In honor of Japanese night, I’d like to correct a common myth about the Japanese education system.

Ask anyone in this country and most will tell you that the Japanese educate their children better than we do. It’s pretty common knowledge that the U.S. is pretty far behind the rest of the world in education quality, at least as far as test scores can show. And it’s also pretty common knowledge that the Japanese education system is rigorous, their culture stresses the importance of a good education and the combination of these factors produces high-performing students.

But many of those same people you ask will make this answer with a corollary. It is a common belief that the same traits that create the strength of the Japanese system also create an environment of excessive stress and stifled creativity. They claim the system generates adults with little individuality or creativity, and worse, they claim that pressure to be perfect leads students to suicide.

These myths are easily perpetrated because they are based in reality. Japanese culture does stress individuality less, and group culture more, than we do in the U.S. — though they have a similar focus on creative expression and the arts. And students in Japan are greatly pressured to make their families proud, to keep up with the rigorous curriculum and to prepare themselves for entrance into universities (which is a much greater feat than in U.S., often requiring years of study at “cram schools”). But the fact is, the suicide rate among Japanese students is not as exceptional as commonly believed. According to the Center for Disease Control and Japan’s National Police Agency, the U.S. actually has a greater number of student-age suicides than Japan.

This misconception most likely arises from the fact that Japan has the ninth highest suicide rate in the world, one that is much higher than all the other industrialized nations, according to the World Health Organization. The National Police Agency reports the number of suicides in Japan passed 30,000 for the twelfth year in a row in 2009. These high numbers might be attributed to recent economic turmoil and unemployment in Japan, but this is not entirely a recent trend. It is more likely attributable to uniquely Japanese views on honor and suicide.

The suicide rate, combined with the stereotypical view of Japanese education and culture as oppressive and highly stressful, leads to the false assumption that the rate of suicide among Japanese students is exceptional.

The perpetration of this negative view is doing great harm to this country, as it makes it possible for us to write off the lessons we could be learning from Japan’s success. It’s easy to ignore their strengths, and the changes we could be making in accordance to strengthen our own system, when we’re afraid of overworking students and raising already high suicide rates.

Japan consistently outranks and outperforms the U.S. in international indicators of the quality of education systems, including subject-specific test scores and literacy rates. Japan consistently ranks among world leaders in student math performance; the U.S. is consistently below average. Though much of their renowned educational strength comes from the intense years of preparatory schooling students undergo before taking the university entrance exams, the strength of the public education system cannot be ignored. We should be evaluating what factors lead to this success, and figuring out which could work the same for us.

That is not to say that the educational system in Japan doesn’t put unique stressors on students. It’s simply that any argument attempting to prove that those stressors cause serious problems for students, and outweigh the benefits, must be more complicated than an appeal to the suicide rate.