19th Annual International Understanding and Cooperation Essay Contest
Middle School Competition Winning Work

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Learning about Japan is the First Step towards International Exchange

by Chiaki Sasamoto
Third-Grader, Nirasaki West Junior High School

Nara. Kyoto. I visited these representative capitals of old Japan this past May on a school trip. For almost half a year before the trip, I had progressed in my pre-departure studies, researching temples, planning our sight-seeing courses, and learning lots of new things. The more I discovered—like how there are 1,001 statues of the Thousand-Armed Kannon at Sanjusangen-do, or how the halls of Nijo Castle were fitted with purposely-squeaky “nightingale flooring”—the more I looked forward to the trip. Then the departure day finally came. At first I had my doubts about how fun it would be just to tour a bunch of temples, but once I was actually there I was filled with curiosity—even more than when I was doing my preliminary research—and I made many new discoveries. The giant statue of Buddha at Todai-ji was so many times bigger than I thought it would be! I was overcome with awe to see firsthand the impressiveness of the “nightingale flooring” at Nijo Castle, the beauty of Kinkaku-ji, and the rock garden at Ryoan-ji. And I discovered with my own eyes the differences between each of the Kannon statues at Sanjusangen-do, and the stunning view from the veranda of Kiyomizu-dera. I learned a lot about just how beautiful and marvelous Japan’s ancient capitals really are. It was a very fulfilling trip.
The following week, with emotions still running high, I rushed to my English conversation school to tell my teacher John all about the trip. He is married to a Japanese lady from the neighborhood, and the couple teaches English conversation out of the wife’s family’s house—I attend some of these classes. Sure that my teacher would be thrilled to hear all about Nara and Kyoto, I strung together what English words I knew and tried my best to explain to him about the trip. After running through my speech, my teacher responded with, “You know, I’ve been to Kyoto three times.” I was both surprised and frustrated to hear that. “Couldn’t he at least have shown some more excitement?” I thought. “Well, there’s surely got to be something he doesn’t know yet.” And so I hung in there, telling him about whatever fact that came to mind, but he didn’t seem any more enthused. I was a little shocked. “Chiaki, did you know that the Imperial Palace in Kyoto is really made up of three different palaces, together known as Kyoto-Gosho?” my teacher added. For me to have done so much research beforehand and not know that about Kyoto-Gosho, for me to have been taught that from my teacher John, an American—I was stunned! I’m the Japanese one. I should be the one teaching him about Japan. I was devastated: I was good-for-nothing! But after questioning my teacher, it seemed that he was simply just interested in Japanese history, enough to read and study books about it, even go to Kyoto. Come to think of it, the other day on TV there was a certain foreign man, married to a Japanese woman, who was talking about many interesting and surprising things about the Japanese language. He himself said that he was simply interested in the language, and decided to research it on his own.
So what about us Japanese, then? Have I even once thought the Japanese language interesting? History for me is just a burdensome subject full of rote memorization. If it weren’t for the school trip, I probably would never have studied about Nara or Kyoto for as long as I lived. And even though I actually did do the research, what I learned was just a tiny piece of the whole. We still have so much to learn about Japan, but all we care about are foreign countries. Of course, it will most likely soon be very important to know about other countries and speak other languages. But by the same token, just how important is it to focus entirely on learning about foreign countries when your knowledge of Japan is full of holes?
I think that no matter how much you want to learn about other countries, if you have to be taught about Japan by foreign people—like I was—then that’s not true international exchange. Comparing the cultures and histories of other countries with Japan—commenting that “this part is different than Japan,” or that “at the same time this was going on in Japan”—we can discover lots of new, interesting things about both Japan and the foreign countries.
I think that we Japanese should know a whole lot more about our country, enough to be able to take pride in Japan when we show the rest of the world how beautiful our country is. Actively studying about foreign countries only after having a strong knowledge about Japan could be the key to true international exchange..