In order to raise political awareness of the public, comedy would play an important role. Japan has been struggling with the lower political awareness of their citizens, For example, the turnout at the last national election in 2017 was 53.68 % (the worst is 52.66 % in 2014)[1]. Although I don’t think comedy is to blame for the lower awareness, the fact that politics has not been being talked in comedy as a taboo in the long time is strange and the taboo should be broken. If that happens, it would contribute to increase the political interest of the public.

Most of comedians do not use political topic even if the public knows some of the political issues are going on in the moment. I often see American comedy get laughter by talking political topics, but it is opposite from Japan. Politics in comedy has been a taboo for a long time in Japan. As far as I know, just a few of comedians talk in the show in a limited number of programs and this phenomenon is unique.

Presumably, there are two possibilities why this is happening.

First, most of comedians are not interested in politics and do not think of using it.

Second, comedians has been avoiding it as a taboo. Even though certain number of comedians do want to talk about politics in their show, but they refrain from doing so since they afraid that they’ll not be starred next time, especially in the field of TV, this case is adapted. Moreover, the Japan’s characteristic of being conservative prevents TV directors from casting them.

This reserved feature making politics less on TV has negative influence on the lower political awareness of Japanese.

Comedy can raise awareness of politics and also can give opportunities for citizens to think about the political issues. Even those who are not so interested in politics can have time to be close to it. Japan’s bizarre culture puts distance between citizens and politics. When there’s political events going on, there’s no need to avoid them

The situation where comedians avoid politics is strange. The key point to raise political consciousness of the citizens is how we can make the distance between citizens and politics closer and how we can integrate politics into our life. If more comedians use the political topic, increasing number of people can get closer to politics. In other words, comedy would familiarize people with politics.

[1]http://www.soumu.go.jp/senkyo/senkyo_s/news/sonota/nendaibetu/ Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication shows the voter turnouts in each year on their website. Accessed 25 December 2018

I’m sometimes surprised that there are still some people saying teacher is in upper position than student. I am not for this idea and it may be one of the causes of teacher-student violence.

In the past several years, the problem of corporal punishment has been controversial in Japan. Recently, Japan had a case that a student swearing at a teacher and then the teacher took a violent action. A lot of news programs has been talking whether the action of the teacher can be justified or not this time, or whether there was any other better solution for this case. In my viewpoint, I think this case is more related to a deeper level of perception of the relationship between teacher and student.

A lot of people in Japan still think teacher is in a position teaching to student one-sidedly and a student is just a person receiving knowledge. Like this time, the students’ resisting attitude against teacher might have stemmed from the old-fashioned concept. Partly because student disobey teacher might be coming from the following two reasons: showing off the fact that they can refuse teacher who is considered as being in a higher position than student and/or the stress caused by this hierarchical structure. This violent action would less take place if the number of provocative student get lower in the first place.

Since teacher has more knowledge than student, they tend to be obsessed with the stereotype built by what they have learned in the past. However, when we study, we need to question the existing theories. In this respect, teachers have possibility of gaining new perspectives from student. Teaching students can be a opportunity for teachers to rethink the established study from outside of the framework. That is why education is bidirectional process of reestablishing theories.

The obsolete notion of superiority of teacher to student should be taken apart this time. If the number of people share the idea of equality of teacher and student, teachers would respect each student more and communicate with each student in a equal position. I expect that it could be a key point for solution of this issue in a deeper level.