WITHIN EVERY WOMAN

Chatting with Japanese high school students

I dropped in at ASE a english teaching after school program for Japanese students.

I was hoping to get another perspective on the issue of WW2 and reconciliation through the eyes of the younger generation in Japan.

Through my conversations with some of the students I got a sense of what they were taught in class and what they weren’t taught in class…what they were interested in learning, and how much the educational system reflects their culture…

When the topic of military sexual slavery came up… an awkward silence was in the room. I later on learnt that the topic of sex is quite taboo altogether . I nervously explained what it meant to be a sexual slave and tried my best to give them some background information about the issue…

Before I left the school I offered to show the teaser we made last year about the Comfort Women. The students were egar to watch it as they crowed the little computer monitor.

One of the reponse from a male Japanese student after watching the video, ” Watching this makes me want to learn more… I want to know why this happened…. why Japanese soldiers would do such a thing…. And why we aren’t taught about this in school.”

On my subway ride home I tried to put myself in the students shoes. I tried to see how it must of  felt like to have a complete stranger come into your school and tell you something shocking that your countries government did that you never knew about y during the WW2 that is still currently effecting the  survivors today. I imagine it isn’t easy and frankly almost disbelieving coming out of a foreigner’s mouth.

The great thing tonight was actually hearing the thoughts of these young Japanese students and getting a sense of their interest in learning more about the truth in history, which is so encouraging to know as I continue on this journey documenting fragments of history through personal stories.

Posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 10:59 pm. Filed under: News RSS 2.0 feed.