Los Angeles | EASC GLOBAL EAST ASIA JAPAN – TOKYO

By Lian Eytinge

Tuesday, May 26 was a big day. First, we met in class and discussed travel plans and Dower’s historical book, A War Without Mercy. That was the day we talked about how race influenced the way in which Americans viewed the Japanese during WWII. This was a very valuable discussion for me in particular because for my final research project I am looking at Japanese perceptions of Japan in response to globalization. By learning about how America perceives Japan I can gain a deeper insight into the kind of position Japan had in the international sphere from a historical standpoint. The racially charged viewpoint of Japanese as vermin or lesser has shifted over time and so it is good to see some of the original misconceptions and how modern perceptions have developed from this old view of Japan. For example, the Japanese people were dehumanized during the war by being represented as monkeys, rats, and other vermin needed exterminating. Dower called it “photocopies of the same person” and “an obedient mass with but a single mind” which made it easier for American soldiers to indiscriminately kill.

Classes at USC

Global East Asia Japan at Dodger Field

Guest lecture from Scott Akasaki

After the lesson, we went to Dodger Stadium and took a tour of the place. It was a really special thing to do as the stadium only offers two public tours a day! From learning more about the history of the Dodgers, we were able to understand how a traditionally American game opened up and accepted Japanese players and how there is a mutual respect for each other because of shared reverence of the game. This was a really interesting experience for me since I had never gone to a Dodger’s game or been to the stadium before! Once the tour was done we all went to speak with Mr. Scott Akasaki. He is a Japanese-American who went to live in Japan and through his passion for baseball, gained experience in the Japanese baseball field and was able to get a job focused around what he is passionate about. He told us about how rewarding it was to sign two Japanese players to the Dodgers as well as frustrating stories about the difficulty of translation and cultural difference. It was really inspiring to hear about how he learned Japanese and created his career path.

Japanese American Museum and Hello Kitty

The Japanese American National Museum was next on our list. We went to the Hello Kitty exhibit and saw how a tiny coin purse turned into an international icon for cuteness. Seeing how the Japanese Hello Kitty, or “Kitty-chan,” was able to warm the hearts of people around the world was very cool because it showed how the Japanese “cute” culture is accessible and attractive to people all around the world. Other than the Hello Kitty exhibit there was the permanent installment of the history of Japanese-Americans. This museum is so important because it shows what kind of struggles racial minorities face in America and acts as a home to the important history of the hybrid culture of Asian-Americans and specifically Japanese-Americans. Going to this museum was such an eye-opening experience. You can learn so much from the pieces and the people presented in it. If you’re ever in the Los Angeles area you should definitely check it out!

Japanese American Historical Exhibit

Japanese ramen in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles

Baseball game Dodgers versus the Braves

Lastly we went to the Dodger’s game! After some quality ramen, we watched the ball game against the Atlanta Braves that night at Dodger Stadium. We beat them 7-0, it was a great game to see before leaving for Japan. While we’re in Japan we will be seeing another professional baseball game, so it will be interesting to see the difference in Japanese and American baseball.

Overall, this was a fun-filled, insightful day where we got to not only learn more about Japan and American cultures, but also about Los Angeles itself by going to all of these different places this amazing city has to offer!

By Jotham Sadan

This year, Global East Asia scholars are participating in the USC Dornsife Problems without Passports (PwP) program, a month-long program aimed at teaching students through problem-based learning and experiences that go beyond the classroom. As a part of this program, we will spend two weeks in the US gaining a theoretical understanding of our problems of interest in class, spending time with guest lecturers and preparing research projects for execution abroad. The latter two weeks will be spent in Japan researching individually chosen topics and experiencing firsthand the issues we studied prior to our Japan trip.

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Group meeting at a park near the Japan Foundation

We are focusing on historical cultural misunderstandings between the United States and Japan: where they originated, why they happened, and how to analyze modern issues of similar nature by applying what we learned in the case of the US and Japan. More specifically, we are examining American stereotypes of Japan and Japanese stereotypes of America: starting with the 1980’s when US-Japan tensions were high, then looking back at their presence in World War II, and then using this knowledge to make broader statements about the prominence of these stereotypes today.

We spent our first two days of discussion pinpointing stereotypes of Japan from the past thirty years, both from personal experience and using Pico Iyer’s The Lady and The Monk and David Mura’s Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei. While both memoirs detailed very different experiences of foreigners in the same country, one of the themes that appeared frequently in both works was that Japan was viewed as an enigma by the West. According to individual accounts within both books, Japan was the complete opposite of the US in many ways. Where the US praised individuality and creativity, Japan emphasized being a cog in the machine. Where the US prided itself as being an equal opportunity country, Japan had strict gender roles that oppressed women, as evidenced by Sachiko throughout Iyer’s book.

Once the discussion was opened to analysis of these claims, we quickly began to discover that several of the ways in which we viewed our country were the same as the Japanese viewed theirs, and that all of these radical ideas we attributed to the Japanese could just as easily be applied to the US. This trend is most easily demonstrated in John W. Dower’s War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, in which the author examines stereotypes like the ones above in World War II propaganda. Speaking specifically to the issue of inequality, the US made accusations that the Japanese mistreated the Chinese and Koreans (Kindle Loc 466), and that the United States was fighting for the free world. On the other side of the war, the Japanese pointed out that the States’ treatment of African Americans was inhumane and that the imperialist West was treating its constituent colonial citizens as sub-human, and that in fact Japan was the true freedom fighter.

All of the examples we studied afterwards all pointed to the same message: for two countries that consider one another opposites, the United States and Japan have a whole lot in common. Moreover, the idea of Japan being an “enigma” was less a matter of its culture being completely different and more a matter of perspective.

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The instructor (left) teaching us how to say “ありがとうございます (Arigatou gozaimasu = Thank you).

During our trip to the Japan Foundation, we discussed this topic briefly, but focused more on preparing to travel to a country whose native language most of us do not know how to speak. In the hour and a half clinic, they taught us etiquette in public places and a few important phrases, such as “なになにはどこですか” doko desu ka, or where, and “ありがとうございます” Arigatou gozaimasu, or thank you, to help us navigate and communicate during our free time.

The more I prepare for our flight next Thursday, the more excited I get. Having spoken to several of my fellow classmates, I know they feel the same. We may only have two more days of class left before our trip, but we definitely have a lot more to discuss before we travel to the Land of the Rising Sun.

EASC GLOBAL EAST ASIA JAPAN – TOKYO

Category Archives: Los Angeles

Big Day in LA! (5/26)

Global East Asia Japan 2015