Oxfam Japan announced a report on
Play Fair at the Olympic, Japanese edition, in mid-June, which
was covered by the Asashi Shimbun, together with the Olympic
campaign, dated on June 23, 2004. Asashi Shimbun is one of
the leading papers in Japan, and many readers were informed
about the Olympic campaign.
Some Japanese are not able to properly affix their signature
in English. Oxfam Japan produced a system to enable people
to do so in Japanese, and launched a signature-collecting
campaign on the system. The organizations belonging to the
Japanese Network have homepage linkages with the Oxfam Japan
homepage.
Some students at Dokkyo University invited on July 21,
2004 Tono Haruhi, of the Yokohama Action Research Center,
to give a lecture on "Play Fair at the Olympics and
Sportswear and female workers". The students prepared
posters and made badges to inform other students on the
campus. The Asashi Shimbun mentioned the meeting as local
news, which helped the organizers to get more than 50 participants
although the students were supposed to take end term examinations.
This has been the first time that the sweatshop issue was
taken up for discussion in a Japanese university.
Tono Haruhi
Yokohama Action Research Center
Japan