We got to the court in plenty of time. In front of Matsumoto Shrine I passed a familiar-looking man in a suit, carrying a heavy backpack, who was walking in the same direction. It was our lawyer who I had met online previously, so I introduced myself.
Two TV crews were already at the court waiting for us. There were four or five TV channels and it’s difficult to keep track. There is TV Shinshu, SBC (Shinetsu Hoso), NBS and ABN. NBS is Nagano Broadcast and I think ABN is Asahi Broadcasting Nagano. And of course NHK, the national broadcaster.
The cameras wanted to film us approaching the court and they expected us to come from the other direction. We waited for the others to turn up and asked the cameras to wait, which they did, and they got a better shot with another union rep and a few friends behind us.
The court part was straightforward. We went upstairs to an office with people who didn’t look like they got people coming in with court cases every day.
The lawyer presented the files for our case, which were extensive enough to rival a decent novel. The kind that hollywood would definitely make into a trilogy. At that point it struck me that rather than spending all this time and effort working on the case, we could have been writing a novel, or a screenplay, and working towards more positive entertainment. At least it could have if anyone read it. I’m pretty sure someone will read this legal, although perhaps not every single word, although it will be a rather small audience.
When they took in the case, they checked through all the references, which are numbered up to forty, including several with a sub number too. This included, for example contracts with the university going back to 1999. I didn’t expect this process to take very long, and we were there for around five minutes.
Next we headed over to the city hall. We had plenty of time, but there isn’t really anywhere to sit in the city hall. The press room was where the press conference would be held. I was expecting a meeting room of some kind with space to sit at the front and desks for people to sit at and watch. But the press room is not a huge room. There are desks around the walls for each media outlet, and four long sofa beds, in sofa mode, in the middle of the room, sat up to face each other with a coffee table between. The cameras were lining up on one side and a row of mics were on the coffee table facing to a sofa bed on the other side.
We went down to the lobby then out to the small park between the city hall and the castle. Other union people from the university were assembling. There were perhaps a dozen teachers from the university and a dozen other friends who had come to support. It was very nice that people had come. Without support this kind of thing would be very difficult. Maybe impossible.
There was also a very good turnout by the media. There were four cameras pointing at us when we sat down for the conference: SBC, ABN, NBC and NHK. There were also local and national newspapers including Shinano Mainichi and Yomiuri.
I sat between our lawyer and the head of our union on one of the sofa beds. It was not a very comfortable seat, and quite hard work sitting up straight. I guess it would have been more comfortable to sit back and relax on, but that was not really appropriate for getting good sound to the micropnones or a good image for the cameras. I was thinking that these sofabeds were more beds that doubled as sofas than sofas that double as beds, but I don’t want to go on too much about design here. I was worried that if the questions went on too long people may start falling asleep on them, although there were rather a lot of people sitting on them.
The local union secretary kicked off the press conference, then I read my prepared statement. It’s a good idea to prepare statements, as I will come to later. I had prepared something in English and then a translation in Japanese, and told them I’d speak in English first as I was better at that language. This didn’t get as big a laugh as it deserved, but I think it helped break the ice a little before I launched into my statement. As a teacher I’m used to standing up in front of people talking, without notes, and I have a lot of experience giving presentations at conferences, but I’m used to unscripted speeches and focus on what I want to say rather than sticking to specific words. This is also something I encourage among my students when I’m teaching presentations, and I sometimes confiscate scripts if students have brought them. I would not have given myself a very high score, and my rendition of the Japanese speech was pretty terrible. Excerpts can be seen on TV.
Next the lawyer spoke and gave the legal case, followed by the union leader.
Next there were questions. A lot of questions. Thankfully most of them were not directed to me, or could be deflected away from me to the union secretary or the lawyer.
One question that threw me was asking what I was trying to do when I was teaching. This is a very big question, that I didn’t have a succinct answer for, but I said that I was trying to get people to communicate, create an environment were everyone gets on, or occasionally argues, and that there are more important things than grammar.
Another question which I partly expected but should have thought of a better strategy for was asking what I was going to do for money and whether me and my family would be destitute without the job.
I replied first by saying that this is not about me, but about the university. And that it has only been a month since I lost my job and I’m really still in shock about that and have not really had much time to think about it. Also, more importantly that it was difficult to process why I have lost my job so I’m not really sure what to do. I finished by saying that I wanted to get back to work.
One of the TV channels took the last part of my answer, put a caption “about income” and then quoted me saying “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to get back to work.” Which is not exactly the context I was talking about, and I don’t think should really be part of the story.
I guess the main lesson from this is to prepare more carefully exactly what to say, and avoid answering any questions that I don’t want to answer. They can, and will, take what you say out of context.
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It looks like the first trial date is set for 3pm Wednesday 29th May and no doubt there will be more opportunity to talk to the media then. They may also, at some point, get a comment from the university, which will be very interesting to see.
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