Images of Japan

A Hampshire College Division III Project

By Samuel A. Ross

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Division III Portfolio

Table of Contents
For a downloadable version with document links, please email admin@outsideinsider.org

- Division III Contract - Chapter I Samurai and Monkeymen:

Historical American Images of Japan and the Japanese
- Introduction - Historical Paper

II Of Aliens and Alienation

- Introduction - Personal Essay

III (Welcome to Tokyo!)

- Introduction - Study Abroad Guidebook to Sophia University and Tokyo

IV Inside Jobs
- Introduction - Audio CD - Inside Jobs - An Interview with Lucy Craft - Feature Transcript

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Division III Contract

Title: Gaikokujin: Japan and the concept of Otherness Description: My Division II seeks to explore two topics; concepts of foreignness in Japan and the historical view of Japan as a "foreign" country in the western world. By this exploration, I hope to build and reflect on my studies of Broadcast Journalism and Japanese Culture. To accomplish this, I intend to write a thesis paper on historic western images of Japan as a "foreign" culture and how those views have influenced American perspectives on the Japanese. I also will spend the five months of my Division III in Japan through a study abroad. This experience will be documented in several ways. First, I plan to make a couple of radio features that explore "foreigners" and "foreign" languages in Japan. I will also write a reflection paper on my personal experiences in the country, detailing (among other things) my own personal preconceptions, and how I confronted them/was forced to confront them. Finally, I shall also compose a guidebook, detailing different aspects of living in Tokyo and studying at Sophia University. By exploring the "why" and "how" Japanese culture has been portrayed as being different or alien from that of the West from multiple perspectives (including my own, as a "foreigner" during the study abroad), I hope to develop a greater understanding of attitudes towards the Japanese people and Japanese society.

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Chapter I: Samurai and Monkeymen

The concept of my Division III was to explore concepts of otherness; what made Japan a foreign country, and how those concepts of foreignness exist in Japan. By looking at these concepts, and how they came into existence, I believed it would give better insight into the Japanese people. Instead of writing a retrospective on these topics and how they related to the five months I spent in Japan during the first half of my Division III, my committee urged me to write this paper, a look at images which have been established of the Japanese people and Japan by the Western World for the past 150 years. By developing this paper, they believed I would develop context for my own observations, and be better equipped to analyze them. In truth, the only reason I opposed doing so at first was because of how intimidating this paper had seemed. This was a truly analytical look at a topic I had somewhat skirted around during my studies of Japan in Division II, because I felt ill-equipped to write about it. Not only would it require a lot of research, but it also required me to venture into potentially ugly territory. There had been many hints throughout the culture studies courses I had taken that the images I found were not likely to be very positive, to say the least. But then, Division III is supposed to be difficult, and writing this paper certainly was on several levels. Reviewing the history of interactions between America and Japan is rather depressing on the basis of images alone. As I comment at the end of the paper, The United States has and continues to dehumanize Japan as a mode of interacting with the country and establishing self-identity as its superior through the images it creates. However, it is up to the individual to define the images they themselves hold and determine whether or not they apply in
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any given circumstance. Its disheartening to look back and see a time where Americans saw the Japanese as child-like, brutal, animalistic, or robotic. Its even further depressing to see how some themes in images have never changed, and have no indication of doing so in the near future. But on the same account, it was also sobering; by giving me a background on the years and years of American perspectives in approaching the Orient, it also forced me to address the way I had studied Japan in the past. It was undeniably necessary for this chapter to be the first part of my Division III. Academically, it exposed me to a subject that I had yet to approach, giving me an ability to do more effective analyses of the topic of otherness from the background it established. Personally, writing it gave me greater insight to the images I had established of the country and how that influenced my experiences in Japan and reflection on them, something that is covered in the second chapter of this Division III thesis. I think anyone who studies a foreign culture tends to glorify or exoticize it to some extent. By studying Japan, I think I saw myself as combating images of Japan. Writing this essay has made me realized that not only do I personally hold certain images of Japan, but that I also encourage their creation through my analysis of the subject and my own experiences. Like in my situation, its up to those who read this paper and my personal essay to look inward and identify the images they hold for themselves, as they may or may not be compatible with mine. I can only hope that reading this Division III generates some inspiration, as writing it has for me. Samuel A. Ross

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Samurai and Monkeymen

Historical and Contemporary American Images of Japan and the Japanese
A thesis paper as part of a Division III project By Sam Ross Hampshire College

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I. Introduction In Orientalism, Edward Said points to a discourse of how the West has historically interacted with the non-west. The oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, different, while the westerner is rational, virtuous, mature, normal.1 Some of this is reflected in Commodore Matthew Perrys notes upon his expedition to Japan ending over two hundred years of isolation between the country and the rest of the world. Perry comments infrequently on the character of the Japanese, but describes them as having inordinate curiosity at one point:
They were not satisfied with the minutest examination of all these things, surpassingly strange as it must have been to them, but followed the officers and men about, seizing upon every occasion to examine every part of his garments, and showing the strongest desire to obtain one or more of their buttons.
2

Perrys detailing of his encounters with the Japanese frequently portrays them as childlike and untrustworthy. He complains about their deceitful conduct, when reviewing their eventual capitulation to some of his demands3, and that while they are prone to gaiety and kind hospitality, it is only by stealth that they exhibit these traits of character.4 Over the course of the Meiji period, some began to doubt that the West, especially the US would ever come to see Japan as it truly was. One such person was the influential poet Okakura Kakuzo, who found that the west tended to dismiss Japanese and Asian culture in general. We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us, states Okakura in 1906 in The Book of Tea. We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fascism or else abject

1 2

Said, Edward, Orientalism, (New York, Vintage Books. 1979), 40 Perry, Matthew. Pineau, Roger, Auth. and Ed, The Personal Journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, (Washington, Smithsonian Institute Press. 1968.) 177 3 Deceitful because they abandon their position that his demands are impossible when he could not be deceived by their cajolery. (Perry, 163) 4 Perry, 216

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voluptuousness.5 Okakura took offense at the trivialization of the peaceful arts of Japan, such as the tea ceremony, compared to the broader recognition of topics like The code of the samurai. Fain would we remain barbarians, he laments if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war6. As Said argues, these limited views of Oriental culture reflect an attempt by the occident to develop a discourse of power by creating a separation of the occident and the orient. He suggests that this is an aspect of Orientalism, through which the west attempts to define itself. Viewing Japan and other Asian countries from the perspective of orientalism as Okakura describes, helps the mind to intensify its own sense of self by dramatizing the difference and distance between what is close to it and what is far away.7 This discourse has continued to come up throughout the positive and negative historical interactions between the US and Japan; frequently presenting itself in propaganda and intersocietal relations. Prior to and during World War II, Japan went from barbarian to bestial, now represented as sneaky monkeys or pests in US publications and films.8 As some cultural analysts, such as David Morley9 have argued, some western images of Japan today give a changed perspective on the power dynamic between the orient and occident, presenting Japan as an austere and disciplined society, with frightening efficient industries, garnering more respect than that of any similar corporations in western societies. Yet, even then the stereotype remains negative; the economic success comes at the expense of salarymen, dehumanized as economic animals, working to inhuman lengths and

5 6

Okakura, Kakuzo, Bleiler, Everett F. Auth. and Ed. The Book of Tea (New York, Dover Publications, Inc. 1964), 3 Okakura uses this view of Japan to reflect on Japanese views of the west. He describes the willingness of Asians to adopt everything western, even if it forces them to approach the west on our knees. The west, on the other hand, seems to have no such compunction to understand and interact with Asia. (Okakura, 4) 7 Said, 55 8 Dower, John, War Without Mercy, (New York, Pantheon Books. 1986) - See Section IV of this thesis. 9 Reference to Techno-Orientalism, a section of a novel by Morley and Robins. See bibliography for details.

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tirelessly in nature for the good of the corporate entity. Other uniquely Japanese images have been conquered by the west, The code of the Samurai being mastered by Tom Cruise, making him The Last Samurai, and Chinese actresses recounting the lives of Geisha girls in Academy-award winning films. The ever-changing shaping of images in relation to Japan and the Japanese are a reflection of the history of interaction between the US and Japan, and a larger umbrella of Orientalism that the occident has used to interpret and interact with Japan in recent history.

II. Meiji-Era Japan: A Country of Heathens Japans participation in the United States centennial fair in 1874 was the countrys first attempt to represent itself to the American public. Due to the relatively recent opening of trade between Japan and other countries, there was still much that was unknown about the Japanese. During the construction of the countrys national pavilion at the fair, the New York Times commented on the carpenters who had traveled from Japan, comparing their work to that of Chinese laborers. Contrary to what has been observed of the Chinese in California and the mining regions, commented the Times, the children of the flowery land do not burst into song when plying the implements of carpentry but work away in absolute silence.10 Images of the Japanese at this time frequently compared the Japanese to that of Chinese immigrants in the US. Thousands of Chinese immigrants had arrived in the late-1840s in reaction to the California gold rush and jobs connected to the construction of the first transcontinental railway in the US. 11 It was here that the first significant images of Asia began to originate in America, the Asian as the pollutant. The rush of Chinese immigrants was seen as an invasion
10 11

Iriye, Akira. Mutual Images, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press. 1975), 29 Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_immigration_to_the_United_States#First_wave_.281800s_to_1949.29

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of sorts, from an exotic and alien culture that threatened to ruin the promise of California for hardworking Americans. According to Robert Lee in his book, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture, In the minds of white immigrants from the East, Chinese who settled California from the west were anomalous; they broke the chain of westward historical progressChina could no longer be imagined simply as a distant destination to which Americans ventured to seek their fortune in trade. It now had to be taken into account as a place from which workers came to America in search of gold or wages.12 As few Americans had experience with Non-Chinese Asian immigrants, all immigrants of Asian origin became Chinese. One notable example is the experiences of Uchimura Kanzo, a well-known 19th century Japanese writer and Christian evangelist who started the non-church movement of Christianity in Japan. Uchimura converted to Christianity while he was a student at William S. Clarks Sapporo University, and recounts how excited he was the first time he and a small group of other converted Japanese traveled to America. Once there though, he details how surprised he was at the treatment he received in the land of Christiandom in 1884, especially for how often he was taken for a Chinese laborer:
They (the Chinese laborers) are all called John, and even the kind policeman of New York call us by that nameA well-clad gentleman sharing the same seat with me in a car asked me to have my comb to brush his grizzly beard; and instead of a thank when we in heathendom consider as appropriate upon such occasion, he returned the comb saying. Well John, where do you keep your laundry shop? An intelligentlooking gentleman asked us when we did cut our cues; and when told that we never had cues, Why, he said, I thought all Chinamen have cues.
13

John Chinaman, or John as Uchimura refers to the stereotype, was a common image of Asians in America, whether or not they were actually Chinese. John Chinaman, originally taking
12 13

Lee, Robert G., Orientals; Asian Americans in Popular Culture, (Philadelphia, Temple University Press. 1999), 31 Uchimura Kanzo, How I Became a Christian, (Tokyo, Kyobunkwan. 1971) 116-117

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form as a vaudeville character represented Asians as a racial other, being too different in culture and value from Americans to live in American society. John Chinaman spoke pidgin English, often peppered with nonsense words, and was a gourmet of domesticated animals like dogs and cats. John Chinamans cue reflected a common hairstyle of Chinese immigrants, to wear their hair in a plaited braid, as cutting it off was a sign of rebellion in China. The true symbol of John Chinamans cue however was that of a backwards and uncivilized Asian. As Lee describes it in Orientals, In an age when middle class white men had shorn their hair, and among so-called civilized people only women wore their hair long, the Chinese males practice of wearing their hair long and in a braid was perceived as sexually and racially ambiguous, and therefore dangerous.14 In 1870, California legislators enacted the Page Act of 1870, which prohibited Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian women from being brought to or entering the United States to engage in immoral or licentious activities.15 This was a result of the moral and physical threat that Asian prostitutes were perceived to pose for young white men, either through disease or corruption of youth. Asians, particularly Chinese were rumored to spread stronger sexual diseases. This attitude was based in racism, general fears of the perils of race-mixing and interracial marriage, a concept that would continue in images of Asians for a long time. Still, the Chinese comparison did not reflect all perceptions of the Japanese, especially once Japanese products and arts began to be widely lauded in the United States. Julian Hawthorne, son of famed poet, Nathaniel Hawthorne, commented in his 1883 book, Humors of the Fair that he held high regard for Japanese art, but that Chinese humor reminded him of a

14 15

Lee, 39 Lee, 89

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weird grimace.16 The difference reflected a perception that Japan had surpassed its origins in China (possibly due to a half-century of discrimination against immigrant workers; the Japanese who came to America were typically seen as exceptionally disciplined and polite, while the Chinese were seen by many as taking jobs from American citizens).17 This separation did not stop a reimagining of the Japanese through exoticised images. Western experts on Japan, such as Lafcadio Hearn, often fell into stereotyping of Okakuras Abject Voluptuousness type. Originally drawn to Japan through his job as a newspaper correspondent, Hearn commented in a later book My First Day in the Orient, that everything seemed Elfish, describing the Japanese as small, and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and smiling little people in their blue costumes.18 Hearns descriptions echo common images of the Japanese as child-like and comical, Child-like, easily pleased and easily grieved,19 little men and women coming in a continuous, uninterrupted stream, without cries, without squabbles, noiselessly, each one making so smiling a bow that it was impossible to be angry with them.20 The people and products of Japan held fashionable exotic charm for Americans, in some ways elevating it above western culture, in particular recognition of Japanese education, perceived personal discipline, and

16

Iriye, 43. Hawthorne goes on to state that he assumed the Chinese were without souls in their worship of antiquity and their earthly everlastingness. 17 This idea is touched on by Uchimura, but Lee explains it further, saying that arguments like this were spread by Irish-Americans, who were also frequently targets of discrimination in America. Chinese immigrants were often citedas superior replacements for Irish workers, who were seen as undisciplined, ill-tempered, and recalcitrant. In turn, Irish labor leaders were among the most prominent in the anti-Chinese movement. Lee, 61 18 Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan. (London, Jonathan Cape Publishing. 1927), 3 19 A Samantha as quoted in Iriye, 42. Although child-like was often associated with someone who was lazy, American interactions with the Japanese changed said stereotype to reflect the unbounded energy, emotion, and dedication to their work Americans perceived in the Japanese. 20 Loti, Pierre. Madame Chrysantheme. (Champaign, Book Jungle. 2007), 13

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artistic works, which some argued, pushed European antiques into 2nd place in their clumsiness of design and execution.21 Yet in this fashion too, Japan only captured the aesthetic attention of the West, rather than recognition. Attempts by the country to modernize in the eyes of the west were lost to a country that was determined to value Japan on its separation. In adopting western culture, US sources argued, Japan would soon abandon the traditional arts that made it valued among western civilizations. Critics of this argument point to the fact that Japan appeared to many as outdoing its occidental opponents. Japanese workmanship was regarded as excellent and innovative, especially when compared to American workers. III. The Early 1900s The Perils of Uniqueness At least as early as the 1930s researchers of Japan frequently commented on the uniqueness of the country and people. John Embree, an American sociologist wrote in his study of a Japanese village in the mid-30s that Japan and the Japanese are different from other nations, or rather, as Japanese nationals phrase it, they are unique among the peoples and cultures of the world.22 This uniqueness was a feature of Japanese which was used to make them seem intriguing but inscrutable, as the oriental mind of Asia mystified the West. This mysteriousness only served to intensify US fears as Japan won a victory against a powerful Russia in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. As this was the first major military victory of an Asian country over a European one, Japan began to rise in the eyes of the rest of the world. Japan also used the victory as an opportunity to start moving into Asian countries. This began the revival of a term that had been used to describe the influx of Chinese immigrants into the US, the
21 22

Iriye, 30. Dower, John, War Without Mercy, (New York, Pantheon Books. 1986), 95

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yellow peril. With Japans militaristic success the concept of an Asian country attempting to dominate the US at some point in the future was a concept that stayed ever present in many western minds. In response to what it saw as a growing Asian threat, the US began to institute radical laws in efforts to wave off perceived dangerous immigration, not only from Japan but from Asian countries as a whole. This included the immigration act of 1917, which barred the immigration of any person whose heritage could be traced back to Asia, and the 1922 Cable Act, which stripped any American woman who married a foreign national of her US citizenship.23 This in particular was another reflection of an earlier fear of racial pollution or conquest through mixed marriage, the white woman being corrupted by a dangerous foreign culture; a dichotomy that served as common imagery for the danger posed by Asians. Cinema also supported this image with movies with villains such as Dr. Fu Manchu. In a series of movies based on popular novels by Sax Rohmer, Fu Manchu represented the complete embodiment of the Yellow Peril. A tall, lean and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan character with all the cruel cunning of the entire eastern race,24 Fu Manchu waged a constant battle with his Western counterpart, an Asian expert, through plots that threatened an Asian conquest of the world. The Wests only defense against Fu Manchus plots is the ability to analyze and predict his thinking as an Asian. As Said puts it in Orientalism, to have knowledge over such a thing is too dominate it, to have authority over it.25 In other words, some knowledge, even if untrue, has power, especially to define the oriental other. Fu Manchus protagonist Nayland Smith, uses his knowledge of the orient to foil Fus
23 24

Lee, 108 The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu Lee, 114 25 Said, 32

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plots but also defines aspects of the orient in the process through an occidental scope. Fu Manchu epitomized the Yellow Peril. Western-educated and sophisticated, he posed a particularly nefarious threat to the West. Yet, despite all that he accomplished, even by western standards, he was always outdone by his western counterparts. Despite his best efforts, he was not a Westerner and therefore could not hope to compete with Nayland Smiths natural acumen. This image of an Asian trying (and failing) to be Western had some parallels in real life, particularly in the case of Takao Ozawa v. The United States in 1922. Takao Ozawa lived in the United States from the age of nineteen, arriving in 1894, and receiving formal education in the states. In 1914, he petitioned the states of California and Hawaii to become a naturalized US citizen. Despite how long he had lived and worked in the US, Ozawas petition was turned down as the courts ruled that only a free white person could become a citizen of the United States, no matter how assimilated he might have become. Lee found this particularly notable, commenting that:
In the case of Takao Ozawa, his 100 percent American habits notwithstanding, the Supreme Court drew a bright line of race between Caucasian and nonwhite. Although Ozawa might have been more Americanized than the proscribed Chinese, the degree of Ozawas assimilation was irrelevant to the court. The principle issue was his claim to whitenesssince the Japanese were not among those included in the popular category of Caucasian, Ozawa could not sustain the argument that he was not Negro and therefore white.
26

In some ways, the idea that someone who was Japanese could not inherently by his genetics be American was only the beginning of what started a negative spiral downward of images of how the Japanese were perceived in the US. Based on the aggressive aspect of growing nationalism and expansionism in the Japanese government, the late 1930s and 40s brought new representations of the Japanese that began to circulate even before the Japanese attack on Pearl
26

Lee, 143

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Harbor in 1941. No longer did they represent Hearns elfish characteristics. Dehumanization was common, portraying the Japanese as bestial and animalistic. An early representation of this was a comparison of the Japanese to wild or mad dogs; a stereotype which grew as Japan began showing signs of acts of aggression in the Pacific; so much so that a year before war broke out between the US and Japan, Churchill told Roosevelt to keep that Japanese dog quiet. It would be a long time before the Japanese once again appeared as anything resembling human beings in the eyes of Americans.

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IV. World War II: Triumphing over the Japanese Superman and Sub-Human

Figure 1

Figure 2

Dehumanization of the Japanese remained a constant source of images immediately before and during the Second World War. Early images portrayed the Japanese as monkeys or gorillas, depending on the message that the creator was attempting to impart. The Japanese were sneaky chimpanzees in David Lows political cartoon published months before America entered the war. In the cartoon, the monkey hangs from a tree, debating which sailor/western country to stab in the back first. (Figure 1) Use of chimpanzees also creates a power discourse, in relation to the disparity between the monkey and men hes attempting to attack. For example, on occasion, this was also meant to show a mental disparity between Japan and the West. In the mind of some critics, Japan was unable to have conceived its expansionist policies on its own, leading at least one artist to use the metaphorical monkey to suggest that Japan was simply imitating in Asia what Hitler was doing in Europe.27 This is notably referenced in a political cartoon by Theodore Geisel shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. (Figure 2) The Japanese are presented as the pet of Hitler, in the role

27

Dower, 182

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of monkey to his organ grinder, asking for advice on how to draw the Americans in the war.28 Another cartoon by Low, drawn in 1942 shows a chimpanzee Japan stomping on East Asian countries while looking to Hitler for approval.29 One particular reason why the monkey image, under Hitlers influence or not, remained so prominent was due to a perception, held by many Americans that the Japanese were incapable of managing major military actions on their own accord. For the Japanese to suddenly take the role of an aggressor could not be reconciled with previous perceptions of the Japanese being comical or childlike; the little clown taking on the gigantic American
Figure 3

superpower. In 1944, the Chief of the State Departments Division of Japanese Affairs gave a speech reviewing why Pearl Harbor had strongly shocked so many Americans. Westerners either did not believe that the supposedly nice little Japanese, whom they associated only with cherry blossom and geisha, could really build up such a [military] machine, or they shrugged off the growing danger with the easy assumption that one American, or one Briton, or one Australian is equal in fighting qualities to five or ten Japanese.30 Suddenly, after being attacked, the Chimpanzees turned into fearsome Gorillas and Beastial Supermen, as the image began to turn towards the Japanese soldier. A comic published in the Chicago Tribune in 1942 shows a young child who grows up to become a storybook hero by serving in the army; a lone giant-killer against the ogre of the Jap Hoards. (Figure 3) In
28 29

Minear, Richard H. Dr. Seuss goes to war (New York, The New Press. 1999), 143 Dower, 182 30 Dower, 110-111

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another in the New York Times Magazine, the soldier is King Kong leering over a village hes recently destroyed, clutching two or three women as his prisoner in his massive paw. (Figure 4) In these two images alone there are some interesting dichotomies with the first being a perceived lack of sophistication of the Japanese. This is doubtlessly supported by the dehumanization as monkeys, but also through images of the American soldiers in relation to them. The American soldier in the Chicago Tribune cartoon (Figure 3) who stands alone but with his mounted machine gun is obviously technologically superior to the ogre carrying a sword. Like the images presented of the Chinese in the 1800s, the
Figure 4

Japanese are dangerous savages, also portrayed in the Times image of King Kong. Unlike the original King Kong, who kidnaps a woman to protect her, the Japanese soldier is a threat to his captives by his brutal nature, thus emphasizing the sexual conquest aspect of the yellow peril again. Brutality comes up regularly in how the Japanese were viewed by members of the armed forces, and reflected their treatment of the opponent and prisoners of war. This is noted by Charles Lindbergh in his diaries as a civilian observer following US forces in 1944:
It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselvesA Japanese soldier who cuts off an American soldiers head is an Oriental barbarianan American soldier who slits a Japanese throat did it only because he knew the Japs had done it to his buddies.
31

31

Dower, 70. Dower comments that Lindbergh still felt that oriental atrocities are often worse than ours.

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In other words, whatever American soldiers did (including mutilation of dead Japanese and torture) during the war was considered as far less savage than their Japanese counterparts. Americans were also fighting for a just cause (originally embodied as vengeance for Pearl Harbor, but converted to holding back the tide of the Japanese tsunami by any means necessary) where as the Japanese were just brutal and barbarically aggressive. Soldiers began to adopt a policy of kill or be killed, believing that the Japanese
Figure 5

were uniquely barbaric; in possession of a naked,

tribal savagery which, in fact was inherent to Japanese culture.32 Any attempt by Japanese to surrender was seen as subterfuge, and to give any quarter was to suffer and die at the hands of Japanese soldiers.33 Other images of the Japanese as beasts began to reinsert themselves in the public consciousness. As Americans began winning more battles, the image of the Japanese as supermen receded and again shrunk down into smaller more manageable challenges; chimpanzees swinging through the forests of Singapore (Figure 5) and a lone monkey desperately gripping onto a springboard as Americans try to knock him into the ocean below. (Figure 6)
32 33

Figure 6

Dower, 48+51 Dower, 64 - The story of the Goettge patrol, concerning over twenty marines who responded to what appeared to be a Japanese attempt to surrender, and were ambushed, shot, and bayoneted to death.the psychology of kill or be killed ruled the battlefield thereafter.

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Figure 7

Figure 8

Other images reflecting a different kind of threat Americans perceived from the war with Japan also surfaced. As the Japanese were seen as a cohesive fighting movement a closely disciplined and conformist people a veritable human bee-hive or ant-hill, determined to fight and die for their God-Emperor, some in the US began to believe that the only way to resolve the conflict and win the war might have to result in the deaths of all Japanese.34 This led to creations of images of the Japanese hoard or pest; images which tried to inspire a need for complete extermination for victory.35 This is demonstrated in another image from the Marine publication Leatherneck in March of 1945, which describes a serious outbreak of the Louseous Japanicas, a large bucktoothed ant-like insect. The Marines were tasked with the giant task of extermination, and that the breeding grounds around Tokyo must be completely annihilated.
34 35

Dower, 83 The Japs turned into ants, the more you killed the more that kept coming. Dower, 90

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(Figure 7) The idea of the Japanese as a plague was not a new one; in 1941, a cartoon by Theodore Geisel portrays an Uncle Sam-lookalike eagle, beating off a mob of hundreds of identical slanted-eyed alley cats on Jap Alley. Maybe only alley cats, but Jeepers! reads the caption. a hell of a lot of em. (Figure 8) Jack may no longer have been fighting a giant, (Figure 3, p.11) but the message was clear. Barbaric Japan was a threat to the modern civilized world, and needed to be stopped by any means necessary.36 De-humanization and disenfranchisement of the Japanese through images was just as common on the home front as the battlefield. Almost immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, over 120,000 Japanese and Korean Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to War Relocation Centers under Franklin Roosevelts enacting of
Figure 9

Executive Order 9066. Under the law, local military commanders were allowed to designate military areas as exclusion zones, from which any and all people may be excluded. (Wikipedia) Anyone of Japanese ethnicity was suspected of possibly being disloyal and a threat to the United States, and anyone of even 1/8 Japanese descent was ordered into internment. Koreans also were subject to this internment process; as a result of Japans invasion of Korea, the military also considered them untrustworthy. White Americans showed little sympathy. When the US Government attempted to establish more camps further inland on the west coast (as a result of over-crowding), the governor of Idaho refused the camps and their internees, stating

36

One particularly strong example lies in a political cartoon by the New York Times in 1943. A hand, labeled as civilization holds a gun to the head of an ape, identified as the Murderers of American Fliers. (Figure 9)

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that a good solution to the Jap problem would be to send them all back to Japan, then sink the island. They live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats.37

V. Know Your Enemy: Japan and Why We Fight The Japanese in 60 minutes or less As the US entered World War II, Hollywood director Frank Capra was approached by the military to create a series of orientation films for American troops about to go into war. The series, eventually adopting the title Why We Fight, were in Capras words, intended to win the war and win the peace, believing that American troops who became privy to the enemys state of mind would rally their morale with a sense of justice. 38 Dower believes that Capras Why We Fight films have become classics of wartime cinematic propaganda a remarkable accomplishment, in retrospect, since each script had to be approved by some fifty military and civilian agencies in Washington.39 Due to Roosevelts positive impressions of the films, Capra released the movies to public theatres, and Americans had another source for establishing images of the German, Italian and Japanese enemy they faced. One film in the series that offers significant images of the Japanese in particular is the sixth movie, The Battle of China, a film which Dower describes as an epic paean to the resistance of the Chinese people against Japanese aggression.40 In the film, Capra is quick to establish three facts that must never be forgotten about China; China is history, China is land,

37

Dower, 92. Dower argues that If loyal neighbors of Japanese extraction at home could be so summarily categorized as vermin, it is once again easy to imagine how such an exterminationist sentiment could be applied not merely to Japanese combat forces in Asia and the Pacific, but to the men, women and children of the Japanese homeland itself. 38 Dower, 16. Capra believed that the most effective way to combat enemy propaganda was to use their own newsreels, footage, and propaganda in his films, to juxtapose the menacing faces and words of the enemy against the bright hope and accomplishments of the American people and their allies. 39 Dower, 15 40 Dower, 17

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China is people, establishing a frame of reference for Americans who might profess unfamiliarity with the country, and an argument about why Japan is attempting to invade it. Capra credits the Chinese as peace-loving people, stating that In all their four thousand years of continuous history, they (the Chinese) have never waged a war of conquest, who have contributed much to the development of navigation, literacy, philosophy and science.41 Even before Capra establishes an image of the Japanese, he establishes the Chinese as valiant for fighting Americas enemy for the past seven years. The first images shown of the Japanese are purely visual; the Japanese bombing civilians in Shanghai, and thousands of Japanese soldiers swarming down mountainsides and up ramparts; the latter reminiscent of colonies of insects, and other images of the Japanese as pests.42 The former also echoed western accounts of the conflicts in papers at the time, reflecting on the Japanese using words to be used later by others to describe Japanese acts against Americans; bestial, evil, crazed, inhuman, and lost to all sense of humanity.43 Capras Japanese are indeed barbaric, lead by mad plans for world conquest. Unlike the Chinese who used the best of Western technology, the Japanese used it to create one of the worlds most powerful war machines. For years, while other nations were trying to outlaw war by reducing armaments, the narrator explains, Japan was feverishly and secretly building a modern armyto strike its infamous blow against the civilized world. This supports images of the savage Japanese in contrast with the rest of the world, particularly the west. It also portrays the Japanese as sneaky, as the film continues with describing how the Japanese insidiously invaded and conquered parts of China, province by province, without ever actually declaring war.
41
42

They are that sort of people, enriching the world in which we live. The Battle of China See Section IV 43 Dower makes this parallel in Dower, 49

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The sneakiness of the Japanese comes up again as a theme in Know Your Enemy: Japan, another propaganda film by Capra. The narrator in this film describes all Japanese as living by the samurai code of Bushido, a way of living that not only sanctioned double-dealing and treachery, but looked upon it as an art to be cultivated.44 Like Dowers image of the backstabbing Japanese chimpanzee (See Figure 1), the Japanese are dangerous for their underhanded willingness to defy Western standards of honor. It is also seen as a betrayal, as the Japanese are using technology learned from the west. Capras Know Your Enemy: Japan paints a more detailed picture of the Japanese but it stands out especially in contrast with its sister film, Know Your Enemy: Germany (Also by Capra). Both attempt to give insight into the minds and lifestyles of their enemy abroad to a significant level of detail. However Capras Japanese differ from Capras Germans in that there are Good Germans, but only Japanese who are all photographic prints off the same negative.
45

Portraying the Japanese as a quaint people obsessed with backwards traditions, the narrator at

one point launches into an elaborate description of Shinto and the Japanese Emperor. Explaining that the Japanese views that the Emperor is the descendent of a god, and that all Japanese are divine due to mixing with ancient gods, he ends his description with: and whats more, they believe it, dismissing those beliefs offhandedly as absurd and antiquated. This is even established less formally in the beginning of the film, which plays a montage of noisy and elaborate Shinto rituals (which no doubt would seem strange to American viewers) mixed with images of soldiers slicing reeds with samurai swords (which would seem threatening to the same

44

Bushido, translated as Way of the Warrior actually in theory stressed honor and loyalty among its main tenets, and general martial arts mastery over both of them. 45 This was a general theme in propaganda at the same time. Dower comments in War Without Mercy that in 1943 the magazine Leatherneck, ran a photograph of Japanese corpses on Guadalcanal with an uppercase headline reading GOOD JAPS, and a caption emphasizing that GOOD JAPS are dead Japs. Dower, 79

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audience). The mixing of both suggests a sense of barbarism and savagery still present in everyday Japanese life. Animal descriptions of the Japanese also play a role in both films. Both Know Your Enemy and The Battle of China show Japan as a giant Octopus, stretching its tentacles out to cover all of its neighbors. When Capra chooses to highlight the insane arrogance and the brutality of the Japanese soldier, the narrator explains that defeating this nation is as necessary as shooting down a mad dog in your neighborhood.46 Capras Japanese are usually human in appearance, but they still get portrayed as less than; if not naturally subhuman, they are made so by their culture. Describing one of Japans greatest products as the Japanese soldier, the narrator continues on to explain the reason for this over dramatic strains of Mussorgskys Night on Bald Mountain:
As iron ore is melted in furnaces to remove impurities, so in Japan, humanitarian impurities are burned out of the child. As the steel is shaped by beating and hammering, so is the boy hammered and beaten into the shape of the fanatic samurai.

Reinforced by images of children performing military-style exercises in unison, these images are overlaid with those of actual Japanese soldiers, and the pounding of metal in a forge. The Japanese are a mass, an obedient mass with but a single mind47 and any sense of individuality and humanity has been beaten out of them, assuming they possessed it in the first place.

VI. Post World War II: Aftereffects and Reconciliation through Marlon Brando

46 47

The mad dog image was a common one; refer to the end of Section III of this thesis. Know Your Enemy: Japan Dir. Frank Capra, Nar. Walter Huston. VHS 1945.

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In 1944, the US government commissioned anthropologist Ruth Benedict to produce a study on the Japanese and their behavior. The results of that study, published in Benedicts The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, were critically acclaimed upon release, and had an influence on government policy during the US occupation of Japan.48 In the book, Benedict describes the Japanese as being both the Chrysanthemum and the Sword:
The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.
49

Benedict, like Capra, had never been to Japan. Nor could she speak Japanese. Her analysis in Chrysanthemum was based entirely on interviews with Japanese Americans who had been reared in Japan50 and accounts of social scientists and westerners who had lived in Japan. Benedicts description of the contradictory Japanese reflected the confusion of Americans in reconciling how to interact with Japan after the end of World War II. This can be represented in one cartoon image widely published The Detroit News and The New York Times in August 1945, shortly after Japans surrender. In the cartoon, several
Figure 10

scientists stand around a Japanese, represented like in World War II images as a monkey. One of the scientists holds a report that details the International Problem; What goes on in the Japanese mind? (Figure 10) It should be noted that in this image, the Japanese monkey while
48

Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword - wikipedia 49 Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. (Boston, Mariner Books. 1946), 2-3 50 Benedict, 6

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looking very cross is significantly more subdued than his wartime gorilla counterpart. He also looks substantially more evolved and man-like; almost a monkey-man in appearance. The periodical Leatherneck also shows an evolution of the image of Japan in the cover of its September 1945 issue, a small monkey sitting quietly on the shoulder of a smiling American soldier. (Figure 11) Dower argues this revealed the malleability of wartime stereotypes, as the simian caricature was almost immediately transformed into an irritated, but already domesticated and even charming pet.51 The tempering of aggressive images eventually revived the pre-war images of the Japanese as children. The Japanese were good pupils, good at imitation, good at learning.52 Benedict and other anthropologists blamed their aggressive behavior on childhood traumas and manipulation on the part of their government. With re-education, such as was used to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents in the US, government officials believed that
Figure 11

the Japanese and oriental people in general would be much more receptive to American style democratic ideas than the post-war Germans were perceived to be.53 From this idea, the Japanese began to take on the image of what Lee refers to as a model minority,54 a group open to being effectively colonized with American ideals through willing

51 52

Dower, 186 Dower, 302 53 Dower when describing General MacArthurs reports on the occupation in the Senate in 1951. The German problem, MacArthur is quoted, is a completely and entirely different one from the Japanese problem. The German people are a mature raceThe Japanese, however, despite of their antiquity measured by time, were in a very tuitionary condition. Measured by the standards of modern civilization, they would be like a boy of 12 as compared with our development of 45 years. Dower, 303

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ethnic assimilation while no longer posing a threat to the white race like the Fu Manchu image of the earlier 1900s. The display of a subdued Asian or Asian American served as a parallel to the growing debates concerning racial equality in the United States. Lee quotes a U.S. News article from 1966, to argue that the images of Asians who displayed a willingness to assimilate to a white status quo was deliberately played up and exploited to criticize African American stances and protests of the 1960s:
At a time when it is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent on uplifting Negroes and other minorities, the nations 300,000 Chinese Americans are moving on their own with no help from anyone else.the writer of the U.S. News article described Americas Chinatowns as havens for law and order and made no fewer than six references to low rates of delinquency among Chinese American youth.
55

In other words, images of docile Asian Americans were created partially as a matter of necessity; to serve as ammunition to fight against what the West perceived as a more dangerous racial enemy, the black civil rights movement. The image was supported by the relative political silence of Japanese Americans, who were reluctant to speak out about their internment experiences until the emergence of an Asian American movement of the 1970s.56 Lee argues that the representation of Asian-American communities as self-contained, safe and politically acquiescent became a powerful example of the success of the American creed in resolving the problems of race.57 As with Fu Manchu, Hollywood once again got in on efforts to portray images of the Japanese, especially with the revival of Asian characters in film that were submissive to the influence of the west. One major source of Hollywoods image of post-war Japan comes from

54 55

Lee, 10 Lee, 151 56 Lee, 151 57 Lee, 160

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Joshua Logans Academy award-winning film, Sayonara. The film was produced in 1957, a time when the war was still relatively recent in the minds of most Americans. Sayonara tells the story of a young air force pilot Gruver, played by Marlon Brando who is stationed in occupied Japan after serving in Korea. Although initially betrothed to Eileen, the daughter of an army general, Gruver falls for Hana Ogi, the leader of an all-women dancing group. Initially professing that she hates all Americans, he wins her over and ends up marrying her. Sayonara, as Lee presents it, is a display of Orientalism domesticatedthe Oriental woman was transformed from dangerously transgressive into a symbol of domesticity and a stalwart of a restored postwar patriarchy.58 When Hana Ogi is first introduced to Gruver, she is cold towards him, and stands as an imposing figure; tall compared to the other Japanese women around her and (also unlike the other women) dressed in western clothes. It is only later when she is dressed in Japanese kimono that she tells Gruver she secretly has feelings for him, and becomes truly oriental in her subordination towards him, telling him that although she has never been in love before, she will love Gruver, if that is his desire.59 The combination of submissive innocence and assertive sexuality60 in Hana Ogi, inserts Lee, is the epitome of Orientalist fantasy. However, as Lee also notes Asian men (in Sayonara) remained outside the American family, marginalized invisible and radically other.61 The only main male Japanese role, a kabuki actor named Nakamura, is actually played by the non-Japanese Ricardo Montalban. The fact that

58 59

Lee, 162 Sayonara 60 Sayonara Hana Ogi tells Gruver that another character has told her how gently he kisses, surprising him. The reason for this, says Lee is that In the West, the (erotic) gaze is traditionally appropriated to masculine power. In revealing her sexuality, Hana Ogi is an image as an exotic opposite to a western woman, simultaneously innocent and erotic. Lee, 169 61 Lee, 162

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Montalban is not Japanese allows him to be a safe Japanese character. This is established when he later spurns the advances of Eileen; while Gruver can domesticate the East through his relationship with Hana Ogi, Nakamura cannot be allowed to do the same to the west. Such action would make him a figure of the yellow peril, conquering the west through the domination of a western woman. Gruvers success with Hana Ogi establishes that the Japanese can be dominated by Western society, eventually to be assimilated all together.

VII. The 1970s and 80s: the Return and Death of Superman

During and after the occupation of Japan, Japanese exports were seen as below global standards; cheap and of below normal quality. A 1949 issue of Business Week commented that war and occupation have not changed Japans traditional tendency to dump poor-quality products on world markets, and like several other periodicals would go on to hold similar attitudes for at least a decade.62 However, the late-1960s and early 1970s saw the rise of a different image as Japan began to develop itself as a quality producer of high-tech products; television sets, video tape recorders, and cars. Johnson comments that Americans began to perceive Japanese-made products to be highly reliable, precision made, and well designed:
By the 1970s, many Americans were deliberately buying Japanese-made radios, television sets and automobiles because they believed them to be better than comparable American-made items, and many more Americans were buying Japanese made products without knowing their country of origin because they were sold under American brand names.
63

62 63

Johnson, Sheila K. The Japanese through American eyes (California, Stanford University Press. 1988), 124 Johnson, 130

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As Japanese products gained more sway in American markets, and companies like Sony and Honda became household names, the Japanese corporate entity began to adopt images of being a threat to the American worker and company. Threatened American manufacturers began calling for tariffs and quotas to be placed on the Japanese products, especially the automobile and textile industries. Taxation placed on Japanese goods failed to stem the tide though, as Japanese profits continued to increase throughout the 70s, leading President Reagan to drop the restrictions in 1985.64 When taxation failed to ebb the Japanese threat, Japanese companies quickly became the source of something Americans desperately tried to emulate. One image that demonstrates this is a political cartoon from the Wall Street Journal in the mid-1980s which portrays a board meeting at an American company. The companys CEO stands at the head of the table, dressed in a Japanese kimono65, a samurai sword running
Figure 12

through the obi belt. Today, he states in the caption well be talking about some new approaches. (Figure 12) The Japanese businessman (or salaryman as they were called in Japan) had adopted the image of being modern day samurai. It was this that prompted the popularity of Miyamoto Musashis The Book of Five Rings in the US in the mid-1980s. A 1600 book on battle strategy by one of Japans most famous samurai, Rings enjoyed a brief fever in popularity among business schools in particular, for (as Johnson puts it) it was thought to
64 65

Johnson, 133 Formal Japanese Robe; in this case, used to represent the style of clothing worn by a samurai. (Figure 12)

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contain important Japanese business precepts.66 Japanese businessmen were notoriously famous for their dedication and loyalty to their companies, which was perceived as a strong advantage over their American counterparts due to an unmatched level of organization. This was supported around the same time by Time Magazine when it profiled Asian American schoolchildren for their scholastic achievements. Time cited a Professor William Liu who claimed that Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese students perform better because the Confucian ethic drives people to work, excel, and repay the debt they owe their parents.67 If the Japanese posed a dangerous threat from afar, the insinuation that Asian-Americans would have similar advantages over White Americans struck a little too close to home. The average Asian American became a gook; a term Lee defines as the ubiquitous and invisible enemythe flip side of the model minority.68 Like they had been in World War II, Asian Americans were seen as potential enemy agents, especially in the context of the trade war that famous American executives, like Ford Motor Companys Lee Iaccoca accused Japan of starting in the early 1980s:
Right now were in the midst of another major war with Japan. This time its not a shooting war and I guess we can be thankful for that. The current conflict is a trade war. But because our government refuses to see this war for what it really is, were well on the road to defeat.
69

Iaccocas warning was heeded, but not by government officials. In 1982, in Detroit, Michigan, the war suffered a major casualty; a Chinese American by the name of Vincent Chin. Cornered in a strip club, Chin was labeled as a Jap and the enemy of the American auto industry70, by

66 67

Johnson, 120 Lee, 187 68 Lee, 190 69 Lee, 203 70 Ebens, one of the two defendants is reported to have yelled the following at Chin during the incident: "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work." William Wei. An American Hate Crime: The Murder

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two autoworkers that had been laid off, who then proceeded to beat him to death.71 When put on trial for his death, the judge cited them as good citizens who represented no threat to the community, and levied a fine of $3,780 as punishment.72 Chins murder reflected a common American perception of the Japanese once again becoming dangerous, especially during the Japanese asset price bubble of the late 1980s. Japanese companies, suddenly flush with more capital resources than their competitors73 began to branch out overseas, a move which alarmed some Americans when Japanese companies started buying directly into American businesses. As David Morley describes in his article on Techno-Orientalism, the Japanese investment in major American motion picture companies such as Columbia Pictures and the Walt Disney Corporation in 1989 caused particular concern:
Suddenly there is an anxiety about exposure to and penetration by, Japanese culture. The fear is that Japanese investors are buying into Americas soul. There is a fear that, in contrast to Western openness, Japan is characterized by a culture of self-censorshipWhat is apparent too is the sense that Japanese culture is incompatible with the Hollywood ethosJapan is seen as a consensus and conformist society, the obverse of the individualistic and creative ethos that made Hollywood a world culture.
74

Once again, the Japanese had picked up the mantle of the Yellow Peril. No longer did they only threaten to conquer Western culture by trade, but to also destroy it from within through infiltration. Referring to the Western image of the sneaky Japanese ninja, Morley comments that
of Vincent Chin Hate in the News, 2002/06/14. Tolerance.org http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=552 71 Lee, 203 72 Wei, An American Hate Crime: The Murder of Vincent Chin. - Asian Americans reacted strongly to the outcome of Chins Manslaughter case, as it insinuated that a Caucasian could attack and/or kill an Asian American without impunity. The Justice department retried the case in 1984, and sentenced Ebens, one of Chins killers, to 25 years in prison. This however, was overturned in appeal on a legal technicality. 73 Japanese asset price bubble Wikipedia Due to the government encouraging policies that supported the saving of finances, banks and businesses had an increased amount of funds to invest. This lead to a short period of real estate booms and general economic prosperity within the country. 74 Morley, David and Robins, Kevin. Techno-Orientalism; Japan Panic Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Bounderies. (London, Pontledge 1995), 151

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there is an anxiety about the stealth of Japanese corporations. The Japanese stealers-in are perceived as having a robot-like dedication to achieving world hegemony and to undermining the principles of western modernity.75 Compared to the center of backwards exoticism that represented Japan in the 19th century, Japan now rose above the US in terms of technological superiority, which threatened western images of itself. If it was the West that created modernity, Morley goes on, it was also modernity that created the imaginary space and identity described as westernJapan is calling the Western modernity into question, and is claiming the franchise on the future. And this has provoked a defensive response from the West. 76 Thus Americans took their superiority in what they perceived the Japanese inherently lacked, emotion. A vice-president of Disney in the 1980s commented that Japanese companies invested in American companies because they admire the American spirit of ingenuity almost a wildness or recklessness, a sense of fun something the more conservative cultures arent capable of.77 The Japanese, having become synonymous with high-technology, were now represented by their technology; cold, emotionless, and almost robot like.

VIII. Present Day, Present Time

Carrying the high-tech images of the 80s into the 90s, Japan became mysticized, developing an image as a land of high-tech entertainment,78 something that received support

75 76

Morley, 153 Morley, 153+149. Said has a similar argument in Orientalism saying that European identity depended on being superior in relation to non-European races. In quite a constant way, Orientalism depends on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the upper hand. - Said, 7 77 Morley, 151 78 Morley, 169

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with the rise of the video game and anime79 industries. Morley claims that Within the political unconscious of the West, Japan has come to exist as the figure of empty and dehumanized technological power. It represents the represents the alienated and dystopian images of capitalist progress. This provokes both resentment and envy.80 He also suggests that while the Japanese may be seen as more technologically superior, they still retain their image as an alien other. This is particularly identified in images of Japanese children, who were seen as dangerously antisocial and or warped by this culture. Becoming Otaku (loosely translated as geeky) was seen as a natural evolution of Japanese children under what was perceived as constant exposure to electronic influences like video games and anime. Not only were American industries still under threat from the Samurai salaryman, American children were at risk of brainwashing through Japanese products, corrupting the US from within. Images of this are particularly demonstrated in Chinpokomon, an episode of the television show South Park which satires American images of the Japanese through the global Pokmon fad of the mid-1990s. In the episode, the four main characters are quickly swept up in Chinpokomon, a new popular TV show from Japan which rapidly mutates into a series of new products. American companies try and fail to compete by developing imitation products of less quality, and parents of South Park continue to buy the Japanese products despite confessing that they dont understand the phenomenon. In truth, the Japanese company behind Chinpokomon is using it as a tool to attempt to brainwash the children into speaking nothing but Japanese and form an army to re-bomb Pearl Harbor. When American adults confront them on their suspicious actions, they change the subject by displaying inferiority (specifically referring to a difference in

79 80

Japanese Animation; often referred to by the Japanese word, even inside the US. Morley, 170

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genitalia size) and only speak about their true intentions to each other in Japanese, saying something completely different in English. While the South Park episode is intended as parody, it still reflects at least four images of the Japanese; the Japanese are powerful commercially (the economic success of Chinpokomon), inscrutable (parents dont understand Chinpokomon), sneaky (lying and misdirecting the argument when confronted by Americans), and a danger of corrupting American children. All of these can be seen as reflections on American response to the Pokmon craze of the 1990s. The South Park Ministers claim that These Japanese are trying to change our children somehow, draws parallels to fears of obsession and violence displayed in children who played with Pokmon. In Pikachus Global Adventure, Christine Yano analyzes a report of a parent who complains about losing her child completely to the fad. This mother, like other parents, states Yano, paints Pokmon as an obsession that has taken over childrens lives and consumed their thoughts. Pokmon fans are depicted here as children lost to their parents, threatening family values.81 Of particular threat are the Japanese elements presented by Pokmon, what Yano says critics identify as mysticism, occultism, martial arts, demonic possession82, even multiculturalism.83 The long term Japanese influence on Americas youth through Pokmon was epitomized through the threatening Otaku image it threatened to propagate. As Yano details, this was demonstrated through an American depiction of Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokmon:
81 82

Tobin, Joseph. Ed. Pikachus Global Adventure (Durham, Duke University Press 2004), 125 Tobin, 131 While some of these (accusations of Pokmon showing support for occultism and paganism, for example) came from complaints of Christian organizations in the US, there were also more general wide concerns about violent incidents connected with Pokmon products, especially those committed by children. Yano explains that In the fall of 1999, reports of Pokmon related crime and violence had proliferated, resulting in schools banning Pokmon cards on the grounds that they incited fights (Tobin, 121) An (admittedly extreme) parallel can be taken of the Japanese ordering American children to bomb Pearl Harbor in Chinpokomon. 83 Many saw Pokmon as spreading Japanese cultural values. In addition to the Japanese otaku image, Yano explains that several right wing publications viewed as a pagan country, mired in occultism, mysticism, and martial arts. Tobin, 130

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Tajiri is a misfit bodily, behaviorally, socially. Now 34, Tajiri is an unimposing man, his face composed of sharp angles. His hands and lips tremble as he talks in a soft, shy voice.The article goes on to discuss some characteristics of Otaku, a list designed to scare anxious parents who will recognize some of the phrases could be used to describe their own Pokmon obsessed childrenThe implication of this article is that Pokmon, a product of an otaku misfit, embeds within it the core practices of otakuism: antisocial behavior centering upon consumption. Pokmon, therefore, may lead children into an otaku world, one considered strange even in Japan.
84

A threat to American children is another reflection of the Japanese as the Yellow Peril; destroying American values in children by propagating inscrutable Japanese ones. In some ways it drew back to fears of intermarriage in the early 1900s, corrupting the purity of American society and values through vulnerable young Americans.85 Views of traditional Japanese culture seem to have reverted to several classic images as well. Almost 100 years after Okakura professed his fears of western images of Japan as those of impotent fascism or else abject voluptuousness, the country also once again picked up that mantle through exoticism of its ancient culture. One display of this is the Hollywood film, Memoirs of a Geisha which gathered over $162 million dollars in revenue and several academy awards after its release in 2005.86 The film, based on a film by an American author, tells of a Geishas life before, during and after World War II, as well as a forbidden love she carries for a businessman throughout her life. Although the film was completely set in Japan, many scenes were shot on soundstages in California, as the producers decided that contemporary Japan looked much too modern.87 The main actors in the film were also all Chinese actresses, who spoke all of their lines in English. This paints two pictures. The first is that Japan has ruined itself through
84 85

Tobin, 131 See Section II of this thesis. 86 Memoirs of a Geisha - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_a_Geisha_%28film%29 87 Wikipedia.org

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modernity, so much so that its no longer a place that can represent its own culture. The other is that American audiences would relate better to Chinese actors speaking English over Japanese ones speaking Japanese. As Yumiko Murakami writes in her article, Hollywoods Slanted View, the point is not only about the location and actors playing the part but rather the image of the Geisha itself. In a statement that can serve as a reflection of Sayonara just as much as Geisha, The geisha in white face has long represented the exotic Japanese femaleExotic, extreme, eccentric and different are the characteristics Hollywood presumes of its Asian characters. Japanese are seldom if ever allowed to be ordinary people on screen.88 Geisha establishes this within several minutes, as the main character, Sayuri narrates over foggy landscape shots that a story like hers should never be told as her world is as forbidden as it is fragile. Without its mysteries, it cannot survive. Sayuri is granting the audience in to a world thats inherently full of secrets, because of its exoticness, almost as if it exists in a different dimension from the west entirely. Revealing those secrets in this film is a show of submission to Western superiority, exposed without reservation despite their supposed fragility. Several other images of western superiority pop up throughout the film. As a Geisha in the film, Sayuri is forced into auctioning off her virginity through an elaborate dance, intended to find a sponsor for her lifestyle. Shes also told by the head of the okiya (geisha house) that a Geisha is not free to love, evoking sympathy for the character in western audiences. If the Japanese are cold, emotionless robots, commercializing sex through what might be labeled as a barbaric ritual, Sayuri has become western in her desires for love and romance. This is further supported when Sayuri meets a former fellow geisha, Pumpkin who has fully become
88

Murakami, Yumiko. Hollywoods Slanted View. Japan Quarterly 46.3., 54

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westernized in the wake of the Second World War. Pumpkin reflects the image of the model minority; clothed in western dress, and sprinkling English colloquialisms into her speech, she claims to be much happier having assimilated compared to her life as a geisha, drawing parallels to images of the model minority.

IX. Conclusion

Okakura asked When will the West understand, or try to understand, the East?89 Memoirs, like Sayonara, Know Your Enemy and many other movies before it are the Western attempts to do just that. Whether or not that understanding meshes with Japanese or Asian images of themselves throughout history is doubtful. As Said points out, The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the west. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.90 In Saids view, a need to define the orient as the orient has nothing to do with a specific geographical location. Images of the Japanese as monkeys, mad dogs, or geisha living on the perfume of the lotus91 spring from a need for the Orient to exist so that the west can define itself through contrast:
Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay has called the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying us Europeans against all those non-Europeansthe idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of European ideas abut the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardnessIn a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the
89 90

Okakura, 3 Said, 5 91 Okakura, 3

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westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the upper hand.
92

By creating Japan as an Oriental other, American people and culture were superior. Perry and Hearns Japanese were childlike. Hollywoods Fu Manchu was conquered by the strength of the West. Japanese soldiers were subhuman and bestial. Even when Japan challenged the modernity of the West, they were robots, lacking American emotion and creativity. The United States has and continues to dehumanize Japan as a mode of interacting with the country and establishing self-identity as its superior through the images it creates. However, it is up to the individual to define the images they themselves hold and determine whether or not they apply in any given circumstance.

92

Said, 7

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Image Credit
(In order of appearance)
Figure 1 (11) Low, David. East or West. July 1941, The Standard. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 182 Figure 2 (11) Geisel, Theodore. Master! What do I do when they wont come across? Dec. 1941 PM. Dr. Seuss goes to War by Richard Minear. New York, The New Press, 1999. 143 Figure 3 (12) Orr, Carey. The Heroic Role Jan. 1942, The Chicago Tribune. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 188 Figure 4 (13) Caption: How Tough Are the Japanese? They are not tougher than other soldiers, says a veteran observer, but brutality is part of their fighting equipment. Source: How Tough Are the Japanese? 1943 London Daily. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 187 Figure 5 (14) Caption: Always pecking at new things are the Bandar-log. This time if I have any eyesight, they have pecked down trouble for themselves The Jungle Book Source: The Monkey Folk Jan. 1942 Punch. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 183 Figure 6 (14) Knock Him off that Springboard 1943, Philadelphia Inquirer. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 184 Figure 7 (15) Caption: Louseous Japanicas The first serious outbreak of this lice epidemic was officially noted on December 7, 1941, at Honolulu, T.H. To the Marine Corps, especially trained in combating this type of pestilence, was assigned the gigantic task of extermination. Extensive experiments on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan have shown that this louse inhabits coral stolls in the South Pacific, particularly pill boxes, palm trees, caves, swamps and jungles. Flame throwers, mortars, grenades, and bayonets have proven to be an effective remedy. But before a complete cure may be effected the origin of the plague, the breeding grounds around the Tokyo area, must be completely annihilated. Source: Louseous Japanicas March 1945 Leatherneck. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 185 Figure 8 (15) Geisel, Theodore. Maybe only alley cats, but Jeepers! A hell of a lot of em Dec. 1941 PM. Dr. Seuss goes to War by Richard Minear. New York, The New Press, 1999. 145 Figure 9 (16) Let the punishment fit the crime April 1943, The New York Times. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 185 Figure 10 (21) Another Puzzler for World Scholars Aug. 1945, Detroit News. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 190 Figure 11 (22) Cover Sept. 1945, Leatherneck. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John Dower. New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. 186 Figure 12 (26) Caption: Today well be talking about some new approaches. Source: Untitled Circa mid1980s, The Wall Street Journal. The Japanese Through American Eyes by Sheila K. Johnson. California, Stanford University Press. 1988. 138

Works Cited Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Boston, Mariner Books. 1946. Dower, John W. War Without Mercy. New York, Pantheon Books. 1986 Fukuzawa, Yukichi Goodbye Asia Japan: A Document History Ed. David J. Lu. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997 Vol. II 351-352 Hearn, Lafcadio. Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan. London, Jonathan Cape Publishing. 1927 Iriye, Akira. Mutual Images: Essays in American Japanese Relations. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. 1975 Johnson, Sheila K. The Japanese through American eyes. California, Stanford University Press. 1988 Lee, Robert G. Orientals; Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia, Temple University Press. 1999. Loti, Pierre. Madame Chrysantheme. Champaign, Book Jungle. 2007. Minear, Richard H. Dr. Seuss goes to war New York, The New Press. 1999 Morley, David and Robins, Kevin. Techno-Orientalism; Japan Panic Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Bounderies. London, Pontledge 1995. 147 - 173. Murakami, Yumiko. Hollywoods Slanted View. Japan Quarterly 46.3. 54-63. Okakura, Kakuzo, Bleiler, Everett F. Auth. and Ed. The Book of Tea. New York, Dover Publications, Inc. 1964 Perry, Matthew C., Pineau, Roger, Auth. and Ed. The Personal Journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. Washington, Smithsonian Institute Press. 1968.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books. 1979 Tobin, Joseph. Ed. Pikachus Global Adventure. Durham, Duke University Press 2004 Uchimura, Kanzo. The Complete Works of Kanzo Uchimura Vol. I: How I Became a Christian. Tokyo, Kyobunkwan. 1971 Wei, William. An American Hate Crime: The Murder of Vincent Chin Hate in the News, 2002/06/14. Tolerance.org http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=552

Video Sources Know Your Enemy: Japan Dir. Frank Capra, Nar. Walter Huston. VHS 1945. Why We Fight: The Battle For China Dir. Frank Capra. Screenplay by Anatole Litvak. New York: Good Times Home Video Corp. DVD Video. 2000 Chinpokomon South Park: The Complete Third Season, Dir. Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Comedy Central 2003 Memoirs of a Geisha. Dir. Rob Marshall. Perf. Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe. Colombia Picture Corporation, 2005.

Chapter II: Of Aliens and Alienation

The second chapter of my Division III is a personal essay analyzing my pre-expectations and reactions towards studying abroad in Japan for five months. Originally, it was intended to be something much different. My original concept was to detail my experiences as both and individually a student and a foreigner within the country through an internet blog. The blog was titled outside insider, creating an image of myself as a foreigner revealing Japan from the insideout. Yet something unexpected happened. I had a very difficult time updating the blog and it failed miserably as the remarkable account of my stay that I had hoped it to be. At the time, I had no idea why, although it has been suggested to me that I was perhaps too close to my material at the time to step back and identify the problem. What confused me further was when, upon my return to the US in February, my committee asked me to write the historical paper aspect of my Division III first, instead of immediately writing a reflection paper. Nevertheless, I launched right into the historical essay. One of the major themes I discussed in that paper came from Edward Saids take on Orientalism in his book by the same name. Said looks at the study of the Orient, and among other things suggests that the West needs to define the Non-West as the Orient not just to define it, but to define the wests identity in contrast, the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures. (Orientalism 7) Said describes it as a positional relationship, one which develops the westerner as being in a position of power over the primitive Orient. It was here that I began to recognize some of the importance of doing the historical research first, as I noticed some parallels to my own experiences. I had considered myself almost authoritative to my peers on defining Japanese culture and society before leaving for Japan. Even

using the name Outside Insider suggested that I saw a positional relationship between me and Japan. But I dont think I ever had as clear an example of the importance of this research until today. One afternoon recently, I was on a ten minute walk from my mod to the Atkins farmers market to pick up a carton of eggs. On the way back, I was scrolling through the music on my iPod looking for walking music, and settled on a theme song soundtrack for The Slayers, a Japanese animation. However, instead of starting from the beginning of the album, I went down to another track, which uniquely (although seemingly inexplicably) had a strange male voice singing a poorly translated English version of a previous track. I was in the mood to listen to something that would make me laugh.

And then, all of a sudden, I stopped. This was my Orientalist attitude!

In the paper, I comment how the wacky Japan held an appeal to me, based on media like anime and YouTube. The humor I found in the situation I just described was in the poor usage of English, establishing myself in a position above the singer due to my status as a native speaker. While there was no maliciousness involved in my finding it funny, there definitely was an element of arrogance to the humor, especially with the potential to create an expectation that this was something that could usually be expected when a Japanese person spoke English. Yet, poor usage of English is not something thats limited solely to Japanese, and it would be a mistake to define it as Orientalism, specifically against the Japanese when in fact it could be applied to any non-native speaker, including occidental ones. This was another issue that I struggled with. How much of my positive and negative experiences were due to being in

Japan, and how many were due to simply being a foreigner in another country? I may never know the answer to that question, but it was definitely not something which would have come up in a blog while I was in Japan. Again, I was too close to the material to be able to separate the ideas of Japan AND being in a foreign country. Writing this personal essay was, if anything, much more emotionally draining than it would have been to write it before everything else. Yet, without having the knowledge of how to look so critically, I believe that it would have been nearly as detailed an exploration of my experiences and how I felt about them. While it doesnt immediately ameliorate all my confusion Ive found myself left with in defining my future with Japan, I believe that writing this paper will have been very helpful in defining and reconciling some of my feelings in the long run.

Samuel A. Ross

Of Aliens and Alienation

A personal essay By Sam Ross Hampshire College

On September 14th, 2007, I got on a plane bound for Tokyo, Japan. I was confident. This was my Div. III, to go and sum up a couple years of study, write about the great time I was having, and (hopefully) in the process, maybe get a little professional credit for my observations. What I argued on applications for programs and scholarships seemed reasonable enough; I had never spent any length of time in a non-US country and traveling to Japan seemed to be the next step after studying the culture and language for 2 years. Without intent to minimize the work of (likely) several hundred anthropologists who have written extensively about Japan without visiting the country, the train of logic that I followed was that one could learn much more about Japanese culture by living it, instead of obsessing over it. And obsess I had. For most of my college career, I had made a practice of absorbing anything that was even remotely connected to Japan. I took Japanese Language and Culture classes. I watched Japanese anime and read Japanese comic books. I started an Asian film club to learn more about good Japanese movies. I went to other schools in the Amherst area constantly for Japanese cultural awareness events. I even joined Mixi, a Japanese social networking site to meet more Japanese people. And as I obsessed, I developed expectations. In being a non-western culture, Japan seemed exotic and exciting. Studying Japan was also a source of power; I had a leg up over other people when they asked me what I knew about the inscrutable Japanese. The idea that I would learn to be conversational in the language while studying abroad was also an aspect of this; I would be able to speak with Japanese people when others could not. The feeling of authority was a major aspect. For example, I criticized any description of the Japanese as mysterious or inscrutable. Japanese society was just different, I asserted, with the
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further suggestion that I was authoritative on how it was different, thanks to four years of interest and study of the country and its people. In retrospect, while I pushed the idea of respecting a different Japan, the position did not always match up with some of my own attitudes and actions. I had come to depend on Japan as a source of entertainment through its wackiness; I routinely searched for new music videos or animated TV shows from the country that were completely strange or off-the-wall, shaking my head while saying Oh, Japan when I found one. Not only were these videos used as ice breakers at the Asian film screenings I ran, they also served as a topic of discussion with friends. Wed laugh about the video, again attributing its strangeness to something that could only be created by the Japanese. Like the people described in many of the books I had read about Japanese culture, the limited number of Japanese people I had met were polite and were nothing but encouraging, telling me that my Japanese was very good, or that I knew a lot about Japanese culture or politics. The trip to Japan itself took on the form of an adventure. Although I never formally made an itinerary of places to see, the only two entries on my mental list were to visit a Maid Caf (restaurants where all the servers dress up as French Maids) and a Capsule Hotel (a low-price hotel where one sleeps in a small pill shaped capsule instead of a bedroom); two places which had always stood out to me for their wackiness. Friends who had been to Japan told me that as an American, I would be popular among Japanese people, if nothing else than for someone to practice their English with. Japanese friends of mine who lived in Tokyo were very impressed when I told them Id be studying at Sophia University, telling me that it was a very famous school in Japan. This
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backed up what I had heard of it when applying through UMass; the sixth best school in Tokyo, and the most international. A student from Sophia even contacted me on Mixi, the social network service I had joined and suggested that we hang out when I came to Japan. So from January to August, throughout all the work of the entire process, one idea kept me working. Japan was going to be great. And yet, when my fourteen hour plane flight finally landed in Tokyos Narita Airport, I already suspected something was wrong. As we were waiting to get off the plane, I turned to the businessman behind me, a person who had kept me company throughout the flight, and told him that I couldnt believe we had landed in Japan, that physically being in the country was like a dream come true. Only, really, it wasnt. I said it because I felt it should have been, although it actually seemed remarkably anticlimactic. Although to be fair, that could have been due to the fourteen hours on a plane, and even longer without sleep. Yet, as the weeks passed and I wasnt constantly having as great a time as I had hoped for, I realized that part of my disappointment was coming from disillusionment. When my expectations were shot, it made me reexamine my reasons for traveling to Japan, and what I intended to do with this experience, something I still look at today. One of the chief factors that got me to that point was the relationship with my host family. The Miyashitas, a middle-aged husband and wife were very tolerant and welcoming. I was the 10th student they had hosted and as such, had a lot of patience with me. Kiyoko, my host mother asked me on the first day I arrived what I liked to eat so that she could accommodate for it. She grilled me on my inability to eat pork; she had never

met an American who hadnt before and told me, in a semi-lighthearted fashion that it would be a challenge. A lot of Japanese foods used pork, she told me. What I didnt realize at the time I arrived was that food was going to be a major source of contention between me and my host mother, which in turn laid the framework for my first major disappointment. I had chosen to stay with a host family because I thought it would be a great way to get introduced to various aspects of Japanese culture naturally, and to establish some stability for myself in a strange country. At least with a host family, I would have people to fall back on if I had problems. Kiyoko, on the other hand, told me on several occasions that from her perspective, Sophia University was paying her to feed me. As she was a housewife, the kitchen was her domain, and I wasnt allowed in it, much less to get food for myself. I also inadvertently had apparently hit a rough nerve one evening. I was sitting at the table eating a plate of beef and vegetables as she watched television. I had been somewhat stressed out recently and it had affected my eating, as usual. When I put down my chopsticks while pieces of beef still remained on the plate, she gave me a concerned look. I didnt want to say anything, she began, but are you okay? Can you eat the food I make? Yes, I responded, Your food is great. Ive just been feeling a little stressed out recently. You have stress, I understand. But you dont eat very much and I am worried. The other students eat more than you. Otousan and I are worried that maybe my food is not okay, she said, referring to my host father. I tried to reassure her that it was not an issue with her food or Japanese food, but she remained stuck on the fact that I didnt always clean my plate; a huge social faux pas in Japan, as its wasteful and suggests that the diner did not enjoy the food. Breakfast also came up as an issue, as I had recently been getting tired of being served the same meal of
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eggs and toast every morning, and had not been finishing it. When I asked you what you like to eat for breakfast, you said eggs and toast, so I made eggs and toast. But I think really you dont like them, she said. It was almost if I had breached some kind of trust with her. From that day on, until I left, they bought me pastries and yogurts for breakfast; tuna fish or egg salad sandwiches if I came back for dinner, because she was convinced I didnt like Japanese food, and that she didnt know what to make for me. My host father, who would invite me to drink with him when hed come home at night stopped asking. And while polite, both were cold and distant towards me until my stay ended. Any tolerance had disappeared and nothing I said in apology or explanation ever served to bring it back. Suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to spend as much time out of the house as possible, Tokyo became my base. Yet here again, I found my experience lacking. Sophia had offered little in the way of an orientation for new students, and the Japanese student that had been sent to pick me up at the airport disappeared soon after directing me to the school, leaving me without any social connections. Tokyo was not exciting, but isolating; silent hoards of people brushing past each other, making an effort to avoid as much contact and conversation as possible. Hundreds gather at certain trains and subway platforms, always lined up orderly in front of the track and entering en masse, squeezing themselves in if necessary. Save for when friends or coworkers get on the same train (and even then, the conversation is hushed) people find their seats or places to stand quietly, starting to read, sleep, listen to music or put on makeup. Talking is limited save for the occasional sumimasen (excuse me) when one must nudge through a sea of bodies to get out at their stop. Posters put up at most train stations show cartoons of rude people
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talking on cell phones, taking up more than one seat, or taking one of the priority seats designated for elderly, pregnant, injured or handicapped individuals. Cell phone use is a big one. People will stare at you if you forgot to silence it, and it rings. The stares turn into annoyed glares if you answer it. The way people behaved towards me, on the other hand, was exacerbated by the fact that I was a foreigner. While Tokyo is not as homogeneous in population as a lot of research had led me to believe, its still mostly Japanese people and foreigners are seen as anything but, a fact which was exceedingly evident to me at some times. For example, as mentioned before, the trains in Tokyo will often become crowded, especially in the morning. The area of Tokyo that my host parents lived in was the first stop on the first train I took to get to classes in the morning but would attain a stiflingly number of bodies per square foot as it moved down the line. This number increases or decreases depending on date and time, but at 8AM in the morning, youre lucky to even be able to hold onto something. It becomes more about fighting for personal space and avoiding inadvertently violating someone elses, as that involves another round of sumimasen. The first time I was on an exceedingly crowded train though, this wasnt a problem for me, at least initially. In fact, people were openly resisting standing close to me in particular and reluctantly held back as much as they could as the train filled up. Eventually that became impossible, but I still had a larger personal bubble than a lot of other commuters for a while that morning. When I related this story sitting down on another crowded train with a Japanese friend, she reacted to my story in disbelief, challenging me to prove it. In response, I pointed to how her legs were pinned against the seat, while the people standing in front of me had deliberately given me some leg room.
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While its possible that I was reading too much into that event, I did notice specific instances where I was more noticeably treated differently from the Japanese around me. One time towards the end of my stay, I was wandering around several department stores in Shibuya with Mayumi, a friend of mine from several years before. Shibuya was the area of Tokyo that reminded me most of New York. Littered with multilevel department and brand stores, bars, restaurants and even a red-light area (all covered with neon and giant televisions), it seems to cater to every age and subgroup (although at different times of the day). Today, I was here to buy a thank you present for my host family, and as the department stores have everything from clothes, to wines and fancy ceramics, I figured that was a good place to start. We moved from section to section, but everything seemed too expensive, or too elaborate. I finally settled on a pretty glass with a large tear shaped green section to give to my host father and a pretty teacup with a blueberry design on the inside for my host mother. Ready to pay, we walked up to a service counter and presented both to the store person. She sat us both down at a table and I asked her to wrap both as they were meant as presents. Coming back with a series of sample colors for wrapping, she turned to Mayumi and asked her in Japanese which one I would like, blue (aoi), green (midori) or pink (pink-u). I said something to the effect of aoi wa ii to omoimasu (I think blue is best), which she marked down, and then turned again to Mayumi and asked her what color ribbon I wanted. As she wrapped, she made small talk with Mayumi, asking questions about me and what I was doing in Japan, and then commenting to her when I inserted answers in Japanese. Even when she brought the bill (which had the total listed in English numerals), she read out the total to Mayumi in Japanese and waited, seemingly expecting her to translate for me.
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The popularity I had expected for being an English speaking foreigner also had not worked out the way I had hoped. Foreigners were not extremely rare in Tokyo, and the fact that I was one generally seemed to draw little attention from the Japanese around me. The one exception was at Sophias school festival, when a random man approached me, and asked me in heavily-accented English if I knew where the bathrooms were. Hai (yes), I said, telling him they were inside a certain building in Japanese. I had been using Japanese as much as I could, and although there were a few times when the friend from Germany I was with that day had to step in, I felt somewhat proud of myself. What we both didnt notice until after we finished was how wide his eyes had become while we had been speaking. Your Japanese is so good! Are you American? His excitement doubled when I told him I was. Come here! Can I show you something? He had taken out a pad of paper as we had been talking to him, and flipped through it until he found the page he wanted. Do you know what this is? On the page were a set of (what I presumed to be) all 50 postal abbreviations for states in the US. He pointed to the first one, TX. Whats this? Texas, I responded. He moved his finger, Connecticut? Again the finger moved. Missouri? No, Mississippi, he corrected. This went on until we got through the list. My friend had wandered off, escaping when she had the chance, but I was stuck until I found a way to politely excuse myself as he kept following me if I tried to leave. When we finished the states, he turned the page. This time, there were sentences. My sister works as a lawyer in Texas. She is an attorney at law. I do not have a job. I live with my father in Tokyo. I like the Dallas Cowboys. At this point he showed me that he was wearing a Cowboys jersey underneath his coat, and asked me if I liked them too. I was trying to figure out how to
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work being a Patriots fan into an exit line when my cell phone began to ring. Do you need some help getting out of there? asked the voice of the friend who had left on the other end. Yeah, thanks. I said. I have to go meet my friend, I said, turning to the man waiting patiently for my attention. But it was it was nice talking to you. Okay, goodbye! he said, fading back into the crowd. Almost immediately, he began talking to someone else, leading me to wonder how anxious he actually was to find a bathroom. My anonymous English student looking for some practice aside, Tokyo also did not seem very exotic. Most signs, from traffic destination distances to those at train stations, contain enough English to get by. You can even ask for an English station and route map. Many restaurants have English or picture menus, and if not, therere always plenty of American staples like McDonalds, KFC, and TGI Fridays (although the cheapest hamburger at the latter costs the decidedly un-American price of around $28). One time, a McDonalds employee insisted on pointing at the pictures of the different foods and confirming everything I was ordering. Even the coddling seems divisive on some level though, and it made me wonder how non-English speaking foreigners would feel in comparison. Every Japanese culture book I had ever read talked lengths about uchi and soto (in and out groups), a theory was originally raised by Japanese anthropologist Chie Nakane to describe the basis of Japanese societal interactions. The core of this philosophy suggests that, in the Japanese mindset, the rest of the world is Japans out-group; making Japanese people singularly different from all foreigners. Whether or not this is actually something that dominated Japanese subconscious was something I had argued in papers in the past. In practice, I felt like I was treated differently from someone who looked
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Japanese in Japan, but the question was, was this due to a general mindset or just incidents with particular people? And on what level did this experience reflect something uniquely Japanese over attitudes towards foreigners. I also questioned what impression relaying my experiences would portray to the readers of my blog. Even if I somehow formed a distinction between my experiences as a foreigner and my experiences as a foreigner in Japan, would my audience do the same? As I came to realize during my time in Japan, people were using my experience as the basis for their knowledge of Japan and the Japanese. Looking for topics for blog entries, I once asked friends and relatives to send me their questions about Japan. I received dozens. My blog was receiving roughly 50 visitors a day and very few entries went by without questions or comments by some of those. A prospective Hampshire student contacted me through instant messenger one night to talk about Japan. Random web pages were linking to a video of a Japanese convention I put on YouTube. Things I was producing were specifically having influence on how people developed their own images of Japan. This was vaguely exciting. It was also somewhat disconcerting. Not only did it seem inappropriate to force an image on other people based on personal experiences, but I also thought it was inappropriate based on my inability to identify what specifically was causing the problems I was having. As I said in a blog entry in October entitled Dissonance, I didnt like Japan. But at the same time, I love it. I was conflicted. Day to day experiences might be enjoyable, but overall, I was having a negative experience. I didnt want to misrepresent Japan through the images I created. I was also unable to distinguish whether or not I was using the differences between my pre-expectation and reality of living in the country as a scapegoat for the problems I was having, further
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making me question what images I would be spreading. So as a result, I stopped blogging, figuring I would pick it up again when I felt more established in the country and my own opinions. If I had waited for that to happen though, I probably never would have blogged again in Japan. As it was, several months passed in between Dissonance and the next significant one in January. Unfortunately, even by the point that I wrote this next entry, I had failed to ameliorate my confusion in relation to the issue. Some things, like my social life had eventually changed for the better. For example, in my third month in Japan, I joined a club at Sophia, something which led to many positive experiences, and helped me fight feelings of isolation. On the other hand, attending Sophia also seemed to create as many problems as it solved. Sophia had taken a lot of stock in labeling itself as one of Tokyos most international schools in their study abroad application materials. As I would eventually discover, this was actually used more as an argument for the amount of foreign programs they made available to their Japanese students. Had I come two years before, I might have been even more offended by this claim, as international students were then regulated to a completely separate campus (now defunct) from the regular Japanese students. Worse yet, few if any departments had any English speaking staff. While this proved to make some things more complicated, such as when dealing with the Overseas Liaison, and IT departments, it served made other things much more difficult. Two weeks before classes ended at the end of January, I came down with my first case of the flu ever. I was bedridden with a constant fever of 100 to 102 degrees Fahrenheit for three days, made worse when I had to come in to teach English on one of
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those nights. During the 20 minute trek to the school, I was in such bad shape that I felt on the verge of passing out. Japanese medicine had proved to be disgusting and inefficient; a small packet of powder to be swallowed with water which would only last for about three hours. So I was still in bad shape when I came in for the last two days of classes that week. A friend of mine who I met accidently while wandering tired and dizzily out of a computer lab told me that I was looking very pale and urged me to go to the clinic on campus. I walked over, gradually feeling more concerned. My dizziness was getting worse, my throat was very dry, and drinking water didnt relieve either like it usually had. I stumbled into the office. The nurse handed me a form to fill out in English and told me in Japanese to tell them when I was finished. As I found out though, the English form was just for show. When I finished with the form, the same nurse came out and compared the boxes I had checked of my symptoms to the Japanese translations on her sheet. There, however, had not been a box for I had the flu this week, or I had a fever, but I think its over. So I tried explaining in Japanese. Konshuu, moshi influenza ga arimashita kedo, kyou mouichidou genki ni natta to omoimasu (This week maybe I had the flu, but I think Ive gotten better again today) I started. Demo ima chotto netsu ga aru ka na (But now, I wonder if I have a fever) Here I began to look up the word for dizzy in my Japanese electronic dictionary, something which had become an everyday accessory. Ima kono kanji ga arimasu (Now, I have this feeling) I said pointing at the dictionary. Mata, noda ga (Also, my throat is) I paused, trying to figure out the word for dry. I settled on thirsty and told them that I was still thirsty even when I drank.

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The nurses talked amongst themselves for a while and told me in Japanese that maybe I was dehydrated and needed rest (stopping to find the English word for the Japanese equivalent of dehydrated, since I didnt understand) They told me to lie down at the clinic and sip an electrolyte drink for a while, but told me I should probably see an English speaking doctor just in case. I agreed, and they found a website with directions to an English speaking clinic about a 30 minute walk from the school. Feeling much revitalized after the rest, I thanked them profusely, and then made my way in the 30-35 degree January weather to the clinic. It turned out that no one there actually spoke English either. For all their lack of tolerance, my host parents at least tried to take care of me, buying me medicine and juice, and scolding me for wanting to check my email in the unheated section of the house that served as the only internet connection. The fact that my health was not a priority to the school that had set up the program was appallingly surprising. Where would I have been had I been living on my own in the dormitory, or unable to explain my condition in Japanese (as members of the schools beginner Japanese class would no doubt have had difficulty with)? A Japanese friend would help, but that wasnt a guarantee to international students either. Ignoring my guide to Sophia who had disappeared during my orientation, it was hard not to be offended by the advertising when a lack of an orientation to events and clubs on campus left my social life extremely lacking during the first few weeks of classes. Not that I saw other students doing much better. Everywhere I looked, it was foreign students talking to foreign students and Japanese students talking to Japanese students. As the program I was on was through another university, I didnt even know any of the other foreign students. And the
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one student I had met on Mixi the summer before coming had suddenly become very busy. This was a far cry from the popular social life and support I had been expecting when I came to one of the most famous schools in Tokyo. I had an image of Sophia as a liberal school asserting change to make Japan more international, in part by encouraging cross-cultural communication. What I found was a school enforcing the status quo while a small minority of students themselves made up the difference. It was somewhat ironic that one of my goals, to meet more Japanese people, was being frustrated by the fact that the school had not encouraged any outlet to accomplish that. I had various experiences in Japan, but because of the personal nature, using them as a source for the original concept of my Division III seemed inappropriate. I was to look at Japan through the eyes of a student and a foreigner, as if those were something that could be objectified and standardized. I had taken my research on Japan at face value. What was to stop someone else from doing the same with what I was posting and then thinking I was full of it when their experience was different? Positive or negative, I didnt want to spread images of Japan that I wasnt sure if I ascribed to. But then, in retrospect while writing this paper, Ive come to realize that perhaps I was doing that already. I had expectations of Japan, and my disappointment may not only have come from them being disappointed with Japan but from my attempts to associate all of my disappointment with my geographical location. Sure, Japan might not have turned out to be as wacky or supportive as I had hoped it to be, but to stop there would be to skim the surface of my reaction to my experiences. A pathetic social life, an incompatible host family and experiencing poor treatment for being a foreigner cannot
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solely be ascribed to any one country. To place the blame primarily on Japan would probably set me up to be disappointed if I visit another foreign country in the future. My chief mistake was not necessarily in having pre-formed images of the country, but in expecting that my studies and the expertise I had gained through them would allow me to conquer all my disadvantages as a foreigner. Maybe it was through my own naivet of traveling to another country for the first time that I attached the experience to what I perceived as national or cultural failings of Japan, rather than just bad experiences that could happen to anyone, anywhere. I never got to go to a maid caf, or a capsule hotel. I didnt function well with my host family or host university, and I didnt have a lot of the experiences I expected to have before I went to Japan. My disappointment was not inherent to being in Japan, but rather in response to the way events unfolded. Maybe once Ive come to terms with that, Ill be able to come to a conclusion about where I want my experiences and studies to take me in the future. Until then, Im still working out what to do next, and it may take a while.

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Chapter III: Tokyo ni Youkoso!

Like the rest of my Division III, this guidebook deals with images of Japan, but in a slightly different way compared to the other chapters. Similar to parts of the personal essay, I am establishing images of Japan for the reader. Unlike the personal essay though, Im not personally reflecting on those images or why I chose to present certain pictures over others. It is up for the reader to recognize the personal perspective of this guidebook and judge it with, as the saying goes, a grain of salt. My experience in Japan was unique, so while I hope to advise future students who may choose to study at Sophia, they may find their experience to be completely different than the image I created for them. Even if they choose to discard my images outright though, I hope that it will get them to think introspectively, as I did, about their experience and form their conclusions on how they view Japan and the effect traveling to country has had on them. While this guidebook is intended to form a foundation for people to work off of when they get to Tokyo, its also to help get the reader to the point where theyre comfortable tearing that foundation down and building their own.

Samuel A. Ross

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A guidebook for studying at Sophia University in Tokyo
By Samuel A. Ross

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction letter

Sophia University................................................................................................................ 2 Location ........................................................................................................................... 3 Important places on campus (That you should know about) ........................................... 4 Building 2 ..................................................................................................................... 4 Building 10 ................................................................................................................... 8 Building 11 ................................................................................................................... 9 Hoffman Hall.............................................................................................................. 10 The Central Library .................................................................................................... 11 Having Fun at Sophia; Joining a circle or a club ........................................................... 13 Nice places to visit near Sophia University ................................................................... 16 Living in Tokyo ................................................................................................................ 18 Eating in Tokyo ............................................................................................................. 19 Convenience Stores .................................................................................................... 19 Fast food noodle and rice bowl chains ....................................................................... 20 American style fast food restaurants and cafs .......................................................... 20 sleeping in Tokyo .......................................................................................................... 22 getting around Tokyo..................................................................................................... 23 Going outside your route; buying a ticket .................................................................. 24 Going outside your route; buying a Suica/Pasmo card .............................................. 25 Nice places to see around tokyo........................................................................................ 26 Akihabara....................................................................................................................... 27 Asakusa .......................................................................................................................... 28 Harajuku ........................................................................................................................ 29 Kamakura....................................................................................................................... 30 Komagome/Sugamo ...................................................................................................... 31 Shibuya .......................................................................................................................... 32 Shinjuku ......................................................................................................................... 33 Final thoughts.................................................................................................................... 34 Of aliens and alienation: a personal Reflection on Japan .............................................. 35 English map of train stations in Tokyo .......................................................................... 50

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To the dear reader who has picked up this guidebook

Greetings, , and so on and so forth! If you have picked up this booklet, it means you are thinking about studying in Japan for a semester, or youre a member of my advising committee. In either case, I say congratulations! Youve made an excellent choice in reading material (or so I hope)! On September 14th, 2007, I got on a plane for the first time in two years. That plane went to New York. But after that, I ran all the way across JFK and got on a much bigger plane. After thirteen and a half hours, I arrived in Tokyo, Japan all primed and ready for a five month study abroad at Sophia University. Well, maybe primed is not a word to use after 36 hours with no sleep. But after collapsing into a deep sleep for over 10 hours and a week of jet lag, I was definitely no longer walking around with my head in the clouds. I chose to put together this guidebook for several reasons. First of all, I remember the process of trying to get the study abroad going and found it to be as enjoyable as being drowned in dog slobber. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I figure that if youre going to drown, I can at least hand you a towel so that youre a little less uncomfortable. Second, I want to make you, the reader, more comfortable about the idea of going to Japan and/or studying abroad. Its an incredibly nerve-wracking experience, and if youre lucky to keep it all together long enough to get over there in the first place, keeping all your marbles may prove to be a challenge in itself. Going to Japan was a life-changing experience for me, and Im still affected by that experience on a daily basis. It made me question a lot of things about myself, my motivations, and my future, and it will be a long time, if ever I work out all the answers. I had good experiences and bad experiences, some of which related to Japan. Others didnt. I hope that reading this guidebook will be as helpful to you, as writing it was to me. If not, I fully encourage you to write your own explaining why you think mine is a load of garbage. Good Luck,

Sam Ross Hampshire College Class of 2008

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General Timeline for Studying Abroad in Japan in the fall semester December/January 1) Start Looking at Study Abroad programs This is the best time to start looking at programs because most of the fall deadlines are in January or early-February. At this point, you should be deciding which schools you want to apply to. Its sort of like applying to college all over again. Is location important? How about size of the school? Will money be a factor in your decision? For the record, I applied to four schools; Sophia University (Tokyo)93, Temple University (Tokyo)94, Nanzan University (Nagoya)95, and Kansai Gaidai University (Kyoto).96 2) Start applying to programs! Once youve made your decision about where to apply, you need to get those applications out! Theyre long and elaborate (I filled out one that was around 20 pages), so the sooner you start working on them, the better. The first section usually asks standard information (name, address, phone number, etc.), and the second is usually your academic background (where you study currently, major, GPA). This section will also request a transcript and two or three academic references. After that, the format changes depending on the application. At some point youll be asked if you speak Japanese, and what Japan related courses youve taken. Youll also be asked about housing and course preferences, which can usually be made by referring to materials with the application. Theyll ask you some personal questions about if youve ever traveled before, and your hobbies (I can only assume this is to refer you to applicable scholarships if you get in), and most will ask for some passport information (see #3). Then you get the essay questions. These can be anything, but the usual themes are Why do you want to go to Japan, and Why do you think we should let you go to Japan? Be honest, but up-sell; its likely all your competition has been studying or been interested in Japan longer than you, so be as earnest as possible. Talk about any Japan related activity youve done outside of class, or how you havent had the opportunity to participate in anything like that, but you really want to. Talk about what got you interested in Japan in the first place. But again, be honest. If you cant, maybe you dont want to go to Japan after all.

93 94

http://www.sophia.ac.jp/E/E_exchangeprograms.nsf/Content/Exchange_Materials http://www.temple.edu/studyabroad/programs/semester_year/japan/index.html 95 http://www.isep.org/students/directory/member_site.asp?CSID=86&ID=240 96 http://www.isep.org/students/directory/member_site.asp?CSID=86&ID=240#

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3) GET A PASSPORT! If you dont have one already, this is a necessity. You must go in person to an applicable government building97 and bring proof of US citizenship (birth certificate), two passport photos (2x2) and another government-issued Picture ID (not a social security card). You will also need to pay a fee of around $100, and itll be 6-8 weeks before its issued. Paying an extra $60 will expedite the process. 4) Dont forget the visa material! Some applications may require separate information or forms so that the Japanese government can issue you a Certificate of Eligibility. Assuming you get accepted, this is a document that the school will send you. Upon receiving it, take it to the nearest Japanese consulate and apply for a student visa so you can enter Japan. (See March/April)

97

You can apply at many post offices, public libraries, and other government buildings for a passport. You can search for these places at http://iafdb.travel.state.gov/

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Sophia University

(Sophia University - North Gate)

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Sophia University has two campuses, one in Yotsuya, and the other now mostly-defunct
campus in Ichigaya. The Ichigaya campus was until around 2006, the exclusive home of the Faculty of Liberal Arts (FLA) department. As a result, it was also the campus used by most of Sophias exchange and international students, as most of the other departments only offer classes in Japanese. In an attempt to encourage greater numbers of international students and Sophias own international programs, the FLA department was moved onto the Yotsuya campus. The move has made it substantially easier for degree students to take FLA classes, and (supposedly) encouraged greater inclusion of international students into the Sophia community (more on this later).

Location:

(Facing Sophia University from outside Yotsuya Station)

(Yotsuya JR and Tokyo Metro Station)

The Yotsuya campus is a five minute walk from Yotsuya station which connects to the JR Chuo-Sobu line, and the Tokyo Metro Namboku and Marunouchi lines.98 The station is connected to a small shopping building with a bakery, flower store, chocolate store, etcTheres also a standard convenience store in the station itself, where you can buy all the usual stuff like umbrellas (around 500 ; worth it on a rainy day), breath mints (I recommend Mintia or Frisk), and bottled coffee and tea (if you need a pick-me-up on the way to class). If you forget, theres also a 7-11 built into the basement of the building to your right when you enter the North Gate. Ill go into Japanese convenience stores in a later section.
(Downtown Yotsuya)
98

See Station Map at the end of this guide.

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Yotsuya is a heavy business district, but is home to many of the usual stores youll see in other areas of Tokyo, cafes, noodle restaurants, karaoke, cell phone sales, and lots of bars. I never found any places uniquely of note, but it is nice to have lots of places to go for a cup of coffee with other people.

Important places on campus that you should know about:

Building 2 -

(Facing the north gate from inside the campus; Building 2 is on the left)

Building 2 is a large administrative building located on your right if youre coming in from the North Gate (Its after Building 7, the big building youll walk under after entering the campus). Building 2 is filled with many useful places for international students. Starting on the first floor is the Overseas Liaison (International studies) Office. You will most likely have to make a trip here at some point, either to send some sort of confirmation back to your home university that youve arrived in Japan, or (as was the case for a lot of international students when I arrived) to receive a partial refund for your housing fee or something. Be
24

aware that no one in the Overseas Liaison Office speaks English (although they can understand some in context), so you may want to bring someone who speaks Japanese better than you do, if you have to talk to them about something complicated. Outside the Overseas Liaison office are a series of machines you can use to buy a student discount for riding the train for a long distance. This is not where you buy a student commuter pass, just where youll receive a pass to get a discount of 20-30% if you want to travel to someplace far away like Kyoto. You will be asked for your name and your 4-digit password (your birthday month+day; i.e. November 16th would be 1116) Very handy and it will save you a decent amount of money. Up on the third floor, youll find the Computer services office and several large computer labs. Sophia (like many places in Japan, as far as I saw) does not offer wireless internet, so youll basically be limited to the computer labs if you want to check your email. At the beginning of the semester, go to the computer services office and theyll give you your login and password for the network when you show them your Sophia student ID card. Youre free to use any of the computer labs at any time, EXCEPT when theres a class in progress. Check the schedule posted outside the door to every room before going in, especially if the door is closed. Sophia students get to print 500 free pages a semester and double-sided sheets will only count as one page. You will have to bring your own stapler and other organizational supplies.

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26

The fifth floor of Building 2 is dedicated to the cafeteria. Upon approaching it, youll see a glass case with plastic representations of all the different set meals being sold that day. You pick out which ever one you want to eat, and then walk over to one of the vending

machines nearby to pick up the corresponding ticket. Meals usually range from 300600 depending mainly on what they offer. You then give that coupon to the servers at the counter, and theyll come back with the appropriate tray of food. Things like condiments are off on a table to the side, along with free glasses of water and tea. Theres also an a la carte counter in the back that offers a variety of western foods like hot dogs and hamburgers, and two grab-and-go stores outside the cafeteria entrances. Overall, I didnt really care for Sophias cafeterias (theres another one, in the basement of Building 11). The quality of the food is fine, but not significantly cheaper than the better tasting alternatives offered outside of campus at convenience stores. That said, its also a lot less crowded then the convenience stores get around lunch time, so it can be slightly quicker if youre in a hurry. The cafeteria in Building 2 also offers a roof patio; see the Nice places you should visit at Sophia University section. The basement of Building 2 also offers several points of interest, the first being Maruzen, the school store:

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The majority of Maruzen is a bookstore, even boasting a small (but overpriced) section of English-language titles (Be aware that Maruzen is not where one buys their textbooks; that store is in the basement of Building 10). Maruzens real usefulness comes from the amount of office supplies it sells. Binders, folders, paper, pens, etc.; you can do pretty much all of your school supply shopping here. Maruzen is also the place to buy Sophia related souvenirs, like clothing.

\ Keep in mind that the clothing store is a separate store from Maruzen, and you will have to pay for anything you buy from it from the person who minds it. Also be aware that you will be a size larger in Japanese clothing sizes. So even if youre a medium back home, youre usually a large in Japan. Theres also a store outside of Maruzen where women can rent hakama or formal robes for important ceremonies. That was not a situation I ever found myself being in (Mostly because Im a guy), but something worth noting.
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Thats basically it for Building 2, so lets move on to:

Building 10Building 10 is commonly frequented by international students for several reasons. First of all, its the location of the FLA department, which all international students are automatically assigned to at Sophia. That means that a lot of the initial academic bureaucratic stuff, like finding out what level of Japanese you were placed at, will require a visit to the main office on the fourth floor. Its also the location of many FLA classes and professor offices. In any case, many will find their way to the basement at some point early in the semester to access the textbook store located in the hallway next to the elevator. I found that the cost of my academic materials ended up to be around $300, which isnt unusual for a semester at home, so I didnt really notice a difference on that front. The books were pretty numerous and heavy though, so it took
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two separate visits to comfortably walk away with all of them. Also worth noting of Building 10 is the Counseling Center on the 3rd floor. At the time I was at Sophia, there were two English speaking counselors available for private appointment two to three days a week. They see a lot of international and exchange students for issues related to homesickness and difficulty adjusting, and maintain a comfortable level of privacy if necessary. Because of the limited availability of the English speaking counselors though, its better to start working on a problem before it becomes a major issue, as they wont always be there to handle emergencies.

Building 11-

Building 11s functions as the building where most, possibly all of the language classes are taught at Sophia. This includes Japanese, so all exchange students will find themselves in the building at least five times a week (as taking Japanese is a requirement for all exchange students to Sophia) The building contains a variety of large and small classrooms, which are also used for several FLA courses. I also took the Japanese Placement Test in this building during my first week at Sophia.
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Located in the basement of Building 11 is another cafeteria, identical in use to the one in building two. The difference is that the a la carte and grab and go stations are combined into one area which always boasts a particularly long line when 12PM rolls around. Both cafeterias become fairly crowded in general during lunch period, so its much nicer to eat outside or in a student lounge, or something if possible.

Hoffman Hall -

31 Hoffman Hall, Front Entrance. Sophias Health Clinic is in the office underneath the stairs.

Hoffman Hall is important for two reasons. First of all, its the building that houses the meeting rooms for individual student groups. If you join a group, chances are they will hold regular meetings in these rooms throughout the year. Theyre often also used for informal get togethers of group members and are generally pretty cozy. Hoffman Hall is also home to the Sophia Health Clinic where, if youre anything like me, your friends will force you to visit when the flu is making you look like youre about to pass out. Unfortunately, the clinic is not English-speaking friendly. You will receive a form with a short list of checkboxes for various symptoms, and the nurse on duty will compare it to her form with a Japanese translation. If you cannot explicitly express what is wrong with you in Japanese, they will probably have you lie down for a while and then try to direct you to an English-speaking clinic. And if your situation is anything like mine was, no one at that clinic will know how to speak English either. Long story short, bring a friend who can translate if its an emergency. Youre covered under Sophias insurance at the clinic, so the paperwork will be much less complicated if they can treat you there. Its probably best to know at least some of the following vocabulary words though (see next page). kusuri medicine netsu fever seki cough yubi finger kosshi bone kinniku muscle itai it hurts outoku to throw up infurenza the flu kaze o hiku to catch a cold kimochii warui I feel nauseous onaka ga itai my stomach hurts atama ga itai my head hurts/I have a headache If you need to know more than that, you probably should go to a hospital. Be aware that Japanese hospitals do have business hours, and your choices may be limited if you need to go to one at night.

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The Central Library

Located right across from Building 10, the Central Library contains 9 floors of books and research materials, mostly in Japanese. This makes it somewhat less useful towards exchange students who cant read Japanese fluently. For example, I went to the library once to find a recently published book by an American author, which the record said they had. Unfortunately, the only copy they had was the translated Japanese version, forcing me to buy the original English language version of the book online.

Whether or not it ends up being a useful place for research, the library is a reliably quiet place to study, and/or a good place to catch a short nap in between classes (it will be
33

necessary sometime, and you wont be bothered). It also has several computer labs on the 2nd floor and a student lounge for socializing on the first basement floor. Just remember to always have your student ID ready to show to the people at the front desk. Otherwise, you will be refused entrance to the library.

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Having Fun at Sophia University: Joining a Circle or Club

The absolute best way to meet people at Sophia is to join a circle or a club. Otherwise, it doesnt matter how many lunches you eat by yourself, because no one will ever come up to you. Being social at Sophia (and Japanese universities in general from what Ive heard) are entirely dependent on joining a club, something which is made eminently clear by club dynamics. You are expected to participate in every event. This can include going on group outings and even informal things like going out for drinks. To do otherwise is seen as being anti-social. Circles are exactly the same as clubs, but require less of a time commitment; i.e. its okay if you skip out on an event or two. Unfortunately, the school does not make finding clubs and circles easy, feeling satisfied to hand out a small booklet at orientation that doesnt offer meeting times or locations for any of the clubs or circles it lists. It also will not list every organization, as student organizations are expected to donate part of their budget to be listed in the booklet. The best way to learn about the different organizations is by word of mouth; talking to your fellow students, international and Japanese. That said, I joined what I consider to be the best circle available at Sophia, Sophia Alpha. Sophia Alpha consists of two goals, creating new images of foreigners and exchange students in Japan, and encouraging communication between Sophias Japanese students and Sophias exchange students. To accomplish the first goal, Japanese and foreign members of Sophia Alpha travel to local elementary schools and lead educational exercises so that the students can have an experience interacting with foreigners. The second goal consists of active discussions about a variety of topics and going out for social and educational events. This includes events like Halloween parties, overnights with the members of the group, and visiting parks, shrines and temples. Usually after we did something, wed have a discussion about it. For example, after visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine (a 20 minute walk from Sophia), we had a discussion about nationalism and patriotism, and what it meant to us individually. The people I met in Sophia Alpha are probably some of the best people I ever met in Japan. One of my nicest memories of the club in particular was how inclusive it was; only two weeks after I joined, they surprised me by buying me a birthday cake for my birthday. While we only hung out together for five months, I believe I developed some very strong friendships in the group, and I sincerely hope that I see all of them again soon. For more information on Sophia Alpha, you can visit their website at http://www.sophiaalpha.com/

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36

(From Top-Left) Row A: 1. Group Photo; Gasshuku Overnight w/ Sophia Alpha at Hachioji Seminar House 2. Group Photo; A park in Ueno. We played frisbee and hung out together after visiting Komagome and Sugamo with more of the members. Picture taken by Kayano Yoshikawa Row B: 1. Visiting a crowded marketplace in Sugamo. Sugamo is known as the Old persons Harajuku, as many elderly people will hunt for bargins there. We used it as a point of discussion; what makes someone an adult? 2. Rikugi Park in Komagome. We enjoyed a beautiful day walking around this park that used to be reserved for use only by politicians for parties. Row C: 1. Standing outside Yasukuni Shrine. 2. Sophia Alphas halloween party at Morrigans Irish Pub near Sophia. There was a contest for best costume, and a lot of great party games. Picture taken by Kayano Yoshikawa Row D: 1. Visiting Yokohamas Chinatown with members of Sophia Alpha. We ate amazing Chinese food, walked through lots of little shops and visited a temple. 2. Breakfast the morning after the overnight. We were all running on about 2 hours of sleep (we stayed up all night talking and having a good time) and woke up to a Japanese breakfast of fish, rice, and fruit. Picture taken by Risa Senoo

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Nice places to visit near Sophia University

On and around campus, there are many nice places to sit and walk around. There are some lesser known ones though, so I thought Id advertise them a little here. First off, one of the best places to eat lunch (that I somehow missed until two weeks before classes ended) is Building 2, or rather on top of it. From the cafeteria on the 5th floor, you can access an outdoor deck on the roof, which gives a fantastic view of Yotsuya, even in the worst weather. Its open from 11AM-6:30PM on weekdays.

Also in Building 2, its not much to see, but I found it amusing that theres a barbershop in the basement near the Maruzen School Store. If anyone ever goes to get a haircut there, please tell me how it went.

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This is not so much of a place, but Sophia traditionally has a three day School Festival every semester. During the festival, various clubs put up booths and enthuiastically try to raise money by encouraging you to buy their (generally) overpriced takoyaki (Fried Balls with Octopus), okonomiyaki (Fried pork and scallion pancakes), yakisoba (Stir-Fried soba noodles), and other similar cuisine. Fun place to walk around and hang out with people at, but be careful not to spend too much money.

By far, the West Entrance is the nicest way to enter and exit Sophia. It also directly leads to an upraised circular path around the sports fields. A beautiful place to walk year-round.

Outside the campus, there are also a number of nearby statues, parks, and shrines. I highly recommend exploring Yotsuya whenever you have some free time!
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Living In Tokyo

(Nishi-Magome, Ota-ku, Tokyo)

40

Eating in Tokyo
So lets suppose that the food offered by Sophia or your host family isnt doing it for you, and you dont have a lot of money. What do you do? Your number one best alternative is Convenience Stores! Thats right, convenience stores. You can find stores like Family Mart, 7-11, AM/PM, K and all over Japan, and unlike the US, they offer a large variety of semi-healthy meal alternatives. For example, you can grab an onigiri (stuffed rice and seaweed ball) for about 70 (~70 cents) a piece, or even go expensive with a heated ome-rice (rice covered by an omelet plate) for only 300 (~$3).

But lets say that youre hungry for some western-style cuisine. The convenience stores have you covered there too. For about 100(~$1), you can grab a small sandwich with tuna, egg salad, potato or shrimp croquettes, pasta, or even chocolate banana. You also have some hot alternatives for a little more like corndogs, burritos, fried chicken breasts,
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and a karage (fried chicken sandwich). Not fabulously healthy, but better than living on candy bars. My only recommendation? Stay away from a package of Cheese Dogs, which really is just fried dough with a nasty cheese substitute inside. In all seriousness though, the quality of the food at convenience stores is much higher than at their counterparts in the US, and they can definitely be trusted for a good cheap meal. Slightly less cheaper, but better tasting are the ever ubiquitous Fast Food Noodle and Rice Bowl Chains Again, like the convenience stores, theyre all over the place. You go in, pay for an entre at a vending machine, and give the ticket that pops out to the cook. He comes back in about 5 minutes with a heaping plate of curry rice, or bowl of soba noodles, or what have you. You eat at the counter, and walk out with a call of gochyosamadeshita (It was delicious) All in all, a meal at one of these places usually ranges from 300-700 (~$3$5) depending on what you order. Very easy to survive on, and unlike 7-11, they give you a place to sit down while you eat. Moving on up the price range, we get to: American-Style Fast Food Restaurants and Cafes With the exception of a few select menu items (i.e. the Mega Mac, a Big Mac with four hamburger patties; never order this) McDonalds in Japan are virtually identical to those youll find in the US, even in price. This also goes for Wendys and KFC. They also offer picture menus to order off of if requested. I would say that a full meal will cost you 500700 (~$5-$7)

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The Japanese burger chains like Mos Burger, are slightly pricier (You will end up paying about 800 for a complete meal), but the quality of the food is much better. So if you have a little extra, Id recommend going there instead. Also more expensive, but infinitely classier are the cafs, like Doutor (pronounced dotoro) and Excelsior Cafs. Other cafes like Tullys, and Starbucks offer very little in the way of food, but are equally good as sources of coffee or tea. Anyway, getting back to the cafs that actually have food, Doutor had a wonderful set while I was over there for about 600, which got you a snack-size Milan Sandwich and a medium drink (choice of iced or hot coffee or tea, usually). They also offered some grilled sandwiches, but I never tried them. My absolute favorite caf meal was at Excelsior Caf, where for about 800, you could get a set that included a choice of a variety of medium-sized (but gourmet, and well made) heated sandwiches, a choice of three different types of soup, and a medium drink (also of your choice). Excelsior has a uniquely relaxing and quiet atmosphere compared with a lot of the other caf chains, and plenty of comfortable chairs to sit in. I found it to be an excellent place to just sit and listen to music, or do my homework.

Im leaving Supermarkets out of this, because theyre not as obscenely common as the convenience stores, fast food places, or cafes. But they exist, and offer plenty of premade meals from the 500-1000 range. I generally didnt find Supermarket options to be as satisfying as the other alternatives though.

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Sleeping in Tokyo
Trains in Tokyo stop running around 12AM, leaving a lot of folks stranded without a way to get home. Admittedly, you can flag down a taxi, but they charge an arm and a leg for a couple blocks, so its not really feasible. While Tokyo is generally one of the safest places in the world, some areas that you may end up in (like Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Roppongi) are not the safest places to wander around alone at night. So here are some cheap alternatives than finding a hotel: First off, the easiest thing to do if you were out at a bar or a restaurant is to see how late you can stay there for. A lot of bars are open until the trains start running again at 5AM, so it may make sense to stay, keep sipping your drink, and ordering some food every once in a while. That said, even if youre not in a restaurant or bar, theres nothing to say you cant find a nice one to camp out in easy enough. I recommend finding a nice 24 hour fast food place and sitting down with a cup of coffee and a book. Barring that, there are a lot of other 24 hour establishments. Renting a private karaoke booth will cost about 400 (~$4) an hour, so if you prepay for about 5-7 hours, youre doing much better then the 10000 (~100) youd be paying for a hotel room. The booths are generally pretty comfortable, but you will get a little bit of noise from the other ones around you, so its not a good option for a light sleeper. One of the best hotel alternatives that I found were Internet Cafes. For about 2000 ($20), youll get your own private cubicle (with a door) and computer for 7 hours overnight in most places. You usually have the option of choosing a cubicle with a reclining/massage chair, or an upraised padded surface with a large pillow. The cafes are usually incredibly quiet, and you have unlimited access to the computer, a library of Japanese manga, and free non-alcoholic drinks. Its a fantastic place to work if you need an all-nighter.

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The only problem is that you need to be a member to use an internet caf. Anyone can sign up, but you will need a permanent address and phone number in Japan, and the knowledge of how to write it in Japanese. The nicest Internet Caf I ever found was the WIP Media Complex Space near the JR train station in Yoyogi just in terms of comfort and variety, but honestly, these things are all over the place in Tokyo, so there are probably nicer ones out there. There are other cheap options available, but I dont know much about them. If you look around, you can find capsule hotels, which will offer you coin lockers to store your stuff and a small round capsule to sleep in. But considering you have much more space to move around, the Internet caf seems like a better bet. Also, if youre with a member of the opposite sex, you can check into a love hotel, where couples can rent bedrooms overnight for about 5000 (~$50), from what Ive heard. Again though, you dont want to sleep on the street if you can avoid it, so try to exhaust whatever options you can.

Getting Around Tokyo

As a student, you will be eligible for a student commuter pass to get to and from your university everyday. Tokyo trains are relatively inexpensive (about 100-200 a ride), but they will add up, as itll be your primary form of transportation. I dont care how much you like to walk, its just not feasible to do so to get everywhere you need to go in Tokyo. Thankfully, the Student Commuter pass significantly cuts down on the cost. Prices for one usually are around 8500 (~$85) for 1 month, 15000(~$150) for 3 months and 23000 (~$230) for 6 months. With the pass, youre allowed unlimited travel to any stop on the route between your residence and your school for whatever length of time you
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buy. Outside of that route, youll still have to pay, but again, itll be much less than paying for all your trains all the time. As a Sophia student, you need to be able to show your ID and something like the following sticker (received at orientation and filled out by you) to the person working at the ticket office before you can purchase the pass:

You will need to know how to write your name (in katakana) and address (in kanji characters), as well as the characters for the name of your destination. This card will be stamped whenever you purchase or renew the pass. The pass itself comes in one of two forms; a reusable ticket, or printed on the pre-paid Suica card (as shown below). I would recommend getting it printed on a Suica, as it makes general travel less complicated. Instead of stopping to get a ticket every time you go outside your route, you can just put an amount of money on the Suica card, which the system will subtract from every time you use it.

Going outside your route - buying a ticket

Lets say you want to go outside the route available on your student pass. To do so, youll have to buy a ticket. Ticket machines are clearly marked near the gates to the platform at
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every station, and usually have a map detailing how much it costs to go to different places. The map does not always have the Romanized names of the different places. Ask a station attendant for an English language map, or ask someone how much it is to go to your destination. To do the latter, politely approach an attendant and ask koko kara ______ mahday ikura desu ka? (From here, how much is it to go to ____). Someone will either tell you or will help you buy a ticket. The machines themselves are relatively easy to use. In most cases, you select how many people and the price of the ticket, and youll be all set. You insert your ticket into the gate as you go through, and pick it up on the other side. You will need to hold onto your ticket until you pass through the gates of your destination.

Going outside your route - buying a Suica/Pasmo Card

Suica and Pasmo are prepaid cards that serve in place of tickets. Suica can be used on both JR and Tokyo Metro Lines, but Pasmo can only be used on the Metro. To buy a card, approach a ticket machine and touch the Suica symbol. You will be required to deposit 2000, 500 of which is a deposit on the card and will not count as part of the cards balance. You will however, receive it back if you return your Suica card to a ticket office. To use a Suica card, simply swipe it over the sensor at the gate and the appropriate fare will be subtracted once you reach your destination and swipe it again to get through the gate.

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Nice places to see around Tokyo

The dai-butsu (Great Buddha) of Hase

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Akihabara Living up to its nickname as Tokyos Electric Town, Akihabara is THE place to go for any kind of electronics. Walking around will make you occasionally feel like youve traveled back in time as dozens of shops sell a variety of old computers and media players for cheap to fit any need. This is also a fantastic place to find used video games, Japanese anime, and DVDs if you shop around a bit. You may want to keep your eyes open to make sure you dont walk into any unsavory stores though. Akihabara is also known for its large selection of duty-free shop, where goods are sold at marked down prices, which descend further for tourists who display their visa to achieve tax-free eligibility. These duty-free stores sell anything you might need, from cameras, to memory cards, to backpacks, and theyre always worth a visit if youre looking for something useful or interesting. This is also the area where youll find the infamous Maid Cafes, where waitresses dress up in full French maid attire while addressing you in overly polite Japanese. Be aware, that while some of these girls advertise for the caf on the street, you are not allowed to take their picture. Finally, no visit to Akihabara would be complete without a visit to Yodobashi Camera (see left), an
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electronics store chain, with the Akihabara branch being one of the largest. Connected to the JR station, it reminds me of Wal-Mart, if you stacked nine of them on top of each other.

Asakusa
Asakusa is the home of Sensou-ji, one of the more famous temples in Tokyo. The temple itself sits at the far end of a long path, which starts at the entrance gate seen above. The path between the gate and the temple caters completely to tourists with outdoor merchants on either side selling the standard fare of candies, pins, statues, and other cheap junk that you can usually pick up at any attraction in Tokyo, serving only as a more efficient route to purchase souvenirs en masse. The temple itself is rather pretty and contains an extremely large Buddhist Kannon statue of a goddess of mercy. Like other temples in Japan, you can purchase charms exclusive to the particular temple for around 500 a piece and your fortune for around 100. The area in general is beautiful, but more so in the mid-winter off season when there are less tourists. The rest of Asakusa is filled with a smattering of interesting stores, largely dedicated to pottery and low-price kitchenware. Visitors may also stumble on shops that sell amazing plastic recreations of food
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dishes for exorbitant prices (theyre usually only sold to restaurant establishments, but still definitely fun to look at). Walking down Kappa-Dori also offers some interesting sights in the form of statues of the mythical turtle-like creatures the street derives its name from.

Harajuku
Harajuku is famous for a number of reasons; the first most major being its reputation as a fashion capital of Tokyo. Its Takeshita-Dori (Takeshita Street), a two minute walk from the station is renowned as a place where fashion seekers hunt for bargains and fashion companies run trials of their new lines. Outside of Takeshita-Dori, Harajuku also plays host to a variety of upscale restaurants and souvenir stores. Those seeking horribly overpriced and stereotypical goods, like tea sets and T-Shirts with the kanji character for Samurai can head for the Oriental Bazaar on the main street. Its worth a look after being in Japan for a few months just for a Theyre charging WHAT for this? reaction. When Harajuku really picks up is Sunday afternoon when dozens of street
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performers come out next to the train station to strut their stuff. This includes artists, musicians, and people who just want to show off their elaborate gothic-lolita style outfits. But the real prize of Harajuku is the Meiji-Jingu shrine behind the station. Pay the 500 to get into the inner sanctuary for what is, quite possibly, the most relaxing fishing pond Ive ever seen. Fishing is forbidden, and fish of many colors will swarm around the deck hoping for food if they detect a visitor. Definitely worth spending an afternoon wandering around.

Kamakura/Hase
If youre looking for a beautiful place to go sightseeing, Kamakura is your first stop. Kamakura is sort of the Kyoto of Tokyo in the sense that its the home to dozens of very old (but still stunning) temples and shrines. Chief among them is the dai-butsu of Hase, the second largest Buddha statue in Japan (the largest being in Nara, over 500 kilometers away). The statue was constructed from donations in 1252, and (despite Japans tendency for statue-shattering earthquakes) has stayed stable ever since, requiring only minor repairs to its foundation. Its really difficult to suggest any other particular shrines or temples in the area, as they all offer fantastically unique views of the area, and you could go through a score of them before the day was out. Definitely also worth checking out before you leave Hase is the Hasedera or Hase Kannon Temple, a five to ten minute walk from the dai-butsu. This temple
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is home to a gigantic statue of the Buddhist kannon of mercy, and some of the most spectacular views of Kamakura youll ever see. Dont forget to check out the room with the rotating spire next to the main temple; in theory, if you walk around the spire while holding on to it, youll absorb the full teachings of the Buddha housed around it. Also worth a visit is the Hokokuji, a shrine with a gigantic natural bamboo forest. Keep your eyes open for the statues hidden throughout the stalks and inside the neighboring cliff outcropping.

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Komagome & Sugamo

Although their stops may not stand out immediately as you travel on the Yamanote line, Komagome and Sugamo are definitely worth an afternoon walk around. The chief offering of Komagome is Rikugi-en or Rikugi park. Initially built as a place for political functions in the mid 1800s, Rikugi-en was eventually bought by the local government and opened up to the general public. The serenity of the place on most days is absolutely stunning. Rikugi-en was originally designed as a haven from the outside hustle and bustle of Tokyo; so much so, that trees were deliberately planted to hide views of the outside world as one walked through the park. The buildings may have grown taller since then, but the effect still works for the most part. One addendum though. If you take the tour, your guide may tell you that the night tours are much more interesting. I found the opposite to be true. While the path is lit at night, the lights are angled poorly and the rest of the park is rather dark due to the trees blocking most outside light. As a result, I found it much more beautiful during the light of day. Also on the list is the nearby area of Sugamo, bearing the reputation of an old persons Shinjuku. This reputation springs from the flea markets on the weekend, when thousands of middle aged and elderly folks swoop down to the main shopping street searching for bargains. Despite its reputation, you can find thousands of interesting items for sale no matter how old you are, as well as dozens of cheap delicious food stands, and some fantastic souvenirs. For example, people will get a kick out of a piece of seaweed cut to look like a smiling Buddhist monk. If you have a host family, this is a wonderful place to buy a present for them.
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ShibuyaNo trip to Tokyo would be complete without checking out Shibuya, a central hub of fashion, entertainment, and merchandise. Located right near Yoyogi on the Yamanote line, exiting from the Hachiko (So named for the nearby dog statue) exit drops you right in the heart of Shibuya, a major four-way crosswalk that hundreds of people launch themselves across the second the traffic light turns green. Side-note, during New Years, hundreds of people will gather outside of the Hachiko exit, screaming and yelling to bring in the new year. At the strike of midnight, the crowd will go nuts and travel clockwise around the crosswalks, partying the entire way. If youre not there on New Years, you wont have to walk far to find an interesting department store, club, or restaurant/izakaya. (The other benefit of Hachiko? Theres a giant map of Shibuya right next to the station.) Shibuya is also home to a branch of Citibank, the one US bank that carries out major operations in Japan. Walking down one street will take you to Tower Records, one of the good places in Tokyo to buy a large variety of English language books. Walking down another will take you to Shibuyas famous 109 department store (so named for supposedly being home to 109 individual stores). If you like to party, Shibuya has plenty of clubs. And with all of the restaurants/bars, its a fantastic place to socialize. The crowds may make you a little tired though eventually.

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Shinjuku
If Shibuya is the capital of entertainment in Tokyo, Shinjuku is easily the capital of consumerism. Home to large branches of every single department store chain imaginable, from Takashimaya to Seitan, you can find any and every product imaginable. Its especially a fantastic place to buy souvenirs. Looking for exotic teas, fancy nihonshu, or fine chocolates? Teacups, glasses or fine pottery? Toys? This should be your first stop. Also worth checking out is the Shinjuku Krispy Kreme store. Located across a bridge with a fantastic view next to the Takashimaya building, the donut store is one of two of its kind in all of Japan, and insanely popular. The prices are easily comparable to that of its US counterparts, but consistently boasts a line of a 30 minute to 2 hour wait. The image of victory on the faces of those riding the train with a box of Krispy Kremes though show that some people obviously think its worth the wait. Me? I was happy to settle for Mr. Donut.

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Chapter IV: Inside Jobs

One of the original things I had thought about focusing my Division III project around was a series of radio features. I had a great deal of experience in high school with talk radio (something which continued into my second year at Hampshire) and I found it a comfortable mode to utilize for my interest in Journalism. Unfortunately, my expectations did not match up with my actual experience. I had less time and resources available to me while in Japan, and as a result, was only able to set up a couple interviews, only one of which actually recorded. This feature has me interviewing Lucy Craft, a freelance reporter based out of the CBS Bureau in Tokyo. At the time I interviewed her, I was still enamored with the idea of working in Japan after I graduated, but wanted to see what Americans did for work in the country besides teaching English (as the vast majority outside of the military seem to be over there to that for a couple years). I also was very interested in hearing about her experience working in the country for the past 25 years, and how things had changed. What caught my interest when I was putting this together though, was that (like what I reflected on of my own behavior in the personal essay) Lucy creates some fascinating images of Japan for the audience throughout the entire interview. Listening to this interview again, almost five months later, it only added to my consciousness to how I was discussing Japan with friends and through my blog while I was there, and after I returned. This was not a perfect radio feature by any means. Because of time constraints on the editing process, the audio quality of the interview is slightly distorted but understandable, and had more editing been done, it probably would have ended up more concise than it was, even after sorting through the forty minutes of audio I had taken. And like I feel after every radio

feature Ive ever produced, Ive always come up with tons of additional questions I wish I could of asked. But what I believe is definitely established in the feature are the images. Unlike the images I talk about in the historical paper that Americans created of the Japanese abroad, these are images formed of Japan, from a foreigner who lives the country. And its very interesting to compare the images Ive created to the ones created by someone whos had a great deal more experience interacting with Japan. While this interview is far from flawless, and the only one of the many I had hoped to do, I think it represents an essential part of my Division III, to create discourses about images.

Samuel A. Ross

Sam: One of the things that led to my study abroad in Japan was a desire to explore the idea of working in the country after I graduated from college. In addition to having never been to the country before, I had two other particular concerns about pursuing this. First of all, I was worried how my experience working in Japan would be different from working in the US. I had read accounts by foreign workers in Japan who had encountered a lot of xenophobia. And considering that a large amount of those accounts seemed to be coming solely from people who had come to Japan to teach English, I also wanted to explore whether Id be able to find careers that fit my interests in the country, if I so desired. My search led me to Lucy Craft, a freelance reporter based out of the CBS News Bureau in Tokyo. A small office, the bureau is located on the 7th floor of the TBS or Tokyo Broadcasting System building in Akasaka; the high rise offices of a television station that produces a great deal of popular News and Drama programs in Japan . As we sat in front of the wall of monitors constantly flashing news in multiple languages from all over East Asia, Craft spoke to me about her experiences working in Japan as a foreign journalist over the past twenty-five years. Sam: What brought you to Japan? Lucy: Thats a good question. Id lived on Kibbutz twice by the time I was 19. I was very strongly imbued with the pioneer spirit and I was firmly intending to go to Israel and make aliyah, and make that not only for spiritual reasons, but also as a career move. I thought it would make eminent sense because the Middle East conflict was not going away. My mother, bless her heart whos Japanese, shes a naturalized citizen, was deathly afraid that I would actually do this, and she said, well, before you go to Israel, why dont you go and see your grandmother in Japan I thought, well, Im going to be in Israel for the rest of my life, so why dont I just go to Israel via the Far east and Ill do some reporting on the way, I live there for a few years and Ill make my resume look even better then it is. So thats what I was planning to do, and ended up getting stuck, because the 80s were booming, there was so much work, we were just cranking out stories. Sam: As Craft explains, her freelance work started with a rather rocky start. Lucy: When I came to Japan I had just, you know, a few hundred dollars in the bank and uh, I started doing stories on Japanese defense spending, which is still one of the highest budgets in the world. Made me immediately the focus of interest of all the Russian journalists slash spies who assumed I was CIA. So one of them sent around somesome dodgy looking guy to check me out when I wasnt home; my aunt told me about it, some guy came around and they were spreading rumors at
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the press club that I was CIA and everything like that. And I said, if so, Im the most incompetent CIA spy that has ever lived in the history of the world. Sam: Since then, Craft has worked as a foreign correspondent for a variety of news organizations, ranging from NPR to PBS Nightly Business Report. She admits that being a foreign woman in Japan has lead to some interesting reactions by the people shes interviewed Sam: If youre interviewing someone in Japanese and youre a foreigner and a womanhave you ever had any negative experiences because of that? Lucy: Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, I would say, not because Im a womanOne of my dear professors, professor Jordan at Cornell, she used to go back and forth to Japan all the time and, she and another scholar would go to these linguistic conferences in Japan and they would be the only foreigners who spoke Japanese. And one time her colleague whispered to her, when they were supposed to go on and make their speech, she says Well, here we are, the dancing Pandas. What she taught us, or what one of her colleagues over there taught us is that foreign women in Japan are not seen as male or female, theyre kind of seen as a third androgynous sex. So people often dont react to us as women because we look and act like males. A lot of time people dont know how to deal with us; they think were basically men in a dress. Sam: Because of her role as a foreign journalist, Craft has occasionally run into some particularly frustrating situations while doing her job. I had an experience at a major Japanese electronics company, which shall remain nameless. I called them up and talked to the PR department in Japanese, which I normally do, and they said, Well, hold on a minute, we have a foreign broadcast, the guy whos in charge of foreign broadcasts, and I said Well, God, how many requests from foreign broadcast mediatheres not that many of us here, but anyways, so I talked to this guy, spoke horrible English, and he was just struggling to get a word in edgewise, and I said Look, lets just speak in Japanese. And then I realized after a time that everyone in his department was listening so that he had to speak in English. So I say, Okay, I feel sorry for him,, my heart goes out to him, and he says can we have a meeting first to talk about this. So I met with the guy, he brought along his specialist for flat panel TVs, which is what I had wanted to talk with them about,. The flat panel TV guy didnt speak any English. So we had this weird three-way conversation where Id speak to him in Japanese, him to English, and they would speak to each other in Japanese.

Sam: Despite the confusion, Craft believes that being a foreign journalist has occasionally given her an advantage in Japan. Lucy: I would say, just off the top of my head, with interviewing someone whos Japanese, unless its someone in the news and is just so jaded by the process, if you get someone who isnt used to getting interviewed, and/or isnt used to being interviewed by a foreigner. You become an object of curiosity. Men areyou know, slightly outnumber us, so you know, you come in there, youre woman, youre flying, you speak Japanese, They dont see a lot of you coming around, soyou can just milk that a little bit. Theyre just so curious. Its like youre a 3headed steer or something like that. Definitely, I would say speaking the language to someone who is not used to speaking to foreigners can help cut the ice and they just cant help themselves sometimes. I mean, I would have the same reaction if I met someone from you know Kazakhstan who wasnt whats his name, you know Sam: Borat. Lucy: Borat. Yeah, I mean, I havent met that many people from Kazakhstan. And then thats sort of disarming in a way. But, youre speaking to someone who speaks English, that novelty does not exist. Sam: Overall though, Craft believes that foreigners face much less resistance to working in Japan today then they did in the past. Lucy: We were doing interviews recently at the Skiiji Fish Market, and they have some old Geezer controlling access and he was saying just absolutely absurd things like You foreigners will just never understand Japan. Oh thats quaint, I havent heard that in twenty years. You know, people might think it, but sort of like the overt discrimination has basically faded away. This place has changed unbelievably, Basically, you know, the gender-blind laws and the fact that Japanese are so well traveled nowadays, and the arrival of the internet, has had just far reaching repercussions I would say. For the good, generally speaking. Sam: For Hampshire College, this is Sam Ross.