授業にの社会 -- Society in the classroom

The day before yesterday marks one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had in this country.

This week's junior high is the second of three I work for, each having me for at least a week's length before I move on. Wanting to be well prepared in route, I made a special trip a couple of weeks ago to find this school. I sat on my bike in front of it at one point unsure whether or not I was in the right place (I had thought it would be an elementary school, and the sign clearly said junior high). A man, Kudo-sensei, then came out and asked in English if he could help me. I mentioned that I was the new teacher of the school (realizing I had been mistaken and was indeed in the right place), and we parted ways in good relations.

I came to discover by the beginning of this week that many of the teachers including Kudo-sensei could speak a moderate level of accurate English. (I'm afraid I've grown a bit lazy in my Japanese since, as I consider it part of my job to speak as much English with the English teachers as possible -- and that might as well include anyone else who is confident enough in their ability to push for conversation in English from me. I've also mostly kept my own Japanese ability secret from the students to encourage their own English advancement.) With that much behind him, Kudo-sensei asked the other day between my classes if I would mind attending and being interviewed in his social studies class. Simultaneously bewildered and fascinated by the idea -- what would I say? what would I be asked? in what language? -- I went for it.

In class, Kudo-sensei made the hardest of the decisions for me: he asked me to please introduce myself again -- as I had in my classes with these students before -- only this time in Japanese. Several of the students jumped, and the rest gasped, to hear conversational Japanese fall from my mouth (warning them that this was a mostly one-time event and that from here on I still strictly expected only English conversation in personal encounters with them). The present subject matter than began to emerge: the students were learning about the Japanese Constitution, and the questions more or less revolved around that. (I was also asked if I had a girlfriend; I'm afraid this comes up with almost every opportunity for question-and-answer sessions I'm granted, to which I have had to come up with a wide variation of ways to say 'no' and 'not looking.')

A girl asked how I, an American, felt about the atomic bomb of '45 -- prompted by the question of infringement on human rights. It must first be understood that human rights, jinken in Japanese, has a different meaning than what we Americans are probably accustomed to. I addressed this in my novice assessment of the Japanese Constitution, as allotted by Kudo-sensei, that cross-cultural psychology has pointed out the implicit social ties imbedded in the Japanese concept of human rights; we of Western descent are far more fluent with matters of the boundaried individual. Of the three principle rights of the Constitution -- jiyūken, or right of freedom; heitōken, right of equality; and shakaiken, social right -- the last is perhaps the most traditionally Japanese in concept of them all, if not in the matter of discrimination then in the value of import given to society and social relations. The bomb was as much -- or more really by a Japanese standard -- an infringement on the network of Japanese society (despite the legal, consitutional right had yet to be born) as on those who were physically in its radius of fire, at least as analyzed in the aftermath. I answered honestly: I would've been against the deployment of the Little Boy, especially considering the apparently true reason for deciding to use it on Japan (that is, to beat the Russians to it).

Further questions about the military came up (could I be forced to serve? did I have to kill if I did? what do I think about the principles of the Japanese military, which is meant to serve only in defense yet can attack if attacked first?). We went back and forth, in English and in Japanese, from an American then a Japanese point-of-view. Did I have any questions? I leaned forward from my chair at the front of the classroom and tapped the desk of a student I'd taken notice in my English class before, one who had a freelance manner but was, I believed, secretly reflective. Indeed, he sat looking forward, eyes clearly turned inward, at being asked what his opinion was of America's decision to end the war the way it did. After a good half-minute passed, I wasn't sure he'd answer, when he then quietly replied (in Japanese) that he felt that there are always alternatives to such measures. I tried to comprehend what had to be playing through his mind, and those of the others' in the room, in wanting to honestly answer a question that was at once of great importance yet whose response stood well possible of offending the bureacratic superior (and potential international friend) asking it. My agreement with his and others' thoughtful observations I think clarified the collective underlying pronouncement: we all want peace.

I sat through the rest of Kudo-sensei's class, taking notes in my terrible Japanese handwriting, given explanation of a term every now and then. (I am still amazed at how the topic was covered; the Japanese Constitution, at least by Kudo-sensei's curriculum, begins at least in part with a careful understanding of John Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and their influences on the American Constitution. Very little had yet to be said of Japan itself, apparently.) I felt aware of all the levels of value of this experience throughout: the gift of, finally, some sense of what it might be like to be a student member of the Japanese education system (which I have tried to imagine since my very first reflections on the country); of a Japanese point-of-view of concerning his own society and its constitutional make-up; and of a chance to be Internationalization incarnate -- an intimate foreigner in conversation and debate with my culturally significant Other. I am feeling blessed.