Kazuko TANAKA
Director, CGS; Professor, ICU
【The article below is the same as the article that appears in the fifteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.】
After the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2011, I have been gradually convinced of the importance of addressing issues in the long term, as far ahead as the next century. More than one year has passed since the world's largest nuclear accident, but the situation is still far from seeing any return to normal. Fukushima people are still being kept in desperate uncertainty, even as they suffer from a sense of abandonment. A fundamental solution can only be found through our earnest search to shape a new society where everyone is treated with full dignity. To think ahead at least a century into the future is to visualize a world in which we ourselves will be absent. It is a commitment that would enable us to relativize firmly internalized social norms and presuppositions of thought. An innovative ability to "imagine the next century," then, could be a powerful means for us to address the gender/sexuality issues deeply embedded in our current social structure.
Japanese society is still firmly structured, with its basis in a gendered division of labor: workers are typically seen as being free from the responsibilities of housework and childcare and are expected to work long hours. Feminists have argued for achieving gender equality first and foremost by striving for women's economic independence. To that end, work-life balance has been a widely discussed topic in recent years. However, discussions regarding gender equality that appear in the public eye are still merely accepting male standards without changing the existing hierarchical structure itself. In addition, gender dualism continues to categorize people into male and female, with heterosexism claiming its place as the "only correct sexuality." These views have defined the current Japanese social structure. Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that we have deeply internalized these gender/sexuality norms and even justified them. By considering the restraints of normative society in the long term, and through consciousness of the appearance of norms in our mundane existence, we will be able to change our perspectives and start reforming society's most deep-seated issues.
In an effort to more deeply examine ordinary everyday life on campus and in the community from a gender/sexuality point of view, CGS plans to start a project beginning next year: the R-Week project. The "R" of R-week stands for a multitude of different concepts, such as Relation, Rainbow, and Respect. Each year, a different, specific "R" will be chosen as the focus of the Week. It is not easy to be aware of our own deeply internalized values since they seem so natural and normal to us. We have a tendency only to notice these personal values while directly interacting and cooperating with various people. Today, our lives move at an accelerated pace and our personal worlds have been isolated and segmented. Yet, in the present, it is imperative for us to cultivate our power to imagine the possibilities of a world 100 years from now, and develop a concrete perspective that firmly connects our own "lives" here to the distant future.