Interview with M____, of the Osaka Dowa Educators’ Association.
Conducted on the 1st of August 2000 at the BLHRRI
Headquarters in N____, Osaka.
Translated by Ian Laidlaw.
I - Ian Laidlaw
M – M____
F – N____ [BLL member]
Interview Begins
I: What does your job involve?
M: The substance of my job? This place is the Dowa Education Research Council, which is an organisation formed by a group of Osaka educators, mostly kindergarten and primary school teachers. Within this group, 10 of us form the executive office. We go to each school and look at the curriculum for the children, and afterwards we deliberate on it and summarise it After that, we talk about our thoughts and impressions, give advice, and make proposals such as “it would be interesting if you were to do this”. That is usually what my job involves.
I: Sort of like a consultant then?
M: More like a coordinator probably.
I: Does it mostly involve primary schools?
M: Primary, intermediate, kindergarten.
I: What kind of Dowa education do you do at kindergartens?
M: Since kindergarten is the grade that comes before primary school we mainly do group games or various interpersonal relations before going to school. Also, with regard to the human rights consciousness of children at kindergarten we help them to see from different viewpoints or teach them how to settle arguments when they have had a disagreement with one of their classmates, and how to come to agreements. With the kindergarten teachers we also think about problems like how children judge each other and how they come to accept each other.
Kindergartens do not yet have things like classroom lessons, so they are quite different to classroom study in primary and intermediate schools. We talk about things like how to form groups or make friends, and we talk to their parents/guardians with regard to their upbringing about their household with things like “please raise your child in this way” or things about their lifestyle. In order to help their physical well-being, for example, not to watch television until 11 or 12 at night. If that sort of thing is happening then we ask them to switch off the television or to stop living that kind of lifestyle or say “please talk to your children as much as you are able to instead of watching television” or “please read picture books together” or “please start up some communication with your child”.
I: What kind of Dowa education do you do at primary schools?
M: When they have reached primary school? Well, we study many human rights problems, not just the Buraku issue but also women’s rights, the gender issue, problems with the disabled. We discuss human rights problems related to Japan so...those kinds of various human rights problems. There are all kinds of problems, not just the Buraku one. At primary school there are various grades so we can’t use the same topics across the board. At the lower grades there is of course the friendship formation and looking at things from other people’s points of view and when there is trouble, how to settle it and how to tell other people about your opinions. These sorts of messages are the most important ones to get across to the lower grades.
I: It doesn’t seem as if the Buraku problem itself enters much into the
primary school human rights education then.
What about in high school?
M: At intermediate level, at years 3 and 4, they go to places like the one that you went to, the M____ Meat Centre, and they talk with people who work there about their jobs. So they meet the people, and listen to them talk about their jobs and what kind of fulfilment they get out of their job or if there are bad things about their job. They go to the schools to talk about that kind of thing, or the children go to those places of work and learn by studying and listening. That kind of activity begins at about intermediate stage. When the children enter into high school it becomes more scientific and in order to stop discrimination they study about how the Buraku issue was regulated in history or what kinds of movements there were to try and fight discrimination and how democracy progressed in Japan. These kinds of historical issues are dealt with in high school and in intermediate.
I: What kinds of difficulties are there in Dowa education in primary
schools right now?
M: As a result of the policies of the administration both nationally and prefecturally of the Special measures Laws, problems resulting from discrimination like the decrepitude of housing, the lack of jobs and other visible signs of difference in equality have mostly disappeared in Osaka. Also due to the improved economic situation there is better job security and people can be more self-reliant. Because of grants, the gap in higher education enrolment rates have also decreased. These are the pluses. On the other hand, however, Buraku consciousness of their identity is fading and because of this, when people are studying about the Buraku issue at school it has become difficult to get rid of anti-Buraku prejudice by saying “There is currently this kind of serious discrimination” and then “There are these people who are having to endure it”.
Right now there is the problem of what is important in trying to get rid of the prejudices and discrimination amongst all children. There is the power of communication that we talked about before, and the power of knowledge, but how do we apply these to the curriculum. Education concerning the discrimination that only Buraku children face had disappeared. So even though we talk about Buraku education, now in Osaka the kinds of struggle like those of trying to get Buraku children together at a separate place and time to stimulate Buraku consciousness have mostly disappeared. So who will be carrying on the liberation movement in the next generation? Those kinds of children in that generation are far and few between, the Buraku consciousness has weakened amongst them. This is the most difficult current problem.
I: Are there still incidents of discrimination at primary schools?
M: Yes there are. They occur in two fields, during lessons when the teacher uses the former discriminatory terminology such as Eta or Hinin. Children remember those kinds of terms when they are used in classroom lessons and then jokingly use them when they get into quarrels with their friends in order to put them down or attack them. Whether or not the child is a Burakumin or not they use these discriminatory words in a derogatory manner so this is one kind of discriminatory attitude.
The other kind, though it may be quite similar, are incidents where people have used that same knowledge and written graffiti in letters, or on school buildings or on personal belongings and recently there has been a growing trend of large numbers of internet based e-mail transmissions of this kind.
I: I read a book yesterday where the writer said that Buraku
discrimination is disappearing and will disappear soon. He said that discrimination exists because
of the state, so it is not people that create discrimination but rather the
state creates it. Not only in Japan,
but across the globe.
M: In order to exploit people?
I: I’m not sure of the exact reason.
F: The reason wasn’t written then?
M: So there is a difference in equality in the working class...
F: Usually due to the management...
M: So the state use their power to exploit people for the purpose of maintaining monopolies or enterprises?
I: Well, that was one of the reasons I believe. I think that there were a variety of reasons
though. He basically said that we are
not born with discriminatory thinking and that if there was no government then
we would not grow up with discriminatory thinking. What do you think about that?
M: Back when we were at school we were told that people take up Buraku discrimination in order to divide us politically. Discrimination exists in order to stop us from uniting. Discrimination is created politically from above. Also there are economic reasons, in order to exploit the working class and divide them they create discrimination. These were the reasons given around 20 years ago.
I: What about other types of discrimination?
M: The Buraku Liberation Movement joined up with the working class movements.
F: That class fighting argument is still being used isn’t it, by the Communist Party. That book was written around the 80s wasn’t it? I don’t think that the Communist Party is still pushing that argument any more. Oh, it was published in English in 1982, so it must have been earlier. It’s 1970s kind of thinking isn’t it. I don’t think that that kind of argument is used any more now.
I: If the government said that they would give you any one thing you
wanted then what would it be?
M: For the Buraku problem? For Dowa education?
I: Dowa education.
M: Definitely an increase of teachers. Right now in Japan we have classes of 40 students. In each class there are 40 students. What is it like in New Zealand?
I: I’m not sure, probably around 30.
M: So, with class sizes of 40 students, from the perspective of 1st year primary school, it is extremely difficult for teachers to communicate with the students in order to find out about student’s worries or to know about their relationships with other classmates, or to provide them with individual teaching time. Due to the size of the class it is also impossible for the teacher to know exactly how much anybody has understood of what has been taught during a lesson. Many lessons have just become a one way street. If there were only between 20 and 25 students per class then the teacher could use different methods of teaching like getting students to discuss the teachers questions and that kind of thing. Right now, however, there 40 students per class in Japan which is the highest number in the world. That is what we most want right now, to increase the number of teachers and to decrease class size.
I: Is the class size so big because of the population of Japan or
because there are not enough teachers?
M: No, there are less and less children coming through. We are the same as Europe and America right now, with about 19.2 according to a recent survey.
F: Really? Each class has only 19 students?
M: If you take it by dividing the number of students by the number of teachers. So we do not differ that much from either America or Europe, but we have our schools regulated by law. That is one teacher to every 40 students. Of the question of what the other students do, they have team teaching, so they work together at the side of the classroom with appointed instructors who help them with the curriculum. They things like study music and home economics. That is how the appointed instructors are arranged, but the there is only one person in charge of each class of 40 students. That is the law.
I: I did not realise that.
M: So, now we, as the teachers board, we are placing a request in to reduce the size of classes to 35 or 30 students.
I: I did not know that was happening.
M: It’s quite difficult.
I: Do you get much help from the Ministry of Education?
M: The Ministry of Education is not that active. Each prefecture still has a self-governing body, in Osaka we have the Osaka prefectural Board of Education, there are boards of education in each prefecture. Compared to other prefectures boards of education, the Osaka Board of Education in actively promoting Dowa education. That is how they are helping. So the 10 of us were sent here to the Osaka Dowa Educators’ Association from the prefectural Board of Education. Originally we were school teachers but they told us to come and work here. We create various data, news and teaching materials and we go to research lessons on schools, it’s that kind of job. We are supervised by the prefectural Board of Education, that back us up.
I: So what about the Ministry of Education itself?
M: The Ministry of Education assigns thousands of extra teachers nationally to schools in Dowa areas. They also give out money. They have budgeted for 200 extra people in Osaka. In those kinds of areas the areas cannot provide enough for themselves so they send extra people there and give out grants. However, while the Dowa issue struggle is progressing in Western Japan, Kansai, Kyushuu and Shikoku, there is not enough understanding in Tokyo and Kanto, so this research group is just for western Japan. For Dowa education.
I: It would be good if Dowa education could spread across the country
wouldn’t it, because there are discrimination issues in other places too.
M: Yes. For example, if you go to Hokkaido then there is the Ainu problem, in Okinawa there is island discrimination and Ryukyu discrimination. Discrimination is a problem that occurs all over Japan but because Dowa education comes mainly from the side of the Buraku issue, it can only occur in Western Japan.
I: Is there similar human rights education in Hokkaido or Okinawa then?
M: Human rights education that is not Dowa education? Yes there is. In Hokkaido there is human rights education relating to the Ainu issue. It is not that connected with Dowa education so we do not have that much to do with it here in our research association.
I: Is that kind of human rights education mainly focussed on the actual
minority group?
M: It does not have the same capacity as Dowa education. Looking at it another way, misunderstanding of the Dowa issue creates walls. Even though there are many other kinds of discrimination, with the Dowa issue there is an extreme feeling that Burakumin are different from the everybody else. This is one of the expressions of Buraku discrimination, they do not want to come together with Burakumin. Maybe each person is thinking “We are different from Burakumin” or “I am different from resident Koreans” or “different from the handicapped”. Even though we are all experiencing the same discrimination there is not this solidarity there.
I: I think that’s about all I wanted to ask - so lastly, is there
anything else that you want to say?
M: We would like to start up a network with other human rights educational associations, in New Zealand for example, so that we can learn about each-other’s achievements. We want to set up exchanges between human rights educators so that we can each learn about each-other’s ways of thinking and ways of doing things.
Interview Ends