Almost 300,000 elementary and junior high school students in Japan skipped school for at least 30 days in the 2022 school year, a government survey showed on Tuesday.

The record figure of 299,048 was a 22.1 per cent rise from the 2021 school year, Japanese media reported.

The survey was conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

It also found a record-breaking 681,948 cases of bullying in elementary, junior, senior high and special-needs schools, according to a report in The Mainichi.

The most cited reason in the survey for not attending school – at 51.8 per cent – was lethargy and anxiety.

A distant second reason was “disrupted daily rhythm, playing and delinquency”, at 11.4 per cent.

Japanese schools have seen a rising trend of truancy for 10 consecutive years, with the numbers surging in recent years, especially during the pandemic.

The ministry believes the increase may have been the result of the pandemic changing children’s “living environment” and disrupting their “daily rhythm”.

Child and family welfare professor Noriko Yamano of Osaka Metropolitan University said the “economic uncertainties due to the pandemic perhaps caused stress in children”, thus possibly leading to the increase in their absences.

Where bullying is concerned, most of them involved the victims “being ridiculed, teased, slandered, threatened” and receiving “nasty remarks”. These made up 57.4 per cent of cases.

The next most common form of bullying involved “being lightly bumped and hit or kicked while pretending to play”, at 23.4 per cent.

Serious bullying cases hit a record 923, up 30.7 per cent from the previous year. These cases included situations in which victims were physically or mentally harmed.

About 40 per cent of the serious cases were not previously recognised as bullying, according to The Japan Times.

The Education Ministry said the rise in bullying was probably due to the increased opportunities for children to interact now that in-person school activities have resumed, following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions.

By end-March 2023, which was the end of the 2022 school year, nearly 80 per cent of all the bullying cases had been resolved, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

The ministry has meanwhile formulated a plan in cooperation with the Children and Families Agency to counter the problem of truancy and bullying. It includes efforts to strengthen community-based initiatives to support children who have not been attending school.

A part of this plan will be put in place in the current school year, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

Some cities are already taking their own initiative in a bid to reverse the trend.

The south-western city of Kumamoto, for example, will use robot assistants in classrooms from November.

The robots will be equipped with microphones, cameras and speakers, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, and they will stream the lesson live for the students to attend classes remotely and take part in discussions.

The authorities hope that the robots will help absentee children overcome their anxiety and boost their confidence to eventually return to in-person classes.