10/31

            It was interesting to see the difference of our foot and ears. Even though we are same Japanese, we still have a lot of different body parts. Same thing can said in race. It is nonsense to divide people by their skin colors. People will not discriminate other people against their Greek foot or round ears. Then why we discriminate people because of their skin color? It was first time for me to hear the word, Nurture, but I agree with the idea. No matter what skin colors people have, if people lived under the same culture or the environment, I believe that the characteristics and the ways of thinking would be similar. I am really interested in how cultures affects people and taking anthropology class this semester. It was first time for me to learn about anthropology, but I found it very interesting. If we observe people very carefully, we can realize how big cultures affect people by the way people live and think. In the last anthropology class, the professor invited the guest speaker, whose parents are black and white. He said that he was discriminated from both black and white people. Black people said that you are not real black, and white people did not play around with him because they think that he is black. This story made me think that how stupid to discriminate people by their skin colors. The guest speaker seemed that he did not care about those who discriminated him and found his own good friends through music. However, there are also many people who care about discrimination more. I also will not feel good if I was judged and discriminated by my skin color. The activity we did in today’s class was very easy way for people to realize how meaningless to divide people by their skin colors. I thought that every student in the world should take this class.

            We also talked about the aging society. More and more elderly people are increasing in Japan, and there are not enough young Japanese people to work for them. I have been taught this problem since junior high school, and the problem become more real as I grow up. One of the ways (or maybe only way) to solve this problem is to welcome many immigrants to work in Japan. I am not sure whether this is good for Japan or not, but I do not come up with other better solutions. However, if we are going to welcome those immigrants more, it will be more important for Japanese people to think about race and discriminations. It seems that Japanese people usually do not have negative image toward white people, but toward Korean and Chinese people (even though we have same skin color). This is because of the long history of Japan, Korea and China has. I also think that many Japanese people discriminate people from other countries not knowing much about race or cultures. It is time for Japanese people to learn more about racism and start thinking about immigrants. In the class of Culture Translation, we saw the movie, GO, which is about Korean living in Japan and West Side Story, which is also about race. Race has been controversial problem for a very long time and people are still struggling to find the answer of this.  In the West Side Story, there was a scene where brown woman who wanted to help white people said, “Let me pass!” However, the white people kept making fun of her and said, “You are too dark to pass.” No matter how she tried hard to pass there, the white people would not let her go not knowing what she were going to do was actually helping them. As a result, she realized that it is no use trying to help them, and instead of helping, she got angry and told them a lie. This scene is not only about them but also about race. If we understand each other more and stop discriminating against people from different race, everything will work out well.