Difference between other Asian countries and Japan (2) – Education -

( The U.S. in 1998 )

There was an Indian woman in my TOEFL class who was a medical doctor and was preparing to enter graduate school at the University of Southern California. One day in class she asked, “What is the Renaissance?” after noticing it in a practice book for the TOEFL. It was unbelievable to learn that even highly educated people in India didn’t know of the Renaissance. In Japan, we study it as part of a compulsory education. Everyone knows about it. That day upon returning home, I asked some Taiwanese friends about it. None but Peter knew about the Renaissance. I was shocked. It was the most surprising thing I learned during my time in the United States. Until then, I’d thought that highly educated people learned about Western culture no matter what country they were from. I thought Western culture was universally understood.

I was taught at a junior high school that many modern thoughts and technologies came from the West. Still now, many school textbooks have the same description as it is accepted as historical fact in Japan. Because of this, I’d always felt that the West was superior to other cultures. But ultimately I warmed to the idea that Western culture could be regarded as a culture from a small corner of the earth. Although the culture has spread throughout the world, the actual area of Europe, where Western culture originates, is less than 5% of the gross area of all land on the earth. I began to see different cultures as equal, but differing.