I was recently asked by the people around me very often about my schedule after graduation because we will be graduating soon. Especially, in the case of postgraduate students, who have studied several years, they are asked about jobs or works after graduation. Being asked about jobs, they are even asked about marriages or marital status especially if a woman unmarried.   Since I have majored in Japanese literature, I came to Japan in September 2011 to get doctoral degree. And I have obtained doctoral degree last month i.e. March 2020 basing on my doctoral thesis which I completed on last December 2019 taking tenure of eight years. It may be quite natural to be asked about jobs or life after my return to Syria. Among a lot of queries done to me, last year, the one was concerns and surprises.  It was a question about “proposing” which precede marriage. “Proposing” has been conversed very often so far but has not been discusses concretely.  Several times I was asked by Japanese acquaintances or friends who are of my age saying “how do I propose?” or “how were Nahed-san proposed?” I understood that Japanese young men worry about words, places and timing of proposal. When Japanese young men propose, they spend a lot of money on gift and luxury hotel or restaurant.I was surprised, why they worry about such things and spend so much money? I asked reason and I came to know there are obligation in Japan that young men should follow. For women who are proposed, they are given with good topics for discuss and heat up their chat. As there is a big difference in meaning of a word “proposal” between Syria and Japan, I searched for a keyword “proposal” on Google and could hit so many links unexpectedly. I was disappointed with so many pages which suggest how, when(timing) and where they should propose. In my case, I had been attached with him for two years before I came to Japan, and I do not remember how he proposed. To begin with, I do not remember well whether he used a word “proposal” clearly. It is not so important for Syrian girls. In Syria or other neighboring countries, when men or women become aware of being compatible or like with each other, they will keep staying near to each other intentionally. And they try to communicate more on school hours and stay longer. I think friendship between men and women start like this in many countries. In Syria, men are more positive than women of course. They become lovers eventually and are tied to knots after being acquainted with each other.   To get married, suitor talks each other and decide. Then, girl tells her mother and finally discussed with the man of the house.  After that she conveys parents’ consent to him, determine the timing of their parents for their engagement. After both the family meets, the boy’s father says “it is my great honor to welcome your daughter to be our daughter-in-law”. Then girl’s father says “it’s my privilege too to be one family when our daughter and your son will marry”. Their engagement is admitted among their families and they will have an engagement party accordance by two fathers. It will take a few weeks or months for the preparation of wedding ceremony and finally the wedding is held. It is a procedure in Syria and other neighboring countries. Initiated relationship through their fathers are welcomed by the women. Before engagement, man usually buys gifts and takes woman to fancy restaurants. At the beginning stage, he gives flowers often. The flowers may not be expensive.  It may be a roses or jasmine which are found easily. Eventually they get into serious relationship, and man starts gifting her with presents like watches and bags.  However, women would not be pleased if the stage will not go to proposal initiated through father and involving parents from both sides. Proposing place is fixed at her family’s house. Men visits her family’s house with his parents bringing fruits or cakes and they will leave the rest to their fathers. I noticed wonderful way of proposal in Japan, which young couples are playing leading part and thought that men’s burden would be heavy. It is a big difference from Syria. You may think Syrian way of proposal is too traditional and boring. But it is much more wonderful for me, born in Syria, to be proposed being supported and watched by parents. Especially, I think it doubtful that internet or SNS suggest men side words, places and timings of proposal.  It is quite natural that proposal style varies in countries and generations.When I see, on the Internet, a lot of suggestions about proposal which should be an important step to make a family, I had a feeling, frankly speaking, that individual spontaneity or positiveness would be shrouded in darkness without realizing. Women side would have a high acceptance for proposal, men side may lose confidences and miss chances to make proposal. Present society or SNS inflame modern style of proposal. But it is a natural course of proposal style that lead to realistic marriage which might not be ideal. It is already nine years I am in Japan and the people around ask me many questions. “Proposal” is one of them and my opinion is mentioned above.  SGRA Kawaraban 645 in Japanese (Original)  Nahed_ALMAREE / 2019 Raccoon Translated by Kazuo KawamuraEnglish checked by Sabina Koirala  

 April 4 is a Qingming Festival in China. At 10 o’clock, this day, the government prayed, for three minutes, for doctors and other medical workers and the dead by the new coronavirus in China which occurred on January 23 in Wuhan. They fought for about two months.  The prayers by the government were the symbol of elementary victory against COVID-19.  In China, COVID-19 converged temporarily. But it spread all over the world in April and Japan was no exception. The number of infected persons in Japan is not so big compared to Europe and America. The Japanese government declared a state of emergency in April and May and could put COVID-19 under their control. But, when the Japanese government released such declarations at the end of May, infection clusters out broke. In Tokyo, the number of infections increased day by day. It was the second wave of coronavirus.  The second wave of coronavirus in Japan brought us brutal facts as follows: At least, in a predictable future, we must live together with corona which would leave influential traces in our daily lives.  We dreamed optimistically that we would be able to get back to normal lives after standing suffering in a short period. But this dream was broken. We must rebuild our new attitude in COVID-19. We have to have strong and tenacious guts of prolonged war against coronavirus and, at the same time, we have to do our best in our defensive measures against COVID-19 paying attention in all our movement of our actual daily lives. I think it corrects attitude to survive in the “WITH-CORONA” societies.  There is one story which I have read before. This story explains how an individual or one organization succeeded in coping with and overcame over prolonging difficulties. The answer, which the writer gave us, is “recuperative power”. Then how is “recuperative power” composed?  The writer of this article has interviewed a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp. According to a survivor, he had never had an illusion that he would be rescued soon. It differed from other inmates.On the contrary, he was prepared seriously to predict that he might not get out of the camp forever.  The only thing he has been thinking in the camp, in which people would reach the limit of life or death, is that he had to expose everything which he had experienced there in the world if he would be able to get out of the camp alive.  He was strongly saying in his heart that he would inform the world about the tragedies in the camp and such tragedies should not be repeated.  Based on such belief, he has collected every material for the winter in the camp and could get over finally such difficult situation which is far beyond our imagination.    Such experience by this survivor shows us clearly that there are three factors that consist of “recuperative power”. Namely, courage which faces actuality, a pursuit for meaning of being alive and flexible correspondence to the situation. I think those three factors are the “theses” which can maximize our real worth in the circumstance that we would confront COVID-19 on a long-term basis.  The COVID-19 pandemics on a global scale brought the people all over the world not only serious disasters but various difficulties like the menace of latent virus, inconvenient and restricted livings, stagnant of consumer lives and losing sense of accomplishment by unemployment etc.I think, however, those difficulties gave us again good chances to reconsider and determine the purpose of lives and positive attitude to our lives.  There will be a big possibility which influence of COVID-19 become a trigger to the sudden change in global situations. But I think we should consider COVID-19, which we encountered unfortunately in the year 2020, as good news, not as bad news. Let’s create infinite possibilities by ourselves in our limited livings which may continue a long period.  SGRA Kawaraban 644 in Japanese (Original)  Xie_Suhang / 2019 Raccoon,  Translated by Kazuo KawamuraEnglish checked by Sabina Koirala   

 We had nearly a hundred participants at SGRA Café this time.The reasons、 why we could gather such a big number of participants, are :1)  Timely selection of the theme “East Asia in the Post-Corona Era”2) Attractive lecturers as Mr. Lim Chuan-Tiong and othersand 3) “Virtual style” Café     The Café started with Mr. Lim Chuan-Tiong’s lecture at the first section.Though we had a get-together meeting after the lecture and comments, I like to explain Mr. Lim’s lecture mainly in this report. As to a get-together meeting, I like to ask Mr. Lim to report in a separate report.  Mr. Lim started his lecture from his view on the world, namely the end of globalization of the world. As a concrete example, he pointed out breaking-off of global supply chains and recurring of the companies in their home countries, suspension of personnel exchange and upsurge of nationalism etc. He reported also that many countries have developed their feelings of distrust against China in their initial response against coronavirus and establishment and enforcement of the “Hong Kong National Security Act”.  Following such report, he expressed the change of the relationship among the East Asian countries in the “New Cold War” between the United States and China. Between Japan and South Korea, the biggest issue is how to keep their balance with the United States and China. China is trying to break up the relations of Japan and South Korea with the United States in the atmosphere that frictions between Japan and South Korea are getting worse. He insisted also that relations between Japan and China were shifted from “quasi-honeymoon” to “hot-China and cool-Japan” during these two years.  At first, China took leadership for Japan-China friendship relationships. However, the Chinese image in Japan is tarnishing day by day and Xi’s visiting Japan as a national guest is uncertain now. It is said that China took the initiative in China-South Korea relationships also and Mr. Lim pointed out that South Korea’s diplomacy did not take their independence. If so, and when the COVID19 would calm down, will Chinese influence become stronger at once? Firstly, in Hong Kong, the Chinese Government will make Hong Kong shift to an authoritarian regime ignoring antipathy or criticism of the United States and European countries. (Before the year 1997, Hong Kong was initiated by local government and half-colonized.)  On the other hand, China began to consider, for Taiwan, it would not be bad to keep distance between Main-Land China and Taiwan. It was an unexpected effect of COVID19. We can say it is an opposite effect against such radical policies like “Merger of Cross-Strait Relations” and “Preferential Treatment 31 agendum(恵台３１カ条)“. Chinese control policy of Hong Kong made Taiwan to be under pressure. As a result of loosing of Hong Kong as a buffer zone, Taiwan’s reliance on the United States is increasing.  Mr. Lim concluded his lecture saying that “the Post-Corona Era” is the coming of “New Cold War”. Hong Kong and Taiwan will be the place of “hard-fought battle”. Though we must pay attention to the presidential election of the United States in November this year, we cannot avoid “New Cold War”, because consensus on Chinese policy was already made in the United States. Shall the world be divided into two major blocks, the United States and China?What Japan will be asked to behave hereafter is their independent activities and leadership.  Following Mr. Lim’s lecturer, we had a few comments.Firstly, Mr. SHIMOKOJI Shuji (ex-diplomat) commented as follows.The New Coronavirus issue brought about a lot of issues to international societies.  Mutual trust is a part of such issues. He pointed out, however, that we are now in the stage how to cope with our common enemy “coronavirus”.  As to an improvement of relations between Japan and China, it is desirable. But it is not important which side shall take the initiative. What is important now is how to lead international orders to constructive direction and big powers must discuss each other especially.    Professor NAM Ki-Jeong commented as follows:  When we think about international order of “Post-Corona Era” as “New-Order”, we must overcome a framework of “theory of realism” in the international politics. It became clear that we have to get rid of “identity-politics” and it is necessary to build the politics which should be put in a center of people’s lives. If we would stick to “identity-politics”, the relations between Japan and South Korea will be failed. However, when we look at political viewpoints which focus on people’s living like the COVID19, we will not be able to solves such issue if we appeal to only nationalism. The COVID19 taught politicians that identities or nationalismwould not lead to the votes. Politicians should consider how they shall leave their political legacy behind. Professor Nam concluded his comment saying that he hopes middle powered nations like Japan and Korea to establish such political legacies.  We finished the lecture and comment section after one hour and 45 minutes. As my personal impression, there were a lot of subjects which we would like to discuss taking more time and it was an interesting cafe as a researcher. And it was a thoughtful lecture for me how I, as a citizen, will develop an international order and how I will act for it. As been pointed out at a get-together meeting, personal power is limited and “identities” cannot be overcome easily by an individual. Needless to say, bad feelings or prejudice are easier to be established, if we will be in negative histories in political situations or restriction of information. Is it OK to give up at this stage? For this half year in 2020, I had a locked up feeling or thought pessimistic in the atmosphere of avoiding going out and meeting.But I believe there would be positive factors which I overlooked in such bias.  SGRA Cafe Report in Japanese (Original) Photos of the Day  Li Yanming / Specially-appointed lecturer at the University of Tokyo         Translated by Kazuo KawamuraEnglish checked by Sabina Koirala

 We have encountered the new coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of the year 2020. It was a very short time that people, except China, considered the coronavirus infection as somebody else’s problem.  Face masks and hand sanitizer have disappeared at the stores. Schools have closed. People, who worked for companies in the cities, have shifted to work from home quickly. At just when we thought how long such a staying-home period would be, economic activities were restarted gradually. People returned to their offices in the cities, re-opened stores and schools were restarted as well.  Those were a stream of time that I felt personally in Japan. In other countries, isolation or self-restrained life started earlier than Japan. But the number of infected persons is increasing day by day in Japan. Recently I took notice of such brilliant news that Disney Land re-opened in some countries where they restarted their economic activities.  However, do not forget the fact that there is no country which could show fine specimen for convergence of new coronavirus. On the contrary, some countries, where people restarted their economic activities, had clusters and got back to the strained situations closing their schools. There are two things which we can do. One is “we live our lives taking care of being affected”. It is kind-heartedness to the others. The second important thing: if some country could hold down infections before the coming of the second wave of coronavirus, it will be appreciated to help other countries that have a lot of infected persons.  We should consider the whole earth as one country. We could re-acknowledge that we can connect each other on the network despite it takes time if we like to move. There is no border on the line.   Amid people in the world are inclined to “nationalism”, the new coronavirus has appeared into sudden prominence. The coronavirus taught us we should not live as we like. And we must win the war against our common enemy “coronavirus” which is the one and only. It may be a good chance for us to change our view that the country, which says “our country first”, may lose the war.  After the corona, China has entered a different phase. Their aims as a country became difficult to understand. While they are developing their support to the developing countries aiding face masks, they are positive in advancement to the South China Sea. They are good friends to the WHO. But, on the other hand, they show open hostility to the United States.  Of course, there are a few points to be evaluated highly. For example, China announced genome information about the new coronavirus to the world promptly which outbreak in Wuhan. Medical facilities in the world became possible to have PCR testing by such an announcement. It is said that China has delayed in their initial response when SAAS in 2003 spread. We can say it was a good example. The United Nations system evaluates it highly actually.      Another example is the lockout of Wuhan City which is the biggest city in Hubei Province and has 11 million population. All of them had to stay at home and every means of transportation and roads were blockaded.  TV pictures, not a soul were to be seen on the street, were broadcasted in the world. It gave the world high-impact and people thought “do we have to do to such extent?” However the world took similar measures as  Wuhan and people stayed at home and public means of transportation including airplanes stopped or decreased their frequencies. Sorry to say to Wuhan citizens who have not been infected, the other governments than China could not imagine how the lockout or refraining from going-out would be if China has not decided “lockout”.  The number of infected persons are still increasing. In South Korea, where the number of infected persons was decreasing and they restarted their economic activities, the clusters have occurred in some areas. In Beijing also, the clusters occurred after lifting their quarantine and schools were asked to close. Then, how about in Japan? They reopened their economic activities knowing the situation in South Korea and China and the number of infected persons is increasing day by day. In America (in the case of states where the number of infected persons is increasing), people became possible to have eating and drinking in restaurants and bars. However, since the number of infected persons did not decrease, people were allowed only delivery or takeaway. No entry at parks or beaches of course.    What I think it noteworthy is that many countries are sharing their pictures or current situations with each other. Many people may think it quite normal. It is precious to share such information with each other now when there are restrictions in movement between countries. If South Korea would hide the clusters in nightclubs despite their restarting of economic activities being ahead of other countries, how would it be? If China hide the clusters in fresh markets in Beijing, how would it be?  Some people may think it would be all right because people can share pictures or videos in real time by Instagram or Tik_Tok.  I think it’s better if people could exchange their compliments with each other for the information which they could share. And it is good diplomacy that those countries share not only the present situation but medical information and statistic also. Because COVID19 is a common issue in international societies now. If China will keep facing the coronavirus openly and taking initiative in sharing information about medical and scientific fields, China could increase its presence in a positive sense and would be appraised in diplomatic fields.  Xie_Zhihai/Associated Professor, Kyoai Gakuen University   SGRA Kawaraban 641 in Japanese (Original)  Translated by Kazuo KawamuraEnglish checked by Sabina Koirala

 Summer 2019, I finished my studies abroad for about seven years in Japan.  And I came to the United States which is the third country for my studying abroad.  The City Princeton, which is the base for my day-to-day life now, seems like another world to me. If I compare Princeton with Tokyo, Tokyo is one of the biggest cities in the world.  It is said a word “Campus”, which means “field” in Latin, has been used as “the premises in Princeton University”.  For the first time when we step in “the campus” of Princeton University, everybody will nod with their agreement. When I saw an old map of the latter part of the eighteen centuries, “the campus” students at that time have called “campus” jokingly, we can understand there had been nothing except some field surrounded by buildings. At present, though the number of university facilities has increased dramatically and the city itself has developed, also there is no change in its richness in nature. You can understand such richness from other living things that live symbiotically together with human beings. Starting from raccoons which are mascots of Atsumi International Foundation, squirrels, foxes, rabbits and deer, all the living things are enjoying their lives in “campus”.  The new type of coronavirus has spread in campus. During these few months, almost all the students had returned to their homes and other students who had no choice stayed back in campus inside their rooms. It added my feelings of isolation from the outer worlds and it caused me to add my sense of reality also.  During our school term when we had busy weekends, I didn’t realize much. But once I become free from restraining terms, it increased such feelings. When it’s clear during summer, many people go out for a walk.But the campus remains quiet as we can see only postgraduate students of scientific fields go to their laboratories, opened recently.    However, even in the small town in the State of New Jersey, violent social movements are occurring now. After George Floyd’s killing by the police on May 25, protest movement of discrimination against African-American started throughout the country. At present, the end of June, demonstration and riots are spreading. In the City of Princeton, except students of Princeton University, where majority of the population is white people, there was no such big demonstration as Minneapolis. It is said that, as a university, they are trying to raise consciousness of the community against racial discrimination which has been engraved in the structure and history of American society. It is said also that university, as an organization of higher education and research organization, is studying how to engage in such issues.  As one of the measurers, the name of Woodrow Wilson was deleted from the graduate student dormitory of the Faculty of Public Policy/Graduate School. President Woodrow Wilson, a graduate of Princeton University, was a great figure.  He became the President of the United States through his career of teaching and the President of Princeton University, Governor of the state of New Jersey and received Nobel Peace Prize. During his presidency services, he was evaluated for not only the establishment of the League of Nations but also contributed to the vigorous development of Princeton University.  However, he was a segregationist. When other Ivy League colleges admitted African-Americans, though the numbers were limited, Princeton University rejected their admission. When he served for the U.S. President, he introduced racial separation again in the civil service system which had been abolished before. It means he has kept his standpoint as a segregationist. According to the President of Princeton University who declared the measure, mentioned above, “Woodrow Wilson’s segregation was very important remarkably basing on the standard at that time”.  Against the deletion of such an influential name, not only in Princeton University but American history, from the name of faculty or graduate school, advocates of the conservative wing said “it is excessive political correctness” or “it is nothing but revisionism of history”. It may be a discretion of the University who shall be admired or who shall be a model of students. It is respectful that African-American students of the Faculty of Public Policy/Graduate School are reluctant to be assimilated to the person who did not admit their entrance. Anyway, deletion of the name “Woodrow Wilson” was welcomed in the community of the University and many people congratulated saying “Princeton School of Public and International Affairs”.  I never thought that American society would amid in flames of the COVID-19. I realized our campus, which seems to be sleeping, is maintaining its life and I am distracted from feelings of desolation.     SGRA Kawaraban 639 in Japanese (Original)  Antonin_Ferre / 2019 Raccoon, Princeton University (East Asia Research Center)  Translated by Kazuo KawamuraEnglish checked by Sabina Koirala