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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 2001
International Christian University
My first engagement was a talk to students in an introductory course at International Christian University. With some advance consultation with Professor Onishi, I took the train to the town closest to the University’s campus and he picked me up there (I took the bus and train back to the hotel on my own). I found ICU interesting because it was self-consciously begun and run on the model of an American University and the introductory American Studies course focuses on the Allied Occupation of Japan. I gave a simplified version of my JAAS paper on the American influence on Japanese radio during the Occupation, prefaced by some explanation of Brown’s introductory American Studies course. I spoke for about 45 minutes, we took a break (during which the faculty had tea in the teacher’s lounge which I quite loved), and then had a lively question and answer session. The students were eager to be clear on the details of the historical story I was telling and also to answer my questions about their tastes in popular culture. The course instructor, the graduate teaching assistant, about six of the students and I continued the discussion over lunch in the cafeteria. I was most moved by several first year students (having just begun their studies in April, they were very new to campus) who approached me with some disappointment because they found that their English was not good enough to understand the whole lecture. I thought them quite brave to come up and talk about their difficulties and we discussed various ways to improve their listening comprehension. While at ICU, Professor Onishi told me of a collection of papers, given to the University by one of its founders, that traces the US role in the reinvigoration of Japanese music during the Occupation. I want very much to return and use these papers for a future research project, perhaps in collaboration with an ICU graduate student. In many ways, the combination of wonderful social, intellectual, and pedagogical interactions made this, perhaps, my favorite talk. The opportunity to be part of the regular academic schedule proved fascinating and important to my understanding of how Japanese universities work.
JAAS Meetings, Aichi Prefectural University
We traveled as a group from Tokyo to Nagoya for the JAAS meetings and the train trip set the stage for the wonderful mix of personal and professional conversations that were to come. I especially enjoyed the chance to meet and talk with Margaret Mihori of the Japanese-US Friendship Commission and appreciated her taking the time to watch the exchange in action. We were welcomed to Nagoya at a reception given by the officers of the JAAS that helped introduce us to colleagues we would continue to meet at the conference. The next day, we arrived at Aichi Prefectural University in time for lunch that we ate with the other international delegation, two professors from the Korean American Studies Association. After lunch while Michael and Amy prepared their talks, I found the cafeteria and chatted informally with a group of graduate students from Tokyo and Michael and Amy soon joined me. I found these informal discussions to be among the most interesting and fruitful of my time at the meetings. A prior acquaintance with some of the younger Japanese academics, through Brown graduate students and other contacts, made this easier. Professor Yujin Yaguchi of Tokyo University and several colleagues from Kansai facilitated my discussions with eager graduate students, many of whom will be studying in the United States soon and promise (threaten?) to be in touch when they arrive. In addition, I found out that several of the students are beginning a graduate student organization (Graduate Students in American Studies Programs – GrASP! – see http://www.geocities.co.jp/CollegeLife Cafe/6195/0.html—contact Erika Sunada for more information, gsd0039@srv.cc.hit-u.ac.jp) since the JAAS does not have an active graduate student component. I introduced the students to Michael and suggested that the ASA put the Graduate Student Committee in touch with these students. The graduate students at Brown were very interested to hear about this group and will soon communicate with them electronically. GrASP holds regular conferences and I will try to arrange funding so that a Brown student can travel to Tokyo and present a paper. In future, I hope that a graduate student could be added to the U.S. delegation and perhaps the ASA could host a Japanese graduate student at the U.S. meetings.
At the ASA meetings, I always like best sitting in the restaurant or bar and exchanging ideas, so it was fun to find I could do the same in Japan. I urge future ASA participants to spend as much time as possible wandering the halls of the meetings to interact with faculty and students informally and agree with previous participants that a time, set aside, for such interactions might well be included in future schedules.
In the afternoon, I attended President Frisch’s engaging Presidential Address and then went on the arranged outing to a ceramics museum and a local park, before returning for a wonderful reception. The outing gave me a chance to talk with Professor Nam-Gyun Kim of Pyongtaek University, one of the Korean delegates. Professor Kim is reorganizing American Studies at his University and I have since been in email contact with him to share our own experiences in a similar reconstruction. At the reception, I was interested in the Japanese custom of having the oldest person present give a toast. The toast on this occasion was very moving, referring to the history of US-Japanese relations.
On Sunday, I went to the morning panel presented in English, to hear Professor Kaplan’s fascinating talk and those by two other scholars, both of which I found quite interesting. I missed some of the question and answer session to meet with the other presenters on my afternoon panel. At lunch, Amy and I gave informal presentations at the Women’s and Gender Studies meeting and then asked those present to briefly explain their own scholarly projects. We both found this very fruitful because it was a chance to learn about the intellectual work being done by Americanists in Japan.
In the afternoon, I gave my paper, “Now It Can Be Told: The Influence of the United States Occupation on Japanese Radio” and listened to the two other papers and the terrific comment. I especially learned from Professor Kim’s paper about the importance of the Korean War to Japanese-American relations and will refer to his insights in my own future work. The commentator, Professor Jong Won Lee of Rikkyo University, did a magnificent job of pointing out the questions raised by the papers. We had only a short time for questions from the audience, but the questions that were posed proved extremely important.
We finished the conference with a wonderful dinner with the two international delegations and our primary hosts, Professors Onishi, Iinos, and Notoji at a justly famous restaurant featuring the local speciality, Nagoya chicken. In retrospect, I would echo the comments of past delegates and say that I wished for an even greater sense of true participation in the meetings. I think this might be achieved in two ways: provision of a simultaneous interpreter so that the Americans could attend sessions in Japanese and the arrangement of informal sessions where graduate students and faculty might make five minute presentations of their work to which the Americans might respond.
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto
Michael, Amy, and I traveled together to Kyoto and did some sightseeing before meeting the faculty of the Center for American Studies, Ritsumeikan Unviersity, for an informal dinner. Professor Julie Higashi wonderfully made the arrangements for this meal and all that followed. I especially appreciated her willingness to communicate before we arrived in Japan about what the seminar would be like and what was expected of us.
The next morning, Professor Hiroshi Yoneyama took us to a few more temples (all fabulous); a great noodle restaurant; and back to the campus for our afternoon seminar. We read our papers one after another; they fit together well (mine was an overview of methodologies for studying popular culture); and the students, many of whom had read the papers ahead of time as a class assignment, seemed engaged. The question session was not as lively as we had hoped, but the students, from both Doshisha University and Ritsumeikan used the reception as a chance to ask more questions. I wished for even more time to really engage them, in an informal setting, about their own work. Michael, Amy, and I found a quiet restaurant for dinner to celebrate the success of our joint travels.
Amy and I stayed on in Kyoto for several days of sightseeing. I also used Amy’s talk in Nara as an excuse to go there myself and look around. These are great, fascinating, and ancient cities, and I would hope to return often to continue my explorations. While in Kyoto, I also visited the Center for American Studies at Doshisha University. I had met some of the faculty and graduate students at the JAAS meetings and the Ritsumeikan Seminar, but also knew Professor Yoshio Higomoto from his graduate work at Brown and Professor Hidehito Gemma from his time as a Visiting Scholar at Brown. Professors Takashi Sasaki, Professor of American Literature and Culture, and Professor Masahiro Hosoya, Director of the Center very kindly showed me the wonderful library and offices of this very active Center for American Studies. I have since sent copies of my work to them both and have had useful and stimulating responses from them. We share interests in several areas and I am sure that I will continue to be in touch with both Professors Sasaki and Hosoya.
American Center Talks
From Kyoto, I returned to Tokyo to begin the part of my travels that was organized by the Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Kansai American Centers and by the Public Affairs Section of the American Embassy, particularly Warren Soiffer, Program Development Officer. I enjoyed the chance to talk to, and meet, a wide range of people at these talks and appreciate the work that went into gathering an audience and making the preparations. Particularly impressive was the effort by the staff of the Centers and at the Embassy: Yoshitsugu Nakamura, at the Embassy in Tokyo; Keizo Sanuki at the Kansai American Center; and Ms. Hanada of the Fukuoka American Center. Their assistance and counsel were invaluable. In addition, the translator who worked with me for all three events, Masayuki Tominaga, of the Public Affairs Section of the American Embassy, proved amazing. Mr. Tominaga’s careful preparation and thoughtful comments made the difference between success and failure. I appreciated his help.
I had several email exchanges with Bruce Kleiner, of the Fukuoka American Center before I left about the subject of my talk. But the subjects of the other talks, their length, any information about the audiences, and the arrangements for translation were all very hazy to me before I arrived in Tokyo. Such details seem crucial for ensuring a good presentation. I appreciate the need for flexibility on the part of the speaker and think, in the end, the talks went well, but I still do not understand why things couldn’t have been clearer, sooner. The American Centers have needs that speakers must meet. I would have been glad to negotiate topics and lengths, but reacted strongly when, upon arrival in Tokyo, I was presented with a title for one of my presentations that was far outside my area of expertise. More communication, earlier, could forestall these kinds of problems. Again, the opportunity to meet and talk with a range of people was terrific and I am very pleased with the outcome, but the process could be improved.
The Tokyo American Center talk, presented in a specially equipped small auditorium, had simultaneous translation. I spoke on “Radio’s Flexibility: Survival in a Changing World” to an audience made up of college students, faculty, and professionals from broadcasting and media. Of particular note was a group of students from a communications class at Meiji Gakuin University whose professor, Robert Seward, had assigned a chapter of my book as class reading, and Hisateru Furuta of the NHK Broadcasting Research Institute who I had met earlier and who was the lead author of the three volume, recently published, history of broadcasting in Japan. Also present were representatives from TV-Asahi, the Daily Yomiuri, Asahi Shimbun, NEC Corporation, Fuji-TV, and the NHK among other companies. Professor Notoji gave a wonderful introduction that helped acquaint the audience with me, and my topic, and she also skillfully handled a long and lively question and answer session. Many of the questions focused on the current state of radio broadcasting in the United States, and included a discussion comparing the NHK and National Public Radio. The audience was well informed about contemporary broadcasting but I hope I was able to give them some historical context to add to their understanding of American radio and television.
I left Tokyo bound for Fukuoka, which I was thrilled to visit. The next night, Mr. Kleiner and Ms. Hanada had kindly arranged for a dinner with area scholars. We had a wonderful discussion over local seafood specialties. The other guests included an anthropologist specializing in South America, an English language teacher at a junior college, a local NHK news executive, and my host for the next day’s program at Kitakyushu University. We talked about economics, about American attitudes toward the Japanese in light of the release of the film “Pearl Harbor,“ and compared Japanese and American drinking, broadcasting, and education. We left for Kitakyushu the next day where we met Professor Yasuhiro Yoshizaki who was kindly hosting my visit. We began by meeting with the President of the University (I was excited to learn that Japanese University presidents are elected from the faculty for rotating terms – a very good idea) and then went to a seminar for faculty that was conducted in English. The faculty had asked if I would talk about American advertising, which I was glad to do but wished I had known ahead of time about the topic so I could have brought some slides of early advertisements to supplement everyone’s knowledge of contemporary advertising. We had an interesting interchange of ideas about the effects of advertising, the topics of advertising, how to interpret individual ads, and whether advertising differs in Japan and the United States. With a quick break, I then gave a lecture on popular culture to a large undergraduate class. Mr. Tominaga gracefully provided consecutive translation but I think both the students and I found this a cumbersome process. Despite the size of the class, the difficulty of the translation, and the late afternoon hour, there were some great questions about the relationship between capitalism and popular culture and the relative status of anime and comic books in Japan and the United States. The questions continued after the class, with Mr. Tominaga and Ms. Hanada sharing translating duties, until I had to be dragged off to catch a train. I much appreciated Professor Yoshizaki’s generosity in sharing his class time with me and for arranging the faculty seminar, as well as Mr. Kleiner’s seriousness about the subject and commitment to making a lecture in his area possible.
A quick trip to Osaka the following morning brought Mr. Tominaga and I to our last engagement – a talk at the Kansai American Center. In many ways, this talk was similar to the one I had given earlier in the week at the Tokyo American Center. I gave a different presentation, describing reasons and methods for studying popular culture using a case study of radio during the Allied Occupation of Japan, but the audience, the simultaneous translation, the thoughtful introduction, comments and moderating (this time by my old friend, Professor Matsuda), the great questions and lengthy discussion all seemed quite familiar. During the discussion, however, several broadcasting professionals wonderfully explained how Osaka and Tokyo differed in every respect, beginning with the differences in broadcasting and entertainment, and continuing from there. Another question related to the role of sports in American popular culture and the role of competition in American sports.
I ended my time in Japan visiting with Professor Matsuda and his family. We first met in 1986 when he was on a Fulbright to the University of Texas, San Antonio where I had my first teaching job. Besides the chance to renew old friendships and share intellectual concerns, I appreciated the chance to meet another family friend who had been a radio producer at the NHK, Osaka radio station, and now helped run the humor museum in Osaka which he kindly showed us around. I hope, with a Japanese colleague yet to be discovered, to compare a particular Osaka radio program with American programs, and so this background was crucial to my future academic work as well as fun.
Conclusion
Summing up such a varied and inspiring experience is hard. I appreciated most the time and trouble to put together a diverse and interesting schedule and make the complexities all seem simple undertaken by our hosts – Professors Iinos, Onishi, and Notoji. Professor Iinos’ dedication to making sure the arrangements worked, suited us, and were communicated was incredible; Professor Onishi’s willingness to help us understand what was going on, to handle the details of our complex arrangements, and to provide humor at the proper moment made even the idea that something would go wrong impossible; and Professor Notoji’s concern for our intellectual and personal welfare, her incredible connections and network, and her running commentary on the meta-narratives of academic life helped put the experience in perspective. Their work was not “merely” organizational. Without the kind of care and warmth they put into the arrangements, no intellectual exchange is possible.
In the end, it is that intellectual exchange that must and does stand at the heart of this experience for me. It was so good that I wished for more of it. I liked giving talks and hearing the reactions to them. I learned a lot about my subjects from the interactions, both formal and informal, after each presentation. I appreciated the care and attention that my Japanese colleagues gave my work. Even more interesting, was the chance to listen to and think about how Japanese scholars approach the study of the U.S. and to hear their conclusions. This is the part of the exchange I would love to see emphasized even more, with the full realization that it is my own lack of skill in Japanese that stood in the way. For one quick example, could the Japanese scholars send their reprints (which they graciously shared with me at the conference) ahead of time so I could have read them before we met? Any further chances for the Americans to learn more about the work of their Japanese colleagues would be much appreciated.
Suggestions
- Americans be encouraged to arrive in Japan as early as possible to make connections and to recover from jet lag. Explanations of the funding, which would easily cover an early arrival, should be made early in the planning process.
- American delegates should take every opportunity to see a regular University campus in action.
- The JAAS might consider scheduling informal sessions at the meetings where faculty and graduate students could make short presentations, in English, of their work and the international delegates could respond.
- The JAAS and the ASA could ask the U.S. Japanese Friendship Commission and the American Embassy to fund a translator for one day of the meetings so the Americans could follow the talks presented in Japanese.
- The ASA should facilitate an exchange, even if only electronically, between the Graduate Student Committee and the graduate students in Japan. Further, we should work to add a graduate student component to this exchange program.
- The Embassy should communicate details of the talks under its jurisdiction early and completely. The chance to meet a greater cross-section of people presented by the talks at the American Centers should be encouraged. These talks turned out to be great fun and useful for all concerned
- The chance for Americans to hear about the work of their Japanese colleagues could be expanded.
Tips for American Delegates
Find out as much as possible about each talk before you go. Here are some questions you might try:
Who is the audience?
What are their interests?
What is their level of English?
What kind of translation will be available? How will that influence the length of the talk?
Will the audience receive a copy of the talk ahead of time?
In what kind of auditorium/facility will the talk be held?
What audio-visual equipment is available?
How long shall I talk?
I believe that talks built around a concrete case study work best for instances where you are uncertain about the audience’s comprehension. If people can leave saying, “I heard a talk about W.E.B. DuBois” or “I heard a talk about world’s fairs,“ they feel they have learned something. The simpler the case study, the better, I think, and be sure to explain the case study in the beginning and refer back to it often. I am not suggesting that one present simple material, rather that one start with a concrete example and move to the deeper level of complexity from there. Several of my talks were methodological and if I had them to do over again, I would have tied each methodological point to an example.
When asked for titles of possible talks, attach two or three sentences of explanation of the talks’ subjects, possibly including the audience (undergraduates, graduate students faculty, the public) to whom the talk would best be presented. I thought the titles were explanatory, but found they often were not. When Professor Notoji spoke at Brown, she did this and we found it much easier to choose a topic when we had more information about each talk.
Prepare and bring with you abstracts and outlines of each talk. The outlines help in situations where students did not receive copies of the paper ahead of time and can be quickly xeroxed. You might think about including difficult or unusual terms or proper names on the outline. Abstracts are often used to publicize the talks.
Any work you can do ahead of time regarding your subject’s connection to Japan, either comparatively (this is very like or unlike what happens/happened in Japan); historically (DuBois wrote about Japan in this text); and/or directly (the U.S. and Japan interacted in this way) will be useful because everyone will ask you about such connections.
During many of the academic talks given in English, the audience follows along on a printed version to increase comprehension. This is a great idea but made me afraid to do anything but read my paper. Watching other speakers, I saw that you could, if you explained what you were doing, sometimes skip paragraphs to shorten the paper, as well as speak off the page for brief instances. Both of these, used sparingly, improved the presentation but it took me a while to realize this.
During translation, we were told you could either speak from an outline or read a paper, but you could not ad lib during a written paper. I used written papers and I think the quality of the translation was higher, but I felt terribly constrained to be simply reading the paper. Both outlining and reading “work,“ but its good to know ahead of time what you plan to do. Simultaneous translation calls for special equipment while in consecutive translation, you speak a paragraph and then the translator speaks. Japanese takes about 1/3 longer than English so in simultaneous translation one must speak very slowly and in both simultaneous and consecutive translation, one must shorten one’s talk considerably. Again, it is useful to find out what will happen ahead of time so as not to exceed time limits.
Many Japanese conferences/seminars are tightly scheduled with no breaks between sessions. More so than in the US, speakers are expected to stay within fairly strict time limits. You can not go wrong planning for slightly less time in order to speak more slowly than usual or to be translated.
If you have met Japanese colleagues in the U.S., either while they were here as students, on research trips, or at conferences, try to be in touch before you get to Japan to hear their suggestions about your presentations and to arrange to see them once you arrive. I loved the new connections this exchange allowed me to make, but I equally valued the renewing of old ties.
Contact previous participants in the exchange in order to get more information. We found that people who had gone before us, including Steve Sumida, Mary Kelley, and Lucy Maddox, were very helpful in explaining the particular situations we would encounter.
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