Upload: 22 April 2019, Last update: 23 April 2019

Arbitrariness of information is what people need to be aware. In particular, when we watch TV news, TV news are made artificially means that it has arbitrariness of information. Some information is buried behind what is spoken. This is a not surprising fact since we cannot convey the exactly same situation to others. First, the perception of what has happened is different in every person and it is going to be conveyed via a medium to others. It’s sure that certain amount of information cannot be transferred. What important is that whether people are aware of the arbitrariness.

As some say that history is his + story, history is arbitrarily combined and built up to some extent. There’s huge amount of information which people didn’t choose, got buried in history and cannot be seen at present.

Compared with France, it feels like many Japanese still receive information as it is and do not care the arbitrariness of information. I know some people do care it, but I have an impression that the number of people aware of arbitrariness of information is quite lower. For example in France, more people have less trust in media. The media defiance of the public is often talked.

We should not see information as it is and should be careful of arbitrariness of information. Especially mainstream media are often influenced by pressure directly or indirectly, we need to get information from as many sources as possible.

Upload: 20 April 2019, Last update: 8 June 2019

I think that we should develop academic institution which is different from educational institution. Even though some of learners like to learn, education has some negative parts to them.

In educational institutions, students are literally educated, but learning voluntarily should be emphasized more than being educated.

Contrary to educational institutions, academic institutions prepare the studying environment for students and students will be more motivated to learn. Moreover, they encourage the development of personalities of each student and are not obsessed with stereotypes. As it is often said that the lifespan is now 100 years and people need to continue to learn, they focus on learning.

Joi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab says “what you need to learn is how to learn” while explaining in the principle of “Learning over Education” in TED talk[1]. I think if we could have some academic institutions, it helps people to get motivated to learn.

Academic institutions gives many opportunities to students to be motivated. Self-motivated learners will continue to learn even after graduation. This kind of institutions should be put more emphasis.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsjTVGIw4z8 2:08-. Accessed 20 April 2019

I often feels that most of teachers pushes their ideas or mainstream theories to students too much. That is negative to younger generations in terms of bringing breakthroughs to the world. Even though knowing and understanding what has been researched or what the world has experienced so far is important, those who teaching should not push the conventional paradigm to students. The explanation of teachers/professors is a good opportunity to learn, but forcing students to think in conventional ways is not welcomed.

Also, classes without insightful analysis or critical thinking of professors are not interesting. They are just following the superficial mainstream ideas and their classes are not attractive. It doesn’t stimulate intellectual curiosity and less worth taking. They are just pushing assembled date to students. It doesn’t work for students to develop and has some factors preventing creativity and development of students. The information in those class

For example, learners are fascinated by lectures, videos, or books of attractive intellectuals. Until now, I became interested in many fields including sociology and journalism by those people. Words uttered by good professors leads students to study further. They stimulate intellectual curiosity of students. Even the studies students are not interested in, it get students interested.

Many Professors educating students with conventional theories are likely to be obsessed with the existing theories. They always should doubt whether the existing notions work or not in the present or in the future. Always getting out of a framework is a way to develop. That is why professors should not put pressures students to be obedient to what they teach. It doesn’t effectively help students to develop a society.

Today’s commonsense doesn’t work enough in 10 or 20 years which means that just educating to follow conventional knowledge doesn’t help students in the long run.

Good professors are having deep insights, critically think, and develop. Those classes are more valuable for learners.

Upload: 6 April 2019, Last update: 23 April 2019

Recently, France media reported that Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of Public Action and Accounts, suggested the possibility of abolishing the current TV fee system.

The Minister mentioned it on BFMTV on 29 March 2019[1].

Although the system is not the completely same, this type of topic related to TV fees has been controversial in Japan. People are increasingly leaving TV by diversified ways of getting information in daily life.

NHK is the TV station demands to pay the fees in Japan. In France, the revenue paid by more than 27 million households whose total is 3.8 billion euros is divided to 7 companies including France Télévisions and Radio France[2].

As time passes, the conventional mediums are changing to others. It needs the conventional media to change the way of raising funds. Japan’s conventional way has to be changed, or more and more people would have complaints.

[1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/politique/gerald-darmanin/audiovisuel-public-la-fin-de-la-redevance-est-elle-faisable_3256507.html Accessed 5 April 2019

[2] http://www.lefigaro.fr/economie/le-scan-eco/dessous-chiffres/redevance-tv-ce-que-paient-nos-voisins-europeens-20190329 Accessed 5 April 2019

Upload: 30 March 2019, Last update: 9 April 2019

The definition of Dentou is not completely same as tradition although in the previous article “How a tradition survive, develop, and decline — Japan as an example“, I used tradition as a word of Dentou. Particularly, Japanese society has been putting values on Dentou. I do think that we should respect dentou, but just continuing something cannot keep dentou alive in the future.

Some Japanese people may misunderstand what “Dentou” is. “Dentou” doesn’t mean just persisting in old styles. It has essential values unchanged from the emergence of its custom. “Kanshu” includes more cases of continuity without respects as it sometimes expressed as “ashiki-kanshu” in Japanese meaning impractical custom[1]. Importantly, the values remain in modern days.

When I look at the Japanese society, people continue to do in the same way even if it is not efficient or some people are noticing that it doesn’t work.

The traditional or conventional way is not effective or not valuable in contemporary society, we don’t have to continue. Indeed, this is not dentou. We should change it to more practical style. There’s cases that traditional ways prevents progress and it often can be seen in Japanese society.

“Dentou” has a long history, but it doesn’t mean that everything old they continue is “dentou”. If it doesn’t have values evaluated in modern society, it becomes a piece of history and it has historical value.

The conservative charactaristic of Japanese society puts more emphasis on conventional ways, but it hinders progress and development. It’s sure that there’s many dentou in Japanese society they should preserve, but it should be preserved if it is valuable and evaluated in a society.