A few updates: North Korean schools, foreign sumo wrestlers, and voting rights for non-citizens
A few updates on topics covered by previous posts:
Prime Minister Hatoyama is still not sure if his party’s plan to help subsidize high school tuition should be applied to people who send their children to private Pro-Pyonyang High Schools that teach students loyalty to North Korea and hatred of Japan:
“I suppose it will take a certain amount of time as after we clear the school waiver bill, the education minister decides on it under a ministry ordinance,” Hatoyama told reporters in the evening.
Hatoyama also said again, “It is necessary to set objective criteria” to determine eligible schools. “I think we need to comprehensively assess” the curricula at the pro-Pyongyang schools.
Several weeks ago, I posted about the Japan Sumo Association making a new rule that placed a limit on the number of “foreign-born” wrestlers allowed in the sport. The Mainichi Shimbun ran an editorial arguing against the discriminatory rule. Here’s an excerpt (in Japanese, hat tip to LB):
数々の乱行がもとで引退に追いやられた元横綱・朝青龍や、薬物汚染で相撲界を追われた力士など、ここ数年、外国出身力士の問題が相次いだ。これらは本人以上に師匠や協会の教育の問題であって、外国人力士の増加が直接の問題ではない。
相撲界は「通訳のいない社会」である。モンゴルだろうが東欧諸国であろうが、相撲を志して入門した外国出身の若者に対し、協会や相撲部屋が通訳をつけたためしはない。外国人力士は必死に日本語を覚え、慣れない日本のしきたりに合わせてけいこに励んでいる。
短期間で日本語を習得し、日本社会に適応できる力士を数多く育ててきた相撲界のシステムは、実は高く評価されるべきだ。苦労の末、晴れて日本国籍を取得した力士を、出身を理由に差別するなど許されない。
It basically stresses how unfair it is to discriminate against wrestlers not born in Japan. Many foreign-born sumo wrestlers show great commitment to learning the Japanese language and following Japanese customs and manners. Some might claim that recent problems with the behavior of a few foreign wrestlers has to do with their own inability to adapt to the way things are done in Japan, but the editorial’s author believes that the JSA should also look at how poorly its stable masters have succeeded when it comes to teaching proper conduct to wrestlers.
In a related story, former Yokozuna Asashoryu gave a press conference in Mongolia yesterday. The reports of him having assaulted somebody were apparently enough to force his retirement from sumo, but he denies any such wrongdoing took place:
“I didn’t commit any violent act,” Asashoryu said, referring to Japanese magazine reports in January that said he became extremely drunk before striking and seriously injuring a man outside a nightclub in Tokyo in the early hours of Jan. 16.
He said that some people within the JSA were trying to push him out of sumo, an allegation that will probably encourage conspiracy theorists.
The DPJ plan to pass a bill granting voting rights to non-citizens has been postponed. It would seem that their coalition partners do not share their views on the issue.
The Daily Yomiuri has translated a very good editorial about non-citizen voting rights by Professor Tei Taikin (Chung Daekyun) of Tokyo Metropolitan University. He believes that granting voting rights to Zainichi Koreans would only preserve their identity as a perpetual “foreign” community of Japanese-born people.
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