Contributing to world peace through piano classes
Today, I forgot that my student was coming 30 minutes earlier than usual, and when he arrived, I was watching this video sent by an Israeli friend living in the US. https://m.facebook.com/.../heres-the.../2883405085233615/
Every time I talk with her, I am deeply moved by her patriotism and her passionate longing to return to Israel, even in the current situation.
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When I heard about the situation in Israel, I became aware of how lucky I am to live in Japan, a peaceful country with an abundance of water, not surrounded by enemies, and in a tense situation where we must constantly defend ourselves against rocket attacks and other threats.
Recently, I've been interested in the theory of the common ancestry of the Japanese and Jews.
I could easily imagine why foreign tribes such as Xu Fu and the Hata clan decided to assimilate/ naturalize peacefully in Japan instead of trying to take her over. How peaceful & rich in soils and nature, Japan appeared to the desert people who came from a dry place where people were always fighting over water resources and land pieces, killing each other.
I read people desperately sought a place in order to escape from persecution. They set on a long ~journey, relying on faint information that there was a peaceful, rich-in-soil country in the Far East where people were very gentle and living happily. In a country where castles could be built within the natural terrain without the need for walls to surround it, coexistence was possible without having to fight over the soil or water. The Climate was lenient. Abundant Resources from the sea and resources from the mountains sustained ordinary people to survive. Japan must look like a paradise.
So when the student came in, I gave him ”HATIKVAH” as a sight-reading assignment for the lesson, this sensitive second-grader really liked this beautiful piece musically, and he sight-read it with the right hand, and I played with the left-hand part, but he wanted to play it over and over again, so I asked him whether he knew Israel. He said he did not know, so I explained to him what a small and new country Israel was and how the country was surrounded by hostility so that Israeli people always had to defend themselves and fight against their neighboring countries. I also told how ardently Jewish people love their country and long to be back in the land. This song was Israel's national anthem, expressing the longing and love for the country.
It turned out he knew little about Israel, but he knew the national anthem, and this is what he told me.
"In China, everyone sings the national anthem every morning at school, from kindergarten through elementary school to university, but in Japan, it is a school song. It's completely different. The Chinese national anthem is a song that says that China has been ruled by seven countries in its history but that it will never be ruled again and that it will be an independent nation that can protect its own country! That's what he told me.
Japan has never been subjugated or enslaved, but it did suffer from the atomic bomb and was a vassal state and brainwashed after World War II. People say we are naive, but I am sure people can envy the peace in Japan.
My Chinese student didn't have anything bad to say about Taiwan, he said that there were two great leaders, and people followed each of them, which caused the country to split in two...
I stopped the conversation here because we were running out of time for piano, but I hope that this child will grow up to be an adult who finds the Hatikvah beautiful and who can understand the feelings of the Israeli people and work for a world without war.
So this is my little ambition that my piano lessons can also contribute to world peace.
This student of mine knows a lot about history even though he's only in second grade. That's impressive!