In the final scenes of Aaron Sorkin's powerfully written film "A Few Good Men," one of the U.S. Marines on trial for the murder of a fellow serviceman is bewildered as to why he has not been cleared of all charges after his commanding officer admits ordering the attack. "We did nothing wrong," cries Pvt. Downey, to which his older, wiser co-accused penitently replies, "Yeah, we did." The realization of guilt by Lance Cpl. Dawson neatly encapsulates the film's central theme: that bullying and the use of physical punishment to discipline innocent people, or to teach them a lesson, is never justified, regardless of the motive.

The understanding that corporal punishment is wrong came too late to save the characters in Sorkin's movie, but at least it did eventually come. If the tales related in the pseudonymous Richard Parker's account of high school basketball in Japan ("Right or wrong, corporal punishment can produce winners," The Foreign Element, March 12) are to be believed, then it is an idea, shamefully, whose time has not yet come in this country.

I say "shamefully" for two reasons. At a basic level, use of physical punishment in the way that Parker describes and condones is wrong because it does not achieve the goal of significantly improving performance and behavior. On a wider scale, the kind of thinking that underpins and nourishes this contemptible philosophy is at the heart of many of the most serious problems in Japanese society today.