We often heard this word, “Being proud of Japanese” especially right after 3/11, this word imply that people in Japan unite and keep social order even though they experience and face such a terrible accident. It is so true but I felt something strange from this word and situation. We should not miss the fact that there are definitely people who are not “Japanese”.

We talked about what is the meaning of being Japanese through some subjects in classes.

This subject reminded me of my feeling toward the situation after 3/11 as I mentioned above.

I don’t think much about my nationality, being Japanese in my daily life. I cannot say that this situation is common among the people in Japan, but it is one of the general senses.

However, sometimes consciousness of being Japanese suddenly becomes remarkable among people. This phenomenon means elevation of people’s consciousness of group they belong to.

Then, I’d like to mention the situation after the earthquake happened in March 11 as a concrete example to explain that phenomenon and to present one of the aspects of what we can grasp from the situation after 3/11.

What phenomenon was there after 3/11? This is quite personal feeling but I do remember that I strongly felt something strange from this phenomenon.

After 3/11, there were tendencies such as that people frequently said they were proud of being Japanese. It was quite easy for us to find this word (which sounds even common slogan for Japan) on newspaper, Internet and TV.

It is natural that the incident which caused extensive damage to a certain society makes people more be conscious of their community and others who belong to same community and unite each other than usual. Naturally enough, people want to share same feeling or consciousness through experience same incident in order to overcome it. This situation also brought and spread the word “GANBAROU NIPPON” over Japan. In consequence, this phenomenon unites people to try to overcome this terrible incident.

However, I felt that we should look this situation carefully spread over japan after 3/11. I mean this has also negative side that we tend to miss the fact that there are actually Non-Japanese people who have been also suffered from that terrible incident in Japan at that time.

In terms of the word, I don’t belong to NOT “Japanese” group, but I just imagined how non-Japanese people who experience this huge accident in 3/11 felt this tendency I mentioned above. This seems to be the problem just only about what words we should use, but it is not the essence of the phenomenon. I think the situation after huge incident happen in society has exclusive side, positive one as well.

Nationalistic elevation is not always negative thing, but we should look and think carefully what kind of aspects that phenomenon after 3/11 has, not just look the limelight.

So, I’d like to ask class mates to tell me how do you think that phenomenon.

by Misa Kono

Let me begin with my experience. I was born and brought up in Kyoto, where it is said that douwa problem still remains. As far as I remember, I had douwa kyouiku classes in elementary school, junior high school, and high school. I don’t remember the detail, but I do remember the video I watched maybe in elementary school. In the video, one burakumin-girl was discriminated when she tried to get job just because she was burakumin, and she was again discriminated when she was getting married. After watching it, we all were required to tell how you felt about the video. That’s all. This is the typical way of douwa kyouiku I think. But to tell you the truth, I think this kind of education is nearly nonsense. It’s very easy to say “discrimination is evil” isn’t it? Who would be against it? I was just a little boy at that time but I wonder that class made sense.

If you call douwa education like I had as a positive approach, there is a kind of negative approach as well. Some people believe that ignoring and stopping telling children about buraku will eliminate discrimination and buraku problem will disappear. Their theory is sometimes referred as “netakowo okosuna” theory. “Netakowo okosuna” is a kind of proverb, which means let a sleeping child asleep (it corresponds to “Let sleeping dog lie” or “Wake not a sleeping lion” in English). Their argument is sometimes based on the fact that people in kanto or touhoku, who hasn’t been told about buraku problem in school are unaware of it. A half-century later, people who know much about buraku or who discriminate buraku people will pass away and unaware people will be left. In this way, buraku problem completely disappears. They think douwa education promote discrimination rather than solve it. What is more, some of them believe douwa education is designed to retain douwa problem by people who have interest in anti-discrimination activities.

The theory of “netakowo okosuna” is often criticized for these following reasons. First, ignoring can’t be a solution. Even you ignore it, discrimination still exists. Discriminated people will not be helped if everyone is blind to the problem. Second, ignorance can lead and spread lies, wrong information, rumors that are not true. You can discriminate burakumin without awareness. Third, you should know the truth, what happened in the past, and what is happening today.

In my opinion, “netakowo okosuna” theory will work because I think it is poverty that causes problems on buraku people rather than discrimination itself. As some statistics show, the conditions and living standards of buraku people are much better than before, and discrimination is declining. Therefore, I strongly believe the solution for douwa or buraku problem is not douwa education, but the policies to help people get out of poverty. My opinion is really close to that of JCP, or Zenkairen, and quite different from that of BLL(Kaidou), who promotes douwa education.

Useful links
The introduction of Zenkairen http://www.geocities.jp/zenkairen21/08.html
BLL (Kaidou) http://www.bll.gr.jp/

by Anonymous