Upload: 8 February 2019, Last update: 18 February 2019

In the press conference of the chief cabinet secretary, Hideki Uemura, the director of press room, often interrupts the questions to the spokesperson posed by Isoko Mochizuki who is a journalist working for Tokyo newspapers. This endangers the right to know of the citizens since journalists attending the conference are trying to gain deeper parts of news for the citizens.

Even Uemura sent an document pointing out that her questions are mistaking facts[1]. However, the questions posed by Mochizuki are logical and based on her factual investigations. I often think that the answer from the spokesperson cannot be a response to question. In the conference, the problem is not question of the reporter, but it is the answers of the spokesperson. The Uemura’s interruption have negative influence on our right to know. I would like him to explain in which part and phrase of her question is not accurate.

She has been stepping into deeper parts and trying to get valuable information for the public. It means that she is asking questions as a representative of the public. Japan’s journalism must not be defeated by the pressure. I hope that not just Mochizuki and other several good journalists, but also others should play more investigative role. In the meantime, citizens should get together to check whether our rights are working or not.

[1] Sentaku shuppan’s article on Yahoo! JAPAN ニュース. https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/article?a=20190201-00010000-sentaku-pol&fbclid=IwAR3gKvVnlz8GeMZVv5ZiiOW6qYZOUHwuKRbS_jm5n_mK4EQ-MwDJ72JhhBE Accessed 8 February 2019, & IWJ’s interview video to Mr. Uemura on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLwiKPKPgCc Accessed 8 February 2019

Living in Japan makes me notice that Japanese people often put importance on tradition. Certainly, Japan has a variety of unique traditional cultures. Tradition is built on the accumulation of history. However, it cannot be infinitely a tradition, it can disappear. In order to make the traditions continue, people have to reform or make some changes, otherwise some of them would disappear being left behind the mainstream of a society.

In this article, “tradition” means “Dentou” in Japanese. The English word “tradition” is translated as “Dentou” and “Kanshu” in Japanese, but in my definition, “Dentou” and “Kanshu” is different and the word “tradition” in this article is meaning only “Dentou”. “Dentou” is with more respect, on the other hand, “Kanshu” is continuing a thing like “Dentou”, but has less respect or is worth less respect than “Dentou”. There might be some people against my definition above, but it is sure that Dentou should be what people in a society recognize it with respect.

Just because people want to maintain a tradition doesn’t mean just persisting in a old way. Survival of a tradition is keeping to get popularity from the members of a society constantly and not easy.

The most famous traditional example is Kabuki. Everyone would recognize this as a representative traditional show of Japan. What matters is that after Kabuki appeared in 1603[1], the popularity of Kabuki has been continuing in the past 400 and more years without changing the essence and it’s been incorporating new aspects. Therefore, the society has always been finding out the traditional value to Kabuki.

Since the life of human being is not eternal, there’s possibility that people come not to recognize the value of a tradition. The value is shared by the member of a society. And if the number of people sharing it in a tradition decreases, the traditional value of a tradition will also decrease. When a tradition declines, it becomes history. For example, a tradition recognized by 100 members of a society declined and if it is recognized as a tradition by just 30 members, it becomes a history for the rest of 70 members.

However, since Kabuki often steps into new fields and make a success in getting on the mainstream of each era, the momentum doesn’t decline. Kabuki doesn’t decrease the traditional value shared by the public and it has been being a traditional culture. This is the very what we should call tradition. Kabuki needed in the past and will continue to need to put new elements into the show getting on the main stream of the era. Particularly, the famous Kabuki actor Ebizo Ichikawa indicates the need of reform[2]. But the essence doesn’t change and it has flexibility to incorporate new factors without changing the essential factor.

As time passes, new products appear. Particularly, the traditional industry in Japan is at stake right now because of lack of successors and development of mass production. Even though the quality of a product by a professional is higher than that of mass production, the public in the modern and future world would increasingly find out values in a product from mass production. Because of price and as technology develops the quality is not so defeated by a hand-made one. In the future, it will be improved more and more. That leads people to move to another product. Keeping the completely same way doesn’t catch up with the trend of next era and it makes a tradition open for a narrow range of people. This the cause that a tradition declines.

There may be a lot of traditions disappeared we do not know, those traditions couldn’t continue to be recognized value by the public are buried in the pile of history. Keeping a tradition being a tradition doesn’t mean persisting in doing the same way, it needs to have flexibility to get through various eras. The flexibility doesn’t change the essential of a tradition, but putting new elements into a tradition getting on the stream of each era.

I used the word “survive” or “continue”, but it is “evolution” and “development”.

Footnotes

[1]http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/kabuki/jp/2/2_01.html Accessed 5 February 2019.

[2]https://www.kabuki-bito.jp/news/5293 Accessed 6 February 2019

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.

I recently realized that the way of people getting information changed from passive to active in terms of viewers. In the past (and now), when we read newspapers and watch TV, we receive the information, each day by paper delivery or just turning on TV. But, after the Internet came out, we search information in the search engine of Google, yahoo!, YouTube, etc. We spontaneously obtain information.

People hoping watch movies and other programs join Netflix by paying per month. Also, in Japan, there’s a medium called NewsPicks specializing business news. People now can choose a medium depending on their preference without waiting broadcasting hours of each program.

Some may think that in the time when there’s no Internet, people were choosing TV program on their own. That is true but the emergence of the Internet enabled people to choose his/her favorite one from a wide range of stocks online. I would say that the time people were just watching TV without choosing what they want was longer than the current situation. In that context, as people watch programs by their preference, they subscribe media even if it cost subscription fees like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

In the meantime, not just watching favorite programs, but it is sure that we need to have a online community that covers what’s mainly going on a society. This is covered by the headline of Yahoo!, Google News, and the timeline of Twitter, for example. Since these can cover up the necessity of information in our life, we often hear that the younger generations do less watch TV than the past.