Produced by OCHANOMIZU UNIVERSITY SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL, GEIC and The Japan NewsThe FrontieR
PROFESSIONAL EDITION, OCTOBER 2018

Gender Issues Take Center StageD

ecember 17, 2017,
OCHANOMIZU UNIVERSITY—Fourcompanies, (4her, One Colors,
FW2 and Aoisora Shiroikumo)
came together at Ochanomizu
University’s great hall to hold an
event to raise gender awareness.
The companies, founded by
students of the International
Cooperation and Gender Course
at Ochanomizu University
Se nior High School, held aworkshop and movie screening
and set up “shops,” the proceedsof which were donated to charity
organizations.
The event was realized as partof the entrepreneurial experience
program of the Tokyo Stock
Exchange, a program aiming
to nurture “the power to live”
through the experience offounding and managing a modelcompany. The program enabled
the young founders to learn about
gender issues, research howthey can improve the situationof women in terms of labor andthe economy—not only in Japan,
but also in the world—and findcompanies to solve gender issues
as their conclusions.
Becoming the center of the
project, 4her Corp. showed“Girl Rising,” a movie produced

2

3

4

Photo by Arisa Yoshiuchi

Students sell handmade chalk to event participants.

by Plan International Japan.
Based on true stories, the highlyinternationally regarded film
gives a detailed account of thesevere situation girls face, andthe possibilities they could have
had in the future.
After the screening, thestudents and audience had adiscussion on gender issues withProfessor Junko Sano of theInstitute of Gender Studies at
Ochanomizu University.
4her also collaborated with
TRAYCLE Market & Coffee,
selling cookies made from fairtrade ingredients, and fair-tradedrip coﬀee with a label speciallydesigned for the occasion.
(Photo 1)
One Colors Corp. held aworkshop about the LGBT com-

mu nity. Participants enjoyeddiscussions and roleplaying,and had a chance to learn about
issues the community faces. In
addition, they sold postcards andbiscotti with a wish to build asociety where all personalities
are respected. (Photo 2)
FW2 (For Working Women)
Corp. made leaflets and soldcandies not only at the event, butalso at three major companies inTokyo in an eﬀort to contributeto a workable society for both
men and women. (Photo 3)
Aoisora Shiroikumo Corp.
sold handmade chalk using
stubbed chalk laying around at
schools along with pamphlets
about the importance of equal
education in developing countries. (Photo 4)

Japan’s Educational Leader – BUNKYO
Located near the center ofTokyo’s 23 wards, Bunkyo
Ward is known as a leading areafor Japanese education. The
ward has produced many literary
masters, such as Natsume
Soseki, Mori Oogai and Ishikawa
Takuboku. Furthermore, the area
is home to several prestigious
educational institutions, such as
The University of Tokyo and UN
Women Japan, a United Nations
body.
Ochanomizu University is also
one such educational institution.
Founded in 1875, the historic

1

women’s university has continued
to send highly intelligent women
into society. In addition, theschool, known for its highly
advanced gender laboratory, madea revolutionary announcementon July 10, 2018, namely that
Ochanomizu “Women’s” University is going to start accepting
transgender students. Witha planned start in 2020, the
new initiative is expected tochange the social status of thetransgender community, leading
to the formation of a society
where “various” women can also

have a chance to take initiatives
in a wide range of ﬁelds. Throughthe new project, there is no doubtthat Ochanomizu will continue tobe a front-runner in education on
the gender equality movement inJapan.
Bunkyo has greatly contributed to educational development
not only in the past, but also inthe present. There is no doubtthat the ward will continue tobe at the frontier of education in
Japan.
(By Mayuka Takasugi)

By Hina Harada, Rei Ogawa,
Kokoro Sakaguchi, Yuri Suganuma,
Natsumi Tamino and Moeka Tokita

What is gender?
Gender is a difference insocial roles between men
and women based on theideology that men are towork and women are to stayat home. The word genderitself does not have negative
meanings, but many issues
currently surround it.
In the world, one in three
girls do not receive enoughedu ca tion. Also, countless
numbers of girls in developing
countries are forced to marryand deliver a child before
their bodies are sufficiently
developed to do so. Even in
Japan, a majority of women areheavily burdened with the duty
to raise children, making ahighly disproportionate numberof women take parental leavecompared to men.
Considering these pending
problems, the United Nations
has recognized gender equality
in 2015 as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals
to be realized worldwide.
150
(%)
100

99

Data on women in certain countries(UNICEF)

0

67

48

50
6 1.1
TurkeyWomen’s literacy rate

15

32
5.1

Niger

20
5.3

Afghanistan

Gave birth before 18 years old

18

4.9

Laos
Infant mortality(https://www.unicef.or.jp/sowc/data.html)

Credit: Hina Harada

2

The FrontieR

OCTOBER 2018

SOCIAL

Simplify Election System to Gain Young VotersIt is said that young people in Japanare not politically active enough.
Following the Japanese legislature’s
revision of the Public Offices Election
Law on June 29, 2016, Japanese residents
18 years or older now have the right tovote.
At the time, officials antic ipated thatlowering the voting age from 20 would
raise political awareness among younger
generations. However, such hopes have
yet to be realized. After two elections withthe revamped law (one for the House ofRepresentatives and another for the House ofCouncillors), teenage voter turnout remainedat around just 40 percent, falling short oflawmakers’ expectations. Moreover, theturnout among people in their 20s was about
half the voter turnout among people in their
60s.
You may have heard such a concern
about modern Japanese society: “Younger
generations seem to lack interest inpolitics, even through they are the very
generation building the future of thiscountry.”
Concerned adults sought to address
this problem by holding special lectures atschools to teach students how to vote, how

100
90

Voter turnouts surveyed by generation(voter turnout)

80
70
60
50
40
30

S.61 H.2 H.5
10s
20s

H.8 H.12 H.15 H.17 H.21 H.24 H.26 H.29
30s
40s
50s
60s
Over 70s

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

to determine one's favorite candidate, andso on. However, a lack of interest in politics
may not be the only reason for low voter
turnout.
Typically, the Web pages of candidates
are assembled on websites powered by theelection admission committee, requiring
visitors to click and jump to each page tocheck all the profiles of the candidates.
This could be frustrating for young people
who are used to swift access to what they
demand. Young people tend to dislike timeconsuming work, particularly when they
do what they are not interested in. In thatsense, some people even feel reluctant
to go to polling stations. What is more,younger residents seem to have a distrustof politicians. They are concerned that theirvote will not change anything, consideringthat there may be little difference among thecandidates.
To improve these circumstances, it isnecessary to conduct an overall review
of systems related to elections, suchas websites and election campaigns.
Without simply focusing on the passivityof younger generations toward elections,
it is essential to make elections easierto understand not only for younger
generations, but also for all voters. Making
the voting steps clearly understandable
will lead to friendlier feelings toward
elections.
The primary reason for carrying out anelection is to choose a certain number ofcandidates as the representatives of voters.
In other words, an election is an important
way for electorates to reflect their opinions
in politics. By abstaining from voting, one
loses the right to do so. We should be awareof the fact that each vote has significance.
Many individual votes makes strong public
opinion.
By Hazuki Sasamoto, Yui Tanaka, Amane
Shingae and Ayane Inuzuka

Nihonbashi to Get Sky Back,
but Challenges RemainT

he sky over Nihonbashi
may soon be clear again.
Thanks to the adoption ofa project to remove the Metropolitan Highway running above
the bridge, the previous landscape
the area was famous for is
expected to be restored, though ina more modern manner.
Standing over the Nihonbashi River in Chou Ward,the national bridge is thecenter of all Japanese roads
and one of the most cherishedlandmarks in the country.
However, since the rush of
infrastructure development
for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics,
the Metropolitan Highway has
covered the bridge and blocked
the sunlight from reaching it.
Displeased with the situation
spoiling the scenery of themonumental bridge for years,
locals collected and submitted
nearly 440,000 signatures witha demand for the Japanese Dietthat the highway be relocated.
After many years and countless
discussions, a project to movethe obstructive highway underground was adopted by the
Ministry of Land, Infrastructure,
Transport and Tourism (MLIT)
on July 18, 2018.
As the main operation inthis project, the MLIT has
announced a plan for a largescale construction, involving
the burying of 1.8 kilometers ofhighway between Kandabashi
and Edobashi. Many people are
optimistic about the project, as it
is expected to revive a beautiful
landscape, renew the aging road,and make the highway more
earthquake-proof compared tobeing elevated.
However, there are several
problems with the plan. One isthe extremely high cost. The
MLIT, the Tokyo Metropolitan
Government, the Metropolitan
Expressway Company Limited

Nihonbashi Renaissance

Photo by Yoshie Kobayashi

Current structure

Artist renderingand Chuo Ward agreed on a
total project cost of about 320
billion yen, much higher than
the average cost of building
a highway, about 53.6 billion
yen.
Another problem is thatthe underground installation
will take years to complete,with the construction period
estimated to be more than 10
years. The deterioration of theexisting road is a great concern.
When the new undergroundpassage is complete, it will
have been 71 years since thehighway between Kandabashi
and Edobashi opened, andthus there are no safety
guarantees. Furthermore,

vehicle regulation, which isnecessary when constructing
new highways, is feared toparalyze traffic in the alreadybusy surrounding area.
Considering the problems
and opposing opinions above, itwill be a great challenge to carry
the project out. Still, we hope
this meaningful project will be
successful and worthy of thetime and money spared, withcurrent setbacks and thoughts
being properly considered in theprocess.
By Yuki Maruyama, Yuri Nishi­da, Minami Kobayashi, Arisa
Kikuchi and Momoka Sotowada

OCTOBER 2018

The FrontieR

3

GLOBAL

Lawmakers Get ‘Lesson’on Global EducationIncreasing school enrollment
rates is often emphasized
to improve educationworldwide; however, while
being an equally important point,
enhancement of the quality ofeducation is often overlooked.
Children in low-income
countries, who are more likely
to be excluded from school thanthose in high-income nations,still face problems because ofpoor educational environments,
even if they go to school.
Many such children are
required to walk long distances
to attend their nearest schools
and commute on often dangerous
school routes. An article
published by WE, an internationalorganization working as an
educational partner, tells a story ofa boy who drowned while trying
to get to school in a neighboring
community across the river.
Another problem is theshortage of well-trained teachers,
a situation that can preventchildren from gaining adequate
literacy and numeracy skills.
The Global Partnership for
Education (GPE) provides
financial support to ensure aquality basic education, giving
priority to the poorest people
in low-income countries andthose living in nations where
there is conflict. Launched in
2002, developed countries havecontributed to the GPE Fund,
though Japan accounts for only
0.5 percent of the amount.
“The World’s Largest Lesson”
is a global event to understandthe current educational situationin the world. Held in morethan 100 countries during thesame period, it aims to spreadawareness of the importance of
education. Eight Japanese juniorand senior high school students,
including one from Ochanomizu
University Senior High School,
conducted such a “lesson” forDiet Members as “teachers.”
Twenty-four upper and lower

Photo by Japan NGO Network for Education

Diet members listen to an appeal for greater educational support.

house members attended thelesson as “students,” as wellas other members of society
interested in the topic, andlearned how necessary education
is and what kind of support iscurrently provided.
At the end of the lesson, theteachers proposed that Japan
should provide not only visible,
but also “invisible” support.
They mentioned that Japan
mainly focuses on providing
visible support such as building
schools and emphasized the needfor invisible support, such asteacher training, as well. Japan
has taken the latter somewhat
lightly, believing that the results

would be unclear. The “teachers”
then suggested that Japan should
expand its contribution to the GPE
Fund as an example of providing
invisible support, considering that
one of the focus areas of the GPE
is teacher training.
“I was glad that the membersof the Diet promised to make aneffort to expand the support,” an
Ochanomizu high school student
said. “I hope support fromJapan will improve the global
education situation.”
By Kanae Akehata, Rio Iso­buchi, Anna Imai, Yuki Ogawara
and Yuki Furuhata

A Nuclear-Free World: From Fantasy to Reality

On July 7, 2017, thefirst-ever international
agreement to prohibit
all nuclear activities was adopted
at a United Nations conference.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) bans
all state parties from testing,producing, using, possessing,
deploying and transferring
nuclear weapons.
Until that time, the international community had
been discussing the agenda
of nuclear disarmament inaccordance with the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which
identifies nuclear weapon states(the United States, Russia, theUnited Kingdom, France andChina) and non-nuclear weapon
states (the remaining 186
countries in the world except for
India, Pakistan, Israel and South
Sudan) to prevent the spread ofthe dangerous arms and weapon

Final Step
Nuclear-Free World

TPNW

NPT
First Step: The New Treaty

Credit by Mio Sakai

technology. It can thus be said
that the TPNW has completely
different characteristics androles in the field of nuclear
disarmament compared withthe previous agreement. What
seems to be lacking, however,is a compromise among
countries that pose and do notpose a nuclear threat, with bothsupposed to be aiming at thesame goal together. Furthermore,
not only nuclear weapon states,
but even Japan, representative ofa non-nuclear weapon state, has
not signed it, extinguishing the
purpose of the whole treaty.
Nuclear disarmament can
only be achieved when bothtypes of states take concrete
actions based on a consensus.
Therefore, considering thecurrent gap between the twosides, a new negotiation
approach is needed to find a way
out of the stagnant situation.
As shown in the diagramon the left, more detailed
treaties branching from existing
agreements such as the TPNW
can be one efficient solution; notonly would this narrow the gap
and strengthen the main treaty
through further compromises,
but also it would fundamentally
prompt both sides to sit down at
the negotiating table.
Starting with prohibiting theincrease in production of nuclear
weapons, both nuclear weapon
states and non-nuclear weapon
states need to proceed withnegotiations on the matter in apositive manner.
By Yoshino Otomo, Mio
Sakai, Nodoka Murakami andHana Watanabe

4The FrontieR

OCTOBER 2018

ENVIRONMENT

Couriers Kiss Redelivery Goodbye

Today, the increase in package
redeliveries has become a social
problem in Japan. According to asurvey conducted by the Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism,
19.1% of all deliveries are being redelivered
yearly, meaning that almost one out of ﬁve
end up in redelivery service. Furthermore,
42,000 tons of carbon dioxide are emitted bytrucks and a total of 180 million hours are
spent to redeliver those packages every year.
It is clear that redelivery is causing serious
issues in terms of protecting the environment
and providing good working conditions.
Now, Open-Type Courier Lockers,
installed in public places such as convenience
stores, are gathering attention as an eﬀective
solution to these redelivery problems. The
service, whereby couriers simply need to
put undelivered packages in online-managed
lockers for customers to take out on theirown, is expected to help reduce the numberof redeliveries. What is more, the system isalso considered to reduce extra labor and beenvironmentally friendly with the decreasein air pollution caused by vehicles.
However, the solution has a major
drawback. Current social recognition and theusage of the Open-Type Courier Lockers are
surprisingly low. According to a survey taken
at Ochanomizu University Senior High School,
nearly 70% of the students said that they didn’tknow about the existence of such lockers. In
response to this, students of the Economic
Development and Environment Course at
Ochanomizu visited Yamato Transport Co.,
Ltd. to learn what kind of measures are being
taken to reduce redeliveries. They discoveredthat the corporation is going to continue
introducing Open-Type Courier Lockers inorder to solve the redelivery problems.
Based on these situations, the students
made a leaflet and distributed it to theirfellow high school students to promote
the service; they drew a map where thelockers could be found and included some
information about the system and its beneﬁts.
As a result, 70% of redelivery users among
the student body agreed in the questionnairetaken again after the distribution that theywould use the service if they knew where thelockers were; the distribution of the leaﬂets
was thus a great success, bringing awarenessof the convenient service to more people.
In 2017, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe’s administration decided to spend 500

Photo by Akari Karakasa

Open-Type Courier Locker

million yen from the national budget tosupport the installation of more Open-Type
Courier Lockers.
By Akari Karakasa, Yurika Okabe, Rina
Suzuki, Manami Nakano and Mana Hashimoto

Domestic Rainwater, a Resource with PotentialA

s a country constantly
having various typesof natural disasters
hanging over it, Japan’s watersupply often gets extensively cut
off when disaster strikes. The
country experienced a serious
water outage in 2011; according
to the Ministry of Health,Labour and Welfare, the Great
East Japan Earthquake stopped
water from reaching 25,700
households in 19 prefectures,with the outage rate as high as
19%. Furthermore, most of thosehouseholds had great difficulty
getting a hold of domestic water
more than drinking water, which
could be provided by emergency
water trucks. Still, a survey
conducted at Ochanomizu
University Senior High Schoolshows that 72% of all students’households store water, buthalf of them do not plan to use
it as domestic water. Securing
domestic water and alerting
residents about the need is oneof the many challenges we face

The result of the survey
Does your family stockpile
water for disaster?

No
28%

Yes
72%

Does your family think about using
the water for living?
(Drink use is not included)

No
51%

Yes
49%

Credit: Haruka Fukumura

in disaster prevention today.
To solve this situation,
students of the Economic
Development and Environment
course at Ochanomizu University Senior High School
considered using rainwater.
The cheap and easy-to-secureresource is thought to be capableof being utilized as domestic
water for purposes such as

bathing, injury irrigation anddish washing.
However, despite rainwater’s
benefits, some people may be
anxious about its safety. The
Rainwater Citizens’ Association
conducted an examinationin 2006 regarding pH levels,
bacteria and metal elementsof rainwater, saying that such
water can be used safely as
long as it is boiled in advanceand not drunk. In reality, thissystem has already been madeuse of, benefitting citizens not
only in emergencies, but also
in daily life. For example, the“Rojison” rainwater tank in
Sumida Ward has played its partby providing water for residents
during disasters, while thesite also serves as a children’s
playground in everyday life.
To spread the idea, thestudents devised a simple
rainwater tank with common
materials and exhibited a video
on how to make one on "NewResource: Rainwater,” a website

they made on their own. Also,
by putting up posters, theyshared the necessity of always
securing domestic water withstudents at their school and doit-yourself store customers.
By Towako Tsuboi, Haruka
Fukumura, Fuka Takahashi and
Miyu Yatagai
The FrontieR
Published by a group of 38
students of Ochanomizu SeniorHigh School, a public high school
in Bunkyo Ward, in cooperation with
the not-for-profit Global Education
Information Center (GEIC) and The
Japan News.
Publisher: Ochanomizu SeniorHigh School
Project Supervisors: Takashi
Hatakeyama
Project Coordinator: Junji Sakurai(GEIC)
Editor: Ai Nozaki
Contributing Editors: Kagari
Tsuchiya, Yumiko Mori (J-Proze)
Staff Writers: Ai Nozaki, Mayuka
Takasugi, Momoko Kaneko,
Sakurako Sono, Rena Otaka
Contact: 2-1-1 Otsuka, Bunkyo Ward,
Tokyo, Japan 112-0012
URL: http://www.fz.ocha.ac.jp/fk/