Dec, 2020
On Sunday, December 27th, 2020, AAEE, the Asian Educational Exchange and Research Organization, held a series of regular study sessions in Japan. The common theme of this study session series was "Multicultural Conviviality. The common theme of this study group series was "Multicultural Conviviality," and through conversations with people with diverse values and cultural backgrounds, we explored the current situation and issues in Japanese society from the perspective of "diversity.
The memorable first session was held online under the theme of "Thinking about Intersectionality - Finding Your Identity Beyond the Framework of Nationality, Race, Religion and Language.
In the first part of the session, we watched a video of a conversation between our guest, Ms. Rajabi Mona, and Professor Akinori Seki, President of OIST. Ms. Rajabi Mona, who is an Iranian living in Japan, came to Japan at the age of five and graduated from junior high school, high school and university in Japan. In the video, she looked back on her life as a "foreigner" growing up in Japan, and talked about the difficulties she had with Japanese customs while attending Japanese schools, as well as the experience of confronting her own identity in Malaysia, where she studied abroad as a university student. At the end of the video, he gave a message to the participants who will be living in the age of multicultural conviviality, asking them not to be trapped in the frame of "Japanese" and "foreigner", but to take another step forward and make an effort to know the "individual" of each person as an individual and their differences as "their individuality".
In the post-workshop questionnaire, we received these comments from the participants about Rajabi and Mona's talk. (Excerpts below)
I would like to take a step forward and try to learn "so" instead of "so what" when I learn something different!
Through Ms. Rajabi's talk, I was able to think from the perspective of an Iranian living in Japanese society, and I was able to ask myself, "What is Japaneseness? It made me think from the perspective of an Iranian living in Japanese society.
I realized that although globalization and multiculturalism have been called for in Japan, there are still barriers and closed-off areas for people from overseas.
I am a person who has only known Japanese education and taken it for granted, so I learned a lot from Ms. Mona's talk. I think that Japan will become more and more diverse in the future. Based on what I learned this time, I would like to think again about how education should be in a multicultural society, and how we can create a society that recognizes diverse values and ways of thinking.
In the second part, we were able to reflect on the video of the conversation between Rajabi and Mona, and have time to exchange opinions on "Identity and Multicultural Conviviality" with other participants from all over Japan and the world (Canada and Malaysia).
In the first ice-breaker session, we introduced not only ourselves, but also discussed the theme "How would you describe yourself in a word? to get to know each other better. One participant used the word "two" to describe himself, introducing that he has two sides to him and that he belongs to two universities. Another participant compared herself to a "tuna" and uniquely described how she is always moving forward and can't sit still. With such a wide variety of answers, the participants, who had never met each other before, became very excited and were able to get to know each other very quickly.
We then shared our opinions on each participant's definition of identity. The participant from Malaysia said that "faith" was most of his identity. The participants this time also have diverse backgrounds and places of birth, as well as the education they have received, and we were able to realize that there are various "forms" of "self-awareness" that cannot be simply applied to academically defined "identity" trends.
Finally, we had time to think about "What can I do? The participants had time to think about what they could do. Some participants expressed that although they do not have any foreigners around them, they should be aware of the fact that everyone is diverse and different, and that accepting and actively learning about them is something they can do.
This year's event was a time for participants to not only learn about diverse values through video viewing and discussion, but also to deepen their learning about their interests by having Ms. Rajabi actually taking the stage for a lively question and answer session. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Ms. Rajabi and Ms. Mona for sharing their valuable insights with us and to all the participants from all over Japan.
