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The story
Starting September 1, 2026, the Kobe City Board of Education is launching “Kobe-Katsu,” a program that abolishes school-run club activities at municipal junior high schools and shifts them entirely to community-run clubs. Driven by teachers’ long working hours and shrinking club rosters from the falling birthrate, Kobe becomes the first government-designated city to fully implement the nationally promoted “community transition” policy, including on weekdays. On 5ch’s Breaking News+ board, many posters welcomed the relief for teachers, who get little to no overtime pay for supervising clubs—though others pointed to reports that teachers are still ending up as advisors even after the handover, and voiced concern about the future of clubs with more complex setups, like brass bands.
Starting September 1, the Kobe City Board of Education is rolling out “Kobe-Katsu,” an initiative that abolishes club activities at municipal junior high schools and hands them over to private clubs. Amid overworked teachers and declining student numbers from the falling birthrate, the national government has been promoting the community expansion of school clubs (the “community transition”). This push is underway nationwide, but Kobe is the first government-designated city to go fully community-run, including on weekdays. With concerns still lingering over issues like safety, how this unfolds is expected to draw close attention.
“So what are you going to talk about this time?” “My new obsession—baking bread.” In August, at an internet radio station in Kobe’s Chuo Ward, junior high schoolers were cheerfully recording a segment. It’s the work of the “Kids’ Editorial Department,” a group that produces articles and radio programs. The organization running it accepts students who opt in as an alternative to traditional club activities.
According to the city’s Board of Education, around 1,000 organizations—including sports clubs and universities—have also registered under Kobe-Katsu. Students can join regardless of where they live. With many school clubs being suspended or disbanded for lack of members, the board says the expanded options are a clear benefit.
Source: 47news.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Let them have it easy. Sure, it's technically the job, but running a club means working weekends and unpaid after-school hours—there's basically no overtime pay for it.
Pay's the same whether you run a club or not—but if you do, your weekends get eaten up by matches and away trips and you never get a day off. It's advisor hell.
Same thing happened where I am—they "transitioned to the community" but the advisor is still the same teacher. Nothing actually changed.
Kobe really made a bad call here.
Youth crime hasn't exactly stopped even with clubs around, though…
Where I'm from, Little League baseball was the real breeding ground for trouble—those kids started acting tough once they hit junior high, and that senior-junior pecking order kept them causing trouble in a vicious cycle until they were about 20.
Is it really a good thing to give people something they were never meant to have in the first place? There's also a saying: know when you already have enough.
Exploiting teachers' goodwill just isn't sustainable anymore. All it takes is one "monster parent" (Japanese slang for an entitled, overly demanding parent) and any decent activity at that school falls apart.
That's the verdict, case closed.
Running a club was never actually part of a teacher's job description, so that dream was kind of on them…
It's a postwar custom, isn't it? It's not like it's some ancient tradition—it just stopped fitting the times.
Making the school responsible for that too seems like a stretch, though.
That's a parenting issue or a community issue, not a school issue.
If everyone involved is doing it willingly, I think it's fine. But when it comes to clubs, the burden on teachers is just too heavy. A system where the harder an advisor works, the more the burden piles on them—that's something that needs to change.
Working weekends for chump change, and if there's trouble or an accident, you're on the hook—that's way too much risk for way too little reward.
It's not even chump change, it's a net loss. Overtime pay only adds about 4% on top of base salary. Private school teachers are a different story, but public school teachers really go above and beyond.
There are unpaid labor-of-love jobs everywhere, not just teaching. No need to treat teachers as some special case.
Teachers' salaries are supposed to already account for that, though.
That said, it obviously doesn't follow that the staffing shortage means the workload relief from cutting clubs should be walked back.
Or did you all actually learn your best subjects just from class?
Japan's education system today has zero interest in actually raising kids—it's just a vested-interest racket.
Does this mean they won't be able to compete in contests as a school anymore?
What happens to the advisor role, I wonder. Can't exactly demand top-tier talent for that.
Honestly, now's a good time to scale that stuff down anyway. It ties kids up for hours on end, plenty of people say they regret it later, and teachers get way too fired up about it.
Out in the countryside, it's mandatory. You're not allowed to skip it. Even in high school it's like that.
That was true in junior high, but high school was completely optional for me. I'm from the Employment Ice Age generation (Japan's "lost generation" who job-hunted during the 1990s–2000s downturn). At a college-prep school, there's an unspoken understanding that you don't have to join a club—exam prep comes first.
I was actually from the countryside myself (´・ω・｀). Anyway, back when today's 50-somethings were students, even rural areas had enough kids that it wasn't like literally everyone was in a club.
Background and Key Points of Debate
The shift of school clubs to community management follows a policy set out by the Japan Sports Agency and the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2022, and has been rolled out by municipalities nationwide. It was originally meant to expand gradually, starting with weekend sports clubs. Kobe’s “Kobe-Katsu” program stands out for switching the operating body from schools to private and community organizations, letting students join regardless of where they live—according to the city’s Board of Education, around 1,000 organizations have registered to take on this role. The thread showed broad support for the policy’s goal of easing teachers’ workload, but posters also pointed to real-world cases of teachers still serving as advisors even after the handover, as well as practical challenges like securing specialized instructors and a competition framework for groups such as brass bands. Practical questions—safety management, securing coaches, and who covers participation costs—remain largely unresolved and will depend on how the program actually plays out.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Junior High Clubs Abolished] Shift to Community Management — Kobe City First Among Government-Designated Cities.”
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