Click Subregion #2 for a more detailed map Teachers Without Borders ＡＴＪ（Alter Trade Japan, Inc.） VITA （Volunteers in Technical Assistance) Daichi Consumer Group (Daichiwo Mamoru Kai) Friends of Earth Japan Virtual Foundation ＵＳＡ Virtual Foundation Japan Individual Activist Citizens & Groups Okamoto International Affairs Research Institute administers and maintain this web site for the Virtual Foundation Japa For the Japanese students who are joining their U.S. and Afghan counterparts in this unique exchange program sponsored by the Teachers Without Borders (TWB) of Mercer Island, Washington, U.S.A., we at OIARI present this introductory web page to point out some of the salient historical ties between Japan and Afghanistan International Exchange Website Where People Can See and Talk to Each Other LIVE is Just Opening the Door for You Sometime During April, 2005 As many as eight persons, or groups, can participate simultaneously, and, if necessary, with the help of interpreters standing by around the world, with satellite connection planned for remote communities during the 2005-2006 period to achieve a truly ubiquitous network.  Red rice once harvested during Japan's Jomon period can still be seen in South China's mountainous regions and the Himalayan foothills OUR OPENING MESSAGE The time has come for all Japanese NGO, citizens' groups and individuals to take an active part in a direct and on-line dialogue with their counterparts in all Asia and the West without language barriers.  During April 2005, we are launching with TWB a joint Afghan exchange project with a Japanese high school participating as a new stakeholder from Northeast Asia. After a few years' delay due to some unexpected venture business setbacks, we have finally managed to launch this spring the Phase One of our grand design of the "Pan-Asia Crescent Cultural Exchange" project.  And, what comes first is this Afghan exchange program to be started during April, 2005. In India and further west, long rice is commonly grown in dry fields without irrigation like Japan's This subregion does have a profoundly significant tie with the birth of the ancient Japan, in fact long before its birth as an ancient state. The first picture above shows the red rice which was once grown in the Jomon Japan and is still grown in dry fields in this subregion together with other millets. But, the far more intensive and productive irrigated wet-paddy rice culture was born along the lower Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) several thousand years ago, and gradually weeded out red rice, particularly in Japan after it reached the country's western plains several centuries BC .  As shown in the chart below, there are many more significant aspects to the prehistoric eastward spread of plant life from Central Asia to Japan, clearly pointing to the the traceable northern and southern routes. Judging from this, there is an obvious possibility even today of Japan and Afghanistan sharing some of the important crops originating from the same Central Asia grain center.  As shown here, quite a few vegetables and grain crops took two routes to be carried, by one into the northern and the other into southern halves of Japan I for one am of the opinion that there must at least be a few farm crops in today's Afghanistan that can be identified as commonly shared by Northern Japan. Take a look at the picture below of a couple of men separating thrashed grains from left-over hulls by dropping them in the wind. This certainly reminds us of our memory of running into similar scenes in rural Japan not so long ago. A scene like this was not uncommon even in the outskirts of Tokyo until the late 1950s and early 60s But, our common bonds do not stop here. There is another, not at all less important, cultural tie between Afghanistan and Japan. You must have heard of the "Gandhara Buddha" Image somewhere and sometime in the past. Well, if so, remember that it provides an important key.  In the ancient Greco-Roman times,  their imperial expansion finally reached the area which included today's Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the influence of the Classical Western culture gave birth to the practice of carving Buddha statutes for religious worship, which was nonexistent in India itself where Buddhism was born. Now, you can understand why a typical Gandhara Buddha tends to look like his Greek half brother. (See the map below) An example of the Greco-Pakistani- Afghan Buddha statue often referred to in Japan as the "Gandhara Buddha" This will remind you that there are many Buddha statues in Japan with countenances which do not strike you as oriental, let alone Japanese.  Now, you realize for the first time that Afghanistan after all is not a distant and strange country to us Japanese. Such a realization, then, will also remind you that some of the things we often take for granted as 'typical examples of the Japanese culture' or 'Japanese way of life' may also be, like Buddha images, of a distant foreign origin shared by many other Asians. The most prominent example is Japan's rice-growing culture, which we often consider the central essence of the traditional Japanese culture. As already seen, irrigated rice culture in fact was originated by the Chang Jiang farmers, and handed over to those who later braved the seas to reach Korea and Japan. We know they also brought with them the whole set of dietary habit and religious rituals, miso and tofu incvluded. Thus, it is obviously true that many Asian countries which are geographically distant from one another are still bound together with a history of diverse cultural interactions despite the obvious linguistic, religious and ethnic differences. The Ancient Greco-Roman civilization reached eastward often as a result of military conquest giving rise to the practice of Buddha image worship in most Asian countries including Japan which accepted Buddhism SUMMARY It is important to remember that the Asian countries as they are today are the result of several thousand years of cultural interactions of the basic forces at work in evolutionary human history, and that the Japanese case in this sense is somewhat similar to that of North America in that Japan during the first ten centuries of the Christian Era remained a great melting pot of divergent Asian cultures brought in from outside by successive waves of ethnic migrations of a scale often measured by responsible scholars to be in the range from the upper hundreds of thousands to around one million. And then, during the last few centuries, Japan came in contact with the Western nations greatly accelerating the pace of  modernization to become a highly industrialized modern state. The difference between Japan and the United States is thus the length of time taken for the ethno-cultural integration; it took some 2000 years for Japan and mere few centuries for the U.S. NOW, LET'S START THE EXCHANGE Now let us go to Afghanistan and see how schools are being restored from the damages of ruinous wars of the recent decades. The first of these two pictures provided by TWB shows a young boy proudly showing his self introduction letter written in his own language. His and others' letters are then flown to the United States by DHL cargo planes free of charge as the air carrier's contribution in kind to the exchange project. This process takes a lot of time, and therefore, the Japanese and American students must first establish their own digital exchange system including video conferencing, and jointly seek how they can help the Afghan peers get an access to a more efficient tool of communication.  We at OIARI hereby propose the following two-step action plan to achieve this goal. Bright-eyed Afghan boy holding up his self-introduction written in his own language  for presentation at schools in America First, as proposed by Ashikaga High School, Japan and the U.S. begin a weekly video conference based on the preceding week's e-mail exchange In the meantime, TWB try to upgrade the digital environment of its education information center in Kabul to provide it with BB or ADSL access to the Internet. If and when this will have been achieved, perhaps sometime during or after the summer of 2005, the youth and children of Afghanistan can participate in the exchange of both e-mail messages and video conferences dramatically enhancing their feeling of direct contact and interaction.. And, once digitized in this fashion, it promises a much greater media exposure and a resultant supportive participation. We at OIARI believe that this will provide the Ashikaga High School students a great opportunity of taking a digital tour of discovering their own cultural roots common among the Asian neighbors. Girls in Afghanistan still continue to keep their heads covered  while studying in the class rooms More important will be the sense of identity and pride to be generated among the Afghan students of themselves as a member of the community of Asian nations. It is hoped that Japan, which has reconstructed and, as it were, reinvented itself into a modern democracy after World War II, will be an encouraging example for Afghanistan which is in a similar process today of rebuilding itself rising from the ruins of the wars groping for its own form of modernization.  After all, Asia should openly discuss its own ideas about democracy and individual freedom to nurture a common awareness of ownership. Please carefully read the following instructions for the use of the bilingual e-mail and video conferencing services.  Direct your questions to the OIARI Secretariat The actual exchange is expected to start during April, 2005. and continue for the nest twelve months. unless some  unexpected situation should arise. 　   　HOW TO USE E-MAILTRANSLATION SERVICE: 　 　HOW TO USE VIDEO-CONFERENCING SERVICE: All participants can, upon request, use the translation and interpreting services provided by OIARI for both e-mail exchange and video conferencing.  These services are provided to strike down the language barriers and open up this exchange program for all interested students.  For more details, just click the above HOW-TOs | Japanese version | Russian version | Previous page |