From: claude@trc.mew.mei.co.jp (Claude Huss)
Subject: Re: Real Name Declaration (Was: How to survive in Japan)
Organization: Matsushita Electric Works Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
	<KENJI.92Sep10121721@kappore.tom.astem.or.jp>
Distribution: fj
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 04:18:52 GMT


Rikitake> It was 1980 when I first encountered with the fact of discriminatory
Rikitake> actions of Japanese to Korean people - I also saw Kwangju incident 
Rikitake> $@!J8w=#;v7o!K(J on TV. It was another version of Tiananmen - and I
Rikitake> realized how I was ignorant about a neighbor country. I decided to
Rikitake> learn Korean language - and I spent my time from 1981 to 1984 for
Rikitake> learning it. It's nice to be able to read/write hangul letters - and
Rikitake> can guess how Korean language have influenced Japanese one and vice
Rikitake> versa.

I'm very impressed with your actitude to start to learn Korean. Sometimes,
I wonder why some people in Japan are studying english... Some of them
are excessively proud about their "skill" to speak in fluent english,
but I don't think they are "culture-sensitive" as you were for Korean.


Rikitake> FYI: In Kansai, I find out that the situation is much more complicated
Rikitake> and that people are rather pragmatic about racial/discriminatory
Rikitake> issues. Discrimination to people who live in "buraku" communities is
Rikitake> still persistent, and local governments are trying to enforce a sort
Rikitake> of "Equal Employment Opportunities" or "Affirmative Action",
Rikitake> anti-racial legal movement in the USA. Also, quite a lot of
Rikitake> Korean-Japanese residents are living in Kansai and local governments
Rikitake> are very sensitive on discrimination to them.

And, this is valid for other groups: Women, married women, aged people,
people with sight problems, etc. I was surprised 3 years ago when a 
japanese company hired a "detective company" to investigate about all
my life, companies were I worked, etc..! (and the strangest thing is
that they even don't think they did a wrong thing...) I was wondering
how would be terrible to investigate the life and "discover" things
like being a burakumin or korean/taiwanese/chinese-japanese... Isn't
there any law about privacy as in the US?


Rikitake> // One thing I suggest to Mr. Huss: not only Taiwanese-Japanese but
Rikitake> // other Chinese-Japanese are suffering from the discrimination.

Sorry, In fact I wanted to mention them as well, but I don't know many 
things about mainland chinese-japanese as I know about korean-japanese and
taiwanese-japanese. If someone has more detail about it, I would like to
know more. (Probably there are people that came from Manchuria?...)


Rikitake> $@2ACM4Q$NB?MM2=(J should be better for describing "making social change
Rikitake> for accepting many kind of values."

Yes. This should be the main target for the japanese society, this will
even more benefic for the japanese living in Japan than foreigners, I 
think. All that discussion about "Internationalization" seems to be
lip service for me. You cannot "internationalize" any society, if you
don't prepare it to accept new values and ideas.









--
+----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
| Claude Huss          | Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd. Tokyo Research Labs.|
| Networking Engineer  | Mita 5-13-2, Minato-Ku, Tokyo 108, JAPAN            |
|                      | Phone: +81-3-3452-4941 Fax: +81-3-3451-0793         |
+----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
|           Disclaimer: "Opinions are mine, not from my employer"            |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
		-- Harry S Truman
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