tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35894930.post302753070567429549..comments2023-12-31T15:40:06.675-08:00Comments on Peace Philosophy Centre: March 20th Peace Philosophy Salon Report "Foreigners in Japan"Peace Philosopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03884294048618803206noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35894930.post-68384658786391865922010-03-22T09:16:57.621-07:002010-03-22T09:16:57.621-07:00Many thanks for one of the greatest salons we had....Many thanks for one of the greatest salons we had. I learned<br />so much. <br /><br />Go, your knowledge of the "immigration bureaucracy" is amazing. I look<br />forward to hearing more. Thank you for making such a big contribution<br />to the salon that you participate in for the first time. <br /><br />Arc, your facilitation and leadership skills were strongly demonstrated<br />throughout the event. Your presentation on the political philosophy was<br />interesting, and I look forward to learning more. <br /><br />Dan, I appreciated hearing your experiences with the American School in<br />Japan. What stood out for me is your ability to engage the audience by<br />challenging them, inviting their input, and encouraging dialogues. <br /><br />Andrew, thank you for sharing your experiences and observations in<br />Yamanashi and beyond. They made me realize that Japan hasn't really<br />changed for the direction of "internationalization" that it has been<br />aiming for the last three decades or so. I hope to hear more. <br /><br />Shoko, you fully utilized your academic and personal backgrounds to<br />present the issue of racism and discrimination in Japan, which helped us<br />relate well to the problem both on the intellectual and emotional level. <br />Your genuineness and open-mindedness are a treasure always. <br /><br />Thanks so much again and we should do something like this again soon!Peace Philosopherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03884294048618803206noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35894930.post-6323048760223163982010-03-22T09:07:28.697-07:002010-03-22T09:07:28.697-07:00Thanks Shoko and Arc! Great comments with consider...Thanks Shoko and Arc! Great comments with considerations. I learn a lot from exchanges of different ideas.<br /><br><br />I would like to offer an additional piece of information on this issue, which I found interesing. I'd hope this is good food for thoughs, too. I found that the prefectures with fewer number of foreign residents tend to oppose introduction of the suffrage for foreign residents.<br /><br><br />One source of this finding comes from <a href="http://sankei.jp.msn.com/politics/policy/100321/plc1003210054000-n1.htm" rel="nofollow"> the recent news article by MSN Sankei Shimbun</a>. <br /><br><br />According to this article, 28 out of 47 prefectures passed some resolution to oppose granting a local election suffrage to foreign residents as of March 20th. On the other hand, 16 prefectures are for the idea.<br /><br />I merged this data with a the number of foreigners, permanent residents, Zaninicih residents, etc. by prefecture released by MOJ in 2008 (you can download all the data from <a href="http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?lid=000001057947" rel="nofollow">here</a>). Although the correlation is moderate, I found that the prefectures with more foreign residents (FRs), permanent residents (PRs), and Tokubetsu permanent residents (Zainichi) are more likely to be agree, and the prefectures with fewer of those are less more likely to oppose the suffrage. Here are stats (standard deviations in parenthesis):<br /><br /><br />** PREFECTURES FOR SUFFRAGE **<br /><br />Median FRs: 37259 (110432.6)<br />Median PRs: 6673.5 (23342.53)<br />Median Zainichi: 5312.5 (29797.66)<br /><br />** PREFECTURES AGAINST SUFFRAGE **<br /><br />Median FRs: 11602 (33448.48)<br />Median PRs: 1829 (9500.977)<br />Median Zainichi: 1557.5 (2647.183)<br /><br />** Correlation (Somers' D)**<br /><br />FOR and FRs: .34<br />FOR and PRs: .42*<br />FOR and Zainichi: .38<br /><br />AGAINST and FRs: -.42*<br />AGAINST and PRs: -.51*<br />AGAINST and Zainichi: -.42*<br /><br />* Statistically significant at p<.05.<br /><br />Why do we have such a correlation? I think it's an interesting question. But please note that this is an ecological relation, and probably we may have many possible explanations.Gonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35894930.post-84466972283637103082010-03-21T23:13:35.436-07:002010-03-21T23:13:35.436-07:00Thank you Shoko for this wonderful report and for ...Thank you Shoko for this wonderful report and for all the things you have done for the Salon when you are also busy with school works. And thank you to everyone who joined us yesterday. I really enjoy the discussion.<br />Two topics caught my attention yesterday. The first is the importance of diversity. To my understanding of the life-circle of a civilization, it always starts boom with an increase of diversity and declines with a decrease of diversity. Nations always face difficult challenges; diversity brings new ideas and mechanisms to deal with these new challenges. Therefore, to emphasize the homogeneity of a nation actually is not good for the nation. Such a cultural arrogance could eliminate the nation’s capacity of dealing with new challenges. My understanding of the Chinese history tells me it is this arrogance of the great central kingdom actually made Chinese leaders in the 19th century blinded themselves, thus ruined China with the 100 years f humiliation. <br />Moreover, culture is not something fixed and never changes. Japanese culture itself has changed over centuries. So we cannot use a fixed criteria to judge whether someone is culturally Japanese. We talked about the MOJ using whether a person can correctly classify garbage as criteria to judge the citizenship applicants, but before the garbage classification system was established, Japanese didn’t classify them as well. So can we say Japanese at that time were culturally not Japanese?<br />Then the second topic attracts my attention is about education. I think using education system to enforce some ideology or culture actually shows the cowardice. If a nation is confident enough for its culture, it doesn’t need to use national machine to enforce it, and it should firmly believe that everyone would naturally follow their culture because their culture fits this land well. <br />Instead of teaching one set of culture, education system should be open and diversified. We should just give kids all the options and trust the next generation have the ability to choose the best one. I know this sounds really idealistic, but this is my ideal (I guess I get this idea from “The Cather in the Rye”. I really love this book when I was in high school. )Arc Z. Hanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06367432484527353963noreply@blogger.com