Flexibility of a society can be described in (at least) two ways below.

One is whether a society can support those who went outside of the framework of a society – in this case they were originally born within it, but prefer to spend time beyond the framework. For example, in general, students are demanded to live in a school where the life is standardized. But a handful of them have different perspectives, they can expand them on their own, and can get our of the framework intellectually. Famously, Edison dropped out from primary school and he left the great inventions in our world.

Another case is whether we can comprehend people coming from outside of framework – this is different from the one explained above since the example of this case is for instance, migrants originally living in the place outside of framework and entering into it. The flexibility here means not whether we can accept the entering of migrants physically, but the flexibility of a society that for example in school, whether school can flexibly respect people having different sense of values like religions, customs, and others. In school where Japanese students are mostly organized in the same standard, whether they can flexibly respect the students coming from different context.

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Upload: 19 February 2019, Last update: 20 February 2019

When I watch French TV programs, I come across debates and international news a lot more than watching Japanese TV. (this depends on the time and the TV programs I watch though)

Japanese TV has debates or commentators exchanging opinions, but in most of cases they are not digging into the topics and they are just talking the surface of it. Also I’ve been wondering why news programs on TV in Japan cover so many entertainment news like romances or interviews of celebrities. That may be because Japanese TV stations tend to be attentive to the ratings of each program, they may be trying to attract more audiences by broadcasting familiar topics of the public than broadcasting international news or assigning time to a little difficult matters.

Take a case of France, France has more debates on TV. Debates on TV give opportunities for the public to think about politics. Though I’m sometimes impressed by some of commentators strongly pushing their opinions without hearing enough others’ comments in debate, TV programs in France takes more time for debate. Moreover, they also cover international topics by putting more time than Japan, like DRC’s election, Venezuelan political situation, and so on.

The importance of international news and political debates on TV is giving opportunity to think about the current news to the public. This provides people with the habit of thinking about what is going on in their society and the world. Although people are also curious and I don’t oppose to cover celebrities’ news, Japan should take more time to the TV programs which needs people to use their brains, like debates and international news. Besides, if Japanese people do not have knowledge on international topics, they will be left behind from the globalized world.

It should be more recognized that everyone can express opinion in a society although there are quite less number of celebrities speaking out their political opinions in Japan. There are even some people condemn that celebrities and comedians should not talk about politics because they do not have knowledge. What is really important is that in a democratic society, everyone can express opinion and the society should be generous to all of opinions.

This is the foundation and a society can be built on it. Japan must break though current situation that people hesitate to express opinion including comedians, celebrities, and students. Some might have lesser knowledge than others, but it doesn’t mean that they should not mention opinion. Certain number of people have been misunderstanding that point. When you know better than others, you can teach it to others and both should deeper understand by thinking and questioning about the topic. Each person has each perspective and it is worth sharing.

Meanwhile, the public should have better media literacy to decide whether the opinion mentioned by a celebrity is worth supporting or not. Otherwise those who are fan of celebrities are going to be easily influenced by their expressions.

And just because a person is a huge fan of a celebrity doesn’t mean that he should agree with the political opinion of the celebrity. Each person should have media literacy and should think whether the opinion is supportable or not.

Upload: 16 February 2019. Last update: 14 December 2019.

Even though I have an impression that the Japanese government is more being closed to the public or giving information one-sidedly, when we look at US and France, they are trying to reflect the public opinion by using the Internet and have political dialogue with citizens.

First in US, as Japanese citizens have been using it to stop the Henoko landfill, the White House has the petition site called We the People which was created by the former president Barack Obama[1]. It enables people to get a official response from the government if they could assemble “100,000 signatures in 30 days”[2].

As another case, France is now conducting the grand débat national (national grand debate) from 15 January to 15 March 2019 in terms of “local meetings”[3]. There are many debates held, for example the President Macron talked with mayors and students, and the Minister of justice had a debate in a prison[4]. On the website of the national grand debate, it says that people can organise and join local meetings, and also can post their propositions online.

In Japan, there are petition sites every person can start a project, but it doesn’t guarantee that the government responds like the one in US. And in the case of Henoko, Japanese used the American system meaning that Japan doesn’t have similar way of expressing opinions. The advancement of technology can reflect the opinion of the public to politics more efficiently if the system is set up. Even the cases of US and France I describes in this article, I think we can have better ideas and make a better system that the political system can assemble civil opinion effectively.

The scale of a society gets larger, it is more difficult to have transparency between the decision makers and citizens. The political dialogue between them is important and technology can be a solution to reflect public opinions to politicians effectively.

[1]Pew Research Center’s article on the background of the petition system. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/28/the-background-of-the-we-the-people-website/ Accessed 15 February 2019

[2]https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ Accessed 15 February 2019

[3]https://granddebat.fr/# Accessed 7 February 2019

[4]http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2019/02/15/01016-20190215ARTFIG00289-grand-debat-les-detenus-font-entendre-leurs-voix.php Accessed 15 February 2019

The ratio of people gaining news from only the Internet and not watching TV is increasing. Think of the media’s situation in Japan, we can see the information gap between TV and the Internet. It means that the information shared from TV and the Internet is becoming different.

Especially when the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in office, the world press freedom index by reporters without borders is much lower than other administrations. Even though Japan was ranked 11st in 2010[1], they were

22nd in 2011 and 2012[2].

53rd in 2013, 72nd in 2016 & 2017, and 67th in 2018[3].

Because of pressure from the government and self-censorship of media, the mainstream media, especially TV, do not play the investigative role so much.

However, when we look at the Internet, we can find huge amount of investigative, logical, and reasonable information on the regime. The internet community has been sharing much more critical information than TV.

Importantly, the logical and factual information shared by the Internet users are having larger proportion of the information the public has. It is not minority and those who using the Internet cannot bear watching what mainstream media cover when they are not getting into the investigative role. The sense of community on the Internet is increasing. In recent years, some journalists of newspapers have been working well, but weakness of journalism still remains. In order to live in a better society, journalism is one of the important aspects.

If Japan’s TV continue to behave this way, people will increasingly leave TV. The current situation that the Internet shares more useful information with the public is one of the reasons that people have been coming to prefer to use the Internet as means of getting news. The different information shared by TV and by the Internet causes the information gap between them.

[1]https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index-2010 Accessed 15 February 2019

[2]https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index-20112012 Accessed 15 February 2019

[3]https://rsf.org/en/japan Accessed 14 February 2019