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Census, Maps, and Museums

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by Saki Miyata

In Chapter 10 of Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson explains censuses, maps, and museums as institutions of power which lead colonial states to imagine their dominions. Anderson explains one of the institutions, maps, as something that is “nothing visible on the ground, but demarcating an exclusive sovereignty wedged between other sovereignty”. Among the three given institutional powers, maps were one of the most interesting and relatable topic to me.

The spread of “official” maps creates an imagined shape of “our” nation, where “we” live and belong. These illustrated maps of territories however are not a concrete line but can be changed throughout history. Anderson gives an example of “imagined ties” between the widespread Dutch colonial territories by illustrating “maps-as-logos”, by using colors to show how the places were all connected.

A similar effect was brought up in class during the discussion as we examined the Japanese wartime textbook, which indicates maps of Japanese territories and the world map. This textbook was a relevant example of this week’s chapter, since the textbook convinced us how the spread of maps with color usage and the world map of Japanese being in the center was distributed through the educational system creating mindset of where Japan is.

I experienced the influence of maps and the mind-set created by them when I went to a school in Canada. Since Canada uses a world map in which England is placed in the center, it was a different “map” from what I saw in Japanese textbooks, where Japan was illustrated in the center. I immediately thought the map was wrong, and was even offended to see Japan placed at the far right of the map, like it didn’t matter, since I was able to imagine people I know and society inside this map of Japan.

When being constantly reminded of where we are connect to and belong to, we tend to look towards the things we are familiar with rather than a map of some foreign country. It is also impossible to actually imagine people living in the “uncolored pieces of the map”, thus only seeing it as a land. This reflects a colonial state of mind, of “filling in “the empty boxes that was not yet their territory.

As a recent example, maps are today not only an instrument to imagine a nation, but also colored and labeled in differently in different occasions, perspectives, in multiple places. Feeling strong sense of attachment towards “Tsu-gaku kuiki 通学区域 (school district)” in Japan could be an example. Throughout the nation, when attending public elementary school, students must go to the school which are assigned to each school district. This system creates the sense of community, since the boundary of who attend which school is clearly illustrated. Thus when students move up in middle school, and introduce which elementary they are from, people easily could imagine which part of the city they are from.

Reference

Anderson, B. (1991). Census, map, and museum. In Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev. and extended ed.). London: Verso.

The Modern Working Woman: Expectations and the Gender Income Gap

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English: Gender Pay Gap in 19 OECD countries a...

English: Gender Pay Gap in 19 OECD countries according to the 2008 OECD Employment Outlook report (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Paige Shaw

From aprons to business suits and domestic duties to the nine-to-five grind, our idea of a hard-working woman has changed drastically. All around the world we see more and more women entering the work force. However, these attempts to make women “equal” have caused different problems to arise. Women who enter the work force are still expected to do the domestic duties they were previously expected to do, on top of having a career. There is simply not enough time in the day for any one person to be able to have a career, raise a family, and maintain a home. Men on the other are not expected to juggle all these things, but they are sometimes expected to put work before family. In addition women are paid a fraction of the amount to do the same work as their male counterparts. As a society we have developed this ideal of having work, home, and time for leisure. In the long run this is not a sustainable lifestyle. I have seen both in my home country, Canada, and in Japan on exchange, that in both countries there is a difference between being a man and being a woman in the workplace.

English: Map of Canada

English: Map of Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I find generally when I talk to people who aren’t from North America, or who aren’t too familiar with Canada, that they sometimes have the idea that Canada has it all figured out. However in terms of the gender income gap, Canada has a larger gap then countries such as Norway, Italy, and France. The Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 11th out of 17 peer countries and gave it a grade C in terms of the Gender Income Gap. Women will earn approximately 76 cents for every dollar a man makes doing the same job. I find in Canada there is still the stereotype that housework and child rearing are more of the woman’s job. However there isn’t as much stigma towards stay at home dads or men helping out around the house as there are in other countries. But it does still seem to be the ideal for a woman to have a successful career, well-behaved children, and a well-maintained home. This is unrealistic because there is simply not enough time for one woman to do all these things.

Compared to Canada, Japan’s gender income gap is much wider, and their expectations for women make it harder to maintain a job. Women in Japan on average earn 29% less than men. It is also uncommon to see a woman working in a high position at a company. Japan has very high expectations for its workers and its mothers. Most women end up quitting their job, either by their own choice or because of societal pressure, once they get married or start having kids. Even with the recent action to increase the amount of women in the workforce, because social expectations aren’t changing, women ultimately have to choose between work and having a family. The husbands are also unable to spend time with their kids, let alone help out around the house, because they are expected to spend long hours at work and put in overtime as well. In order to accommodate having women in the work force Japan would need to loosen its expectations on not only the wife’s duties at home, but also the husband’s obligations at work, so both parents can play a role at home.

Overall it seems globally we still have distinct gender roles, and although on the outside it can seem that women are on equal terms with men in the workplace, that might not be the case. To solve this would take a lot of rearranging of the social order. In countries like Canada we need to get rid of the idea of a “supermom” that can do everything in one day, while ideal, it’s not realistic. And in countries like Japan men need to be given as much opportunity to participate in their families’ lives as much a woman should be given equal opportunity to participate in the workforce. This includes equal pay; women in every country should be paid the same amount for the same work regardless of their gender. We need to release the time-squeeze, and give people more time to maintain a healthy home life as well as a healthy life at work.

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How to Educate Foreign Children

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by Yutaro Nishioka

Robert Moorehead‘s research, “Separate and Unequal: The Remedial Japanese Language Classroom as an Ethnic Project,” addresses education for immigrant children in a Japanese elementary school. He examines the connection between the Japanese as a second language (JSL) classroom and the school’s homeroom classes, as well as the impact of the JSL class on immigrant children’s academic development.

The teachers of the elementary school claim that the JSL classrooms not only help the immigrant students to learn the Japanese language but also enable them to relax from challenging situations in an effort to adapt to the Japanese culture and language. The research reveals that although professional norms in Japanese education value equality, collectivity, and mutual interdependence, the JSL classrooms separate those immigrant children from the regular Japanese students in the homeroom class, by which the gap between the immigrant children and regular children never disappears.

Is this an effective way of educating the immigrant children? I don’t think so. In this blog post, I’d like to discuss the experiences of my friend (fully Japanese) who moved abroad and received education in a context outside Japan at the age of 7, and argue that the way the JSL program attempts to educate immigrant children is not effective.

My friend was born and raised in Japan until the age of 7, when she moved to Switzerland due to her mother’s job. Like a normal Japanese child, she had gone to a Japanese kindergarten and elementary school. Since she had had no previous English education, she initially had an extremely hard time learning English to understand her teachers. Unlike the immigrant children that learn Japanese outside their homeroom classes, she was in the ESL (English as a second language) class only for the first 3 months, and after the 3 months she was treated the same way as the other students. She also went to a Japanese school every Saturday to maintain and improve her Japanese.

The reason why she was in the ESL class only for the first 3 months is that the level of English used in the ESL class was not much different than that of other students because they were only 6-7 years old. She also reports that whenever she was pulled out of the class, she felt “embarrassed and isolated.” She doesn’t know whether the teachers sensed her feelings, but she is glad that she quit taking the ESL so that she stopped feeling uncomfortable any more. After leaving the ESL class, she learned English ‘naturally’ on her own just by studying with the other students without being isolated.

Those who believe in the effectiveness of the JSL program in educating immigrant children in Japan would have to say that she could not have learned English to reach the regular students’ standards. However, the fact is that she quickly learned English to the point where the others would not be able to tell she was not a native English speaker, and she was doing just as well as the other students whose native language was English. In fact, she says she now speaks English even better (or more comfortably) than her Japanese. She not only moved on to high school but also to a university in Canada. I have a few other friends that went through a similar situation as hers, and they all learned English without being isolated from the native students and brought their English to the native level.

Moorehead’s study mentions that while 97 percent of Japanese youths aged 15-18 are in high school, only 42 percent of Brazilians and less than 60 percent of Filipinos go to high school. In contrast, all of the friends of mine that went abroad and acquired English are now in university. This clearly implies the ineffectiveness of the present JSL program.

Reference

Moorehead, Robert. (2013). “Separate and Unequal: The Remedial Japanese Language    Classroom as an Ethnic Project.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11(32):3.

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Immigrants face labor issues in the host countries

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by Mao Shibata

Nowadays, globalization spreads all around the world and it has brought diffusion of international transportation so that people are able to flow freely over borders. The number of international immigrants who look for a job and seek more stable life is getting increase over the world, while they are struggling with serious labor problem in their host countries.

When I went to Vancouver during this summer vacation and stayed with my host Pilipino family, they were facing labor problem. The father had quit security guard and wanted to be an elementary school teacher, though the Vancouver government did not accept his require and grant letter of acknowledgement. Moreover they had two children who were still 6 and 8 and they live separately with their parents so that he had to take care of them in the home while the mother went to work during the long vacation. Since the mother was a breadwinner, she went to work 7 days a week and even worked on holidays as salary was higher than usual. They knew that as long as this condition persists, it is really difficult to make a living as their children get older. Then, what should they do? Should the father have to find another job-even if it is a lower wages one- while he leaves his children home alone? Should they send their children to their home country where their parents take care of their children?

Though they leave their home countries to get a job or to help their families, they cannot get stable and well-paid occupation even they have documents and the host country’s nationalities. Needless to say, immigrants who come to new country without any documents or visa cannot get a proper and high paying job. What’s more, their children those born and raised in host country also regard as illegal immigrants. Even they are educated exactly as well as children who have that host country’s citizenship and high skilled or talented people, they are not able to enter the university, get any certificate and satisfying job. It causes not only deprives of the children’s bright future but also it endanger their safety and the lives. Since it forces them to engage in unsustainable work and harsh environment such as day labor, low wages and prolong work besides, it may drag them into drug or gun crime to make much money.

Internationalization and development of the transportation make people easy to cross a frontier throughout the world and millions of people decided to go overseas to earn a livelihood or send money home to their families, however, they face multiple barriers in the host countries; low wages and long hour works, limited visa and citizenship. Not only try to restrict the immigrant’s occupations and to drive them away, but we need to consider how to improve their severe working situations and shift policies more flexible to accept them.