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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 2005
The lively discussion continued at a delicious traditional Korean lunch hosted by Professor Sook-Won Shin and ASAK for about 20 scholars, most of whom were on the ASAK board. After lunch Prof. Bong Eun Kim and Professor Jin He Yim spent the day with me (with Professor Shim joining us for part of it) taking me to a series of fascinating places—the “Secret Garden;“ Insadong, the main shopping district for tourists (where we stopped for a heavenly concoction that Prof. Kim recalled I’d enjoyed during my last trip to Seoul: a red bean ice-and-fruit compote); and the South Gate Market—a shopping area popular with locals (where I was fascinated by food stalls featuring things I’d never seen—such as crunchy silk-worm cocoon-shells, a favorite snack of Korean youngsters. My friends assured me that they tasted very good). I was unable to dissuade them from spoiling me with small gifts from Insadong. They helped me buy a box of tea bags to prepare barley tea at home, and helped me find various special gifts for family and friends. Prof. Kim and Professor Yim took me out to a lovely dinner at a French restaurant across from Ewha Women’s University. Only in a city featuring a women’s university as distinguished, large and established as Ewha would one find a restaurant like this one: with its subtle shades of purple, violet and rose, and its delicate décor, it felt like a women’s faculty club. The food was excellent and the talk was even better. In fact, we were having such a good time that Professor Kim missed the last train back to Pusan, and I had an unplanned roommate in the Guest House at Yonsei University that night! It had been a full, fun and exhausting day. Professor Kim made an early train home the next morning.
Sunday, June 12th.
Professor Sook-Won Shin picked me up at the Guest House and surprised me with the gift of a small ceramic dish glazed with a very graceful design that, she told me, was “typically Korean.“ She knew of my interest in ceramic art and had thoughtfully arranged for us to visit the Leeum, the Samsung Museum of Korean Art, that had recently opened. Take one of the richest men in the world, and have him marry an art historian, Prof. Shin said, and you get a very distinctive museum. The Leeum was, in fact, the most beautifully-designed museum I had ever visited, and its holdings were stunning. This electronics manufacturer, not surprisingly, had built a museum with state-of-the-art electronic audio guides that provided illuminating commentary on all the art. I have never seen ceramic art as beautiful as that which I saw at the Leeum—luminous celadon pieces and 15th-century vases that were startlingly modernist. Prof. Shin helped me learn to decode the iconography—cranes meaning “long life;“ peonies signifying “prosperity;“ the lotus, a flower that blooms in the muck, symbolizing Buddhism or “spirituality’” the chrysanthemum, or the apricot, both of which bloom in the winter, symbolizing overcoming adversity; dragons connoting royalty. The exhibits of contemporary Korean art were very striking as well.
The conversation was just as interesting—and a possible collaborative project came out of it. We realized, as we discussed comparative feminist traditions in a range of cultures, that it might be fascinating to co-edit, with some colleagues, an international anthology of feminist fiction and folklore. As we brainstormed in the museum’s café, ideas came fast and furious. Having forgotten to bring paper, I filled a number of napkins with our notes. We discussed potential collaborators in Japan, and I agreed to explore the topic with Japanese colleagues during the next week; I also said I’d bring it up with Professor Peterson, who I suspected would be interested, as well. We were both excited about this new project—both because it struck us as worthwhile, and because we knew we’d enjoy working together on it. Throughout my trip, in both Japan and Korea, discussions of feminism had enlivened many a lunch or dinner. I relished the opportunity to continue those conversations.
Prof. Sook-won Shin then drove me through parts of Seoul whose winding hills reminded me of San Francisco, and took me to lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant that served a meal of some 28 different dishes—an extraordinary array of different kinds of kimchee and other delectable vegetables, as well as tasty fish. The setting, the food, and the conversation were wonderful.
I was then picked up by Professor Sangjun Jeong and Professor Patty Cho, who took me to an imperial palace and to the Korean Folk Museum. Prof. Sangjun Jeong, who teaches Korean history to foreign students and American history to Korean students, was a fount of facts about Korea’s past that I found fascinating (I was stunned to learn that Korea had been invaded over a thousand times, for example). And I also greatly enjoyed talking with Prof. Patty Cho, who grew up in both Korea and the U.S. and did some of her graduate study in South Africa. In the Palace, I learned that Koreans had mastered radiant heating hundreds of years before it was built into the floors of my college dormitory at Yale. In the Folk Museum, I learned, among other things, that Koreans had invented moveable metal type two hundred years before Gutenberg and printed books with it. I also learned about the roots of the Korean alphabet—the result of the ruler’s effort to facilitate literacy among his subjects (he created a commission to invent an alphabet instead of relying on the vast number of Chinese characters through which the language was previously written). We had a delicious dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the engineering building at Prof. Jeong’s university (Korea National University). Perched at the top of a hill, the elegant restaurant’s walls of windows allowed us to watch the sun set over the hills and over the city. Following up on the question he had asked me after my talk at ASAK about “anti-American Studies,“ Prof. Jeong made an interesting observation. In the U.S., he noted, the field of American Studies has been more focused on critique during the last decade or so, than on exploring the positive values the U.S. aspires to project. He said that he wanted to teach students not only the flaws and problems inherent in U.S. culture, but also “how the U.S. became what it is—not just the critique.“ But his students were often so anti-American, that getting them to see more than the critique was often challenging. “How can I give them a sense of what’s good about the U.S., what works, what made it what it is,“ he asked, “when the field is focused on the problems and the flaws?“ I had no easy answers for him. It was a good question.
Monday, June 13th.
Prof. Miseong Woo took me out for coffee, introduced me to another new “favorite” food, a “dinosaur egg muffin” (named for its shape—not its ingredients!), and chatted with me about the World Women’s Forum that was about to be held in Seoul before helping me arrange a taxi to Gimpo. She was kind enough to get me a program for the literature section of that conference, and I regretted that I would not be there to hear all the interesting papers on feminism and literature. The Forum was to bring thousands of feminist scholars from around the world to Seoul at Ewha, Sogang and Yonsei Universities. We chatted about issues that are current among Korean feminists today. I learned, for example, that just last year the legislature passed a bill allowing women to be heads of households. As is the case in the U.S., there is still not adequate day care available. She noted that North Korea handled that problem at least more effectively. I was surprised to learn that in Korean, as in Japanese, there was no word for “babysitter.“ The word was borrowed from English in both languages, reflecting the tradition that mandates that a blood relative look after a young child. We talked about the continuing controversies over responses to Korean “comfort women”—the issue of Japanese apologies, and of Korean ostracism of these women (Prof. Woo noted that feminists viewed the term “comfort women” as a euphemism, and that “sex slaves” as generally the preferred term.) Before I left, Prof. Woo gave me a bar of special green tea soap. I look forward to continuing our conversations in Elmira.
I flew to Haneda Airport in Tokyo and took the monorail back to the Takanawa Prince Hotel, where Prof. Carla Peterson met me. We had read in one of my books about a festival and street fair this time of year at the Sanno Hie-jinja shrine, and decided to check it out. When we got there, the shrine was empty. But we heard music coming from behind the shrine, and saw some people in kimonos headed that way and followed them. In the area behind the shrine, scores of Japanese in beautiful traditional kimonos—men and women of all ages, and a few children danced in graceful, slow-moving circle around a raised platform where drummers took turns doing traditional taiko drumming. Vendors at stands were selling fried fish fritters, noodles, teriyaki skewers of various meats, and Japanese beer. Prof. Peterson and I were transfixed by the energetic drumming and the beautiful dancing. We were about the only non-Japanese at the festival, and we were made to feel very welcome. The evening was a magical one. As we sampled the wares of several of the food vendors, I told Prof Peterson about the feminist fiction and folktale editing project that Prof. Sook-Won Shin and I planned to explore and asked her whether she might like to join us. I was very pleased when she said yes. She and I had collaborated on a number of projects over the years, and we were happy to have a new one. After watching the dancers for some two hours, we returned to our respective hotels.
Tuesday, June 14th
I explored Tokyo by myself in the morning and early afternoon, wandering through interesting temples and shops, riding the subway, and getting a better sense of the city. Yoko Hatakeyama of the U.S. Embassy (whom I had first met when she helped organize my visit to KASSS in 1999) picked me up in a taxi to take me to the reception that CAO Mark Davidson and his wife Kuniko were throwing in my honor in their lovely apartment in the American Embassy Housing Compound in Roppongi.
It was a fascinating group of guests, and the Davidsons’ gracious hospitality made everyone feel totally at home. It was nice to see so many of my Japanese friends again—Professors Naoki Onishi, Daizaburo Yui, Kazuto Oshio, Juri Abe, Tsuyoshi Ishihara, Masako Notoji, Fukuko Kobayashi, Mari Kotani, Takayuki Tatsumi, Noriko Shimada, Toyoomi Nagata, Hisako Yanaka, and many others. I also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Mary Knighton, whose outstanding article in Mark Twain Studies—“‘Was Huck Burak(k)u?‘ Reading and Teaching Twain in Asian Pacific World Literature”—
I had read with interest; Ken Moscowitz, Director of the Tokyo American Center; Dr. Oi Takashi, Chairman, Board of Trustees and President, International Education Center, Nichebei Kaiwa Gakuin; Mong-Lan Pham, writer and artist; Dr. .Joseph J. Arden, Vice President and Director of University of Maryland University College Asia; and Louise Blais, CAO of the Embassy of Canada—to name just a few of the many interesting people I met that night.
Prof. Takayuki Tatsumi presented me with yet another articles, one which I was very pleased to have, this time a piece on Poe that had run in the Journal of American and Canadian Studies in 1999. And a writer/artist whom I met that evening, Mong-Lan, surprised me with the gift of her 2001 book of illustrated poems Song of the Cicadas. Born in Vietnam, Mong-Lam emigrated to the U.S. in 1975. A former Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford, her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry of 2002 and the Pushcart Prize Anthology XXIV It was a pleasure to become acquainted with these spare, graceful and vivid poems and sketches and their author.
Prof. Fukuko Kobayashi was at the party, and I had the opportunity to tell her about the feminist fiction and folktale editing project that Prof. Shin, Prof. Peterson, and I were interested in exploring, and asked whether she might like to work on it with us as well. Her response was a resounding yes. Prof. Peterson and I were delighted to welcome her as a co-editor.
The party was informal, relaxing, and great fun. Animated conversations bubbled up in every corner of the room. I’m sure that Professors Chu and Peterson would agree that it would be difficult to imagine a more pleasant way to spend an evening.
Wednesday, June 15th
I met Prof. Peterson and together we went to the Shitamachi Museum, the Taito City Public Museum. We saw a clog merchant’s shop, a tenement with a sweets shop on the first floor, and upstairs kitchen utensils, children’s games, also some artifacts from the war years—including gas masks and a protective hood. I then returned to the Takanawa Prince hotel to meet Prof. Tsuyoshi Ishihara.
It was when I first came to Japan six years ago for the Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminar, that I first met a brave and (and, I suspected) foolhardy young man who was absolutely determined to come to the States to get his Ph.D. under my supervision, and then return to Japan and be a college professor. I knew nothing about the academic world in Japan, and I had grave doubts about whether his plan made sense. I can’t claim credit for his success, but I can express a measure of relief: He certainly knew what he was doing, even if I didn’t. I was thrilled to board a train with him and hear about the classes that he’s teaching in his new job as a tenured member of the faculty at Waseda University. After a nice lunch in the faculty dining room, I went to a lecture hall where about a hundred students from his class, and a class taught by Prof. Fukoku Kobayashi were waiting for me. Since Waseda is famous as a training ground for Japanese journalists, Prof. Ishihara had asked me to speak on Mark Twain’s apprenticeship in journalism. I did so with pleasure. There were a number of interesting questions about how satire works, and about which contemporary writers might be considered heirs to Twain’s role as a journalist/satirist/humorist whose writing often had a sharp political edge. After the class I enjoyed chatting with several graduate students, some of whom would later join us at dinner. A graduate student named Yu Miri told me about her interesting comparative research project on Korean -American and Korean –Japanese writers (in the U.S., Nora Okja Keller and Chang Dawn Rae, and in Japan, Sagisaw Megummu and Lee Yangi. )
As we left the building, I was startled by some bloodcurdling screams emanating from the building next door that Prof. Ishihara seemed to hardly notice. In response to the aghast look on my face, he placidly said, “Japanese fencing practice.“
At my request he took me to Yasukuni Shrine (I had told Prof. Nagawara that I would follow his advice and go), where I got at least a cursory sense of the skewed view of history and celebration of militarism to which Prof. Nagawara had referred. (The bookstore featured a book called something like (as it was translated for me) The Alleged Massacre of Nanking, and another had a title that (as it was translated for me) was something like, Why the US. Was Wrong and Is Bad.
Dinner that night, at a sushi restaurant need Waseda, was a culinary and intellectual delight. Prof. Fukuko Kobayashi was there, as was Prof. Masago Igawa, and Hiroko Takioka, a graduate student who had been kind enough to show me and my son Bobby around Tokyo after the KASSS seminar in 1999. Also Prof. Mariko Takashima, who will also be giving a Twain paper in Elmira in August (Prof. Takashima and I had an interesting chat about Beate Sirota Gordon, the American woman who drafted Japan’s constitution, and who’s responsible for—among other things—the guarantees of women’s rights in the constitution.) Prof. Igawa told me a bit about her future research interests related to Twain, and surprised me with a thoughtful gift that any scholar my age can definitely use: a little portable magnifying glass. Waseda graduate student Ryo Tamura told me about his interesting research project on Mark Twain’s and Frank Norris’s responses to the Chinese. I also enjoyed chatting with Kyoko Katayama and Kaori Sugimoto. Once again, it was fun to sign several well-read, marked-up copies of my books.
Prof. Kobayashi gave me a review she had written of Mari Yoshihara’s book Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism because of our mutual interest in Ayako Ishigaki, the Japanese feminist whom I’d discussed in my keynote address Although Prof. Kobayashi generally praised the Prof. Yoshihara’s book, she also noted that “A few statements from [Ayako] Ishigaki…would have served to illustrate a different perspective, perhaps, and also the fact that Japanese women had their own voices.“ And while I had heard the term for sexual harassment in Japan earlier in my visit (a term drawn from the English: “secu-hara”), I learned about another concept, and the name for it, at the dinner: “aca-hara,“ meaning “academic harassment.“ It referred to senior scholars inappropriately pulling rank and exploiting junior colleagues. Sounds like a term that might be useful in some American contexts.
But by far the best part of the dinner was the opportunity to turn it into a celebratory book party for Prof. Tsuyoshi Ishihara, my former student: his book, Mark Twain in Japan, which grew out of the Ph.D. dissertation he wrote under my supervision, had been published a few days earlier by the University of Missouri Press, and he presented me with one of the first copies. We toasted the book and its author early and often. It was a wonderful evening all around.
Thursday, June 16th
I packed my bags, checked them at the front desk of the hotel, and took the subway to the Tokyo National Museum before heading home. Having only a very brief amount of time, I was able to see only a small portion of the stunning collection. Next time!
In Conclusion
I am fully aware of the fact that talking to Japanese American Studies scholars can be dangerous. A conversation I had a little over a decade ago with Professor Masako Notoji completely derailed my research agenda. When she realized I was a Twain scholar who had never been to Hannibal, Missouri, she insisted that I go. So I went. My book Lighting Out for the Territory was the result.
We cannot predict which conversations, correspondence, or encounters will plant seeds that will bear fruit some day. What we can do is remain open to what Annette Kolodny calls “the serendipity of scholarship” as we struggle to understand the transnational crossroads of cultures that confront us in American Studies
I’d like to congratulate JAAS on having organized such an enormously stimulating conference. I applaud the intellectual vitality that JASS so ably nurtures and supports. The American Studies Community in Japan is fortunate indeed to have so many lively and interesting scholars contributing their intellectual energy in so many positive ways.
I am enormously grateful to JAAS—and to ASAK—for all they did to make my visits to Japan and Korea so interesting and so instructive. I know my colleagues Professor Carla Peterson and Professor Patricia Chu share my gratitude for the many ways in which so many people helped make our visit so fruitful and productive. For your gracious hospitality, for sharing your ideas so generously, and for making us feel so very much at home, I can only say, arigato gozaimashita and gamsa hamnida! Report of ASA Delegate Patricia P. Chu George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 June 2005
It was an honor and a pleasure to serve as the ASA delegate to the Japanese Association for American Studies conference in Kyoto this year, and to have the opportunity to meet with so many colleagues and to begin to get a sense of the work of colleagues in Japan. As this was my first trip to Japan, I was also delighted simply to garner some first impressions of this culturally rich and beautiful country. Since I had the unusual good luck to attend a conference in Shanghai en route to Kyoto, and to spend some time with the Korean delegates from the American Studies Association of Korea, I was also able to hear a bit about scholarship in China and Korea as well. As a specialist in Asian American literature, I was particularly pleased that JAAS and the Embassy seemed to have made it possible for me to meet with local scholars working on this specialty, and to hear about the status of Asian American studies in the Japan. I would also like to thank Professors Naoko Onishi, Yanaka Hisaka, the JAAS board, the American Embassy, especially Mr. Mark Davidson, Ms. Margo Carrington, and Ms. Erika Wada, and the US-Japan Friendship commission for their assistance and support. A record of my activities is given below.
My arrival in Kyoto on Friday, June 3 was ably facilitated by Professor Julie Higashi, who corresponded with me in advance about such details as changing money and getting the train from the Kansai Osaka airport to Kyoto, but then volunteered to escort me to Kyoto, where we stayed at the Shiran Kaikan Annex, placed conveniently only a block away from the JAAS conference site at Kyoto University. Professor Higashi reviewed my travel schedule in detail, helped sort out details in the next few days such as mailing surplus baggage home, and provided candid and interesting insights about current Japanese views of the wartime history I was discussing in my paper. I very much appreciate her assistance.
That evening, I was invited to a reception in our hotel by JAAS, where I was able to meet Professors Naoko Onishi and Yanaka Hisaka, with whom I had corresponded, as well as many others who were my hosts and colleagues. Among others, I was introduced to Professor Juri Abe of the JAAS board, JAAS President Daizaburo Yui, ASA President Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ASA delegate Carla Peterson, ASAK President Sookwon Shin, ASAK delegate Yong-Jin Won, and Professor Kyoko Norma Nozaki, the moderator for my conference panel. Afterwards, a smaller group of us went out for additional refreshments nearby.
On Saturday, June 2, the non-Japanese speakers were free in the morning, as the JAAS conference panels that morning (with intriguing titles in the English program) were all being given in English. I had the good luck to be invited to do sightseeing with Professor Masako Notoji, who, being an anthropologist, was a particularly knowledgeable tour guide, and Professor Shin, who includes Asian American drama among her research interests. In the afternoon, we returned to hear Professor Fishkin’s brilliant keynote address on “The Transnational Turn in American Studies: Asian Crossroads,“ which abundantly cited the scholarship of Asian as well as American colleagues, exemplifying her point that American scholars would be enriched by greater attention to overseas research. That evening, at the main reception for the JAAS conference, I had the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with Professor Yuko Matsukawa, whom I had met years ago at a conference, and meet my American Center hosts for Kobe, Ms. Eri Nakanishi and Mr. Chris Laycock.
On Sunday, June 3, I presented my paper, “Hip-hopping to Japan and Back: Japanese American Narratives of Return,“ in the workshop, “Hip-hopping America: Dimensions of Mainstreaming Subcultures,“ at the JAAS conference. Here I must thank Professor Onishi, who kindly reviewed an earlier version of my paper in April and advised me how best to frame the paper for this audience. Our excellent moderator, Professor Kyoko Nozaki, faced a challenge in bringing unity to the discussion, as our topics were somewhat divergent. My use of the term “hip-hopping” was broadly metaphorical, referring to the concepts of marginal texts challenging the mainstream culture rather than hip-hop culture per se; Professor Yong-Jin Won’s paper on Asian American tactics for overcoming model minority stereotyping also used the concept more metaphorically, and Professor Yasumasa Fujinaga’s paper, on hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, did not deal with Asian Americans. Professor Nozaki did quite a bit of research and preparation, with the result that the common themes of challenging the mainstream, and of deconstructing the mainstream/margin binary, came out clearly in her framing remarks and in the discussion. In a highly structured session in which questions presented written questions, the panel received ample and interesting questions, apparently all from faculty. (In Kobe it was explained to me that Japanese student usually don’t speak before their elders at such events.) Despite the hour (9 a.m. Sunday), the session was well attended, with at least 30 and perhaps as many as 50 audience members.
I also attended the second workshop, “Negotiating the National and the International in the American Experiences,“ in which ASA delegate Carla Peterson spoke on African Americans who had served as U.S. diplomats; Professor Toyoki Hosono discussed the Kyoto global warming negotiations; and Professor Yasuhiro Izumikawa described the U.S. as a shadow player in a set of famous Japanese-Soviet negotiations over disputed territories. I felt this panel was enjoyably challenging in its interdisciplinary, international orientations, and it was interesting to get a glimpse of Japanese perspectives on these international diplomatic matters. I think others who attended felt the same.
Over the weekend, we delegates were invited to two very elegant lunches on the University campus as guests of the university, where I was able to hear about other scholars’ work and about a few of the conference panels that had been given in Japanese, and we dined at a wonderful Chinese restaurant on the river with Professors Fishkin, Peterson, Shin, and Won among the guests and Professors Abe, Notaji, Nozaki, and Onishi among the hosts, and took a short walk through the beautiful Gion district before returning to our hotel.
On Monday, June 6, after a morning of sightseeing, we visitors joined local faculty and students at Doshisha University to hear Professor Fishkin’s talk on Mark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar. We were ably hosted by Professor Takashi Sasaki and Professor Nobuyuki Yamauchi of the Center for American Studies, and Dr. Masahiro Hosoya, Dean of the Graduate School of American Studies, and invited afterwards for a traditional Kyoto banquet by our hosts, along with local faculty including I believe Professor Joy S. Kasson, a visiting scholar from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I believe it was at Doshisha that I met Joshua Paul Dale, a visiting professor at Tokyo Liberal Arts University, who volunteered to send me some of his research on Asian American writers in Asia. In addition to this, I received Professor Sasaki’s article on American Studies in Japan and copies of Doshisha American Studies.
Tuesday, June 7 was a free day for sightseeing. In the morning I joined Professor Fishkin and Professor Hitomi Nabae, a scholar of Lafcadio Hearn and American literature, for a walk through the imperial gardens; Professor Shin and I were the fortunate guests of Professor Kyoko Nozaki, who showed us around a mountain temple near her home and invited us for tea at her home, an honor and a pleasure. Professor Nozaki, who so ably moderated our JAAS conference panel, shares my interest in Asian American writers, so we enjoyed comparing impressions of Japanese American writers and exchanged copies of our books, and I look forward to future dialogue with her about Asian American literature. Professor Shin was not only a delightful sightseeing companion but, in her capacity as President of the American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK), described Korean work in American and Asian American studies and encouraged me to attend a future ASAK conference.
On Wednesday, June 8, I was met by Ms. Eri Nakanishi and Mr. Chris Laycock of the Kansai American Center and escorted to Kobe Women’s University, where I gave my first lecture on “Themes of Asian American Identity in Asian American Literature,“ for an audience of perhaps forty, including undergraduate students of Kobe Women’s University and faculty, members of the Asian American Literature Association, and members of the Japan American Literature Society in Kansai. My hosts were Professor Teruyo Ueki of Kobe Women’s University and Seisaku Kawakami, President of Kobe Women’s University, and my translator was Ms. Keiko Hashimoto. Due to the length of the talk when combined with sequential translation, there was no formal question and answer session, but the audience were most attentive and appreciative, and a smaller group of scholars and graduate students met with me at tea, and joined us afterwards for a tour of the completely unique Kobe earthquake memorial museum and another generous banquet, arranged and apparently paid for my colleagues of the Kobe area. I was particularly happy to see Professor Ueki, whom I had met in Taiwan at a previous conference. Professor Ueki, President of the Asian American Literature Association, promised to mail her research to me (to lighten my baggage), and I look forward to receiving it.
(At the university, Mr. Laycock and Professor Ueki helped fend off a local enthusiast, who was so struck with my talk that he wanted to introduce me to the editorial board of his publication, “Blue,“ that very evening, so that he could publish my talk. As “Blue” is apparently published solely in Chinese and Japanese, and none of us had heard of it, Mr. Laycock persuaded the zealous editor to send me a copy of his publication, care of the American Center, for review.)
On Thursday, June 9, I took the train to Tokyo, settled in at the Tokyo Garden Palace, conveniently located near the JR Ochanamizu station, and met Professor Gayle Sato, one of my hosts at Meiji University. It was a great pleasure to meet Professor Sato, a specialist in Asian American literature whose work I had cited in my own book (Assimilating Asians: Gendered Strategies of Authorship in Asian America). Over tea, we compared notes on our careers in Asian American studies and on Asian American writers. Professor Sato provided copies of her articles on Maxine Hong Kingston, Karen Tei Yamashita, and the theme of war and memory in Asia, which I hope to consult in preparing my own research on Kingston and Asian American representations of war. I look forward to the publication of her longer work, now in process, on the timely and important topic of war and memory in Asia.
At Meiji University, I met Professor Yoshikatsu Hayashi, my other host, with whom I had corresponded in preparation for the talk. This talk, a fuller version of my JAAS conference talk on “Hip Hopping to America: Japanese American Narratives of Return,“ was presented to a group of faculty and students, perhaps 20, whom I understood to be all affiliated with Meiji University. Having sent a copy of my talk in advance for some listeners to follow along, I was delighted to be able to present my ideas in fuller form, and the questions from both students and faculty after this talk were perceptive and helpful to me as a scholar. That evening, I was invited for pizza and pasta at an excellent neighborhood restaurant and had a bit more of a chance to hear about my hosts’ work, including that of Rika Nakamura of Seijo University, who is I understand writing her doctoral dissertation at Rutgers University in Asian American literature; it seems likely we will have further contact.
My lecturing duties being completed until the following week, I was warmly hosted on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for sightseeing in Kamakura, Tokyo, and Hakone by my old family friend, Mr. Mark Davidson of the American Embassy, assisted on Saturday by Ms. Yan Yang, a trilingual summer intern, and on Friday and Sunday by Mark’s family.
Thus refreshed, I proceeded to Fukuoka Women’s University on Monday June 13. There I was welcomed by Ms. Joyce S. Wong and Mr. Masayuki Miyauchi of the Fukuoka American Center, Professor Kuniko Yoshizaki of Fukuoka Women’s University, her doctoral student, Naomi Matsuo, and the University President, Dr. Makoto Takagi. Assisted by Ms. Kukiko Yamashita, a conference interpreter, I spoke once more on “Themes of Identity in Asian American Literature,“ this time to an audience of about 125 listeners, principally undergraduates, once more with sequential interpretation, and this time I was able to leave time for questions and answers. Ms. Matsuo plans to write her dissertation on Asian American literature, and her university lacks a specialist in that area, so I look forward to hearing from her about her future work. The conversation continued at a tea party, then I returned to my hotel, the dramatically elegant Fukuoka Grand Hyatt, for supper.
On Tuesday, June 14, I returned to Tokyo. I was the guest of honor at a lunch at Kitaoji restaurant, hosted by Mr. Mark Davidson, joined by Ms. Wada, Professor Yuko Matsukawa (Seijo University), a specialist in 19th and 20th century American literature and ethnic writing, and Ms. Kyoko Michishita, an independent translator, scholar, and author. Ms. Michishita gave me the text of a very interesting talk she had given, describing the state of the publishing industry in Japan and its effects on writers, and I became reacquainted with Prof. Matsukawa, whom I had met years ago in New York, and briefly again in Kyoto.
In the evening, Professors Fishkin and the ASA delegation were honored at a splendid reception hosted by Mark and Kuniko Davidson at their home in Tokyo, along with many other members of the JAAS and American Studies communities. Among the guests, I met Mr. Ken Moskowitz, outgoing Director of the Tokyo American Center, Dr. Joseph Arden, of the University of Maryland University College of Asia, Jane Yamashiro, an American scholar doing research at the East-West Center doing research parallel to mine, Professors Juri, Notaji, Onishi, Yanaka, and Yui of the JAAS, Professor Nakamura (Meiji University), Ms. Mong-Lan, a Vietnamese American poet who gave me a copy of her book, Song of the Cicadas, and a feminist science fiction writer, Mari Kotani.
My final stop in Japan was Okinawa, where on June 15 I was invited to speak at the American Studies Center of the University of the Ryukyus. Because the American Ambassador arrived in Okinawa on the same day, Mr. Frank Stanley of the U.S. Consulate General in Naha and Ms. Fuji Takayasu of that office were unable to attend my talk, but Ms. Takayasu took me out to lunch and told me about her personal research on American museums’ holdings of Okinawan artifacts as she dropped me off at the University. My host there, Professor Katsunori Yamazato, apologized before that talk for the small audience, explaining that my talk had been scheduled on the students’ day off, and some faculty had been called to attend some unavoidable meetings, but I found this audience attentive, lively, and thoughtful. This audience of 7 or 8, about half faculty and half graduate students, required neither transcript nor translation. Although Professor Yamazato and his students, seemed familiar with some the basic material in my talk (which had been written for a general audience), they listened attentively and asked probing questions in a discussion that lasted over an hour. Afterward, Professor Yamazoto, Professor Ishihara Masahide, and Professor Ikue Kina invited me for a dinner and a lively conversation about Asian American writers, Okinawans, Japanese, Americans, Professor Ishihara’s research on language retention about second-generation Asian Americans, and debates about history. Whether Okinawans are more Americanized or more postcolonial, or the sake was better, these folks seemed among the most forthcoming of colleagues in fielding my questions about touchy questions like the U.S. presence in Okinawa or the Chinese history-book protests. I promised to send a copy of my book, and Professor Yamazoto offered to send a copy of the work of Jon Shinoda, an Okinawan-American writer from Hawaii now in residence at the University of Ryukyu; he also provided copies of the American Center’s new publication, the Okinawan Journal of American Studies. In addition, our conversation generated interest in having Professor Gary Okihiro visit at the University some time in the future; in addition to his outstanding publications in Asian American history, Professor Okihiro is, according to my memory, of partly Okinawan descent.
The next day I flew from Okinawa to Kansai airport, where I caught a flight home to Washington, DC.
In reviewing this report, I’m struck with the extensive preparation, organization, generosity, and hospitality that made all these wonderful exchanges possible. I felt lucky to be invited in a year when the ASA president and other delegate, and the ASAK delegates, all senior to me, were so welcoming and interesting. My hosts of JAAS, the universities, the Embassy and the American center were so sincere, stimulating, and generous that, as I mentioned to a few people, I must have completely distorted view of Japan as a place where everyone is always gracious and helpful, the food is great, and everyone has time to feast and talk about American studies at a moment’s notice. I was also especially happy to be introduced to so many people interested in Asian American literature and Asian American studies, and hope to keep in touch with some of these scholars and to read their work in English.
As for suggestions for future trips, I have just a few comments about logistics.
One was that the timing of the JAAS conference and this trip is excellent for an American academic, because the actual conference and trip took place after my teaching and grading responsibilities were done; our university held commencement ceremonies the weekend of May 20. I also think that it is helpful to have prepared the talks in advance, and to have sent copies in advance for Japanese listeners; I myself am quite happy to have copies of the talks my colleagues gave at the JAAS conference. However, the timing was such that I was preparing these transcripts in the final weeks of the semester here, with requests for 5 talks of slightly differing lengths, formats and topics being sent in mid-to-late May. (In my case, this was complicated by the fact that I as invited to appear at a conference in Shanghai the week of June 1, so I was preparing 6 talks with one less week to do it—but then I gather Professor Fishkin was in the same boat, so to speak.) I’m not sure how this could be improved, but perhaps it would be helpful for the host campuses or American centers to indicate as early as possible whether they need the talks sent in advance, what the time constraints would be, and any special requests such as discussion of particular authors. I also appreciated the flexibility of my hosts, who when asked were flexible about these preferences.
My schedule had me flying out of Tokyo to Fukuoka, back to Tokyo, then to Okinawa before leaving for home by way of Kansai on four successive days. The requirement to travel back and forth four days in a row was stressful, and if this could be avoided that might relieve wear and tear on future speakers. (Of course, I do understand that the scheduling of 3 speakers on so many campuses was complicated, and feel happy with the overall results.)
I would like to second the comments of some of the earlier ASA representatives—that opportunities to learn more about Japanese colleagues’ research and teaching would be welcome. I admit that my scholarship has been American-centered and if anything, this trip has shown me the possibilities of taking part in a broader dialogue.
Finally, I’d like to note that there was a noticeable difference in English fluency and cultural ease between Japanese academics who had studied in America and those who had not. So I hope we can do whatever we can to encourage future students and scholars to study in the U.S. The funding of graduate students to attend ASA is a good beginning to that.
Publications received:
Doshisha American Studies. Doshisha University Center for American Studies 40 (2004).—. 41 (2005)
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Three Short Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. Ed. and annotated by Kyoko Norma Nozaki. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Japanese translation, published by Yamaguchi Shoten.
Michishita, Myoko, Untitled speech given at “East-West Creators’ Rendezvous” session, Seoul: CISAC World Congress, 2004.
Mong-lan. Song of the Cicadas. Amherst and Boston: U. Massachusetts P, 2001.
Kyoko Norma Nozaki, “Crossing National Boundaries and the Color Line: A Contrastive Stud of Houston’s Tea with Ariyoshi’s Hishoku,“ New Wave: Studies on Japanese Americans in the 21st Century. Ed. Brian Masaru Hayashi and Yasuko Takezawa. Kyoto: Kyoto University, Institute for Research in Humanities, March 2004: 57-66.
—. Singing My Own Song [Chapters on Janice Mirikitani, Joy Kogawa, and Kyoko Mori]. Yamaguchi Shoten.
Okinawan Journal of American Studies. American Studies Center of the University of the Ryukyus, Premiere Issue, 2004. Ed. By Professor Katsunori Yamazoto.—. 2 (2005).
Sasaki, Takashi, “American Studies in Japan: Problems and Prospects,“ a revised version of a paper presented by Prof. Sasaki at a symposium, “Minnesota and International American Studies,“ held at the 50th Anniversary Conference of the American Studies Program at University of Minnesota (October 20-23, 1994). Prof. Sasaki is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Center for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo.
Sato, Gayle K. “Asian American Literary History: War, Memory, and Representation,“ forthcoming in Asian American Literary Studies, ed. Guiyou Huang. (Edinburgh UP: September 2005).
—. “Karen Tei Yamashita: An Interview by Gayle K. Sato,“ Feb. 10, 2003, Oahu and Cyberspace. Japanese language publication.
—. “Marie Murphy Hara: In Interview by Gayle K. Sato, “ Feb. 12, 2002, Honolulu. Same Japanese language publication.
—. “Reconfiguring the ‘American Pacific’: Narrative Reenactments of Viet Nam in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace,“ The Japanese Journal of American Studies 18 (2005): 111-132.
Conference proceedings:
Chu, Patricia P. “Hip-Hopping to America and Back—Japanese American Narratives of ‘Return,‘“ in Workshop A: “Hip-hopping America: Dimensions of Mainstreaming Subcultures,“ 39th Annual Conference, JAAS, Kyoto University, June 5, 2005.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, “The Transnational Turn in American Studies: Asian Crossroads,“ Presidential Address. 39th JAAS Annual Meeting, Kyoto University, June 4, 2005.
Fujinaga, Yasumasa, “The Life and Times of Tupac Shakur: A Griot of Inner-city America and Commodified African-American Radicalism,“ in “Workshop A: Hip-hopping America; Dimensions of Mainstreaming Subcultures,“ 39th Annual Conference, JAAS, Kyoto University, June 5, 2005.
Hosono, Toyoki, “National and Subnational Aspects of United States Environmental Diplomacy,“ in “Workshop B: Negotiating the National and International in the Amrican Experiences,“ Kyoto University: 19th Annual Conference, JAAS, June 5, 2005.
Izumikawa, Yasuhiro, “The Role of the United States in the Normalization of Japanese-Soviet Diplomatic Relations: US and Japanese Negotiation Strategies/Tactics,“ in Workshop B: Negotiating the National and International in the Amrican Experiences,“ Kyoto University: 19th Annual Conference, Japanese Association for American Studies, June 5, 2005.
Peterson, Carla L., “Black Cosmopolitanism and the Reshaping of African Americal Local and National Identities (1830-1910), in “Workshop B: Negotiating the National and International in the American Experiences,“ Kyoto University: 19th Annual Conference, Japanese Association for American Studies, June 5, 2005.
Won, Yong Jin, “Model Minority Strategy and Asian Americans’ Tactics,“ in “Workshop A: Hip-hopping America,“ 39th Annual Conference, JAAS, June 5, 2005.ASA-JAAS Report Carla L. Peterson, University of Maryland June 2005
The following is my report on my trip to Japan, first as a member of the ASA delegation to the JAAS 2005 annual conference in Kyoto, and second as a lecturer at Japanese universities. I attended the JAAS conference with fellow delegates, ASA President Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Professor Patricia Chu of The George Washington University, as well as with the two delegates from Korea, KASSS President Sook-Won Shin and Professor Yong Jin Won of Sogang University. After the conference, I gave lectures at three different Japanese universities, Nanzan University in Nagoya, Meiji University in Tokyo, and Tokyo Women’s Christian College. My experience in Japan was extremely positive, not to say exhilarating. Much of this was due to the warm hospitality of all my Japanese hosts as well to the great organizational skills of Professors Julie Hagashi, Hisako Yanaka, Naoki Onishi, and also JAAS staff member Kyoki Aoki. My entire trip went very smoothly, starting with my arrival at Kanzai International Airport and continuing with my various hotel accommodations and train travel within Japan.
Speaking abroad on my area of expertise—nineteenth-century African American culture—was a wonderfully broadening and stimulating experience for me. Although I am a literary critic by training and teach in an English department, I have been working increasingly in the fields of cultural studies and history. Throughout my trip, disciplinary boundaries broke down repeatedly as I found myself addressing historians and literary critics alike. In my university lectures I quickly became aware that much of my subject matter was quite unfamiliar to Japanese students (and to many Americans I might add), and that this unfamiliarity was compounded by language difference. I found myself wondering at times whether I should have provided basic information in my lectures rather than more complex theoretical and analytical frameworks. (Maybe ASA could alert lecturers to the fact that many undergraduate students attend the lectures). That being said, my hosts found effective strategies to deal with this issue. Sending my text ahead of time so that attendees could read it prior to the lecture, and then follow it as I spoke, proved to be tremendously helpful. Also, my hosts either prefaced my lecture with a brief introduction providing context to my topic, or summarized my major points after I had finished. Most importantly, I found that students were not intimidated by their lack of familiarity with the material; in the question and answer period, they had a knack of entering “sideways,“ starting their question with comments on African American material that they were familiar with and then asking me to relate it to what I had been talking about. That kept me on my toes!
What follows is a day-by-day account of my trip.
I arrived the evening of June 2 at approximately the same time as Professor Fishkin. We were met by Julie Higashi who got us safely to Kyoto and our hotel, the Shiran Kaikan Annex. For the rest of that evening and much of the next day Professor Fishkin and I went around the city together, visiting sites and eating at restaurants Japanese style. On the evening of June 3, JAAS hosted a small reception at the hotel where we joined Professor Chu and the Korean delegates. There I met many of the Japanese professors who I would see time and again during my visit.
The JAAS conference took place June 4 and 5. On each of these days, our Japanese counterparts hosted the two delegations—U.S. and Korean—at a delightful French restaurant on the Kyoto University campus. These luncheons were particularly informative because the small gathering allowed us to have sustained exchange about our work and scholarly interests. I was particularly fascinated by Julie Higashi’s comments on the current Japanese textbook controversy and the forthcoming history textbook co-authored by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese educators. Since the conference panels were conducted in Japanese, we did not attend them. (I recommend that JAAS move toward incorporation of English language panels into the conference; I gather that all of the KAAS conference panels are in English). On the afternoon of June 4, Professor Fishkin delivered her presidential address, “The Transnational Turn in American Studies: Asian Crossroads.“ The Japanese scholars were highly appreciative of her talk and came away with a good sense of the transnational dialogue thriving among U.S. and Asian scholars. The day concluded with a large JAAS reception where I saw many of the people I had met the night before. I was also introduced to many conference attendees, including the participants of my panel the next day and faculty members who were hosting me at their universities over the next two weeks.
The two English language workshops took place on June 5—Professors Chu and Won’s panel, “Hip-Hopping America: Dimensions of Mainstreaming Subcultures,“ in the morning and mine, “Negotiating the National and International in the American Experiences” in the afternoon. On the surface it seemed that the only commonality among the workshops’ papers was that they were in English. But the chairs embraced this challenge, commenting on each paper individually paper but also looking for commonalties. The morning workshop, where the paper topics ranged from Japanese narratives of return to Asian Americans as model minorities and to rap artist Tupac Shakur, led to an interesting discussion not only of who constitutes “mainstream” or “subculture” but also who gets to label them as such.
My workshop consisted of my own paper on black cosmopolitanism, which focused on the ways in which nineteenth-century African Americans embraced western culture in the belief that by becoming citizens of the world they could eventually become citizens of their own nation. The second paper by Toyoki Hosono from Kyoritsu Women’s University dealt with U.S. responses to the Kyoto Protocol. Yasuhiro Izumikawa from Miyazaki International University delivered the third paper on the role of the U.S. in the Normalization of Japanese-Soviet Diplomatic Relations in the 1950s. Our panel was chaired by Fumiko Nishizaki, a Harvard Ph.D. who is currently Professor of History at Seikei University as well as editor of The Japanese Journal of American Studies (the 2004 issue contains excellent essays by Stephen Sumida and Naoki Onishi). Professor Nishizaki did a brilliant job tying together papers from fields as diverse as cultural studies, environmental science, and diplomatic history. She pointed out that each case provided telling examples of mediation between the local, the national, and the global, and also suggested that cosmopolitanism inflects not only the realms of culture and diplomacy but science as well. In the evening Naoki Onishi took us (U.S. and Koreans delegates) to dinner at a Chinese restaurant overlooking the river where we were joined by Professors Masako Notoji and Juri Abe, as well as Kyoki Aoki.
The following morning, I accompanied Professors Fishkin and Takashi Sasaki of Doshisha University to a brief meeting with Doshisha’s president, Dr. Eiji Hatta. Afterwards, Professor Emeritus Yasuo Sakakibara drove us out to his country home where we were joined by Professor Koichiro Fujikura, also retired from Doshisha, and his wife. Our luncheon was a truly cosmopolitan experience. We had all traveled across the Pacific many times. Professor Sakakibara is perhaps best known to us as the creator of the prize for the best paper presented by an international scholar at ASA annual conference; yet he is also expert on modern transportation systems and a Buddhist monk. As a professor of environmental law, Professor Fujikura participated in the Kyoto Protocol and told us that his greatest achievement was to get Kyoto named in the treaty. Their conversation was fascinating. We then returned to Doshisha University where Professor Fishkin delivered a lecture on “Race and the Politics of Memory: Mark Twain and Paul Laurence Dunbar.“ In addition to the U.S. and Korean delegates, Professors Joy and John Kasson were also there, and we had a good exchange that covered issues as varied as historical memory, irony, and ambiguous narrative endings. The day ended with a wonderful Japanese banquet (kaiseki) hosted by Doshisha.
On June 7 I left for Nanzan University in Nagoya. My host was Masaki Kawashima, Director of the Center for American Studies and Professor of American History. He is passionate scholar of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and was particularly interested in my lecture topic on the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. My talk had a quite specific focus: the ways in which the behavior of white citizens during the riots—both Irish mob and benevolent elites—depended on their perceptions of how African Americans occupied city spaces. So Professor Kawashima began by providing students with a summary in English of the Draft Riots, which he then explained in Japanese. Providing this context was tremendously helpful. There were also many faculty members in the audience, among whom was David Mayer, a University of Maryland Ph.D. who has written a book on the “neighborhood novel.“ Given my interest in city spaces, we had a great conversation which continued over a shabu-shabu dinner with several other faculty members.
I returned to Kyoto, and after a day and a half of sightseeing took a train to Tokyo on June 10. My first Tokyo lecture was at Meiji University where I was hosted by Professors Yoshikatsu Hayashi and Gayle Sato. In the talk I focused on the ways in which the African American novels of the nadir engage issues of historical memory and modernity. A graduate student did a wonderful summarizing my major points in Japanese, and in the question and answer period students asked me to relate these early novels to later twentieth-century texts that they were more familiar with. I also had a lively exchange with a faculty member over problems of terminology—the inadequacy of traditional terms (melodrama, sentimental or historical novel, realism, naturalism) to define these texts and our inability thus far to come up with new terms. Once again, the evening ended with a great dinner, this time with both faculty and students at a small local restaurant.
My final lecture, hosted by Professors of American Studies Shigehiro Yuasa and Rui Kohiyama, was at Tokyo Women’s Christian College where I gave a longer version of my talk on black cosmopolitanism. The audience was composed almost entirely of undergraduate students although there were also some graduate students from other universities. After the talk, Professor Yuasa summarized my major points in Japanese, and I had an interesting exchange with the students about possible similarities between Japanese and African Americans as social groups open to the outside world and eager to embrace other cultures and make them their own.
I had a lot of free time to see Tokyo, which I did with Professor Fishkin and also with Japanese friends whom I’d known from the U.S. One friend is a special assistant to Prime Minister Koizumi and gave me real insight into the current government. Another, Naomi Takasu, works in the Community Leaders and Youth Exchange Division of the Cultural Affairs Department of the Japan Foundation. ASA might want to explore the possibility of working with her at some point on student exchange programs. My time in Tokyo was capped off with a reception hosted by the U.S. cultural attaché and his wife, Mark and Kuniko Davidson, where I met many more wonderful people and said goodbye to all of my new Japanese friends. I hope to be able to repay their hospitality in the near future.
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