【令和7年度報道部入部試験問題】英語

注意事項

・東北大学の入学試験とは一切関係ありません。

Culture change is upon us, many fear, like a tsunami advancing rapidly to the shore threatening to engulf[1] whole populations, erasing them and all memory of what they once held dear. The watchword, then, is cultural preservation.

 

Consider the ludicrous notion that Italy will look and smell and sound just like Germany after a given number of years of shared membership in the European Union. The widely shared fear, often mongered[2] by uninformed experts, that globalisation will extract the exotic taste from all cultures so that people will be blended into the same bland batch of cultural dough is groundless. In fact, cultures manage to survive for hundreds of years despite the many mutations they have undergone. A striking example of this is Japanese culture. What does life in urban Tokyo today, with men and women in Western business dress commuting to work by subway or bullet train, have in common with the days of the sworded samurais? Not much. Yet they are all distinctively Japanese.

 

Many perceive culture to be the sum total of the products of a people. Yet, culture is not about feathered headdresses, shell belts, and paintings—found in a museum, relics of the past. It should be the pattern of life, the design for community living, that is found in a real people as they exist today. Thus, our emphasis on cultural survival is perhaps misplaced. Instead of guarding the ramparts[3] against breaches of culture, we should be encouraging adaptation as a means of survival. The key to cultural survival, then, is not purely conservatism—but a genuine sense of dynamism and a readiness to adapt to a changing world. Therefore, some of what we have understood in the past as either-or dichotomies[4] ought to be re-examined in the light of this new model of culture. Some changes are necessary, even inevitable. We should not be afraid to adopt and adapt.

 

[1] engulf: 巻き込む

[2] monger: (うわさ）を広める

[3] rampart: 守備、防御

[4] dichotomy: 対立

 

 

問１：段落１で、筆者が文化の変化を’Tsunami’にたとえて強調したいことを説明せよ[2]

 

問２：段落２の下線部で、筆者がどのような表現を使って自分の気持ちをどのように強めているのか。説明せよ。

 

問３：段落３の下線部が指していることを説明せよ。

 

問4：段落４の下線部で、筆者が我々に見つめ直してほしいことを説明せよ。