By David Wallace WEST BLOOMFIELD — A four-person delegation from the West Bloomfield Township Public Library’s Japanese sister library built upon a nine-year relationship and might help educate library science students in Japan. The Japanese from the Awaji City Higashiura Public Library arrived Aug. 14 and departed Aug. 16 after filling nearly every moment of their visit with activities. They toured the West Bloomfield Main Library about four hours after they arrived. “We’re sharing culture; we’re sharing materials that we have in our libraries; and then … two of the individuals are library science instructors in Japan, so they have taken hundreds and hundreds of pictures of our library, and have asked me for all the pertinent statistical information about our library, because they plan to go back to their students and show a library, what a library is like in Michigan,” said Library Director Clara Bohrer. The library’s children’s section captured the delegates’ attention. “We couldn’t get them to leave the children’s area on the tour. We didn’t realize that the libraries in Japan don’t necessarily focus on the young children, and they had never seen such an expansive area, and designed specifically for young children,” said Bohrer. “The library’s (section) for children is nicer than ours — very nice and much nicer than ours,” said Yasuhiro Harada, chairman of the Awaji library board and a professor at Nara University. He said that seeing the Main Library was his favorite part of the trip. The two libraries began their relationship in 1999, as part of a millennium project then-first lady Hillary Clinton sponsored. “And her goal was to find a library in every state to pair with a library overseas. And we were selected in Michigan, and we had requested, because we have so many Japanese people living in the area, if we could possibly be paired with a Japanese library. And that’s how it came to be,” said Bohrer. She has no doubts about the value of the relationship with Awaji, which is an island close to Kobe, Japan. “I think that it fosters a greater understanding of different cultures, because one of the very first projects we did was a photo exhibit where they went throughout their island and took photographs of what everyday life was like, and sent them to us. “And we did the same with West Bloomfield and sent it to them. And then we had up the photo exhibits, so people could see — we invited classes to come in to see what it was like to live everyday in Japan. And not in a big city, but in a more small, rural type of area,” said Bohrer. “It connects us with the Japanese population, not only in the community, but in the greater Detroit area, and it really enriches our lives and our library to have that connection,” said Carol Kravetz, president of the library board. At the end of the day Aug. 15, after visiting Greenfield Village, touring the library’s Westacres Branch and Gretchko Elementary School, the Friends of the Library put on a dinner in their honor at A Matter of Taste in Commerce Township. There, the delegation received proclamations from the governor, Legislature, Oakland County and West Bloomfield. They also received the official state children’s book, “The Legend of Sleeping Bear.” All came with translations so that people could enjoy them in Japan. The Japanese government’s consul general in Detroit attended the dinner, as did the executive director of the Japan Business Society of Detroit. “I was greatly moved at how deep and how amicable that people-to-people contact and relationship has been developed,” said Tamotsu Shinotsuka, the consul general. “I very much hope that this kind of people-to-people contact can continue to flourish in years to come. “Each one of those people are kind of ambassadors, friendship ambassadors, and (are) always building a bridge between two great countries,” he said. The two groups of library personnel are not so different, though they live so far away. “We share a common commitment besides being sister libraries. We really are all invested in the libraries in our respective cities,” said Kravetz. “I think by meeting them and getting to know them, it gives me an understanding that libraries all over the world are very similar — even though we’re so different, we’re very similar — and we think the same way on topics, and we like to make sure that people that come to our library are getting the things that they want,” said Brenda Plizga, Main Library branch manager, who visited the Japanese library with Bohrer in 2002. The other delegates were Makiko Noda, librarian; Masao Osawa, former trustee of the Japan Library Association; and Fusako Inagaki, instructor of library science at Kansai University. You can reach Staff Writer David Wallace at dwallace@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1053. |
