From Tetsuryokukai to Keio Medical School, and Then to Country Life in Katsuura: Kurumi on Educational Abuse and Leaving the "Academic Track"

The interview covered two main things. One was how a child who simply loved studying drifted into medical school amid a mother's educational abuse and an environment where "anything other than the University of Tokyo or a medical school isn't a real university." The other was what Kurumi came to see as happiness after breaking away from that. Kurumi cut ties with their mother after an article in Shukan Bunshun.

The interview was filmed on a stretch of seashore within walking distance of Kurumi's home, a place where Kurumi often comes to play with the children. Kurumi moved to Katsuura about two and a half years ago. The older child is 2 and the younger is 1, born within a year of each other, and the third child on the way will also be born less than a year after the second. If Kurumi's water broke or labor began during filming, the shoot would end right there.

Kurumi bought a first house at age 20 and later bought another in Katsuura. The first house is rented out, and Kurumi lives on that rental income and other earnings. Kurumi described it as "a landlord's life, so to speak."

Kurumi also spoke concretely about Katsuura's child-rearing support. According to Kurumi, Katsuura has a population of about 15,000 and only around 30 births a year. As a result, the support per child is generous. A third child brings a birth gift of 400,000 yen (100,000 yen for a second child), plus 100,000 yen for diapers usable over a year, and prenatal checkups and childbirth costs are also free, Kurumi said.

Kurumi was born in Nishi-Azabu. The mother's family had long owned land there, and the family lived in the old apartment portion of a two-household building, with the grandmother living on one side and apartments on the other. Because the area wasn't suited to raising children, the family moved to Nerima when Kurumi was small, and lived there the longest. For Kurumi, Nerima is "where I grew up."

Kurumi's father is "a smart person," but company life didn't suit him, and as far as Kurumi knows, he changed jobs at least 10 times. In Kurumi's view, he was bound by the Showa-era value that "the father is the one who works outside the home," and kept searching for a workplace that fit him without ever finding one. Now retired, he lives in the countryside in an old house he bought, much like his child did. Kurumi's mother was a full-time homemaker when Kurumi was little. Since they have cut ties, Kurumi doesn't know how she is doing now.

The Spartan education began "before I was born," with prenatal education, Kurumi said. During the pregnancy, the mother played English for the baby. The parents had lived in the United States for a time, and Kurumi's older brother was born there. Kurumi's earliest memory is of working through homemade drills the mother had written out, with lots of problems, in a free-form notebook. Kurumi also did store-bought drills and early English materials such as Disney's World of English. At the time, though, none of this seemed unusual, and Kurumi enjoyed it. Kurumi has no memories of it being painful, and repeatedly said they loved studying then and still do now.

The house was full of books, and the children could get as many books as they asked for. On the other hand, anything considered bad for their education was not bought. Kurumi never wanted video games, but the older brother secretly bought some and was eventually found out. All of Kurumi's New Year's money was collected and put into savings, so as a young child Kurumi rarely spent money or wanted things. Nerima has many large parks, and Kurumi loved playing in them with friends. Not having games or not watching TV never got Kurumi left out.

Kurumi attended a public elementary school. Kurumi joined SAPIX in the lower grades, was placed in the top class from the start, and never dropped down. Kurumi remembers SAPIX classes as "a really fun place," because they covered advanced material that public elementary schools don't teach. Kurumi went less to aim for an elite school than because studying was interesting.

The problem was that Kurumi once came in first in the grade. That became the standard, and placing 10th or 100th was seen as "worse than before" and punished. The punishments included being put outside the front door, being denied meals, and physical ones like being hit and kicked. Kurumi was put out the front door "again and again." Looking back now, Kurumi said, "It completely fit the definition of abuse and a toxic parent."

Kurumi didn't choose the target school. The parents showed Kurumi a table of school rankings and asked which one it would be. Then Kurumi was told, "If you're going to aim for something, aim for the top," and Ouin, the highest-ranked, became the target. Kurumi didn't want to go there because of its ranking, but in the end it was good to meet classmates with intellectual curiosity. The older brother went on to one of the so-called "big three" boys' junior high schools.

As for SAPIX and private school tuition for two children, Kurumi said that although the father's employment was unstable, he earned about 10 million yen a year, so the family was better off than the average household. Still, the mother was frugal and often said "we don't have money." Kurumi believes much of the income went to the children's education. Because of that influence, Kurumi also became someone who doesn't spend much money.

Many students join Tetsuryokukai in the first year of junior high, but Kurumi didn't join during junior high and studied freely without worrying much about grades. Kurumi wasn't seriously aiming for the University of Tokyo and figured joining in the first year of high school would be fine.

During junior high, the parents separated, and Kurumi lived alone with the mother all through high school. If Kurumi had to go with one of them, it would be the mother. Because the mother started working, Kurumi took over the housework and made their own lunches. Every day Kurumi got up before 6 a.m. to study, did housework, went to school, and after club activities made dinner and went to cram school. Kurumi sees the father normally these days.

Tetsuryokukai is a cram school specializing in entrance exams for the University of Tokyo and medical schools. According to Kurumi, what sets it apart from ordinary cram schools is the high quality of its instructors. Kurumi considers it "the optimal, best cram school" if you're aiming for the University of Tokyo or medical school.

The curriculum is a spiral system that goes over the same material repeatedly at increasing difficulty: one cycle in junior high, one in the first year of high school, one in the second year, and another in the third year. Kurumi described it as doing "the amount where of course you'd get into the University of Tokyo."

Classes were ranked. When Kurumi was enrolled, A, B, and C were the upper "regular course," while D and E were general courses with many sections. Having joined in the first year of high school, Kurumi started in the lowest class and moved up to the regular course within that year. Kurumi recalls moving up from B to C, or to B. Class A had around "the chosen 30," and Kurumi called it the place for "geniuses at a freakish level." Their goal was basically the University of Tokyo's Science III, its medical track.

Admission involves a designated-school system. Students from designated schools such as Ouin and Azabu can enter without an exam if they join in the first year of junior high. Those joining in the first year of high school or from non-designated schools take an exam, but almost no one came in from non-designated schools, Kurumi said. Classes were coed, and Kurumi was dating someone met at Tetsuryokukai. But it was just walking home together and hanging out a little on days off, and Kurumi kept studying properly. During the Tetsuryokukai years, the mother's checking of grades was considerably milder than in the SAPIX days.

Even then, Kurumi had no dream for the future. Because Kurumi loved studying and got good grades, Kurumi went along with the flow toward elite universities and drifted straight into the world of the University of Tokyo or medical school. Kurumi had no strong feelings about the University of Tokyo or becoming a doctor, saying, "I just kind of ended up aiming for medical school by going with the flow."

Kurumi applied to Keio University School of Medicine and the national Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and was accepted by both. Kurumi had also considered the University of Tokyo's Science III, but the cram school teacher said that from Kurumi's class, the odds of passing were 50-50 or lower. To avoid the risk of having to retake exams the following year, Kurumi applied to Tokyo Medical and Dental, which was a sure bet.

At first Kurumi planned to go to the national university. But Keio notified Kurumi of admission as a scholarship student, with a scholarship of 8 million yen. Six years of tuition would cost about 20 million yen. Even so, because there were other scholarships available and the father had said "I'll pay if it's medical school," the family agreed Kurumi would go to Keio. In the worst case, Kurumi planned to earn the money themselves.

In the end, however, the father didn't pay a single yen. According to Kurumi, their relationship wasn't very good at the time. Moreover, the father wasn't the type to keep a promise just because he had made it, but Kurumi didn't think that far ahead back then.

So right after enrolling, Kurumi earned as much as possible. Not knowing whether working would still be possible in the fifth and sixth years, Kurumi decided to earn while they could. The main income came from private tutoring. With good terms, the hourly rate was 5,000 to 10,000 yen. Kurumi went to three homes a day, taught more than 10 students a week from elementary to high school, and earned about 400,000 yen a month. Kurumi only attended university for a year and a half, but said that given the income during that time, they were earning enough to pay the tuition had they stayed.

Kurumi took a full course load and even started playing ice hockey as a club activity. Kurumi would get up at 4 a.m. to tutor in the morning, attend classes at the university, tutor again from the evening, and then head to ice hockey practice at 1 a.m., because that was when the rink could be rented. Looking back, Kurumi said, "I was overdoing it" and "I was overworked and not in a very good place mentally either."

Asked why ice hockey, Kurumi explained having highs and lows in mood. Kurumi has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and can only say it was "a manic period" at the time. The diagnosis came after Kurumi couldn't sleep despite having no time to sleep, and went to a hospital thinking this was really bad.

Soon after, the COVID pandemic hit. Both the university and the tutoring jobs stopped, and Kurumi plunged into depression. Income dropped, and there was nothing to do. That became a chance to think about their life, Kurumi said.

There was no way to reach the 12 million yen that had to be earned. And to begin with, did Kurumi really want to go to medical school, or become a doctor, badly enough to live such a reckless life? Because everyone around them had, Kurumi had only ever seen the world of the University of Tokyo or medical school, but was it really right to keep this life going for five more years? "It's a bit awkward to say it was thanks to COVID, but I got time to think," Kurumi said. Kurumi believes that if they had kept going, something would have given way at some point and their health would have broken down.

Withdrawing required the signature of a parent as guarantor. The mother opposed it at first, but Kurumi persuaded her and got the signature. Kurumi was able to stand up to the mother only after becoming financially independent. Until high school, Kurumi was in the position of having tuition paid and couldn't push back. But at university, Kurumi was earning 400,000 yen a month and had several million yen in savings. Kurumi felt able to leave home and pay their own tuition. The mother, meanwhile, was living on about 100,000 yen a month as a temp worker. It was only after entering university that Kurumi could think, "What my mother says isn't absolute." Right after dropping out, Kurumi rented a place and began living separately from the mother.

After dropping out, Kurumi got a job right away. After quitting university and "breaking free," as Kurumi started doing various things, Kurumi came to admire the life of a landlord with rent coming in every month. Wanting to invest in real estate, Kurumi joined a real estate company that hired high school graduates in order to learn the business, and worked in sales of investment properties. The clients were "rich people, or people who want to become rich."

Kurumi says they were completely unsuited to sales. Kurumi wasn't suited to being a salaried employee in the first place, and worked there intending to quit someday after buying their own property. Sourcing investment properties went well, though, and Kurumi sourced several in the first year.

About six months after joining the company, at 20, Kurumi bought a first old house. It was less an investment than a place to live with the person Kurumi was engaged to at the time.

They met at a job at an after-school childcare program. Kurumi felt that tutoring alone would limit their relationships to highly educated circles, so Kurumi also worked at an izakaya and at after-school childcare. During COVID, both the tutoring and the izakaya shut down, but after-school childcare was still needed even under COVID and was hiring part-timers. The pay was about 1,000 yen an hour, nowhere near the target, but Kurumi started it wanting to do something. Kurumi also talked with this partner about dropping out, and the partner offered encouragement: "You'll be fine even if you quit."

Kurumi chose a house within a 10-minute bike ride of the partner's family home. The partner was still a student. The closest thing to a proposal was a small pair of matching rings. They were living together, so Kurumi said, "Rent is a waste, so let's just buy a house," and they bought it. "Maybe that was my proposal," Kurumi laughed. The partner's parents initially reacted as if a student marriage was out of the question. But once a house had been bought, they felt they had no choice but to accept it, and the couple registered their marriage the following year.

Even as a 20-year-old company employee, Kurumi was able to get a mortgage. It was a 35-year loan, but they paid it off in three years. Both are the type who don't spend money and both worked, so their savings only grew, Kurumi explained. There was also income from the foreign firm, described below. After paying off the loan, they decided to rent out that house and buy another.

Kurumi says, "The three years from age 20 were packed." Even after dropping out, getting a job, buying a house, and marrying in succession, Kurumi still couldn't let go of the dream of a high income. So Kurumi took a job at Morgan Stanley.

As a university dropout, Kurumi says there should have been no way in through the regular route. It started when a headhunter reached out on X (formerly Twitter). Someone in a division had seen Kurumi's posts on social media, found them interesting, and wanted to hire Kurumi. At foreign firms, divisions have a lot of discretion over hiring, so Kurumi explains that it was less a company-wide decision than that this one person found them interesting.

But the work was a return to the kind of grueling schedule of the university days. Kurumi hit a limit, became unable to go to the office, and quit after three months. The people around Kurumi were all earning tens of millions of yen a year. Even so, it made Kurumi realize once again that they didn't want a high-income or urban lifestyle.

Kurumi cut ties with the mother about two years ago, and the mother doesn't know about the birth of the second child. They hadn't cut ties at the time Kurumi dropped out. Kurumi had thought that, with a stronger position, they could now talk as equals, but because of differing values, among other things, they couldn't understand each other.

When Kurumi started raising children, memories came back as trauma: as a parent, I would never do this to my child. I would never force them to do things, or hit, kick, or throw them out. Thinking that, Kurumi now found feelings welling up of being unable to forgive what had happened back then.

Until then, Kurumi had thought this was common in education-minded families. Ask friends, and there's no end of "funny stories" like being tracked by GPS the whole time, or being fined for bad grades. Kurumi had thought their own experience fell within that range. But seeing the husband's close-knit family, Kurumi realized it was completely different.

The decisive moment came from an abuse-prevention manual learned in training for the after-school childcare job. It said, "Do not lecture children for long periods." In Kurumi's home, once a lecture started, it was normal for it to last eight hours. Kurumi would be yelled at continuously regardless of how late it was, morning would arrive before they knew it, and Kurumi would go to school in a daze. It was worst in elementary school, during the SAPIX years.

As for what happened to the mother, Kurumi speculates as follows. In her life as a full-time homemaker, perhaps her children getting into Azabu and getting good grades at SAPIX became her identity. The mother bragged about her children's schools and grades to those around her. The father couldn't stand up to the mother, and the marriage was bad. He rarely came home, and in Kurumi's words, he was, "to put it badly, an ATM."

The break came about because of an article in Shukan Bunshun. Until then, even on the YouTube channel with Tomahawk (Kurumi's husband), Kurumi hadn't gone as far as saying their parent was a toxic parent. During the Bunshun interview, the reporter said, "That's a toxic parent, isn't it?" and Kurumi recognized that they had indeed been raised by a toxic parent.

When the article was published, Kurumi left the term "toxic parent" in as it was. Out of consideration for the mother, Kurumi could have removed it, but published the article having accepted that the relationship might end. After reading the article, the mother sent a LINE message saying "I won't see you anymore," even though they had plans to meet next. Formally, it was the mother who cut ties, but Kurumi says the article itself was Kurumi's declaration of "I won't see you anymore."

People generally think it's wrong to call the parents who raised you toxic, and Kurumi was in fact told so in social media comments. Even so, Kurumi believes that, viewed objectively, this was a toxic parent and it was abuse.

The interviewer said Kurumi seemed not to have been colored by those values despite being in a strongly credential-oriented environment. Kurumi denied this, since they had once drifted along and entered medical school. At Tetsuryokukai, students were told "anything other than the University of Tokyo or a medical school isn't a real university," and not being good at studying meant being rejected as a human being. Coming to believe in that environment that medical school was everything was "brainwashing, in a sense," Kurumi said. Only after having obtained the medical school title and the money did Kurumi realize it was wrong.

When dropping out, Kurumi had a meeting with a medical school professor. Asked what Kurumi would do after leaving medical school, Kurumi was told, "I can't think of any profession better than being a doctor." Kurumi thinks it's fine for some people to live by those values, but they shouldn't force them on others. Kurumi says there must be something you truly love that remains once you strip away all reasons like covering living expenses.

Kurumi also repeats that originally, they just loved studying. When you love studying, you inevitably end up on the track of a good school, a good university, and a high-paying company. But for Kurumi, becoming financially well-off wasn't happiness. If people can find happiness in a life of buying a tower condo and luxury brands, that's fine. But Kurumi wasn't like that, Kurumi said. Watching their parents, Kurumi thought money would bring freedom and that the family was unhappy because it didn't have money, and part of the reason Kurumi aimed to become a high-earning doctor was that. But now that life is stable and work doesn't have to be chosen for money alone, a life where Kurumi can be useful to others by doing what they love is the happiest, Kurumi says.

When the interviewer noted that some people with parental trauma don't want to start a family, Kurumi said it was thanks to the husband and his family. In the husband's family, all four members gather every Friday for a home party. The mother lays out homemade dishes, they drink, and everyone talks happily together. In Kurumi's family, it was normal for everyone to eat separately. Kurumi is grateful to have had a model nearby that made them want to build a family like that.

The husband went to a public high school. There's no one so gentle and easygoing around Tetsuryokukai, so at first Kurumi thought the husband was "a different species." No one who says anything other than the University of Tokyo or a medical school isn't a real university is gentle, Kurumi said. Highly educated people get their confidence from numbers like academic credentials and income. But Kurumi feels few of them have the self-esteem that comes from feeling it's enough just to be themselves. For Kurumi, who had always been measured by grades and rankings, the husband may have been the first person Kurumi met who grew up loved unconditionally.

The interviewer shared an experience of their own. While holding a late-night meeting in the shared study room of the condominium where they used to live, a mother and child who were residents came in. The mother kept yelling while teaching the child. The interviewer thought it was educational abuse, but couldn't say anything, thinking that even if they intervened, the same thing would just happen again at home. Partway through, the father also came, silently listened to the yelling beside them for about 30 minutes, and left.

"I get that. My father couldn't say anything either," Kurumi responded. Kurumi then cited the saying "junior high entrance exams take the father's money and the mother's madness," and said it's really true. If you're aiming for the top schools or SAPIX, it doesn't work without those, Kurumi said. Kurumi also said the mother wasn't like that from the start, and that maybe it's simply human nature to end up that way once you're being ranked.

Asked what they study now that they're away from exams and work achievements, Kurumi answered, "Everything in daily life is study." For example, wild radish with a sharp, spicy taste grows on the beach. The white flowers blooming under a nearby slide are a relative of aconite, Kurumi said. There are poisonous plants and edible plants close at hand, and since moving, Kurumi has started looking up all sorts of things. Kurumi also keeps a vegetable garden in the yard.

This is a return to childhood interests, Kurumi said. Nerima has the only farm in Tokyo's 23 wards and large parks, and what Kurumi originally loved was living creatures and plants. Without the atmosphere that becoming a doctor was the only option, Kurumi might have enjoyed studying those fields, but at the time Kurumi couldn't choose a path based on their own interests alone, Kurumi reflected.

Kurumi is now self-employed and supports local child-rearing, providing play spaces for children and running a free children's cafeteria. Kurumi believes it's most important for children to grow up freely, and says this is "the flip side of myself." There are no schools near Katsuura that require junior high entrance exams. Even without entrance exams, children have the curiosity to be interested in everything, asking "What's this?" Kurumi says that this is what studying really is, and that perhaps what matters is the part that's education for enriching one's life. Kurumi wants the children to grow up freely here at least through elementary school. High school options will be narrower, but by then online education and the like may have developed, and Kurumi plans to decide depending on the circumstances.

Although Kurumi has a bipolar temperament, Kurumi has been settled and sleeping well since coming to Katsuura. It's "the most peaceful it's been in my life so far," Kurumi said. Finding a lifestyle that suits them was the biggest thing, Kurumi says.

People still tell Kurumi, "What a waste to quit medical school" or "If you'd at least gotten a medical license, you could have done a side job earning 500,000 yen a month." But Kurumi replies that it's not about money. It's about whether you're doing what you truly want to do. Kurumi said they are satisfied with their current life, lived with that alone as the guiding principle, and that raising children is a great joy, and with that the interview ended.