Living Postwar History

Thanks to Tawara san’s wonderful lecture, I could learn,

almost for the first time, the thorough history of the

Ienaga trial–in the first-person narrative of somebody who

engaged himself in the textbook conflict!

To me, his presence itself in the classroom and in the

lecture hall was very powerful. He has lived and experienced

all the critical stages of postwar Japan, and in this

sense, he himself seemed to be “the postwar.” I got a very

similar feeling when Nakajima san visited us, and it was

interesting that two have been engaging in different, yet

very interrelated fields.

It is still very early to capture visitors’ messages fully,

but all the guests have certainly throw important questions

to us, and it is our task to find answers. For myself, I

wish I could be a person to talk to the future younger

generation in the way that our visitors did to us.

Yoshifumi Tawara

Yesterday was the last lecture in the Celebrating Protest series. Yoshifumi Tawara came to class this week and gave a lecture titled Japanese Education and Society in Crisis.

I was very interested in this topic because very similar issues come up in China. Only recently has it been okay to talk about the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen, but there are still limits to how far investigations can be pushed. I am very reluctant to make statements on Japan on this flame-prone board, but I am puzzled by the level of awareness, or rather unawareness, of the history of the events leading up to WWII.