“Hello, everyone. Today, I will talk about the international understanding of Islam.” With students filling up the auditorium, Mr. Akira Ikegami greeted and started his story with their applause.
This was a special edition of the Global Career course. We invited Mr. Akira Ikegami, a journalist and professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology Liberal Arts Center. All students from 9th to 12th grade participated.
Mr. Ikegami is a well-known and popular active journalist and newscaster. He is a very descriptive commentator and well known for this by a wide range of people. With the excitement of facing a famous television personality, the students seemed very interested and concentrated on his easy-to-understand story.
He started the lecture by saying, in the near future, Islam is expected to have the most followers out of any religion in the world; it will be even larger than Christianity. That is why he wanted to tell the students what Islam is and how it should be respected.
“By comparing three religions, you can easily understand Islam.” He listed some keywords on a whiteboard explained about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam which all believe in the same God.
Each religion’s origin, historical background, and key moments were explained showing a rich knowledge and very clear words that did not make the subject hard to understand. Many students were passionately taking notes as they listened to Mr. Ikegami’s words.
He also spoke about his experiences that made him think about “how he, himself should react as a Japanese person.” He highlighted a case where his Muslim acquaintance criticized how Japanese people celebrate Christmas not because of religion but as an entertainment and business. Another one was be a story about how many Japanese not following or believing in any specific religion often they have hard time living in other countries.
The high point of his lecture was a message to the students.
“By going to a shrine to pray for success, celebrating Christmas, and having a funeral in a temple… Japanese people can seem a little strange from the outside world. However, the world also needs to accept and respect the different religions and values as Japanese people often do, since there are wars caused by religious problems between countries around the world. In order to be able to respect them, please learn about each religion and country.”
During the Q&A time after the lecture, there were so many students who had their hands up that there was not enough time to answer all of them. Mr. Ikegami answered each question passionately which helped the students have a deeper understanding.
To the question, “Can a person, as a human being, determine what ‘good behavior’ can be as the basis of a religion?” Mr. Ikegami shouted out, “That’s a very good question!” The auditorium heated up as many students who felt sympathetic to the question applauded.
Mr. Ikegami’s story had a real impact on the students’ intellectual curiosity. This was furthered by his unbiased point of view as a journalist, and passionately talking about his own experiences of things he had seen around the world. Furthermore, this special lecture was filled with individual lessons about how each one of us can act as a Japanese person in the world.
