The successes of the Japanese educational system have been widely praised by western educators in recent years. But this success appears to have a dark side; an educational framework that places students in fierce competition with one another and in which school-related violence and suicide occur with disturbing frequency. This paper focuses on the reality of educational pressure in Japan and the effects it has on the children of that country. The paper is divided into three phases, all of which deal with the decade of the 1980s and involve Japanese teenagers. The first phase briefly describes and offers a critique of Japanese education as viewed by westerners. The second phase analyzes trends in school-related violence based on statistics from Japanese sources. The third phase outlines results of a descriptive, pilot study on school-related teenage suicide. A 9-item list of references is included. (DB)