Judo Brings Foreign & Japanese Communities Together

A brief TV news clip about foreign children learning judo in Gunma Prefecture:

A special martial arts program started at the Ota City police dojo back in May with the aim of bringing Japanese and foreign children together through weekly judo lessons. Most of the foreign children are Brazilians of Japanese ethnicity whose families came to work at factories in the area, and foreigners now make up a significant percentage of the population in Ota City and neighboring Oizumi Town. The judo program is meant to increase communication between the foreign and Japanese populations of the city, often involving the parents as well as the children.

The Gunma Prefectural Police have touted the first year of the program as a success, and are planning to continue it in 2008.

9 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - December 27, 2007 at 11:55 am

Categories: Foreigners in Japan Tags: brazil, foreigners, japan

Kevin

Cheers to the Ota police. Sounds like a great program.
Peter Pan

They keep bringing up the police in the clip. First the mother says how her son used to be afraid of the police but now he knows that there are nice people who are police officers too, or later they interviewed a man from the police about how it is necessary to include the foreigners in the community for the better of the community.

I’ve heard that many (all?) police officers in Japan have to go through Judo training; where the instructors at this class police officers? I can’t figure out why the topic of police kept coming up.

shazzb0t

“A special martial arts program started at the Ota City police dojo back in May with the aim of bringing Japanese and foreign children together through weekly judo lessons. Most of the foreign children are Brazilians of Japanese ethnicity whose families came to work at factories in the area, and foreigners now make up a significant percentage of the population in Ota City and neighboring Oizumi Town. The judo program is meant to increase communication between the foreign and Japanese populations of the city, often involving the parents as well as the children.

The Gunma Prefectural Police have touted the first year of the program as a success, and are planning to continue it in 2008.”
gunmagal

maybe because the classes are held at the police dojo as stated in the report. all police must have martial arts training but i am not sure it is only judo. other martial arts qualify as well.
Aki

That judo class is being held at the dojo (judo hall) of a police station.

Police officers are usually good judo players. In the national tournaments of judo, many police officers are usually among the top-ranked players.

Aki (Gunmaken-jin in Kansai)

http://alecinjapan.com Alec

Hopefully this will help the Brazilians get more integrated into Japanese society. I’ve met so many Brazilians who speak less Japanese than I do even after living here for many many years. I’ve met many more who only have Brazilian friends (I imagine partly due to not being able to speak Japanese).
http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

Why are there so many foreigners specifically in that area of factories and not, say, Nagoya? 15% is more than significant in Japan – It’s impressive.

This came off as a very good news story. It wasn’t one of those, “Hey, look at us educating foreigners in the way of superior Japanese culture,” but more of an extended hand trying to integrate the foreign population into local society.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

There is a significant Brazilian population that works in the factory areas around Nagoya. I think I heard Komaki had a pretty large foreign population. There are some other large concentrations of foreigners in Shizuoka Prefecture.

The towns of Oizumi and Ota have some auto industry factories and a huge Sanyo factory. A need for laborers in the 1990′s led to waves of South American immigrants during a period in which the Japanese population of small towns like Oizumi was decreasing, so it created the 15% situation we have today.

I used to live there, and I found the Japanese and South American communities to be pretty segregated. Hopefully programs such as the one I posted about here along with efforts among the foreign population to learn Japanese will combine to make a better living environment for both groups.

Chris

I think that it is cool that Brazilians and Japanese are getting along through judo.

Judo Brings Foreign & Japanese Communities Together

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