Letter from Boston
Politics Close To Home
By MASAKO YAMADA
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政治問題が身近に
ある朝、雅子さんが研究室に着くと、同じ研究グループの学生たちがNATOのセルビア空爆の是非をめぐって白熱した論争を繰り広げていました。普段から戦争や政治に関する論議にはあまり参加しない雅子さんは、今回も話し合いには加わりませんでした。無関心だからというわけではなく雅子さんなりの理由があるようです。
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I walked into my lab one morning to see two of my groupmates arguing. They
were debating whether the NATO bombings in Serbia were justified. One of
them supported NATO's decision while the other was against it.
The argument was quite heated, and even though I left the room several
times over the next couple of hours, they were still arguing each time I came
back. They are both from small countries in what was once Eastern Europe, and
it's clear that they have both experienced firsthand some of the
hardships that come from growing up in that region. For this reason, their
argument seemed especially personal. I suppose it's impossible to be
objective when public policy affects you so personally.
Nevertheless, since they are both reasonable guys, they brought up
statistics and drew their facts from multiple news sources to try to make
their points. The good thing is that they did not treat any one source as
the authority. I don't think Americans place as much trust in newspapers as
Japanese people do, but news organizations such as The New York Times and CNN
are still very well respected. However, most of my friends, including these
two guys, do not take the oversimplified news clips from such sources at
face value.
I think I'd find it incredibly difficult to form an opinion even if I
did know all the facts!! Many politically active young students have expressed
sheer outrage over the bombings. They have written political editorials to
newspapers or have conducted demos in public places. However, I personally
know many students who are not swayed by this kind of activism. They either
quietly support NATO or express ambivalence, or even indifference.
Indeed, although many of my friends knew about a demo being staged in
front of the Boston Public Library, most of them didn't go. I myself went to
the demo to watch the activists, but I really didn't have any political
motivation. I was curious to see what would happen, but I can't say that I
was a supporter or an opponent of the cause. The demo was rather small,
and I got the feeling that perhaps some of the participants were ambivalent
as well.
I usually tend to keep quiet when arguments over wars and politics erupt
around me. In this way, I think I'm similar to a lot of Japanese people of my
generation. The older generation suffered a great deal from the war, and I
learned from them that war is bad. However, I don't think I've learned much
about analyzing the delicate gray areas of conflict and I find myself
unable to make complex arguments that put many conflicting circumstances into
context. I don't think I'm a particularly indifferent person, but I often
feel disconnected from military events.
This is partly because of my lack of historical knowledge but it's also
partly because my day-to-day life has been so far removed from military
activity. My friends from countries such as Russia, Germany, Austria, France,
South Korea and Israel always seem to have more to say about such issues
than I do. Not only is their historical knowledge more nuanced and deeper
than mine, but most of them have served mandatory military service in their
countries. All of my friends who have served in the military say that they
hated it. Many of them did noncombat training, but that didn't make the
experience any more fruitful. If anything, they seem to have come out of
training less nationalistic than they were before entering.
There's nothing I can do about my lack of worldly experience, but I have
been trying to learn about such things from other people. I have friends who
are from cities in Serbia that have been bombed, such as Belgrade and Novi
Sad. They give the news an urgency that I don't feel when I skim through
the New York Times in the morning. These are moderate people who simply do
not want to see their families destroyed. I do not know any Albanians or
Serbian nationalists, but I know they must have their own stories, too.
Even with firsthand information from different sources, it's still very
difficult to make sense of everything that's going on in the world at any
given time. I do wonder whether all of this information will make me more
confused, or whether it will lead me to an opinion of what is right or wrong.
Shukan ST: April 16, 1999
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