Unpredictable Agents: The Making of Japan’s Americanists during the Cold War and Beyond

232 Pages·2021·1.627 MB·English

by  Mari Yoshihara, Yujin Yaguchi

UNPREDICTABLE AGENTS

UNPREDICTABLE AGENTS
The Making of Japan’s Americanists during
the Cold War and Beyond
Edited by Mari Yoshihara
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
© 2021 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Yoshihara, Mari, editor.
Title: Unpredictable agents : the making of Japan’s Americanists during the
Cold War and beyond / edited by Mari Yoshihara.
Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2021] | Includes
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021038767 | ISBN 9780824888848 (cloth) | ISBN
9780824890018 (pdf) | ISBN 9780824890025 (epub) | ISBN 9780824890032
(kindle edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Americanists—Japan—Biography. | United States—Study and
teaching—Japan.
Classification: LCC E169.12 .U54 2021 | DDC 973.07/202—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038767
Cover design: William F. Temple
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper
and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Council on Library Resources.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Mari Yoshihara
PART I America, Japan, Okinawa
1 Memories of an Okinawan Americanist 21
Katsunori Yamazato
2 American Paralysis: Floating Homeland, Family,
and Masculinity 37
Eijun Senaha
3 On Becoming an Okinawan and a Feminist:
My Path to an Americanist Career 56
Ikue Kina
PART II Family Ties
4 Learning “America” from the Mennonites 75
Yujin Yaguchi
5 The Land She Could Never Call Home Again:
“America” in My Family History 88
Sanae Nakatani
6 Navigating the Sea of Fatherhood across the Pacific 104
Yohei Sekiguchi
PART III Embodied Lives, Grounded Careers
7 The Accidental Mirror: The Shine and Shatter of
My American Dream 121
Yuko Itatsu
v
vi Contents
8 An Americanist from a Different Shore, and Gazing
Back at Japan 137
Hiroshi Kitamura
9 Loneliness, Laughter, and Belonging: A Feminist
View of an Asian in America 149
Naoko Wake
PART IV Different Shores, Multiple Borders
10 An Accidental Historian: My Journey in Research on Japanese
North American Community Activism 165
Masumi Izumi
11 An Americanist Who Sees the US from the Peripheries 185
Mariko Iijima
12 Making of a Transpacific Americanist via Latin America:
Myself Discovered through Immigration History 202
Yu Tokunaga
Contributors 219
Index 223
Acknowledgments
The initial idea for this collection came to my mind during a conversation
with Mariko Iijima and Lon Kurashige on a bus for a field trip to China-
town in Locke, California, during the Organization of American Historians
annual meeting in the spring of 2018. The seed of the idea then developed
into a book project several months later through my conversation with Yujin
Yaguchi during a weekend on O‘ahu’s North Shore. Masako Ikeda of the
University of Hawai‘i Press has been consistently encouraging and gave me
sound advice on how to turn the idea into an actual book.
I am deeply grateful to the twelve authors who have contributed their
essays, many of whom graciously undertook multiple rounds of revision per
my request. I know that reflecting on and revealing their personal trajecto-
ries in this way has involved not only intellectual but heavy emotional labor
for some. I thank them for trusting me through the process.
The two anonymous reviewers for the manuscript gave thorough
readings and constructive suggestions for framing and situating the proj-
ect in a broader context, and their comments were especially helpful in
developing my introduction. Lon Kurashige and Yujin Yaguchi com-
mented on multiple versions of the introduction as well. Once again, my
writing group—Elizabeth Colwill, Monisha Das Gupta, Cynthia Frank-
lin, Candace Fujikane, Linda Lierheimer, and Naoko Shibusawa—gave
me astute readings and warm friendship.
Working on this book gave me the chance to think back on my own
personal and professional journey to an Americanist career. I have lived
with many forms of privilege, yet I also realize that I would not have en-
tered the field or remained in this profession if I did not have the biggest
privilege of all: the support and encouragement of many mentors, col-
leagues, administrators, and friends in both Japan and the United States. I
will not list them here, not because I am oblivious to the importance of
naming but because this book is not about me or my life. But I hope to re-
turn my debt to everyone in other ways.
This book goes into production in the midst of the global pandemic of
COVID-19, the mass movement for #BlackLivesMatter calling for an end
vii
viii Acknowledgments
to police brutality and anti-Black racism, and unprecedented violence
accompanying the transition of power. Like all the contributors to this col-
lection, I have spent the past several months in sober reflection about
nations, borders, and mobility that I had long taken for granted, and in
deep mourning for the ideals of “America” that drew me to this country
and the field. Even as my stubborn faith in America continues to be chal-
lenged from multiple directions, I also find hope in the newly emerging
forms of transnational solidarity, creative modes of sociality and activism,
and the audacious youths who are determined to imagine and create a dif-
ferent world. The political, economic, and social conditions we live in today
remind me that how we live is inseparable from what and how we study,
teach, and write.
UNPREDICTABLE AGENTS