There is a film “Ajia no junnshinn”. This film was finished in 2009, but some difficulties interrupted to show this film to public. Why?

This film shows the situation of Japan in 2002. In 2002, 5 Japanese abductees came back to Japan from North Korea, and negative criticism to North Korea was spreading in Japan. The main character is a Korean girl with permanent residence in Japan who has a twin sister. One day, her sister is killed by Japanese hooligans in a town. Another main character is a Japanese boy who is a high school student, and he looked the scene that she is killed. Two young boy and girl make a plan to make an indiscriminate terrorism to Japanese society with poison gas of old Japanese army.

This film was rejected to show by many Japanese cinemas or film festivals. However this film was showed in foreign film festivals. Some people in foreign countries said “It was a beautiful film.” Then in Japan, a lot of negative criticism about this film was online.

In addition, the actress who performed the main character is a Korean girl with permanent residence in Japan in her real life. She says “This film is not an anti-Japanese film. I think this film is a road movie of youth. I am glad that this film is a part of my memories of last of my teenage.”

Well, why did many Japanese cinemas or film festivals reject to show this film? I suppose two reasons. One is they themselves have negative opinions about revenge to Japanese society from Korean. Another is they afraid of reaction of people who watched the film. Why does such a film have to be disliked by Japanese people? We Japanese who watch this film might feel bad, but discrimination to Korean with permanent residence in Japan exists in real Japanese society. Can you declare that there is no discrimination to them at all? Films often involve exaggeration or dramatization. However we can receive any hint from films. I think we Japanese have to accept both of negative and positive aspect of Japan. It is better that we can think things from two opposite sides. If we don’t try to look negative aspects of Japan, our field of vision becomes very narrow. I think it is not good that such a film is excluded very easily in Japanese society.

by Ayako Miyamae

A new political party is to be formed early next year in Hokkaido, which aims to give political representation for the Ainu community. The representative will be Shiro Kayano, whose father is the first Ainu to become a member of the Diet. According to the party, they claim that there has not been enough policies implemented to preserve the Ainu culture and community identity.

Indeed, Ainu has long been deprived of legitimate political rights or representation. There is a history of Ainu oppression under Japanese control, and forcing them to abandon practicing or preserving their culture. The Japanese government never publically recognized Ainu as an ethnic minority until 1997. Even then, the governmental advisory board that developed 1997 Ainu Culture Law, Shingikai, did not have a single Ainu person in the committee. It was not until 2008 that Ainu was officially recognized as indigenous to Japan.

It is obvious that the Ainu need more political attention: not in words but in policies. According to Asahi Shimbun, the formation of the party emerged from heightened discontent among Ainu because of the failure of state authority to delivery of public policies for the Ainu.

For any ethnic minority, a proper political representation is an important step for forming a strong cornerstone for the community, and it is the responsibility of all democratic societies to provide such opportunity. In the case of Ainu, however, I wonder if an “ethnic party” could create a greater separation between Ainu and non-Ainu—and if a true representation is even possible.

According to the news article, the candidates for the next election are going to be (but not limited to) Ainu. However, it is difficult to know who is Ainu or not because the Ainu community has been actively promoting intermarriages between Japanese and Ainu in order to lessen the burden of discrimination against their children. Therefore, many people of the Ainu community today would have both Ainu and Japanese identities. Moreover, the Ainu community in Japan is not strictly regional; there is a vibrant Ainu community in Tokyo as well as several places across Hokkaido. Could there be a negative impact on the rest of the society? If there are so many Ainu that are not necessarily “fully” Ainu, how should the new political party reflect this? Is it possible that people of both Ainu and Japanese descent would face a pressure of having to choose one identity over the other?

I believe that the Ainu community needs to have their voices heard properly, and that formation of a political party is a significant step towards a better Ainu community life. This will probably also cause a lot of debates and strong emotions to be aroused within the Ainu community, as well as with the greater Japanese community—so that we could finally evolve as a whole.

(Source: http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1029/TKY201110290538.html)

by Nanako Kurioka

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

Minami Hosokawa

Japan has always been thought as a nation of mono-ethnic, though there are numerous minority groups within Japan, making it a quite diverse society in reality. People of ha-fu, who are born from a parent of Japanese and a parent of another nationality, are included in one of these minority groups. I would like to discuss how Japanese people treat and feel about the hāfus, especially putting my focus on the differences of their treatment and attitude depending on the types of the hāfus.

Japanese people tend to indicate people who are half Japanese and half white as “hāfu” for the most part. On the other hand, the Japanese sometimes do not consider those of half Japanese and half black or latino as “hāfu” but “gaijin”. This is an awkward situation since they are all same “hāfus” according to the definition. Furthermore, Japanese people have fairly positive and favorable images towards people whom they call the “hāfu”, while there are times when they have negative images towards those who are the “hāfu” of blacks or latinos. (Let me make my point clear that this situation does not fit into every occasion).

For example, I saw a difference in treatment the doctor had made towards two hāfu children at my workplace, an orthodontic dentist. There are couple patients who are hāfu at the dentist I work, mostly children under 15. I would like to give an example of Katie, a mix of Japanese and French, and Tiffany, a mix of Japanese and Brazilian (both pseudonyms). The doctor likes Katie very much and treats her with goodwill saying “you are such a sweet girl”. On the other hand, he treats Tiffany quite differently. Although he does not show his attitude too openly in front of Tiffany, when she is gone from the clinic, he complains how she is loud or how she is uneducated.

I believe the media has a lot to do with making this situation of prejudice and image gap against ha-fus. As is obvious, there are many namely hāfu models, commentators or singers showing up on Japanese media, especially on TV. The point I want to make here is that Japanese media only puts spot-lights on to white hāfus only such as Becky, Laura, and Rosa Kato. They are popular among Japanese people and are being called by adjectives like “kawaii!” or “beautiful!”. On the other hand, hāfus of blacks or latinos rarely show up on TV shows. Thus, in order to eradicate the image gap towards hāfu within Japanese people, changing the policy of media would be the prior settlement.

Nana Uno

 Japanese who live in Japan may not know the fact that there are many Japanese immigrants in many countries. According to Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, there are 373,559 Japanese immigrants in the world in 2009. They immigrated into the U.S, Brazil, Canada, England, Germany and other countries all over the world. Into Peru, 33,000 Japanese immigrated between 1899 and 1942. They were denied to access to the capital and Peruvian bank. Therefore they kept their ties, and they even made revolving credit system among their community. Now, they are not denied by Peruvian bank system, but they still get together and have a big community among Japanese in Peru.

Same as in Peru, there is a big Japanese community in British Columbia, Canada. There are many Japanese immigrants in Canada, especially in British Columbia. Their community bases on Buddhism. They meet and have events at temples. However, they are not really religious. They gather at temples and share Japanese culture, but they do not really have religious activity. Similar to Japanese in Peru, Japanese in Canada were excluded from Canada during WWII. In order to stand from exclusions, Japanese get together through Buddhism, but they try to show Buddhism is not anti-Christianity or anti-Canada. In fact, they call the temple “church”. Even after the war ended, Japanese still got together at “church”, and “church” was becoming just a place to get together for Japanese Canadian. Still now, Japanese community in British Columbia bases on Buddhism, however it does not means they are really religious, but it means they get together, share and carry on their culture, and tie up each other through Buddhism.

Kosuke Matsuura

In Japan, Dowa Problem, which refers to discrimination against those who used to be outcaste in Edo Era, has existed for the long time; however, the number of those who are conscious of Dowa Problem has been decreasing due to the long time. Should we do education which reminds me of the past? Does it worthwhile to educate discrimination now?

Until I take this Class, I have grown up without recognizing almost no dowa problem around me. After I learned about Dowa Problem, I asked my mother whether she had ever heard about the problem around her and existence of such regions. She acknowledged the existence as true and it became clear that the region was near my hometown. The fact was surprising because I had never known at all though I was living near the region for more than 15 years. Further, she told me an episode related to the fact. When she was in high school, she fell in love with a boyfriend who was born in a region which was believed to be a Dowa area; and she was severely scolded by her father due to the boyfriend’s birthplace when she introduced him. Unfortunately, they were separated and, she said, she then first recognized existence of Dowa Problem. Finally, I asked a question whether she would accept my marriage with burakumin girlfriend or not. She answered that she would accept but my relatives might complain.

From this episode, it is obvious that, though the elderly are recognizing and, perhaps, doing discrimination, the youth are hardly recognizing. That is, the more descendant the generation is, the less consciousness toward Dowa Problem becomes. The effect of Dowa Problem is getting relatively small and, if this situation continues, we can minimize the discrimination.

We can see various measures against Dowa Problem such as sayings in everyday life. For example, it is well-known “No discrimination and keep human rights (なくそう差別、守ろう人権). Moreover, we can see others on the rear of City Buses such as “Both your and our lives have the same worth (おなじです　あなたと私の　大切さ). Of course, these sayings contribute to mitigating discrimination, but they may remember the existence of discrimination due to their implication.

It is clear that we should not let the existence of Dowa Problem fade away; however, it is impossible to abandon discrimination without completely forgetting that. More and more people are forgetting the existence; and less and less people are recognizing the existence. The next step will be ceasing measures which let us recall the existence. After that, the true equality will be realized.

Yukari Deguchi

Let me write my opinions about the small differences of nationalities that we feel in our daily life. I got this during the last class.

When I discussed about Chinese social dance party and the subculture groups which were formed by Chinese participants in the class, I found that we have a belief when we come in contact with foreigners. For example, if we found some differences between me and he or she, we would usually think “it’s because he or she is not Japanese”. Of course, the idea is not wrong, but it’s not necessarily right. When you have some experiences, for example, you and the person’s opinions didn’t mesh, or you felt rude although the person thought he or she treated you with kindness, did you thought it was because of the difference of nationalities? Although most of those cases would be got over with the difference of nationalities, but isn’t it controversial topic? I think the situations can be seen in the pure Japanese society. Sometimes Japanese can’t understand each other like the situations we have with foreigners. It’s also usual in the Japanese society. However, when the person is foreigner we feel the differences between us are very unusual things because we look at him or her through lends of the race without knowing.

I have this idea because the way to form subgroups in Chinese dance party is very similar to that of Japan. They formed groups based on their regions, educational background, interests and generations, and they also feel uncomfortable to sit in different groups although both of them are Chinese immigrants.

I don’t mean that it’s not good to think “because he or she is not Japanese”. It’s natural that we feel the differences of nationalities. However, I think that getting all differences over with the nationality makes invisible barrier between people. Therefore, we should carefully think weather the differences among us were because of personality or nationality.

Sae Tamagawa

There was an interesting article on New York Times in 2009. The headline was “Japan’s Outcasts Still Wait for Acceptance”. This article was about a deep-rooted problem: Burakumin in Japan. It was written after Mr. Obama became the first African-American president in the U.S., and the article argued if it is possible for burakumin to be a leader of Japan like in the U.S. accepts the African-American. In Japan, the issue of burakumin is regarded as taboo to talk about, so it is rarely reported on the public news or newspaper. Thus I think what New York Times reported was so significant.

There is another surprising fact. Hiromu Nonaka, who was one of the politicians who never hid his buraku roots, tells his discriminatory experience in his book called “Sabetsu to Kenryoku”. After Mori cabinet collapsed, he came to be a surface to be a next new prime minister. However, Taro Aso said “How can those people be a prime minister?” in the meeting. Almost all the people who attended in the meeting denied the fact what Aso said to Mr. Nonaka, and tried to pretend as if it was not happened. However, Mr. Kamei, who is a politician in the Liberal Democratic Party, proved that Mr. Aso definitely said discriminatory comment. Although what Mr. Kamei did was tremendously brave, Japanese media tried to hide it, so it did not come to light.

Due to lack of education about burakumin, there are a lot of rumors about them, and most of them are based on bias or discrimination against them; for example, burakumin has strong blood relations. Because of discrimination, people who are not burakumin tend not to get married with burakumin from long time ago. Thus, some people believe they get married within very close burakumin community, so they think burakumin’s blood relation is so strong, despite this idea is completely totally wrong. Some scholars prove it that this idea is wrong, and also there are some evidences. According to Ishimoto(2006), burakumin get married not only with neighbors, but also with burakumin who live distant place; for example, burakumin in Osaka get married with one in Tottori.

I noticed through my experience that some people really believe such kind of rumor. The other day, I talked about Burakumin with my friends after I learned about it in the class. To my surprise, my friend believed what I said before. What is worse, she said “that is why, statistically, there are more disabled people in the burakumin community than the others in Japan”. I was shocked into silence. I assume such kind of discrimination or misunderstanding comes from lack of education. Government tries to hide the fact that there is discrimination against burakumin, and behave as if they do not exist. I think right education and accurate knowledge will help to reduce such kind of discrimination.

Reference

・Kawamoto,S. (2009,Jan,15). Ningen publication. Burakusabetsu no nazo wo toku.

・Inoue,K. (2009)”Japan’s Outcasts Still Wait for Acceptance” .New York Times retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/world/asia/16outcasts.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2. Last access date:2011/11/15

・Ehimeken Jinkenkeihatsu Center. (2006). Atarashii shiten kara Dowa mondai wo kangaeru, 13-15. Retrieved from http://www.pref.ehime.jp/h15900/jinkennituite/htm/keihatsu_center/siryohaihu/17iko.pdf last access date: 2011/11/15

Shiomi Maeda

Okinawa – Southern island of Japan – has a quite unique culture. As we covered in the class, Okinawa once was an independent country itself; once belonged to a different country; and today is a part of Japan. We non-Okinawan would say “Okinawa is of course a part of Japan, but it’s different from the rest of Japan.” Is this the case with what Okinawans see themselves? Since I fortunately have a friend (Kenshiro Oshiro) from Nago, Okinawa, I decided to interview him.

The identity he would prefer is – Okinawan identity

…So his prior identity is that as Okinawan. But, according to him, this is not because he is from a special island with unique historical backgrounds, but is more like affection/sincerity that everyone would hold toward his/her hometown.

Just because he prefers regional identity over the national one does not mean he does not have a national identity – because he DOES see himself as a member of Japanese society, just like us.

“I’m both Okinawan and Japanese. It’s just I have a stronger sense of belonging to my home, than to my country.”

However, as he continued, he came to realize the existence of special pride as Uchinanchu (Okinawan) – being different from Yamatonchu (non-Okinawan).

“We Okinawans have…a pride. We are proud of being the way we are, distinct from the rest of Japan.”

He claims this “pride” came into existence due to the history of discrimination against Okinawa.

H: We chose to belong back to Japan. But I am not sure whether it was right to have done so.

Ever since the year of 1972 when Okinawa was returned from the States, Japanese government has laid such a huge burden to the prefecture of Okinawa, such as existence of the U.S. Army bases.

On the one hand, they are forced to be Japanized. On the other hand, they have been treated different from the rest, and been facing social discrimination. They have always been left in-between. This discrimination brought up their pride – being different from the rest.

“We have been considered different, treated differently. They always saw us behind in lower status. This long-time inferiority complex has strengthened our pride as Uchinanchu.”

But at the same time, he says Okinawans thank the nation for their economical development.

“If we had made a different choice, I don’t think Okinawa could survive in today’s globalized economy. In this sense, that choice was a right one.”

I personally think having different culture and values is interesting and fun, unless each culture and its people are properly respected. But in reality, Okinawans have been suffering from segregation because of its unique history. And this is now the way we can be proud of ourselves.

“It is very important to learn the historical background when it comes to discuss the issues surrounding Okinawa. Things are so complicated that not all of them can be seen on the surface.”

That is true. We non-Okinawans are too unconscious or ignorant about this issue. This is the biggest problem. The first step to resolve the issue is for us to get to know the history and current situation.

It is on us whether to leave the issue as it is now, or to try to make it better.

Special thanks to Kenshiro Oshiro (11/14/2011)