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 | Contact Members
ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 1999
ELAINE KIM
I arrived at Tokyo’s Narita Airport on May 31. After settling in at the International House, I was contacted by Professor and JAAS officer Fumiko Fujita of Tsuda University, who delivered an envelope containing per diem and honorarium funds.
On the following day, I was picked up by a U.S. Embassy car and driven to the USIS Program Development Office for a program briefing with Cultural Affairs Attaché Marshall R. Louis, who told me about the various American Center programs. I had lunch with Program Development Office staffer Yoshitsugu Nakamura, an Okinawan native who had been working for the U.S. Embassy for twenty years. Then I was escorted to Tokyo Station, where I boarded a train for Nagoya.
About two hours later, I arrived in Nagoya, where Jeffrey M. Jamison, the USIS Nagoya Branch Public Affairs Officer and Director of Nagoya American Center picked me up. I gave a lecture, which was co-sponsored by the Chubu Chapter of the Japan American Literature Society, on new Asian American writing and visual art that was attended by about thirty-five persons, including Professors Koike Rie, Ayako Uchida, and Akitoshi Nagahata of Nagoya University’s Faculty of Language and Culture; Toru Arai of Nagoya City University; Tokuya Atsumi of the Japan American Literature Society; Yoko Kurahashi of Tokai Gakuen College; Kimiko Nozawa of Aichi Prefectural University; Eiji Sinmi, the Cultural Program Coordinator of Canolfan; Junko Yamashita and David Mayer of Nanzan University; Yoshio Yamaguchi of Aichi Gakusen University; Junko Urayama of Aichi Shukuoku University; Junko Oka of Aihchi University of Education; Tomoko Yamabe, a reporter with NHK Nagoya; Professor Eriko Yamamoto of Literature and Americans Studies at Sugiyama Jogakuen University in Nagoya; and about ten students from various local universities. The moderator was Professor Mizuho Murayama of Aichi Prefectural University’s American Literature Department. Professor Murayama provided summary translations.
During the Q & A period after my lecture, one audience member asked me if I felt “guilty” about “what Korean soldiers did in Vietnam.“ I replied that although I made it my business to know about what happened there, I did not feel guilty about it. She said that she did not think she should feel “guilty” about what her grandfather’s generation did during World War II. I responded to her comment by talking about some white Americans’ expressed resentment about being linked to white slave owners of previous centuries. I suggested that instead of focusing on the days before they were born, Japanese of today might think about whether there are continuing repercussions from past injustices, such as economic inequality between today’s black and white Americans resulting from restrictions on property ownership that have prevented blacks as a group from acquiring the wealth from real estate that whites as a group were able to accumulate. At dinner afterwards, my hosts apologized for the questioner, saying that she had probably been infuriated when a young Korean Japanese had told a group a few weeks before that all Japanese should feel guilty for Japanese atrocities during World War II. One of them told me that she was married to a Korean. I did not mind the question at all, but I think that my hosts were worried about it. I suspect that my hosts do not want their guest speakers to be embarrassed by controversial questions. I noticed that every guest was required to notify the Center ahead of time that they were planning to attend a lecture, so that there was a complete guest list ahead of time, and no unplanned-for guest could participate.
After a night at the Hotel Castle Plaza, I walked around in the Yanagibashi Central Market, which is mostly a fish market, and then I took at train back to Tokyo. In Tokyo, I took a subway to visit the Asakusa district and the Ginza area. In the evening, I had dinner with Beth Bailey.
On June 3, I was taken to the Tokyo American Center, where I met Director J. Brooks Spector and Program Specialist Yoko Hatakeyama. I gave a lecture on Asian American literature in the post-L.A. riot years. Professor Fukuko Kobayashi of Waseda University’s American Literature program and the Gender Center moderated the talk at Ochanomisu University. Professor Kobayashi provided me with copies of some of her scholarly essays, including a very interesting piece on Enchi Fumiko’s Onnazaka (1957), a proto-feminist novel. Skilled interpreters Keiko Murasaki and Naoko Nishida of Simul International provided simultaneous translation by headphone. Helen Lee, a graduate student at UC Irvine studying in Tokyo, read selections I had chosen from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s DICTEE and from Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman. I also showed some slides and a videotape excerpt. About fifty persons, including Professor Gayle K. Sato of Meiji University’s Literature department, Professor Lisa Bloom, and Professor Suresht Bald of Josai International University’s Humanities, Inter-Cultural Studies, attended the presentation. According to the guest list, in addition to professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students, there were a number of writers, journalists, reporters, art critics, and people working for charitable organizations.
I met Misako Ando of the Japan National Press Club; Minami Aoyama, a free lance writer; Hisakazu Dohi of the Japan Association of Charitable Organizations; Koichi Edagawa, a writer; Yuriko Hamamoto, former director of Globe Japan; Eriko Hara, Professor at Tokyo Kasei University; Akiko Hyuga, an art critic; Professor Masako Iino of Tsuda College and her students, Yuko Itatsu, Tomoko Ozawa, Yuko Matsuzaki, and Tonomi Iino; Yukiko Imatomi of Tokyo Women’s Christian University; and one scholar from the Chinese mainland whose name I cannot recall. I remember, though, that she traveled four hours by train to attend the session.
On June 4, I was taken on a tour of the Shinjuku District by Helen Lee, the Korean American graduate student from UC Irvine who read excerpts from Cha and Keller the previous day, and Daniel O’Neal, a Chinese American graduate student from Yale, both of whom have been studying in Japan for the past one or two years. I learned a great deal from them about contemporary cultural practices among Japanese youth as well as about what academic life is like for Japanese scholars.
In the evening, there was a dinner at the International House hosted by the JAAS officers, including the president, Professor Hiroko Sato of Tokyo Women’s Christian University’s English Department and Center for Women’s Studies. At the dinner, I met Professor Daizaburo Yui of the University of Tokyo’s Area Studies Division. Professor Yui had previously been a visiting scholar at Berkeley, where he conducted archival research on Japanese Americans. I also met Professors Jae Min Kim of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies’ Institute of American Studies and Hoon-Sung Hwang of Dongguk University’s English Department.
On June 5 and 6, we all attended the JAAS 33rd Annual Meeting at Taisho University’s International Center. I heard a paper by Professor William Clark of Temple University Japan. It was titled “Nisei Daughter/Sansei Son: Structure of Memory in Japanese American Autobiography.“ Professor Clark cited the new work by UC Riverside English professor Traise Yamamoto, whose work I have supported in the past. Another memorable conference paper was by Yujin Yaguchi of the University of Tokyo. The paper was titled “Community, Memory, and Ethnic History Museums in the Age of Globalization: Revisiting ‘From Bento to Mixed Lunch.‘“ Professor Yaguchi examined the linear, ameliorative, liberal multiculturalist view of history presented in the exhibit, which he studied at Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, an organization with which I am quite familiar. Professor Janice Radway delivered her ASA presidential address, for which simultaneous interpretation with headphones was provided. This address was followed by a symposium, with presentations by four Japanese scholars addressing questions of national and “international” politics. I delivered a paper titled “Counter-Memory in Korean American Literature” and attended the group meeting for Asian American Studies, which was chaired by Professor Teruo Ueki of Kobe Women’s University and attended by about sixty persons. There, I met a number of Japanese scholars interested in Asian American literature.
At a sumptuous reception provided by Taisho University, I met Professor Yasuko Takezawa of Kyoto University, who studied the redress movement in Seattle and whom I met in Berkeley this month (she has asked me to read her work on race and pre-World War II representations of Asians in U.S. advertisements). I also met Kyoko Michishita, an independent scholar; Kazuko Takemura of Ochanimizu University, who has translated the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha and Judith Butler of UC Berkeley (both challenging to translate, I’m sure); Takayumi Tatsumi of Keio University, who studied with Jonathan Culler at Cornell; Misako Koike, another independent scholar who had formerly taught in Hokkaido; Miyuki Kitamura of Doshisha University’s American Studies program; and Yoshiko Takita of the University of Tokyo’s American Studies and Comparative Literature program.
In general, I felt that many of the papers were more concerned with the relations between Japan-as-nation and the U.S.-as-nation than about “globalization and American studies,“ the stated conference title. Even with regard to the field of Asian American studies, I felt, there was a great deal of interest in what Japanese American history and writing says about U.S.-Japan relations during various eras.
On June 7, Janice Radway, Beth Bailey, Professor Jae Min Kim, Professor Hoonsung Hwang, and I left for Kyoto, where we were met by Professor Masahiro Nakano, Professor of American Studies and Director for American Studies at Ritsumeikan University. We each paid in advance for our meals and activities. Professor Nakano took us to the Gion District and to dinner. The next day, he and a former student took us to Nijojo Castle, to the Bordeaux French restaurant, and to Kinkakuji Temple. The student, who was 25 years old, talked about the current employment difficulties young women graduates are facing. Then we went to Ritsumeikan University, where all three of us read the papers we had delivered at the JAAS conference in Tokyo. Later, we were greeted at a reception, where I met Professor Masahiro Oikawa of Ritsumeikan’s Faculty of International Relations, Yasuho Ikeuchi of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Professor Hiroshi Yoneyama, Associate Director of American Studies at Ritsumeikan.
On June 9, I was met by Keizo Sanuki, Public Affairs Program Specialist at the American Center in Kansai. Mr. Sanuki accompanied me by train to Kobe. Along the way, he described the grim situation facing many formerly middle class, middle-aged men in Japan who have been laid off during the current economic crisis. In Kobe, we were met by Professor Teruo Ueki, founder of the Asian American Literature Association, the consecutive translator, Mr. Tominaga, and Karen Kelley, Director of the American Center in Osaka. I learned that after Karen Kelley, who is African American, will leave her post next year; a Korean American will replace her. I was told that Osaka is one of Japan’s most “multi-racial” cities. Communities of Korean Japanese, burakumin, Okinawans, and immigrants from various countries have settled in Osaka for decades. Thus Osaka is the city where an African American and Korean American diplomat can operate without disconcerting people who have other notions of what an “American” is.
After lunch in the school cafeteria, we surveyed the state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment, which included a monitor built into the podium, where a speaker can simply touch the tiny screen to advance, reverse, or freeze the video frames, or indeed to switch from video playback to slide projection. The lecture, which was titled “The Significance of Asian American Literature in the Formation of U.S. Culture,“ was attended by about 120 persons, many of whom I think were students required to be present. The group also included professors and members of the Kansai Asian American Literature Association, which is impressively large and active compared to ten years ago, when I visited. Excellent questions were asked during the Q & A, and I understand that the presentation was well received.
At a reception following the lecture, as well as at a dinner at a tofu restaurant after that, I met people who had traveled from afar to attend the lecture, including a gentleman named Mr. Tsurushima, who told me that I had lobbied him in Berkeley twenty years before on behalf of a Korean immigrant on San Quentin’s Death Row for a murder I believed he did not commit. A journalist, he said that he did indeed write two newspaper articles about the inmate. Among the other persons at the reception and dinner were Professor Natsuki Aruga of American Studies at Saitama University, Professor Kyoko Nozaki of Kyoto Sangyo University’s English Education Center; Professor Mie Hihara of Kyoto Women’s University; Professor Yasuo Sakakibara of Osaka University of Commerce’s Economics Faculty; Professor Kazuko Watanabe of the Kyoto Sangyo University’s Faculty of Foreign Languages; Professor Chitoshi Motoyama of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies’ English and American Studies Department; Professor Yorimasa Nasu of Kobe Women’s Universal American Literature Department; Masumi Izumi, a graduate student at Doshisha University’s American Studies program; Matsuko Song Katada, an undergraduate student at Kobe Women’s University who is Korean Japanese; and Professor Mitsu Yoshida of Matsuyama University, who seems to have read everything I have ever written.
In the future, I plan to collaborate with Professor Teruo Ueki, who has now almost finished translating my book on Asian American literature into Japanese. We have collaborated in the past on interviews with Japanese American writers in Los Angeles, which Professor Ueki has now put together in a new book.
I left Osaka from the Kansai Airport the afternoon of June 10.
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]