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-- An Entirely New World of Our "E-Bazaar" -- -- To the Japanese version -- My family and I have lived in the United States for over 30 years from 1959 through the early 1980s before coming back to Japan , during which time a remarkable change took place in the world which later came to be called "globalization" of human life in general. As a result, our life became progressively "internationalized," growing so much richer in diversity and cross-border in scope. And, in the same process, international division of labor became the prime order of the day given the compelling forces of global market economy. The process of globalization, however, did not take place without accompanying problems and unhappy people, one of which was the sad fact that it uprooted and so often destroyed the cultural heritage of many a peoples around the world, especially the so-called minorities. In North America, this process became patently evident. When one went into an Indian gift shop as a tourist, one found much of the items on sale were actually made in foreign countries. "Made in China, Korea and Taiwan" became the order of the day. They were made commercially for profit by those who knew little or nothing about the cultural heritages of the North American Indians.
We at the Virtual Foundation Japan, however, have
come a long way and, at the midpoint of 2002, stand ready to roll out an
ambitious international project in the Asia-Pacific region called "Cultural
Exchange for Children and Youth, which prominelty include a site named "E-Bazaar"
connecting the young peoples, craftpeople and artists living in the remote
rural areas with their counterparts in large urban centers in Japan and
the United States. We intend to keep the entire process of cultural and material
exchange visible on the Internet in absolutely transparency. By doing this, we can be sure for instance, if a young man living in downtown Tokyo became acquainted with a young Nepali lady artist who paints thangkas in her own native village in the valley of the Himalayan foothills, he knows who the artist is, where she lives, what she looks like, and how she painted the thangka. Above all, all the pictures and the personal messages exchanged via Satellite/Internet e-mail communication will become treasure to show if he ends up buying her artwork. In addition, who knows, he got a lady friend in Nepal and he might actually visit her in person one of these days by joining an ecotour in Nepal. E-Mail: yokamoto@sbpark.com
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Nepal Project |