when is a swastika not a swastika?

When it's anticlockwise.

Today in class I noticed a student was drawing a symbol on his desk. After class I went and had a closer look - he had repeatedly drawn the Nazi swatsika. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because there is a Japanese symbol used to mark temples on maps etc. that looks like a swastika but with the arms directed anticlockwise. It predates any Hitler action. I asked him what it was. Was it 'temple'? No, he said, it's the swastika. Hmmm, I asked him if he knew the meaning of that symbol, but only got a vague answer implying that he either didn't know or didn't really care. I was getting a bit exasperated now! The English teacher was still there, so I told her that I wanted him to stop drawing it!! I used as many simple English words as I could to explain 'BAD BAD BAD'! But I got the impression that he really didn't understand the true meaning and impact of the symbol. And given the tendency of Japanese history textbooks to gloss over / omit significant events (What? You mean Japanese people did bad things in the war??) it was no surprise to me.

A totally unrelated teacher later confirmed my suspicions. He came up to me out of the blue and said, Miss Anna, I must apologise to you, because we don't teach the meaning of the swastika to students and they don't know what it is.

I remember seeing a Japanese guy wearing a jumper with a huge 'temple' sign on it once. I think he would get beat up wearing that outside Japan. Would you recognise that the arms were heading in the opposite direction to a swastika? I don't think most people would, and even now that I know about the temple symbol I still feel shocked when I see it.