 |
|
||||||||
The great poster conflict
The madang executive committee had made a tactical decision to move the event from year to year between four different school locations in Higashi-kujo. The reasons given included a desire to include as many different neighborhoods as possible. But also this tactic served to A) minimize the damage if one school refuses to cooperate, and B) minimize the "negative" impact of the event (noise, crowds, etc.).
The school and the PTA had given approvals which the Madang organizing committee thought were sufficient to secure their cooperation. However the PTA's cooperation was about to be withdrawn because of a complaint from a neighborhood association. Reading from this letter and giving his own input, the exasperated committee member told the group what had to be done if, indeed, the madang was to happen.“There is the matter of the mutual agreement with the [school precinct] self-government alliance society (representatives of the 23 chounaikai organizations in the school's district). This brings up an issue we need to reflect on. [In this district] there are not so many persons who want to be involved with the Higashi-kujo madang, and so this is really the reason why requests for cooperation were so very difficult."
Click below to view poster:"And so we need to think about how we approach [this area]. There are various ways to go: we need introductions to the neighborhood associations, [we need access to] their bulletin boards, although I think we do not need to get approval through the circular notice system (kairanban)."
As this was only the second year of the event, the school district where the Madang would be held had not, previously, been asked to "cooperate" for the purpose of the event. This particular district, which contains some of the older, more established neighborhoods in Higashi-kujo (i.e., pre-War), turned out to be less cooperative than the previous year’s district.
“[Here's what happened this year:] I had to first get an introduction to the self-government association (jichirengoukai). There I was given a list of the (23) neighborhood association presidents. Talking to them [all] would have taken forever. [In the middle of this,] the school's PTA held an election, and some of the self-government association officers were also newly elected. To some extent, [approval seemed possible] when, in talks with the president of the self-government association, he said “the list [of officers] will go along.”
The officers of these groups, which are elected by executive committees (no need for a general vote) have the authority to speak for the group, and can make decisions that do not involve further discussion at other levels. These decisions are simply passed along to the chounaikai through the circular memo system. In this case, the association’s president requested that a letter requesting cooperation be sent to every neighborhood association.
"For this reason, because the association's president requested this, and although there remained complex problems, I distributed this document (a request for cooperation) on behalf of the [Madang] executive committee. So the executive committee sent each neighborhood organization president this official document.”
The question of ethnic prejudice against Koreans is not one that can easily be dismissed, but it also is difficult to judge, as neighborhood associations have no reason to cooperate with any group outside of the usual city-led institutions. The Madang is the only other "game" in town.
“Now this area think in many ways, but it has some old sectors (lit. “old soil”), and in that sense we didn't know how conservative it was. Well, to tell you the truth, the objections came back by the dozens! Of course, there is the problem of the self-government association [itself], but I don't know just how much racial discrimination [played a role]. ...“
“They are saying that it is unprecedented to put out a poster that [advertises] a connection with the self-government association, a connection with the PTA, and a connection with the [regional city] educational committee, without having circulated this on neighborhood bulletin boards/by circular notice. But really, every neighborhood association is different.
The focus of the complaints involved the use of the flier to solicit cooperation with the fund-raising drive (kampa="campaign") for the madang. Because the PTA is listed on the front, they argued, people may think they are donating to the PTA, and this would have a negative impact on the PTA’s own "red-feather" (community-chest) fund drive. Since the address of the Post-Office account clearly stated it was for the Madang, this argument seemed weak at best.
[Some say we need to] delete the back side [of the poster], and others [say] to delete the whole thing. And then is seems there is something about internal bylaws [of the self-government association]. One of the neighborhood association presidents [suggests] since 'The campaign request has no connection with the self-government association nor with the PTA' ... and then something about 'community-chest fund-raising,' etc., which the self-government association does on its own, therefore, a promise of cooperation is not a request for fund-raising, we just cross out the one sentence [the request for funds], and make that [request] some other time.”
“With this suggestion of the neighborhood association president, a new mutual agreement (the agreement that the committee that can release the school grounds had asked for) was written which includes this suggestion, and which the I promised that the Higashi-kujo Madang would conform to, and which also needed the support of the PTA.”
The tactic here is the take note of the position and number of persons who can say "no" to the event. There are at least five of these, and none of them have anything to do with the event except approval or denial: the president of the PTA, the president of the self-government association of the school district, the City’s education committee, the school’s principal, and the committee in charge of releasing the school grounds for non-school purposes. Because the Madang organizers feel they have the political clout (in terms of their ability to summon up a public outcry) to avoid a denial by the City, it is the other groups, in particular the PTA, that are most worrisome.
“Because the city education committee and the principal who has jurisdiction makes this condition that [we] obtain the name and the support of the PTA, the president of the PTA [also] has ex post facto approval [of the Higashi-kujo Madang].”
“So I went there, and he understood that it [the cooperation] was in name only, and nothing else except that. Since I have been a participant in the PTA I can tell you that the promise of cooperation is not [automatic], and that we cannot but think that some other time the request for cooperation can fail. The problem is, when a conservative person is also the officer of the PTA, and is, in public, connected to established groups: even though there is no problem, he might just say “I want you to stop everything.”
The result of this decision to not even mention the idea of a kampa (fundraising campaign) on the flier meant that all of the already printed fliers had to be altered. And so, with black markers the thirty (or so) Madang organizers at the meeting set about blacking out the sentence that gave the account where funds could be contributed to the Higashi-kujo Madang.
 |
 |
 |
 |
