Moderator: Rion Koshinaga
Session Team: Yui
Rion Koshinaga (1st year, Department of Creative Innovation)
Tan Rin Sen (1st year, Doctoral Program, Environment Formation Field)
Shiori Ishizuka (3rd year, Department of Arts Policy and Management)
Isao Ohtsuka (CASIO COMPUTER Co., Ltd.)

Communicating with other people can be difficult. When we meet people, I think we’re more concerned if they are senior to us, or a boss or are from a different culture. We watch their expressions and try to guess how they feel, or just humor them. Haven't we all looked the other way sometimes when we encounter something that is different from the identities or cultures we're familiar with? Haven't you ever thought "This is too difficult to deal with..." or "How should I start a conversation?", and just given up because you lack courage? But the other person is probably thinking the same thing. You should have thought about how you were going to start a conversation. Any number of times, Mr Ishino has seen friends who worry about this sort of cross-cultural communication. He tells me some of them have even left Japan because of their problems with communication. After talking directly to those people and listening to their stories, Mr Ishino realized that just by making small changes in how they talked or by getting them to cooperate just a little better, their communication could be improved. So he established Shahran Consulting to help in that role. He was greatly influenced by his background in Iran, which is a highly ethnically diverse nation, and by his hopes for Japan where he now lives, and above all, by a desire to help his friends. So, by all means attend Mr Ishino's session to get some tips on everyday communication.

Participant: You say that things can only go well if we are conscious of our cultural differences. But in my experience the opposite is true. I tend to be too conscious of cultural differences and don't know how to communicate effectively, or I'm afraid of being rude because of how our customs differ. What about those situations?

Ishino: That's an interesting perspective. I think that's definitely true. But I think the solution is to just converse normally in your own words without being offensive. You can just start the conversation by talking about ordinary everyday things, like "How did you get here today?" or "How long did it take?". I think it's better to try just communicating through everyday conversations rather than trying to get into heavy discussions.

Participant: What nationality is your wife?

Ishino: She's Japanese. But I don't think your nationality has anything to do with cultural differences or being multicultural. If you think about it, you could say that your neighboring village or street is also culturally different. Even the house next door has a different culture!

Participant: Absolutely!

Ishino: With my five-year-old daughter and a Japanese wife, we are a three-person family eating dinner at the same table, but we are still culturally different. That's why we need to be aware of even the smallest cultural differences. Small differences in things like our religion or our eating habits are cultural differences.

Frameworks Created by Multicultural Co-existence
Rion Koshinaga
(1st year, Department of Creative Innovation)

By taking part in this project, I thought that there would be no need for me to go the trouble of creating a framework for "multicultural co-existence". I get the impression from the sound of "multicultural co-existence" that it is a really good thing and something that highly aware people have devised. This is because "multicultural" and "co-existence" are words that normally are hardly ever used. They appear easy to understand and yet somehow seem difficult. So, simply from hearing these words, my impression is that it is difficult to actively study them and make even a little progress. Of course, from my experience with this project, I have come to understand that thanks to the term "multicultural co-existence", it is an easy subject to convey to people. But I don't think that these words alone can really describe the essence of "multicultural co-existence". By which I mean, the meaning conveyed by these words is, in effect, just the meaning of the kanji characters, and by taking part in this project, I have come to feel that the expression "multicultural co-existence" cannot really express the true meaning that we need to understand.

I moderated Mr Ishino's session. In his second session, he said, "Nobody is perfect, so you cannot think of yourself as the greatest." These words really caught my attention. In the past, I've adopted a broad perspective as I looked for answers to the way minorities living in Japan are treated. But I now realize that this approach is mistaken. I didn't need to take an elevated viewpoint, such as looking for what I can do to save all those people. It would've been better to face those people simply and take them as individuals. I should've just had a conversation with them and not try to just lump them all into categories. Settling on this "multicultural co-existence" framework and looking for answers at the university has taught me some obvious truths, rather like a small child being given instructions by an adult. As I pored over the way we interact with other cultures and the meaning of co-existence, I became confused. But this was simply because the words made me think that the concepts were difficult. The real problems have nothing to do with the words. The problem is not to do with frameworks for multiculturalism or for foreigners, it is simply a personal problem that we have as people. I realized that with these different frameworks, the important thing is not to mull over the words that make us aware of those frameworks, but how we relate to those people as individuals.

What is multicultural co-existence? This is a question to which we can't apply really clear and precise words. But what is actually needed by the people to which multicultural co-existence applies is not some obsession with the words "multicultural co-existence", but for all the different people in the world to simply interact in a natural way. To talk, laugh and share ideas without randomly ascribing a particular personality to people or judging based on their cultural background. By interacting in this spirit, I think people who continue to adhere to the words "multicultural co-existence" can genuinely achieve the ideal.

I've spent six months on this course studying multicultural co-existence, and have concluded that it's very difficult to grasp the true meaning of these words. I think today also, I've taken a very roundabout route to find answers. But I've realized in this course that questioning the meanings and definitions of words is important to understanding the true essence of anything. In the past, I've written articles and essays using words whose definitions were taken for granted, but now I think I've come to understand the real importance of words. I'm sure that in the future there will be other opportunities to think about and discuss other words. When that happens, rather than thinking that there's only the meaning that the world generally ascribes to those words, I'd like to take a different stance where I think about how I myself interpret that meaning.