Recently, a number of schools has stressed the importance of the need to focus on the social and emotional health of young students, especially in the current environment of epidemics, school closings, racial conflicts, social unrest, layoffs, and poverty. Several of these developments such as epidemics, school closings, and racial conflicts affect them and their schools directly, and several others such as social unrest, layoffs, and poverty, are experienced by their parents but the impacts also affect them.
One approach adopted by some schools to help young students to handle social and emotional health problems that may arise from this environment is the focus on mindfulness. In this article, we explain what mindfulness is, and in what ways Taiji can contribute to mindfulness.
One Speaks for the Voiceless and One Is the Conscience of Japan
Next year will mark the 90th anniversary of the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War: 1931-1945, a war that resulted in approximately 25-30 million Chinese killed, millions of women and girls raped, and millions of innocent civilians slaughtered. Yet, the country that did all of this still has not acknowledged what it did and has been trying to rewrite this part of history. We are reaching the time when all of the people who experienced this tragedy first hand will have passed away. However, many people of different nationalities around the world have not forgotten and are working hard to make sure that we learn the lessons from this part of history so that similar mistakes will not be repeated any where else in this world.
Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. This article provides a short summary of these two people, Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan.
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