My border consciousness

I am very sorry for my late posting. I post my comment about my border consciousness here, since I can't express my learning & thinking  well in class,  because of my language level.

First of all, I thought it is very interested in facing my several contradictions when crossing borders. I have lots of contradictions in myself, between "traditional" and "progressive", "extroversive" and "introversive", "conservative"and "liberal"etc..

For example, I didn't like Japanese closed society for a long time, because there are a lot of male oriented hierarchies in Japan, there are disciples, but less liberties, exchanges. But my mother tongue is absolutely Japanese, I couldn't communicate with people fluently in another languages. That made me so upset, I felt inferiority because I didn't speak English well. Neither Spanish, not perfect at all (still now).  So I didn't like I was a Japanese neither especially when I was outside of Japan, I wanted to be born in different diverse country or English speaking countries. I just only looked at outside before. I yearned for diversities.

I was interested in Chicana/o cultures, because I had such a contradiction, I wanted to know about dualities, the way of border-crossing. In Japanese society, we have a word " half" for mixed race people, but, it is definitely different from Chicana/o, because still the definition of"half" is so limited, in addition, there are no effective affirmative actions in Japan, we still have a lot of prejudices to differences, unfortunately.

So before this class, nobody promoted me to think about my contradictions, including the field of education. I felt I was encouraged to think about more by facing my contradictions. It was so pleased to me, because it looked flexible way of thinking.  I couldn't read class textbooks all, but I got influenced by " Borderlands/La Frontera" a lot, for example, description of facing the wound, and trying to have a new hybrid consciousness.

 I think "border consciousness" comes from sense of loss of fixed concepts.I realized one of my borders when I was here on the day Japan suffered from huge earthquake, March 11, 2011. I was in Los Angeles at that time to do research. I saw on TV,  many houses were swallowed up by Tsunami wave. It was horrible. Some Japanese told me not to come back to Japan, because there was in danger of radioactive contamination by nuclear power plant accident. Some people in Japan told me like " everything is ok! " But, everyone said different things, including news. Unfortunately we can't see the degree of the air, sea pollution by radioactivities. That made me so scared, I was by myself here, I wasn't sure what really happened in Japan. Some news even said that so many airplanes to Japan stopped by the disaster. Everyone here told me like" How is your family? You're so lucky staying here," but, I didn't feel so. I was very anxious if I could go back or not, I was very worried about that I couldn't make sure what happened in Japan actually. I thought how unsure images of a country were, too. 

 Also when I safely went back to Japan, some people told me like " You're so lucky, because you were outside of Japan! "It was sarcastic.  I thought so many people inside/ outside, hardly understood my feeling, my anxiety. I was emotionally alone. So I wanted to share experiences honestly with other people, some people had same feeling like me, I was relieved. But sometimes Japanese people just forgot, or tried not to think about it anymore. I thought I need to be independent, because I really imagined that I lost my place to go back, it was very strong moment to me.When I saw sinking of Japan in March11, 2011, outside of Japan,  I somehow lost my sense of inside. Before, Japan was just relatively safe inside to me, but after that, I clearly realized there is no safe inside anymore. Actually, a lot of people lost their home by the Tsunami. I can't totally forget about it until now, because it is part of my story, too. Then I started to think again about "border"and "exchange", notion of "home"  or "network". Especially I started questioning of relationship between "home" and place. When I was writing my MD, I felt commons with chicana/o artists, because their expressions are close to my feelings.

The reason I do research about Chicano/Mexican mural arts is also from similar interests as those. I think cultural exchanges are definitely ways to cross borders, like Chicana/o or Mexican Muralists exchanged the techniques, aesthetic senses when they made murals. Immobile mural arts sometimes represent spiritual feelings of belonging to common-memories for a specific people beyond fixed national images, and mural can make own specific cultural spaces based-on specific local site, too.  I think those cultural products have possibilities to transcend so many people's anxieties in borderlands.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to everyone in the class.  Thank you so much for sharing your ideas with me, I am lucky to listen to all of your ideas in the class. It is very fruitful to think about my borders more.  In addition, thank you for cooperation with my questionnaire, too. I will surely reflect your answers on my studies with respect.  I am looking forward to listening to your last discussion, too.