The Girl with the Magic Finger Fights to be Equal
By Hitomi Sumada
Hitomi Sumada lives in Tokyo.
An attractive girl with memorably big eyes and shiny black hair tosses a tennis ball, hits a smash and gorgeously gains a point. She tries to high-five her partner with her left hand. It is then that we find out that the attractive girl with memorably big eyes has a physical handicap: she has a stump below her elbow where her left hand should be.
Kana Saito was born with a physical handicap. Her parents, who are educators, soon accepted it. However, her parent’s acquaintances often asked: “Is that handicap because of food additives or radiation? Or drugs or something else? ” Those kinds of reactions hurt them greatly. Kana’s handicap is a causeless event.
Kana’s parents, especially her mother, tried to raise her the same as ordinary children. “Mom let me try anything. Now I can cook, wring water out of a rag, even enjoy playing tennis. I think there’s nothing I can’t do if I devise a little better process.” People who get to know Kana are surprised to see her handicap at first, but gradually forget about it because of her excellence. “When I went to Australia for a farm stay, I heard that trainees were talking about me behind my back. Then one Greek boy said, “Ah, I see … she has a magic-finger!’ How good his words made me feel! He regarded my arm not as a handicap, but as part of my individuality.”
However, the most shocking thing for Kana was yet to come. When she became a university student, she tried to find a part-time job -- just like other university students. College students can usually find a job after three or four interviews, but no one would hire Kana even though she had over 50 interviews.
At first she did not understand why. “Finally I realized that the employers were biased against me. They rejected me even before they had a chance to see what I could do. “ At last she got a job at a café where the manager understood something about the difficulties that physically challenged people faced. As a result, he let her serve drinks and food to customers. One day, a little boy saw her arm and shouted, “Look, mom! She does not have a hand!” At that time, she felt hurt with his carefree shout, and also because everyone was staring at her. The boy’s mother desperately apologized to Kana. However, Kana was able to approach the boy with a new attitude. Smiling, she said: “You are right! I do not have a left hand.” At first, he looked confused, but when he stood to leave, he smiled at her and said, “Good bye, toots!” in a loud voice.
At the end of her junior year, Kana started looking for a full-time job. Beginning next spring she’ll work at a big manufacturing company as a sales woman. Her success in landing a job is in part thanks to the fact that in 1960 the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare passed the Handicapped Persons’ Employment Promotion Act. As a result, all companies that employ more than 56 regular employees must insure that at least 1.8% of their staff includes physically challenged people.
Despite these advancements, Kana frequently encountered discrimination during her job search. “Recently it is quite natural for one student to have more than three interviews for one job, but they do not let physically challenged people do so … we just get one or two interviews. I wanted them to try to know what I can do and what I can’t. What is more, sometimes I felt that the interviewers looked down upon me, as if to say, ‘It’s our deep kindness to employ handicapped people like you, all the way!’ Even though laws have been passed, people have not gotten barrier-free minds so easily.”
Kana is not alone in her frustration. Nowadays there are still many instances of discrimination and abuse regarding physically challenged workers. Chikako Itoh, a professor at the Aichi Kohnan College, cites direct experiences of workers in her book The Rights of Handicapped People. “I was told that I do not have enough potential to work in this company,” one said. Another reported that he was told that training was useless because he was blind. Another complained that even though he was formally employed, no one ever gave him anything to do. Although Section 3 of the Handicapped Persons’ Employment Promotion Act stipulates that anyone with a handicap must be given an equal opportunity to manifest his or her aptitude, not everyone’s view has changed.
Many people who are physically challenged encounter even worse discrimination than the workers in Professor Itoh’s book. In 1995, for example, a company president in Mito, Japan hired more than 10 handicapped workers and gave them a dormitory. At first the president earned full respect from local people for his courage and dedication. However, it was later discovered that he only employed handicapped people in order to obtain a bonus. What’s worse, the workers were abused for a long time in the dormitory: they were not given enough to eat and were beaten and tortured. Some were sexually abused. This case caused such a sensation in Japan that it was eventually turned into a TV drama.
How can the barriers in people’s minds be broken down? After struggling to get her first part-time job -- and also after the little boy shouted at her -- Kana found her own answer. “Just show them. Come to think of it, it is quite difficult to let people understand my potential whether oral or written. People should be required to have contact with handicapped people, and understand what they can and cannot do. I suppose society will be a tough place for me to work, but I’ll never give up. I will show people my working style with my head held high, and change their wrong impression towards handicapped people. It’s my mission in life.”
The Japanese Help
By Yuka Ishii
Yuka is a senior at Tsuda College in Tokyo, Japan.
Keiko Mochizuki often feels there are two voices in her mind. One says: “You want to listen to the secrets more, don’t you? Let’s stay here to get more information!” The other says: “You must not listen to these secrets any more! You should get out of the room now!” Mochizuki is a middle-aged janitor at an elementary and junior high school in Osaka. She always cleans the schools in a pink T-shirt and black pants and often overhears forbidden information about the students while she is working. “Since there is so much of the students’ personal information around the school, it is not unusual to overhear students’ secrets among teachers in the faculty room,” she said. Although she does not have a high-ranking position, she is often called the “real principal” of the school, not only because she seems to be everywhere but because she gets along with everyone. As a result, she knows the students’ secrets better than any one else. What kind of secrets does she overhear? ““So-and-so committed a robbery in such and such a place” and “He is always bullying his classmates”; “They had a quarrel again”; “So-and-so shoplifted something and there was a call from the shop to the school”; “He has been absent from school every day”; “Her home has domestic violence” and so on. Although she tries to forget everything she overhears, there are many secrets she can not help listening to. Since they are deeply related to students’ personal information, she is often confused about what to do. How could she learn all these secrets? First of all, a janitor is an important but unspectacular job, so teachers never pay much attention to her. Second, since a janitor is not a student, most teachers are not worried about gossiping in front of her. Third, as a public service worker, she has a responsibility for preserving the confidentiality of her school, so teachers don’t mind if she overhears the students’ private information. Finally, teachers normally only discuss the students’ secrets in the faculty room, so there is almost no chance that students could overhear since they are not allowed to enter the room. A similar situation to the one Keiko Mochizuki experienced can be seen in a Japanese TV drama called Kaseifu Wa Mita! or The House Maid Witnessed! in English. The program is about a maid who works at upper class residences and loves to find fault with the people who live there. The maid witnesses many stories of deception and betrayal, both by chance and on purpose. In the drama, she finally exposes all of the deceptions and secrets in front of the family, collapses them, quits her job and finds a new upper class family who will employ her and begins anew in the next episode. Since the ratings for this TV drama are generally high, a lot of people obviously enjoy watching a blue-collar worker exposing the secrets of the privileged and the rich. The theme of eavesdropping is not only popular among Japanese television viewers. Indeed, it is central to many novels and plays the world over. Ann Gaylin, Associate Dean at Brown University, says that eavesdropping has always been used as a device to propel literary plots, starting with classical Greek drama. For example, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius was killed because he was hiding behind the curtain and eavesdropping on Hamlet’s conversation with his mother. John L. Locke, who wrote a book about the history of eavesdropping, notes that “eavesdropping always carried something of a double standard. In the Middle Ages, in England, eavesdropping was illegal but at the same time, it was used as evidence in court.” How ironical it is! According to Sally Feldman, a writer at the New Humanist magazine, “The need to maintain a barrier against the outside world may be one of the most basic human urges; but another is the lust to know the unknown, to observe and indulge in the privacy of others.” This point of view reveals that human beings naturally have both feelings. A current phenomenon that taps into both impulses is the 2010 controversy surrounding the diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks, a non-profit organization that publishes submissions of private, classified media from anonymous news sources and leaks. Wikileaks permits anyone to learn the secrets of the diplomatic world through the Internet. As a result, the leaked cables have recently become a hot topic in the news, including the revelation of Pentagon secret documents about the Iraqi war. This new type of high-tech eavesdropping is an international expression of both the desire to know the unknown as well as the need to preserve one’s privacy. Mochizuki agrees that she has a strong desire to know secrets but she also points out she wants to stay out of students’ secrets if possible. “Once we know a secret, we tend to want to share it with someone else, so it may be possible that the secret will not be secret any more. Moreover, students’ secrets are very dangerous information because they may influence a student’s future. If a student who commits a crime finds some teachers chatting about their crimes behind their backs, what would they think? Though he or she already regrets their bad behavior, if teachers keep believing the secrets, they will be inclined to view those students with prejudice. In such cases, I feel very sorry for them.” Although Mochizuki has since retired from her job at the school, she sometimes remembers the students and their secrets. She said she hopes that students will be free from their secrets from now on. 60,000,000,000,000 By Marina Tsutsui Marina is a Japanese exchange student in the United States.
After my grandfather reached his 80th year, I stopped keeping track of his age. Riding on a motorbike, smiling softly, he looked like an ageless Buddha. It seemed meaningless to apply a human standard to his life. Living next door, I had grown up hearing people praise my grandfather as the most reliable gentleman in the neighborhood. His existence had a huge influence on me and helped me choose my way of life today. From my earliest recollections, I had been identified as a grandchild of Tsutsui Sensei, my grandfather. I had never heard of his career as a teacher, but I would not be surprised if I discovered something new about him. Each year he had numerous jobs, ranging from an editorial board member for a local JR station to being the director of a local community center. Since he often visits other cities and prefectures, his jobs are not limited to my hometown. His calendar is always full of events, and his desk full of papers. However, once he comes back home he becomes a tender grandfather. While I was growing up, whenever my parents were at work, my sister and I were often left at my grandparents’ house. In his spare time, my grandfather taught us calligraphy, for which he had a master license, or how to make traditional toys like stilts or acorn tops. Our favorite activity was making bamboo lanterns for a local festival called Hitoboshi, which means “light a fire.” Grandfather made a symbolic lantern for each of the Tsutsui children. Holding our own personal lanterns, we walked along a road lit on both sides by torches. When I looked back, he was proudly watching his grandchildren on a river of floating flame-rafts. My grandfather not only taught us about many traditional things but often joined in our original plays as a special member. When our uncle gave us a video of Disney’s Peter Pan, we immediately became addicted and started a “Peter Pan play.” In our play, however, there was neither a Peter Pan nor a Tinker Bell; instead, all of us played Indians. Never realizing the strangeness, we made an Indian feather headdress using leaflets and asked grandfather to play our Indian chief. He solemnly took the ornament and put it on his head as if it were a real coronation. “Awawawawa!” he cried. We danced around him to celebrate the birth of our divine headman. He then held a banquet, serving us fruits and sweets. Needless to say, our grandfather was a very generous man. He never laughed away our childish nonsense (like the absence of the main characters of a play). He did not even scold when one of my cousins was rough-housing and wrecked the ceiling in his house. Witnessing the incident, grandfather looked satisfied with his grandchild’s pleasure. Only once did he ever raise his voice to us. It was when my cousin, my sister and I were excitedly maligning some of our school friends. “If you speak evil of someone, someday it will return to you,” he admonished. The words shocked us very much: we instantly felt ashamed of our behavior because we knew the meaning of his unusual rebuke. Unlike my grandfather’s normally placid personality, our grandmother had a completely opposite character. Although she was also a good grandparent, her everlasting grumbling was the fly in the ointment. Every day grandma came to my house to complain about something, quoting rumors she had stocked from a friend dubbed the “radio station.” Sometimes her complaints were about the increasing price of vegetables, at other times they were about a divorced young couple in the neighborhood. Of course she vigorously scolded my cousin when he damaged the ceiling, and repeatedly complained about it afterward. However, the most frequent topic of her complaints was our grandfather. One day while visiting me she started in on him. “Mari-chan, do you know what? Grandpa has hid his dislike for koya dofu for almost 50 years!” Koya dofu is dried tofu that is usually boiled in sweet and salty broth. Since it was my favorite food, grandma often cooked it and naturally served it to grandfather as well. According to her story, on that morning he had looked at the dishes and suddenly said, “I don’t like it” while pointing at the koya dofu. Imagining his long struggle to find a confidante after their marriage, I could not help laughing. After grumbling for two hours and half, grandma left my house to prepare for dinner. Though my grandma always nagged at my grandfather, the difference at least seemed to have helped the balance in their marital life. Grandma complained, and then grandfather warded off. This peaceful cycle rarely failed. However, the atmosphere was quite different in my father’s childhood. My grandfather was born in the Taisho Period and experienced World War II. During the war, his family was transferred to Manchuria because his father was working as a police officer there. My great-grandfather died at the age of 34, so my grandfather had to support the family because he was the eldest son. Grandfather served in the army early in his teens, but the only thing he told me was that he worked to carry artillery to the front. After his family returned to Japan at the end of the war, my grandfather got a job showing the films. He carried a projector on a bicycle from place to place and played movies for the children. “On my way home, I used to hang on to the back of a truck,” he told me. “I was too exhausted to peddle the bicycle, but I wanted to come home as fast as possible. You would be arrested doing such a dangerous thing today, though.” In those days, he hardly ever stayed at his house, even after he married and had children. When I found a picture of him from that period, I got really upset. He was sitting alone on a block and smoking, with painfully sharp eyes. My father told me that most of the men who lived during the war tended to smoke in order to stand the reality. Today, the sharp look in his eyes has disappeared and a soft light has replaced it. A number of years ago, grandfather became a member of a spiritual group called Seicho no Ie. He told me that the basic tenet of the group was a belief that all religions were one. Like most religious associations, I find it difficult to believe in them wholeheartedly. However, I liked grandfather’s favorite sermon: “Every human being is composed of 60 trillion cells, and 20% of them are replaced by new cells every day. This suggests the enduring possibility of humans to develop. Therefore, do not give up by giving your present limitations as an excuse.” His sermon continues to discuss the existence of spirit and the hereafter, but I would like to stop quoting at this point. My grandfather’s diverse experience and knowledge motivated me to study earnestly. His words encouraged me to pursue my aspiration to see the outside world first hand. On the morning of the day when I left my home for Tokyo, grandfather and I happened to be alone together in front of the garage. “Do you feel nervous?” he asked. “I feel excited,” I answered. “Do your best for yourself and your parents.” “Yes, I will.” “And take care of yourself.” “OK.” In comfortably mild quietness, I promised that I would study Chinese in order to visit Manchuria with him someday. “Take care of grandma and yourself. And never die in my absence, before our promise is fulfilled.” Smiling softly, my grandfather said “OK.”
My Second Life
By Kana Komiyama.
Kana is a senior at Tsuda College in Tokyo, Japan.
YAMANASHI, Japan -- Shigetomi Mochizuki, 65, has just come back from an adventure to the Antarctic Ocean. Mr. Mochizuki had always wanted to cruise the Antarctic but never had time when he was younger. He was finally able to realize his dream after retiring five years ago. He is one of a growing number of retirees discovering a “second life” in Japan’s graying society.
According to a survey from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the number of people 65 or older will account for more than forty percent of the Japanese population by 2055. The graying of Japan’s population is having various impacts on Japanese society, most of which are seen as harmful. Some elderly live in solitude and lack welfare services; others suffer extreme poverty. Problems with the pension system are becoming especially bad. Many elderly bow their heads low and worry about their second lives. Despite such a dismal picture, Mr. Mochizuki is determined to find a second life worth living. His trip to the Antarctic, he says, is just the beginning.
His journey began when he and his companions boarded a ship bound for Antarctica. During the trip, they sometimes docked at ports and came across rare animals and other wonders of nature. From their ship, they could see small icebergs and smile at pretty flocks of penguins. In the South Sandwich Islands, sea lions as large as small boats surprised them. And when they arrived at the grave of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, they prayed.
However, not all their experiences were pleasant. On the way to the Antarctic, their ship was sometimes tossed about by heavy seas. Especially unnerving was when they crossed the Bransfield Strait and encountered the notorious ‘shrieking sixties,’ at which point he and his friends had to endure violent shaking all day long. Of all the experiences on Mr. Mochizuki’s journey, the most moving was when he saw table icebergs, some of which were 80 or 90 kilometers in length. “I have never seen such a big iceberg,” Mr. Mochizuki said. “When I saw one I realized how tiny I am compared with the grand earth. Getting over the extreme coldness, I just fixed my eyes on them at that time.”
Five years ago, Mr. Mochizuki worked in a public high school where he taught geography. In addition, he advised the mountain climbing club at his school. He was proud of the job and loved his students. “I was confronted with many difficulties at the time,” he said, such as students eating and drinking during class and squabbles that broke out among both students and parents. “I faced many problems, but everything at the time was fantastic. The year our climbing club won first prize in a contest leaves a vivid impression in my mind even now.” Mr. Mochizuki traveled frequently when he was young. He loved the scenes of nature so eagerly that, whenever he got the time, he went fishing or climbing at various place all over Japan.
After retiring from teaching, he has often traveled to Africa, China, Turkey and other foreign countries. He even climbed Mt. Everest once. Being able to travel after retiring was his longtime dream, and he spent many years saving money in order to realize it. Now he mainly travels to developing countries because he is interested in indigenous cultures and histories. And rather than feeling older he says he feels younger than ever. “Thanks to traveling, my burning curiosity and surprise are getting stronger year by year. I can make friends with local people through my travels, and I keep in touch with some of them. When I travel, something new is always waiting for me. So traveling always cheers me up and gives me another goal.” Mr. Mochizuki says Iceland is his next destination. “From now on, I will visit as many places as possible!”
The problem of solitary elderly people is a topic often taken up by the media. However, if Mr. Mochizuki is any indication, not all elderly people are living in misery. “Regardless of riches, whether people’s second lives go well or not is up to each person’s attitude. Many encounters and discoveries are waiting for them. Every elderly person should enjoy their second life."
