Equal Opportunity

Today I want to talk about the concept of equal opportunity. This applies both to what I have been learning in school and what I have been doing. Article 14 of the Japanese constitution states that all people are equal under the law. This is almost exactly the same as the US constitution’s 14th amendment. 14 – 14. A coincidence? My teacher doesn’t seem to think so. The Japanese like to copy everything else from Americans, why not the constitution? However, the Japanese concept of equal isn’t quite equal to the US’s. For example, there is a Japanese statute that says the punishment for killing a family member is greater than it is for killing a stranger. Clearly this promotes family love. This law was found unconstitutional under the 14th amendment – I mean article. Last week there was another decision based on equal opportunity. Illegitimate children of Japanese fathers and foreign mothers were not allowed Japanese nationality unless the father recognized paternity before birth or married the mother. So, there were tons of Japanese kids running around with only Philippino nationality. “Change in society” was noted as a reason for this violating the constitution. This was only the 8th time in the current constitution’s history that a law was determined unconstitutional. (8 is a lot compared with the old constitution by which everything the Emperor did was automatically constitutional).

As far as my practicing equal opportunity: just because I’m in Japan, doesn’t mean I have to eat Japanese food. I said I was going to put my foot down and demand some Japanese curry! I got curry all right; I went to an Indian restaurant for lunch. Food eaten in Japan so far: German, Italian, Indian. But…it was pretty fantastic! The nan was bigger than my head and the aloo gobi and pumpkin chicken curry were as Japanese as Indian food gets.