Friendship -the fourth assignment-

Among what is written in the Chapter 6 and what we talked in class discussion, the topic of "ijime" (bullying) seemed most interesting since it is a huge problem in Japan at this moment. In this year, some junior high and senior high students killed themselves leaving letters in which they confessed that they had been suffering from bullying at schools. The news shocked us terribly; you could see the news in every news papers and TV news.

I think that we can consider ijime as a result of distorted friendship in a way and some ideas can be found in the Chapter 6 for it is talking about friendship. For example, White points out how some Japanese teenagers consider their personalities bright(akarui) or dark（kurai). Although she doesn't mentions bullying particularly related to this topic, even this kind of tendency could provoke kids into bullying someone. The kurai kids tend to be a target of bullying for their quiet or not outgoing nature, and in that case, bullying get really serious since these kids often do not have many friends as White claims in the book.

Although I'm not sure if the kids in the news were actually kurai kids at schools or not, I think not having sincere friends might have been one of the major factors in this tragedy indeed. Even if one is suffering from bullying, the situation doesn't get too serious if he has someone who cares about him whether it is his parent, teacher or friend. However, since more parents has come to pay less attention to their kids and teachers are often interested only in students' academic scores, friends at schools tend to be the only hopes for the kids who is bullied.

So, I think it is important for kids to have as many friends as they can. Those friends don't necessarily need to be "best friends", they just need to have different personalities and ways of thinking so that in case bullying happens, one can escape to another group or friend instead of hanging out with the kids who are bullying you. Since it is common for Japanese kids to form one group with limited friends and they always hang out with the group, it is often difficult for one to ask for help when bullying happens inside the group. He would have no one to talk to and nowhere to escape. In order to avoid these kind of cases, Japanese teenagers should take part in many activities and get to know with many people so that they will have more friends who are reliable in case.