Professor David Slater: "In that gap between the representation and the reality, there is alwa

It was 1986: Japan was bubbling, it was the model for the rest of the world. Everybody was trying to copy Japanese education because the standards were so high and the test scores were so great. So I came here, and I started working for this very low-level, night high school in Yoyogi. On my first day of teaching at this school, this kid starts yelling at me. He picks up this desk and throws it across the room. (A desk!) I don't know, maybe I was scared, but I completely froze. The desk ended up landing right by my feet -- I couldn't believe what was happening. But because I didn't flinch, because I didn't back away from him, it gave me little credentials within the school, a reason for him, and other students to talk to me. It was such a chaotic place. I couldn't believe how different it was from anything I had ever read about Japan, which is supposed to be this structured and orderly and highly achieving society. It was like the Japanese government, Japanese scholars and the Japanese-Studies foreign scholars were all talking about a different Japan from the one I saw in front of me. That's when I decided I was going to be an anthropologist in Tokyo. In that gap between the representation and the reality, there is always research to be done.

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1986年、当時の日本はバブルによって経済成長しただけでなく、教育面でも基準が高く成績もよかったので、多くの国が日本の教育の真似をしていました。そのため、私は来日し、代々木の夜間高校に教えにきました。授業初日、いきなり生徒たちに叫ばれました。彼らは机を持ち上げ私に向かって投げました。当時、私は恐らく怖かったのでしょう、思わず固まってしまいました。その投げられた机は私の足元にまできました。その場の状況を信じられずにいました。しかし、私はひるまず、彼から逃げなかったため彼らと信頼関係を築くことができ、生徒たちが私に話しかけてくれるようになりました。それにかかわらず、本当に混沌とした場所でした。私は以前本読んでいた日本の整っていて向上心に燃えているというイメージとあまりにもかけ離れていてびっくりしたのです。日本の政府や学者また日本を研究している外国の学者たちが私が目の当たりにした実態と全く異なる事を書いていたのです。それを知った時に私は、東京で人類学者になる決意をしました。表面と実態のギャップを知るには必ずリサーチを行う必要があると考えたのです。