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.