday evening.
The school suspended the responsible directors from their duties after a clip of the ceremony recently went viral online and the authorities looked into the incident.
The education department also said on its Weibo microblog account that it ordered the kindergarten to conduct “profound self-criticism and apologise to the public”.
The kindergarten’s principal, Xia Miao, has since apologised through a written statement, which was posted on the Zhabei education department’s Weibo.
Xia explained that a head teacher of one class found the Warship March while searching online for drumming performance music and, thinking it was just an ordinary marching song, mistakenly used it for the graduation of that class.
