4 April 2003 (2 Nisan 5763)
It is probably no coincidence that I have not found a permanent position in a Japanese university. I must be known among those who know me directly or indirectly in the academia as someone who destroys their "harmony", hence someone whom they may as well avoid in their respective organization or group. The fact that I major in something for which there is no department in any Japanese university seems to be only a secondary reason.
I believe in the value of arguments as a heuristic measure. What I mean by arguments includes direct (but constructive) criticisms toward those who are involved. When I find something is wrong with someone, including his or her opinions and behaviors, I never hesitate point it out to him or her and expect others to do so, at least toward me. I also believe that the social status of those who criticize and are criticized should not prevent them from arguing. This must make me quite unpopular among people who value the Japanese version of "harmony". This is especially the case with those who are considered superior to me socially, such as my teachers, as they seem to interpret my criticism toward them as my denial of their superior social status, which is the last thing I mean. I, therefore, despise someone who criticizes someone else behind his or her back. When I notice someone criticizing me behind my back, I often ask him or her to do so directly to me, and this seems to even worsen his or her view of me.
What is "harmony" in the Japanese context? For me it is an artificial (and often pathological) condition which is attained not through the process of arguing exhaustively but mostly by suppressing opinions opposing a "consensus" predetermined by someone in power in his or her group and prearranged by those who flatter him or her. This is extremely instrumental in keeping the status quo but detrimental to self-evaluation and progress. "Harmony" in this sense is rampant everywhere in Japanese society and helps fossilize organizations and groups at every level, including universities. Even if I should find a position at some university in Japan, I might feel choked if its faculty were also controled by such "harmony".
11 April 2003 (9 Nisan 5763)
With the start of the new academic year, I started teaching this week. Interacting with new students, I feel I am recharged with new intellectual energy. There is, however, one thing that has been worrying me more and more. I wish I were wrong, but hearing their self-introductions, I feel that there are more and more students who have no clear aim or dream in their lives and just live each day out of inertia. I am not surprised any more to see students who cannot answer the question why they are studying what they are studying. Even those who do have a clear aim or dream do not always seem to be taking an efficient path for their aim or dream. They are navigating in the ocean with no destination, no chart and no compass.
The educational system in the postwar Japan - and probably in other developed countries - has apparently failed in equipping the young with two important skills in navigating in the ocean of life, i.e., how to find a destination in the first place, then how to reach there most efficiently. As a result, an average person has to repeat trials and errors in order to equip him- or herself with these two skills somehow. And it is often the case that by the time he or she has acquired them, it is too late to change the destination of his or her life drastically.
Of course, the wisdom of life does not have to be taught in school, and in many societies it must be transmitted from generation to generation through various family and communal activities involving more than one generation. Tragically, this chain of transmitting the wisdom of life from generation to generation seems to be among the things that have been broken after the Second World War in Japan. And even in a small number of families and communities where this tradition may still be preserved, young people are too busy cramming themselves with fragmented pieces of information to be exposed to it. Once broken, the chain of transmission is probably impossible to restore, and the wisdom transmitted through it may be lost forever.
16 April 2003 (14 Nisan 5763)
Obligatory courses can be problematic in that teachers and students cannot choose each other. In such courses of mine I often see one type of Japanese students whom I would not see more than once if they were elective courses, for they would not come again after the first lesson. Many of them seem to have one thing in common: they find it difficult to communicate with others, including teachers. As my courses, including frontal lectures, are based on constant verbal interactions, it is natural that they feel uncomfortable or even threatened. It is interesting that I see few or no students of this type who are from other countries, so this lack of communicative skill among so many students may be a problem unique to Japanese society.
This lack of communicative still among Japanese university students seems to derive from one of the following two reasons. The first one is that although they have something to convey, they are simply too shy to express it verbally. I have all my sympathy toward these students as I know that they are liable to suffer from a number of negative things they do not deserve. Most importantly, many people simply stay away from them, and even when they do have some contact with someone, they are often underevaluated. This can also harm their own self-image, which is a serious problem in itself. As I myself suffered from this problem until my mid-twenties, I am trying to help them get over this problem by making the atmosphere in class as cozy as possible, but only their firm decision to change themselves seems to be able to make any significant change.
The second reason for lack of communicative skill, or to be more precise, intellectual communicative skill, is that they simply have little or no interest in anything intellectual. Until this very day I cannot help being surprised anew every time I see such university students; they are small in number but not negligibly small. Frankly speaking, I have little or no sympathy toward them. They seem to have opinions about few or no intellectual issues, even including why they major in what they major in. In many cases the only issue to which I can get any response from them at all is their part-time jobs. I have to conclude that they are enrolled as university students to have enough free time for their part-time jobs, which have become a purpose in itself for them. Naturally, their class attendance is quite low, and they often have to take the same courses again (and again). Private universities in particular seem to be too lenient to these students with little or no intellectual motivation. Although their continued enrollment may contribute to the budget, they do cause invisible damage to Japanese universities in general and to the atmosphere in class in particular. If they have little or no intellectual motivation, they should find places other than universities for themselves.
25 April 2003 (23 Nisan 5763)
I have met many young rabbis and students in their early twenties who were sent to Kobe from various Chabad centers around the world on major Jewish holidays. All of them, including the two I met during this Passover, impressed me both intellectually and spiritually. When I met them for the first time many years ago, I thought that this impression might be due to something individual, but the more of them I met, the more inclined I have become to ascribe it to the education they must have received since childhood. Although I do not know the details of the Chabad educational system, self-confidence and communicative skills are two of the most impressive traits they all had in common, together with their excellent command of at least three languages.
As a person who has been teaching in the Japanese educational system and is basically a product thereof, I can say that these are precisely the traits it cannot bestow upon students studying in its framework. There are, of course, exceptional students who do have self-confidence and communicative skills, but this is not thanks to the educational system but in spite of it. Their self-confidence and communicative skills must have been developed further, instead of being hampered, in other educational systems different from the Japanese one.
It even seems to me that the inability to equip students with self-confidence and communicative skills is not a byproduct of a flawed system but one of its hidden goals. Schools are full of visible and invisible incentives and pressures that discourage students from developing these traits. Having passed nine years of this filtering process, average university students in Japan do not have sufficient self-confidence and communicative skills, which are suddenly required after graduation. Therefore, outsiders who come to a typical classroom in a Japanese university may even have the impression that they have lost their way into a graveyard. They will witness not only silence but also tense atmosphere created by a collective of passive students who seem to be constantly afraid of something.
Teaching is probably one of the few areas where I can have some influence upon the society, if not directly, in order to make it a better place. I do not think that others can really change them, but I can at least try to help them realize that lack of self-confidence and bad communicative skills can only harm them even in Japanese society. Once they truly become aware of this, it is up to them to decide whether to remain as they are or to do something in order to change themselves.