Register
If you haven’t already, register to start contributing news and events, and to search the Member Directory. Registration is free, but only open to current members of the American Studies Association.
Group Members
The following people are members of this group:
The following people are administrators of this group:
Member Tools
We're sorry. You are not yet a member of the ASA-JAAS.
Register or login to join this group.
MAIN | Reports | Submit a Proposal | Contact
ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 1999
Japan-United States Dialogues Across the Pacific: Globalization and American Studies Project Report
The American Studies Association is grateful to the Japan United States Friendship Commission and to the United States Information Agency for their financial support of this collaborative project.
The American Studies Association, in response to the recommendations of its delegates and our Japanese colleagues, has appointed a project advisory committee to oversee the exchange program, insure continuity, coordinate delegate selection, and assess participate recommendations. The committees includes officers and project alumnae fluent in Japanese and/or with substantial international experience. The reports of the 1999 project participants follow:
JANICE RADWAY
INTRODUCTION
It is with profound gratitude that I write this report on my trip to Japan as President of the U. S. American Studies Association. The trip extended from May 31 to June 13, 1999. During that time I visited Tokyo, Sendai, Kyoto, and Okinawa. I am immensely grateful to both the USIS and the Japanese-American Friendship Commission for making this international scholarly exchange financially possible. I also feel a special and quite personal debt to Professor Hiroko Sato and Fumiko Fujita for all the work they did to insure that my sojourn—and that of the two other U. S. visitors—went smoothly and proved intellectually productive and enjoyable as well. I also want to acknowledge the assistance of Yoshitsugu Nakamura of the Tokyo office of the USIS and of Steve Prieto in Washington. Finally, I am grateful as well to my presidential predecessors, both Japanese and American, for recognizing the desirability of this kind of exchange and for doing the hard work to implement it. I believe it is a valuable experience for all who are involved in the exchange. The current challenge, it seems to me, is to find ways to build on the personal relationships that develop so that the intellectual benefits that result can be made more widely available to others in the American Studies community worldwide.
I will report first on my daily activities in Japan and will pay special attention to the nature of the talks I gave, to the character of the audiences I addressed, and to the kind of intellectual exchanges that resulted. In a second section, I will reflect more generally on my experiences, on the nature of the JAAS/ASA exchange, and make just a few observations about maximizing the possibilities for communication and dialogue in the future. I am convinced that this is an immensely important undertaking and that it should continue for the foreseeable future.
DAILY ITINERARY
TUESDAY, JUNE 1:
I arrived at Narita Airport at 1430 via United Airlines Flight 881 from Chicago. I was met by a representative from the Meet-Assist Limousine Desk, which had been arranged by Yoshitsugu Nakamura, I believe, at the suggestion of Professor Fujita. I was grateful for the assistance and was graciously guided to the right bus for Tokyo. The bus ride from Narita to central Tokyo was an amazing experience in itself. Although I grew up in suburban New Jersey and have long and happy experience with New York City, I was stunned by Tokyo’s size, density, and dynamism. I was struck immediately by the cultural hubris involved in calling Tokyo a “Westernized” city, which one hears frequently in the United States. It seemed obvious to me that contemporary Japan is clearly synonymous with its own very special forms of modernity and postmodernity. In particular, I was struck immediately by the startling colors of the city, an effect of the large number of neon signs, and by the ways in which office architecture displays middle class office work to the casual eye.
After settling in briefly at International House, I enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Spago, Tokyo hosted by Professor Hiroko Sato, of Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, and President of the JAAS. I met Professor Beth Bailey for the first time at this dinner and especially enjoyed the experience of getting to know her and Professor Sato at the same time.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2
Marshall Louis and Yoshitsugu Nakamura of the USIS briefed Professor Bailey and me at the U. S. Embassy. They reviewed our itineraries with us, explained the particulars of the lectures and seminars that had been established, and dispensed air and train tickets and per diem cash. I was introduced to Masayuki Tominago who was to act as my interpreter the next day at my lecture in Sendai. We were also introduced briefly to Helen McKee, Deputy Cultural Attaché, who was deeply involved in coordinating a film festival that night in Tokyo and arranging the visit of George Lucas to the festival. It was interesting to catch a glimpse of how the JAAS/ASA program fit into the larger schedule of cultural activities coordinated by the U. S. Embassy and USIS in Tokyo.
In the afternoon, Professor Bailey and I explored Tokyo a bit via the subway and managed to order extra business cards at a shop in the Ginza district. We both realized that we had not brought enough cards to exchange with our Japanese colleagues and hosts.
In the evening, I had dinner at International House with Mr. Motoo Kaji, Executive Director, and Mr. Mikio Kato, of International House before my lecture there. That lecture, entitled “Brand Name Books for the General Reader: The Book-of-the-Month Club and Middle Class Literary Taste in an Age of Mass Culture,“ had been arranged by Ms. Tomoko Nagaoka, Program Officer of International House. Professor Hiroko Sato and Mr. Donald Richie, a film critic, joined us at the dinner and writer, who was scheduled to introduce me and to preside over the Q and A session after the lecture. The dinner was especially enjoyable for the insight it gave me into the complex and fascinating community of Americans who live more or less permanently in Japan. Mr. Richie was an observant and wry informant on this score and I felt that I learned a lot about both the intricacies and intensities of what is often too simply called “expatriation.“ Mr. Richie was precise and clear about what he found compelling and pleasurable about his “adopted” country of Japan and about his continuing status as an “American.“ Mr. Richie’s reflections on his long experience in Japan made me think of Eva Hoffman’s book, Lost in Translation, which is about the experience of moving from Poland to the United States, and of Ariel Dorfman’s Heading South, Looking North, which chronicles his experiences living in and between two different languages.
My talk that night was well attended by a mixed group, mostly non-academic, of writers and readers from in and around Tokyo. I placed the history of the Book-of-the-Month Club and middlebrow culture in context and connected both to recent developments in the U. S. including the creation of Oprah’s Book Club, the appearance of on-line booksellers like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, and the global concentration of the book industry. It was fascinating to hear the response of the audience on these latter developments. They were highly skeptical about the academic response typical in the U. S. that is to dismiss all of these as destructive of the book in general and literary culture more specifically. The Japanese audience expressed strong investment in the on-line booksellers particularly because it gave them easier and quicker access to international book culture. They pointed to the ironies of capitalist cultural production and to the ways in which this kind of concentration does benefit heretofore-isolated audiences and groups of readers. We discussed the pros and cons of the “Americanization” of global culture that this tends to produce. I was especially pleased to make the acquaintance of Professor Chieko Irie Mulhern who has written on the genre of romance novels, the subject of my first book. After my talk, we exchanged observations about recent developments in the genre and Professor Mulhern graciously gave me copies of some of her articles.
THURSDAY, JUNE 3
I traveled to Sendai via the bullet train, Yamabiko #37 from Tokyo Station. I was accompanied by USIS interpreter Masayuki Tominago, who continued to work on his interpretation of my talk. This proved fascinating to me as it gave me insight into the specificities and difficulties of translating between English and Japanese. We were then met by Michael Gayle of the USIS office in Sapporo and by USIS Public Affairs Advisor, Fujiaki Hondo. After lunch at the Metropolitan Hotel, we proceeded by taxi to the School of International Studies at Tohoku University. I was welcomed and briefed by Koji Takenaka, who also introduced me graciously, and by Yoji Sawairi, and Shigeru Sato. My audience included senior American Studies scholars and graduate students as well as a smattering of others from related programs.
I fear my talk was much too long for the seminar. This was my first experience with consecutive interpretation in Japanese and consequently I did not realize how much my original talk needed to be cut to fit the time frame of the seminar. I think the ASA and the USIS can help future scholars in this program by being clearer about the nature of the problems involved in consecutive interpretation and by giving specific advice about the length of presentations. A talk that I thought was thirty-five minutes in length took two hours to deliver in conjunction with a careful interpretation. I should have cut it more radically. Although this problem necessarily curtailed the Q and A session, I was intrigued and challenged by the informed and pointed questions asked by the American Studies graduate students. They were clearly curious about queer theory and feminism in the U. S. American Studies context. I really regretted that I did not have more time to spend with them. This is understandable, though, since this visit took place during a very busy part of the Japanese academic year. I was amazed at how gracious all my hosts were even though they were clearly working hard to fit my visit within their already busy working day.
Since my experiences with the graduate students at all the universities I visited were among the most memorable of a generally exciting trip, I would suggest that thought be given in the future to building in some unstructured time for interaction between visiting U. S. scholars and Japanese graduate students who seem very eager to talk about their field with visitors from abroad. This could take the form of an informal lunch or dinner at a local restaurant open to all interested in general discussion and dialogue. It would not take much energy to arrange this and financial support would be unnecessary since everyone (including the U. S. visitors!) could pay for his/her meal.
After a brief rest at the Metropolitan Hotel, I had dinner with Fujiaki Hondo. This was an especially enjoyable occasion since it enabled us to carry on our conversation at length. We talked about the difference between U. S. and Japanese attitudes toward professional authority, about the nature of middle class family life in both countries and our own perspectives on major life issues. This was one of many enjoyable personal experiences during the trip and I am grateful to Mr. Hondo for his fine talk.
FRIDAY, JUNE 4
During the morning, Yasuko Skashita, one of two elected female representatives in the Miagi prefecture, escorted me around Sendai. Because her familiarity with English was limited and I unfortunately know little Japanese, it was difficult to carry on much of a conversation. Nevertheless, I was overwhelmed by her generosity with her time and her willingness to give me a tour of the Prefecture offices and of a small temple in Sendai. It is my hope that she will be able to travel to the United States in the near future and that I can reciprocally serve as her host and perhaps take her to the North Carolina capital building in Raleigh.
Upon my return to Tokyo and International House, I attended the JAAS Executive Board dinner along with Professors Bailey and Elaine Kim of the United States and, from Korea, Professors Jaemin Kim of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Hoon-Sung Hwang of Dongguk University.
SATURDAY, JUNE 5 AND SUNDAY, JUNE 6
The theme for the 1999 JAAS meeting was “Gender and the Globalization of American Studies.“ Because some of the sessions were held in English and others were generously and expertly interpreted by our Japanese colleagues, Beth Bailey, Elaine Kim, and I were able to participate quite fully in the meeting. Most of the sessions I attended eventually discussed the value and nuances of the concept of globalization and its usefulness to American Studies. There was great variety in the way the concept was understood and deployed though I would also say I was generally struck by the skepticism expressed about its overall value. Many people felt that the concept of globalization is too often employed in a unilateral manner, which is to say, it is used to designate the export of U. S. products, ideologies, and institutions throughout the world. Virtually everyone felt that this usage fails to do justice to the complex reciprocities of cultural relations and influence.
My presidential address to the JAAS meeting was very well attended and I was enormously grateful for the opportunity to deliver the talk in an international context. I felt some discomfort at the structural imbalance involved in speaking to the JAAS in this capacity while the JAAS president did not. I realize that this may result from the two year term served by the JAAS president and by the fact that the JAAS meeting falls at a busy time of the academic year for the president who may not wish to prepare yet another major address. Thus, I am not sure that the U. S. ASA should suggest changes in the format if our Japanese colleagues are comfortable with it. I do wonder, though, whether a workshop session could be set-aside on the day after the address that could be voluntarily attended by all who were interested in discussing the address. Although I was delighted to entertain a few skeptical questions about my ideas at the reception afterward, I would have welcomed the opportunity to hear in a more fulsome manner my international colleagues’ thoughts on the value and limitations of my perspective. I sense that very fruitful disagreement was making its way through the corridors and I would have welcomed the opportunity to learn from its expression. I do not make this suggestion for a seminar, however, out of dissatisfaction. I felt very graciously and thoughtfully received. It may well be that dialogue and discussion in the Japanese context are more effectively carried on in an informal way within the local community.
After the meeting, Professors Bailey, Kim and I, along with Professors Kim and Hwang from Korea, were the guests of Professors Sato, Fujita, and Professor Masako Notoji at a traditional Japanese restaurant. The multiple course meal was stunning in its variety and I was delighted and grateful for the experience.
MONDAY, JUNE 7
I traveled to Kyoto with Professors Bailey, Kim, Kim, and Hwang via the bullet train again. After a very brief rest at the Kyoto ANA hotel, I proceeded to a seminar at the Kyoto Women’s Center for the Kyoto Women’s Studies Group, which had been arranged by Professor Kazuko Watanabe of Kyoto Sangyo University, whom I had met previously at Duke University.
I was privileged to deliver a talk entitled “Girls: Reading and Writing Their Lives,“ at this seminar. The audience included women from many different walks of life and graduate students from several universities in the Kyoto area. After the talk, we had a wide-ranging and exploratory conversation about feminism, subject-construction, and popular culture. I was especially delighted to hear about gay and lesbian-related activities in the Kyoto area. Many probing questions about the politics of feminist scholarship were asked and discussed with nuance by the group. After a long question and answer period, I enjoyed another fine meal as the guest of Professor Watanabe. We were joined by Matt Thorn, of the Department of Humanities, Kyoto Seika University, who is finishing a dissertation at Columbia University’s anthropology department on Japanese girls’ manga. This was an exciting opportunity for me to learn a good deal more about Japanese girls’ cultural activities and everyday life.
TUESDAY, JUNE 8
During the morning, I went sightseeing with Professor Masahiro Nakano, Director of the Center for American Studies at Ritsumeikan University and Professors Bailey, Kim, Kim, and Hwang. We walked the grounds of Nijo Castle and the Kinkaku-ji shrine and then had lunch at Bordeaux Restaurant.
In the afternoon, I presented a paper at the Ritsumeikan American Studies Seminar whose topic was again “Gender and the Globalization of American Studies.“ Professor Bailey and I presented the talks we had given at the JAAS for a diverse group of scholars from Ritsumeikan and other universities in the Kyoto area. Professor Kim presented a slightly different version of her JAAS talk with additional slides and videos. The assembled group then discussed these at length and in substantial depth. I believe this was made possible by the fact that the talks had been circulated before hand. I was especially intrigued by the discussion of the current emphasis within American Studies circles in the U. S. of the concepts of diversity and difference. While virtually everyone at the seminar was familiar with this work and aware of the complex intellectual and political rationales justifying it, many raised questions about the usefulness of this perspective for scholars working outside the U. S. and interested in the way the U. S. interacts with their own nations, cultures, and people. Several graduate students eloquently defended the need for useful generalizations about “Americans” and “America” for peoples attempting to insure their own self-determination in the global context. I found this dialogue immensely exciting and corrective of some of the cultural blindnesses contained in my own talk.
This dialogue continued at a wonderful reception attended by many graduate students from Ritsumeikan and Doshisha University. I had met several of these individuals, including Wuming Zhao, and Masumi Izumi, the night before so I was very pleased to continue my discussions with them. This gave me the opportunity to hear more about their own work and to offer my own reflections upon it. I very much hope to put these wonderful young people in touch with some of my own students and I have offered to help them make session proposals for the U. S. ASA conference. I do not know how to solve the financial problem of facilitating their participation, however.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9
In the morning, I toured several shrines and the palace gardens with Yumiko Honjo and Atsuko Karakasa, two friends of Professor Watanabe who was teaching a heavy load that day.
In the afternoon, I presented a paper on the Book-of-the-Month Club and middle class reading at a seminar in the American Studies Program at Doshisa University. This seminar was organized by Professor Keiko Ikeda. My paper was well received by the large seminar, which included senior professors in the program and many of the graduate students. This discussion was a very rich one for me since everyone in the program is conversant with ethnographic approaches to cultural study and very well versed in recent cultural studies theory. Fine theoretical questions about the effects of reading were posed by several of the students who were able to draw judiciously on some of the problems they themselves had encountered in their own research. Again, we discussed the effects of recent developments in worldwide book publishing and explored the concept of cultural imperialism. I was delighted as well to continue my conversation with the students who had attended all my talks in Kyoto. This enabled us to get to know each other better than we otherwise might have and to engage in significant cross-cultural dialogue. I have now read papers written by several of these students and corresponded with them about their work. I found this ongoing encounter enormously useful and exciting and I think it was beneficial to the students as well. If it is at all possible, I would suggest that a three or four day sojourn like this in a single city with several major universities and American Studies programs should be planned for the American delegation in the future. This facilitates ongoing connections and provides more opportunities for extended dialogue.
In the evening, I very much enjoyed a barbecue at the home of Kay Ikeda and Matt Thorn that was attended by colleagues from Doshisha University. This was a wonderful, convivial party and it enabled me to develop new friendships and collegial relationships in an informal context.
THURSDAY, JUNE 10
I spent the day in Kyoto with Professor Watanabe who graciously showed me around the city and hosted a small dinner at her home.
FRIDAY, JUNE 11
I traveled by train to Kansai Airport in Osaka where I boarded a flight for Okinawa. I was met there by Yoshitsugu Nakamura of the USIS and was escorted with Professor Bailey to the University of the Ryukus. Professor Kenji Akamine and Dean Kentoku Yogi graciously welcomed us and prepared us for our seminar. I delivered my paper on girls and reading while Professor Bailey discussed the American sexual revolution and its legacies. Since many of the attendees at the seminar were undergraduates who had less experience with English, they were reluctant to pose questions to us. The faculty, however, asked several really probing questions, of us. I entertained a particularly fine question about American Studies pedagogy and popular culture while Professor Bailey was asked about the consequences of using battle metaphors and terminology from warfare to discuss changes in sexual mores. When the poser of the question pointed out that Okinawans were especially attentive to such issues because of their terrible experiences in World War II, I recognized anew how unaware we often are about the ways in which even our most basic terminologies and grids of intelligibility are affected and determined by our histories and cultural experiences.
SATURDAY, JUNE 12
I went sightseeing with Professor Akamine, his wife, and Professor Bailey. We visited Shurijo Castle and the very moving and impressive Okinawa Peace Memorial and World War II museum.
I returned to Tokyo in the afternoon and stayed overnight before my return the next day to the United States.
REFLECTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Like Professor Bailey, I want to reiterate again how useful and fascinating I found this experience and how grateful I am to all who made my trip possible. Although I, too, have traveled extensively in non-U.S. academic circles, most of my work has been done in a Western European context, especially in Scandinavia. This was my first trip to Asia in general and to Japan in particular. I enjoyed the sense of suddenly finding myself in a wholly different part of the world with its own very different environmental, political, and cultural concerns. I was fascinated, for instance, by Japanese television and by the fact that the images of news events that flickered across the screen were largely of activities in cities within Asia, Africa, or Australia. I found this to be true even of the CNN broadcasts in English. This is very different from what one sees in Sweden or Denmark, for instance, where images of the U. S. Capitol Building are almost as frequent as images of Big Ben in London or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This concatenation of predominately Asian images produced a bracing and very practical recognition of how ethnocentrism inures us to familiar perspectives and to a sense of what is important, central, or significant for investigation and/or reporting. It was challenging to find myself in world where events in Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Beijing were counted much more important than those in Washington, Frankfurt, London, or Rome. This was especially true for me because it pushed me to realize how little I know of the world beyond the so-called “West.“
This more general observation, which came from my engagement with Japanese popular culture, was then confirmed and elaborated upon by my engagement with Japanese Americanists. My international colleagues listened graciously and interestedly to the perspectives and theoretical formulations articulated by their American visitors but, at the same time, they firmly insisted on the value of their own quite different perspectives and investments in studying the history and culture of the United States. Again and again, I was forced to see how so much of my work implicitly engages the domestic and internal politics of the United States. Engagement with others who have other concerns in mind, most of which are distinctly informed by concerns about international political relations, helped to defamiliarize even the new, more “global” American Studies paradigms and pushed me to see the ways in which they are still deeply affected by fundamental assumptions American scholars share as a function of working always within the U. S. domestic context. I found the intellectual disorientation this produced both exhilarating and quite challenging. I was exhilarated by the opportunity to glimpse just for brief moments what it would be like to really see differently. At the same time, I was challenged by the sense of how hard it is to remove blinders one does not even know one has. I came away from this trip even more respectful of the facticity of cultural difference and of the real challenges of negotiating intellectually, personally, and emotionally across them.
For these reasons, I believe this exchange between Japanese and U.S. Americanists should continue and that it should serve as a model for other similar international exchanges. What I am most stymied by, however, is the challenge of generalizing the benefits that accrue from the exchange itself. Clearly, the parties involved in the exchange benefit most from it. This includes the U. S. visitors, their Japanese hosts, and the many colleagues and students who participate in lectures and seminars. But I wonder whether the intellectual benefits that are realized through this experience couldn’t be summarized and publicized for the wider U. S. ASA membership and for those who participate in the JAAS. I wonder, for instance, whether it would make sense to compile the reflections of an assorted group of people who participated in this year’s exchange and to publish them in the ASA newsletter and/or in the JAAS journal. I myself would love to hear how some of my Japanese colleagues thought about the exchange and what they found useful in it. Again, I do not make these suggestions out of dissatisfaction but out of a real desire to make something more of this than a wonderful, intellectually stimulating personal experience. I would welcome the thoughts of my many Japanese hosts on this suggestion. Perhaps it is just hubris to assume that a personal experience as intense as this one could be generally useful for a wider audience. It may well be enough that I feel transformed by the experience and that it will affect my day-to-day teaching as well as the ways I define my research agendas.
I agree also with Professor Bailey that this year’s manner of choosing the U. S. delegation worked very well. I think it a good thing that the Americans who traveled to Japan this year did not know each other beforehand. This meant that we did not so easily constitute ourselves as a group or bloc when meeting out hosts and that we did not so easily fall back into U. S. context-specific conversations or familiarity with known compatriots when in situations that were initially a bit challenging to negotiate. I do think this produced much more diverse and constantly changing conversations between the Americans and the many Japanese colleagues who attended our lectures and served as our gracious hosts at dinners, receptions, and sightseeing events. I would recommend, then, that this recent innovation in the project be retained. I also think it a very good thing that the officers of the JAAS choose the themes they are most interested in and that they have a strong role in the selection of the eventual U. S. delegation. Americans, it seems to me, are not the best judges of what international Americanists are most interested in or find most useful intellectually. Thus, I think the officers of the JAAS should continue to play the defining role in this exchange.
However, as recent reports on the nature of the JAAS-ASA exchange have tried to suggest there is still an imbalance in the way that exchange functions. For the most part, the U. S. visitors are the beneficiaries of the exchange and particularly of the astounding hospitality of their Japanese hosts. They have not as yet fully reciprocated the favor by extending themselves or the resources of their home institutions on behalf of their Japanese colleagues. While this sort of provision was envisioned in the last grant proposal and even written into the call for applicants to the program this year, I agree with Professor Bailey that the nature of this reciprocal exchange has not been fully thought through thus far.
It is not clear, for instance, what sort of reciprocity would be most appreciated by Japanese Americanists. Who should be included in a reciprocal exchange and how should it work? Clearly not everyone who so generously extended himself or herself on our behalf could be invited to the U. S. How to determine, then, what sort of exchanges would be useful and who should benefit from them? Would our Japanese colleagues even find a similar speaking tour useful? Or, as Professor Bailey suggests, would they better prefer being put in contact with Americans doing work close to their own? On the other hand, would they simply like assistance in identifying relevant research libraries and centers? The question, I suppose, is to what extent the personal contacts that have been established in the exchange should be developed into more formal and/or institutional exchanges?
The question of how to fund these reciprocal exchanges is a thorny one as well. All of the activity that takes place in Japan is funded by grants, by our colleagues home institutions, or, most generously, by our Japanese colleagues themselves. The visit of the U. S. ASA President is, of course, paid for by the USIS. As I understand it, until quite recently, few of the American visitors to Japan returned the favors done them by reciprocating with their Japanese hosts. In part, this was difficult since few of the people they met in Japan could travel to the U. S. Now that more JAAS members are traveling to the U. S. for the annual ASA meeting, it seems that similar hosting and feting could, and indeed, should go on. If it is assumed, however, that an American delegate in this exchange is to fund these reciprocal offerings herself or through the auspices of her own university, won’t this ensure that mostly senior American scholars will be selected for the program in the future? I can certainly invite some of the people I met in Japan out to dinner in Montreal (if they are attending the 1999 meeting) because, as a senior scholar, I have a significant research budget. But, as Professor Bailey suggests, few younger people have this luxury. No junior scholar I know of at Duke, for instance, would have the contacts or the resources to put Japanese scholars in touch with their U.S. counterparts or to take them out to dinner while at the U. S. ASA meeting. Nor do they usually have the institutional power to engineer a visit to their own campus. Thus I agree that more thought needs to be put into how this reciprocity should work. I also think the two organizations that serve as the prism or funnel for these quite personal exchanges have a responsibility to make these expectations clear to future applicants of program.
It might be useful, for instance, to have further conversations among the JAAS officers and the ASA ad hoc committee for this project about the question of reciprocity. Perhaps with the assistance of our colleagues in the JAAS, we can clarify what kinds of activities, exchanges, and social occasions would be most desirable from their perspective. At the same time, I think we need to do a better job of explaining what the expectations about reciprocity are and to make suggestions to potential participants about how these activities might be creatively funded in the future. Careful thought should be devoted to this issue at the next meeting of the oversight committee for this project.
BETH BAILEY
INTRODUCTION
My trip to Japan in June 1999 was one of the most valuable professional and personal experiences in my life, and I am immensely grateful to the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, the Japanese Association for American Studies, and the American Studies Association for the opportunity. My experiences gave me greater insight into the practice of American Studies and the meaning and complexities of internationalization. I made personal and scholarly contacts that I believe will result in some future collaborative work and will help to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Japanese associations. I was introduced to Japan and Japanese culture by colleagues whose generosity and hospitality were overwhelming. I had many substantive conversations with people ranging from beginning graduate students to distinguished professors. I spent time in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Okinawa, and gave six talks to diverse audiences. And I was even able to do some research that will add a comparative dimension to my American Studies course on War and American culture at the University of New Mexico.
I have organized my report into three parts. First is a schedule of my activities, with comments on each of the presentations I gave and seminars I participated in. Second is a statement of results and future plans. Third is a summary of observations and conclusions, followed by some suggestions for-and questions about—the future.
SUMMARY OF ACTIVITIES
While dozens of people made me welcome in Japan, I would like to acknowledge three in particular: Professor Hiroko Sato, president of the JAAS; Professor Fumiko Fujita, the JAAS’s international liaison; and Professor Natsuki Aruga, who put together the JAAS panel in which I participated and gave me extremely useful comments and suggestions. My sole disappointment during this trip was that Professor Aruga was ill and unable to participate in any meetings or events. I had met her when we were on a panel together at an Organization of American Historians meeting in Chicago during the early 1990s, and we both had looked forward to working together while I was in Japan.
TUESDAY, JUNE 1
Arrive International House 7:20 p.m.
Dinner with Hiroko Sato and Jan Radway
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2
Briefing at American Embassy
Afternoon free; explored Tokyo with Jan
Dinner with Elaine Kim
THURSDAY, JUNE 3
Tokyo-Edo Museum with Yuko Itatsu, Tsuda College graduate student American Studies Seminar, University of Tokyo, “On the Border of War: Race and Gender in America’s Pacific War” This was my first talk in Japan, and a wonderful experience for my introduction. Yoshiko Takita, Professor of American Studies and Comparative Literature, arranged this seminar at the University of Tokyo. Yugin Yaguchi, an assistant professor with a recent Ph.D. from William and Mary and a research interest in Hawai’i, assisted her in making the arrangements. While participants in the seminar came from various universities in the Tokyo area, and included both faculty members and graduate students, approximately half of the participants were students in Professor Yaguchi’s American Studies seminar. They had read a couple of chapters from my book, The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii, on which the talk I presented at the beginning of the seminar was based. I was quite impressed by the sophistication of their comments and critiques, and by the genuine interest they showed in the process of research and writing. We had a lively discussion, which ran over the time allotted. Each participant also introduced him or herself and described his/her scholarly interests. I had continuing interactions with several of the people I met at this seminar throughout my stay in Japan.
FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Kabuki 11-4:30 (with Yuko Itatsu)
JAAS Executive board dinner
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, JUNE 5 AND 6
Japanese Association for American Studies Conference, Taisho University “Gender and the Globalization of American Studies.“ The conference was a mixture of plenary sessions, paper sessions, and workshops, and was quite well attended. Jan Radway, Elaine Kim, and I attended sessions all day each day of the conference; there were quite a few sessions in English, which were indicated on the conference program, and the JAAS very kindly provided translators (who did an heroic and quite impressive job) for a major session that was presented in Japanese. (Sometimes the presence of one of the American delegates would force a smaller workshop group into English, which may have been a problem for some graduate student participants.)
My talk on “Gender and the Globalization of American Studies” was part of a workshop addressing that theme. There were four papers: mine; a Lacanian analysis of three American plays by Prof. Hwang, one of the Korean delegates to the conference; an interesting historical analysis of the experience of young Japanese women sent to live and study in the U.S. in the 19th century; and a comparative analysis of feminism in the context of globalization. (“Small world” aside: I had met Yuko Takahashi, the author of the third paper, when she was a graduate student and I a faculty member at the University of Kansas in the late 1980s; the author of the fourth paper taught at Barnard College at the same time I did, though we never met.)
Though the conference organizers collected our papers in advance and provided written texts to audience members, the sessions were not really set up as workshops or seminars. The presenters read our papers and then audience members asked questions from the floor. I know that the last ASA-JAAS report stressed the desirability of workshops and more interactive formats, but I am not sure how this session (or the one in which Elaine Kim participated) could have functioned as a workshop. It is not simply the context of the Japanese meeting; the U.S. ASA has not quite figured that format question out either. While the session was not especially interactive, the presentations served as a basis for many informal conversations both at the JAAS meeting and elsewhere. I also benefited a great deal from the process of writing the paper, both because if allowed me to sort out some questions I had been thinking about for some time, and because I wrote it in consultation with Prof. Natsuki Aruga.
A few comments on the meeting in general: I was struck by the fact that the presidential address was delivered by the U.S. ASA president, Jan Radway, and not by the JAAS president, Hiroko Sato. The JAAS president has a two-year term, which allows for such flexibility. While the audience seemed quite interested in the presidential address (it was very well attended), and while I think it is a valuable opportunity for Japanese Americanists to hear the ASA president, this practice also highlights my greatest reservation or concern about what was, in all, a wonderful experience. We were all treated as distinguished guests, and deferred to so consistently on matters of scholarship and opinion that we did not hear as much about what Japanese scholars are doing and are interested in as I would have liked. It may be a cultural-style or academic-culture issue; perhaps Americans are not so good at picking up the talking-listening signals and negotiations the Japanese employ, and certainly American scholars are much more forceful and argumentative, in general, than our Japanese colleagues (though Jan, Elaine, and I seem to be on the quieter and calmer end of the spectrum, as American academics go). This might be an issue to address on some level, either by raising the issue with future ASA delegates before they go to Japan or by seeking a few more forums in which the US delegates might learn more about the state of American Studies in Japan.
SATURDAY P.M.: conference reception/party
SUNDAY P.M.: dinner for conference organizers/JAAS officers and foreign delegates
MONDAY, JUNE 7
Travel to Kyoto en masse (American and Korean delegates). Sightseeing and dinner with Prof. Masahiro Nakano, Director of the Center for American Studies, Ritsumeikan University
TUESDAY, JUNE 8
Sightseeing as a group with Prof. Nakano. Nijo Castle, Kinkaku-ji Shrine, Bordeaux Restaurant for lunch.
Ritsumeikan American Studies Seminar, Kyoto. “Gender and the Globalization of American Studies” Jan, Elaine, and I presented talks; Jan and I the same ones as at the Tokyo JAAS conference, and Elaine gave a different, related talk. The students had copies of Jan’s and my papers in advance, and had read them carefully. One student suggested that the time would be better spent if we did not read papers already given to them in advance, but the seminar leaders, Professors Yoneyama and Oikawa, said that past experience led them to believe it was better to have the papers presented as well as read in advance. The discussion was quite lively and wide-ranging, with many of the most probing and thoughtful questions coming from students at Doshisha University. Reception followed.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9
Travel to Hiroshima (alone)
Hiroshima University. “The Etiquette of Masculinity and Femininity.“ This talk was the least successful I gave, in my opinion, probably because it was almost completely discursive analysis/cultural history, without a lot of grounding in “what was going on in America during that historical era.“ Most of the students had difficulty distinguishing between material I quoted from popular magazines in the 1950s and my own analysis. The faculty, on the other hand, had a spirited debate that got fairly heated about gender politics, manners, and power in contemporary Japan. I felt that some of the heat came from a misunderstanding of my point, but their conversation was quite interesting to me. Dinner with faculty members from seminar.
THURSDAY, JUNE 10
Peace Museum (alone) in the morning. Sightseeing to Isle of Shrines with three graduate students from Hiroshima University, Kyoko Matsunaga, Mitsuyo Kido, and Hirsoshi Shioto.
FRIDAY, JUNE 11
Travel (alone) to Okinawa, meet Jan and Yoshitsugu Nakamura at airport. Lunch at airport, meet with Prof. Kenji Akamine and Dean Yogi, University of the Ryukyus University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa. “The American Sexual Revolution and Its Legacies.“ Jan and I presented papers, which fit together fairly well, given that we had not coordinated our planning in any way. Much of the audience was made up of undergraduate students of the English language, and they were very shy, so it was hard to judge reaction based on the questions-or lack of questions-that followed. There was an awkward incident during the questioning period when a Canadian woman (on the faculty in some capacity?) started “congratulating” the Japanese women on the progress they had made over the last decade in becoming “real” women, instead of “dolls.“ The faculty in attendance seemed interested in the papers, especially the American Fulbrighter who was finishing up his yearlong stay.
SATURDAY, JUNE 12
Sightseeing: Jan and I, Prof. Akamine and his wife (who did not speak much English) Shurijo Castle, Okinawa Peace Memorial and WWII museum Jan to airport; I explored (on foot, which was limiting) for the rest of the day
SUNDAY, JUNE 13
Travel from Okinawa to Tokyo. Dinner with Fumiko Fujita, Masako Notoji, and Yoshiko Takita.
MONDAY, JUNE 14
Koishikawa Kora Kuen Garden and Meiji Jingu Shrine with Kaori Okushita and Yuko Matsuzaki, graduate students. Women and War Seminar, Tokyo Women’s University “American Women in World War II.“ I had not known about this talk in advance, and had to get my husband to fax me some materials (I thought statements like “a lot of women took jobs in factories during WWII” would sound lame). It went well, as I was speaking to an ongoing seminar convened by a group of women scholars who had been working on a research and reading project on “women and war” over the past year or so. They gave me a copy of the set of articles they had written (unfortunately for me, in Japanese), and I learned a lot from the conversations following my presentation. This was probably the best mix of conversation including both students and their professors. At least one of the members of that group will be coming to Montreal for the ASA meeting. I think there is potential for some follow-up conversation and/or collaboration with members of that faculty seminar.
TUESDAY, JUNE 15
Spent the day walking around/subway-ing in Tokyo, found some Japanese punk music as a present for my son (a project with which countless graduate students had helped me during the course of my stay; I still have a long list of suggestions, but CDs are incredibly expensive in Japan).
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16
Depart Tokyo for Thailand to meet my family.
RESULTS AND FUTURE PLANS
PROFESSIONAL CONTACTS
I have almost finished writing or emailing all the people with whom I had substantive interactions while in Japan (I was delayed because I did not return to the U.S. until July 12). By actual count, there are 37 people with whom I have a relationship deserving correspondence. Several of us have exchanged materials or begun what promises to be a long-term professional relationship. As I mentioned earlier, I was unable to meet with my friend and colleague Natsuki Aruga because she was very ill, but, health permitting, I look forward to some future collaboration through email. I already have plans to see several Japanese scholars at the ASA 1999 meeting in Montreal (see “Suggestions”). While some of those contacts and relationships might have been established without my having visited Japan (as in the case of Professor Aruga in the past), I believe that having some general knowledge of Japanese academic culture and its differences from our own may make collaboration and/or organizational relations easier and more productive.
PLANS FOR COLLABORATION AND SCHOLARLY PROJECTS
Because I write and teach about World War II, especially the Pacific War, I was interested in Japan’s representations and memorializations of that historical era. I talked to many people about that subject, and became interested in a comparative analysis of what young people in the U.S. and in Japan have been taught about the war, and how that has changed over time. Some very good work has been done on official representations and museum exhibits, but education seems a worthwhile topic, especially in comparative context. As a member of the Board of Editors of the Pacific Historical Review (which is awarding its article prize this year to a Japanese scholar) and of American Studies, I intend to sound out the editors of each to see if the topic is of interest, and then attempt to find a collaborator. There is a group of women scholars in greater Tokyo who have just completed a project on “Women and War”; I gave a talk at their ongoing seminar. I think there are several possibilities for scholarly collaboration here.
RESEARCH/TEACHING:
Professors Aruga and Fujita and Mr. Nakamura of USIS, in arranging my itinerary, made it possible for me to visit both Hiroshima and Okinawa. As I write and teach about World War II, with a concentration on the Pacific War, visiting these two sites was very important for me. I was able to tour the Peace Museum at Hiroshima and visit the memorial and museum at Okinawa. I should be able to incorporate the photos I took and the captions I transcribed into a lecture on the politics of memory that I give in my American Studies War and American Culture course. I was also inspired to think about a possible collaborative project (see “Plans for Collaboration and Scholarly Projects).
OBSERVATIONS
The summary of comments below is compiled from conversations with quite a few people, and does not accurately represent the views of any one person. I also want to caution readers that I may not have understood the nuances of some of the comments. However, the answers I received seem particularly useful as the ASA confronts issues of internationalism and attempts to forge an international community of scholars.
How do Japanese scholars and graduate students perceive the field of U.S. American Studies? To the extent that the mainstream of the field is largely focused upon the differences among Americans (to the point of questioning the boundary of nation), and to the extent that U.S. American Studies scholarship is avowedly political, evaluating and seeking change in our society-how do Japanese scholars envision possibilities of interchange and intersection with their U.S. counterparts? What are the key scholarly and intellectual trends in American Studies in Japan?
Several senior professors felt strongly that the trends in U.S. American Studies scholarship today make the work of Japanese scholars, especially those who treat the United States as a “whole,“ or as a nation, more intellectually valuable than ever before. Japanese and other non-U.S. scholars of America see things that are naturalized into invisibility for U.S. scholars, one professor pointed out. Another argued that the dissolution of “America” being accomplished in and by the scholarship of difference serves to deny the extent to which the U.S. is a world power, a producer and exporter of influential cultural products, and the possessor of a culture that is distinctive among the world’s nations (just as Japan or France has a distinctive culture). To her and some of her colleagues, difference is a critical part of U.S. culture, not a reason to deny its existence. Those who made these points believed that Japanese scholars could play an important role in complicating and counterbalancing some of the major trends in U.S. American Studies scholarship.
Others-and many of these were graduate students or very junior faculty members who had been trained in state-of-the-art U.S. American Studies theory and methods in the United States—embraced scholarly questions about identity, positionality, and subjectivity, as well as the theoretical understandings critical to them. Some of these scholars made the political commitments typical of U.S. American Studies more relevant by focusing on Japanese in the U.S. or on Japanese-Americans. However, multiculturalism is also an important scholarly category in Japan’s American Studies; I was struck by how many graduate students and younger scholars are working on Native American literary texts. In terms of politics, a graduate student from Hiroshima University explained to me, one reason scholars study the history and culture of another nation is for insights into their own; the questions being asked by U.S. scholars are useful not only to Japanese scholars writing for a primarily U.S./international academic audience, but also for those who wish to use their (positive or negative) analyses of the United States to analyze Japanese society (whether directly or implicitly).
Finally, there were a few who, if I correctly understood their politely phrased comments, found much of U.S. American Studies scholarship somewhat self-indulgent or largely irrelevant to the sorts of questions they see as significant to a Japanese audience-often concerning international relations, politics, or economics. I might include in this group those who practice a more traditional form of literary analysis than is currently popular in the U.S.
CULTURE SHOCK
According to the evaluation of previous delegate reports that John Stephens furnished us to help in preparing our own reports, culture shock was the primary narrative in most reports. I have to say that I did not feel much culture shock. That does not mean that I was not constantly aware that I did not understand what was happening below the surface in interactions, and I know that I committed breaches of etiquette and faux pas, despite my best efforts. However, Japanese colleagues who had spent extensive amounts of time in the U.S. and were familiar with American manners and mannerisms cushioned our experiences. I suspect that my reaction was also shaped by the fact that I have spent a fair amount of time in Asia, including a Fulbright lectureship at the University of Jakarta in 1996. Compared with the difficulties of negotiating Indonesia’s infrastructure, academic culture, and protocols of hierarchy (complicated by Islam), Japan was a very easy place to be. I suppose years in New York made Tokyo less daunting. I have no illusions I understand Japanese culture, but the culture shock was not at all incapacitating.
At the same time, spending time in Japan was intellectually valuable in part because of the sense of cultural dislocation. It makes concepts we use in our work, such as cultural construction and difference, hit home on the gut level. For example, on the third day I spent in Tokyo I went to a 5 hour Kabuki performance, accompanied by a graduate student from Tsuda College. It consisted of portions of three different plays, each of a different sort, and translation/explanation was transmitted simultaneously in English. The final piece, which I enjoyed very much, consisted of a wealthy and refined young man pining for a geisha whom he loved. To me, the young man appeared delicate and feminine, more so, in fact, than his “female” lover. Yet when I asked Yuko, my companion, about this, she was quite surprised. It was not gender, but a version of class: what I read as femininity was instead signaling refinement.
These sorts of unanticipated-or at least unpredictable-difficulties in reading another culture arose sometimes in my presentations as well. I realized, once again, that cultural history is often quite difficult to communicate to people who do not exist within that culture. It is not simply the depth and texture of contextual knowledge that is problematic; metaphors do not always translate and the sorts of evidence often employed in cultural analysis is not transparent enough for the dual process of linguistic and cultural translation. For example, a story I have used very successfully as a metaphor for the complex intersections/interactions of gender and ethnicity in the United States turned out to be perplexing to some very knowledgeable Japanese scholars.
Such experiences have made me more self-conscious about the culture-bound nature of such analysis, and led me to think more about how to effectively communicate across (national) cultures. In preparing these talks, I also realized how internally-focused so much of my work, and of American Studies scholarship in general, typically is. Three of the six talks I gave were based on talks I had written previously for American audiences. I was shocked, in revising them, to discover how often I used the term “we,“ and how consistently I used some sense of desired changes in American society as the larger “so what” of the paper. While it was fairly easy to make the cosmetic changes necessary, recognizing this set of presumptions made me think more about the complexities of “internationalizing” American Studies and of the ways in which different national organizations of scholars may have quite different interests and stakes in the practice of American Studies.
SOME PRACTICAL COMMENTS
This was an incredible experience largely because so many people in Japan made it so. In each place I visited, colleagues made me very welcome, showed me around, answered my endless stream of questions. I met some very interesting and impressive people, and that is probably the thing I will remember most about the trip. Spending time with professional colleagues and being intensely involved in personal and professional interactions makes the times spent in another country quite a bit different from the usual travel/tourist experience. When I left Japan I met my husband and son in the south of Thailand for three weeks travel/vacation. While we certainly were not isolated in resort world, and traveled on the sort of public buses that took 7 hours to go 120 km, our relationship to the place and people was vastly different than I had experienced in Japan (or we had experienced while working in Jakarta). There is no substitute for the interactive nature of the experience, and that was made possible by the generosity of our Japanese hosts. That hospitality was also expressed materially, and I have to say that I have never had so many wonderful meals. For someone coming from an underfunded university remarkable short on such gestures, the entertaining was quite amazing.
I know that the site of the JAAS meeting rotates, but I think we were quite lucky to have it in Tokyo this year. Perhaps it is just because I found Tokyo immensely appealing. Nonetheless, the location allowed us to spend close to a week based in a single place, which offered the opportunity to speak to several audiences and to explore museums and cultural performances from a single site. Some of the most interesting time I spent was just wandering around Tokyo, exploring the city and the subway-system, and trying to get a feel for the city. While I might have accomplished the same amount of official work (i.e. presentations and seminars) in a shorter stay, the uncommitted time for exploration was a critical part of the experience.
I realize that this is the first year in which the president of the ASA did not select her/his fellow delegates. I had be interested in Jan Radway’s response, especially as she compares her experience to those of her predecessors, but I think it is also a very good idea to put U.S. delegates who are not already well acquainted in contact. I really enjoyed the time I spent with Jan and Elaine, both of whom I only knew through their work.
This was a fairly intense experience to share, and the connections and friendships forged were not only transnational.
I also found the process of traveling around the country interesting. Sometimes all five delegates (U.S. and Korean) traveled as a group, but usually travel was on our own. As it is quite unpredictable whether signs will appear in Roman script, navigating is sometimes a challenge. Traveling from Kyoto to Hiroshima by Shinkansen was quite easy, but the transfer to the local train to go up to the Hiroshima University campus (45 minutes away) was complicated because there was no sign I could read. The local train was scheduled to arrive at the university station at 3:48 and my talk was to be at 4:00, so there was no margin for error. I approached a few Japanese who did not understand me, and then ended up having a conversation in Indonesian with a man in a batik shirt who, it turns out, was an Japanese-speaking Indonesian graduate student at Hiroshima University. He not only answered my questions, but also took me to the platform and saw me onto the right train. Often it was the unplanned and unscheduled that turned out to be memorable.
SUGGESTIONS/QUESTIONS
I understand that one of the purposes of this third incarnation of the ASA-JAAS relationship is to create a more equitable relationship, especially in the opportunities extended to delegates from Japan to the United States. One report suggests that each former U.S. delegate to Japan become responsible for hosting a delegate from Japan. I am happy to have the opportunity to renew relationships or to create new ones, and I welcome the change to return some of the hospitality I experienced. I believe it is crucial that the Japanese delegates are not simply dropped into our huge and (creatively) chaotic meeting without much substantive contact with American colleagues. However, I’m not clear yet on the practicalities of the situation. Is it possible to coordinate the interactions in some central office or through one former delegate? While we certainly will never match the level of hospitality extended to us in Japan, some coordination with several years’ worth of past scholars seems important, if it does not already take place. Is there a way to create some sort of official group dinner or reception?
We might, also, think more about what sort of hosting is appropriate and possible. It is hard to host people in a city you do not know, if hosting means showing them around. What would the Japanese delegates find interesting and useful from us? Is putting them in touch with American scholars who share their interests more useful than external excursions? Would they like to make plans to attend sessions with one of us? Obviously, the situations are not parallel. None of us had spent significant time in Japan before, none of us spoke or read Japanese, and none of us could have functioned well without the very practical assistance our hosts furnished. The Japanese delegates are Americanists. They speak English, and most have lived in the U.S. for extended periods of time. In thinking about how to fulfil my obligations, I would welcome a chance to hear more from the ASA committee in charge about what they envisioned in their report, and also to hear from the JAAS officers or delegates about their expectations and desires.
In terms of the larger issue of what roles the Japanese delegates will play during their trips to the U.S., I had several conversations on that topic. A couple of people told me that they were less interested in traveling around the country giving presentations (one asked if anyone would really be interested) than in the opportunity to spend time with U.S. scholars who worked on similar topics, and/or to spend some time at relevant archives and libraries. I would, of course, be happy to host someone interested in southwest or Native American research that wished to be in Albuquerque, or to spend time collaborating with someone who shares my research interests. I would be willing to offer my guestroom, and/or to host a reception at my house or arrange a departmental seminar. Again, though, I am uncertain about the practicalities. Who would fund the travel? I found the report uncomfortably vague on how the reciprocity would function, and how organizational (ASA), institutional (university), and personal responsibility were to be divided. Can the ASA and JAAS offer practical information and suggestions about what initiatives seem most important and useful, and about what we former delegates might do?
Increased interaction between Japanese and U.S. Americanists requires more interchange of scholarly work. In preparation for my trip, I searched databases for the work of those I knew I would meet (I was familiar with a couple of people already), and used interlibrary loan to secure copies of articles and books in English. It was well worth the effort, but I had mixed success obtaining materials. In the bigger picture, the language barrier for U.S. scholars is an obvious problem, and U.S. publishing houses, cutting back on less-marketable scholarly books anyway, are not likely to begin a large-scale publishing effort. The Internet offers the best possibilities, I suppose, and the ASA has been quite adventurous in that regard lately. However, computer use and possession was much less widespread in Japan than in the U.S.—I was quite surprised. I also had not realized how expensive English-language books are in Japan. Again, the Internet helps-Amazon.com and other Internet based services undercut the prices and the limited stock of bookstores quite dramatically. Perhaps there is a way to encourage the exchange of recently published works, or to discuss with JAAS officers what they might find useful in terms of ASA initiatives.
In conclusion, I want to reiterate my gratitude for the opportunity to participate in this program and my desire to do whatever possible to ensure its continued success.
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]