Summary of my Presentation and Discussion

Post date: May 3, 2014 10:59:08 PM

My presentation theme was global issue in Hamamatsu. First of all, I explained the history of . Before 1990s, Japanese government opposed allowing migrants fearing that they could create social tensions against the strategy of Japanese government. However, facing a labour shortage, the government allowed second and third generation Nikkeijin to come to Japan as permanent workers. So, a lot of Nikkeijin came to Japan and got jobs. At that time, Japanese had the image that Nikkeijin could speak Japanese, understand Japanese culture and integrate more easily than other foreigner because they had Japanese blood. But, in fact, they were sociologically Brazilian, speak Portuguese and most of their cultural reference were Brazilian, of course. Second, I explained that current conditions of Hamamatsu. Hamamatsu has the largest number of Brazilian, 19,000 have settled and found jobs in factories. Hamamatsu officials have helped them by providing language programs, translating key documents, employing interpreters and signposted in Portuguese. However, these measures have been said "On The Surface" ones. Still, there are a lot of issues like friction caused by cultural differences, bullying issues at school and law wages in their working place. I also introduced some NPOs addressing these issues in Hamamatsu.

Third, I focused on linguistic GAP. I explained what is linguistic GAP using the example of Omura's case. They cannot communicate each other because they cannot understand each language. I thought that it is also a big issues because the family relationship is important for the growth of child. However, there are few organizations addressing this issue. There are some schools that teach Portuguese, but these schools are private ones, so it is not easy for them to go to such schools.

In discussion, I wanted to discuss the linguistic GAP issue, but both of my partners have never heard about this. I think that the very fact that this issue still has not been famous is the biggest problem in this linguistic GAP issue.