The New York Sophist

Our debate against Tokai University was very good, and it was one of the few in a pure parliamentary style. The motion was to ban the ownership of cellphones by minors in Japan. The debaters were very skilled, one being from Taiwan and able to speak several languages, and the other a very brilliant law student who had quite a nice WUDC style to his speech. The speech times were shortened, so there was not a lot of time for vigorous POIs, but that was ok as the arguments were of high quality. It was a very good debate and I think thee students who were watching learned a good deal about the format and the issue.

Parliamentary debate, it was explained to me, is growing in popularity, but it is not a part of JDA (The Japanese Debate Association). Since it is purely up to students to arrange practice, team logistics, and tournaments, the growth of parliamentary debate in Japan does not match its popularity. I was happy to see points of information and more typical parliamentary structure in the debate.

Tokai University debate is under the direction of one of the most dedicated, organized and on-top-of-it guys I know – Isao Ayabe. He is amazing. Not only does he happily teach more classes than anyone I know, he also works long hours trying to promote debate in Japan. He hosts club meetings, and other events (tonight we are going to his Toastmaster’s event to help teach debate there) and travels quite a bit doing the hard work of debate promotion. He is always happy, never tired, and is always genuinely glad to discuss debate with anyone. He’s pictured above on the right, two down from where I am (I’m the blonde in case you don’t know).

Tokai took us out to a fantastic Japanese dinner with wonderful drinks. One or two of the students chatted with me about the U.S., including one student who wanted to know all about jazz bars, what they are like, who goes to them, and how many they are. He thought they sounded “romantic” and wanted to go.

It was a great night, followed by a too early flight to Fukoka. So yes, I’m posting out of order. Oops!

Getting back to my roots here – just read a good, if older, post about academic blogging. Some of the concerns in that article mirror the great concerns raised by Gordon Mitchell in his fantastic recent post on the 3NR blog.

Why do I blog? It’s clearly for me to think through questions, but often times it is for me to imagine an audience and write for them, like a journal or diary I guess. It also, hopefully, will spur some conversation or thought among those who happen across it. But mostly it’s for me to share my recent thoughts with those who read this. Hopefully they might make a comment.

But recently it has been historical in nature, documenting the American debate exchange, which is super-fun!

Our stop at Kitakyushu University was amazing for a couple of reasons. Of course we had amazing hosts, food, drink and an interesting debate, but additionally this was one of the most organized, punctual and well planned student run debate clubs that I have encountered. In this photo, the American debaters Chris and Tony are given a tour of the club room at Kitakyushu by one of our hosts, and our opponent for the debate, who goes by the name “Pan.” We were treated to a nice suprise when we were shown the debate room, which brought nice continuity to the tour:

No it’s not the sexy man picture. Look again. It’s an American flag, signed by members of the 2007 Debate Exchange Tour. It was cool to see it displayed so proudly by the debate club.

After this tour, we were treated to some snacks and preparation time, then the debate started. Some of Pan’s family came to watch the debate, which I thought was really nice. They drove nearly 5 hours to come see the debate, which shows how much they care about his endeavors. Here is a photo we took just before the debate of Pan, his partner who went by the name “Jimmy,” (a nickname he picked up in Australia while studying there) and the Americans:

We look so happy to be about to debate!

After the debate, we went to a fantastic party (nomehotai? I hope I spelled that right, but I have some trouble learning this great language). Here is the collected team having a great time, and enjoying what was definitely a successful debate well planned and excecuted by these great students.

Thanks to everyone who made this fantastic day possible! Such a blast.

Anything I say about the quality of the students that I have had the chance to meet, talk to, and watch debate during the tour will be lacking. I have had such a great combination of experiences – fun and exciting combined with intellectual stimulation – that it is hard to express my full appreciation for the students who hosted us and made it possible. But I’m going to try to detail the events as best I can.

First is Kyushu University in Fukuoka, they have an amazingly beautiful campus as seen here:

It’s a totally new campus, so everything was pristine. The debate was about banning mobile phones from those who are minors, and was attended by about 100 students. I gave a talk about the Second Life Debate and recieved a good number of criticisms and questions. Then we had an amazing reception with many delicious foods – I really enjoyed a kind of beef stew served over rice with okra. Simple flavors, but very delicious.

The students were very well organized, and very excited about the debate:

The girl on the right kept trying to convince me that I should eat natto, which is a sort of fermented soybean dish usually eaten for breakfast or maybe lunch. I haven’t become brave enough to do it yet, although I almost did this morning.

Kyushu University was a great stop on the tour, we were treated as honored guests, given a great debate, and hosted with a fabulous reception by some really outstanding debate students!

One of the best things about this stop was meeting Prof. Inoue, who really took a great interest in my studies and work, and we had a great conversation or 2 about University life. One of the most interesting stories he told me was how he judged a debate round alongside Charles Willard once. Amazing! He also printed for me a story about how Musashi used to live in Fukuoka City. He really took a personal interest in hosting us, and also handed us off very nicely to our next hosts.

Thank you Kyushu University!

I have only about 10 days left on the tour, and I must say it doesn’t seem like I’ve been in Japan that long. Of course, by now I am very anxious to get home to my regularly scheduled life, but at the same time I feel like I just arrived.

The tour is an exceptional experience, no doubt. I think that the key part that keeps it all together is the generosity and care of the host schools and host debaters. Everyone goes out of their way to make sure that we are entertained, fed and housed beyond anything we could have expected.

The most interesting element to me has been insight into how Japanese debate operates. They are still very committed to policy debate, but there are a few parliamentary teams here and there popping up. The future for Japan I think will have more and more parliamentary teams, but policy debate is so well supported at the student level that transition to parliamentary debate in total would be very difficult. The built in retirement system will see to it that debate continues uninterrupted at the student run level. The wildcards are the few programs that are directed by faculty. They might choose parliamentary debate, but I doubt it. The reason is that there are many more tournaments in the policy style (which they call academic debate). Nearly 4 or 5 to 1 in some areas, so if you want to teach debate, you simply must do policy debate to get a good number of tournament experiences.

I don’t have a preference myself, although Japanese policy debate really should be called and studied under the name “academic debate” because it is a fully different form. The evolution of Japanese debate took a very different turn at some point and developed its own theory and patterns of argument, as you can see from my earlier posts. I think that coming here with the expectation that the debate cultures are the same or even operate under the same limits and rules is not smart. Most debate students, for example, feel that a topical counterplan is equivalent to conceding the round.

I think it would make a fascinating study.

I am right now in the hotel lobby waiting on our ride to the university for another debate on the topic of equal pay for equal work. Tonight we fly to Tokyo and are there for a couple of days. I hope to be able to post some more pictures and give a great report on my next most anticipated stop on the tour – conducting a debate workshop for Toastmasters club members in Tokyo!!