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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 2004
Report on JAAS-ASA Project 2004: Japan-United States Dialogues Across the Pacific
Report of the ASA President
Amy Kaplan, University of Pennsylvania
July 2004
On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the JAAS/ ASA Project, it was a great honor and pleasure to join the ASA delegation to the JAAS meeting for the second time. Renewing ties I first made with Japanese colleagues two years ago and sustained through visits to the ASA conferences enhanced this wonderful intellectual and professional experience. This second visit taught me that a key component of the JAAS/ASA exchange lies in building an ongoing and growing intellectual community, whose ties go far beyond the two annual conventions. On behalf of all three ASA delegates, including Professors Marita Sturken, Jonathan Auerbach, I would like to thank the officers and members of JAAS for the unique combination of hospitality, collegiality, and intellectual quality. As the ASA embarks on new international initiatives, this collaboration will long stand as a model of intellectual exchange.
The success of this visit and the continuing project is clearly due to a collective effort. I would like to single out several individuals for their special efforts: President Toyoomi Nagata and incoming President Daizaburo Yui for convening the conference and warmly welcoming us; Professor Noriko Shimada for hosting the conference at Japan Woman’s University so graciously, and Professor Kazuto Oshio for coordinating the details there; Professor Masako Iino and Professor Hisako Yanaka for organizing the endless details of the international exchange starting almost a year ago; Professor Naoki Onishi for his good cheer, and Professor Notoji for her ubiquitous hard work and enthusiasm. I would also like to express my gratitude to the American Embassy in Japan, especially Mr. Davidson, Ms. Wada and Ms. Carrington, for supporting my travel as ASA president and for their commitment to the entire project. We are all in debt to the US-Japanese Friendship Commission for their longstanding support that makes this exchange possible.
Let me start with my own experience of my week in Tokyo (my only regret was that for personal reasons my time frame was limited). My visited started with a lovely meeting of old and new friends, when Professor Notoji and Professor Yanaka met me for dinner to go over the well-organized plans for the week. In fact, I should start further back in time to note how expertly Professors Iino and Yanaka executed the pre-conference planning. From our end, the schedules for submitting materials were clearly laid out and reasonable; it was a pleasure to board the plane knowing that my papers had arrived ahead of me. In comparison with my trip two years ago, I found it easier and more straightforward to deal directly with representatives of each university where I was scheduled to lecture. There was no ambiguity about topics, format, or translation. Although I was sorry that the American embassy could not include visits to other venues this year, dealing directly with our Japanese colleagues was much more efficient and gratifying. Nonetheless, on behalf of the ASA, I am grateful to the U.S. embassy for sponsoring my travel as ASA president to Japan. It was heartening to see that during this difficult political period, our embassy rises above partisanship and continues to recognize the vital nature of such intellectual contacts across cultures. At the gracious reception he hosted, Mr. Davidson made a moving speech about this subject, and he put into action his commitment to cultural exchange by inviting many Japanese scholars I was thrilled to meet.
Indeed as I look over my colleague’s reports, I note how many references there are to excellent dinners and receptions. It is not simply that we appreciated the outstanding hospitality at every level—and loved the food—, but it is also an awareness that so much intellectual exchange occurs in these informal settings, where people can discuss their work and share ideas about a wide range of issues. Those venues generate so much of the intellectual excitement and learning beyond narrowly defined topics of scholarship alone.
Before the JAAS meeting, I gave lectures at two universities: Meiji University and Tokyo Women’s Christian University. From my end, both were great successes; I learned as much from the discussion as I had to offer to my listeners. This give and take is key to the whole enterprise. At Meiji University, I presented a lecture on “Mourning and Memory in Contemporary American Literature” to about 50 students and faculty. The question session was very stimulating as we talked not only about the texts I analyzed but my methodology in general. People asked excellent questions about interpreting the relation of literature to history through the framework of memory, trauma, and mourning, and very interesting analogies were raised about the Japanese context and the German as well. The lecture was followed by a beautiful dinner overlooking the city, hosted by Professor Yoshikatsu Hayashi, where a lively discussion continued. I am especially grateful to Professor Gayle Sato, for her stimulating conversation and for overseeing the details of my visit.
I also had the pleasure of lecturing on “Mark Twain, Gender, and Imperialism” at Tokyo Women’s University, where I was hosted by Professor Rui Kohiyama and honored by the attendance of Professor Hiroko Sato. There too I had plenty of time before and after my lecture to chat with students and faculty and to tour the lovely campus and to visit and learn about the Center for Gender Studies. Professor Kohiyama had warned me that Japanese students wouldn’t ask questions, but her insistence on calling on several of them directly sparked a lively discussion in which we related Twain’s commentary to current political conditions (after drawing analogies between the American war in Iraq and those in the Philippines and Vietnam, one young student asked the memorable question: why don’t Americans learn from their history). I enjoyed having the opportunity to speak to both graduate and undergraduate students.
This was an especially powerful time for me as an American to travel to Japan. I was impressed by the combination of bewilderment, warmth, and genuine questioning, which many Japanese expressed about current U.S. policies. Colleagues across the generations and political spectrum continually asked, “What has happened to America?“ This concern gave added urgency to the goal of making American studies a truly international project, which the JAAS/ASA exchange has long put into practice. As a Japanese colleague said to me, “America is too important these days to be left to the Americans.“ I see this encounter as part of a broader trend to make internationalization more of an equal two-way street, not a matter simply of Americans lecturing to their Japanese scholars about America and Japanese students studying in the U.S., but a matter of genuine exchange and learning from one another. This exchange goes beyond physical travel to the need to share scholarship published in both countries. I was thrilled, for example, to receive copies of Professor Yui’s co-edited volume, Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, Eiko Owada’s Faulkner, Haiti and Questions of Imperialism, and Professor Taketani’s prizewinning U.S Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825-1861, as well as copies of The Japan Review of International Affairs, and The Japanese Journal of American Studies, and many other new references. I can see how this visit will have repercussions beyond my own encounters, as I share this work with my colleagues at home. I was pleased to see that this question of internationalizing perspectives on American studies was the topic of a paper by Sheila Hones and Julia Leyda, which generated lively discussion.
I had the added benefit of traveling to Seoul before I arrived in Tokyo. This meant that I had already met the Korean delegates, Professor Kwangsook Chung and Professor Jo-Young Shin, who contributed so much to internationalizing the discussion. It was illuminating, for example, during the discussion of Professor Kohiyama’s excellent paper on women missionaries (in the workshop, “Transmission of Cultures”) that Professor Chung’s perspective from Korea sparked very interesting discussions about comparative missionary enterprises and higher education for women in Korea and Japan. I recommend that future presidents of ASA continue to combine these two trips. In addition, in Korea I had the pleasure of comparing notes with the delegate from the year before, and several people in Japan mentioned the possibilities of an Asian regional conference on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of JAAS, which would be another way of pursuing the international project without placing ASA at the center.
Intellectually, I was struck that one of the great impacts of my visit and of learning from international perspective was the experience of defamiliarization. In the workshop, “Gateless or Gates? New Social Stratification in American Society,“ in particular, I looked at a subject that I took for granted through entirely different lenses of a comparative perspective, with a different set of expectations about land use, education, race, class, the role of government, and zoning. It helped me to see anew a socially constructed landscape where I had previously seen a “natural” environment.
I think I have already made clear by example, how successful the two workshops were. I was also gratified by the responses and questions to my presidential address and enjoyed President Nagata’s reflections on Southern historiography and his call for change. If time had permitted, it would also have been nice to have a public question session after the addresses.
For suggestions, a few elaborations on those made by Professor Sturken: I think the American delegates arrive hungry to hear more about the work of their Japanese colleagues. Perhaps small discussion groups, papers by Japanese scholars circulated ahead of time, and meetings with students would facilitate this exchange. Even though this would require some work, I wonder whether abstracts of those papers in Japanese could be printed in English so that the ASA delegates would have a sense of the paper contents, and would then be able to approach those scholars with common interests.
Finally, we need to publicize better the opportunity for American scholars to participate in this exchange. Given such a wonderful and even transformative experience so many of us have had, I am surprised more ASA folks do not apply (even though the numbers are up and it would be hard to turn away more excellent candidates). Let us discuss this at our next meeting.
In conclusion I wish to thank and congratulate everyone involved over the last fifteen years for making the JAAS/ASA project such a resounding success.
Report of ASA Delegate
Marita Sturken
Editor of American Quarterly
University of Southern California
June 2004M
My experience as a delegate to the Japanese American Studies Association conference and giving talks throughout the following weeks in Japan was a deeply rewarding and intellectually stimulating one. I learned a great deal in ways that have already and will continue to inform my views as a scholar and as an editor of an American Studies journal. Unlike the singular experience of giving one talk at a conference, this trip had an important cumulative effect, which, as I became familiar with the different contexts of each host university, allowed me to understand further the differences and connections between Japanese and American universities. I am deeply grateful to the US-Japanese Friendship Commission for funding this trip and to the ASA and JAAS for coordinating it. I felt, along with the other delegates, that I made important personal and intellectual connections with the scholars that I met in Japan that will continue on in important ways and that the hospitality and intellectual engagement of our hosts was unparalleled.
My husband, Dana Polan, who is a Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinema-TV at the University of Southern California, accompanied me on this trip. Because he participated in many of the conference activities and attended most of the talks, and also gave a talk at Doshisha University in Kyoto, I have included some of his activities and observations as well.
Before leaving the United States, I had corresponded with the contact people at each campus where I was speaking. Since Professors Iino and Yanaka, who were organizing my visit, had given me contact people for each place I was able to determine the technology available at each site (I showed images on PowerPoint for each presentation) and how long each presentation should be. The JAAS committee was very organized in giving us extensive information about presentations, contacts, and deadlines, in the months before we left.
We arrived in Tokyo on June 3, where we were staying at the Hotel Mets Mejiro. It was a very nice location for several reasons - it was in a neighborhood rather than a commercial district, and it was easy walking distance from the JAAS conference. In addition, it was right next to the JR train line, which made getting around the city quite easy.
On our first full day, I met with Jonathan Auerbach, the ASAK delegates Kwangsook Chung and Jo-Young Shin, and Professor Masako Notoji and the JAAS secretary Motoko Aoki to receive the stipend and some instructions about getting around and to the conference. That evening, we attended a quite wonderful reception at the Chinzan-so Restaurant for the JAAS International Committee, where we met a number of the JAAS executive committee members. This was very valuable for me, since I had not met any of these scholars previously, and I was able to talk with Professors Toyo Omi Nagata, Daizaburo Yui, Hisako Yanaka, Kazuto Oshio, Naoki Onishi, and others. In addition, I was able to meet Fumiko Nishizaki, the editor of the Japanese Journal of American Studies, as well as outgoing editor of the Japanese journal The American Review, Shinobu Uesugi. This was very helpful, and Professor Nishizaki and I discussed the meeting of international editors at the Atlanta ASA meeting and possibility of her and Takayuki Tatsumi, the incoming editor of The American Review (who I met later at the JAAS conference) coming to Atlanta. In addition, Professor Yui gave us each copies of a book that he had coedited at the University of Tokyo, Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, which was relevant in many ways to the papers I was giving in Japan. I was able to read a few essays from it before I lectured at the University of Tokyo, which was very helpful. The food at the reception was quite impressive, and there was a wonderful view of Mount Fuji in the distance. After the reception, Professor Notoji took us down to the impressive gardens of the hotel, where we joined a crowd that was watching the fireflies that had emerged for their brief season.
At the JAAS conference, I was able to attend the panels that were presented in English. There were several papers on an early session on the first day, and then in the afternoon, Professors Kaplan and Nagata both gave Presidential Addresses before the evening reception. This reception was also a wonderful opportunity to meet a number of scholars from the various campuses that I would visit - this may seem like a small matter, but it was extremely helpful to have met early on so many of the people that I had been corresponding with and that I would meeting again later in my trip. Not only was the food sumptuous, but we were all very impressed by the welcome speeches that were made by our various hosts, and in particular the very moving toast that was made by a senior professor (whose name I am sorry to say I do not remember) about the importance of remembering the ideals of the United States. This was a moment that we all discussed at length later.
The following day, we attended the morning session, “Transmission of Cultures,“ on the second day of the conference, in which Jonathan Auerbach, Hideyo Konagaya, Rui Kohiyama, and Kwangsook Chung spoke, which was ably moderated by Hisako Yanaka. While these papers were all very different, the discussion succeeded, I think, in making important connections between them.
The afternoon panel session, on “Gateless or Gates? New Social Stratification in American Society,“ well moderated by Kouhei Kawashima and with papers by myself, Jo-Young Shin, Natsuki Aruga, and Yoshiko Terao, also included a very diverse group of papers that seemed to come together in the discussion section. In the case of this panel, many of us were speaking “around” the topic of gated communities, which was of great interest to the audience, so the discussion brought that topic much more to the foreground. As others have noted, the comparative aspect of this grouping of scholars was one of the most interesting aspects of these panel sessions, since we had scholars from the US, Korea, and Japan all addressing interconnecting questions about certain aspects of American culture - in this case, questions of class and gatedness which are quite different from Japan.
In general, we found the JAAS conference to be very well organized. The sessions all had students assigned to organize them and the logistics, and things ran smoothly and on time. This was clearly a good host site for the conference and Professor Oshio and the rest of the host committee did a very impressive job.
Our last night in Tokyo there was a dinner with many members of the JAAS committee and the Korean and American delegates at a Chinese restaurant near the hotel that was full of good cheer at the success of the conference. At this point, in a very short period of time, we felt that we had gotten to know each other.
Monday, June 7, we traveled to Kyoto with Jonathan Auerbach and his wife Mary Jean, and with the ASAK delegates, Kwangsook Chung and Jo-Young Shin. Throughout our time in Tokyo and Kyoto, we enjoyed getting to know the ASAK delegates, and hearing about their work as well. I would like to affirm that I found the three-way connection of this trip, of the US-Japan-Korea, to be quite valuable, and this has given me better insight into the complex and very different relationships of the US to both these countries, and their own complex historical relationship as well. We traveled as a group, and since Dana and I had taken the Shinkansen before, we were able to provide some logistical guidance.
The rest of the week we spent in Kyoto as guests of Doshisha University, primarily under the guidance of Dean Masahiro Hosoya, who was a wonderful host. Doshisha appears to have a regular seminar from 4:45 to 6:45 on many weekdays that students and faculty attend. The first day, Jonathan and I gave a joint session of papers both addressing aspects of visual culture (his on early film, mine on the meanings of Ground Zero in New York), which worked well together. There was a substantial audience of graduate students and faculty and an interesting discussion afterwards. That evening we were all treated to a wonderful dinner at a restaurant in downtown Kyoto, with an elaborate menu. There, we were able to get to know a number of the other faculty in American Studies at Doshisha, including Gavin Campbell, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Takashi Sasaki, and Shiro Yamada. Professor Hosoya also gave us a large packet of materials about Doshisha University and its program, and with an essay by Professor Sasaki about American Studies in Japan and a few other essays that were very informative.
The following day, I traveled with Professor Minako Baba (who came to Kyoto to pick me up) to Kwansei Gakuin University, which is near Kobe. There, I gave a talk to Professor Baba’s graduate class as well as number of faculty. This was the smallest audience that I spoke to, which made it a bit more intimate and informal. There was a very interesting discussion afterwards. I had lunch with Professor Baba and one of her colleagues, Kikuyo Tanaka, who will be coming to Los Angeles at some point this year, and one of her graduate students, who lives in Kyoto and was able to accompany me back on the train to Kyoto. I really enjoyed having a chance to talk more with Professor Baba (who I had met at the JAAS conference) and to get the sense of another campus.
When I returned to Kyoto that day, Dana gave a talk at Doshisha for the afternoon session, on the emergence of cinema studies as a discipline in the United States, which was attended by Jonathan Auerbach and his wife Mary Jean, the ASAK delegates, and a large audience of students and faculty at Doshisha. This followed well on the discussions of the previous day’s session and there was a lively and interesting question session. That evening we all went to dinner with the ASAK delegates and Jonathan Auerbach’s friend from Chiba University, Yoichiro Miyamoto, who was quite interesting.
The following day, Dana and I met with a small group of graduate students at Doshisha to discuss their work. This was organized by Mazumi Izumi, who teaches at Doshisha and who has just completed a PhD (the first) in their Graduate School of American Studies. She had asked us at the JAAS conference if she could organize such as session and we agreed. We spoke a little about our own methodologies and approaches, and then we asked each of the students to discuss their own projects. We all then went out to dinner, with Professor Izumi, and discussed a great deal more. This was a very wonderful interaction both because it was quite informal and also because it was one of the few times in which we were able to talk more substantially with students. While students had been part of many of the other sessions, here they really were the focus. It was also a valuable occasion to get to know Professor Izumi, who will be on a Fulbright next year at USC.
Our last day in Kyoto, we returned to Doshisha to hear an afternoon talk by Professor Daniel Horowitz, who was coincidentally visiting there as well that week. That provided one last opportunity to see the faculty and students there - and also gave us the sense that we had been part of a weeklong conversation.
We spent a few days being tourists, in Kyoto and Nara, before returning to Tokyo. There, I gave two more talks. The first was at Meiji University and was organized by Professors Gayle Sato and Yoshikatsu Hayashi. This was a lecture to a large audience of about 50 people, students and faculty, in which people read along with my talk and then there was an interpreter for the long question and answer session. Again, I found the audience to be highly engaged, and the questions to be challenging and very thoughtful. We were then treated to a wonderful meal with Professors Hayashi and Sato and a number of other faculty and few graduate students, where we had a lively discussion about Japanese politics. Professor Sato picked us up and returned us via taxi, which was fun, even though we insisted we could take the train.
My final talk was at the University of Tokyo. Professor Notoji met us at a well-known meeting point in Shibuya and we took the subway there. In many ways, it was nice timing to have this campus be my last talk, since I had met many of these faculty at JAAS and had previously had contact with several of them before coming to Japan. Professor Notoji gave me a number of publications from the University of Tokyo that were very informative. Professor Notoji moderated the session, and there was a wonderful discussion afterwards with faculty and students. Afterwards, we were treated to a great meal at a nearby restaurant, with Professors Masako Notoji, Daizaburo Yui, Yujin Yaguchi, and Sheila Hones and several students. This was a very lovely final evening.
Dana and I traveled for another week, to Hiroshima and Miyajima, outside Hiroshima, before returning to Tokyo and the U.S. We were able to see Professor Notoji one last time before leaving Japan, and to have a nice final discussion about our experiences in Japan.
While I traveled to Japan as a scholar, the experience was also very informative to me as the editor of American Quarterly. I met a number of scholars while there whose work I solicited for submission for publication and was able to meet at length with Fumiko Nishizaki and to read the Japanese Journal of American Studies that she gave me. I felt that this gave me a much better understanding of the international context of publishing in American Studies as well.
Some Recommendations for JAAS-ASA
Both Dana and I felt that that session that we did with graduate students at Doshisha was quite valuable, and I think that JAAS might consider ways in which visitors can have this more informal kind of interaction with students. At several of my talks, the professors told me that their students had had many questions before my talk, but were a bit intimidated to ask a lot of questions after it. If, for instance, I had met with these students the following day, in a more informal session, I think it would have been valuable for them. I understand that that JAAS organizers are concerned about asking visiting faculty to do too much, but the stipend is so generous that I think some talks could be supplemented with these kinds of sessions which do not involve preparation.
In addition, we also felt that it would have been nice to have more contexts in which the Japanese scholars discussed their own work. Clearly, an important part of this experience is the exchange between scholars, not simply the opportunity for American scholars to speak in Japan but also the opportunity to create important connections between scholars. I realize that Japanese scholars are presenting their work at the JAAS conference, but many of those panels are in Japanese. It might make sense to consider a format at one of the venues that involved pairing an American and a Japanese scholar together for a session. Since so many of these Japanese scholars are so well informed and knowledgeable about many aspects of American culture that we did not specialize in and are unfamiliar with, such a format might also work against the potential tendency to set up the American scholars as the primary experts in the field that I understand a program such as this to be working against.
I understand that it is difficult to navigate logistical issues in Japan for first-time visitors there, and while the Japanese hosts are very well organized at getting delegates various places, no one wants to be too much of a logistical burden. I think that the ASA could, working with the International Committee and Steve Sumida, prepare American delegates for the trip a bit more systematically, both intellectually and logistically. Some of the preparation I had came to me anecdotally and was very useful, and Jonathan and I were both lucky to have had many sources of information (I had traveled to Japan once before and he had several local contacts who served as his guide). It would be good if we could pass down this information more systematically - what to expect in terms of logistics, advice on navigating transportation, and general information about American Studies in Japan. Often, scholars are so pressed for time before they leave, given that the trip takes place at the end of the spring semester and they are preparing talks, that they do not have a lot of time to research such things. For instance, while we were at Doshisha, they gave us a copy of an essay by Takashi Sasaki about the history of American Studies in Japan, which was very helpful. This and a few other essays by Japanese scholars might be something to include in a packet of materials for upcoming delegates, along with information about travel and some things to expect in terms of local customs and university contexts (for instance, it would be helpful for people to know in advance that at some of the talks, people will be reading along with the printed text). I would be happy to help compile such a set of materials.
Report of ASA Delegate
Jonathan Auerbach, University of Maryland, College Park
June 2004M
What follows is a narrative account, day by day, of my lecture tour of Japan as an ASA delegate. Overall I found the experience tremendously interesting and valuable, enhanced by the wonderful hospitality of the JAAS organizers and other Japanese scholars, as well as the special attention that I received by my two personal friends, professors Takeshi Oya and Yoichiro Miyamoto, who helped arrange the later portion of my visit. My trip was very well organized and planned, and I hope to stay in touch with many of the people I met during my two-week stay.
The day after arriving in Tokyo June 3, I met in the afternoon with JAAS officers Motoki Aoki and Masako Notoji, along with the two Korean Americanists, Kwangsook Chung and Jo-Young Shin and my fellow delegate Marita Sturken, to receive a generous travel stipend and to discuss briefly the upcoming JAAS conference. Later that evening we attended a reception at the restaurant Chinzan-so, where the three members of the ASA delegation, the Koreans, and various JAAS members toasted one another and offered short remarks on the importance of the ASA/JAAS alliance. This was a good initial opportunity to meet various JAAS members in a relaxed and informal setting.
The following day, June 5, marked the opening of the conference, with addresses in English by ASA President Kaplan on empire as well as JAAS President Nagata, who gave a thoughtful account of his training as a scholar of Southern history. A large JAAS reception that evening allowed me to meet many other Japanese Americanists such as Takayuki Tasumi, who was introduced to me by Professor Oya.
The next day June 6 our two workshops took place: the morning session entitled “The Transmission of Culture,“ including my own presentation on early American cinema, and the afternoon’s “Gateless or Gated?“ in which Professor Sturken delivered her paper. Given the early deadline for the abstract months before the conference, I found myself committed to a topic that did not fully reflect my changing ideas as they developed in the composition process, and as a result my paper tended to divide into two distinct parts. I understand the need for JAAS to have titles, abstracts, and full papers well in advance, but since this is not the norm for American conferences, future ASA delegates should be alerted about the complications that may result from this policy.
On the other hand, I was very grateful to have in advance the other two very stimulating workshop papers, since it helped all of us, including the commentator Professor Chung and the chair Professor Yanaka, to attempt to tie together three seemingly different issues (film, taiko drumming, and women’s colleges) under the somewhat loose rubric “transmission of culture.“ I think the audience also benefited by having written copies of the papers in front of them. I was very impressed by Professor Chung’s synthesizing insights, as well as the lively responses of the audience, who pointed out certain striking connections among the three papers. I was similarly impressed by the afternoon workshop, which initially struck me as being more narrowly focused than the morning topic, but which raised a surprisingly wide variety of issues. In both workshops what I found most valuable was the comparative perspective, which as Professor Kaplan remarked at one point, helped allow us to see American cultural practices from the outside, as it were, denaturalized.
After Tokyo, Marita Sturken and I moved on to Kyoto, where we gave a joint presentation at Doshisha University on June 9th. This format worked well because both my talk and Professor Sturken’s centered on visual culture, although one hundred years apart: the early film “Life of an American Fireman” (1903), and the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and current plans for its memorialization. The audience was a mixture of graduate students and faculty from the School of American Studies who responded with an astute number of questions and comments for both of us. After our presentations, we were treated to a wonderful dinner hosted by Dean Mashiro Hosoya.
In Kyoto I was met by my friend Professor Yoichiro Miyamoto who escorted me to my next talk at Hiroshima University, where I met Professor Shoko Itoh and her colleague Reiko Nitta, among others. My early cinema “Fireman” talk was well received and followed by another great dinner at a local restaurant. My final two talks in Japan were rather different from these previous three-a June 12 lecture to the Japanese Jack London Society held at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, and a small seminar on contemporary American politics held at Tsukuba University on June 14th. My Jack London talk ended up being my largest audience, over 60 people, thanks to a class of undergraduates in attendance. Beforehand Professor Oya wisely advised me to cut the length of my paper in order to allow him to serve as translator, a crucial move since it would have been difficult for the students to follow my talk in English. Professors (Jack London specialists) and students seemed intrigued by my lecture, which gave an unusual slant to postcolonial studies by focusing on the role of a clock in a London South Seas tale in ways that resonated with Japan’s own fixation with punctuality, I think.
My final presentation at Tsukuba University (where Professor Miyamoto teaches) was my smallest audience, a half dozen faculty and graduate students gathered at a restaurant, but this setting and size allowed for the most intimate and sustained interaction I had with faculty and students during my trip. We discussed article 9 of Japan’s constitution, as well as threats to the US constitution in the wake of the Patriot Act. I discovered later than for two of the students this was the first time they had a chance to talk at length with an American academic, and so I believe this small format certainly has its merits.
In conclusion, all of my five lectures (on four different subjects) allowed me to engage with various mixtures of students and faculty in a variety of venues. It was a truly wonderful experience, made all the more special with the help of Professors Oya and Miyamoto. My sense is that the two greatest difficulties facing American scholars lecturing in Japan are transportation and language. I honestly do not think I could have ventured to Hiroshima University (not in the city itself!) or Yokohama (three hours travel time) without being personally accompanied by Professors Miyamoto and Oya, respectively, and of course their translation also proved invaluable on many occasions. In this sense I consider myself particularly fortunate, but I also think it is safe to say that even without such help (above and beyond the call to duty) future ASA delegates coming to Japan will continue to have rewarding experiences thanks to the hospitality and generosity of JAAS and other hosting institutions.
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