translation by Midori Hiraga
proofread by Yura Okamoto
ก
From the Beginning
@@As was mentioned in the previous sections, though our center has been
receiving
information regarding the situation with people with disabilities
from overseas, we did not have many chances to
send out our own messages, or exchange views or data on an
international level. Naturally, for those attempting such exchange
there is no need to limit it to Asian countries. One important area
is Africa, and a group led by
one of our graduate
students, Tomoki
Niiyama, with great support
offered by the
Africa
Japan Forum
are publishing information on Africa on
our
website and
planning to publish their research regarding the issue of how societies
deal with HIV/AIDS and other
infectious diseases. Be that as it may,
Asian countries are our neighbors, and communication with them has
already commenced. It is easy for us to visit them, and for them to
visit us. Also, as I will show in detail below, we have quite a lot to
learn from each other. At present, we lay
particular emphasis on strengthening our relationships with people from
South Korea.
@@Below I shall write mainly about disabilities-related exchange
between the two countries, based on my personal experience. Previously,
I
have had very little connection with South Korea and its people, though
I knew that there had been some links between Japanese people involved
in the disabled movement and Korean people. I visited South Korea for
the first time in October, 2003 to give a lecture entitled
"The
Development of Independent Living Movement in Japan" at
the International Seminar on Independent Living of People with
Disabilities that was held in Seoul. CHONG
Hee Kyong offered her services
and interpreted my
speech. I
did not know her at the time, but, as I found out at the time, CHONG
had come from South Korea
to Japan to study and had graduated from the College of
Community
& Human Service, Rikkyo University in March, 2003.
Before leaving
South Korea, she had been
working in welfare
services for people with disabilities and had already been collecting
information on the disabled movement in South Korea. When she was
enrolled in the undergraduate course in Japan she
also worked as a personal assistant for the Tachikawa Independent
Living Center located in Tachikawa-city, Tokyo. I have worked for the
center as a member of the steering committee and director for
about 10 years, but did not know her at the time. In
2007,
CHONG came to our Graduate School of Core Ethics & Frontier
Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, and began her historical and
analytical research of the disabled movement in South Korea. At the
time CHONG had already established close relationships with people with
disabilities working in private organizations in South Korea (some of
them later went to work for government-related organizations),
as
well
as with university researchers. She also worked as a coordinator and
interpreter in various events involving people with disabilities from
South Korea and Japan. And, as I have mentioned
in section [6],
as our GCOE
program commenced in
2007, we received the opportunity to use some of the budget allocated
to us for
international academic exchange.
ก
2008 - 2009
@@With CHONG as our
coordinator,
we first organized "Conference on History
of Disabled Movements
in South Korea and Japan" that
was held at Ritsumeikan University
on October 23,
2008. We invited three people from South Korea: KIM Desong (the Bureau
Chief of DPI-South Korea, who has been one of the leading members of
Revolutionary Disabled Movement since the 1980s), LEE Sangho (Member of
City Council of Seoul, former Director of Yang-chon Independent Living
Center), and JO Hanjin (Professor at the Department of Social Welfare,
Daegu University). From the Japanese side, presentations
were made by MISAWA
Ryo (DPI Japan) and
myself. The conference provided a good opportunity to share information
and
exchange opinions. Here is a part of the poster we made for the
occasion:
@ Emancipation from the Disability!! Emancipation from
the Disability!! This is the slogan that was always
chented by
activists of the South Korean Disabled Movement. What did they seek
for, dedicating their lives to
the movement, often risking
them for the cause?
What did
people with disabilities in Japan and in South Korea learned from each
other after a decade of mutual exchange? And what can we learn
from each
other in the future? Come to our conference
on October 23 and
let us think
about it together!
ILCs in Tokyo and
Kansai. She also visited us
at the
Ritsumeikan University as a part of her training to learn about the
support offered by the university to students with disabilities. The
lecture was about the situation of people with disabilities in Taiwan,
and it was a valuable opportunity to share information and exchange
opinions between CHEN Ying-Ju
and our graduate
students. Also, CHONG
made a presentation at the Symposium entitled "The Development of
Independent Living Movement in South Korea and Collaboration with
Japan: A Road to Collabolation in East Asia".
@@The three people from South Korea who visited us in October 2008 also
attended the 5th Annual Convention of
Japan Society for Disability Studies
in Kumamoto Gakuen University
with their colleagues from South Korea and had an exchange gathering
with members of Japan Society for Disability Studies there as well.
Some of the South Korean scholars had studied disability studies in the
UK or the USA. Disability studies are recently gathering more and more
attention in the country, attention of both the activists engaged in
the movement and of the academic circles. This is the background
against
which the Society of Disability Studies of
at its foundation conference
in Seoul,
introducing the history of disability studies in Japan that is also
summarized in section [5]
@@Also, on November 2, the day before the conference, South Korea & Japan
International Seminar
on Euthanasia was held at the
Parliament Members' Hall, in which
some members of the South Korean Parliament participated. Author made a
presentation, "What We Lose in
Exchange for Death: Notes on the Introduction of the Situation
in
Japan (Presentation available in
Korean).
@@During this seminar, KAWAGUCHI Yumiko,
a graduate student of our Graduate School of Core Ethics &
Frontier
Sciences, also made presentation describing the situation in Japan.
Also, during the same visit to South Korea we had an opportunity to
visit the office of the ALS Association of
South Korea,
and also to
visit AHN
Hyosuk and her mother at their
home in
Seoul and talk to them. She, her sister and their mother, who
has
ALS, co-authored a book, the cover of which is shown on the right.
@@After returning to Japan, in order to show our gratitude to
the people of South Korea for giving us the opportunity to exchange
views and information with them, we created a report of the visit. At
the same time, to develop our
relationship
further, we started a
Korean mail
magazine. Past issues
are available at our
website. (Those who would like to subscribe, please
send me
an e-mail. To my utmost
regret, I do not know Korean at all, but will have your e-mail
translated and will do the procedures needed for the subscription).
ก
2010
@@On January 19, 2010, I was invited to the Special Education
and
Multi-Knowledge Convergence held in Daegu University, where I gave a
lecture entitled "Issues We Need to Simply Push for / Issues to be
Pursued Carefully" ([Japanese]^Korean).
After briefly introducing
our current activities (refer to [6]),
I also mentioned that the ongoing debate in Japan on education for
children with disabilities is related to the
conflict described in [Q].
Also, guided by KWAK
Jeongran, who had studied
in the Graduate School of Daegu University and has
been working in
the areas of research and education there since,
and who also
had had training
in Japan, I
had a chance to
visit the
University's Support Center for Students with Disabilities and the
Independent Living Center in Daegu City, where I had an opportunity to
interview people working there, watch a documentary about the movement
on the internet, and also received a photo book and other
documents.
@@In April 2010, AN, with whom I met in
South
Korea in 2008, entered
the Graduate School of Core Ethics & Frontier Sciences and
decided
to live for the period of her studies
with her mother
in Kyoto. Also, LEE Wook,
who had graduated a university in
South Korea and had been working at a welfare facility for the elderly
since, entered our
graduate school, at the same time starting to work for a social welfare
facility
in Kyoto, "Family of the Heart: Homeland House, Kyoto", a
facility inhabited by many elderly
Koreans
permanently residing in
Japan (the so-called Zainichi).
The picture on the right shows LEE making a presentation in Kyonggi
University in May, 2010. These three students from South Korea, while
pursuing their own
research at our
graduate school, are also very
energetically
engaged in the translation of our website into Korean. ABE Yasusi,
who had studied at the Graduate
School of Daegu University, and KIM Wooja, who had studied at the
Graduate Scholl of Ewha Womans University, also help us with this work.
@@On the basis of
these
activities, from May 27 to 30, 2010, we
conducted an academic international
exchange program with South
Korean scholars. Myself and nine
others - students, post-graduate fellows, and also CHONG and LEE, who
shouldered the planning, the communication with the South Korean side
and also worked as interpreters - visited South Korea. Graduate
students
and research fellows from South Korea and Japan made presentations and
discussions at Research Machine
"Suyu+Trans" ??? on May, 27, and
at Kyonggi
University on May, 29. On May,
28, members conducted interviews and
other activities according to their interests and research
themes. I made a presentation, "Fights
over
the "Limits": Analysys of the Past Decade in Japan [Korean and
Japanese]", at the South Korea
Social Welfare Politics Association
Convention at Yonsei University. I also had meetings with people in
South Korea on academic exchange programs we are planning to hold in
South Korea in the fall of 2010, and at Ritsumeikan University in the
beginning of 2011.
@@At exactly the same time, on May 31, the Korean translation of
our book, Ars
Vivendi: Sociology
of Disabled People
Living outside Families and Institutions
@@"We greatly respect
the disabled
movement of South
Korea for its bold resolution its achievements made
in such a short
period of time. We also respect
the Korean
people who led and supported the movement
and believe that
there is much for
us to learn from them. People with disabilities and the
movements of the two countries have already learned a lot from each
other. The academia has been lagging behind, while people not
related to the scientific world, such as one of the authors of this
book, ASAKA
Yuho, have already developed
strong relationships with Korean people. In 2008 ... discussions
between the
graduate students and
the faculty of GCOE "Ars Vivendi" on one side and Korean researchers
and activists both in South Korea and Japan on the other finally began
as a part of our project
. Communication
and cooperation
between South Korea and Japan have shown great progress during the last
two years. Many South Korean students have come to study at our
graduate school, following CHONG Hee Kyong's
footsteps. We are receiving more and more invitations to participate in
conferences and research meetings in South Korea. We hope that we shall
learn to understand each other even better, and conduct discussions
together. And we shall be more than happy if this book
proves useful for this collaboration."
@@Our Graduate School of Core Ethics & Frontier Sciences could
receive some university funds for the purpose of dissemination of the
results of our
research abroad and promotion of international academic exchange. Using
this funding, we plan to increase our academic exchange with
other countries further
and strive to
make our research
better known around the world. I shall
report our results in this area in the near future.