Haruki Nonaka, Part 1

Learn about the world and the value of life through a study tour

Walking in the river in the rainforest; Haruki Nonaka is to the right. (At the village of Rumah Panjing in Sarawak, on July 26)

Haruki Nonaka

Born in Osaka in 1953. He lived in Kure from the time he was a young child to the time he graduated from high school. After completing his studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Sophia University, he moved to Brazil in 1978. He studied theology and worked as a priest in Catholic churches in Rio de Janeiro and Para. He returned to Japan in 1991. He now works as a teacher of social studies at Hiroshima Nagisa Junior High and High School. In such classes as "Human Beings," "International Life," "Global Learning," and "Global Citizens," his workshops and lectures employ interactive learning methods.

Hiroshima Nagisa Junior High and High School, where I work, conducts a study tour to a village of Iban people who live in the rainforest in Sarawak (on the island of Borneo) in Malaysia. The second-year students in our high school have visited the village each year since 1998.

Two months after this year's tour, the participants gathered one day in October. I proposed to the 11 participants sitting around the table: "Let's try describing the positive points of the tour concisely." The students all wrote down individual words and short sentences and placed them on the table.

They wrote such things as: "I changed"; "The trip gave me power"; "I learned that the world is a big place"; "I've come to like the things around me"; "I returned to a wild side of life"; and "I became more healthy." One by one, each student talked about the positive aspects of the trip. I felt they all had matured a great deal and I felt very happy about that.

During the tour, the students stayed in a home called a "longhouse," which is a structure about 100 meters long and built up off the ground.

Some 20 families live together in the longhouse. There is a long hallway from one end of the building to the other end. In this hallway people perform work, such as making rugs and baskets, and hold meetings, ceremonies, and parties. Children play in the hallway and mothers gather to chat; others can be found there napping. The villagers all live together in one longhouse.

Our high school students stay in the longhouse for five days with Iban families. The students live with a family in pairs, but they are free to go in and out of any family's room. For meal times, the students are invited by many families, so some students eat supper with one family and then they eat supper again with another family. The Iban families live together like one large family. They raise the children as a community and treat them all the same.

During our stay, an accident occurred. The oil in one family's electric generator caught fire. Instantly the Iban people rushed to the scene, carrying the fire extinguishers that sit in front of the entrances to their rooms, and they quickly extinguished the fire. We had a close-up look at their sense of unity.

The students are shocked at the sight of the Iban people cooking chicken and pork. When they see a chicken being killed, its feathers plucked, and then hacked into pieces, some students burst into tears. At first, the students perceive it as cruel, but they come to realize that someone must perform this work in Japan, too. They discover that we are able to sustain our own lives by taking the lives of these animals. They gain a deeper sense of the "life" around them and they come to appreciate the meals they eat with fuller hearts.

The students grasp that the Iban people are able to live by being surrounded by the riches of nature. At the same time, though, they encounter the fact that the forest is being cut down and the rivers are growing contaminated as a consequence of producing wood and palm oil for people in Japan. That reality strikes the students as sad. As a result, they feel inspired to do something for their new friends, the Iban people, to help protect their way of life.

After I graduated from my university, I moved to Brazil and I lived there for 12 years. Brazil has a very different culture, society, and economic system compared to Japan. My time in Brazil changed my life and made me more mature. Once I started working as a teacher of junior high and high school students, I hoped I could help the children to become more aware of the world and reflect on the positive aspects of their own lives. I wanted them to meet other people and encounter new experiences, and the idea of the study tour in Sarawak was born from these hopes.