Teachers across Japan are facing an insane amount of unreasonable demands from parents. The situation has become so serious that Tokyo is now writing official rules to protect teachers from being harassed. These new rules will make it clear what schools should and should not have to deal with when parents complain.
According to the South China Morning Post, officials from the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education put out a draft plan this month. They said the new rules are supposed to help teachers do their jobs without being stressed out all the time. For years now, teachers have been saying that parents are making it almost impossible for them to focus on teaching because of nonstop complaints about things that don’t really matter.
One story really shows how bad things have gotten. A student got hurt at school, but it was nothing serious. The parents told the school that it needed to pay the medical bills. Then they went further and said the school should also pay for their dinner. A Fuji TV news segment talked about this case, and it became an example of just how far some parents will go when they think they can get something from the school.
Some requests just don’t make sense anymore
Back in 2007, a teacher named Yoichi Mukoyama started calling these types of parents “monster parents.” He was talking about moms and dads who would make crazy demands and call teachers at all hours to complain. Teachers say the problem is actually worse now than it was back then. Parents seem to think they have the right to demand almost anything from schools.
The complaints teachers get are often about things nobody can control. Some parents have gotten angry because the cherry blossom trees didn’t bloom at the right time for a school ceremony. Others have called to say the school lunch didn’t have enough flavor or that their kid still can’t hold chopsticks right.
What are schools' new protocols for dealing with Japan's 'monster parents'?https://t.co/MYek1VRbgO
— The Mainichi (Japan Daily News) (@themainichi) November 9, 2025
Teachers also report getting texts and calls after midnight from parents who want to know basic information that was already sent home in a letter or email. While some children have experienced serious incidents where they walked away with only minor injuries, most school injuries are small bumps and scrapes that heal quickly.
All of this is really hurting teachers. Many are too scared to talk about what they’re going through because they think the parents will just make more trouble by complaining to the school board.
A professor named Izumi Tsuji from Chuo University said there’s a reason this keeps getting worse. “This problem has been increasing in recent years and the Tokyo government would not have acted if it did not feel the situation was worsening,” he explained.
Japan is having fewer babies now, so the parents who do have kids are putting everything they have into those children. That means they expect schools to be perfect in every way, and they get upset over tiny problems. Unlike cases where parents face genuinely frightening situations with their children, most of what teachers deal with involves complaints about everyday school life.
