上智大學 2011年出題の問題文のひとつです。設問は、内容に合致する英文を４つの選擇肢から選ぶ形式で、10問が出題されてゐます。
月曜日と金曜日に、１パラグラフづつ解説を掲載してゆく豫定です。
The contemporary world is at the beginning of a new revolution as significant as the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Western Europe. Those previous revolutionary epochs utterly transformed the human experience ― transformations that have been echoing ever since in all societies around the world. The processes they unleashed have been lumped together under the title of “modernization.” Because the contemporary revolutionary era is still in its infancy, we cannot be sure where it is taking us. However, it already has a title: “Globalization.”
Globalization entails a growing global intimacy. This is a development that some experts refer to as the growth of world citizenship, or the emergence of a global civil society. This new form of citizenship transcends conventional citizenship categories: increasingly we find that we are no longer simply American, or British, or Chinese, or Vietnamese. We also experience our citizenship globally. We are daily discovering much in common with people who, hitherto, have been geographically, culturally and ethnically foreign to us. There is a growing awareness that the very survival of the human species depends on the flourishing of this new sense of citizenship, provided it can be nurtured into a higher form of global civilization than we humans have been able to achieve so far in the brief archeological time accorded to us on this planet.
If we are going to survive the catastrophic dangers inherent in global warming and climate change; if we are to protect our prosperity as business is increasingly enmeshed in the global economy; if we are going to combat the spread of international crime and terrorism; if we are going to overcome the desperate poverty of too many people around the world; if we are going to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and dismantle the terrible high-technology of late-modern warfare, then we shall have to learn how to relate amicably and productively across cultures and traditions. We need, in short, to discover our common global humanity. Only this can guarantee human security on this earth. Only when we achieve this shall we begin to discover practical solutions to what are undoubtedly serious and terrifying transnational threats now looming over humanity’s future.
What role, if any, can Japan play in nurturing a global civil society? Some observers, inside and outside the country, think that a Japanese role in the shaping of global civilization at best can only be negligible. They describe Japan as the shokyokuteki kokumin － the passive or disengaged nation. By this they mean that it has a history of remaining apart from the world, uninterested in global matters, self-preoccupied, unwilling to encounter the outside world in a mature and positive way. The Tokugawa Era – when foreigners were forbidden entry to the country and Japanese were not allowed to go overseas – is often cited in support of this view of contemporary Japan as remote and aloof nation. Some Chinese and Koreans hear echoes of Japan’s wartime ultra-nationalism in successive Japanese Governments’ reluctance to apologize for actions of their soldiers during the Pacific War. They see this as evidence of a Japan that is selfish and inward-looking, not open and reaching out to the world. Some North American commentators are struck by what they interpret as Japan’s self-centeredness in wanting to shelter beneath the U.S. security umbrella while playing only a minor role in peace-making and peace-keeping operations around the world. Moreover, not a few Japanese are thought to be uncomfortable in the presence of foreigners and foreigners sometimes are made to feel unwelcome in present-day Japan.
Does this mean that Japan has no role to play in the contemporary Globalization Revolution? The answer to this question is an unequivocal “No!” While it is true that Japan has a tendency to cultural insularity, so too do many societies around the world. But any foreign observer who spends time in Japan soon becomes aware that many young Japanese today are wonderfully enthusiastic about engaging with the wider world. They are impressively ambitious for their country to play a leadership role in helping to construct a meaningful form of global citizenship. They are justifiably proud of their country’s moral authority as a peace power, its successful modern economic history (the “Japanese miracles”), the unequalled efficiency of its service industries, its low rates of social conflict and crime, the elegance of its humanism, and the beauty of Japanese aesthetics. They rightly believe that these things should be providing cultural leadership to the nascent global civilization.
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