August 23, 2010
This happened when I was about to buy Wacoal’s CW-X—supportive athletic undergarments made from high-performance materials—at Hankyu Ings.
Suddenly, I heard a middle-aged woman’s voice behind me…“The same thing Ryo-san wears…”
When I turned around, there were three women around their fifties…People around fifty addressing an eighteen-year-old golfer with the honorific “san.”
I had experienced something similar even before this…At a nearby hotel bar…An older man and woman were sitting next to me…Speaking of a young golfer competing against the golfer mentioned above, the woman said, “○○ has a bad attitude and a bad character. Everyone around me says so…”
As for the first encounter, I find myself thinking how much these women must have lived their lives without using their own minds.
How much of their lives must have passed without their being able to express themselves.
Whether they had lived without realizing even a fragment of the diversity that everyone possesses.
That must be why women around their fifties…the housewife demographic…address a mere eighteen-year-old golfer with “san.”
I do think the Korean Wave boom of earlier years had the beneficial effect of softening relations between Japan and South Korea, but…
The problem is that so many people are moving toward the kind of thinking displayed in the second encounter, which makes me ask, “What on earth kind of mind is that?”
Television, it is time for you to reflect seriously on yourselves and disperse to the regions…If you are mass media whose original mission is journalism, you should put an end to this exclusive reliance on exactly the same programs and the same bland wide-show format featuring trivial entertainers…
Your culpability has truly reached a point from which there is no easy escape…
For it goes without saying that political choices, too, are being made at the same level.
On the basis of appearance, or simply how television presents someone, people pass outrageous judgments on that person…