MEDAMA SENSEI:
A CLOSER LOOK AT MIKI DEZAKI Amelia Hagen 8
In February, former JET Miki Dezaki, posted a controversial video titled, ‘Racism in Japan,’ which opened a giant ‘can of worms’ surrounding racism and discrimination in Japan. Across Facebook and Twitter, JETs praised his courage and voiced their support. AJET Connect recently sat down with Miki to get the 411 on his recent YouTube attention and his reflections on this hot topic.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me and share your thoughts with the greater JET community. When and where were you previously a JET? From 2007 to 2012. I was a JET in Yamanashi for three years and then transferred to Itoman in Okinawa for two years. What have you been up to since finishing your time on the JET Programme? I am planning on becoming a Buddhist monk in a forest monastery. Your Medama Sensei YouTube videos, ‘Sh*t Japanese Students Say in Japan’ and ‘Sh*t Japanese Girls Say,’ were very popular within the JET community. What inspired you to create these? Two things inspired me. First, I bet my friend that I could make a video go viral. I love videos and editing in general and thought I could do a good job. I laugh so much at what my students say and do, and I knew it just wasn’t just my school. Second, making the comedy video was the best way to get viewers. I made the YouTube channel so that I could later approach serious issues like discrimination in Japan. Based on a discrimination-themed lesson you did last summer and posted in February, your ‘Racism in Japan’ video instantly drew controversy. Did you originally plan to post this on YouTube? When I did the lesson, I had no idea. To create the video, I knew I had to be very sensitive on the subject. I didn’t get the idea until I came back to America and thought about it for four to five months. The class and the video are two very different things. The video centers around the examples I gave of racism while I actually only talk about the examples for three minutes out of the 50 minute class. The class was more about how to recognize discrimination within yourself, society, and culture and how to get rid of it.
Can you discuss your process for creating this lesson in the first place? I showed them the video, ‘Eye of the Storm, in which a teacher does an experiment in an elementary school class to teach that discrimination is wrong. I then asked them to relate to this as Okinawans, explained how they’re grandparents went through the same thing, and described how discriminatory thinking develops. I showed clips of T.V. shows and news of how these biases are formed. I talked about discrimination in general, and even went into bullying in Japan. How did you go about planning/preparing with fellow Japanese Teachers of English? I already had quite a bit of respect from my JTEs and they let me do anything I wanted. I proposed the idea and they said, ‘Let’s try it.’ After a highly successful initial lesson, it spread and I taught this lesson to over 1,000 students. How did you choose examples for the class and the video? Many people said I should use Ainu examples but I didn’t want to use examples people already knew. I wanted to bring the issue closer to my students. I used the Okinawa example to emphasize that they were discriminated against, too.