Behind Yuhito’s First Day of School; Media Swayed by Her Merit of Reporting
It has been announced that Prince Eugene, the eldest son of the Akishino family, has been accepted to the high school attached to Tsukuba University. Ochanomizu Women’s University, where Prince Eugene is currently enrolled, becomes an all-girls school from high school, so he had no choice but to go outside from high school.
Ochanomizu Women’s University and Tsukuba University have a temporary partnership that allows students to go on to high school without having to take an academic test, but it seems that Prince Eugene also took the general entrance exam. As a result, however, he was able to enter high school through the “Partner School System.
What came out at the same time as the congratulatory news was the issue of the “essay contest.
Last year, Princess Eugene received an honorable mention in the junior high school division of the “Children’s Nonfiction Literature Award” sponsored by the Kitakyushu Literature Museum. It was revealed that the text he wrote in this competition was very similar to several other texts, even though he did not cite any references. These were first reported by Josei Seven and Shukan Shincho.
When “Josei Seven” contacted the Imperial Household Agency, Prince Eugene admitted that he had quoted the text and “thanked them for pointing it out. Apparently, he had neglected to include the reference.
However, I felt that the sentence was just a small change of “te ni wa”…. It could be taken as a quotation, but on the other hand, it could also be taken as her own writing,” said a reporter from a weekly magazine.
Incidentally, the application flyer for the Children’s Nonfiction Literature Prize says the following as a “cautionary note on application.
“Look, listen, research, and write in your own words.
Do not use other people’s writing without permission. If you do, enclose it in ” ” or drop a paragraph so that you can distinguish between your own and others’ writing. Also, please be sure to write where you got the idea from.
At this point, not only did Eugene make a mistake in writing the references, but he also made it difficult to distinguish his own writing from others’, which could be seen as breaking the rules of the application process.
Speaking of the Akishino family, during the marriage of their eldest daughter, Mako, to Kei Komuro, there was a major public uproar over financial issues. The Imperial Household Agency and Mr. and Mrs. Akishino would probably like to avoid any more reports that might provoke the public.
However, at the TV station, there was a big debate on how to handle this report. One of the reporters at the TV station said.
Even though Princess Eugene is a member of the royal family, this is an essay written when she was 13 years old. If it had been an ordinary junior high school student, a misquoted reference would not have been reported. There were some who thought it was too harsh to report this, and others who said that considering his future, there was no need to report this.
However, some of the staff rebelled against the executives, saying, “What about the conflict with freedom of the press? In the end, it was decided to report only the minimum fact that there was a “misquote.
It is not only the TV stations that are making discoveries, but the competition organizers as well. The organizers of the competition are not the only ones making discoveries, but they are also saying that they are “not considering withdrawing the award” even though the rules were not followed, even though it was a mistake as mentioned above. If such a precedent is set, it may affect the future of the competition.
In any case, it is clear that this was a “difficult question” for which no one can find the right answer.
Photo: Representative photo/Reuters/Afro