Category Archives: Class Pages

How do you think about citizenship?

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In this time, I would like to talk about citizenship.

 

First of all, I tell you about Japan and Korea.  In Japan, from 1985, if you have Japanese mother or father, you can have Japanese citizenship.  Also in Korea, if you have Korean father or mother, you can have Korean citizenship.  Then can you have dual citizenship entire your life?  The answer is NO.  You have to choice the only one citizenship when you will be 22 years old.

 

Next, I would like to tell you about the U.S.  The U.S can have dual citizenship.  There are many countries that recognize to have two or more citizenship.  For example,  the U.S., Russia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, France, Italy, Nigeria, the South African Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and so on.  Because of globalization of recent years, many countries accept dual citizenship.

 

Is it good to have dual citizenship?  From the sight of moral, I think it is good to have dual citizenship because you have two mother countries.  But from the sight of logical way, I think you should choice the one citizenship.  The reason why I think you should choice the one citizenship is law.

How about military obligation?  In Japan, there is no allegiance to go to military obligation, but in Korea, you have to go to military obligation before you will have been 29 years old.  If you are a guy, and you have Japanese father and Korean mother, what will you do then?  I think it is difficult decision.  So, I think you should choice the one citizenship.

Moreover, how about marriage, franchise, and crimes?  If you have two citizenships, can you marriage to two people?  Can you participate in two countries’ government?  If you are a criminal, which country’s law are you tried by a court?

There are big problem about crimes.  Even though you are kicked out from one of your mother country, as long as you have two passports, you can enter again with the use of one of the other your passport.

From these reasons, I think it is difficult to have dual citizenships.

 

by Konomi Yamamoto

International Marriages In Japan

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Why do Japanese women yearn for international marriage? In Japanese, international marriages have increased with the development of internationalization and globalization. Marriages between Japanese and foreigners in the 1960s are 4-5 thousand. The surge began in the late 1980s, exceeded 40,000 in 2005. However, it began to decrease after a peak of 4.47 million people in 2006. Foreigners in Japan is about 200 million people (alien registration number), the ratio of international marriages as compared to less than 2% of total population is quite high. To marriage foreigner of Japanese man has a reason. In an increasingly depopulated area it is going from wife shortage. And Japanese men ask their wife to focus on Asian countries. This is beneficial for both parties. Japanese men in countryside can find their wife. Women in developing countries can live in Japan. On the other hand, the reason Japanese women marry to a foreigner is admiration. Moreover, in this case marry foreign men are predominantly white or black not Asian. If Japanese woman marry to foreigner, they can live in Europe and America with the blonde husband. Their children are very cute because they are half. Husband must be active in housework and childcare. Most of Japanese women has image like this.

I found an interesting article. This is the article published by newspaper of China. International marriage has increased in recent years of Chinese and Japanese. A significant increase in cases, especially Chinese women marry in Japan. The newspaper cities the following four points about the effect of Chinese women marry in Japan. In the first it’s active birth. In Japan, the aging progresses, international marriage have played an important part of the Japanese marriage form. Couple number of births has increased every year during the day. Next that’s what made to stop the depopulation of rural labor. The minimum area of Yamagata Prefecture in the agricultural population is declining, according to statistics scholars, in 1989 were only 18 foreign. However, in 1995 most Chinese women were increased to 180 people. In addition, it plays an important role in international exchanges between China and Japan. In Yamagata Prefecture　the Chinese women put in effect “interpreters assisted living”. Married bride is faced with cultural differences in various scenarios. So, she eliminates the differences such as medical care, life and parenting. Finally, culture of China has to respect for their parents. And it appears that this effect can strengthen the bounds of the same family in Japan. In this way, international marriage sometimes has an important means.

 

by Saki Uetsuji

The situation of Japanese-Brazilians in Japan

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From the latter half of 1980, the number of Japanese-Brazilians who came to Japan to find work was increased remarkably. While Japan was in the bubble economy, Brazil hadn’t been improved the employment opportunity and the standard of wages. It was because immigrations of Japanese-Brazilians kept increasing. Japanese-Brazilian could not find their jobs very well. They still have the serious problems. Especially, I state about two problems――language, living in Japan.

First, it is difficult to find their jobs for Japanese-Brazilians who cannot speak Japanese. Moreover, because most of them have no skills to work, cannot get respectable job. And what is even worse, it is the situation that many Japanese-Brazilian children cannot receive education in Japan. It is said that over the half number of Japanese-Brazilian children doesn’t receive education in Japan. In Japan, support of education for foreign people isn’t enough to be provided. As a result, such children also cannot get the job, the Japanese-Brazilian are forced strict living.

Second, it is a problem that losing the Japanese-Brazilians’ job because of the depression after the collapse of the bubble economy. Most of the Japanese-Brazilians are temporary worker.  Because Japanese companies tried to cut personal expenses, many of them who cannot speak Japanese and haven’t skills are fired from temporary jobs. Not a few Japanese-Brazilians go back their country to find their job for their living. Also, their poverty is a one of the cause that no education of Japanese-Brazilian children as stated above.

Many differences of lifestyle between Japanese-Brazilian and Japanese caused some problems. In a certain apartment complex, Japanese people and Japanese-Brazilians live together. While Japanese tell that Brazilians have no manners, Japanese-Brazilians tell that Japanese are so stiff. The large-size refuses and noises by Japanese-Brazilians who don’t know Japanese rules are problems in the apartment complex. However, they don’t mean any harms, the compromise is necessity each other.

However there are a lot of the third or fourth-generation Japanese-Brazilians, their living is still in unstable condition. Now, we are demanded to live with foreign people who have different theirs sense of values. For this reason, Japanese-Brazilians hope that the systems are established for them, for example, the system that give the equal opportunity of education for Japanese-Brazilian children or the system of employment that Japanese-Brazilians can work as not temporary worker but regular worker. I think Japan should respond to them.

by Ayako Takagi

Which is better for immigrants to live as groups or individual?

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Many immigration countries set a borderline between natives and immigrants. I mean that many residents live separtely according to the region. For example, in the U.S.A,  there are residential segregation of black. In Los Angels, whites live along the beach where it is comfortable to live and blacks live aroud the center city such as Lennox regarded as dangerous place. The number of hispanics is higher than that of whites, and blacks. They spread and live. In Canada, there are Indian streets and Italian streets and so on. Why did they set the borderlines like this? Because of convinience? Because of others?

 

Personally, I believe it is better to live as individuals. Of cource, family is together. In case, the host countries accept them favorably and there are many immigrants. I need this idea to realize multi-cultural society. I think the ability of communication increases and people can understand each other.

I think to live as group create the wall. Someone could think that this area is dangerous, and I do not want to go or someone might say here is better than over there. It might show little interest in others. They might have ideas living as groups, not countries.

 

However, this idea have a lot of difficulties. It is natural that same race gather as same place and the standards of their lives are different dependent on races. Actually, the rate of hard jobs of whites is low, but Hispanic or Black don’t, so it genarates. It is regarded as a problem of differences of income. Further more, they have different culture and religion. It creates hate crime or discrimination. In Europe, there was some troubles that natives attacked immigrants or mosque. On the other hand, there are examples that get along with immigrants.

 

I know it is very difficuclt, but I wish the society would be better living together with  less difference.

What do you think?

 

by Rie Murata

Japanese Religion

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It is said that Japanese people are irreligious. Actually, 70 percent of Japanese are so. There is no religious role except the time of ceremonial occasions in Japan. For example, a funeral is by a Buddhism formula, a marriage ceremony is held at a church and paying our first visits of the year in a shrine. There are some reasons for this. I’ll divide it into four points and explain these.

First, Japan is island country and not invaded or occupied from the old days. So, Japanese race could live without depending on some religion.

“The irreligion” of Westerners is a way of thinking that is almost “atheism”, but the Japanese “irreligion” has a plan that “it is natural religion”. Since ancient times, it was thought that God dwelled in all things in the universe in Japan. This is called “YAOYOROZUNOKAMI”. They do not oppose to each other, and in other words, it is polytheism. This is very different from monotheistic such as Christianity and Islam.

Third, Japanese policy is also its cause. In the Meiji era, the government wanted to assume Buddhism a state religion but the other religions was powerful in the world. Because of this, the government did not ignore these and could not decide a state religion. As a result of this, the government did not take a religious line clearly.

Finally, in the other side, the case which was done by the religious body was happened in the past. Aum Shinrikyo scattered sarin which is nerve gas on a subway, and a large quantity of victims came out. Therefore the image of religion became to be extremely bad.

I think that the Japanese religious idea is good, though it is often criticized by other country’s people. However, this expresses Japanese generosity and splendid sensitivity that people are careful and thank to everything. I think that Japanese people should maintain this Japanese irreligion stance as an identity.

 by Ayaka Hori

Men -> Women!?

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During October, I was watching a TV show called “Shin-Jyoushiki” which means new common sense in Japanese. And they were talking about how the Japanese Men are acting and wanting to look like as women. For example, some men started putting on makeup and wearing skirts. And some men do plastic surgery to change their eyes and lips like an idol. These acts of wanting to be like women by the men are increasing in Japan and some Japanese sociologist said that in the future, all men will be like women.

On the other hand, there are men who starting to talk at a high tone of voice like women. Why do they do this? Especially men who have a job through the phone service, wants to talk in a high tone because it sounds nicer towards the customer than thick and low. There is even a school that teaches such voice called “Ryousei-rui” which is the term when men talks in a women’s voice of tone.

Such things are done by men, especially men working for customer service, because they think that their looks and sound of manliness will scare off female customers. Having a deep voice might scare customers over the phone, so men try to speak at a nicer tone for service. And the looks of a man is changing by changing their eyes by making it wider, so it won’t look like he is glaring at the opponent.

Like such examples, Japanese men are falling off from the gender norm. In the past, men acting like women were not normal. However, such norm is changing slightly every time and changing in how people act. I still cannot believe that Japan is changing into such country, but I’m sure that not all people will become like it. For sure, I will not be one of them, because I have no way in adapting to such idea. I’m fine looking at men becoming like women, because it will not have an effect on me. However, I’m worried about women that how they would feel about this, because I have an image that most women would want to love a man who is manly more than women like men. Anyways, if there are any others updates on this topic, I would like to search on it and let people know about it.

 

by Cody Ueda

How to Act Like a Princess

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What makes royals different from their subjects? What makes them stand out, admired and respected? Well, one obvious answer would be that they are monarchs and have some power over their people but if we were to add some sociological understanding to it, it would come down to one concept, cultural capital. Cultural capital is, “a concept associated with Bourdieu, for whom cultural capital acts as a social relation within a system of exchange that includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers power and status” (The Sage dictionary of cultural studies, 2004) or it can simply be defined as forms of knowledge, skills, education, and advantages that a person has, which give them a higher status in society. Therefore, the difference between royals and their subjects can be seen by the way they were brought up and educated.

 

While Professor Moorehead was explaining this concept in class, I could not help but remember a movie I had watched a couple of years back called The Princess Diaries, a comedy produced in 2001 that shows a perfect example of cultural capital. In this movie, we are introduced to a very young Anne Hathaway who plays Mia Thermopolis, a fifteen year old teenager who discovers that she is the heir to the throne of Genovia after her father dies in a car crush. Her grandmother Clarisse Renaldi played by Julie Andrews hopes to introduce her to the Genovian government at the upcoming State Dinner but before that, Mia has to undergo ‘princess lessons’. she is taught how to sit, dine, talk, walk, dance and dress. Well, couldn’t she do all these things before she discovered that she was a princess?  That is where cultural capital comes in. Mia had always been getting basic education at school and no one had ever tried to teach her how to conduct herself in public. Fortunately for her, when she becomes a princess, all this changes. She is taught how to act and behave like a royal contradicting all the other teachings she has been getting from her middle class school and home. From this movie, it is clear to see the difference between social classes of people. The upper and middle classes of people are brought up and educated in different ways and that is why people in the upper class succeed more than those in the middle class. They have more cultural capital since they are taught a lot of things that are relevant in society and this may not be the case with middle class people.

Reference:

Barker, C (2004). The Sage dictionary of cultural studies. London: Sage Publications Limited

 

by Allan Kastiro

Contradiction of Japanese Society Regarding Zainichi Koreans

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Kyoto is one of the prefectures which hold some areas where Zainichi Koreans live densely such as Yamashina area and Utoro area in Uji City. In this post, I would like to make the definition of “Zainichi Korean” clear and introduce the situations of Zainichi Koreans in Kyoto. As a conclusion I would like to discuss about the contradiction within Japanese society towards Zainichi Koreans.

The narrowest definition of “Zainichi Korean” is “Koreans remained in Japan with Korean nationality after WWII, including their descendants”. When complied with this definition, the population of Zainichi Korean in Japan overall reached 650,000 (excluding those became naturalized as Japanese citizen). If those who naturalized were included, the population could be predicted to be over 2,000,000.

As a situation of Zainichi Korean in Kyoto, let me pay my attention to the problem that Zainichi Koreans face in applying to university. There are 150 ethnic schools in Japan, including some in Kyoto just like the one showed up in the film “Pacchigi!”. If a Zainichi Korean wanted to apply to Kyoto University for example, he/she would have a difficult time in order to do so. Because the Ministry of Education excludes Zainichi Koreans from the qualification of examination, Zainichi Koreans must take extra work, such as going to correspondence school and writing numerous essays just to be allowed to apply to Japanese university. Moreover, since ethnic schools are not approved by the government as a legitimate school, they must pay extra fees compared to regular Japanese students.

Don’t you see a contradiction of this situation with another stream within Japanese society, “Hanryu Boom”? On one side Japanese prefer Korean culture while they try to exclude Zainichi Koreans out of the society at the same time. In my opinion, this contradictory situation indicates the gap of consciousness between the Japanese and the Japanese government. Therefore, Japanese government is trying to exclude and foreclose Zainichi Korean, or even any other foreigners, while Japanese people are accepting the situation.

by Minami Hosokawa 

Hashimoto’s suggestions – Tuition fees of Chousen-schools should be free?

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     Since April 2010, tuition fees of high schools in Japan have started to be assisted by the government, in order to help those who want to learn. For public high school students, all of tuition fees are paid by government thus they don’t have to pay at all. For private high school students, about 120,000 yen is paid for schools by government, and they pay rest of it. Students in severe economic hardship can be provided maximum 240,000 yen for private high schools. This is a great decision. My sister has high school education for free, it’s absolutely nice.

     However there is an exception. Chousen-schools are excluded from this decision because Chousen-schools are not “normal” high school that the ministry of education defines (Ichijoukou). Chousen-schools, they don’t adopt the national curriculum of Japan and they have different package of education. The problem is that they are suspected to tell children how Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are great, Juche-sasang (an ideology of DPRK), and some distorted information. In fact, you can find the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in the classroom and their textbooks are totally different from the ones that Japanese have. Some people regard connection with Chousen-Souren as a problem because Chousen-Souren is suspected to have something to do with kidnapping, illegal remittance (sending money illegally), spying, and other illegal activities. In addition, DPRK attacked South Korea in November 2010. Democratic Party of Japan, the party in power, was confused by this incident and yet reach conclusion; assist Chousen-school students or not.

     For all these reasons, there are number of people who are against assistance for Chousen-schools. Tooru Hashimoto, the Governor of Osaka prefecture made these following four suggestions to Chousen-schools if they want to be subsidized; 1)adopt Japanese curriculum, 2)enhance transparency in financial affair, 3)keep away from Chousen-Souren, 4)take away the portraits of Kim family. In other words he showed them two choices like freedom of ideology or money, and he told them they couldn’t have both of them.

     In my opinion, his argument is clear and I agree with him. If Chousen-schools want to keep their own education, they should do it all by themselves. If they adopt Japanese curriculum, they should be funded as other schools. Some people criticize him like education should be free from all political affairs, just support who wants to learn. But, budget is limited. Japanese government cannot spend on what doesn’t benefit Japanese people. What do you think about this issue? Is Hashimoto discriminating Chousen-schools? Let me hear your opinion.

p.s. I wonder how to call the chousen-koukyuu-gakkou. When I googled how they are called generally, I found these following names like North Korea funded school, pro-Pyongyang high school, and something. But finally I decided simply call them “Chousen-schools”

by Anonymous

Homosexuality

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 Have you ever watched “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila”? When I first watched this TV program, I was very surprised because this is a reality television features on a bisexual dating show in which 16 straight men and 16 lesbian women compete each other for Tila’s affection (Tila Tequila are bisexual American model and television personality). I have never watched this kind of TV shows featured on sexual orientation such as bisexual and homosexual in Japan. And, this program made me think “Americans are quite tolerant to individual’s sexual orientation” But, it seems that not entirely correct.

“A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” were very popular even the continue seasons were produced. On the other hand, this TV program led a heated discussion to America by Conservative Christians. Because homosexuality is prohibited in the Bible, Conservative Christian groups which make much of the Bible complained about Tila’s TV program.

Even though some Conservative Christian groups oppose homosexuality, on the other hand, same sex marriage was legalized in New York in June 2011, and New York became the largest state where gay and lesbian couples are able to wed. Also, some states have already legalized same sex or domestic partnership system. Moreover, many famous people like Lady Gaga, Anne Hathaway, Adam Lambert, and the President Obama declared how significant homosexual people are treated as equal as heterosexual people.

‘A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila’ became so popular that 2nd season was produced.  On the other hand, there were also people opposed homosexuality or bisexuality in America.  These TV program and laws reveal that Americans are care about sexual fluidity or homosexuality whether pro or anti.

References

Retrieved from Starpulse.com (http://www.starpulse.com/news/Danielle_Turchiano/2008/06/04/is_this_really_our_reality_nominees_for_)

 

by Mayumi Kurosawa