(Tokyo Area, Japan; Click for inspection.)International Comparison and Difference
China welcomes Japan's new Prime Minister Mr. Yukio Hatoyama.
It is so, since the Chinese Communist Party seems to regard Mr. Yukio Hatoyama as a more acceptable politician than new DPJ Secretary-General Mr. Ichiro Ozawa well known as pro-China in Japan since the era of P.M. Kakuei Tanaka in early 1970's.
After having established the Democratic Party of Japan in 1996, Mr. Hatoyama visited China as head of the DPJ to see then Chinese President Mr. Jiang Zemin.
In those years Mr. Ichiro Ozawa was not a member of the DPJ, but Mr. Naoto Kan, another veteran leader of the DPJ, has been more pro-China, visiting China in 1984, 1987, 1999, and 2003.
After very veteran Mr. Ozawa joined the DPJ in 2003 and was elected as head of the DPJ in 2006 (in charge till this May), the three veteran leaders of the DPJ, Mr. Ozawa, Mr. Hatoyama, and Mr. Kan, together flew to Beijing to be welcomed by Chinese President Mr. Hu Jintao.
(http://j.people.com.cn/94474/6746277.html)
Japan has had five very conservative prime ministers in a series from the Liberal Democratic Party: Mr. Yoshiro Mori, Mr. Junichiro Koizumi, Mr. Shinzo Abe, Mr. Yasuo Fukuda, and Mr. Taro Aso all of whom China does not show affection for as much as it does for DPJ Mr. Ozawa, Mr. Hatoyama, and Mr. Kan.
(Former Prime Minister Mr. Yasuo Fukuda was the most China-friendly prime minister among the five very conservative and pro-American PMs from the LDP.)
Now, the LDP and incumbent (till tomorrow) Prime Minister Mr. Aso have phenomenally lost in the 8/30/2009 general election; the most popular LDP leader Mr. Koizumi (an old friend of Mr. George W. Bush) retired on the election passing his seat in the Lower House to his son; and their new president is yet to be decided.
If the era of the conservative LDP has gone, the liberal DPJ might be reasonably expected by Chinese leaders to open a new era for Japan and China.
Of course, no Japanese voters expect the DPJ to adopt an anti-American policy, since so many Japanese businesses and business persons are engaged in their business in America.
SECTION I: Difference between Japan and Europe
When the Russian Revolution was triggered in 1905, it is said that those who could not read and write accounted for 80% of all the Russians.
India was a closed world of caste or class segregation, so that we cannot expect a majority of the Indian people could read and write before its independence from the U.K. after WWII.
In China, where farmers were never educated well traditionally by dominant classes, those who could not read and write accounted for 85% when the Cultural Revolution was set off and raged around 1970.
(Chinese characters are ten times more difficult to learn than the alphabet, namely A, B, C, etc.)
Yet, in France, those who could read and write at least their names (on a marriage certificate) accounted for 55% for men and 35% for women around 1820; yet the actual literacy rate is considered to be 33% or so in France, the most sophisticated nation in Europe, around the 19th century.
As for Japan, during the Tokugawa samurai era, from the 17th century to the 19th century, 50% of boys and 15% of girls went to elementary school mostly set in temples of villages and towns all over Japan.
(http://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~french/source/y.html#yomikaki)
More specifically, it is estimated that in the 18th century, only 10% of Parisians and 20% of Londoners could read and write, while 70% of residents in Tokyo (then called Edo with one million population around 1800) could read and write.
(http://ameblo.jp/campanera/entry-10054758697.html)
Of course, 100% of samurais could read and write.
The key to this higher literacy rate in Japan hundreds years ago or in the samurai dominance era lies in their way of administration to govern farmers and villagers.
Samurais did not live in villages with or near farmers. Instead, they lived in a town or a city built around a castle with or near craftsmen and merchants.
European landlords and noblemen lived in villages near farmers, though their residences were big stone castles overlooking villages so as to monitor farmers. If children of farmers had wanted to learn reading and writing, they had to enter a Christian monastery. European landlords and noblemen tried to keep farmers illiterate for easy control.
But, in Japan, samurais did not adopt the European style of direct control of farmers. Accordingly, farmers and their leaders should read, write, and calculate any tax-related official documents to be submitted to, or received from, samurai landlords or officials who occasionally came to a village to collect straw rice bags and so on as tax referring to land ledgers and family registrations.
And in every village in Japan from hundreds of years before, there was a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine whose priests and monks could read and write. Samurais partly entrusted those religious leaders with monitoring of villagers. And those priests and monks were respected by farmers through their teaching them how to read and write.
It should be also noted that 90% of the Japanese population was farmers in the samurai era or before 1868.
SECTION II: American Education
(To be continued...)
(Quel monde merveilleux dans lequel nous vivons! It is so, since drug crimes are being eliminated in the TV entertainment sector of Japan, aren't they, dear?
http://www.alpha-net.ne.jp/users2/thwin/pops/p021.htm )
Mat 9:14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?
Mat 9:15 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.