KAZE, May 2019

New Era coming with “Disater Prevention” and “Nuturing People”

Konoe FUJIMURA
Japan enters new era of Reiwa from this May after Emperor Akihito, whose
era was Heisei, makes way for Crown Prince Naruhito. Of course, the new era does
not erase all evils or reset our mal habits /behaviors. CO2 accumulation continues
and so does the debt to our children. Having said that, people tend to expect
something good to the new era. So I would like to write two of my expectations tothe new Reiwa Era.
1. Creation of safe /secure and sustainable society/community
Fortunately, Japan did not go into warfare throughout the Heisei Era(1989-2019), but we experienced various natural disasters such as the Great
Hansin Earthquake (1995) , the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) and others oflarge magnitude attacked various parts of Japan. In addition to these big
earthquakes, climatic disasters have become more conspicuous and serious thesedays: frequent storms and resulting floods claimed a lot of human lives as well asproperties.
Torahiko Terada (1878-1935), a physicist/essayist from Meiji Era up to earlyShowa, once wrote that natural disasters should be the most difficult enemy for any
nation because we cannot prevent their attacks even with science and technologies
while warfares could be avoided by our efforts. He suggested that Japan withfrequent natural disasters should deploy a national defence forces with scientificexpertise on natural disasters, believing that, for maintaining national security,
politics needs to go with science.
He wrote this in 1934, well before we got aware of climate changes.
Nowadays, climatic abnormal weather is becomimg more frequent and violent, so
we must be more highly prepared for natural disasters. No need of big spending(more than \5 trillion /year) on armament of JSDF (Japan Self-Defence Forces)
preparing for hypothetical wars with no scientific evidence. (It is in fact for theprofit of the war industry.) What we most need now for the sake of safe /sacuresociety is the enhanced national disaster prevention system based on scientificknowledge /information and we have to face up to the reality that warned byexperts.
2. Raising children through education in the true sense of the word
We are trying to depict the structure of what we call “Green Civilization
Society” using the following chart.
As the chart shows, we consider Education as the basis of society (politics,economy and technology, etc.) because it is people that control economy, politics
and technologies and the quality of a society depends on how people of that society
were educated (at school, at home and in the community).

Life/Culture
Eating, working, purchasing, learning, living,
enjoying, travelling, nursing

EconomyPolitics

TechnologyEDUCATION
Values to be fostered
Co-existence, mutual-aid, moderateness, adequateness,compassion, sensible

Sustainability  Richness of humanity
Basic Concept: FinitenessWe have been emphasizing the importance of education in variousoccasions, but still education in this country, especially school education, has been
degraded more and more. For example, such new curriculums as English andComputer Programming were added in elementary school education under thegovernment guidelines starting from 2020, when neither parents /kids nor teachers
have enough time to digest them. Moreover, the guidelines request teachers tograde up their teaching and provide active learning through subjective andcommunicative methods.

For the active learning where students are expected to do researchthemselves and discuss based on their findings, a lot of time should be allocated toeach of the subject. This is not possible under the limited schedule of today’s public
education, but the government requests are increasing without considering theactual situation on the ground. We cannot but ask ourselves what is the education
for and to whom the education is targeted. At the same time, I have a specificclinical concern on the IT and ITC-oriented education in elementary and mid-level
education. In fact, medical people have warned that excessive exposure to IT andICT gadgets will prevent a balance of intellectual, mental and physical growth ofyoung children.
Rather, today’s education should focus on nurturing capabilities ofthinking/judging/implementing by ourselves, of keep asking ourselves very basic
questions of life, of communicating with others as a person of dignity, and of
fostering qualities as a citizen. Both English and IT would be useful for senior
students if they have learned to utilize them effectively by themselves. However,the Japanese government, under the pressure from the industry, decided tointroduce these tools as early as when children’s brain has not been fully developed,
even before they acquire a good command of their mother tongue Japanese. This
would be a strong evidence that our government puts more emphasis on economy
and industrial development than fostering its people /citizens.
Recently, the Government Council Proposal for the formulation of theLong-Term Strategy under the Paris Agreement was announced. Unfortunately, theproposal is full of those words as “business-led”, “innovation” or such technicalterms as “CCS”, “next-generation accumulator”, and “next-generation nuclearpower”. It does not at all refer to “people” that actually control what these words
represent. While degradation of education going on and on, and so does
deterioration of people, the Japanese government and the ministry of environment
have forgotten the importance of nurturing sensible people, the very basis of acountry.
We have seen a lot of progresses during the Heisei Era. People enjoyed theprogresses and eventually desired more and more, and as the result, our enlarged
desires brought about deteriorated environment and unstable society. Nowadays,
what we need to do is to accept this reality, and to build a society based on a newpeople-based values. Not economy, not technology, but “people” should be focusedon. Then, we can create a new era which is only possible on the basis of nurturing
good people.