Touring Japanese team defeats debate club 13-7

College students from Japan competed against the IU debate club in a public debate Monday at the Whittenberger Auditorium.

Yoshiki Shimamoto and Takahito Osako came to IU as part of a four-week debate tour of American universities, which includes schools in Indiana, Kansas and California, among other places.

“One of our goals is to promote the ideal of argument as ways people should interact with each other,” said Brian DeLong, IU debate coach and lecturer in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

He said this is important both on campus and globally, which is why IU was willing to play host to international debaters.

Monday’s debate centered around the issue of implementing an emissions trading scheme —  more commonly known as a cap-and-trade system — in Japan. Debaters were given one week to prepare their sides of the issue.

Shimamoto and Osako debated the affirmative, that a cap-and-trade system would effectively solve Japanese environmental issues and provide for stable economic growth. DeLong and Adam Abelkop, a Ph.D. student in SPEA, represented the negative opinion and advocated for a carbon emissions tax instead.

In the end, the audience, serving as judges for the debate, voted 13-7 in favor of the Japanese debaters’ argument.

Shimamoto and Osako said they compete with each other in debates in Japan, but they were chosen for this tour through the Committee for International Discussion and Debate, which brings international debaters to the United States.

“This (is) my first time to an international debate,” Shimamoto said. “Next, I’d like to debate with China.”

Since arriving in Indiana, Osako said they also judged a debate and participated in other debates. Next, Osako and Shimamoto will go to the University of Kansas.

“Japanese debate is not so much popular as in the U.S.,” Osako said. “We want to get experience from the U.S. and introduce U.S. knowledge into
Japanese debate.”