I was born in Japan, raised in Tokyo, moved to the states, went to the college, taught in the same college, spent 15 years of my life in the U.S.
After moving I met so many different kinds of Japanese people in the states, who I never came across before in my life.
Ladies who married to the G.I. after the war, 2nd or 3rd generations of Japanese who originally migrated before the war. Business people who were sent to the U.S, by Japanese company and ended up obtaining a citizenship, regular students, and some of those who stayed in the country illegally. My status was in one stage illegal when I was switching from one type of visa to another. I used to joke with my friend, “If you meet a Japanese person and you don’t know why he or she is here (US) in an initial conversation within 5 min, it tells something about this person”.
I lived on the East Coast, but on the West Coast, my friends there used to tell me they meet more weird Japanese who nobody can tell why they were there.
Generally, though, I think Japanese people tend to stay in our own country. Recently I heard on the news that only 17% of young Japanese people have passport, so not very interested even to go abroad. However in worldwide view, there are so many people living outside of their country and many of them migrated. Refugees in Europe has created some confusion, many Chinese people residing in Japan have their own communities and trying to obtain a citizenship. Living abroad for long, I realized that people have been moving around mixing together throughout our whole history.
I had an admiration for the U.S. since I was a child. The attraction was that the U.S. is a great example of people mixing together, and they have been searching how to be a better country for long. Sometimes it made a terrible mistake and other times showed a great humanity. Just like a human being trying to develop oneself. going to the one direction and come back again to correct the mistake. Very human like. That’s something that I have never seen in Japan and that is what attracted me about the U.S.
However, now in this very country I had admired for long, I can only see a development of totalitarianism.
Republican and Democrat are 2 political parties and we often exchange our opinions in those 2 different political views, so did I before.
However the present situation is far beyond the argument of political preferences.
Totalitarianism with cunning manipulation of people brought a tragedy into Germany from the WWI to WWII. Japan killed so many people in neighboring countries and also our own people resulting from the arrogance to push forward the totalitarianism.
I thought we had learned that totalitarianism would never work.
Why does it not work?
Because people have never been, and never will be a “total”.
We are “so many”.
Let us keep that in our heart.
by Georges Ferdinand Bigot