17th Annual International Understanding and Cooperation Essay Contest
Elementary School Competition Winning Work

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First Steps towards a World Filled with Love
~Together with Those I've Come in Contact with~

by Iori Fukutome
Fourth Year Student, Yamanaka-ko East Municipal Elementary School

I met a Canadian aboriginal in the first grade. It was my first time to meet an aboriginal person of any country. I was making a deerskin drum at the time, but I was just a weak first-grader. The native person saw me struggle with it, and out of the thirty or so children around, he came to me and helped pull the deerskin taught.

At lunch that same day, I became very close with that guy who helped me pull the deerskin-he was like my older brother. I couldn't speak any English at the time, but I felt that we understood each other. Then, when we were eating salmon sandwiches, the seventh-grader Noguchi dropped his on the floor. In Japan, if you drop food on the floor you get punished. But this time was different. The native person thought like this: animals do humans a favor when they become our food.

So we must show our thanks, and we can do so by offering that dropped sandwich to the animals. So we put it on top of a tree stump.

After a while, a squirrel came by. As we and the native people were keeping watch, the squirrel snatched up the sandwich and ran back to its nest. They said that they put the food on top of the stump because that way, animals can find the food without worrying about being caught. It touched my heart to see this.

This year I became a fourth-grader. I've been able to meet Canadians, Australians, and New Zealand Maoris. The time I spent with the Maoris, especially, felt oddly like I had known them some time long ago. The "Haka" they dance before battle made me think about sad historical events. I could feel in my skin events that happened before I was born. It seemed scary at first, but after talking with them, they were very nice and cheery people. We spent the day eating traditional Maori food like "Hangi dinner," learning about their lives, dancing with people from many different nations and singing our national anthems to each other. I could feel my heart warming to them.

This summer vacation I went to Hokkaido because I wanted to learn a lot more about the country I was born in-and because the town of Nibutani in Hidaka, Hokkaido has the most Ainu people of all Japan. There, I met Yasuko Yamamichi. The Ainu people call all humans ainu, and everything else they worship as kamui, or gods. Just like the people I had met in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the Ainu were very nice, and it felt just like I was doing a home-stay in another country.

People who live off of hunting are not always guaranteed a catch of food. It's much harder to preserve meat than rice and such, so they must divide the food among everyone and cooperate with each other. They care and respect each other without ever forgetting to give thanks to nature (god). Ms. Yamamichi's voice echoed as she shouted out "funnaa" before meals and "enekeraan" after them. I said "enekeraan" in a small voice, too. It seemed that "enekeraan" is said with the spirit of "I liked it very much, thank you for the delicious dinner." It's a little different from the after-meal "gochisousama" we say in Japanese, with more of a feeling of thanks.

Since coming back from Hokkaido, I've been cooking more than I used to. And now when I say "gochisousama," I glimpse in my mind all of the animals and plants that offered to become my food.

My dream is to become a teacher in a country besides Japan and keep learning together with my students. I hope that as an adult I will be able to correctly teach about Canadian and Australian aboriginals, New Zealand Maoris, and Japanese like myself.

9/11, the Afghanistan Invasion, the Iraq War, terrorist acts and many sad wars are being fought all over the world. But I definitely think that there's something we can do to bring peace to the world. I've started to learn about Japanese history, about the wars and invasions the Japanese started, and I think it's interesting. If you know the true history, you'll be able to learn so much more.

"War is wrought by bloodthirsty and hateful hearts. Atomic bombs are born from fearful and cynical ones. But human beings also possess loving hearts, trusting hearts, understanding and accepting hearts. It is with these hearts that we can bring peace to the world, eliminating the need for atomic weapons" (from On That Summer Day, by Yoh Shomei).

I, too, want to have a loving heart