戦争の教え方 | How to Teach War

８月というのは、僕にとって毎年のように特別だ。

カナダに来てから、夏真っ盛りの日本ではないけれど、初秋の風の中、小学校の登校日を思い出す。

クーラーをがんがんにきかせた部屋で、姉と食べたアイスの味、がりがりくんだったような。

共働きだった両親をよそに、鍵っ子どうし冷房でお腹を壊しながら、姉と遊んだものである。

僕の育った東大阪は、在日朝鮮・韓国人やその子孫が多く住む町だ。そして、かつて部落と呼ばれた地区も存在する。公立の小学校の教育の場で、歴史教育や部落差別の認知教育など、日本の他の地域に比べれば、相互理解を促す教育を幼い頃から受けていたのだと思う。

日本の歴史の教科書では数ページで終わる、戦中日本の歴史。教科書を横において拡大授業をした先生もいた。今思うと、日本人として、少々自虐的な解釈をする先生もいた。でも、歴史を語る時、視点によって、名誉にも不名誉にもなると、修学できたので良しとしよう。

８月はいつでも僕にあの戦争を少なからず思い出させる。

カナダの友人に「原爆の日や終戦記念日には何かするの？」と聞かれた。

僕は「何もしない。でも僕が両親、おじいちゃんや本から覚えた戦中、戦後のお話は次の世代に伝えたい。」と言った。

理想主義者で何が悪い。

でも理想だけで世界は動かないのも確かである。

矛盾した考えの中で、新しい考えを生み出すことは不可能だろうか。

August is a very special month for me personally.
Since I came to Canada, unlike Japan's hot August but in the cool early autumn air, I recalled a summer day in August when we had to attend a class for half a day.

My sister and I ate ice candy bar in a well air-conditioned room at home. Both of our parents are working, so my sister and I played together often with occasional stomach aches from the chilled air by the air conditioner.

My hometown, Higashiosaka, has many Korean people residing in Japan since the wartime and before. As well, there are areas where used to be called "Buraku" (where there are discrimination against outcast people) in my hometown.

In the local public education system, we had enough opportunities to be taught recognition of the history and the discrimination against outcast people. To gain mutual understandings in our community, the education tried to play a key role for our community future. This, I assume, was a unique thing if you look at the whole Japan at the time.

The history of wartime Japan ends in a few pages in the Japanese history textbook. There were history teachers who put the textbook aside and expanded the Japanese wartime history with a handmade textbook. Some of those teachers taught us in somewhat self-degradation ways with no further follow-ups, but it was really a good thing for me that I learned that a history can be glory or shame at the same point depending on perspectives.

August makes me think about the war more or less every year.

I was asked if I do something special on atomic bomb days in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on the anniversary of the end of World War II by my Canadian friend.

I told him that I don't do anything special but I always want to tell the next generation what I learned at school and what I heard from my grandfather and my parents about the wartime and the post war Japan.

Is there anything wrong to be an idealist?
But, it is so true that the world doesn't spin only with ideal thoughts.

Is it impossible to have a new idea from paradoxical ideas of mine?