May 2009 JASC reunion!

Last night we were lucky enough to have another Boston JASC reunion! Catherine, Colin, Kai, and Giff visited Cambridge. We got Thai food together and strolled by the river...

The six of us by a bridge over the Charles.

Old RT leaders together again!

And of course, as happens when Catherine visits Cambridge, we went to Finale!

Colin being very sophisticated with his espresso and his pinky finger.

One of our elegant desserts (as it turns out, you were not meant to eat the lavender--I found out the hard way).

Kayoko trying to avoid my camera!

DOCTOR GIFF! Yes, he brought his labcoat and stethoscope to dinner...

It was wonderful to see everyone again and have an evening that felt like JASC!

DC!

I am currently in our nation's capital, meeting with President-elect Barack Obama...


...and eating tacos with him. Mmm, delicious tacos.

No, I kid, although President-elect Obama is never far from my mind, because I'm a "cock-eyed optimist," in the immortal words of Rogers and Hammerstein, and I go all weak in the knees over the prospect of a president whose policies aren't a slap in the face to all I hold dear. Hurray!

Actually, I'm in DC for the JASC fall meeting awesome amazing great so cool!

Because of various transportation difficulties (from hell's heart I stab at thee, Delta Airlines!!!), I arrived a full sixteen hours later than I should have. While this was enormously terrible in every way and a huge waste of time for me and others, it had the advantage of allowing my favorite pastime--clueless Rachel wandering!

But Rachel, most of your time is spent in clueless wandering! How is this any different?

I will tell you!

I am sessile. I am a deeply rooted plant. I walk the same paths every day; I stay in my room, my building, and my city. This is partly by choice and partly by habit, but either way, I end up spending most of my time in one place. This feeds my (usually unfulfilled) wanderlust.

So when I arrived in DC, without a map, without even the vaguest knowledge of the layout of the city or its subway, I was filled with totally childish glee. I loved figuring out how the ticket machines in the metro worked--and the metro stations in DC are so gorgeous and modernist and freaky--wandering around and figuring out the layout of the streets--tracking down some wifi to make this post--awesome, all of it.

Here's to a weekend of adventure!

Boston JASC Reunion, Part 1

What's this I see?


Five JASCers in one room! Yoshi with his Pooh-san towel, Aya in her pajamas, Sunyoung smiling like a goddess, Nancy as our gracious host, and me as the photographer.


After moving in and making a big mess out of Nancy's room...


... we had a late dinner of Japanese food (because Yoshi reaaally wanted rice!).


It's been so wonderful to see everyone--Yoshi's crazy stories about JASC behind the scenes, talking with Aya, Sunyoung's laughter. It's like JASC again, running around getting lost and being inefficient and talking about love and staying up late and getting up early.


More updates on Boston JASC reunion soon!

Traveling

Speaking of modernity (see Rachel's last post), I came across a very evocative quote in the opening pages of Joseph Conrad's Victory, written in 1915:

"The age in which we are encamped like bewildered travelers in a garish, unrestful hotel"

-- Joseph Conrad

The obvious point is how fitting this quote seems within its historical context: the beginning of the 20th century, after the West's imperial project but before two convulsive world wars, a time of political crises not yet redeemed by the marvel of consumer technology or the optimism of a return to democratic ideals.


The second point I want to make concerns the trope of traveling. I found Conrad's quote in an essay by James Clifford (originally given as remarks at a conference on cultural studies in 1990). Clifford is an anthropologist, and in this essay, he criticizes the dominant strain of anthropological study in the mid-twentieth century, a mode that focuses on participant-observation in the "field." This method basically means the anthropologist finds a village of "natives" in, say, Melanesia, pitches a tent, lives with the subject of his study for two years, and records his observations.


I have placed the words natives and field in quotation marks not to be obnoxious, but rather to show that Clifford finds these concepts problematic. A field is restrictive: to define a field, you must draw boundaries, outside of which is not the field, not a part of the anthropological study. Culture thus becomes circumscribed within the field. The "native" is assumed to be a dweller, not a traveler; he lives within an enclosed space out of contact with the larger world. Does this kind of hermetic native even exist? The village-mode of anthropology marginalizes a long list of actors: missionaries, converts, people of mixed blood, merchants, tourists, pilgrims, servants, entertainers, migrant laborers, translators, and so forth. Culture does not stay still, it does not live and die in a bounded village. Clifford's essay is tellingly titled "Traveling Cultures."


Why have I spent so long talking about Clifford's critique? Anthropology has long moved beyond a Jane Goodall-esque study of natives, witness the attention paid to the migrant labor phenomenon in Southeast Asia (Pei-Chia Lan's Global Cinderellas, Rhacel Parrenas' The Force of Domesticity, Servants of Globalization). In the process of reading Clifford, two thoughts occurred to me.


First, I like the conjunction between academia and traveling. Imagine anthropological studies of liminal spaces: hotel lobbies, airplane terminals, hospitals, urban cafes, buses, and trains. But travel here can also be a metaphor. How do we as students "travel" between discourses, disciplines, and paradigms? (Edward Said published a paper specifically on this topic: "Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler.") And on a shamelessly personal level, I think of myself as a traveler, an individual defined by my schismatic crossing of the Pacific. How does this shape my awareness and thought?


Second, the layering of traveling and culture pulls me inevitably towards JASC. I can't help it; I've been reading essays on culture, cultural identities, and cultural confrontations, and I always end up trying to map these theories onto my understanding of JASC. If, as Clifford suggests, the act of traveling is culturally meaningful, then JASC can be imagined not just as the meeting of two hegemonic cultures. Rather, the process of JASC -- the four weeks of traveling -- is itself a site of cultural production and hybridity. Does this obviate the need for an overarching mission? Is the fact that JASC happens at all sufficient?

JASC 59

I talk about the 60th JASC and I talk about the theoretical premises of JASC, but here is a nostalgic look at my JASC: the 59th Conference! En route to Kagoshima, Josh was lucky enough to be part of a JASC reunion. Incidentally, I received this picture not from him but from Hiromichi (he wears a white shirt, in the second row), my round table leader.

Having led my own round table this past summer, I appreciate the dedication and intellectual commitment of my round table leaders all the more! JASC as an institution remains year after year, but the delegates and the EC's come and go. I feel a special affection for the EC's that led my conference, my mentors and -- in many ways -- the reason why I became an EC.


Best wishes to Ryota, Yuko, Hiromichi, Nao, Daichi, Josh, and Eri~

Contact Hypothesis

The psychologist Gordon Allport suggested, in 1954, that equal status contact would improve intergroup relations, the premise of many government sponsored (or not) cultural exchange missions.

It turns out, however, that increased contact will improve intergroup relations only under very specific conditions. For instance, contact must be meaningful, voluntary, extended in duration, varied across contexts, generalized beyond the immediate situation, and take place among individuals who are similar in all but cultural background.

Pretty demanding, I would say. So, how many of these conditions does JASC fulfill?

Allport, Gordon W. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1954.

Prentice, Deborah A., and Dale T. Miller. "The Psychology of Cultural Contact." In Cultural Divides: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict, edited by Deborah A. Prentice and Dale T. Miller. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

This is the most famous photograph of World War II and possibly the most famous photograph in history.



In the photo, five Marines and one Navy corpsman are raising a flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. Published stateside, this photograph became unimaginably famous.

Although Mount Suribachi (which means mortar, as in mortar and pestle, in Japanese) was the most tactically important location on Iwo Jima (which means "sulfur island"), the battle continued for a month after this photograph was taken. In spite of the continuing carnage, the image of an American flag going up on Iwo Jima inspired hope in Americans. The three surviving flag-raisers, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and John Bradley went on a bond tour and raised $26.3 billion for the war.

To me, what is amazing about this photograph is not the impact it had on the US during the war, but the man on the very end at the left, Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian from Arizona. He was apparently a model Marine, until he was recalled from Iwo Jima for the bond tour in the United States. He said, "It was supposed to be soft duty, but I couldn't take it. Everywhere we went people shoved drinks in our hands and said 'You're a Hero!' We knew we hadn't done that much but you couldn't tell them that." He became a serious alcoholic and died ten years after he left Iwo Jima.

Ira himself has inspired the popular imagination in books, movies, and even song. There's something admirable in a morbid way about his refusal to accept the myths people tried to build.

My other blog is a Porsche

For a slightly more professional and less pathetic glimpse at planning JASC, please visit the totally awesome 61st JASC AEC Blog, which I set up.  Oh yeah!  I'm about as techno-literate as an eight-year-old!  Woo!

Boston JASC Reunion, Part Deux

Monday starts bright and early. Which is to say we all woke up around 11 in the morning and barely left my dorm by noon. The following posters grabbed our attention at the subway stop:

Yes, the first ad does in fact say, "COULD YOU SPARE SOME DNA?" And while mitosis does happen, it is really meiosis that makes reproduction with genetic variation possible. I digress. Fascinated by this fantastically-concocted ad campaign, we actually looked up spore.com upon our return and discovered, to our disappointment, that it is merely another computer/Playstation game in the take-control-of-a-civilization-and-lead-it-to-greatness tradition. It's hard to say, in retrospect, what we were expecting. But had it been advertisement for a sperm-donation service, I would have been quite satisfied.



This is a (staged though nonetheless evocative) shot of Schlachet mourning his camera. Apparently, "the flash setting cannot be changed." Both Rachel and I are technologically hapless and in no way tried to help.



Rachel entrusted her camera to me, so the first thing I did with it is take awkward self-portraits. Here we are on the subway. Rachel demonstrates how to properly make a fish-face. I fail.




I like taking pictures of produce stands. I think they are beautiful. Hopeful and reassuring.



The long subway ride takes us to Jamaica Plains, which Rachel assures us is a charming neighborhood, but we are both unfamiliar with the area, and the process of finding lunch was more arduous than we had expected. Here, we stumble into a grocery store, in which Rachel contemplates "Old Bread, Reduced" for lunch fare.



JASC never really leaves us.



We ended up at Fiore's Bakery, which exceeded my expectations and made me wish to return many times (irrationally so, as the trip to Fiore's takes a good hour or so, even on a good day). We pose for a group picture before we dive into our respective sandwiches: from left to right, the Sophia Loren, the Mobster, and the Gobbler. Yummy.



After our satisfying meal, we take a little detour to the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. The sprawling greens are calming, though not quite what I would have expected an arboretum to be. In my youth (haha, I speak as if I am long past that age), I went to the arboretum with my parents several times and remembered a profusion of colors, flowers competing against each other to be noticed. It was, however, a wonderful walk, and we return to the gate for another group picture.




And this is really the highlight of our day. Rachel, by some stroke of brilliance or divine inspiration, suggests that we visit the Museum of Bad Art, which, ladies and gentlemen, does exist. Albeit in the basement of a community theater in Dedham. Where is Dedham? That's a good question. And the best answer we can give you is that it is approximately 1 hour in subway ride and another 25 minutes on a bus from Cambridge. The admissions is free. But, in retrospect, I would have been willing to pay a hefty price for a ticket, both in support of unintentional artistic failure and in appreciation of my opportunity to witness some stunning artistic failures.



Nancy: What is this?
Josh: What is this? "Mexican in Tiananmen Square"?


Point for Josh.
(Also note that the Museum Curator has accidentally misspelled "Tian'anmen".)
We saw many other pieces of artwork, so earnest and so repulsively bad. I could try to describe them here, but any attempts on my part would dilute the spectacle that was the Museum of Bad Art.



We take a walk around historic Dedham. Houses from the 1830s and earlier. We were not impressed and sought shelter in an independent coffee shop. Here, Rachel and I indulge ourselves in a moment of photographic mutual admiration: we take pictures of each other.




Our drinks: white chocolate raspberry truffle latte, raspberry lime rickey, junior mint latte. And also peace signs.


OMG!
We decide to open a bar in Japan. I'm not sure we were really kidding.

Boston JASC Reunion, Part 1

On Sunday night, the epic JASCstravaganza that is my life continued!  Josh came to hang out with Nancy for a few days, and Catherine visited for an evening.

We went and ate at an Indian restaurant.  Particularly enjoyable were the creatively described dishes, including "chicken-coated lamb," and "raw banana dumplings cooked in onion sauce" (which Catherine actually ate--they were delicious but probably not made of banana).  Josh and I had goat!

Then we went to Finale's and luxuriated.  Nancy had creme brulee and Catherine and I shared a molten chocolate cake (o extase!).  Josh introduced us to the complex pleasures of tawny port.

It was so lovely to see Catherine again, and so heart-wrenching to have to wave goodbye to another bus.  But JASC is not over, and will never be over as long as we have each other!

The end.  <3

Rachel's JASC application essay

Inspired by Nancy, I thought I'd post my JASC application essay as well.  It is stunningly mediocre (much like me!  ha!), but in retrospect, it's interesting how relevant this essay was to some of the conversations we had during JASC.

On a separate sheet of paper, describe a modern-day issue in which you perceive conflict.  Do you see a role for students in resolving this conflict, and if so, how?

In the context of Japan-US relations, I believe the most pressing conflict at the moment lies in the broader issue of militarization and peace.  The unavoidable influence of the war in Iraq has heightened the tensions that already existed in the complicated and sometimes contradictory military relationship between Japan and the United States.

Article 9 of the Japanese constitution is in itself a site of conflict, moral and political.  Its renunciation of war makes Japan unique among all the governments of the world; there are those who say that the Japanese constitution and its dedication to peace are the world’s treasures.  At the same time, as the constitution was imposed by the American occupation, its moral authority is suspect.  Furthermore, while Article 9 prevents Japan from becoming embroiled in military conflicts, it has left Japan prey to several as-yet-unresolved political issues.  What is the role in the international community of a country that cannot be involved in military action?  How is Japan to balance the obligations of Article 9 with the provisions of its mutual defense treaty with the United States?

            The deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq has caused this latent conflict to become a problem urgently requiring resolution.  Sending troops to participate in overseas military action suggests that the Self-Defense Forces are acting beyond the limits imposed by Article 9.  Allegations that Japanese ships in the Indian Ocean have refueled American ships directly involved in military operations in Iraq only contribute to the concerns that the peace constitution is no longer being enforced.  It is true, however, that Japanese troops in Iraq have not actively engaged in military operations, but rather served in a non-combat capacity.  As Japan has skirted the boundary between self-defense and military actions, the gap between the peace constitution and reality has widened to the point where a discussion can no longer be avoided.

            Students are crucial to any potential improvement in this tense situation because they can play the roles of both intellectuals and activists.  Because students have access to an academic community that an average citizen might not, they have the opportunity and perhaps even the obligation to engage with this issue on a more sophisticated intellectual level.  This conflict can so easily be reduced to facile political talking points, either from dedicated pacifists who support Article 9 without acknowledging the difficulties it presents, or from uyoku (the extreme Japanese right wing) waving flags and shouting for constitutional revision.  Students represent hope for a more productive discussion of the issue that addresses the complicated moral and political nuances of reality.  In both the United States and Japan, there is a tradition of student political activism; in this case, students can function as educators.  Even the bare facts of the situation are, I think, little known among the general populace in the United States; if students could spread knowledge and understanding of the Japanese peace constitution, perhaps situations where the United States pressured Japan into engaging in quasi-military actions that verge on its violation would be prevented.

            While the fundamental issues of whether or not Article 9 ought to be revised or how the Japan-US military alliance should be conducted obviously cannot be resolved through student activities alone (and indeed may not be resolved within our lifetimes), if Japanese and American students alike could have honest dialogue about this issue, it would doubtless lead to greater understanding between the two countries.

In Two Short Answers

In lieu of an original post, I offer a segment of my application to the 59th Japan-America Student Conference.



Short Answer 1:

Please explain why you would like to participate in your number one choice roundtable from the previous page. What are your expectations, what can you contribute, and what do you hope to gain both academically and culturally?

I lived in the United States as a foreign national for a number of years, and, consequently, I can appreciate the nuance in nationalism. It can turn all too easily into chauvinism or ethnocentrism, and in times of war, the state or the media can easily exploit national identity and turn it into aggression.

At the same time, I do not accept the cosmopolitan creed to transcend national identity and become a “citizen of the world”. I find it not only unrealistic but also undesirable. One way to ground ourselves in the dislocation and change created by globalization is through a shared national narrative. More importantly, I am interested in how East Asian societies have chosen to modernize, and nationalism, as a relatively modern phenomenon, is inevitably a part of the story. I would like to gain a more complete perspective on the evolution of nationalism, and this conference will be a particularly rich opportunity because Japan, by harnessing national identity at various points in the twentieth century, has reaped both sorrow and gain. In return, I can offer insights on diaspora and a more general discussion on the phenomenon of nationalism that is no longer related to geographical boundaries.

Short Answer 2:

Briefly describe today’s global society as you see it. How do you think the Japan-America partnership can actively promote positive change within that global society?

Even as the U.S. is debating over how to end its most recent war, I choose to believe that the next great global conflict will no longer take place in the battle arena. Or, at least, such a conflict will no longer be fought by hard power. Instead, countries will compete over their abilities to influence not just other heads of states but the people of these states. In this scenario, economics may matter, media will matter, and pop culture will matter most of all.

And is that not already the case? Culture wars prompted by Hollywood and McDonalds rage, as much in the U.S. as anywhere else in the world. But I am beginning to find, to my immense pleasure, that America no longer holds a monopoly on global pop culture. With the possible exception of India’s Bollywood, Japan is the only country capable of contending with America in the global export of pop culture. It would be facetious to argue that anime alone will bring some sort of global resolution in all the fronts that worry politicians and NGOs, but there is a certain comfort in knowing that the world of mass culture – in all its superficiality and spectacle – is not subject to military might or political maneuverings. It is a spontaneous expression of taste, desires and insecurities, voiced by the young to the bewilderment of the older generations.

The opportunities in such a cultural democracy, as it were, bear tremendous potential, in part because they have been given so little consideration. Pop culture is transmitted effortlessly and reverberates endlessly; it creates its own self-renewing lexicon, which offers a completely different – and completely privatized – way of describing the world. At the least, it gives the world an alternative way to communicate and understand each other, and this very pluralism is heartening.

I am afraid of the time when politicians will realize the strength of this unmediated pool of ideas and try to regulate it. If we look at pop culture as more than just a fanciful entertainment for the young, if we accept it as a means of linking people together in completely novel ways, then we have the obligation to protect it from tampering of governments or multinational companies. Perhaps the most that Japan and the United States will be able to do in this aspect is acknowledge that a marketplace of ideas exists – decked out in flashing neon and movie marquee – and mutually refrain from repressing it.

Women and Peace

I've read some essays by Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to U.S. Congress, and the only member of Congress to vote against entry into World War II.  She was more a dedicated pacifist than a feminist, and some of her writings on both women and peace strike me as problematic.

The peace problem is a woman's problem.  Disarmament will not be won without their aid.  So long as they shirk, and so long as the High Commissions exclude them, something will be radically wanting in the peace activities of the public and the state.  I would like to suggest to those offering peace awards that they appoint an investigating commission, composed of experts on human conduct, and send this commission out to explore the history of a people which already has a practical working program of peace, namely, the people known as women.

Half of the human race does not fight, and has never fought.  We know a little, though not nearly enough, about why men fight, but we know nothing at all about why women do not fight.  No, I am not forgetting about the Amazons and the Battalion of Death and Joan of Arc and all the rest.  In fact, I see in them a ray of hope.  If women could take on so thoroughly the behavior of the fighting male, why should not men learn something in their turn from the non-fighting female.  I am aware that men are disposed to look down on the temperamental pacifism of women (which in spite of all the exceptions is a psychological fact) as something which the manly man would scorn to imitate.  However, there is no other way that I can see in which peace can be realized except through forbearance from fighting on the part of men as well as women.

--"Peace and the Disarmament Conference," Jeanette Rankin

What strikes me about her argument, in this essay and others, is that the source of war is a desire to fight (on the part of men).  She speaks eloquently about "war habits" and "peace habits" and how to instill "peace habits" in children through education, all of which I think is admirable.

(Lysistrata made a similar point; the women dismiss the war that the men are fighting as born of masculine bluster and desire for money.  Again, there's the idea that men are predisposed to want to go to war simply because they like war, but women are devoid of such martial desires.)

Rankin had plenty of extremely powerful arguments against war and justifying voting against entering WWII, some of which seem quite before her time.  (She had a more sophisticated understanding of the subtleties of the conflict between Japan and the US in 1958 than the average American has today, I would wager.)  I think most of her arguments against war hold even today.  But she never even addressed what to me is the central question: how can you refrain from war when the consequence of your pacifism is murder of innocents on an unthinkable scale and the destruction of an entire people?

I'm disappointed and also slightly baffled.  How could she be so involved in global politics and so passionate about her pacifist cause while seemingly not even considering what to me is the obvious concern of militarism vs. pacifism?  Part of me can't help but think that perhaps the reason she didn't seem concerned about the victims of WWII in the European and Asian theatres is that the people being gassed and raped were Jews and Koreans.  I can't tell if I'm not giving her enough credit, but I just can't think of an explanation for this gaping hole in her logic.

JASC farewell speech

Despite all my efforts at anonymity, horrifyingly enough, I am now on the internet.  Goodness!

Howard Zinn

I'm just starting to read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I took it out from the library for my own edification (I've wanted to read it for years now but always been too lazy), but I'm realizing that it's actually extremely relevant for my roundtable next year.

I still have to clarify my thoughts on this, but at least some of my RT will focus on the conflict between national interests in education and other goals of education. In his first chapter, Zinn discusses the problem of teaching US history:

---

It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map.

My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians But the mapmaker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.

...

"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation--a world not restored but disintegrated.

My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, maters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

(Zinn, 8-10)

---

I will also note that Kissinger was a JASC alum!

Obviously I need to think more. It's a pity, but I don't think I'll be able to finish this book before I leave for Cambridge.