Discrimination in Japan

By Sae

What do you imagine about discrimination? There are much discrimination because of religion, sex and race. It is hard to lose all discrimination from the world because prejudices are in people’s mind deeply. Prejudice came from painful experiences or elder people. I learned about discriminations and prejudice in America, so started to think about Japan. There seems to be no discriminations in Japan, but I found different kind of discrimination. This is occupation and academic background discrimination.

Occupation and academic background discrimination is big concern in Japan. Japanese tend to classify into winnfers and losers by property because media imprinted in people’s mind. From the media airs that topic up, people started to believe that winners are happy because they are wealthy, for becoming rich person, good occupation or academic background are needed to get high salary. Therefore, Japanese focus on occupation and academic background. For example, many students ask their name and university which they go to when they meet for the first time, and people think it is good to enter a good university. On the other hand, many parents only care about their children’s grades and score in education instead of thinking about their children’s hopes or dreams. In addition, children are victims of this discrimination. Recently, many children go to cram school after school and learn many things such as English conversation, playing an instrument and doing sports; on the other hand, they have no time to play with their friends. In fact, I think children become adults who are like their parents if they continue to do that. They will stop thinking about their dream, and they will just study for future career. In other case, university students want to work at major companies, so they try to take an interview with those companies. Actually, there are only a few places for new employees. That is one reason that many university students can’t get jobs.

Because of occupation and academic background discrimination, people try not to think about dreams. Is money really important for us? People feel happy with different ways such as having family, doing what you really want to do, and having dreams. First, focusing on your wish in your mind and then respecting individuals are the keys of losing this discrimination.