Three Rapes: The Status of Forces Agreement and Okinawa
Chalmers Johnson, President, Japan Policy Research Institute
January 29, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Okinawa, Japan's most southerly prefecture and its poorest, has been the scene since 2001 of a particularly fierce confrontation between Washington, Tokyo, and Naha over the Japanese-American SOFA (Status Of Forces Agreement) and its use by American authorities to shield military felons from the application of Japanese law. To many Japanese and virtually all Okinawans, the SOFA represents a rebirth of the "unequal treaties" that Western imperialists imposed on Japan after Commodore Perry's armed incursion in 1853. On November 15, 2003, in talks with Japanese officials in Tokyo, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that he planned "to press anew for the Japanese government to relent on a long-standing U.S. demand for fuller legal protections for members of its military force accused of crimes while serving in Japan." Most American press accounts avoided details about what this enigmatic comment might mean, including whether the American defense secretary was equally concerned about legal protections for Japanese citizens forced to live in close proximity to American soldiers and their weapons and warplanes.
— Extract from "Three Rapes: The Status of Forces Agreement and Okinawa," JPRI Working Paper No. 97, 1/04
Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research and public affairs organization devoted to public education concerning Japan and international relations in the Pacific. He taught for thirty years, 1962-1992, at the Berkeley and San Diego campuses of the University of California and held endowed chairs in Asian politics at both of them. At Berkeley he served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies and as chairman of the Department of Political Science. His B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in economics and political science are all from the University of California, Berkeley.
He first visited Japan in 1953 as a U.S. Navy officer and has lived and worked there with his wife, the anthropologist Sheila K. Johnson, virtually every year since 1961. Chalmers Johnson has been honored with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation; and in 1976 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written numerous articles and reviews and some fifteen books, including Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power on the Chinese revolution, An Instance of Treason on Japan's most famous spy, Revolutionary Change on the theory of violent protest movements, and MITI and the Japanese Miracle on Japanese economic development. This last-named book laid the foundation for the "revisionist" school of writers on Japan, and because of it the Japanese press dubbed him the "Godfather of revisionism."
He was chairman of the academic advisory committee for the PBS television series "The Pacific Century," and he played a prominent role in the PBS "Frontline" documentary "Losing the War with Japan." Both won Emmy awards. His most recent books are, as editor and contributor, Okinawa: Cold War Island(Cardiff, Calif.: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999); and Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Holt Metropolitan Books, 2000). The latter won the 2001 American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. His new book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic will be published by Metropolitan in late 2003.
Pride and Prejudice: Public Memory and the U.S.-Japan Relations
Toru Suzuki, CJS Visiting Scholar, American Literature/Culture, Keio University
February 9, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Today both the United States and Japan are struggling with the problem of how to reinforce national pride without producing unnecessary prejudice against "others." One important factor in determining the fate of this struggle lies in the commitment of those two countries to the reconstruction of public memory. This lecture argues that the ways in which the United States and Japan attempt or decline to reshape the memories of their repressed past affect not only how they look at themselves but also the future relations of those two countries. Referring to such critical issues as the historical preservation of Manzanar, a Japanese relocation camp, the exhibition of the Enola Gay, and the anti-American sentiments reflected in a recently published history textbook in Japan, the speaker will discuss what we need to promote the reconstruction of public memory on both sides of the Pacific without sacrificing ties between the United States and Japan.
The 11th Annual Bakai (バークレー大学研究大会)
February 13, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Schedule
2:00 — Welcome / Announcements
Andrew Barshay, Chair, Center for Japanese Studies
2:15 — "State Policing of Religion and Nationalism in Colonial Korea"
Michael Shapiro, Graduate Student, History, UCB
2:30 — "Taisho Moral Reformism and Its Social Implications"
Yosuke Nirei, Graduate Student, History, UCB
2:45 — "Music in Japan: A New Sort of Textbook"
Bonnie Wade, Professor, Music, UCB
3:00 — "Models of Cultural Diversity in Japan"
Nelson Graburn, Professor, Anthropology, UCB
3:15 — "Un-bare-able Bodies: Women Perform Uncanny Genders, Strange Angels, and 'Nostalgie'"
Katherine Mezur, Postdoctoral Scholar, Rhetoric/Film Studies, UCB
3:30 — "Japan's 'Comfort Women' Controversy"
Chunghee Sarah Soh, Associate Professor, Anthropology, SFSU
4:00 — "Migration, Differential Access to Health Services and Civil Society's Reponses in Japan"
Keiko Yamanaka, Lecturer, Ethnic Studies/Institute for the Study of Social Change, UCB
4:15 — "Immigration Policy and Immigration Politics in Japan"
Ken Haig, Graduate Student, Political Science, UCB
4:30 — "Localization and Globalization of Multi-National Corporations"
Yasuyuki Motoyama, Graduate Student, City and Regional Planning, UCB
4:45 — "Keiretsu"
James Lincoln, Professor, Haas School of Business, UCB
5:00 — Further questions / Closing comments
From a Children's Colony on a Japanese Periphery: Postwar Counter-memories
Leslie Pincus, History, University of Michigan
February 23, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
Part of a larger project on alternative and oppositional initiatives in Japan's contemporary history, this talk takes as its subject a highly unorthodox community and children's colony in the hinterlands of Japan's northernmost island, Hokkaido. Drawing on print and oral sources, on insights gained from participation and observation, I will explore the history of the community and the life stories of its founders along with the forms in which these stories are recollected and recounted. Through the concrete detail of thick description, I hope to suggest that these stories document a "counter-memory" of Japan's long postwar era-inseparable from a dominant national narrative shaped by cold-war exigencies and the rigors of economic growth, but critically disrupting it at points along the way.
Parental Control of the "Personal Domain" and Adolescent Symptoms of Psychopathology
Yuki Hasebe, Educational Psychology, Western Illinois University
March 1, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
In the context of Elliot Turiel's social domain theory (UCB) originated from Kohlberg's work on moral development, this cross-national study in the U.S. and Japan was conducted in collaboration with Larry Nucci, Professor at University of Illinois (Chicago campus). The talk also extends the discussion to the broader theoretical issues of autonomy and psychological health within cultural context. (Research was supported by the Center for Urban Education Research & Development, UIC and has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Child Development.)
John Nathan, Japan Unbound
March 10, 2004
Lecture and book signing
Institute of East Asian Studies, Japan Society of Northern California
John Nathan, the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will discuss his new book Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). "Japan feels like a bewildered giant," writes Nathan describing Japan's struggle with a decade-long recession. Its schools, youth, families, and workforce are suffering a profound loss of stability. While the crisis in Japan is very real, the country's transformation isn't without its glimpses of promise. As Nathan writes, "Japan's economy is stalled, but the society is in motion." The country is throwing off the chains that have long since stifled entrepreneurship, women, artistic creativity, and effective democracy.
This program is jointly sponsored by the Japan Society of Northern California and the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley.
Transformations of Experience: Interpreting the "Opening" of Japan
March 19, 2004
Joint Colloquium
Center for Japanese Studies, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Institute of East Asian Studies
After the Shipwreck: New Horizons for History-Writing
Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of Japanese History, Columbia University
April 1, 2004
Maruyama Lecture
Center for Japanese Studies
The Maruyama Lectures are named in honor of the late Masao Maruyama (1914-1996), historian of East Asian political thought and one of the most influential political thinkers in twentieth-century Japan.
Carol Gluck is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University. She holds the B.A. degree from Wellesley College, the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. Professor Gluck's special field is the history of modern Japan from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with writings in modern intellectual history, international relations, postwar Japanese history, historiography and public memory in Japan and the West. She is the author of the widely acclaimed Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period(Princeton, 1985). Her new book, Past Obsessions: War and Memory in the Twentieth Century will be published by Columbia University Press in 2005.
Her honors and awards include the Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Award (2002), the John King Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association, the Lionel Trilling Award of Columbia University (both for Japan's Modern Myths); Member of the American Philosophical Society; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Mark van Doren Award and Great Teacher Award for teaching, Columbia University. She was president of the Association for Asian Studies, 1996-97.
Maruyama and History
Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of Japanese History, Columbia University
April 2, 2004
Maruyama Seminar (reservation only)
Center for Japanese Studies
Traveling Words Across Japanese Studies
April 2, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
"Traveling Words" is the final meeting of a multi-year workshop attended by scholars of Japan across the disciplines. The workshop has addressed questions of cultural and disciplinary translation. In this final meeting, each participant will reflect upon these questions by following the movement of one word through his or her discipline.
— Alan Tansman, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UCB
Death at City Hall: Power and Corruption in Late Meiji Tokyo
Peter Duus, Professor, Japanese History, Stanford University
April 8, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
In the summer of 1901 Hoshi Toru, president of the Tokyo City Council, and one of the most powerful political leaders of his day, was cut down by an assassin in Tokyo City Hall. The bloody incident revealed the complex tensions generated by the rise of the growing influence of political parties, the de-bureaucratization of city politics, the emergence of an exuberant and untrammeled capitalist class, and the reconstruction of the urban infrastructure. The talk will discuss the historical background and implications of the incident.
"Soldier Zen" in WWII Japan: A Classic Case Study of "Holy War"
Brian Victoria, Buddhist Studies, University of Hawaii-Manoa
April 13, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
In the aftermath of 9/11 there is a tendency to regard 'holy war' as a unique expression of Islamic fundamentalism. The reality, however, is that religious endorsed violence has existed, at one time or another, in all of the world's major religions. One relatively unknown example of this phenomenon is the fervent, if not fanatical, support given by leaders of the Zen school to Japanese militarism during WWII. By examining this support, it will be possible to gain a better understanding of the universal mechanisms making 'holy war' an enduring feature of contemporary religion and society.
Brian Daizen Victoria is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and a 1961 graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also holds a M.A. in Buddhist Studies from Sôtô Zen sect-affiliated Komazawa University in Tokyo, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Religious Studies at Temple University. In addition to his new book, Zen War Stories (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), Brian's major writings include the 1997 book Zen At War; an autobiographical work in Japanese entitled Gaijin de ari, Zen bozu de ari (As a Foreigner, As a Zen Priest), published by San-ichi Shobo in 1971; Zen Master Dôgen, coauthored with Prof. Yokoi Yûhô of Aichi-gakuin University (Weatherhill, 1976); and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji (Weatherhill, 1972). Brian currently serves as the Yehan Numata Distinguished Visiting Professor Chair in Buddhist Studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. He is not affiliated with any particular Zen group.
Egocentric Japanese?: Nature/Nurture Influence on Spatial Cognition
Kyoko Inoue, Linguistics/Anthropology, Keio University
May 3, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies
"My east molar hurts" was a commonly used expression in a rural community in Japan. It may sound odd and unconceivable for those who are used to locating themselves by the "right/left" (egocentric) coordinate system, which turns out to be historically common among Indo-European language users. However, as recent studies on spatial cognition (Levinson 2003) revealed the other possibilities in describing (and conceiving) horizontal spatial directions that have long been available to peoples of the world, environment-centered spatial coordinate system is not outdated at all.
Based on the fieldwork conducted in a community in Kochi Prefecture in Shikoku Island where both "relative (egocentric)" and "absolute (environment-centered)" frames of reference are readily available for habitual use, this talk will discuss the motivation for spatial code switching among the population.
Aobakai "Japan" Conference
May 11, 2004
Center for Japanese Studies