Untold Horrors

A Book by Jason O'Leary

2006-06-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

Note: We don't have permission to make Richard Minear's excellent translation of the poem available online, so only the opening lines are included here along with Jason's artwork. Please see When We Say 'Hiroshima: Selected Poems of Kurihara Sadako to read this poem, as well as many others.

The mayor of Piroshima is an old fox who likes to dress up in tuxedos.
Pulling on white gloves, he gives speeches larded with English, "Piisu." "Piisu."

Original Art by John Nedved!

2006-05-04T14:08:00.000-05:00

Please click on the images above to view larger versions.

Announcing ...

2006-05-03T19:48:00.000-05:00

Stephanie's website!!

Amanda and JoHanna say:

2006-05-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

We decided on Oyama's on Tuesday (the 9th) at 5:00 pm.

If people need rides, post a comment and people with cars can help out with rides.

free food and stuff

2006-05-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

a message from the library

More grist for the mill ... links will disappear soon, so read 'em while you can!

2006-04-30T13:02:00.000-05:00

"Japan 'unsuitable' for child-rearing"
Click here to read this article. (It'll only be there a few days.)

Also click here for more on the "patriotic education."

Osaka man grilled part of mother's body.

Koizumi vaguely threatens China and SK.

"He nagged only us. We hoped the drug might make him kinder," the two third-year students were quoted as saying.Maybe not such a bad idea?

Patriotic Education

2006-04-28T09:19:00.000-05:00

You definitely want to click here.

DISCOVER NIKKEI

2006-04-27T14:43:00.000-05:00

Check out the amazing new resource coordinated by the Japanese American National Museum!

DISCOVER NIKKEI

US Congressional Resolution Calls on Japan to Accept Responsibility for Wartime Comfort Women

2006-04-26T22:42:00.000-05:00

To see the full article with links, click here.

article by Alexis Dudden
April 25, 2006

Two members of the United States Congress, Representative Lane Evans (D-Illinois) and Representative Chris Smith (R-New Jersey), have introduced a non-binding resolution (H.Res. 759) in the current congressional session which calls on the government of Japan to "formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for its sexual enslavement of young women" during the 1930s and 40s.

In the 1930s, as it expanded into China, the Japanese military colluded with the government to establish what were called, "Comfort Stations." Such stations provided Japanese soldiers paid sex with women (and it appears in some instances men and boys, too) from all areas under Japanese control, but especially Korea and China. These women and girls were called "comfort women." The system grew along with Japan's war effort, extending throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Since the late 1980s when some of these women were able to speak publicly for the first time, however, it has become widely recognized that there was nothing voluntary in their service to the Japanese soldiers, and that most of the estimated 50,000 to 200,000 women who were part of this system had been kidnapped or tricked into their involvement. The largest number of women -- including girls as young as 12 years old -- were Korean, while many others were Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian, and Dutch.

Throughout the 1990s the issue was a major regional and international topic, culminating in the 2000 Tokyo Women's Tribunal and a controversial NHK TV documentary. The Japanese government, refusing to accept direct responsibility for the victimization of the comfort women, nevertheless established and administered a "private" Comfort Women Fund that paid some of the women $20,000 each. Most of the surviving comfort women, however, particularly those in Korea, refused to accept payment from a non-government entity. It remains a crucial part of Japan's ongoing problems over coming to terms with its history and settling its wartime debts to its Asian neighbors.

This is not the first such bill introduced in the House, including previous efforts on behalf of American POWs. None have been successful. Importantly, however, this time the bill has bipartisan sponsorship from its inception. Perhaps even more importantly, there are some subtle -- yet powerful -- changes in the language used in this attempt: with an eye to the fact that the San Francisco Treaty protected Japan from demands for compensation from victim nations, a position supported by the US State Department ever since, the compensation question has been put aside in favor of more strategically deployed terminology.

In contrast with prior efforts urging the Japanese government to apologize for its wartime behavior, this bill focuses on the issue of "responsibility." Also, it notices the repeated denials that Japanese officials have made and continue to make concerning not only the issue of sexual slavery but other wartime atrocities as well. In short, the authors of this bill are well aware that the government of Japan has repeatedly issued pro forma apologies during the past decade, but that these apologies themselves remain suspect because of contrary actions and statements by Japan's elected and appointed officials.

Several Washington observers note that some critical behind-the-scenes support for the bill stems from the growing importance of the Chinese-American and Korean-American lobbies and give credit to their efforts for keeping this sentiment alive. These are groups that have followed closely the rejection by Japanese courts of repeated suits seeking compensation for unpaid wartime forced labor from corporations such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui, as well as from the Japanese government. Others notice that key members of the House Committee on International Relations such as Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) are soon retiring, and that they are determined to bring some measure of recognition to the horrors they and their fellow WWII veterans endured during their service in the Pacific theater. Mindy Kotler of Asia Policy Point notices that the bill's mention of Amnesty International and the United Nations reveals a more "global" awareness of the issues involved, and that the new phrasing goes beyond the issue of sexual slavery and "is directed at larger issues of US-Japan alliance management as well."

The key UN documents submitted by special rapporteurs for human rights have been the 1996 Coomaraswamy Report and the 1998 McDougall Report, both accessible -- along with a similarly scathing report by the Geneva-based International Commissions of Jurists -- at the website of the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues. Released after establishment of the Asian Women's Fund, which essentially represented a damage-control approach by the Japanese government to accountability for sexual slavery, the McDougall Report concluded by finding that "anything less than full and unqualified acceptance by the Government of Japan of legal liability and the consequences that flow from such liability is wholly inadequate." Japan failed to accept this liability in the wake of these damning UN documents, as explained by a Japanese attorney and comfort women's advocate.

Another important example of the global consensus that Japan needs to do much more to settle the comfort women and other forced labor issues is provided by the International Labor Organization. Since 1996, the ILO's highly regarded Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) has on a near-annual basis issued "individual observations" finding that imperial Japan committed systematic violations of the Forced Labor Convention of 1930 -- and urging modern Japan to correct the transgressions. The ILO committee's earlier reports centered on military sexual slavery and industrial labor conscription; more recently the issue of Chinese forced labor in wartime Japan has come to the fore. The CEACR's 2003 report describes support for redress among trade union confederations in Japan and South Korea, along with Japanese government positions that the committee finds unpersuasive. Tokyo, despite having ratified the Forced Labor Convention in 1932, continues to request that the ILO stop delving into its wartime past.

H.Res. 759, 109th Congress, 2d Session.

In the House of Representatives April 4, 2006

Mr. EVANS (for himself and Mr. SMITH of New Jersey) submitted the following resolution, which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

Status: Referred to the House Committee on International Relations.

RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government of Japan should formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for its sexual enslavement of young women, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II, and for other purposes.

Whereas the Government of Japan, during its colonial occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II, organized the subjugation and kidnapping, for the sole purpose of sexual servitude, of young women, who became known to the world as 'comfort women';

Whereas the 'comfort women' tragedy was one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century;

Whereas the enslavement of comfort women was officially commissioned and orchestrated by the Government of Japan to include gang rape, forced abortions, sexual violence, human trafficking, and numerous other crimes against humanity;

Whereas the comfort women included girls as young as 13 years of age and women separated from their own children;

Whereas the comfort women were either abducted from their homes or lured into sexual servitude under false pretenses;

Whereas many comfort women were eventually killed or driven to commit suicide when the hostilities ceased;

Whereas the use of 'comfort women' is considered a current as well as past human rights issue;

Whereas the shame connected to their ordeal caused many comfort women to conceal it and caused many others to come forward about their experiences only in recent years;

Whereas historians conclude that as many as 200,000 women were enslaved, but very few of them survive today;

Whereas the Government of Japan did not fully disclose these war crimes during negotiations for reparations with its former enemies and occupied countries;

Whereas some textbooks used in Japanese schools minimize the 'comfort women' tragedy and other atrocities, and distort the Japanese role in war crimes during World War II; and

Whereas Japanese Government officials, both elected and career, as recently as June 2005, praised the removal of the term 'comfort women' from Japanese textbooks: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government of Japan--

(1) should formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for its sexual enslavement of young women, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II;

(2) should educate current and future generations about this horrible crime against humanity;

(3) should publicly, strongly, and repeatedly refute any claims that the subjugation and enslavement of comfort women never occurred; and

(4) should follow the recommendations of the United Nations and Amnesty International with respect to the 'comfort women'.

Supplementary Information on previous resolutions:

June 25, 2000 -- A resolution ordering Japan to apologize and compensate victims of war crimes committed during World War II has been proposed to the U.S. House of Representatives. The resolution includes measures for comfort women, Korean women forced into providing sex to the Japanese Army. Congressman Lane Evans-13th District Illinois (Democrat) submitted the resolution to the International Relations Committee on June 19 for consideration during the 106th Congress in September. This resolution is the second of its kind, following one submitted by Congressman William Lipinski-3rd District Illinois (Democrat) in July 1997. The resolution was passed on to the International Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, but was later scrapped when congressmen delayed resolutions, fearing damage to relations with Japan.

Alexis Dudden is associate professor of history at Connecticut College and author of Japan's Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power. She is a Japan Focus Associate. She wrote this article for Japan Focus with contributions by William Underwood

Corey would like you to view and comment on this 1943 cartoon before his presentation.

2006-04-26T12:11:00.000-05:00

Nate's show is on 89.7 KRUI right now, and it's rocking!

2006-04-24T23:59:00.000-05:00

That's just a reminder that you still have another hour to enjoy "The Golden Years."

GREAT comments below!!!

On Motherhood and Yasukuni

2006-04-22T11:26:00.000-05:00

Ray and Shiori posted some very good comments below.

As we near the end of the course, we have a new challenge as a class. There is no end to the material we could (and perhaps should) cover, but I think it's important that we build on some of the hopeful strategies we've encountered thus far. I'd like us all to take away from this course some ideas and skills we can use to have the kinds of lives we want and also, hopefully, work together to build a better society. To that end, we are nearing the point in the course where I will ask us to abandon (or at least resist) any remaining cynicism. Even if it's hard or you feel as if it's maybe less than authentic, I want us all to try cultivating a belief that things don't have to be this way, that better societies are possible. For some of you, this will mean imagining what it would feel like to be an idealist. Perhaps that will even feel at odds with how you see yourself and your core identity. I can't police your thoughts and wouldn't even if I could, but I really want you to try. If this is beyond what you can or want to do, please, at the very least, keep your cynicism to yourself so that your classmates who want to give this a try can do so.

Before we go there, I want us to sort through some questions about motherhood, which Shiori actually brought up in her comment below. Shiori pointed out one of the scenes in the film that stood out the most to me too: the child (perhaps with an infant sibling) locked in the car outside the pachinko parlor where creepy Enken worked. She was right in seeing this detail as connected to news stories. Here, I'd like to step back a little and have us think about the moms we've encountered lately. Shizuko's mom and the kids' mom in the film are very complicated figures who hurt their children.

Idealized notions of motherhood run far deeper and wider than any single religious or cultural ideology, regardless of how pervasive or powerful that ideology may be. In their introduction to a collection of essays on the myriad ways in which children are increasingly casualties in "small wars" waged against them, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent summarize Jill Korbin’s claim that the consequences of “an uncritical overattachment to the idealization of maternity and mother-love, an attachment that can prevent family, friends, and even well-seasoned professionals from perceiving the intent of some women who are determined to kill their children,” are deadly. The problem here is clear: on the one hand, we have belief systems that see a mother’s unconditional love as natural and universal; yet on the other hand, those same belief systems make it very difficult for many mothers to express the ways in which their daily lives are less than ideal because they feel bound by our collective attachment to idealized motherhood. That can spell disaster. This is certainly the case in Japan, where child abuse intervention counselors routinely describe their female clients’ complaints that motherhood is not like what they anticipated, not like it is represented in magazines and on television. And, as is the case in the United States, the response to a news story about a mother who kills her children inevitably provokes shock and outrage at this “unnatural” form of fatal child abuse as if it were uncommon when, in fact, it happens a lot. On March 26, 1998, for example, a “young mother” (yanmama) in Japan left her two toddlers in the car with the engine running (for air conditioning) while she played Pachinko for 9 hours. 9 hours. I believe this is the incident to which Shiori referred. She checked on them only twice, leaving them juice and candy, and the two children died. Analyses of this incident in the Japanese popular media portrayed the mother as lacking normal “maternal instincts." Similar examples from North American news sources will be familiar to some of you. As Jill Korbin explains, “only some of these cases capture public attention,” making it seem as if they are rare when they are not."

If we attribute this sort of fatal child maltreatment to a biological problem, how does that affect our understanding of what happened and how and why it happened?

Do you think there might be a more effective way to understand these terrible events than as a sign of a woman's lack of an appropriate biological instinct?

What do you think it would take to prevent this kind of incident?

Here's a special assignment for those of you who know Japanese.

What do you make of this Hiyoshi Yûkari cartoon?

Describe the language.

What kind of image of a "young mother" is this?

Can you think of similar examples from J-pop culture?

Now, I also want to give you this latest chapter in the ongoing Yasukuni story.

"Lawmakers gather at Yasukuni"
04/22/2006
The Asahi Shimbun

Former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Makoto Koga, left, with other Diet members at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on Friday

Courting the likelihood of another outburst from overseas, 96 members of a suprapartisan lawmakers' group visited war-related Yasukuni Shrine on Friday, the first day of an annual three-day spring rite.

The politicians belong to a group called Minnade Yasukunijinja ni Sanpaisuru Kokkaigiin no Kai, which literally means, "A group of Diet members who visit Yasukuni Shrine together."

The 96 lawmakers who visited Friday included former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Makoto Koga, who currently serves as the head of Nippon Izokukai, an association for bereaved family members of the nation's war dead.

Speaking at a news conference following the visit, Koga dismissed expected criticism from China and South Korea, saying, "Whenever I visit the shrine, I separate the war criminals from the war dead in my heart. It is an issue in the heart of each person who visits the shrine."

Visits by politicians to the shrine are controversial because it memorializes 14 Class-A war criminals from World War II in addition to the war dead. Tokyo's relations with Beijing and Seoul have taken a battering over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to the facility.

While Friday's visit did not include any current Cabinet members, six parliamentary secretaries, including Eriko Yamatani of the Cabinet Office and Wataru Takeshita of the Environment Ministry, were present. The group included senior lawmakers from the LDP, the opposition Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) and People's New Party.

Asked his opinion on proposals to construct a separate, secular memorial facility for the war dead, Koga said it was not a feasible option.

"I cannot approve of such a facility," he said. "Yasukuni Shrine is the only memorial facility."

As for Koizumi's insistence on continuing to visit the shrine, and any possible visits by future leaders, Koga said: "The visits are issues in the hearts of prime ministers. It is important to watch the visits with calm feelings."

Presentations and Film

2006-04-19T11:48:00.000-05:00

Those of you who stayed til the end of the film know why the ending is important. I think the tendency some folks might have to read the film as "cute" or "sentimental" can be challenged by the ending, but you'll have to let us know what it was like for you. I know the film was hard to watch, and I know some of you discussed it in an impromptu class afterwards. Please share your thoughts and reactions (whether or not you discussed the film with others).

For me, the important thing for us to keep in mind in terms of the film is that, situationally, it's very real.

Big up to Amanda and Ray for their presentations!!

Please check out Amanda's Human Traficking Awareness Project to learn about activism here at UI, ways to get involved, and more about the problem.

Ray, thanks for giving us the chance to reflect on all the layers of hardship and trauma under the larger stories (of war, trafficking, etc.). I think the trench foot example really shows how every part of a person is affected, and adversely so.

Are you all okay?

2006-04-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

Please let us know here. I hope none of you were hurt or displaced!!! We can mobilize as a community to support anyone who needs anything, so holla!!

"Mom Izumicho Koizumi"

2006-04-13T11:13:00.000-05:00

My dear graduate school professor/adviser Jim Fujii, whose email I read in class, agreed to share this entry from his ongoing journal with us all.

4-12-06

MOM, IZUMICHO AND KOIZUMI

As I was making my transition to Tokyo for a 9-month stay in early September of 2005, Koizumi was on the brink of winning what would be a landslide victory, using the privatization of the postal system--a moribund issue widely resisted by the populace a short few months ago but transformed with the help of the Japanese mass media trumpeting the virtues of privatization (min'eika) at every turn--as the signifier of everything good and the promise of even greater things for Japan. The word globalization had lived its half life, but it has been displaced by the much easier formula that lends itself to political manipulation by the apparent ease of its logic that promises economic success, national prosperity, and THE way for Japan to participate in the rather too complex matrix of dynamics that goes under the name of globalization.

Five years earlier, at the beginning of the millenium, we had just begun to recognize the signs of ninchishō--the preferred term to cover a multitude of cognitive disorders associated with aging--in mom. The maze of social welfare and health programs proved to be daunting then as it is now amidst the changes wrought by policies of privatization that has come to touch virtually all aspects of lived life for the huge population of parents that had given birth to baby boomers (dankai no sedai). Anyone willing to look can see the much larger tidal wave of baby boomers whose “threat” the Koizumi administration anticipates by proleptically enacting draconian privatization, severe budget cuts and slashes that are hitting the parents of those boomers.

Not that long ago, a mixture of financial success, enlightened perspectives, and a long enduring Meiji-era legacy of wanting to look good to the West had Japan looking to the Scandinavian countries as a touchstone for improving its own system of delivering social, health, and welfare services to its population. There was pride behind the lament that economic prowess and prosperity had helped confer the unique if dubious distinction of having become the most rapidly “aging” society in the world, where aging meant longer life expectancy. The legion of dedicated workers at all levels—aids, helpers, NPO staff, nurses, care managers, health care educators—are quite numerous in fact, but the steep compressed slide from visions of hope to the wholesale abandonment of a society centered on integrated levels of care devised to provide a universal safety net and into a hopelessly fractured nonsystem of privatized profit-motivated agencies have left service providers and recipients alike bewildered and demoralized.

In late March, Dad and I met with Ms. Sasaki and Ms. Ikeda, the outgoing caremanager who handled Mom’s intake and certification as a level-2 care recipient, and the new one, upstairs at the Meidaimae Starbucks (unfortunately, the only non-smoking coffee shop in the area). I could feel Ikeda’s frustration from beginning to end, at a system in which she worked for years and was now feeling no choice but to leave because it would not provide the care that her level-5 Alzheimer’s suffering father-in-law would need. Confined to a wheelchair and incontinent, he (or rather, Ms. Sasaki) was told that it would be years before he could be admitted to a Tokuyō (Tokubetsu Yōgo Rōjin Hōmu), the very few certified homes for the elderly equipped to take Alzheimer’s patients. Unfortunately (though understandably) this situation was affecting the conduct of her work, and so she informed us in a clearly unsympathetic way that Dad and Mom would be losing the kaigo (in-home) support they had been receiving in the form of a subsidized weekly housecleaner. It has become entirely too easy to find situations that fall under the Keseyian-formulation of catch 22, and here was yet another. At age 88, Dad dutifully rises at 6:30 a.m. every day of the week, and gets things going. After taking the garbage out, depending on the day, he will get the laundry going, make sure the front yard and road is swept (this, with Mom’s help), and then begins making what is a combination of breakfast and lunch (though brunch just doesn’t sound right for these largely Japanese meals); that meal takes place at 10 a.m. promptly, and after doing dishes, mom forces him to rest for thirty minutes. At 10:30 he leaves the house for two or three destinations, ranging from nearby Sasazuka to Asagaya (35 minutes by bus), Shinjuku (45 minutes by bus) or Shibuya (25 minutes by train, 50 minutes by bus). Each day he usually goes to at least three of these places to get the ingredients Mom finds agreeable. Many Japanese are quite finicky about the freshness of Store A’s bass, the produce at X Market, and so on, but in Mom’s case it is increasingly an issue of failing taste buds—very likely from the strong medications she takes. Dad returns at anywhere from 12:30 to 2:30 or so, and then does whatever else requires work: trimming the bushes and trees, taking in the laundry, paying bills, doing his (Federal income) taxes, painting some rusted parts of the fence. And then he prepares their early evening meal, their “light” meal he says. He is the one who keeps track of Mom’s eight different pills, the prescriptions, doctor’s appointments, and arranging for the once a week housecleaner to come so that Mom can avoid her.

But his most demanding task is to deal with Mom when something triggers a tirade that results in thrown objects, overturned furniture, grabbing a knife, scissors, anything, and threatening to kill herself and or him. Mom’s gerentological neurologist has advised Dad to gently (?) restrain her and take the knife when this happens, and so far, he says he is up to the task. But I have witnessed a few of the “after moments” like these, and I can see the helplessness and fear in Dad’s eyes. Just yesterday I had to step in and take gardening scissors out of Mom’s hand as she went after Dad trapped in the very narrow confines of the kitchen area. So, back to the catch-22. Because Dad was deemed “too healthy” to receive a rating (1-5, with 5 being the highest level of in-home service need), his presence in the household makes them ineligible to receive government subvention for the housecleaning services. Of course, if Dad was not heroically taking care of her, she would be in an institution, costing the government lots of money. I tell Sasaki, the outgoing care-manager who works for a private for-profit company subcontracted by the Ward to be intake-social worker that Dad has fallen down twice in the last two months, the first time resulting in two broken ribs. He is clearly weakening. But Sasaki has personalized her response. She does not say it, but feels that her father-in-law, a level-5 wheelchair bound Alzheimer’s patient cannot get into a proper facility, so if the law states that as of April 1, there can be no subvention to a household where there is a member who can carry out care for the patient, then that is what must be.

A few weeks after this “decertification,” I contact a group home designed to take Alzheimer’s patients—for future reference, not immediate admittance—but am told that in order for them to admit a patient, that patient must have family or a responsible relative whom they can contact and work with once they accept a patient. Fine, my father will be here. But no, they say, he is too old, and perhaps too frail. [Note: Jim will soon have to return to his home in California, where he is also needed.] So, the catch-22: he is too healthy to keep them from getting government help with in-home cleaning, but too frail to serve as Mom’s family member once she is admitted to a facility. The facility that peremptorily refused us is Yokufūkai Himawari Group Home, run by the most famous non-profit institution for the elderly in Japan.

Nobody Knows

2006-04-12T01:49:00.000-05:00

Amanda and Ray will be making presentations next time. Woo-hoo! The movie we'll watch (Dare mo shiranai) is 2 hours and 18 minutes, so it'll be a very full class, probably with little in the way of a break. You've been warned.

Many of you will be interested in this discussion on "The Diene Report on Discrimination and Racism in Japan".

Here are some links related to the film we'll watch.
Interview with the director, Kore-eda Hirokazu
Official film site (in Japanese)
Adam Campbell's review for Midnight Eye
IFC "About the Film"
Jamie Russell's review for the BBC
Sarah Wilkins' review for the San Diego State student newspaper
Michael Atkinson's review for the Village Voice

And not like it matters to anyone but me, but creepy "Enken" (or Endô Kenichi) has a very small role in this film. He was in a movie with Uchida Shungiku called Visitor Q, which I don't intend to see. (You all might know him from The Happiness of the Katakuris or TV shows.)

Just my way of saying "thanks for a great class"

2006-04-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

Periodically, a friend reminds me of this photo of Phil Spector, a bad – if "resplendently coiffed" – man.

Enjoy.

Orpha Day

2006-04-11T20:30:00.000-05:00

This post is for discussing our class session today. You should also check back to read comments under earlier blog posts (Ed recently left one under the FF post below).

If you want to learn more about Orpha, a dissertation from the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis by Nancy Smith is excellent (if hard to get), as is anything else by her. And there are, of course, Ferenczi's clinical diaries. Here is an excerpt from the only free online source of which I'm aware:

I’m going to describe a phenomenon, now, that Ferenczi observed during his groundbreaking treatment of Elizabeth Severn, of which mutual analysis was an inseparable part. The two of them, Ferenczi and Severn, named this phenomenon "Orpha". "Orpha" is the construct addressing an individual’s capacity to survive extreme circumstances, and important new work by Nancy Smith suggests that this phenomenon was not unique to Severn. This is how it was described in The Clinical Diary: "The enormity of suffering…and despair of any outside help, propel her[the patient] toward death; but as conscious thought is lost, or abandoned, the organizing life instincts ("Orpha") awaken…" (p. 8) "Orpha" is the last-resort preserver of self, the "guardian angel", in Ferenczi’s words "producing wish-fulfilling hallucinations, consolation fantasies; it anesthetizes the consciousness and sensitivity against sensations as they become unbearable." [p. 9] During severe trauma, the personality splits, abandoning the body to its fate. The fragment of a pre-existing self that contains affect is hidden away by Orpha, the "innate maternal protective process", intellect stripped of affect. Orpha itself, hypervigilant and devoid of basic affect, mediates with the outside world to try to guard against the intrusion of further harm. As with Stolorow and Schwartz’s conceptualization of the "presymbolic" trauma, but from a different perspective, Smith’s understanding of "Orpha" demands a rethinking of trauma and its significance (no less than of the significance of the mutual analysis of Severn and Ferenczi for the development of psychoanalysis). A key element of the "Orpha" construct for today is that Orpha does not belong to the intersubjective world. According to Smith, Orpha, the "innate maternal protective process", may be "part of humanity’s genetic grammar, to ensure the continued survival of the species when attachment becomes impossible in times of trauma."
Source

"Mutual analysis" might sound weird or scary, but it's actually pretty interesting. If this kind of thing interests you, you should check out Ferenczi.

"Japan may shed image of equality"

2006-04-09T15:45:00.000-05:00

Sun, Apr. 09, 2006
Japan may shed image of equality:
Some say gap between haves and have-nots growing

By CHISAKI WATANABE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TOKYO - Yoshinori Umemoto once made a decent living as a writer and assistant TV director - until his freelance jobs dried up and four production companies he worked for closed down.

Now, he's one of a growing number of Japanese on welfare, crammed into a tiny studio apartment and living on a meager budget in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

"I'd never imagined myself being on welfare," said Umemoto, whose economic problems have been compounded by battles with clinical depression and diabetes.

Meanwhile, in another part of Tokyo, Mayumi Honda and Hinako Yamazoe were busy indulging in a favorite hobby: spending money on luxury goods.

The two women, both 44, said they had just spent about $1,700 each on an Emporio Armani jacket, a Bally handbag, Max Mara shoes and other pricy items.

"I just bought a condominium, because I was told it's better to buy now. I had been saving up for it," said Yamazoe, a veterinarian, as they strolled past squeaky clean shops filled with Chanel and Louis Vuitton merchandise.

As the Japanese economy emerges from a decadelong malaise, the nation is confronting a widening gap between haves like Yamazoe and have-nots like Umemoto. The differences are challenging the country's view of itself as solidly middle class and egalitarian.

On the upside, conspicuous consumption is in style. Luxury condominiums priced at $850,000 are selling briskly and elegant cruises are growing in popularity. The number of Japanese millionaires rose by 10 percent from 2001 to 2004, to 1.34 million, Merrill Lynch's annual World Wealth Report said.

The poverty rate - the proportion of the population below 50 percent of the national median income - nearly doubled from 8.1 percent in 1994 to 15.3 percent in 2000, the latest figure available. The percentage of households with no savings, once unknown in high-saving Japan, hit 22.8 percent last year, the highest since the national surveys began in 1953.

The percentage of people on welfare has been steadily growing from 0.7 percent in 1995 to 1.11 percent in 2004, according to the Health Ministry. The number of households receiving welfare reached 1 million in October for the first time since the social welfare program began in 1951.

The changes have been a shock to Japan, which since World War II has prided itself on its ability to foster spectacular economic growth without the social ills - rampant homelessness, poverty and economic inequality - common in the West.

The trend has triggered a string of books on disparity, including the best seller "Lower Class Society," and the topic has become a constant fixture in parliamentary discussions.

Fears are rising that inequality could one day turn Japan into a polarized, high-crime, slum-ridden society. The government on March 30 launched a task force to come up with measures to help jobless workers and bankrupt companies.

"Never has our society been so aware of the gap," said Hajime Ota, an economist at Doshisha University in Kyoto. "More are on welfare and there are increasingly more students who have difficulty paying for school lunch. This is really worrying."

The causes for the widening disparity are various.

Japan's rapidly aging population is more prone to economic problems and the erosion of the lifetime employment system has led to layoffs and labor instability. Government budget reductions have led to cuts in public works projects that once kept many low-skilled laborers on the job.

Values are also changing. Workers once proud to toil anonymously for the sake of company profits now are more likely to want to reap the benefits of their hard work and get rich. Companies once willing to carry unproductive or aging workers for the sake of social harmony are more likely to lay them off.

Companies are also turning increasingly to part-time workers, who typically are paid less and are not entitled to the benefits of full-timers. When a business encounters trouble, these workers are the first to be let go.

"What's been the backbone of social stability has changed as the number of part-time and temporary workers goes up," said Jiro Yamaguchi, political scientist at Hokkaido University.

The gulf between rich and poor is expected to expand even further, in part because of a trend among many young people to shun all-consuming career-track employment in favor of less-demanding part-time jobs. Experts worry that those without skills or education will suffer economically later in life.

"They are likely candidates for welfare as they grow older without work experience and find themselves not qualified," said Norihiro Oyama, who heads a support group in the Tokyo suburb of Saitama for those who are on welfare.

Welfare recipients get a certain amount of general allowance depending on the size of the family and it includes money for food. They also get housing and health allowances.

Oyama and others have blamed the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for encouraging inequality through spending cuts and deregulation that have exposed companies to more competition and chipped away at seniority-based compensation systems.

But Koizumi said recently in parliament that having a system of winners and losers has its benefits.

"I don't necessarily think having disparity is a bad thing," he said. "We want a society where your hard work is rewarded."

Despite the changes, Japan has a long way to go before it shows the disparities in income of, for example, the United States, said Hiroshi Tanaka, marketing professor of Hosei University in Tokyo.

Even with the increase in welfare cases, Japan is hardly a poverty stricken nation. The standard measure of income disparity, the Gini coefficient, shows Japan still more egalitarian than the United States and Britain, but less egalitarian than Sweden or Germany.

The widening gap between haves and have-nots could also be a measure of the increasing diversity in Japanese society, which has long prided itself on conformity, some say.

"Some people may be content with being a lower class as long as they can enjoy life, while others want to double their 100 million yen," said Tanaka, the marketing professor. "The purpose of life for an individual will become more diverse."

a heartbreaking story

2006-04-09T13:48:00.000-05:00

An 8th grader (14 yrs. old) named Anthony Soltero was one of the many, many youth who participated in student walk-outs to protest the immigration bill. Tomorrow, many more youth are likely to walk out of school and participate in protests across the country. Anthony was called into the Assistant Principal's office when he went back to school. He was reportedly told that he would be sent to prison for 3 years for being one of the walk-out organizers. My understanding is that the Asst. Principal's threat was not only inaccurate, but in violation of his role in the school district. Distraught, Anthony phoned his mother and then shot himself in the head. He died several days later. While this story isn't related to Japan, I felt compelled to share it. I hope this is a horror that will not remain untold.

an interview with S. Paz about Anthony

press release

野宿者

2006-04-07T00:24:00.000-05:00

If you all want, we can talk more about Father Fucker and related issues next time. Then we'll move into a discussion of San'ya and homelessness with A Man with no Talents.

Violence directed at the homeless has made the headlines from time to time in recent years in Japan. It will be helpful to keep these stories in mind as you read A Man with no Talents. Also, please keep in mind that the narrator in FF tells us she was homeless and living on the streets after she ran away from home.

"Homeless man killed for yelling"
03/18/2006
The Asahi Shimbun

HIMEJI, Hyogo Prefecture--Four boys arrested in the grisly torching death of a disabled homeless man said they did it because he had reacted angrily to their earlier acts of rock-throwing and verbal abuse, police said.

Makoto Amazutsumi, 60, suffered an agonizing death last October when a group of four teenage boys surrounded him and tossed Molotov cocktails at him.

Amazutsumi had lived for years in the same spot, under a bridge over the Yumesakigawa river in Himeji, police said.

Two boys, an 18-year-old third-grade senior high school student who was the apparent leader of the gang, and a 15-year-old third-year junior high school student in the city, were arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder and in connection with violations of a law on firebombs.

Two other boys, both 16, who are in custody in a separate extortion case, were rearrested Friday for their alleged role in the slaying.

Police said the boys had admitted killing the homeless man.

The 18-year-old instructed the other boys to prepare firebombs to teach Amazutsumi a lesson for having had the cheek to answer back when they abused him earlier, police said.

According to police, the four boys ganged up on Amazutsumi while he was asleep on the morning of Oct. 22 last year. Amazutsumi was in a makeshift bed of cardboard when the boys attacked him around 4:15 a.m.

Several homeless people were nearby and managed to flee. But Amazutsumi, because his mobility was restricted, remained trapped.

According to officers at the Himeji Police Station and others, the four boys made it a habit of harassing homeless people, often targeting Amazutsumi.

The boys told police they wanted to take revenge on Amazutsumi because he used to yell at them.

At first, the boys tossed three large beer bottles filled with gasoline. But those didn't break. As a backup, the boys had prepared several glass bottles used for soft drinks, which they filled with gasoline and set alight, police said.(IHT/Asahi: March 18,2006)

The population of those beneath the poverty level in Japan has practically doubled (from 8.1 percent in 1994 to 15.3 percent in 2000) over the past decade or so. More people have no savings (approximately 23%). Conservative official estimates put the overall homeless population at around 26,000 right now.

Here are some links:

Homeless Women in Japan

Women and Poverty in Japan

Foreign-Japanese Workers Action

"Japan's Homeless Face Ageism"

Photos (scroll down)

"Homeless People Evicted from Osaka Parks"

Gaizao: Radical Voice of East Asia Blog

Discussion Questions

2006-04-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

For some time now, I've been concerned that everyone posts long comments right before class and that there hasn't been much sustained discussion throughout the week. Your comments have been excellent, especially the ones for our last session, but I'd like to see you all engage each other more in conversation.

I'm giving you two questions to discuss as a follow-up to our last class. I think you did a really excellent job of breaking down the differences between the film and the novel, so I'd like you to think more about the novel.

1. If we read carefully, we can find details in the narration (in how the story is told) that indicate some of the long-term effects of the abuse Shizuko suffered. What do you think is significant about how the story is told? Be as specific as possible.

2. What do you think of Chie's situation? If you were to imagine writing the story from her point of view, what kinds of questions would you consider?

JoHanna Wants to Know ...

2006-03-31T17:11:00.000-06:00

... what you still want to know about the "comfort women." What specific information would you be interested in hearing more about? Are there questions you still want answered?

She wants to use your answers to help her develop her presentation for our class.

ファザー　ファッカー

2006-03-29T22:08:00.000-06:00

This long post and what we'll discuss and watch next week include graphic representations of sexual violence. I am giving you a lot here so that we can push through more in class together. The verbal contracts we made in class about how we'll approach this material hold for the blog discussion too. Be gentle with yourselves and each other.

We'll watch clips from the film based on Uchida Shungicu's (her romanization) 1993 novel Fazaa Fakkaa (Father Fucker). Uchida’s decision to call her autobiographical novel Father Fucker warrants some discussion at the outset. The use of two widely known English words, one of which is a vulgarity, for this Japanese novel helped to attract attention – obviously. The eponymous protagonist is described as a “fucker” – not a survivor, victim, or even a girl. This phrase also feeds into some existing myths about sexual abuse. For example, in Japan, children sexually abused by family members are misassigned agency as soon as the abuse is rendered into language (as soon as it's "named"). The word for “incest” (a term that is problematic in its associations in English too, as is evident in the use of the words “between” or “with” in many dictionary definitions) in Japanese is kinshinsôkan, a word meaning “sexual relations WITH close relatives” and which contains the character (sô or ai) for “mutuality” or “reciprocity.” If you keep reading, you'll get a better sense of why I'm singling "with" out as a problem. In Japanese, the word is this: 近親相姦｛きんしんそうかん｝

That a well-known cartoonist would publish a novel based on her own experiences of childhood sexual abuse and call it Father Fucker, invoking the linguistic and cultural myths that assign agency to sexually abused girls, could not have been a marketing accident, and the myth of consent will be one focus of our class discussions. Uchida’s deft marketing sense has contributed to what was (at least in the 1990s) a diverse and lucrative business bearing her name. Uchida “goods,” such as comic books, essay collections, music cd’s, and nude photos (taken while she was pregnant), along with periodic television appearances, have made hers somewhat of a household name in Japan. Given the notoriety of its author and the escalation of the marketing of Uchida goods following its publication, many readers may be more prepared to see the words Father Fucker as shocking or provocative than to recognize the irony in such a title. I will say more about this in class.

In a book of essays, Uchida Shungicu describes the origin of this title, shedding some light on how she (and Shizuko) came to be called “father fucker”:

"If your stepfather hadn’t done you, you never would have become such a great manga artist, huh?” About four years ago, my boyfriend at the time said this to me. “Father Fucker!” is what that same boyfriend cruelly accused me of being one year later. I wondered what I was if even my boyfriend would call me that, and I couldn't stop crying. But about six months later, I ended up thinking, “If I’ve cried this much, I’d better figure all this out,” and with that I began to feel better. [all these translations are mine, by the way]

For Uchida, “figuring out” and feeling better meant writing, but once she had brought her completed first novel to the publishers, she saw how the emphasis on maximizing profit would determine the way her story would be marketed. Yesterday, in the elevator, Chika asked me whether the story was true. This question was a tough one for Uchida even at the get-go.

Every single day [at the publishers] I was asked the same question over and over again to the point where it was all I heard: “Is all that true?” And then when they’d say, “Well, we’ve got to sell copies, so let’s go ahead and put ‘autobiography’ on the jacket cover,” I realized how it works and replied, “Sure, go ahead, since you are publishing it for me, I don’t want to risk all the hassle of the book not selling. Do it.” But I hadn’t expected that everyone would be so interested in whether or not it was true.

In this moment not only her work, but Uchida’s life became a commodity subject to the dictates of the marketplace. I'd like us to think of it as autobiographical fiction, thinking of both words and being mindful of what we've already discussed about how fiction and the arts can serve as special vehicles through which stories of horrifying trauma can emerge – even when they might be "beyond words" (as our granny said in the documentary) in conversation.

In interviews and essays, Uchida has discussed aspects of her childhood and indicated that the novel is, indeed, based on her own childhood. The following is an example of the elliptical descriptions of her early years Uchida often provides in her nonfiction writing:

My stepfather came into the home where I lived with my mom and my younger sister and created a paradise for him and only him, which I kicked down and left for rubble when I ran away. But . . . I am not “poor little sexually abused Uchida-san."

In light of the dynamics of trauma we discussed earlier in the semester (especially in relation to the comfort women), it is not surprising that much is left unsaid in her discussions of her own trauma and that those gaps take shape only in fiction.

Father Fucker epitomizes the complexities of “survivor discourse” in that not only are barriers to telling represented in the story, the book itself was received with considerable hostility and outrage, and she was rebuked for “telling” her "unpleasant" story publicly as a novel. Publishing house exploitation did not protect Uchida from the harsh criticism that her novel was untruthful and distasteful. Rather, the novel’s promotion exacerbated certain criticisms (according to the “any publicity is good publicity” model of profit-generation).

Telling stories of childhood abuse, sexual abuse in particular, can be so threatening to those who would wish to ignore and deny it that even a practice as immaterial as demonstrating “good manners” and filial piety can be picked up as a justification for dismissing the disturbing reality of abuse. Uchida expresses frustration with this kind of criticism:

After publishing Father Fucker, I was criticized for “disclosing my real parents’ faults,” but I just wondered what that was about. People even believe that in romantic or married relationships anything a man does to a woman should be kept secret. What the hell is that? I don’t know.

As was the case for Uchida herself, derisive name-calling serves as the protagonist’s reason for reflecting on her childhood and deciding to “figure it out” by telling her story. Father Fucker begins with her description of her journey back to childhood. When I was writing my dissertation, I translated some passages, which I'll share with you for comparison. One comes right at that beginning:

People often tell me I have a face like a prostitute. When I tell them that I have had all sorts of job experiences that involved hostessing, they often ask, “Did you also do, um, you know,” implying selling my body. They ask in a lighthearted tone as if it were only natural. I haven’t let it show on my face, but I have hated that. Soon after I turned 16, I ran away from home and started out homeless, and I frequently thought that the one thing I wouldn’t do is sell my body. Even when it looked like someone would ask me to just try it, I would refuse. Still, without having any mean intentions, people will ask me in complete earnest, “Did you do it?” I got asked this so many times that more than getting angry, I thought it was strange. The people asking me this were not particularly cruel or callous people. So, for them to ask me like that must mean I really do look like I've hooked. I truly hated having people say that to me. I had lived my life thinking that was the one thing I would never do. I don’t care what other people think about me, but why do I have that kind of face?

Yesterday, I finally remembered. I was a prostitute. [...] My pimp was the person who raised me up until the age of sixteen, and furthermore she was my biological mother. My customer was her lover, the father who raised me.

In addition to being labeled a “father fucker” and an apparent prostitute from the outset, the protagonist’s very name, Shizuko, which literally means “quiet child,” is connected both to the way she is denied a voice and her struggle to later claim it. One can hardly say “reclaim” in the case of one silenced before she can speak. While still a toddler of three or four, Shizuko was already conditioned to accept injustice and physical pain through repeated acts of violence and neglect, groomed, as it were, by her mother and biological father for the sexual abuse she later suffers by teaching her to anticipate assault and ridicule.

The adult narrator’s earliest memory of physical abuse – which occurred prior to her entrance into kindergarten – is having been hit in the head by her biological father with a dresser drawer “because” she asked him to bring home money at the instigation of a neighborhood adult who knew Shizuko’s mother was supporting the family. In concert with this training to expect violent punishment, she is taught by her father to keep secrets, a lesson which deforms her developing ability to communicate what she knows and what she sees. When one of her father’s girlfriends accompanies Shizuko, her sister, and her father to a beach outing, he tells Shizuko that she must not tell her mother (the implied punishment being further violence). The adult Shizuko includes these early lessons as part of a picture of her childhood prior to the years in which she was violently sexually abused by her stepfather, but it is up to the reader to think about how such early experiences limited, or perhaps determined, how Shizuko would interpret and organize her subsequent daily terror and pain.

There is a lot that happens in this novel, and I want to focus on some key themes and scenes that I'll want us to discuss in earnest on Tuesday. The first is related to the story Shizuko's family tells about themselves. In this story, Shizuko is blamed for her abuse. She is the "bad" kid, the problem child, and the outsider. We'll see examples of this in the film version as well.

Bombarded by criticisms that she was “weird” and “disobedient” and that her troubles were her own fault, the young Shizuko struggles to think against or out of the distortions imposed on her, but her attempts to disentangle herself from those distortions are constantly sabotaged. It is not until she turns sixteen that Shizuko can run away from the dangerous stories and her dangerous home. At sixteen, she describes her home life to a new boyfriend, whose sympathetic reaction assigns blame to her family, providing her with the first corrective reading of the abuse. It's like, "Hey, that's messed up. You don't need that." Soon after he says this, she is raped and beaten by her stepfather despite her repeated protestations. She describes finding the courage to leave after this brutal attack as epiphanic, born of a sudden realization that propels her to break away: “That’s right. I don’t really have to be here," she says. As pivotal as the boyfriend was, however, we should see her decision to run away as the culmination of years of struggling – carried out very much alone.

Now, here is the really big thing I want you to consider. Throughout the novel, Shizuko clearly signals to the reader that there is a significant disparity between her mother’s interpretation of events and her own perceptions even before she begins recounting memories. She even relates how this disparity led her to disavow relations with her mother and sister:

Even if I try to line up my memories with the stories I heard from my mom, they don’t match up very well. Eleven years after I ran away from home, I decided to cut all ties to my mother and sister once and for all at the end of an argument we had.

Beyond warning us that she and her mother do not share the same views as to “what happened,” she positions her “memories” (kioku) in opposition to her mother’s “stories” (hanashi). Although throughout the text many of her mother’s stories are qualified with grammatical signals that indicate that Shizuko’s memories differ from what she remembers her mother having said, these clues are frequently very subtle, such as the use of quotations, paraphrase, or words that attribute information to other sources. Peppered everywhere, yet never calling attention to themselves, these clues can be easily missed if a reader does not heed the narrator’s warning. I don't want you all to miss them!

The marked difference between the way the narrator describes her mother’s treatment of her and her sister as well as the mother’s insistence that Shizuko’s own behavior causes the abuse is connected early on to the mother’s feelings about her first husband (Shizuko’s biological father), to whom she frequently compares Shizuko. She had hoped that giving birth to Shizuko would transform her husband from a philanderer into a devoted husband, but, instead, he urged her to have an abortion and continued his relationships with other women. One could imagine that, being unable to express her resentment and anger directly at the absent father, the mother instead aims it at Shizuko, whom the mother always describes in the harshest terms. Significantly, when her younger sister demonstrates the good penmanship that their father had, their mother does not compare Chie to their biological father; “[...] on no occasion did my mom ever comment on the ways Chie was like our real dad. All she always ever said, like she was chanting the nenbutsu, was that I was like our real dad.” Such comparisons (“chanted” by her mother like a nenbutsu mantra, “namu amida butsu,” to Amida Buddha) are, for Shizuko, examples of how she was an outsider even in her own family, positioned beyond or away from home with her absent father.

There are lots of other examples of this sort of thing. With the division already firmly in place by the time her stepfather moves in, the script, as it were, for what would transpire is already partially written.

Shizuko’s role as the “bad” daughter and family outsider is quickly picked up by the stepfather, who, as we see in the scene in which he leads Shizuko and Chie over a condemned bridge, uses the mother’s schema to distort and twist events in ways that continue to blame Shizuko for that over which she has no control. Shizuko knows they should not cross this bridge, and she hesitates while her stepfather and Chie go on ahead, leaving her behind. She recalls being worried for Chie, “as her big sister,” but Chie was “unbelievably [...] enjoying the thrill.” Shizuko was left to decide whether to stay behind and incur his wrath or traverse the bridge, both options carrying the risk of physical danger. After the stepfather and Chie reach the other side, Shizuko is spotted on the bridge, and a crowd tries to coax her safely across. When she reaches the other side, she searches the crowd in vain for her stepfather and Chie like “Rocky looking for Adrian.” When she does find them, she is met with hostility and reprimand. Her stepfather calls her an “idiot.” She is “in trouble” (for getting caught) when, in fact, she was coerced into a dangerous situation by the very man who now rebukes her.

Her parents tell Shizuko that to be a “good daughter” and avoid further “punishment” she must be more compliant and “obedient.” When her stepfather touches her breasts in front of her mother, Shizuko protests, but her resistance is met by her stepfather’s complaint that she is not “obedient” (sunao), and her mother follows this up by admonishing her in a similar way: “Shizu-chan, please be more obedient.” This pattern escalates to the point where her mother routinely sends Shizuko off to be raped, warning her not to disobey or “go against” her stepfather. The message here is not to obey so that the abuse will stop; it is to obey and endure (so that the abuse can continue). The confusing message that Shizuko needs to accept abuse obediently in order to be a “good daughter” is never challenged. Being “obedient” means to repress any instinct to protect herself. Shizuko struggles to understand just what the word “obedient” means in these moments, which signals to the reader that even as a child, she was able to recognize that something was wrong with her family’s vocabularies and stories.

In the film based on the novel, we will watch her mother wash rice noisily and intently, rhythmically rinsing the rice against the metal bowl as if to drown out the sounds of her daughter being raped. In the novel, the mother not only actively avoids acknowledging the abuse, she uses Shizuko to avoid becoming the abused herself. For example, she asks Shizuko to find out what her stepfather does on Sundays and holidays that keeps him away from their home all night. (He is with his other family at these times.) Her mother relies on Shizuko to voice the question about his other family that she herself is afraid to ask. When Shizuko asks the question, she bears the brunt of his anger in her mother’s stead. Her mother’s use of Shizuko to say what she herself will not say (and endure what she herself will not endure) is inextricably linked to another aspect of her family fiction, one which involves a considerable amount of what Shizuko describes as “melodrama.”

In her representation of her first marriage, the mother portrays herself as having been battered and neglected by a philandering and seldom employed husband who spent their money on gambling and other women. Shizuko describes her mother’s relationship with her stepfather less sympathetically. For example, when her stepfather beats her mother and then threatens to leave her while walking away, Shizuko describes her mother pleading with him, “Please come back!” Shizuko describes her mother as looking like a “character in a melodrama.” This story raises the problematic relationship between battered women and their children. While not vilifying battered women as participants in their abuse, a myth that continues to impede domestic violence prevention, we cannot overlook the difference between inequality of power in adult-adult relations and the dependency characteristic of adult-child relations.

Without denying the difficulty involved in escaping a violent spouse or the trauma suffered by battered women whose children are also abused (and who may, in fact, also abuse her children), I think this novel (without hammering the message in readers’ heads) communicates something like: “She could have saved me, but she didn’t.” Shizuko’s narration demonstrates it even if it's not so "in-your-face." For example, when the mother calls her lover, the stepfather, back after he has beaten her (as if his presence were the sole means of attaining the distorted dream of a “family” for which she yearns), we see the meaning of her pleas from Shizuko’s perspective. Her mother’s “melodramatic” desperation seems fake in Shizuko’s retelling – not in the sense that it did not happen; it was artificial (like play-acting) in comparison to the materiality (real-ness) of Shizuko’s own pain. Her mother’s “melodramatic” story does not tell the truth of how Shizuko was made to suffer. The mother’s version masks the abuse with melodramatic pathos and stock characters: the suffering wife, the violent womanizer, and the two daughters, one good, one bad.

Shizuko’s assigned role as the “problem” child (“sick in the head” according to her stepfather) masks the role thrust upon her to maintain her mother’s relationship with her stepfather at all costs. The narrator describes feeling as if she were being manipulated and abused by her parents for their amusement. For example, after Shizuko had written a letter addressed to them in honorific language “To Mother Dearest and Father Dearest” (Okaasama, Otôsama e), her stepfather gets angry that he was not shown the proper deference by having his name written first. Her mother sends her to talk with him, and when she asks what he wants, he replies, “I don’t know! What a pest!” Shizuko describes feeling like an “ingredient” or “material” (zairyô) necessary for such exchanges:

My stepdad and mom even smirked like they were enjoying themselves by sending me back-and-forth like that. And this kind of thing happened over and over again. Even as a child, I could sense there was something creepy going on with them. It wasn’t long before I realized I was being used as an ingredient for that environment.

Although her stepfather insists Shizuko call him “Father Dearest” (otôsama), her mother tells Shizuko that she herself chose to use this honorific term of address. She recalls how her mother told her that in kindergarten she declared that from that point on she would refer to them as otôsama and okaasama. However, Shizuko remembers several conversations in which her stepfather did, in fact, insist on this method of address, and she describes not having liked using it. To see past the distorted “double-talk” (which was also used to enforce and maintain the story that Shizuko was “bad”) requires that the reader trust in Shizuko’s perceptions, just as she herself struggles to come to trust her own perceptions as an adult narrator.

In addition to casting Shizuko as the “bad daughter,” her mother (and later stepfather) find fault with those on the “outside” who challenge the myth of the “good” family, such as the woman who told Shizuko to ask her biological father to bring home money when she was a toddler and the teachers who later try to foster Shizuko’s developing talents and dreams. When she decides she wants to write manga, Shizuko tells her elementary school teacher who gives her a drawing pad to encourage the young girl. Happy with this gift and excited about her new dream, Shizuko eagerly returns home to tell her mother, but she is not met with the kind of encouragement she anticipates. Her mother angrily objects to Shizuko’s wish to draw manga and insists that she return the drawing pad. When the stepfather arrives home and learns of Shizuko’s manga writing aspirations, he is even angrier. Having already determined that Shizuko will become a doctor, they perceive manga writing as frivolous and “stupid.” The direction their conversation takes, however, reflects the need they have to disparage differing opinions or practices in order to maintain the myth that their family is “good.” Instead of looking at the meaning of how fostering a child’s interests might encourage her to excel in many areas, they see the teacher as having acted inappropriately by giving Shizuko a drawing pad. Her stepfather exclaims, “What idiots. All these damned teachers are complete idiots!” Shizuko goes on to tell us that “no matter who the teacher was, he’d put them down, calling them cheapskates,” and that both her mother and stepfather even spoke ill of her teachers’ “personal lives.” Their litanies of other people’s problems are described as increasingly frantic and desperate in proportion to the escalation of the horrors at home.

Toward the end of her eighth grade year (when she is fifteen years old), Shizuko begins having sex with her boyfriend and classmate, Hiroki, and soon after fears she is pregnant. Her mother also becomes suspicious, noticing signs of pregnancy such as morning sickness, and she warns Shizuko that if her stepfather were to find out, he would “kill” Shizuko. Shizuko recalls maintaining the daily hope that her period would finally come. It becomes increasingly difficult to deny her pregnancy, and her mother eventually reveals Shizuko’s condition to her stepfather, whose first reaction is to call Shizuko a “whore.” Shizuko tells us that she “did not know the meaning of that word.” He then beats Shizuko “more times than [she] could count,” and eventually demands to know with whom she had sex. He takes Shizuko and her mother in a taxi to Hiroki’s house ( this was Shizuko’s first ride in a taxi), and “typically” worried about what “people” (the taxi driver) might think, he remains silent and composed for the duration of the ride, but upon arriving at Hiroki’s house, he blows up again, unable to contain his rage, screaming at Hiroki’s father, “You want me to do it to your wife? Huh? What do you think?” Shizuko remembers thinking that this was a very curious question, perhaps because it conflated the categories of “wife” and “stepdaughter.” Her stepfather proceeds to attack Hiroki, and after Hiroki runs off, he begins beating Shizuko again. Before leaving for home with her mother, the stepfather turns to Shizuko and says, “Don’t bother coming home. I’ll let this family have you!” You'll notice this scene is quite different in the film version we'll watch. This still photo comes from the film.

Shizuko’s initial reaction upon being left at Hiroki’s is one of relief, of being “lucky.” And she soon witnesses an entirely different way of expressing anger, when Hiroki’s parents sit the two of them down and ask if they understand the gravity of their situation. His mother asks Shizuko if she would like to take a bath. For Shizuko, who had been effectively isolated and unable to make friends, this was a new experience. “Raised with the warning that I was not to make friends, I had never bathed at another person’s home before.” Restricted social interactions and limited experiences with people outside the family are characteristic of abusive homes as Judith Herman (the woman who wrote the book Trauma and Recovery that I told you about) explains:

[F]amilies in which child abuse occurs are socially isolated. It is less commonly recognized that social isolation does not just happen; it is often enforced by the abuser in the interest of preserving secrecy and control over other family members. Survivors frequently describe a pattern of jealous surveillance of all social contacts. Their abusers may forbid them to participate in ordinary peer activities or may insist on the right to intrude into these activities at will. The social lives of abused children are also profoundly limited by the need to keep up appearances and preserve secrecy. Thus, even those children who manage to develop the semblance of a social life experience it as inauthentic.

The contrast between her parents and Hiroki’s leaves Shizuko feeling envious. Hiroki’s response to witnessing some of the culture of Shizuko’s home, on the other hand, predictably leads to retreat. She remembers that after her bath, she saw Hiroki studying at his desk and guessed that he was still intending to go to school the next day. Sensing an immediate shift in their relationship, Shizuko feels distant from the boy to whom she had grown so attached, and tellingly, their awkward discussion about a homework assignment proves to be their last conversation.

Shizuko describes her return home and how she was bombarded by questions from her stepfather – such as “Where did you do it? Did you do it here?” – and asked by her mother to “apologize to your father.” Her stepfather also accuses her of “doing it” with her homeroom teacher, a teacher Shizuko liked a great deal, and then he “examines” and “punishes” her. That's one of the toughest scenes, I think.

Shizuko recalls frequently “shutting down,” being “silent,” and “staring at the ceiling” in her recollection of this episode. The previous night she had been beaten by her stepfather in front of Hiroki and his parents, and no one intervened to stop the abuse. The abuse expanded outside the confines of their home, making it increasingly difficult for Shizuko to imagine that her survival could involve physical escape from pain. Like many victims of repeated torture and abuse, Shizuko describes her ability to survive the abuse in the moment as stemming from her desperate attempts to see herself as powerful. She imagines herself to be “strong” and unaffected by fear, and she promises herself that no matter what he does to her, she will not be broken. Certainly no one in her immediate surroundings gives Shizuko any cause to think that she does not deserve to be abused or could be saved. As the “surgery” scenario unfolds, Shizuko’s portrait of her mother’s limitations indicates why imagination provided a necessary function for her.

Although my mom seemed frightened that my stepfather would really sew me shut like he said, she never once said “Stop.” To me, it seemed like that’s what she wanted too. From the beginning I had never thought she would save me, and I solemnly washed myself in the bath tub. I opened my legs wide and leaned back down on the “operating table” my stepfather had made by spreading out some newspaper.
My mom no longer questioned him. And, of course, she didn’t stop him.
[...]
I was silently staring at the ceiling. The surgery never got underway.
My stepfather said, “Your pulse is too high. I can’t perform surgery like this."
I took this to mean, “I have scared you,” which made me angry. Because no matter what my stepfather tried to do to me, I believed I could be strong and not get scared, plead with him, or kiss his ass.

The next morning, she asks her mother, “Why did Dad do it with me?” Her mother tells Shizuko that he thought he might induce a miscarriage.

Here is the next big point. A particular word Shizuko uses in the question above and in many other passages related from the vantage point of the adult survivor to describe being raped requires some discussion. Her use of the conjunction meaning “and” or “with” (と) to describe the sexual abuse in Father Fucker as “sex with my stepfather” – as opposed to a grammatical pattern that would more accurately reflect the unidirectionality of rape – is a distortion that stems from the myth that she was somehow a participant in her stepfather’s violence. We can look at this “with” as both a discursive expression of the stepfather’s power and a signal reminding the reader of the discrepancy between the consent implied by the “with” (her stepfather’s version of the story) and Shizuko’s own experience as the abused. Unlike other competing interpretations of events in the text, such as how her mother’s “stories” differ from her “memories,” Shizuko does not attribute this particular phrasing (“sex with my stepfather”) to another source, providing some insight into the way in which the impact of repeated rape by her stepfather differs from her earlier experiences of abuse and discrimination. By looking at what is communicated by this word choice and how its functions in a particular point in the narrative, we can see how, even as an adult survivor, Shizuko has yet to extricate herself completely from the distortions so brutally imposed on her. For while she does, at times, use grammatical constructions that indicate an awareness of the unidirectionality of rape, the “と” appears more often.

Shizuko’s frequent use of “with” to describe the sexual abuse reflects how the family cover-up skews the lopsided nature of parent-child relations, as if Shizuko could consent to “sex with her stepfather” – a fiction most clearly illustrated when her stepfather is upset that her vagina is “not wet” and accuses her of “thinking about something else” instead of sex “with” him. This discursive absolution of his responsibility is similar to what occurs with the use of “sô” (“reciprocity” or “mutuality”) in kinshinsôkan (“incest”) in that by introducing the language of consent, attention is deflected away from the sexually abused child’s inability to consent. By using the “with” to describe rape as “sex with her stepfather,” the adult Shizuko reveals the extent to which she has internalized her parents’ distorted portrait of her as an active participant in her abuse. Our job is to notice such remnants of the abuse and its traumatic effects, to undo the “with” and its distractions, and to see past the “stories” and distortions to the truth of the trauma.

Shizuko’s early attempt to undo the “with” is strongly discouraged by her mother, who is portrayed as policing Shizuko’s resistance. This scene is a critical moment in that she attempts to express her rage and drive toward self-preservation directly. Having been called to the bedroom by her stepfather in what had become a pre-rape ritual, Shizuko finds a KNIFE. As narrator, she lets the reader know that she fully intended to stab her stepfather and bring an end to her abuse!! But she is stopped by her mother, who makes her put down the KNIFE. Although her mother claims to be acting in Shizuko’s best interest, the immediate circumstances reveal the limits (and irony) of such “parental” concern. For in knowing that her daughter has been summoned to be raped, the mother says, “Since you are still a child, you probably can’t understand this, but I am thinking about your own good in saying this to you. That is the one thing you can’t do. If you do, it will be the end.” Her mother’s “concern” for Shizuko not to kill her stepfather is expressed at the same time that the mother watches her daughter walk away to be raped by him. Taking up the KNIFE will be the “end” of something (the mother does not want to end). The confusing message that her mother is “thinking about [Shizuko’s] own good” at the same time that her mother is acting as Shizuko’s “pimp” triggers a return to a dissociative state, which Shizuko describes as her “usual” feeling as if she were looking at herself from a far-off and disconnected space.

The memories she can recall and piece together for the reader must stand for other memories left unsaid, because, as I have discussed in class, profoundly traumatic memories are fraught with proportionally profound gaps. Seared into her memory is the rape that led to her decision to run away, and it is also the most detailed memory of being raped that Shizuko (Uchida) shares with readers. In the scene when the stepfather admonishes Shizuko for “not being wet,” the physical pain of rape is so severe that even her highly developed ability to “check out” cannot numb it. The severity of the pain propels her to break out of her usual state of “feeling nothing.”

“Please, it hurts. It hurts,” I said.
“You can take it.”
My stepfather continued.
“I’m serious; it hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” I kept saying.
But my stepfather still kept at it, and then he suddenly yelled, “Shut up!”
And he smacked me down with all his might. He kept beating me like that, and I never said a word.

She goes on to describe her head hitting a glass door and being beaten with a guitar and a dresser drawer, the same “prop” her biological father had used to beat her when she was a toddler. Her mother and sister come home, and her mother, seeing Shizuko lying on the floor, asks her, “what did you do?”

The severity of this attack for which she is blamed leads Shizuko to what she recalls as her “sudden” decision to run away from home. Her growing capacity to challenge the “bad” daughter story is accelerated by the escalation of the abuse, and she stays up all night planning her escape. Shizuko’s discovery of her agency and how very different it is from the false agency imposed on her by her parents disrupts the pseudo-logic of the “with” and the rhetoric of consent that pretends she is a participant in or otherwise responsible for her own abuse. Her ability to run away from home and escape is severely hindered by a number of forces, not the least of which is her stepfather’s surveillance. Allowing the possibility that she can leave and act upon that new idea demonstrates extraordinary courage in the face of extraordinary adversity.

I hate to say so, but in the sequel to Father Fucker, the hope we feel after she runs away is quickly crushed when her family finds her and pulls her back into a world of routine abuse for a while longer. The sequel makes clear how running away from home did not guarantee the certainty that the knife might have. Not that this blog advocates murder or anything, but ...

I know some of you will want to read these.

2006-03-28T21:19:00.000-06:00

Japan's Navy

Iwasaki essay Part I
Part II

Yomiuri and Asahi Editors Call for a National Memorial to Replace Yasukuni

Free Speech and Japan Courts

Death by Hanging

2006-03-22T13:20:00.000-06:00

In addition to the presentation/paper I sent to your campus email addresses, I'd like you to read the following for next week. We'll watch "Death by Hanging," which lasts about two hours, take a very short break, enjoy (maybe not the best verb, but you know what I mean) Corey's presentation, and then use any remaining time to discuss the common themes.

Vincent Canby's review
Timothy Iles review essay
Nelson Kim essay
Lenin Imports Megastore Oshima Page
Hector Rodriguez essay
Midnight Eye piece by Go Hirasawa

From a campus computer you can access this article by Kyung Hyun Kim and this one by SONIA RYANG, who will join the UI faculty next year! (Woo-hoo!)

"tongues livid with history"

2006-03-19T21:33:00.000-06:00

a phrase from "In Remembrance" by Janice Mirikitani

Vincent Chin

Remember Vincent Chin

Thien Minh Ly

"Jump in Violence Against APAs

Lili Wang

Robert Jensen on white privilege

"Crossing Race and Nationality: The Racial Formation of Asian Americans, 1852-1965"

"What's so funny about racism for sale?"

Big Bad Chinese Mama

"Asians are automatically labeled gang members"

"Mea culpa, too little too late"

"A timeline of hate"

VietUnity Press Release

2 Books on 2zday

2006-03-17T09:48:00.000-06:00

Please remember to bring both 17 and When the Emperor was Divine to class on Tuesday! We will have a very full session, so please also get a good night's sleep, eat a healthy lunch, and be ready for a pretty "high energy" class.

Additional Reading

2006-03-15T00:07:00.000-06:00

Children of the Camps
JAMN Resources
Case (i.e. Korematsu)Links and Resources
Life Interrupted
Zogby Essay
NCRR Statement on Redress on Azine site

Janice Mirikitani Links:

We, the Dangerous
Janice Mirikitani Info
Poet Laureate of San Francisco
"Why is Preparing a Fish a Political Act?"
I'll be reading one of Mirikitani's poems in class.

Julie Otsuka

2006-03-14T21:45:00.000-06:00

AsiaSource Interview with Julie Otsuka

Terry Hong Interview with Julie Otsuka

William Nakayama interview with Julie Otsuka

Excerpt:
William Nakayama: Do you feel a deep suspicion toward authority?
Julie Otsuka: I do think I'm a sort of suspicious person. Yeah, I think so. In general I'm just wary, very wary I think. I think I get that from my mother. I don't trust that things are going well. Even if things are going well, I'm not sure. I don't take anything for granted.

William Nakayama: Is the humor that was in your comic writing a way of expressing or venting anger?
Julie Otsuka: I think comedy very much comes out of anger, or sadness. Good comedy I think especially has a vein of sadness in it too, but humor is sort of an expression of anger.

Post-Symposium Dinner

2006-03-08T01:27:00.000-06:00

That was a great dinner-discussion tonight! I know I wasn't able to hear everyone's reflections on the symposium and class visits, so please share some highlights and any lingering thoughts/questions below. (Please also check out the New Nationalisms blog for recent answers from Hoshino-san.)

By the way, Hoshino-san emailed me today. He remembered we would be having the dinner tonight and said to tell you all he had a great time speaking with you all and sends his thanks.

七生報国 Shichisei Hôkoku

2006-03-07T10:35:00.000-06:00

Those of you who have seen the film "Mishima: a life in four chapters" will remember that this is the slogan written across Mishima's hachimaki before he reads his demands, calls out "Long Live the Emperor" (天皇陛下万歳) and kills himself. In our story, this slogan is translated as "Seven lives in service of the country, long live his Majesty the Emperor."

(Photo: Ogata Ken as Mishima)

Asanuma Inejiro 浅沼稲次郎 Assassination

2006-03-07T01:05:00.000-06:00

The socialist leader Asanuma had just finished speaking out against U.S. Imperialism when the 17 year-old upon whom our story is based killed him.

Those of you who can read Japanese, do a google search with "山口二矢" and see what comes up ...

17 Part II

2006-03-06T22:37:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

Guess what I just found on the net? I am a little curious as to its authenticity.

政治少年死す

This work is not in any of his "collected works" anthologies. When I spoke about this story with Hoshino-san, he conjectured that Ôe must not want it in circulation because someone actually died (not just because his fear of right wing attacks, which he incurs anyway). I'm not sure if this link is in violation of Ôe's wishes or if it's even the real deal. I include it here because it's out there and will remove the link promptly if I learn anything that suggests I should.

Now, when I was talking with Hoshino-san, I was thinking of the right wing attack on the novelist Fukazawa Shichirô (hardly a leftist or much of a rebel), who around the same time published a novel about the imperial family getting decapitated (by leftists). I think I need to check with Hoshino-san, because I'm not sure if this is the incident to which he was referring or if someone died in Ôe's case too, but in Fukazawa's case, a 17 year-old right winger broke into Fukazawa's home and murdered a maid and almost killed Fukazawa's wife. (With a sword, if I remember correctly.)

I asked our amazing Japan Studies Librarian Sakai-san about Ôe's publishers, and she said they published the story in Feb., 1961 and then published an apology in the following March issue according to the Ôe Kenzaburô Literary Dictionary.

And without my even needing to pose the question ...

2006-03-06T21:19:00.000-06:00

You are already starting to answer it below.

Why did I have you read this story while we are watching the Byun Young-joo documentaries on "comfort women"???

"Comfort Women" Links

2006-03-04T17:48:00.000-06:00

Comfort-Women.Org
V-Day Spotlight on Comfort Women
Amnesty page on Comfort Women
Article for JPRI by C. Sarah Soh
Article by Nozaki Yoshiko

Background for Oe Day

2006-03-04T07:05:00.000-06:00

Ôe Kenzaburô will now have a major literary prize in his name. You can learn more about the prize here:

The Ôe Prize

You'll want to check out these links as well:

Ôe in Berkeley, 1999

Guardian Ôe Review with quotes from Hoshino and info I mentioned at the symposium!

Nobel Page for Ôe

Ôe Intro from Willamette

We'll spend the next class with Ôe (along with a some follow-up films and discussions on "comfort women")

The following excerpt comes from an interview with Ôe in the 6/30/05 Virgina Review:

So, we in Japan created, one or two years after the war, a new constitution. We adopted it and we used it. I was only twelve years old at the time, but I was influenced by the movement for teaching the people the spirit of the new constitution. Even at such a young age, I found it truly wonderful, especially in two points. First there was the preface, where it was written that we must create a new country and wanted to make clear to Asia and to all the other nations on this planet that we were determined to compensate for our wartime activities and that we must transform ourselves and must create a new attitude in Japan. This attitude would entail abolishing all arms. We would not have weapons and we would not use war as a method for solving difficult international problems. Very simply, no war and no arms. That was the concept of the ninth article of our constitution, and the spirit behind that article was expressed in the style of the preface, which was particularly moving to me. I was also moved by what was written about the fundamental role of education.�

[As you might imagine, this view wouldn't sit well with nationalists and political conservatives in Japan, i.e. those who have been engaged in efforts to repeal Article 9, etc. in contemporary Japan.]

Plenary Discussion and Dinner Announcement

2006-03-01T00:44:00.000-06:00

I am pleased to announce that a post-symposium discussion and dinner will be held for all of my students (in both classes) next Tuesday (March 7th) at 7pm at Oyama Restaurant in the Sycamore Mall at 1853 Lower Muscatine Rd., Iowa City, IA 52240. We will discuss the readings and talks over a Japanese dinner, which will be provided by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies thanks to the Freeman Foundation. Please bring a list of questions and comments to the dinner and be prepared to enjoy a lively and in-depth follow-up discussion over a nice meal. Please feel free to use this post to arrange carpools to the restaurant. Given the size of my classes, I regret that only my students can attend this educational event. After this special event, you will be asked to write about our discussion on the class blog.

a MUST SEE movie for this class!!!!!!!!!

2006-02-28T15:10:00.000-06:00

PLEASE NOTICE THAT SHIORI STARTED A CONVERSATION ABOUT HABITUAL SADNESS UNDER THIS POST. I OBVIOUSLY THINK THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FILM. I FEEL LIKE PART OF MY RESPONSIBILITY TO THE GRANNIES WHO WANTED THEIR STORIES TOLD IS TO KEEP SHOWING IT. PLEASE FOLLOW SHIORI'S LEAD AND SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS BELOW. I WILL GIVE YOU SOME ADDITIONAL INFO ON "COMFORT WOMEN" VIA THE BLOG IN THE COMING DAYS.

This Thursday, March 2nd, at 7 p.m. in 101 BCSB (corner of Washington and Madison), the Proseminar in Human Rights Film will screen Kazuo Hara's THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON (Japan, 1987, 122 min).

A 16 mm print!

I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society.
-Kazuo Hara Director, THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON.

THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON traces the efforts of Okuzaki Kenzõ to chronicle war crimes, including murder and cannibalism, committed by Japanese soldiers in occupied New Guinea during World War II. Okuzaki, who is infamous in Japan for having slung marbles at Emperor Hirohito in 1969, repeatedly criticizes the emperor during the course of the film, thus challenging one of the strongest taboos in Japan. For this reason Hara's film has never been shown on Japanese television, and major movie studios were afraid to distribute it.

The Proseminar is organized by Assistant Professor Louis Schwartz. All films are free and open to the public. Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you require accomodations to attend this event, or if you would like more information about the program, please call the Institute for Cinema and Culture at (319) 335-1348.

Women

2006-02-22T00:24:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

Wow, I was so proud of and for you all today! Hoshino-san and Naito-san were blown away by how neat, how bright, how engaged, how smart, (how cute), and how thoughtful you are. So it's not just me. You all really are a special bunch. I hope it was as special an experience for you all too. If you have any lingering questions for them, please post them here, and I'll make sure to pass them along (and post the replies).

One thing I completely neglected was to mention the class plan for next week. My bad.

In all the excitement I forgot to tell you that as part of the ongoing syllabus adjustment, I am giving you a week without reading. You have to attend the symposium on Saturday, so that will count as this week's "reading." Next Tuesday, I will be showing you some documentaries by the Korean filmmaker Byun Young-Joo, and we will discuss the experiences of "comfort women." Jason has already written some about reparations in several of his comments. This will become an even stronger question in the coming weeks, beginning with our engagement with the so-called "comfort women." We also have stuck pretty closely to the subjectivities and experiences of men in this class up til now for the most part, so it's about time we did some sustained analysis of how the Pacific War impacted a large number of Korean and other women.

So, enjoy the week with no reading and see you Saturday! Please also stop by the reception if you'd like to chat more with Hoshino-san and Naito-san in a relaxed and informal setting.

Readings for next week

2006-02-14T21:58:00.000-06:00

If we are lucky, Hoshino-san, Naitô-san, or both will visit our class next week. You should read the entire New Nationalisms blog before class next week (including links to translated text and any other still-active links):
New Nationalisms. That is your assignment unless your name is Chika or Shiori, in which case, you'll see a different assignment below.

You are among the first U.S. readers to encounter Hoshino-san and Naitô-san, so I have to rely on the blog-linked material for our class since there just isn't anything else in English yet. Having them here together with Su Tong is huge. If you can get a hold of a novel by Su Tong (at Prairie Lights or the library), I encourage you to read something by him too.

Posts you make to either this or the NN blog will count for this class for the next 2 weeks (starting now).

You should all thank Stephanie for the syllabus change. She took the discussion to the point I'd anticipated it reaching two weeks from now, so you will no longer be required to read from the Dower and Tanaka books. If that makes you happy, show Stephanie some love. :)

Chika and Shiori, since you have direct access to the original, you do not need to read the entire the blog. Please, instead, read Hoshino's website: 星野智幸アーカイヴス, especially some entries under 言ってしまえばよかったのに日記. Also, please read a novel or short story by Hoshino Tomoyuki. (Chika, you can find lots in the library. I would recommend especially 在日ヲロシヤ人の悲劇, ファンタジスタ, or ロンリー・ハーツ・キラー, but anything by him would be great if these are checked out.) Shiori and Chika, please also see me to get some articles by Naitô Chizuko in my office too, if possible. It would be great if you'd share your responses with the class on this or the NN blog.

JoHanna, please get better!
Doug, go to a doctor!
Chika, please get better!
Ed, we missed you after you left.

If you all want to watch the movie I showed clips from today (The Spook Who Sat By the Door), I was thinking of arranging a free screening later this semester. Let me know if you would like that.

Reflections on the "Sisterhood" Event

2006-02-13T18:04:00.000-06:00

This post is for those of you who attended the 30 Years of Sisterhood event on Saturday. Feel free to share your responses with the class!

Storytelling

2006-02-13T08:43:00.000-06:00

One of the messages we can take from Ceremony is that stories and words do make a difference. The stories Tayo tells, with their specific words and specific references, make the war mean something different than when it is narrated by Emo, for example. We find the same thing in writing that isn't what we think of as literature. News, history, public policy, and the law convey stories too. As just one example, some of you may have heard of the "cultural defense" in U.S. law, a defense invoked in cases involving a defendant whose culture is perceived as different from the dominant U.S. culture and as grounds for explaining or justifying criminalized behavior. When these cases come to trial, an academic "expert" testifies in court as to what that culture is. In other words, someone like me would enter a court room and tell a story about Japanese culture that supports the defense's case. I can give you some examples of situations when I've been asked to do this and how I responded in class.

Stories that serve the state and other powerful interests often work best when they can be reduced and easily represented by a catch phrase or buzz word. An example that will probably be familiar to you is the phrase “personal responsibility” or 自己責任 in Japanese.

In the U.S., this phrase has been used, for example, as shorthand for a larger story in which welfare recipients are depicted as “lazy.” By not exercising “personal responsibility,” those on welfare supposedly act as a drain on the economy according to this story. In this story, those who do not “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” are responsible for any economic or social hardships they endure in this “land of opportunity.” This story is easily translatable offshore, as is the case when we hear stories about how Third World communities "benefit" from the wages sweatshops provide. By virtue of our “largesse,” in other words, poor people can obtain employment and we can purchase cheaper goods. (A win-win situation in theory that is quickly undone when one begins to examine specific contexts and the relationships that structure export processing zones in places like the Philippines.)

For the story of “personal responsibility” to be compelling in any of these instances, one must conveniently leave out certain questions, certain voices, and certain details.

This story works just as effectively in Japan. “Personal responsibility” was a rallying cry for critics after three young Japanese citizens were taken hostage in Iraq in 2004. Upon their release, the three hostages, the youngest of whom, Imai Noriaki (18 yrs. old), was attempting to document the effects of depleted uranium weapons, and their families were subjected to vicious attacks, harassment, and ridicule. (Phone calls, violent threats, etc.) Chief among the criticisms lobbed at the three was the claim that their actions in Iraq showed a lack of “personal responsibility.”

The three were in Iraq not as part of the Japanese contribution to the U.S. war and occupation efforts, but to assist Iraqi people directly in defiance of the war. Government officials went so far as to demand that the three freed “anti-Japanese” rogues pay reparations for their repatriation expenses, an official response which was in keeping with the lack of official sympathy exhibited during their captivity.

Even as the kidnappers were still threatening to burn alive the three hostages, Yukio Takeuchi, a top official in the Foreign Ministry, said of the three, ``When it comes to a matter of safety and life, I would like them to be aware of the basic principle of personal responsibility.'' (Norimitsu Ohnishi in the NYT, 4/24/04)

The hostages were aid workers and investigators who divested themselves of some of their First World privilege and entered a dangerous environment in order to combat suffering for which they felt at least in part responsible. To be really clear, they felt a sense of "personal responsibility" to do something, to help, to make a difference. Yet their actions were roundly denounced as lacking “personal responsibility.” Think here of how Tayo and and Emo tell different stories about the same period of time. Even when they use similar words, the story is very different in meaning.

Given the close relationship between government and media (in both Japan and the U.S.), this distortion of the aid workers was every bit as predictable as it was required. For to allow the hostages their motivations would be to call into question Japan’s participation in the war. The invocation of this phrase reveals a fundamental premise undergirding First World culture, the notion that we, as First World subjects, must abide by and accept a rigid “us versus them” world view in order for society to function. (“You are either with us or against us.”) There may be shifts in who “we” are, but the logic remains the same.

Therefore, one could argue that the Japanese government’s fear of exposure required that the “anti-Japanese” released hostages be the objects of public outrage. Attempts to establish solidarity or sympathy with “them” constitutes a kind of “treason,” a violation of the foundational agreement to which we are expected to adhere. We might say the Japanese hostages felt personally responsible to “them” (or the BIG WE) and not “us.”

The renowned Japanese psychiatrist and trauma expert Saito Satoru interviewed the three upon their return and, according to the New York Times, said:

... the stress [the released hostages] were enduring now was "much heavier'’ than what they endured during their captivity in Iraq. Asked to name their three most stressful moments, the former hostages told him, in ascending order: the moment when they were kidnapped on their way to Baghdad, the knife-wielding incident, and the moment they watched a television show the morning after their return here and realized Japan's anger with them. "Let's say the knife incident, which lasted about 10 minutes, ranks 10 on a stress level,'' Saito said in an interview at his clinic Thursday. "After they came back to Japan and saw the morning news show, their stress level ranked 12."

Nonetheless, one of the three, Takato Nahoko, indicated that the stress brought on by the public criticism only deepened her commitment to her own very different understanding of her “personal responsibility.” Takato made clear her plans to return to Iraq to continue her aid work and explained that “she and the government didn't see eye to eye on exactly what ‘personal responsibility' meant.”

In his New York Times essay that appeared shortly after the hostages were released, Norimitsu Onishi makes an interesting observation regarding this phenomenon, one that transcends the specific way in which he may have intended it:

The former hostages' transgression was to ignore a government advisory against traveling to Iraq. But their sin, in a vertical society that likes to think of itself as classless, was to defy what people call here okami, or, literally, "what is higher.''

Okami, as we will discuss when Hoshino Tomoyuki arrives for the New Nationalisms symposium, is also a way to refer to the emperor, and one can argue that the three former hostages were in contravention of their roles as subjects of an empire, not necessarily or exclusively a Japanese one given Japan’s support role to a larger empire in the Iraq war. The topdown ordering of a society in which certain lives are assigned greater value than others certainly complicates the meaning of “personal responsibility” when uttered by those near the top towards those at the bottom or those who attempt to advocate for those at or near the bottom.

今井さんは「自己責任というより、今回のことで自分にとっての責任の取り方というのは、今回の体験を日本の人々に伝えること。つまりイラク戦争の現実とかそういうことを伝えていきたい」と述べた。

Related links:
Takato article (repost)

Imai profile

"Prisoners in Their Own Land"

We should all go to this!!!

2006-02-12T20:24:00.000-06:00

Proseminar in Cinema and Culture Spring 2006: Human Rights Film
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
Date: 03/02/2006 Time: 07:00pm
Location: Room 101 , Becker Communication Studies Building
Sponsor: Institute for Cinema and Culture / Phone: 335-1348

Of course, I will offer lots and lots of extra credit for attending this film!!!

Kimigayo-Hinomaru 101

2006-02-10T19:31:00.000-06:00

Here are some articles to give you a sense of the national anthem/flag issue:

kimigayo info

"High School Students Struggle Against National Anthem Enforcement"

"Three Views of the Hinomaru and Kimigayo Vote"

"Tokyo's Flag Law: Proud Patriotism, or Indoctrination?" (originally appeared in the New York Times

"Tokyo Teacher Is Punished for Pacifist Stance"

Against Flag-Anthem Bill Rally July 23
「日の丸・君が代」法制化反対！７・２３大集会

"The Tokorozawa High School Entrance Ceremony Incident"

Click and scroll down to read the "Opposition to Imposition of Hinomaru and Kimigayo at Entrance and Graduation Ceremonies" by NJWA

Japanese Revolutionary Communist League response

"Sing or be Sacked"

The People's Ombudsperson's Site (in Japanese)

Imawano Punk Corner:

"Entertainment Japan's 'punk' anthem shelved"

"Punk Version of Japan Anthem Sacked"

In the news

2006-02-10T13:08:00.000-06:00

Don't forget that you can earn SUPER-EXTRA credit by attending "30 Years of Sisterhood."
When? Saturday, February 11, 2006
4:00 pm: Film Screening
5:00 pm: Panel Discussion
Where? 140 Schaeffer Hall

I always feel kind of guilty when the news so obviously reinforces our class themes. I probably wouldn't feel that way if I taught classes on the wisteria and the narcissus ... or monkeys and crabs. Mmmm. Monkeys. Next time.

Here are the articles, which will hopefully generate your thoughtful comments. Remember that news links are short-lived. If you wait a few days to read these stories, you'll have to ferret them out on your own.

"Former diplomat acknowledged secret pact over reversion of Okinawa"

"Court scraps 'Yokohama Incident' retrial"

"Mitsubishi, Historical Revisionism and Japanese Corporate Resistance to Chinese Forced Labor Redress"

"The Tokyo Tribunal, War Responsibility and the Japanese People"

Shiori's Idea

2006-02-07T19:12:00.000-06:00

Shiori is currently in my office, where she has just suggested starting an "Untold Horrors" Study Group! She would like to get together with others on Sunday night (or some time that works for everyone) to, in her words, "push one another" in your readings. I say, "right on." If you are interested, please let her know via this post.

Doug and Mark, we missed you and will be happy when you come back next week.

Ceremonyについて

2006-02-05T14:17:00.000-06:00

Here are some links to check out as you read Ceremony:

a very interesting essay by Silko from the Tucson Weekly

Part I of an interview with Silko
Part II of the interview

Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

The photos you see here were taken at the Laguna Pueblo. The lower photo is of Laguna Pueblo Junior High School.

Since some of you may not be familiar with the Southwest and New Mexico in particular, I thought some visual reference might be useful. I grew up about 5 hours north of Laguna. In that relatively short distance (roughly from Laguna Pueblo, NM to Pueblo, CO), the landscape changes to this:

Please don't forget to respond to the MP questions below. If you can get through enough of that, we can focus on Ceremony on Tuesday. Also, the goal of blogging is not for you to jump in with a mini-lecture response right before class to meet a deadline. (A week can be Sun-Sun. or Tues-Tues., etc. ) The goal is for you to engage one another in a meaningful and substantive dialogue. I'd rather you submit an engaged response to a classmate or question on Tuesday or Wed. than submit a comment that is more unidirectionally directed at me. As I've said before, I think multiple comments posted throughout the week would be best.

Blogger Down!

2006-02-04T23:53:00.000-06:00

My apologies to everyone who has been trying to post comments. Blogger has been down most of the weekend, and some of my blogs are still entirely inaccessible. While there have been short outages from time to time in the past, this is the largest unscheduled outage I've ever experienced with them. Needless to say, I will adjust my expectations this week accordingly.

Ask Mr. Science

2006-02-01T18:56:00.000-06:00

If you have a question for Marko Ramius, leave a note for him below.

from the MP to PTSD

2006-02-01T03:15:00.000-06:00

Wow! What great comments!

And thanks to Marko Ramius for the presentation! I will never think of mouse traps the same way again!

I was really struck by something Ray mentioned in one of his comments both on the blog and in class. He reminded us about how many people don't have discussions like the ones we are having and how many people don't think about the rest of the world much. Yup. Of course, some people really don't have the luxury or access. But it's very easy to find plenty of folks who can, but choose not to engage or learn about the world. That makes it all the more impressive to me that you are such an aware bunch!

So much of what we are engaging will be new and surprising even for those of us who do think about the world and who feel a certain responsibility in doing so. We also cannot always know what will be familiar to someone else in the class – something of which we should also be mindful in weeks ahead. I want to talk about how I'd like us to handle this in class next week. (JoHanna actually makes a segue to this when she writes of the memos, "But all we can use is professional language when describing how it might affect some people?!?")

I also really want to devote our time next week to Ceremony. It will give us our big issues for the rest of the semester (post-traumatic stress, memory, the effects of prolonged and repeated torture, etc.), and I want us to give the novel the time it deserves. There's a link on the author, Leslie Marmon Silko, to your right. Please check it out. This is our first sustained foray into a full-length novel – and a very important one. Amanda sets it up really well in one of her blog comments under "The Gadget."

Here are some blog discussion questions for the MP documents.

1. Several of you commented on the way in which Russia figures in the documents. Jason, for example, wrote that he was surprised at the extent to which Russia mattered in the decision-making process. Clearly, the decision to drop the bomb wasn't only about Japan. In your first document, an entry from Stimson's diary of Dec. 31, 1944, what kind of image of Russia emerges? In that and subsequent documents, what kind of image of Russia as an "ally" emerges?

2. What was James Byrnes trying to do in his Memorandum for the President on March 3, 1945?

3. Several of you, like Nick and John, wrote about the target selection and how it surprised you. With the exception of Kyoto, civilian populations are not invoked much in the Derry/Ramsey memo to Groves. In Arneson's notes from the Interim Committee Meeting (with Stimson, scientists) of May 31, 1945, he indicates Stimson and others present agreed that civilian areas could not be targets. How do you understand the target list? What do you know about the different areas involved?

4. Based on your readings, what can you surmise Truman did and/or did not know? What kind of image of Japanese history and culture does Stimson provide to Truman in his memo of July 2, 1945 (keep in mind how incredibly fast all this was, as Alecs mentioned)?

5. What is significant about Stimson's July 16 diary entry?

6 What kind of "warning" did different players have in mind?

7. On p. 267, Stimson writes, "The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust." I think there are several ways to read that last clause. What do you think is significant about this statement in light of your reading of the documents.

8. Based on what you've read, what do you think it would have taken for the bombs NOT to have been dropped on Japan?

Write more about the movie too! (I bet Shiori and Corey will!)

You all did a good job sorting through the Groves-Rea conversation, by the way. And Nate, all the "Old Man Atom" info is on that link below under "The Gadget." (1950/The Sons of the Pioneers) Michele Mason, a postdoctoral fellow in Japan Studies at Stanford, is teaching a class all about the bomb, and she is an expert on songs like that! She recently introduced me to the song "Thirteen Women" and "Atom and Evil." (All songs you could play on your radio show.) She'd be a great resource for you or anyone wanting to research the bomb in music.

Original Art by Stephanie! Kurihara's Flag!

2006-01-29T13:21:00.000-06:00

Extra Credit Opportunities

2006-01-29T00:00:00.000-06:00

If you attend either of the following events and write a 1-2 page response paper, you'll earn extra credit, which can be applied where ever you need it most at the end of the semester, for each. Sorry about the late notice for the first opportunity, which is tomorrow!

Public seminar: "The OSS and Ho Chi Minh"
(Note: This seminar does relate to Japan direcctly)
Monday, January 30, 2006
By Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, Associate Professor of History, Buena Vista University
2:30 p.m. in Lecture Room 2, Van Allen Hall

30 Years of Sisterhood: Women in the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement in Japan
Press Release: Please join us for the screening followed by a panel discussion of 30 Years of Sisterhood: Women in the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement in Japan (co-directed by Chieko Yamagami & Noriko Seyama, documentary: 57 min. 2004) at ten US locations in February. Starting with the University of Chicago, the tour's main host, the directors and several of the Women's Lib activists featured in the film will visit the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, Yale University, the LGBT Community Center and the Bluestockings Books in New York City, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Washington University in St. Louis.
Feb 11 (Sat)
4 pm in 140 Schaeffer Hall

The Gadget

2006-01-25T02:28:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone,

Aren't you fabulous?

Please make sure to read the more recent posts below, including Doug's provocative and timely (considering next week's material) response to our last class session. Remember that blog posts and comments are part of your required reading for this course. You won't want to be embarrassed when I ask you to discuss or write about them in class. (They are also very good. I'm really delighted so far.)

I should also mention that there will be a scheduled outage of the Blogger system at 6pm on Wednesday (today) for about 15 minutes. Stuff like that happens.

Your reading load this week is much lighter, but the interpretive burden is much heavier. I wanted to simulate the kind of situation a good historian confronts when reading primary source documents. I want you to share your questions and ideas with one another on the blog and apply this shared knowledge (even when it's sketchy) to help one another make sense of what I've given you. Don't feel intimidated if you've never studied the Manhattan Project before. Some of the best questions will come from those of you who are coming at this material with no prior knowledge.

Here are some major figures who appear in your readings (as authors of documents or figures referenced in them):

Henry Stimson (pictured here) was Secretary of War at the time these documents were written. He had been both Secretary of War and Secretary of State earlier in his career, so he was not new to the world of politics and policy-making. You can find a lot of information about him with a simple Google search.

James Byrnes was Director of the Office of War Mobilization and a close advisor to both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.

General Leslie "Dick" Groves was the military director of the Manhattan Project.

Robert Oppenheimer (pictured here) was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project.

R. Gordon Arneson (nicknamed "Mr. Atom") was Secretary to the Interim Committee on Atomic Energy.

Vannevar Bush (apparently no relation to GWB & Co.) was an engineer who became director of the National Defense Research Committee and later the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which oversaw the Manhattan Project.

Arthur Compton was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1927) whose "Metallurgical Laboratory" was an arm of the Manhattan Project (a bomb-making lab).

Derry and Ramsey drafted the Target Committee memo dated May 12, 1945.

Here are some links to some additional documents you'll want to review (even if very briefly) before class next week:

Trinity Test
The Szilard Petition
What did Truman Tell Stalin?

Some Songs:
"Fujiyama Mama"
"When They Found the Atomic Power"
"Old Man Atom"

I think you all might want to check out this more recent article by Yuki Tanaka. It's very germane to our last class session.

Also:
"Reflection on the 60th Anniversary of the Trinity Test" (with Japanese translation)
and
"Mushroom Clouds Over Nevada"

Finally, as I mentioned in class, the terms "S-1" and "the gadget" in your readings refer to the atomic bomb.

(Stephanie, if you do try and draw Kurihara's flag, please show us!)

Blog Comments Now Working

2006-01-19T19:20:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone,

Stephanie pointed out that the comment box wasn't allowing you to post without registering. I've corrected that problem. Unless you want to publicize a blog of your own, I highly recommend that you click on "other" and then enter only your first name.

I know the reading load is very thick. Please remember that you won't be tested on details. I want you to read the short story very carefully, but try to read for the overall scope of the "stories" in your history books. In your blog comments, you should feel free to pose questions, like Corey did below. Any substantive response is appropriate, and that means you also have the freedom to discuss specific passages and your general impressions of the readings.

Great News! A Room Change!

2006-01-18T21:14:00.000-06:00

We won't have to struggle to make out images on a small screen again or fight for a computer. Our class will now meet (same time and day, of course) in 207 Phillips Hall starting next Tuesday, the 24th! If you are in the departmental offices on the 1st Floor of Phillips, please take a moment to thank Peggy Timm for making this happen for us.

Hiroshima Poet -- Kurihara Sadako

2006-01-18T00:06:00.000-06:00

広島の詩人 -- 栗原貞子さん

I'd say that was a pretty great first day! I'm really happy with our group.

Corey has already put up some great comments (and questions) in response to the previous post below. I'm anxious to read how the rest of you respond.

Of course, you should also feel welcome to post comments about our class discussion and the film too.

I went to Prairie Lights Bookstore after class. All the books are ready for you back in the textbook area.

As a bridge to begin connecting the Hiroshima material from class to the histories at play below, I thought I would share with you some lines from a poem by Kurihara Sadako, the poet I mentioned in class today who herself survived the bombing of Hiroshima. It was translated by Richard Minear. This isn't her "Piroshima Piisu, Piisu" poem, which I'll also share down the road, but it is pretty germane to our starting questions.

From "The Flag, I" (June, 1952)

As if nothing at all had gone wrong,
the flag fluttered once more
high over the roofs
and began to dream again of carnage in broad daylight.
But no one looked up to it,
and people resented its insatiable greed
and gnashed their teeth at its monstrous amnesia.

I'll share the rest with you in class.

She died just last year.
Here are some links to obituaries:
from the Asahi Online
from the Japan Times Online

And a poem:
"We Shall Bring Forth New Life!".

Tomorrow's the Day!

2006-01-16T23:04:00.000-06:00

Hi New Class!

Tomorrow we will begin what will be a very heavy class. The fact that you've decided to take this course already tells me something about your willingness to think about material many avoid. I'll get a better sense of what brings you to "Untold Horrors" when we meet.

Throughout this semester we will reflect on how historical trauma can linger and resonate, how it can be woven into relationships both big and small. Along with our readings related to the Pacific War, for example, we'll keep up with current events in Japan and elsewhere that are complicated or contentious precisely because of wartime experiences. We will also keep an eye on public discourse, media, and politics in contemporary Japan to think about how questions of human suffering are rendered into language today.

As a jumping-off point, I'm posting links to some recent opinion pieces and articles. Here is an opinion piece from Saturday's Asahi Newspaper (the English edition) by Mizuho Fukushima, a politician. What kind of histories underwrite her appeal? What is at stake in the debates she engages here? What do you all think matters about whether or not Japan keeps Article 9? You don't need to have been following the debates until now to share your thoughts. As a class, we will be sharing and developing our knowledge of and responses to this material as we go. If you read Japanese and want to learn about the author, you can see Fukushima Mizuho's Website.

Here are some other stories to consider:

Professor Kang Sang Jung poses very keen questions about whether a new Cold War is developing in East Asia. Here's an excerpt from his essay:

"In Northeast Asia, the rise of nationalism is so conspicuous that should tripartite relations spin out of control, the East Asian Community concept will virtually disintegrate. This would be a great loss not only to Japan, but to other nations in the region."

For a little background, you can check out this post from the New Nationalisms blog

Finally, perhaps you'll want to read about Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima Movie Project?

Feel free to post any thoughts and questions you have. Our conversation has to start somewhere, and whatever you are thinging right now is the perfect place to start.

Coming Spring Semester 2006

2005-11-21T17:37:00.000-06:00

Stay tuned for the new course blog!

The following required course books will be available at Prairie Lights Bookstore for next semester. You might want to get them ahead of time and start reading. (Required readings will also include handouts, material on this blog, and a coursepack, all of which will be explained at the beginning of next semester.)

War Without Mercy: Race, Power, and the Pacific War
by John Dower
Paperback
Pantheon
ISBN: 0394751728

Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II
by Yuki Tanaka
Paperback
Westview Press
ISBN: 0813327180

A Man With No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer
by Oyama Shiro
Hardback
Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080144375X

Seventeen and J: Two Novels
by Oe Kenzaburo
Paperback
Foxrock Books
ISBN: 1562010913

Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko
Paperback
Penguin
ISBN: 0140086838

When the Emperor was Divine
by Julie Otsuka
Paperback
Anchor
ISBN: 0385721811