issho V1 #1390
issho
issho Wednesday, June 20 2001 Volume 01 : Number 1390
subjects of the messages sent today:
[ISSHO] Re: issho V1 #1387 - "Betrayal of History"
[ISSHO] Re: issho V1 #1389
[ISSHO] Bilingual web magazine "Zipangu."
[ISSHO] Ethnicity, race and genes
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Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 00:25:31 +0900 (JST)
From: Tony Laszlo <las...@gol.com>
Subject: [ISSHO] Re: issho V1 #1387 - "Betrayal of History"
> Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 02:40:37 +0100
> From: Earl Kinmonth <e...@gol.com>
> For an excellent article discussing the de facto censorship of history
> texts in the US, see
>
> Alexander Stille, "The Betrayal of History" NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS (June
> 11, 1998): 15-18.
>
> This review is, I believe, on-line, but I do not have the URL handy.
Jim Eckman kindly posted the URL on scjm. Thanks, Jim! -T.L.
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19980611015R#top
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Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 08:39:53 +0100
From: Earl Kinmonth <e...@gol.com>
Subject: [ISSHO] Re: issho V1 #1389
At 00:05 01/06/19 +0900, you wrote:
>Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 16:24:07 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Paul Guss <wat...@Radix.Net>
>Subject: [ISSHO] Nenrei Sabetsu
>
>My (giri)grandfather was recently dismissed from his position as a
>professor at Reitakudai where he taught, by all accounts, a very popular
>seminar course in journalism and contemporary Chinese culture.
>
>He was dismissed because, well, it was his "teinen." I believe he got the
>Japanese equivalent of the gold watch.
If he had indeed reached "teinen" I find it hard to see what the issue is.
I don't know the situation at Reitaku, but typically, "teinen" in Japanese
universities has been 70 or older. In the last few years, a few
institutions have dropped this to 65 (Sophia for example) for budgetary reasons.
Reaching teinen may or may not mean the end of your career. At national
universities that have an even lower teinen, the pattern is often national
university -> private university -> private university. Indeed, second
tier private universities get many of their faculty from national
universities (and first tier private universities) this way.
Further, a common pattern is for someone to be employed "post-teinen" on a
contract basis if their is sufficient demand for his/her courses and there
is not someone younger to take over.
To the extent that teinen in Japanese private universities has been 70 or
above, it is rather better than the UK where the academic retirement age is
usually 65 and the prospects for post-retirement employment very limited.
Generally, when you reach teinen, you get N-months of your final salary as
a lump sum benefit (taishoku nenkin). N is a function of your years of
service. If your entire career has been with a given institution, N can
amount to several years pay. I've read of highly criticized public sector
cases where N was over 100 (months, not years).
Further, in the Japanese case, even if you do no research and have no
publications, your pay will move on a linear progression plus periodic
"base up" adjustments until you reach teinen. This is essentially the case
in Britain, but not necessarily the case in the US for "research universities."
If there is an issue with teinen, I would suggest that it is in the fact
that if you do not have 20 years in the retirement scheme you get nothing.
Absolutely zilch. Assuming I go until 70, I will have 17 years of payments
but will get nothing in return. Further, you cannot buy additional years
out of pocket as you can in the UK.
If anyone would like to work on this type of discrimination, please contact me.
>I am not so sure that my grandfather has the personality to do much beyond
>falling in line and accepting his fate, but it made me mad as hell.
>
>This does not seem to be much of an issue in Japan, a country that is said
>to praise itself in honoring her elders. I located a group
>(www.hatarakizakari.com) that seems to be grappling with it, but very
>little else. There was also, apparently, a revision to the employment
>law, to be implemented in October of this year, that aims to prohibit
>age-related decisions in employment, and I wonder if this is toothless or
>real, or what it even means.
You'll have to provide more details before it is possible to say whether
this case or issue has merit. Although there has been some move to abolish
mandatory retirement ages in US academia and other sectors, such age caps
are common and accepted in many countries. Even in the US, it is quite
common to have age caps on applications for certain types of academic
awards. At 54 pushing 55, I am already "too old" for quite a number of US
grant programs. (Note: I' commenting based on what the situation was when
I left the US in 1989. There may have been substantial changes since then.)
A better case might be made that in Japan age is used an irrelevant filter
for many jobs. For example, language teachers, including my wife, are
"over the hill" at thirty-five in Japan. Legislation MIGHT help in this
area, but changes in demographics (a shortage of young people) and
management style (more output related pay and less seniority/age related
pay) will probably do more.
Legislating against "age-related decisions in employment" would not
necessarily cover "age-related decisions pertaining to retirement."
>http://www.sankei.co.jp/databox/paper/0104/18/html/0418side_koyoho.html
>
>Is this an issue that Issho could/should consider making an alliance with?
>It has some transcendental qualities uniting what Japanese might feel
>about deficiencies in their own social rules ("shakai kisei") and
>discrimination in general. When Japanese discriminate against themselves
>it may provide a nexus out of which they could understand our suffering.
This is not for me to say. The age discrimination in pensions (length of
service) is, I think worth looking at, but then I have a vested interest in
this particular issue....
>Take a look please: www.hatarakizakari.com
>
>
>Paul
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Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 12:52:35 +0900
From: Hideko Otake <japan...@lists.nbr.org> (by way of Wade Carlton)
Subject: [ISSHO] Bilingual web magazine "Zipangu."
The following might interest some listmembers, so I forward it here.
Wade Carlton
From Japan Forum:
I am editor of English/Japanese bilingual web magazine "Zipangu."
Hideko Otake Zipangu zip...@tiac.net or ma...@ezipangu.org
ABOUT US:
New web magazine "Zipangu" opens on May 25 !
"Zipangu," a new magazine (www.ezipangu.org) is:
**an online English/Japanese bilingual magazine.**?a transcultural
networking space that stimulates and realizes dialogues between
different races and cultures.
**an archive for documents and data that would be helpful for
transcultural conversations.
**an open forum for everybody to share knowledge, information,
ideas and experiences.
**an innovative magazine edited by Zipangu, a grass-roots, non-
profit organization in New York, whose achivements include the
publication of the internationally acclaimed book "Japan Made in
USA," a critique of the U.S. media's coverage of Japan.
Bookmark www.ezipangu.org for "Zipangu" now!
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What does the term "Pearl Harbor" conjure up in people's psyches?
By providing a forum that allows you to voice your own opinions,
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- ---
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 19:36:54 +0900 (JST)
From: Tony Laszlo <las...@gol.com>
Subject: [ISSHO] Ethnicity, race and genes
I posted these materials on SHAKAI the other day. The fact that
"race" has no scientific basis has been known for decades. Still,
it exists as a social norm - and a very real one, at that. As
these matters come up on the ISSHO Digest now and again, I repost
here for your reference.
1) From a paper by the United Nations Research Institute for Social
Development (UNRISD), made in preparation for the upcoming United
Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR). The conference
will be held in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 of this year):
"Physical differences, such as skin colour; hair colour and texture; and
eye, nose and lip shapes were previously thought to reflect distinct
biological and behavioural differences between people. Recent findings in
genetics reject the scientific value of the concept of race. Advances in
DNA research in the last 20 years demonstrate that, on average, 99.9
percent of the genetic features of humans are the same; of the remaining
percentage that accounts for variation, differences within groups are
larger than between groups; only six genes out of at least 100,000 that
make up the human genome account for differences in skin colour;
variations in colour are not discrete, but are distributed along a
continuum, which reflects different levels of melanin in the skin; and
many physical differences are due to environmental adaptations."
NB:
The "recent findings" noted here are but extensions of what was
learned in the early 70s. Those earlier finding were the impetus
for the following EP statement:
2) From the Resolution of the European Parliament on racism, xenophobia
and anti-semitism and the European Year against Racism (1977)
"The European Parliament...
11. Considers that the notion of race has no scientific, genetic or
anthropological basis, and that this concept can therefore only serve
to underpin ethnic, national and cultural discrimination or
discrimination linked to colour, since it is based on the erroneous
idea that there are separate 'races' which are hierarchically
structured;"
3) David Suzuki, from a 1998 Toronto Sun article:
["Race makes sense when you look at it with the eye," Suzuki
said. "But look at it in an evolutionary and molecular view and it's
absurd."
Suzuki spoke of how his family was held for three years in an
internment camp during World War II. "Our crime was that we
shared genes with the Japanese," he said. His parents had never
been to Japan. ]
Tony Laszlo
http://www.issho.org/laszlo.html
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End of issho V1 #1390
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