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.

Upload: 27 January 2019, Last update: 17 June 2019

As technology develops, our life is getting digitalized. Computer literacy is necessary for each of us now. Workers manage documents by computer, students make essays on laptop, and so on. However, there’s threat of cyberattack and being stolen information.

For example, we would see many news of cyberattack into the government data base or other confidential data sources in the future. In our life level, right now banks are becoming paper-less. In Japan, people were using paper-bankbook, but now it is managed on the Internet. We can see out bank account on the web, in the meantime as it actually happened before[1], we have a risk of being scanned bank information. Previously, I remember Japan had a case that a web page identical to the actual bank website which was collecting bank-user information. And as another case, hackers attacked university servers and got personal information of university professors and students.

In the modern digitalized world, there’s always threat of cyberattack. Certainly technology would govern our world more and more, but the importance of analogue would still remain. Confidential information might be better to kept in safe in analogue because of no risk of cyber attack. I will not be surprised if in the future people return to analogue life again.

[1] As the following website warned, URL was sent by email which asks people to fill out their bank information to log in their bank account on the almost same website as the existing bank web. https://www.spread.or.jp/phishing/2016/08/29/2604/ Accessed 17 June 2019

Among Japanese people, I realize that quite many people are not aware of importance of journalism. Journalism which provides deeper news to the public is important for democracy.

As UN special rapporteur David Kaye came to Japan several years ago and published his report, journalism in Japan is facing crisis. The main roles of journalism are that providing investigative information to citizens, prevent corruption of the power including the government and major corporations and so on. Journalism against the power is basic structure and there’s always tension between them, but I think a lof of people in Japan do have less awareness of the importance. Especially even among Japanese journalists, it seems that the number of investigative journalists is not enough. What is really surprising is that some people are condemning several journalists who are doing great job at press conference as interrupting or disturbing it. If investigative journalism doesn’t work, misconducts and wrongdoings happen easily. In order to make the politics clean and not allow corruption, the role of journalism is significant and should be encouraged.

In addition, the consciousness of Journalism as watch dog is too weak in Japanese society. Some people criticize the mainstream media are on the side of the government. Especially, controversial incidents were the former chairperson of NHK said “When the government says right, they cannot say left”[1] and the remark of the former Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications implying that the government can suspend the broadcasting if TV program is politically biased. The independency of media is not protected in Japan and this is influencing negatively on Japan’s journalism.

Most importantly, journalism is beneficial to every person for a country. Each person needs to catch up with news which is not manipulated and comes from media protected independency. Like some independent media organisations in overseas countries, for example, Democracy Now! and Korean Center for Investigative Journalism – Newstapa, investigative media organisation not sponsored by major corporations but citizens might be trend for journalism. I don’t think journalism in Japan is investigative enough except some limited number of journalists. Not only journalists, but every citizen has to be paying attention to what those who having power are doing. I hope we can get our of this crisis soon.

Footnote

[1]ANNnewsCH. (2016). 物議醸したNHK籾井会長　任期満了で退任決まる(16/12/06). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsiuskfmBH4 Accessed 25 January 2018