What creates your identity as a citizen?
The language you speak is deeply connected to your identity. In general, each ethnic group has its own language and unique culture. Language brings a specific way of thinking. It is obvious that each country has own standard language that citizens are supposed to speak. In the past, however, it was common for a country to have several ethnic groups, and sometimes conflicts happens between them. Japan was also one of the countries that had several tribes, such as Yamato, Ryukyu, and Ainu.

How did Japan go through the difficult times about the problem?
The one key was to build schools, and provide education in Japanese. In other words, the government intentionally made places where people had to speak Japanese. This helped people to think themselves as a Japanese. This way of indoctrination has been traditionally taken place all over the world.

Now we live in the 21st century, and the situation has changed. For example, in China, it is said that there are more than 50 tribes, including the Han people and the Tibetan people. Of course, as I mentioned, the power of the school still remains when it comes to indoctrination. However, now people use television as a more influential way of creating people’s identity. It can provide information with pictures, videos, and sounds. This contributes to making people in China be able to speak Mandarin even though some people are not native speakers. As a result, many governments like China succeeded in establishing people’s identity as a citizen, deliberately. Considering these cases, we need to be careful about information and always think about whether it is deliberately made and has a specific purpose for someone or not.