Le Japon, objet d’étude et d’enseignement au Sénégal

Japan is a field of study and education in Senegal. But the representations that are constructed on it generally work as a mirror in inverted images. In geography classes, the Senegalese are, from any point of view, opposed to the Japanese. Japan is seen as a perfect model of economic success and socio-cultural example which has come over her poor natural resources and the hard aftereffects of World War II thanks to the discipline and the work of her people. So, our relation to Japan is both mimicry and self- criticism. Japan as a field of study at school is expressed through a reductive discourse which fundamentally originates in the mass media and in Western studies – to note French ones from 1990 to 2000. It looks like a pompous lecture somehow caricatured which ranges far from Japan social and geographical current real life