The New York Sophist

Today’s event was fantastic, and the reception was even better. Everything is going very well so far, and I have great respect for all of the Japanese debaters that I have met so far. Japanese debate is a very vibrant and exciting community to be a part of.

Tomorrow is one of the most anticipated events for me of the tour – a debate and a talk at a Japanese high school. I’m very curious and nervous at the same time. I hope to post some pictures and video from this very unique experience. I am pretty nervous mostly I think because I will be one of the first lecturers on the benefits and basics of debate these students have heard from. I hope to be engaging and entertaining at once.

More details to come tomorrow after it is over. Right now we have had a 14 hour day of travel, debate and activities, so it’s time to crash!

We arrived on one of the cleanest and smoothest flights I’ve ever taken, including the leaving of the plane which was super fast, polite and orderly. I was so stunned when the plane emptied out in about 5 to 8 minutes.

My bags are suddenly overweight, which was a problem at check in, but it has been sorted out. I need to figure out some way of losing 7 kilos of cargo between today and Sunday. Not sure what the difference could be, but I have room in my backpack, so that should take care of it.

Suggestion to future Japan debate exchange students – pack light! There’s a lot of walking involved with suitcases. I did not follow this advice and now I have too much to carry around.

I am sitting in the prep room right now observing and taking pictures as we prepare to debate the Kyusyu JDA chapter in parliamentary style with light evidence. I sound like I’m writing a menu with a statement like that but it’s accurate!

The debate will be before about 150 University students who are studying english and/or intercultural studies. The topic again is banning the use of cellphones by minors in Japan, but this time the American team is Government.

The style is extemporaneous but many features of policy debate will be present such as cross examination and prep time, as well as rebuttals. After the debate I’m talking for about an hour on the potential of online/second life debating for the future.

Through the tour many debaters have introduced other debaters to us by saying “He/She is my Junior.” This phrase refers to the dominance of student-run debate programs in Japan.

When a student reaches his or her senior year, he or she is expected to retire from debating and enter the tournament as a judge or coach of some kind. These seniors often take a junior team under their wing so to speak and help them out, give them advice and support them during the debate tournament. These are the people who are responsible for judging debates, and some other seniors run the tournament from the position of coordination and tabbing.

This system might be a bit scary to the professional coaching system of the U.S. But it seems to run very smoothly in Japan.

Furthermore, now that I’ve had a day or two to think about the evolution of policy debate in Japan, I think I have a handle on Topicality in a bit more detail.

Topicality is brought up by the negative, same as in U.S. Debating. But instead of it being an issue with the plan, it is more like a challenge to the Affirmative – basically saying, “Here’s our interpretation, now you come up with something more reasonable than what you just heard.” This might explain why some topicality violations are strings of definitions and are named “Topicality One” and “Topicality Two” by the speakers when the arguments are being road-mapped.

On counterplans – it seems that the counterplan can be about almost anything as long as it is non-topical. Competitiveness is mentioned, but most of the debate is about net benefits. I saw one negative team tie the T violation to the counterplan to prove that the CP was non-topical (It was non topical under the negative definition in the T violation, therefore it was non-topical). I tried to explain why this is a bad strategy to a couple of debaters, and they were pretty convinced that if the T violation was “reasonable” then the judge would have to accept the counterplan.

All of this would make a fascinating study if these changes could be historically mapped, but I doubt the policy debate community keeps much of an institutional memory (U.S. Debate barely has one for strategic developments, but at least we had the forensic journals). It would be more of an oral history project that would involve interviewing many former debaters and trying to piece together these interesting theoretical differences from U.S. Debate.

Last night we went to a very good Sushi restaurant here in Machida. This lovely piece of Tako should give you a sense of how awesome the place was.

This was the end to a brilliant day of shopping and hanging out in Akihabara for me for most of the day. The debaters spent the day looking for a brewery in Akusa, I think. Either way it was a nice send off to Tokyo, for we leave to go to Fukoka in the morning on a very early flight.

We will be hosted by Fyushu University for a demonstration debate, as well as a lecture on my new research interest of “disembodied debating,” or debating in online environments. There will be a number of students who are taking an argumentation course in attendence there, and I hope we can encourage them to start debating competitvely.

I look forward to seeing another part of Japan. Tokyo is amazing, but I want to be able to compare it to other parts of the country. Apparently the sushi is better because it is more fresh down there.

This afternoon is a visit to Tokai University for a parliamentary debate on the motion that minors should not be allowed to own mobile phones. We are government, and we are meeting for lunch to plan our strategy.

Yesterday we were invited as guests at the 35th East-West policy debate tournament in Tokyo, which was really cool. I recorded both a semifinal and a final round, but had to use the miniDV camera, so I will post these videos when I return to the U.S. at the end of the month. The East-West tournament is a championship tournament between debate teams from Western Japan and Eastern Japan, who have different styles. I was told that Western Japan focuses more on delivery style, while Eastern Japan doesn’t care much about that and focuses on the depth of the arguments. This was told to me by someone who is from the East, so I wonder what the Western Universities would say. The photo is of the East-West Champions for this year, from the University of Tokyo.

Japanese policy debate is very different from U.S. policy debate. One of the major differences is Topicality – the argument seems to be a number of definitions, and then the claim that the Affirmative is unreasonable in their definition. It seems to me that Topicality of the Affirmative case doesn’t matter that much, that the responses of the 2AC to the reasonability standard are the entire T debate. It departed in the final round pretty quickly from the plan and into the idea of what, in general, was the best definition of “government.”

After each round, the judges retire to the “decision room” where they sit and write out detailed comments on their ballots in silence. No decision is announced, and feedback is given privately after the debate to teams or individuals who ask for it. The ballot is about the size of a 11″ x 15″ sheet of paper, and there are two pages for comments. Many judges nearly fill these pages, from what I could see. Before the final round, the panel is announced and welcomed to a standing ovation. When the judges enter, they hand out typed judging philosophies to the teams debating.

During the debate, prep time is kept by a timer who colors in boxes on the chalkboard to represent the declining minutes.

We had a chance to address the assembled debaters as they waited for the 11 judge panel to make a decision in the final round. I explained some of the differences between what I had seen, and U.S. debating. The U.S. debaters also did so, and there were many good questions. Everyone was very friendly and interested in chatting with us.

When the final round was decided, one of the judges gave a decision which had a lot of tips in it for the debaters. One of the issues it seems they are focusing on is issue selection, as his comments were mostly about how the 2NR goes for every argument in the debate.

Many of the students are suspicious of critiques, and they wonder how such arguments could ever win a debate. This is due primarily, I think, to the fact that most debaters I talked to are hypo testers and whole resolution theorists. They feel that the debate is resolutionally focused above anything else. This does make the 2NC interesting as you might be suprised with a couple of new counterplans that are called “Mutually Exclusive” but seem to have resolutionality as the standard of competitiveness.

After the tournament it was off for drinking and food, including something described as “Japanese Pizza” which was flour dough with cabbage and some wonderful sauce in the middle of it. Our hosts were fantastic.

Today’s a day to recover a bit, and I must say that I do need it. I’m off to do some sightseeing and shopping for most of the day. Tomorrow is a debate and mini-workshop at Tokai University.