the philosophy cafe
with the Mainichi Children’s Newspaper
In April 2024, I joined the team of 7 other Japanese philosophers for their "philosophy cafe (てつがくカフェ)" project, hosted by the Mainichi Children's Newspaper.
For context, the Mainichi Newspaper is one of the major newspapers in Japan (think the Washington Post of the United States?), and they have a daily children's newspaper that dissects domestic and international news in a way that is accessible to elementary school students. The "philosophy cafe" project began as a weekly column in the children's newspaper where philosophers answer questions shared by children from all over Japan.
Naming the project the "philosophy cafe" (instead of "Philosophy Cafe" with capitalizations) is deliberate. It reflects the ethos of the "little p philosophy," a term coined by a Philosophy for Children pioneer, Dr. Thomas Jackson, to capture the spirit of doing philosophy with everyday people (and avoiding studying philosophy in the ivory tower of universities and colleges).
I love being part of this project, and recently, I got permission from the editor to post the English translation of my answers to Japanese children's questions. So, I began this blog series to share the children's questions & my answers in both Japanese & English. I hope you enjoy it!
Notes
1. I am required to limit each of my responses to 400 Japanese characters.
I would say that 400 Japanese characters are equivalent to 1-2 paragraphs (each paragraph containing 6-7 lines) in English. So, my answers in Egnlish would most likely feel incomplete.
2. Not all questions are philosophical/ philosophy questions.
We answer pretty much any questions that won’t be resolved by some simple googling, and this includes STEM-related questions. The editors choose the questions and assign them to me, so I don’t have control over which questions to answer.
3. Each question receives answers from 3 philosophers.
Some of my answers do not directly address the question/ core issue. This happened likely because other contributors already provided the direct answer/ addressed the core issue in a way that I agree.