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English Pages 212 [229] Year 2014
Internationalising Japan
In the twenty-¿rst century, the concept of internationalisation remains a crucial tool for understanding the dynamics of globalising processes. It draws attention to the dimensions of conscious action in inter- and trans-national phenomena, connecting globalisation with individuals’ experiences of everyday life. This book explores how internationalisation is imagined, discussed and operationalised in Japan and surrounding countries. The chapters focus on educational, leisure and cultural activities, ¿elds which are often overlooked in favour of economic and political developments in the literature. The conclusion reÀects on the concept of internationalisation and assesses how it is likely to develop in Japan in the future, taking into account the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. Jeremy Breaden is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Monash University, Australia. Stacey Steele is Associate Director (Japan) at the Asia Law Centre of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Carolyn S. Stevens is Professor of Japanese Studies at Monash University, Australia.
Routledge contemporary Japan series
1
A Japanese Company in Crisis Ideology, strategy, and narrative Fiona Graham
2
Japan’s Foreign Aid Old continuities and new directions Edited by David Arase
3
Japanese Apologies for World War II A rhetorical study Jane W. Yamazaki
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Linguistic Stereotyping and Minority Groups in Japan Nanette Gottlieb
5
Shinkansen From bullet train to symbol of modern Japan Christopher P. Hood
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Small Firms and Innovation Policy in Japan Edited by Cornelia Storz
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Cities, Autonomy and Decentralization in Japan Edited by Carola Hein and Philippe Pelletier
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The Changing Japanese Family Edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka
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Adoption in Japan Comparing policies for children in need Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu
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The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature Polygraphic desire Nina Cornyetz
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Institutional and Technological Change in Japan’s Economy Past and present Edited by Janet Hunter and Cornelia Storz
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Political Reform in Japan Leadership looming large Alisa Gaunder
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Civil Society and the Internet in Japan Isa Ducke
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Japan’s Contested War Memories The ‘memory rifts’ in historical consciousness of World War II Philip A. Seaton
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Japanese Love Hotels A cultural history Sarah Chaplin
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Population Decline and Ageing in Japan – The Social Consequences Florian Coulmas
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Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity David Chapman
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A Japanese Joint Venture in the Paci¿c Foreign bodies in tinned tuna Kate Barclay
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Japanese–Russian Relations, 1907–2007 Joseph P. Ferguson
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War Memory, Nationalism and Education in Post-War Japan, 1945–2007 The Japanese history textbook controversy and Ienaga Saburo’s court challenges Yoshiko Nozaki
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A New Japan for the Twenty-First Century An inside overview of current fundamental changes and problems Edited by Rien T. Segers
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A Life Adrift Soeda Azembo, popular song and modern mass culture in Japan Translated by Michael Lewis
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The Novels of Oe Kenzaburo Yasuko Claremont
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Perversion in Modern Japan Psychoanalysis, literature, culture Edited by Nina Cornyetz and J. Keith Vincent
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Homosexuality and Manliness in Postwar Japan Jonathan D. Mackintosh
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Marriage in Contemporary Japan Yoko Tokuhiro
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Japanese Aid and the Construction of Global Development Inescapable solutions Edited by David Leheny and Carol Warren
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The Rise of Japanese NGOs Activism from above Kim D. Reimann
29
Postwar History Education in Japan and the Germanys Guilty lessons Julian Dierkes
30 Japan-Bashing Anti-Japanism since the 1980s Narrelle Morris 31
Legacies of the Asia–Paci¿c War The Yakeato generation Edited by Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko Claremont
32
Challenges of Human Resource Management in Japan Edited by Ralf Bebenroth and Toshihiro Kanai
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Translation in Modern Japan Edited by Indra Levy
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Language Life in Japan Transformations and prospects Edited by Patrick Heinrich and Christian Galan
35 The Quest for Japan’s New Constitution An analysis of visions and constitutional reform proposals, 1980–2009 Christian G. Winkler 36
Japan in the Age of Globalization Edited by Carin Holroyd and Ken Coates
37
Social Networks and Japanese Democracy The bene¿cial impact of interpersonal communication in East Asia Ken’ichi Ikeda and Sean Richey
38
Dealing with Disaster in Japan Responses to the Àight JL123 crash Christopher P. Hood
39
The Ethics of Japan’s Global Environmental Policy The conÀict between principles and practice Midori Kagawa-Fox
40 Superhuman Japan Knowledge, nation and culture in US–Japan relations Marie Thorsten 41
Nationalism, Political Realism and Democracy in Japan The thought of Masao Maruyama Fumiko Sasaki
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Japan’s Local Newspapers Chihǀshi and revitalization journalism Anthony S. Rausch
43
Mental Health Care in Japan Edited by Ruth Taplin and Sandra J. Lawman
44
Manga and the Representation of Japanese History Edited by Roman Rosenbaum
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Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan Edited by Rachael Hutchinson
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EU–Japan Relations, 1970–2012 From confrontation to global partnership Edited by Jörn Keck, Dimitri Vanoverbeke and Franz Waldenberger
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Japan and the High Treason Incident Edited by Masako Gavin and Ben Middleton
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Diplomacy in Japan–EU Relations From the Cold War to the post-bipolar era Oliviero Frattollilo
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Sound, Space and Sociality in Modern Japan Edited by Joseph D. Hankins and Carolyn S. Stevens
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Japanese Femininities Justin Charlebois
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Japan’s Foreign Aid to Africa Angola and Mozambique within the TICAD process Pedro Amakasu Raposo
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Internationalising Japan Discourse and practice Edited by Jeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and Carolyn S. Stevens
Internationalising Japan Discourse and practice
Edited by Jeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and Carolyn S. Stevens
First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 selection and editorial material, Jeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and Carolyn S. Stevens; individual chapters, the contributors. The right of Jeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and Carolyn S. Stevens to be identi¿ed as authors of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identi¿cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Internationalising Japan : discourse and practice / edited by Jeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and Carolyn S. Stevens. pages cm. — (Routledge contemporary Japan series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Culture and globalization—Japan. 2. Education and globalization— Japan. 3. Sports and globalization—Japan. 4. National characteristics, Japanese. 5. Japan—Civilization—Foreign inÀuences. I. Breaden, Jeremy, author, editor of compilation. II. Steele, Stacey, author, editor of compilation. III. Stevens, Carolyn S., 1963– , author, editor of compilation. IV. Title: Internationalizing Japan. HN730.Z9G565 2014 303.48ƍ20952—dc23 2013040616 ISBN: 978-0-415-73570-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81880-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Re¿neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Contents
List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements Notes on transliterations
1 Introduction: internationalising Japan as discourse and practice
xi xii xv xvi
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JEREMY BREADEN AND CAROLYN S. STEVENS
2 The dog that didn’t bark: 3/11 and international students in Japan
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JEREMY BREADEN AND ROGER GOODMAN
3 Internationalising legal education in Japan as discourse and practice
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KOTA FUKUI AND STACEY STEELE
4 From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ in Japanese schools
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KAORI OKANO
5 Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia: im-perfect translations
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IORI HAMADA AND CAROLYN S. STEVENS
6 Internationalising Japanese culture: Australian interpretations of Urasenke Chadǀ (the Way of Tea) tradition STACEY STEELE
84
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Contents
7 Uneven cosmopolitanism: Japanese working holiday makers in Australia and the ‘lost decade’
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KUMIKO KAWASHIMA
8 Self-help groups for alcoholics in Japan: models of ‘recovery’
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RICHARD CHENHALL AND TOMOFUMI OKA
9 Globalisation, soccer, and the sportsworlds of Japan, Australia and the United States
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WILLIAM W. KELLY
10 Internationalising sumo: from viewing to doing Japan’s national sport
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HOWARD GILBERT AND KATRINA WATTS
11 The transfer of Japanese baseball players to major league baseball: have Japanese ball players been internationalised?
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KEIJI KAWAI AND MATT NICHOL
12 Conclusion: reÀections on the rhythms of internationalisation in post-disaster Japan
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VERA MACKIE
Index
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Tables
2.1 Universities with over 1,000 international students as of May 2011 2.2 Growth in international students in Japan (at 1 May) (1961–2011) 2.3 Number of international students enrolled in 2008 and target for numbers in 2020 as part of 300,000 by 2020 student plan 4.1 Three strands of discourse on international education and human rights education at national, local and school levels 7.1 Job listing for casual administrative staff at a study abroad agency, 2007
18 21 22 55 119
Contributors
Jeremy Breaden is a Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Monash University. His ¿rst monograph, The Organisational Dynamics of University Reform in Japan: International Inside Out, was published by Routledge in 2012. Jeremy has also worked as an international communications consultant to universities in Japan. Richard Chenhall is Senior Lecturer in Medical Anthropology in the Melbourne School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne. Richard has conducted research in Japan since 2006, focusing on alcohol, treatment and self-help groups. He is working on a number of other projects focusing on the health of indigenous Australians. Kota Fukui is a Professor of Law at the Graduate School of Law and Politics at Osaka University, where he teaches legal sociology. Professor Fukui’s recent research projects include new ¿elds for the legal profession. His current research focuses on the globalisation of the legal profession. Howard Gilbert received his PhD in Asian Studies from the University of Auckland. His thesis focused on the internationalisation of amateur sumo, and he became involved in the sport as both a regional administrator and an athlete during the course of his research. Roger Goodman is Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies and Head of the Social Sciences Division at the University of Oxford. His major works include Japan’s International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren (1990) and Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan (2000). Iori Hamada came to Australia as a recipient of the 2006 Endeavour Japan Awards scholarship. She completed her PhD project researching the phenomena of Japanese restaurants outside of Japan in 2012 at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia, where she is currently teaching. She has published in the areas of cross-cultural politics, food and international communication. Keiji Kawai is a Professor in the Faculty of Policy Studies at Doshisha University. His book, Legal Status of Professional League Players (2003) received the Okinaga Prize, awarded by the Labor Research Center. Professor Kawai served
List of contributors
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as a visiting researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2007 to 2009. Kumiko Kawashima is Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her projects to date have investigated the nexus between the lives of young people, transnational migration and social transformation with focus on Japan, Australia and China. William W. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies at Yale University. Among his publications on sports cultures in Japan are the edited volumes on This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan (2007), The Olympics in East Asia (2011), and The New Geopolitics of Sport in East Asia (forthcoming). Vera Mackie is Professor of Asian Studies in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong. She is co-editor, with Mark McLelland, of the Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia (2014). Other publications include Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality (2003), Gurǀbaruka to JendƗ Hyǀshǀ [Globalisation and Representations of Gender] (2003) and Creating Socialist Women in Japan: Gender, Labour and Activism, 1900–1937 (1997). Matt Nichol teaches commercial and banking law in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University, and was a visiting research fellow at Osaka University’s Graduate Law School in 2012. Matt has over 25 years’ experience in Australian baseball as a player, coach, and club and league administrator. Tomofumi Oka is a Professor of Social Work at Sophia University in Tokyo. Dr Oka is a highly regarded Japanese researcher on self-help groups. His work principally focuses on self-help groups for alcoholism and families. He has published inÀuentially in both Japanese and English. Kaori Okano is a Professor in the Asian Studies Program at La Trobe University. Her major recent publications include Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan (ed. with R. Tsuneyoshi and S. Boocock, 2011), Handbook of Asian Education (ed. with Y. Zhao et al. 2011), and Young Women in Japan: Transitions to Adulthood (2009). Stacey Steele is Associate Director (Japan) at the Asian Law Centre, Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include Japanese insolvency law, law reform, legal education, and banking law. She co-edited Legal Education in Asia: Globalization, Change and Contexts (Routledge 2010). Stacey practices Chanoyu (the Way of Tea) and is a member of the Urasenke Melbourne Chapter. Carolyn S. Stevens is Professor of Japanese Studies and Director of the Japanese Studies Centre at Monash University. Her major publications include Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and Power (Routledge 2008)
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List of contributors
and Disability in Japan (Routledge 2013). She is currently Editor in Chief of the interdisciplinary journal Japanese Studies, a Routledge imprint. Katrina Watts taught modern languages and English in Australia before spending 25 years at Kobe Shoin Women’s University. She commentated for the English language broadcasts of sumo on NHK from 1995 to 2005. Katrina is President of the Australian Sumo Federation and board member of the International Sumo Federation.
Acknowledgements
The origin of this monograph was the 17th Biennial Conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia (JSAA), held at the Melbourne Law School in July 2011. The theme of the conference was ‘Internationalising Japan: Sport, Culture and Education’. It attracted a diverse group of scholars and other participants and included three keynote sessions, 56 panels and three poster sessions. The chapters in this book were ¿rst presented at the conference. The JSAA 2011 Conference could not have taken place without generous funding from the Japan Foundation (including the Sakura Network), the Ian Potter Foundation, the ARC Asia-Paci¿c Futures Research Network, the Embassy of Japan in Australia, and the Japanese Studies Association of Australia. The conference was also supported generously by various bodies within the University of Melbourne: the Asia Institute, the Asian Law Centre, the Cultural and Community Relations Advisory Group, and the Faculty of Arts. We extend our gratitude to all these organisations for their ¿nancial support. We would like to thank the members of the JSAA 2011 Organising Committee, our panel proposal reviewers, and our research assistants and conference volunteers. We also thank our research assistants, Anesti Petridis and Aya Haruyama, for their invaluable assistance in completing this monograph. Finally, we thank our contributors for their cooperation and patience. Cover image reproduced courtesy of the Kanbara Collection, Kagawa University Library.
Notes on transliterations
In this edited monograph, ordinary Japanese words have been romanised using the modi¿ed Hepburn romanisation system, and appear in italics. Japanese words that are already a normal part of the English lexicon appear according to their regular English usage (e.g. Sumo), without italics or macrons. Proper nouns such as the names of organisations appear in the format preferred by the organisation itself, or, where noted, as translated by the chapter author.
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Introduction Internationalising Japan as discourse and practice Jeremy Breaden and Carolyn S. Stevens
Like any nation engaged in global trade, diplomacy and cultural exchange, Japan is internationalising. It is also being internationalised by the growing transnational Àows of people, goods and ideas that are the hallmarks of globalisation. As both a subject and an object of internationalisation, Japan is changing from within and without. It is not possible to comprehend internationalisation as a simple matter of ‘Japan’ engaging with the ‘international’. Rather, internationalising Japan is a multidirectional, heterogeneous process that does not ¿t comfortably within any single conceptual framework. Internationalisation is a point of convergence for us to examine themes such as economic change, the meaning of social status and transformations brought on by modernity. Transcending conventional dichotomies and stereotypes held by the popular press about Japan’s internationalisation project, this book employs these themes to explore the synergies and discords of internationalisation, and highlights the processes and agents of change, both passive and active.
Economic change, social status and modernity Internationalisation is often thought of as an economic strategy for change. This is an extension of the notion of comparative advantage, further rei¿ed in an age of neoliberalism. To succeed in an environment of inevitably increasing competition, individuals as well as collectives must specialise and interact with other producers and consumers; economic protectionism is seen to stiÀe the development of both public and private enterprise. The classic ‘Uppsala model’ describes this process of commercial internationalisation as a rational response to market forces. It follows a gradual, linear progression from export activities, through establishment of subsidiaries and ultimately to offshore production (Johanson and Vahlne 1977; Johanson and Mattsson 1988). This is readily applied to describe the process by which Japanese ¿rms have extended their activities beyond national borders, initially by ¿nding new markets for their existing products but ultimately developing new products, business structures and production and marketing arrangements. This economic process is a starting point; it is not a complete account of the internationalising process. Issues related to social status (both collective and individual) and the experience of modernity attend these economic and political
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interactions. With regard to social status, in the case of Japanese ¿rms, international expansion also leads to new forms of social and cultural interaction. At the individual level, this requires employees and representatives of internationalised ¿rms to reorient their understandings of business practice and rethink approaches to communication to accommodate broader, more diverse interpersonal engagement. At the same time, the exposure of products in markets beyond Japan directs new attention to the associations between product and culture. While domestic brands are internationalised, they are also Japanised: they are consumed within a framework of external perceptions of ‘Japan’, and also actively form and manipulate those perceptions. Both these dimensions raise questions of status. Successfully internationalised products are founded on both economic prowess and cultural acceptance. How is this acceptance achieved? How are economics and culture overlaid in the process of internationalisation? Individual status, meanwhile, is dependent on successful interaction. Such interaction requires internationally-oriented skills such as foreign language pro¿ciency, and a capacity to comprehend and establish af¿liation to the organisation that is internationalising. Who, therefore, is best placed to capitalise on internationalisation? What, and who, determines this placement? These questions, all of which are addressed within the pages of this book, suggest that even if we follow a narrowly-de¿ned narrative of economic internationalisation we soon ¿nd ourselves in a much wider landscape of experience. Modernity is also inextricably linked to internationalisation. Modernity is more properly conceptualised as the ‘project of modernity’ (Habermas cited in Harvey 1990: 12) whereby human beings seek enlightenment and emancipation from ‘scarcity, want and the arbitrariness of natural calamity’ (Harvey 1990: 12). This emancipation results in the ‘social freedom’ (15) that demarcates ‘premodern’ life (which is rife with oppression and hardship) from ‘modern’ life (which is liberated and ful¿lling to the individual). The connections between modernity and internationalisation are both economic and ideological. Modernity has a close association with capitalism (and its attendant ‘freedoms’); competitive strategies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all involved international relationships, and Harvey argues that with capitalist developments emerged a new ‘international culture’ (137) which was desirable not only for its aesthetic cosmopolitanism but also for its potential for increasing pro¿ts through expanded markets. Furthermore, modernity has come to be closely associated with the circulation of information (also bene¿cial to gain economic ‘edge’), speci¿cally through increasingly ubiquitous media technology, which culminated in the current state of immediate internet communication (also known as ‘Web 2.0’). Japan’s modern history has been ¿rmly entrenched in a modernist trajectory, arguably beginning with the opening up of Japan to the West following the arrival of US Commodore Matthew Perry’s ‘black ships’ in 1853. While it is dif¿cult to conclude de¿nitively that Perry’s arrival was the dividing line between premodern and modern Japan, it is clear that from the earliest stages, the Japanese idea of modernity was inextricably linked to the process of internationalisation. Japan’s modernisation exceeded the expectations of foreign observers, who saw
Introduction 3 Japan as a nation-state achieve an industrial society far quicker than its European counterparts, only to lose much of its productive capacity after its defeat in the Second World War. Japan’s modernist trajectory re-emerged during the reconstruction and high growth period (1955 to 1973) and it was during the ‘bubble economy’ period (1980s to 1991) that Japan established itself as a world economic superpower as well as setting a domestic agenda of internationalisation (kokusaika). As a policy, Japan’s internationalisation addressed both the demands that arose from its new status as the world’s second largest economy and the need to ‘keep up’ in order to maintain that status. The above outline of the processes of internationalisation in an abstract and collectivist way is not intended to give the impression that these processes are in some way disconnected from individuals’ experience of everyday life. As the authors of the chapters in this book demonstrate, internationalisation is encompassed in the everyday experiences of ordinary people. Individuals might experience the interaction of these internationalisation themes, for example, through personal consumption. The hyakuen shoppu (100 yen shop) began to proliferate in Japan in the early to mid 1990s, after the initial ‘burst’ of the bubble economy that gave consumers cause to consider restraint in their purchasing behaviour. Cheaply available goods always had a market with students and working classes, but recessions, coupled with growth in the importation of inexpensive goods made in China, created a growing market for these retail outlets. As ‘Cool Japan’ culture spread globally, the hyakuen shoppu also became a site of culture desire; in the same way that young people in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Los Angeles desired music, animation and fashion from Japan, they also desired the inexpensive stationary items, home furnishings and fashion accessories that their young Japanese counterparts consumed. One such leader in this retail genre is Daiso Japan. Daiso, ¿rst launched as a retail business in 1972, began its plans for the 100 yen shop in 1987 and launched a ‘full scale development’ of this concept in 1991 (Daiso 2011). In 2001, Daiso opened its ¿rst low cost variety stores overseas; eight years later it had stores in 24 locations in East Asia, South East Asia, Middle East and North America (Daiso 2011). In 2010 Daiso (Australia) Pty Ltd opened two stores in Victoria (Abbotsford and Doncaster). The physical layout of the Abbotsford store is actually much like any hyakuen shoppu in Tokyo or Osaka (crowded aisles crammed with household goods, stationery and accessories). Yet the international process of transporting Daiso to Australia has not been seamless; the 100 yen moniker has translated into the inÀated price of $2.80 Australian dollars, showing that international business will always come at a cost. Despite this mark-up, consumers (many of them ethnic Chinese Australians) Àock to the shop to ¿ll their baskets with small ‘Cool Japan’ goods, creating their own Japan-China (or Vietnam or Malaysia)-Australia environment through decorating their homes and bodies with these made in China, marketed through Japan, sold in Australia items. The hyakuen shoppu is a revealing case study in the diversity of both inputs and outputs of internationalisation. Internationalising Daiso is a business strategy
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rooted in the practical attempt to grow markets, but it has also elided cultural concepts of ‘cool’ with social phenomena such as economising. One is left pondering the serendipitous connection of outputs in the products themselves: ‘Made in China’ labels evidencing the pursuit of cost-cutting through internationalised manufacturing operations, and popularity among an emerging Chinese middle class for whom the transnational aesthetic of ‘cool’ Japan has a distinctive allure. It is through these practices that internationalisation assumes meaning for individuals.
Internationalisation, globalisation and other ambiguities The contributions to this volume examine some of the numerous incarnations and dimensions of internationalising processes in contemporary Japan. These diverse processes do not lend themselves to conclusive de¿nitions of terms; in fact, de¿nitive frameworks defeat our core theoretical purpose of exploring contemporary meanings for internationalisation. Considering recent academic and popular discourse on global phenomena and processes, however, we must clarify why the term ‘internationalisation’ has been chosen over ‘globalisation’. Our focus on internationalisation highlights the dimensions of conscious action in the context of international or transnational processes, and the relationships between different actors. As suggested by the description of ‘internationalising Japan’ at the start of this chapter, in the term internationalisation, actors tend to be speci¿ed or at least implied: someone (or something) is actively internationalising, or being internationalised as the result of the action of another. In this sense internationalisation is a process rather than a description of conditions; it is conscious and often intentional rather than implicit, fortuitous or entirely beyond the control of its protagonists. It is these features that distinguish it from globalisation, which may similarly be conceived as a process but one that is the product, rather than the focus, of human action. There are many other theoretical permutations to this relationship. Is internationalisation triggered by globalisation? Alternatively, can something be internationalised to the point that it is ‘globalised’? Does the inevitable and all-encompassing experience of globalisation render the idea of discrete internationalisation ‘processes’ obsolete? In the ¿eld of education, for example, globalisation is often used to indicate a linear progression which begins with internationalisation. As a starting point internationalisation involves conscious initiatives to facilitate the cross-border mobility of students, researchers and knowledge itself. These border-crossing activities progress initially in a way that does not undermine the sovereignty of individual national systems or domains. Eventually, however, a stage is reached at which the extent of mobility actually begins to blur borders and differences between once-closed national systems: in other words, globalisation. This view holds that globalisation is an advanced stage of internationality, a metaphor for sophistication and complexity in border-transcending activities. The starting point is clearly domestic. In Australia, for example, the principal driving force for university internationalisation has arguably been the reform of public funding
Introduction 5 structures. Universities have been forced to engage internationally in order to strengthen their revenue base, and this engagement has in turn exerted a signi¿cant inÀuence on the growth of a global market for higher education. At the same time, the global market is prompting universities to pursue internationalisation more vigorously in order to establish or retain competitiveness. Thus globalisation can also be used to account for internationalisation. In the literature on Japanese higher education, globalisation often appears to be characterised as an independent force for change, an important inÀuence on education reform and the manner in which universities operate (see, for example, Tsuruta 2003; Yonezawa 2003). Under this view, globalisation is the catalyst, the internationalisation of universities is the response (Knight 2006). The starting point can be either broader economic, social and technological integration, or the development in particular of a cross-border market for higher education services to which domestic institutions must react, by internationalising, in order to capitalise on economic opportunities. The idea of globalisation in higher education is thus employed in several ways: to link university reform to a wider notion of economic, political and social change, to describe the new international arena for higher education, and to identify a new stage in the development of international activity among institutions of higher education. It is both a cause and an effect of changes in higher education systems, and the action of universities, in the form of internationalisation, can be both reactive and pro-active. Other processes commonly associated with globalisation are transnationalism and domestication. Once again, the relationship between these terms and internationalisation is ambiguous, but they clearly have different points of reference. Internationalisation entails a ‘self’ which is internationalised, or is internationalising, by reference to an ‘other’ (or others). Transnationalism implies a subject split between two or more sites. For example, a declaration of transnational identity – such as someone who identi¿es themselves as half Japanese, half Australian – is quite different from a declaration of internationalised identity – such as a Japanese person who displays certain non-Japanese attributes acquired as a result of spending time in Australia. In the case of domestication, the points of reference are still self and other, but the process is one of altering, adjusting and negotiating that other to make it ¿t with the self. Domestication is, in this sense, the Àipside of internationalisation, and the two can also produce phenomena labelled transnational. Hybridity is another phrase often used in discussions of globalisation and domestication. In a sense, the term ‘glocalisation’ (which originally stems from the Japanese word dochakuka, meaning adapting one’s practice to suit the land [Iwabuchi 1999: 168]) denotes a kind of hybrid process, whereby producers and/ or consumers modify their production (and consumption) of a product which creates a new form, distinct from the original yet with clear ties to each cultural product and/or practice. As several of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, transplantation to a new setting can often generate a stronger awareness of the ‘original’ (non-hybrid) form, and a desire to safeguard that form and the values and identities associated with it.
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Internationalisation is, of course, not just a theory or an experience, but also a discourse. This term can mean, narrowly, the aspects of language we use to communicate ideas that go beyond the frameworks of simple vocabulary and grammar; it includes style, nuance and so on. More broadly, discourse can be thought of as a style of debate, or arguing, rather than the content of the debate itself. It is a tool used to communicate intellectual ideas and this is often related to academic discipline. We have a historical discourse, a cultural discourse, an economic discourse; while discursive consciousness is high in the academe, discourse is also important in other spheres. There are political discourses, business discourses and so on. Broadly we understand discourse as a code by which we are informed of the meaning beneath the words. Most everyone has had the experience of sitting at a dinner party next to people from different professions: professors with doctors or lawyers, for example, and while they are all speaking English, often discussions of their work fall into patterns including completely different sets of words and phrases. Further to this set of values and communication tools that constitute ‘discourse’, we also intuitively know that to succeed in a certain social or business role, you need to ‘master’ the discourse, whatever that might be. Discourse thus connects individuals with social practice. Medical discourse, for example, represents the relationship of discussants to the practice of medicine. Attention to practice is a vital complement to an examination of discourse, rather than an exercise separate thereto. Exploring the practice of internationalisation is particularly important as it identi¿es the various stages in which, and how, internationalisation is produced, transmitted and received as meaning. It is also important to acknowledge that discourse is both subject matter and medium: any examination of ‘internationalising Japan’ as discourse inevitably demands involvement in and contribution to that discourse. This volume forms part of the discourse of internationalisation.
Internationalisation in Japanese studies The ¿rst major wave of research on internationalisation in Japan followed the emergence of the term kokusaika as a buzzword in 1980s Japan. Kokusaika is generally treated as equivalent to ‘internationalisation’ in English despite its technical differences, most notably the fact that its verb form kokusaika suru (‘internationalise’) is intransitive: it denotes becoming international rather than making international. It has been suggested that this linguistic feature helps explain the characteristically self-conscious nature of Japan’s internationalisation (Ebuchi 1997: 35–54). In the early 1980s, under the leadership of Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, kokusaika became a political catchphrase to describe a more active approach to engagement with the world beyond Japan. Originally prompted by outside pressure to open Japan’s markets to foreign goods, this programme of internationalisation soon developed to encompass not only economic aspects, but also ideological ones. One of the ¿rst critiques of the 1980s programme of kokusaika was Mannari and Befu’s edited volume The Challenge of Japan’s Internationalization (1983),
Introduction 7 the key thrust of which was that kokusaika was more about taking Japan to the world than it was about bringing the world to Japan, and perhaps more about nationalism than internationalism. Chalmers Johnson summarised these arguments when he wrote in Mannari and Befu’s volume that kokusaika was ‘merely the latest code word or jargon expression for a much longer standing tradition of intellectual discourse about Japan’ (Johnson 1983: 32). The tradition to which Johnson referred was, of course, nihonjinron, the discourse of Japanese uniqueness that had begun to attract critical attention from Japan scholars around the same time (see, for example, Mannari and Befu 1983 and Mouer and Sugimoto 1986). The increased physical interaction resulting from growing economic interdependence raised social and cultural consequences, ones that could be negotiated by reference to pre-existing ideas about Japan and ‘others’. Internationalisation became a description of this negotiation process. Subsequent volumes maintained this critique of the ideological dimensions of internationalisation discourse in Japan, at the same time as exploring speci¿c social and political contexts for its practice. Hook and Weiner’s edited volume The Internationalization of Japan (1992) addressed topics ranging from the harmonisation of economic policy across borders to the international dimensions of education in Japan, as well as placing Japanese experiences of internationalisation in a comparative context. This volume contained several papers exploring issues surrounding migrant workers in Japan. This attention to the social impact of internationalisation processes was carried over into many subsequent volumes, most notably Eades, Gill and Befu’s Globalisation and Social Change in Contemporary Japan (2000). Once again addressing a wide variety of both macro phenomena and ground-level developments, this volume underlined how developments in globalisation and internationalisation could be employed as a lens to comprehend the changing nature of Japanese society and culture. Themes of citizenship and national identity emerged as a particular focus of attention, drawn together in works such Goodman et al.’s (2003) exploration of the dual problems of new immigrant communities in Japan and Japanese communities overseas, and Lee, Murphy-Shigematsu and Befu’s (2006) edited volume on the ‘dilemmas’ arising from the reality of an increasingly multicultural society. Meanwhile, the concept of internationalisation itself remained a focus of attention through major works such as David McConnell’s (2000) study of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, which highlighted the multidimensional expectations, interpretations and applications of internationalisation in a major government initiative – one that continues to this day. At the same time, a new awareness emerged of effects beyond Japan’s national borders. Internationalisation resulted in an expanded global economic presence for Japan, and this presence had cultural and social dimensions at least as important as the immediate economic consequences. Globalising Japan, edited by Befu and Guichard-Anguis (2001), employed an ethnographic lens to examine the dispersal and diffusion of people, organisations, cultural objects and ideas beyond Japan, highlighting the importance of Japan as a new centre of globalising processes.
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As globalisation became entrenched as a central theme of analysis in the social sciences, attention was directed to ‘re-centring’ understandings of global Àows. Despite Japan’s crucial place in the post-war global cultural economy, many scholars, including Japan specialists, focused on the Àow of culture and capital from the ‘West’ to the ‘Rest’ (see Tobin 1992). Internationalising processes, conventionally focused on negotiating ‘global’ forces exogenous to Japan, have surely been disrupted by the country’s emergence as a centre of globalisation in its own right. Iwabuchi’s (1999; 2002; 2004) research on Japanese popular culture in Asia and elsewhere has turned the gaze from the ‘West’ to the ‘Rest’ to from Japan to the ‘Rest’, which includes the United States and Europe (Allison 2000) as well as East and Southeast Asia. While no one can deny Japan’s ‘gross national cool’ as a signi¿cant form of soft power (McGray 2002), one of the aims of this book is to shed light on some of the details of these disruptions, and in a multidirectional and mutually dynamic way.
Sites of discourse and practice Internationalisation affects Japanese society on a variety of levels and places; thus this edited volume includes chapters on a wide range of topics to demonstrate how individuals and groups of people are making sense of cross-cultural and transnational interaction in their daily lives. Learning and leisure activities, and attitudes about these projects in an internationalising climate, are the primary sites of investigation. Learning activities constitute the focus of the ¿rst section of this volume. Breaden and Goodman discuss the impact of the 11 March 2011 disaster on university internationalisation. They describe how the disaster revealed the limitations of the dominant construction of internationalisation as a national project directed by government and practiced by universities. Internationalisation emerges as a dynamic and conditional process in which universities must negotiate questions of national governance, cultural identity, organisational capacity, and individual choice. Fukui and Steele complement this analysis with a case study of curricular internationalisation. The remodelling of an undergraduate law degree program is presented in the broader context of reform of the Japanese legal system. Rather than being isolated as an explicit program of change, internationalisation is more of an implicit, but fundamental, theme in the reform agenda; this theme is translated selectively and Àexibly into the practice of undergraduate legal education in speci¿c organisational circumstances. Okano’s chapter on school education presents a more direct and conscious internationalising process. Here, becoming more ‘international’ is not a scenario for change but a tangible reality arising from the increasingly multicultural pro¿le of Japanese society. Okano describes the evolution of internationalisation policy into a bifurcated construction with ‘multicultural coexistence’ on the one side, and curricular internationalisation, exempli¿ed by English language education, on the other. This is paralleled by divergence between national and municipal levels: the latter takes the lead in engaging with diversity, blending concepts
Introduction 9 of multiculturalism from other countries with local understandings of schooling and community life. The volume then turns to questions of the internationalisation of Japanese cultural representations overseas. Hamada and Stevens analyse internationalisation of Japanese food in a non-Japanese context. The ‘sushi police’, as dubbed by the mass media in response to a Japanese ministerial proposal to legitimise overseas restaurateurs through a licensing process, have failed to materialise in the multitude of Japanese themed eateries around Melbourne, Australia’s ‘food capital’. Still, there are strongly held perceptions of what Japanese food ‘should’ be, held by both producers and consumers from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. These notions are modi¿ed by necessity through market pressures, meaning that different restaurateurs must negotiate both their ideas of Japanese cuisine and their perceptions of local (Melbourne) culture, making them cultural ‘translators’ of Japanese food culture in Melbourne, an internationalised city. Melbourne is also the site for Steele’s discussion of the internationalisation of chadǀ (Way of Tea) practices. Once again, attention is drawn to the translational function, performed in this case not by professionals as part of a business enterprise, but by individual Japanese migrants. Examined as part of the migrant experience, the practice of chadǀ in Melbourne evidences both an internationalisation of Japanese tradition and a Japanisation of personal identity. Unlike the case of food, however, there is a clear reference point for these processes – in this case, the global Urasenke organisation. Kawashima’s chapter also presents data on individual Japanese experiences in Australia, but turns our attention to the discourses within Japan by which they are informed. Young Japanese are manifestly ‘internationalised’ by their sojourning experience: but how do they impart social meaning to this internationalisation? By focusing on aspirations and life choices, Kawashima highlights the interplay between the mass mediated value of ‘cosmopolitan’ experience and the practical limitations on capacity to access this value. Chenhall and Oka describe a similar interface between transnational concepts and local understandings, using the case of self-help groups in Japan. Danshukai, the Japanese adaptation of Alcoholics Anonymous, is a product of the mutually constitutive process of internationalisation and domestication described earlier, a localised variant of an international model but also an active and distinctively ‘Japanese’ player in the international self-help movement. This organisational identity is now threatened, however, by another type of internationalisation, namely the emergence of disease models of alcoholism. Chenhall and Oka’s discussion suggests that even when considering a single subject, it is better not to speak of an internationalisation but rather of alternative and competing ‘internationalisations’. There are few sports today that are contained exclusively within the borders of any one nation, yet both sporting practice and consumption are intrinsically linked to national identity, tradition and local culture. William W. Kelly’s chapter illustrates the subject/object dialogues of internationalisation, suggesting that sports are both ‘agents and exemplars’ of global interconnectivity. Kelly describes how the global sport of soccer is recon¿guring national sporting landscapes
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Jeremy Breaden and Carolyn S. Stevens
throughout the world. Japan’s ‘sportsworld’, which has always been a unique juxtaposition of indigenous and foreign, is effectively being internationalised by this new sporting ‘globality’. Chapters on sport appear at ¿rst glance to be addressing a more conventional process of internationalising Japanese tradition. They highlight, however, the fact that this process is not unidirectional: tradition is often constructed through internationalisation, and this construction conversely shapes approaches to international engagement. Gilbert and Watts look beyond the stereotype of Sumo as a recalcitrant object of internationalising forces and describe a diversity of inputs and outputs, organised in the ¿rst instance around the duality of professional and amateur sport, but speaking more fundamentally to common questions of historical context, cultural identity and the global organisation of sporting competition. Kawai and Nichol use the example of professional baseball to remind us that sport is also a business, and it is the conduct of that business which frames the issues of cultural identity and af¿liation discussed in other chapters. Taking sporting organisation rather than sport itself as their subject matter, the authors present the interaction between regulators, stakeholders and individual players as a struggle for control over the process of internationalisation of one of Japan’s most robust sporting traditions. Vera Mackie’s chapter concludes the volume’s discussion of the internationalisation phenomenon by reprising Breaden and Goodman’s chapter: the 3/11 metaphor provides a moment in time that allows us to see how internationalisation has affected all aspects of Japanese life, from the family to the workplace to the concert stadium.
Conclusion The value of internationalisation as a unifying theme is in its potential to provide a counterweight to the macro-debates over globalisation processes. These debates tend to overlook or devalue local struggles for control and the position of internationalising elements in indigenous matrices of social and cultural change. The chapters in this book present consciously localised analyses of internationalisation both as a response to globalising forces, and as a key constitutive element thereof. The focus on case studies, allowing us to ground the ‘grand theory’ in empirical data, also provides new conclusions on how the process works in the Japanese context, which may vary from contexts in countries such as the United States, China or Australia. These questions also form part of the important task of re-centring our understanding of ‘international’ itself. While Japanese Studies as a discipline emerges from the American dominated ‘regional studies’ paradigm, we should not look at research on Japan from purely an American point of view. ‘International studies’ sprang from ‘inquir[ies] by Americans into those parts of the world Americans have traditionally regarded as having histories, cultures, and social arrangements distinctly different from their own’ (McCaughey 1984: xi). This project, rooted in the modernist history of North American and European
Introduction 11 hegemony, has only recently been ‘de-centred’ by challenges from Asia (see Iwabuchi 2002). How does the re-centring of international studies – away from the US and towards Japan or even Australia – affect our understanding of international processes? The discourses and practices of ‘internationalising Japan’ provide an ideal medium for exploring this question. This introduction has sketched the parameters of discussions of internationalisation as a process that is deliberate and strategic; as a tactic, it aims for economic, social and ideological bene¿ts, resulting in varied outcomes. This volume’s essays demonstrate how these strategies are played out in a number of settings – educational, leisure, business – and what the results are to both the individual and the collective.
References Allison, Anne. 2000. ‘A Challenge to Hollywood? Japanese Character Goods Hit the US’. Japanese Studies 20(1): 67–88. Befu, Harumi and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, eds. 2001. Globalising Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe and America. London: Routledge. Daiso. 2011. ‘History’. Available from: http://www.daiso-sangyo.co.jp/english/about/ history.html [accessed 6 December 2013]. Eades, J. S., Tom Gill and Harumi Befu, eds. 2000. Globalisation and Social Change in Contemporary Japan. Rosanna: Trans Paci¿c Press. Ebuchi, Kazuhiro. 1997. Daigaku Kokusaika no Kenkynj [Research on Internationalisation of Universities]. Tokyo: Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppanbu. Goodman, Roger, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Tanaka and Paul White, eds. 2003. Global Japan: The Experience of Japan’s New Immigrant and Overseas Communities. London: Routledge Curzon. Harvey, David. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge and Oxford: Blackwell. Hook, Glenn D. and Michael A. Weiner, eds. 1992. The Internationalization of Japan. London: Routledge. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 1999. ‘Marketing “Japan”: Japanese Cultural Presence Under a Global Gaze’. Japanese Studies 18(2): 165–180. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2004. ‘Time and Neighbor: Japanese Media Consumption of Asia in the 1990s’. In Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traf¿c, edited by Koichi Iwabuchi, Stephen Muecke and Mandy Thomas, 151–174. Hong Kong University Press. Johanson, Jan and Jan-Erik Vahlne. 1977. ‘The Internationalization Process of the Firm – A Model of Knowledge Development and Increasing Foreign Market Commitment’. Journal of International Business Studies 8: 23–32. Johanson, Jan and Lars-Gunnar Mattsson. 1988. ‘Internationalization in Industrial Systems—a Network Approach’. In Strategies in Global Competition, edited by Neil Hood and Jan-Erik Vahlne, 287–314, London: Croon Helm. Johnson, Chalmers. 1983. ‘The Internationalization of the Japanese Economy’. In The Challenge of Japan’s Internationalization: Organization and Culture, edited by Hiroshi Mannari and Harumi Befu, 31–58. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
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Knight, Jane A. 2006. ‘Internationalization: Concepts, Complexities and Challenges’. In International Handbook of Higher Education, edited by James J. F. Forest and Phillip G. Altbach, 345–396. Dordrecht: Springer Academic Publishers. Lee, Soo im, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu and Harumi Befu, eds. 2006. Japan’s Diversity Dilemmas: Ethnicity, Citizenship, and Education. New York: iUniverse. Mannari, Hiroshi and Harumi Befu, eds. 1983. The Challenge of Japan’s Internationalization: Organization and Culture. Tokyo: Kodansha International. McCaughey, Robert. 1984. International Studies and Academic Enterprise. A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning. New York: Columbia University Press. McConnell, David. 2000. Importing Diversity: Inside Japan’s JET Program. Berkeley: University of California Press. McGray, Douglas. 2002. ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’. Foreign Policy, May 1: 45–54. Mouer, Ross and Yoshio Sugimoto. 1986. Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the Structure of Social Reality. London: Kegan Paul International. Tobin, Joseph, ed. 1992. Re-made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tsuruta, Yoko. 2003. ‘Globalisation and the Recent Reforms in Japanese Higher Education’. In Can the Japanese Change their Education System?, edited by Roger Goodman and David Phillips, 119–150. Oxford: Symposium Books. Yonezawa, Akiyoshi. 2003. ‘The Impact of Globalisation on Higher Education Governance in Japan’. Higher Education Research and Development, 22(2): 145–154.
2
The dog that didn’t bark 3/11 and international students in Japan Jeremy Breaden and Roger Goodman
3/11 has become the Japanese equivalent of 9/11 in the United States, referring to the triple tragedy of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown which unfolded after 11 March 2011, almost a decade after the Twin Towers were destroyed in New York. The events of 3/11 dominated the Japanese media for many months, as amazing stories of personal tragedy and triumph emerged from the shocking events of that day and the weeks which followed. One story which was given a great deal of coverage in both the Japanese and the foreign press was the reaction to those events of the foreign community in Japan. The apparent Àight of non-Japanese nationals from Japan immediately after 3/11 resulted in a new expression, Ày-jin: loosely translated as a ‘person who has taken Àight’ and rhyming with the colloquial word gai-jin, an ‘outsider’. The proportion of foreigners in the total population of people living in Japan is very small compared to most OECD countries, and one may well question why the Ày-jin phenomenon gained such prominence. One explanation can be found in Japanese society’s notorious self-consciousness in the global gaze; sensitivity to the perceptions of foreign residents and visitors is part of the construction of Japanese identity by reference to ‘others’ (see, for example, Clammer 2001). In order to understand the response more completely, however, and to make sense of its meaning in post 3/11 Japanese society, we need to look closer at the contexts and actors involved. This chapter addresses this task by examining one of the most prominent Ày-jin groups: foreign nationals studying at Japanese higher education institutions. We argue that the attention directed to this group in both Japanese media coverage and governmental responses, which far outweighed the scale and impact of their post-3/11 movements in objective terms, was a product of the particular approach to internationalisation developed in the context of Japanese higher education over the past four decades. This case study highlights both the important but indeterminate place of international students in Japan’s higher education system today, and the durability of ‘internationalisation’ as a tool of policy and practice in Japan more generally.
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The brief Àight and quick return of Japan’s international students post 3/11 The Japanese media made a great deal of the different responses to the tragic events of 3/11 shown by foreign governments. Chinese and Mongolian consular outposts chartered buses to take Tohoku-based nationals to international airports in order to leave Japan as quickly as possible. Some governments, including the French, Belgian, Russian and Czechoslovakian, mobilised aircraft for citizens wishing to leave Japan temporarily. Other governments, among them the German and Finnish, issued advice to their Japan-based citizens that they should consider moving out of the eastern part of Japan, including the Tokyo metropolitan area. In other cases, the evacuation advice was limited to the Fukushima evacuation zone – this was the case for the South Korean and Singaporean governments, for example. The United Kingdom ordered its citizens out of the evacuation zone around Fukushima and offered them iodine tablets as a safety precaution if the Fukushima situation worsened. Sir John Beddington, the UK Government Chief Scienti¿c Advisor, stated that the radiation from the meltdown at the Fukushima plants was no more dangerous than the natural radiation levels that existed in many parts of the world (British Embassy Tokyo 2011). This was widely noted in Japan and Beddington became, for a period, a symbol of British solidarity with the Japanese population. Students in Japan on university exchange programmes were no doubt attuned to this governmental advice, but were also subject to instructions issued directly by their home institutions. Australian universities, acting either on their own assessments or directly in line with travel advice issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, adopted policies ranging from recommending that students in East Japan evacuate or return to Australia, through to forced return for all students on exchange to all parts of Japan.1 This meant that within the same host university or region of Japan, some students were advised to stay while others were urged to leave, adding to the already considerable confusion about the gravity of the situation. The main story that was covered in the Japanese media, however, was not around short-term exchange students, but around those undertaking full degrees in Japan’s universities, who represent more committed members of the foreign community in Japan. Some of the of¿cial ¿gures disseminated by the Japanese government at the time of 3/11 suggested that their departure from Japan was very widespread. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) reported that a total of 316,489 foreigners left Japan temporarily in March 2011, more than doubling the 141,133 recorded in the same month of the previous year.2 The rise in departures of ‘College Student’ visa holders (international students enrolled in Japanese higher education institutions) was even more marked – 77,041 as against 22,638 in 2010 (Statistics Bureau 2010; 2011).3 Students keen to leave the country swamped the MOJ’s immigration bureau service counters seeking ‘re-entry permits’, which authorise non-Japanese residents of Japan to resume residence following a temporary departure. Several regional bureaux instituted simpli¿ed systems for
3/11 and international students in Japan 15 issuing such permits, but many students opted to leave the country without permits rather than brave the immigration bureau queues. After 29 March 2011, the MOJ instituted procedures to enable such individuals to return to Japan without penalty. On 20 April 2011 the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper published a survey of 71 universities ¿nding 4,330 students not intending to return despite being three weeks into the new academic year (Yomiuri Online 2011b). Despite all the news coverage of the Ày-jin phenomenon, however, probably the most interesting feature of the supposed ‘abandonment of Japan’ was that it was not nearly as dramatic as originally thought – if indeed it happened at all. Most universities in Kanto and further north delayed the start of their academic year to early May, at which time 13 per cent of international students nationwide had not returned to within commuting distance of their institutions. But, by late May (just ten weeks after the earthquake and the tsunami), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) ¿gures showed that only 4 per cent of international students nationwide, and 14 per cent in Tohoku, had not returned to within commuting distance of their institutions (MEXT 2011a). In effect this meant that just 13 per cent of students already enrolled missed a month or less of their academic studies at the beginning of the new academic year; only 4 per cent missed more than a month. The expected major decline in the number of new students who took up places in Japanese universities from May 2011 also did not eventuate: 95 per cent of all students expected to enrol did so (Times Higher Education 2011b). Some of those who did not enrol as expected in April simply deferred entry to September, which was no problem for the growing number of universities, including leading recruiters of international students such as Waseda University and Ritsumeikan Asia Paci¿c University, which operate a semester system. Bruce Stronach, Dean of Temple University Japan in Tokyo, suggested shortly after 3/11 that ‘[w]hen all is said and done, the story could be how little the quake really affected higher education and research in the region’ (McNeill 2011). This prediction appears to be borne out by international student enrolment data released later. The overall decline in international student numbers in Japan in the 2011 academic year was 2.6 per cent (JASSO 2012a) – far less than suggested by many at the height of the post-3/11 ‘crisis’. The overall number of Chinese students, the largest national cohort in Japan’s international student population, actually rose 1.6 per cent in 2011 (the largest decreases were among students from Korea and Taiwan, 12.7 per cent and 13.7 per cent respectively) (ibid). At university level alone, the drop in numbers was even smaller: undergraduate enrolments fell around 1.5 per cent but postgraduate enrolments rose by a similar proportion; combined, the overall decline at university level was just 0.5 per cent (ibid). The 25 per cent decline in enrolments in Japanese language schools in 2011 (JASSO 2012b) is an ongoing source of concern, because this decline is likely to have a Àow-on effect on undergraduate enrolment in 2012 and 2013. Even before the disaster, however, total university-level enrolments from Japanese language schools were around 10,000 (APJLE 2011), so the 25 per cent decline should produce a drop of only 2,500 or less than 2 per cent of total international student
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enrolments at university. Furthermore, the thrust of recent government policy, as explained below, is to recruit students directly from outside Japan, particularly through provision of English-medium courses. A drop in numbers in the traditional ‘feeder’ sector of Japanese language schools should not be of signi¿cant strategic concern to universities aligned with this new direction. The puzzle which this chapter seeks to address, then, is: why was there such a sharp difference between the very limited real impact of the disaster, and (a) the rhetoric of the disappearance of current students and (b) the anticipated failure of universities to recruit international students subsequently. We argue that the answer to this puzzle lies in the distinctive approach to ‘internationalisation’ which has developed in the Japanese higher education sector over several decades since the 1970s. While this approach has been and still is heavily focused on the intake of international students, the students themselves are by no means the primary concern. Rather, they are a commodity to be managed in order for internationalisation to proceed to ful¿l other economic and social objectives. A crisis such as 3/11 was a moment at which the fragility of this construction became apparent, occasioning an unprecedented degree of public attention on international students and providing an intriguing case study of the practice of internationalisation in contemporary Japan.
Why a non-story became a story In part, the media were interested in the post-3/11 movements of international students because such movements provided an obvious visible manifestation of the effect of the tsunami and nuclear crisis. The fact that the students were able to leave the country, when most Japanese were not, was of course itself a story. Very few Japanese, unlike the international students, had another home to go to, certainly not one outside Japan. A clear contrast could also be drawn between the departing international students and the Japanese students staying on in the disaster-affected area as volunteers to support the devastated communities on the Tohoku coastline. Just as with the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, students were at the forefront of providing relief services and many universities set up volunteer groups to encourage them to do so. Another story, however, demonstrated the extraordinary lengths to which the Japanese government and universities went to retain and recruit international students in the aftermath of 3/11. A variety of special arrangements were of course made by universities, with MEXT’s mandate, to minimise the impact of the disaster on all students – Japanese and non-Japanese alike. These included adjusting entrance examination requirements, delaying semester start dates, and excusing students who remained absent from classes beyond those dates. Many of these measures were unprecedented; one notable example was MEXT’s decision to grant tuition fee subsidies to disaster-affected vocational school (senmon gakkǀ) students – the ¿rst time ever that such students, who are usually considered beyond MEXT’s immediate responsibility, had received direct governmental support (Asahi Shimbun 2011).
3/11 and international students in Japan 17 Initiatives targeting international students came on top of these general measures. On 14 March 2011, MEXT issued a directive to universities to adopt a Àexible approach to tuition fee payment deadlines and credit recognition for international students, and to provide counselling and other mental health care services. As well as providing relief subsidies to around 1000 international students directly affected by the disaster, the Ministry offered free airfares to Japanese Government Scholarship students who had left Japan and subsequently wished to return. It also announced an extra round of cash scholarships (valid for one semester) to privately-¿nanced students (these measures are all summarised in MEXT 2011b). In order to encourage the enrolment of international students in vocational schools and Japanese language schools, the requirement for graduates of such programmes to have a degree before they could work in Japan was also dropped (Times Higher Education 2011b). Both the government and universities also published extensive information on radiation and disaster preparedness for international students in languages other than Japanese. Messages from international students who had chosen to stay in Japan were disseminated via MEXT’s website, and such students were even mobilised in a Tourism Agency campaign to draw visitors back to Japan after the disaster (Sankei News 2011). The Japanese state’s response to the disasters certainly made it easier for international students to stay in or come to Japan, but it also played a large part in fuelling concern over post-3/11 international student departure itself. Had authorities not responded with such alacrity and diligence, the ‘crisis’, which, as already noted, was small in both scale and impact, would surely not have been recognised as such by either the public or higher education institutions themselves.
The heterogeneous nature of the international student body in Japan Why were such huge ¿nancial and administrative efforts, and such a large amount of domestic as well as international media attention, devoted to such a tiny proportion of the people living in Japan? The 138,075 international students in total in Japan as of May 2011 constituted around 0.1 per cent of the total population of Japan of 127 million. International students make up only 3.5 per cent of all students in higher education in the country, far below the OECD average of 7 per cent. Of all the international students in the world, only 5 per cent go to Japan, which has the second highest level of investment in its higher education system worldwide; in contrast, 25 per cent of students go to the US, 13 per cent UK, 10 per cent France, 9 per cent Germany, 7 per cent Australia. It is also signi¿cant that international students were far from a homogenous group, despite media reports treating them as such. In 2011, over 50 per cent were on undergraduate programmes; 30 per cent at graduate school; and 20 per cent at vocational colleges. Sixty-three per cent were from China, 13 per cent from South Korea, just over 3 per cent from Taiwan, and just under 3 per cent from Vietnam (JASSO 2012a). Different institutions in Japan also have different reasons for recruiting international students. As discussed elsewhere (Goodman 2007: 84),
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the range of reasons is considerable: in the case of elite national universities, international students are an important part of their self-image as institutions which participate in a global research culture; at top private universities, they are part of the commercial repositioning of institutions seeking to maintain their number of international students; in lower-level private universities, they can be part of a desperate policy for survival as a source of fee-income;4 the idea of the programme at some foreign universities’ overseas campuses is an almost evangelical belief that it can ‘rescue’ students from the Japanese higher education institution; at vocational schools, the international nature of the programme is directly related to the employment market. This variety of motives is reÀected in the huge diversity in the list of Japanese universities enrolling more than 1,000 international students (see Table 2.1). Japan’s largest and most famous elite national universities, such as the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, are well represented in this list. At the top of this list at the time of writing, however, is Waseda University, a large, prestigious private institution; other private institutions in this category include Keio and Ritsumeikan. The list also contains other well-known but far less prestigious private institutions such as Kokushikan, and institutions which fare relatively Table 2.1 Universities with over 1,000 international students as of May 2011 Institution name
No. of international students
Waseda University Japan University of Economics University of Tokyo Ritsumeikan Asia Paci¿c University Kyushu University Osaka University Tsukuba University Kyoto University Nagoya University Tohoku University Nihon University Hokkaido University Ritsumeikan University Tokyo Institute of Technology Kokushikan University Osaka Institute of Technology Kobe University Hiroshima University Keio University Meiji University Chiba University
3,393 3,378 2,877 2,692 1,866 1,780 1,663 1,631 1,556 1,497 1,340 1,340 1,253 1,252 1,159 1,154 1,108 1,090 1,072 1,046 1,025
Source: JASSO 2012a
3/11 and international students in Japan 19 poorly in domestic university rankings, such as Josai International University. The university which has risen most dramatically on this list in recent years is Japan University of Economics (formerly Fukuoka University of Economics): number two in 2011 with 3,378 international students, up from 833 just two years previously. This university is far from competitive in domestic terms: its standardised rank score or hensachi, which indicates the dif¿culty of admission under the regular entrance exam system, is just 40, placing it in roughly the sixteenth percentile (Benesse Corporation 2011). The goals, priorities, and resources of an institution such as the Japan University of Economics differ greatly from those of one such as the prestigious and highly competitive University of Tokyo, yet in the current story of Japanese university internationalisation, focused as it is on the intake of international students, they are both leading players. Conversely, some universities see international students less as a source of income and prestige and more as a liability. According to one survey (Kudo and Hashimoto 2011: 355), 99 out of 688 universities in Japan have no international students at all; at a further 159 universities, the number is between one and ten; that is, 37.5 per cent of Japanese universities have less than ten international students enrolled. Another survey suggests that only 28 per cent of universities expect a ¿nancial return from accepting such students and only 2.6 per cent of universities in Japan would pursue internationalisation for the primary reason that it was ¿nancially bene¿cial; 80 per cent would not expect any ¿nancial returns from internationalisation (Yonezawa 2011a: 337).
The symbolic signi¿cance of international students in Japan The answer to this conundrum regarding the perceived ‘value’ of international students in Japan appears to lie in the fact that they are symbolic of something much more signi¿cant than their numbers and economic and political signi¿cance would suggest, namely the ‘internationalisation’ of Japanese society and in particular of Japanese higher education. We need to look at the post-war history of Japan’s international students to understand this story. In 1954, in response to moves to promote international student mobility by UNESCO,5 the Japanese government established the Government-Funded International Students Invitational Program (kokuhi gaikokujin rynjgakusei shǀchi seido). Twenty-three students from other countries in Asia came to Japan under this scheme. Japan also concluded reparations discussions with Asian neighbours at this time, which led to it sponsoring six hundred students to study in Japan between 1960 and 1965 (Kawai 2005: 22). These two programmes, both established to discharge Japan’s perceived international responsibilities, evolved into the Japanese Government Scholarship Program (kokuhi gaikokujin rynjgakusei seido) which provides over 9000 scholarships a year for international students today (85 per cent to graduate students) (JASSO 2012a). The intake of international students grew together with Japan’s economic and diplomatic standing. The signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People’s Republic of China in 1978, for example, led to 151 Chinese
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nationals coming to Japan to study, mainly in science and technology areas, the following year. Five years later, the total number of Chinese students in Japan had increased to over 2,000 (Terakura 2011). Japan’s emergence as an economic superpower prompted the launch of the Look East policy in Malaysia in 1981, leading to 5,000 Malaysian students coming to Japan over the next 15 years. In 1980, however, Japan was still twentieth in terms of receiving international students (behind Lebanon and Egypt), and sending many more students overseas than receiving them (Kawai 2005: 24). In 1983, as trade frictions emerged and lingering concerns over reparations continued, especially with Asian neighbours, Prime Minister Nakasone launched a plan to accept 100,000 international students to Japan by 2000. The government invested heavily in this plan: budgetary allocations to support international students increased almost fourfold in the ¿rst eight years after the launch of the plan (Umakoshi 1997: 260). In 2011, spending was around 31.9 billion yen a year: 60 per cent on government scholarships, 23 per cent on ¿nancial support for privately-¿nanced students, and the remainder on short-term exchange programmes and accommodation and job placement support (MEXT 2011d). This expenditure is still considered part of Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) even though around one-quarter of government scholarship recipients are from industrialised countries in Europe, North American and Oceania (JASSO 2012a). Very little money was spent on sending Japanese students overseas; the policy on international student mobility was expressed as part of Japan’s duties as a member of the international community. International student numbers went up consistently through the 1980s and 90s until the 1996/7 economic crisis in Asia (see Table 2.2). Progress towards the 100,000 target shifted back on course following deregulation of immigration controls and residency status which the MOJ introduced in October 1999, and the target was ¿nally reached in 2003. It is important to point out how dependent this target was on students from China; the number of Chinese students rose from 24,000 in 1995 to over 80,000 in 2005, representing around 66 per cent of all international students in Japan (JASSO 2012a). The increase in Chinese students was in part because of more disposable income on the part of Chinese families, but also because of the relaxation by the Chinese state of compulsory placements elsewhere in China for those who had ¿nished their ¿rst degree at a Chinese institution (Terakura 2011). The success of the 100,000 student plan was followed by the 2008 launch of a new target of 300,000 international students by 2020, designed to bring the proportion of international students in the total student population up to around 10 per cent, comparable to non-English speaking developed countries such as France (12.3 per cent) and Germany (11.9 per cent) while maintaining Japan’s world international student share of around 5 per cent (Kuwamura 2009: 191). Progress towards this target was to be propelled forward by the Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization, commonly known as ‘Global 30’, which originally envisaged selecting 30 institutions to receive special support for internationalisation and creating more than 130 undergraduate and graduate
3/11 and international students in Japan 21 Table 2.2 Growth in international students in Japan (at 1 May) (1961–2011) Year
No. of international students
1961 1964 1967 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2011
1,727 3,003 3,469 4,444 5,241 5,671 5,933 8,116 15,009 25,643 45,066 53,787 51,047 64,011 109,508 117,927 132,720 138,075
Sources: For ¿gures pre-1983, Nihon Kokusai Kyǀiku Kyǀkai 1997: 28; for ¿gures since 1983, JASSO 2012a
courses taught entirely in English by 2012 (MEXT 2009a).6 The proposal was ultimately whittled down under budget pressure to 13 universities seen as future ‘global education hubs’ (see Table 2.3). These universities were given 200–400 million yen per year for ¿ve years to help recruit more students and faculty from outside Japan. Currently only 3.5 per cent of faculty on full-time contracts are from outside Japan, mainly teaching English (Huang 2009; Times Higher Education 14 October 2010).7 At the time of writing, the latest government initiative was the Project for Promoting Global Human Resources Development, the ¿rst round of which is funding 42 universities to advance either campus-wide or project-speci¿c internationalisation (MEXT 2012b). While this project extends the reach of internationalisation activities to include offering more overseas study and business experiences for Japanese students,8 achieving a sustainable intake of inbound students is still envisaged as a crucial element. Further, like Global 30, it is a limited-term, project-based scheme, steered by MEXT bureaucrats and dependent for both its scope and survival on budgetary largesse. A critical point to be taken from this brief historical overview is that the recruitment of international students into Japanese universities is a subject of government policy, not just left to the market and to individual institutions. However, unlike many other sectors where policy and regulation is oriented to
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Table 2.3 Number of international students enrolled in 2008 and target for numbers in 2020 as part of 300,000 by 2020 student plan University
2008
2020
1,218 1,377 2,444 1,214 1,336 1,439 1,292
3,211 4,500 3,500 3,000 3,200 3,000 3,900
934 1,000 712 3,000 563 1,119
4,000 2,600 4,000 8,000 3,500 4,005
National Tohoku Tsukuba Tokyo Nagoya Kyoto Osaka Kyushu Private Keio Sophia Meiji Waseda Doshisha Ritsumeikan Source: Yonezawa 2011b: 77
stimulating and guiding market activity, the mainstay of international student policy is the provision of subsidies, mainly as part of Japanese foreign aid. Combined with strict management of student visa issuing criteria and procedure, this arrangement creates an impression that the presence of international students in Japan is something that can be controlled by the national government, rather like turning a tap on and off. The tap is to be turned on in response to domestic or international pressures, and the Àow reduced when those pressures subside. Following 3/11, it appeared (albeit very brieÀy and with little long-term effect on the ground) that foreign countries and international students were not quite as passive actors in this process as the government had expected. The unusual extent and speed of the government’s response post-3/11 can perhaps be explained as an attempt to regain a ¿rm hold on the tap. This degree of governmental control is rare in Japanese higher education. Few other elements of university admissions, for example, are subject to the same type of regulation. MEXT regulates enrolment quotas in all universities, but generally does not interfere in recruitment activities. Notably, there is no government policy to help support the recruitment into universities of disabled students, or students from Japan’s internal minority groups such as Zainichi (long-term residents of non-Japanese ethnicity) and Nikkeijin (overseas residents of Japanese heritage who have returned to Japan) – indeed these groups have traditionally faced
3/11 and international students in Japan 23 government barriers to university entrance (see Goodman 2007: 83; Horie 2002: 77–81).
The current importance of Japan’s policy for international students It is clear that the government is currently concerned about boosting the intake of international students. What is the cause of this concern? Kudo and Hashimoto suggest a ¿ve-fold strati¿ed categorisation of university internationalisation in Japan linked to policies regarding overseas students (Kudo and Hashimoto 2011). International student intake, they write, is ‘both to promote mutual understanding and international friendship between Japan and other countries . . ., and to bring foreign-born skilled workers into Japanese society.’ They argue the new 300,000 international students target is quite different from the 100,000 one: ‘the rationale for having overseas students on campuses is shifting from development aid to the revitalisation of Japanese political economy, society and universities’ (ibid: 346–7). This invites us to consider: what kinds of revitalisation can be achieved through the intake of international students? In terms of political economy, the intake of international students reÀects Japan’s capacity to respond effectively to global trends. This is manifested in the concern over Japanese ¿rms’ exposure to intense international competition and loss of market share, particularly in ¿elds in which Japan previously enjoyed ascendancy, but where East Asian neighbours now have a competitive edge. There is a renewed consciousness of the need to build a more globally-literate workforce in Japan, as demonstrated by the emergence of the term gurǀbaru jinzai (global human resources) in national policy and public discourse since 2010 (see, for example, Council for Global Human Resource Development through IndustryAcademia Partnerships 2011; Nippon Keidanren 2011; MEXT 2012b). Foreign graduates of Japanese universities are in a privileged position in the Japanese job market, being equipped with useful non-Japanese attributes (such as Àuency in foreign languages), combined with Japan literacy developed while studying at a Japanese university. Some employers have even gone so far as to announce quotas for recruiting non-Japanese graduates. Uniqlo sought two-thirds non-Japanese students for its graduate recruitment cohort in 2011; Lawson convenience stores one-third; and Hitachi electronics aimed to double its ratio of non-Japanese recruits.9 The term ‘highly-skilled foreign labour’ (kǀdo gaikoku jinzai) has appeared regularly in government policy documents in the past ¿ve years, as can be seen for example in the Council for Economic and Fiscal Reform’s recommendation for the ‘rapid development of attractive working and living environments to expand the intake of highly-skilled foreign labour’ (Cabinet Of¿ce 2009). The direct connection between international student presence and the needs of Japan’s labour force is something new – or at least palpably different – from the earlier rationales of development aid and cultural diplomacy. This change also parallels the terminological shift from internationalisation (kokusaika)
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to globalisation (gurǀbaruka) which, as noted in the Introduction, has taken place in so many ¿elds of policy and practice in recent years. We could speculate that kokusaika connotes a positive programme of engagement with the world which enhances Japan’s prestige, while gurǀbaruka is more of an imperative, a means of survival in a rapidly changing world. The competitiveness issue is related to policymakers’ wider fear of a deepening Galapagos syndrome (Garapagosu-ka): the perceived isolation of Japanese society from an increasingly interconnected global community. One of the most commonly cited trends in recessional Japan is the drop in Japanese going overseas for study – the overall number enrolling in formal degrees at universities outside Japan fell to 59,923 in 2009 from a peak of 82,945 in 2004 (MEXT 2012a). Japan is becoming known as a ‘sunset market’ among international student recruiters in the English-speaking world who formerly enjoyed high enrolments from Japan (see, for example, Calderon 2011). Japanese student numbers in the UK fell from 6,800 in 2003/4 to 4,505 in 2008/9, while the US has seen a 60 per cent drop in Japanese students between 1998–2008 (Times Higher Education 27 Jan 2011a).10 The decline is part of a larger trend: the number of Japanese in their twenties going on overseas trips as a whole was 4.63 million in 1996 and 2.62 million in 2008 (Yamaguchi 2010). The decline in overseas study and travel can be partly explained demographically – the overall population of young people in Japan is on the decrease – and economically – a weaker yen has made staying at home a more viable option for many – but many observers argue that it also represents an increasingly introspective mind-set (uchi muki shikǀ) among young people.11 Despite the censorious tone of such commentary, others have suggested that the trend to introspection is not evidence of an intrinsic narrow-mindedness in Japanese young people, but is better understood as evidence of a failure of schools and universities to prepare students for experience beyond Japan, and a reÀection of uncertainty over future career prospects. The increasingly tight market for local graduate jobs has prompted students and their parents to favour a safe, conventional route through the domestic education and job placement system, of which study abroad is clearly not part. International student presence on Japanese university campuses is presented as a remedy for introspection, a means to ensure that Japan’s next generation of graduates has had at least some experience in interacting with non-Japanese and learning about the world beyond Japan. This reasoning is encapsulated in MEXT’s new Global Human Resources project noted above, in which internationalisation is promoted in order ‘to overcome the Japanese younger generation’s inward tendency and to foster human resources who can positively meet the challenges and succeed in the global ¿eld’ (MEXT 2012b). These two lines of thinking – labour force development and social invigoration – are both clearly visible in of¿cial justi¿cations for programmes advancing international student recruitment. The aim of the Global 30 program, for example, is explained in the terms of ‘strengthening the international competitiveness of Japanese higher education as global competition for human resources intensi¿es’, and at the same time creating an ‘environment of friendly competition with
3/11 and international students in Japan 25 international students’ in order to ‘cultivate [Japanese] individuals capable of active international engagement’ (MEXT 2009b). There is of course a curious contradiction in these two goals – presumably bringing highly employable international students to Japan will actually make it harder for Japanese students to ¿nd graduate jobs. In terms of higher education institutions themselves and the policy of increasing the number of international students in Japan, the primary concern is international standing. Japanese universities are notoriously under-represented in global rankings and league tables such as those produced by Times Higher Education and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Their poor performance in measures of internationalisation, such as ratios of foreign staff and students, affects their ranking negatively. Low university rankings is a signi¿cant reputational issue for Japan as a whole – and reputational problems in turn limit the pulling power of Japanese higher education institutions in the global market for students and researchers (Yonezawa 2010). International rankings link with the new vocabulary in universities of ‘global standard’, ‘top thirty’, FD, COE, COL, sangaku kyǀdǀ kenkynj (university-industry joint research); all part of a neoliberal agenda of a worldwide university network (Goodman 2005). The introduction of international students is, in this context, one vehicle for driving through other neoliberal reforms such as competitive funding, external evaluation, short-term contracts and managerial responsibility (Breaden 2013: 59–60). The convergence of the issues outlined above suggests that the recruitment of international students is both a remedy for the traditional dysfunctions of Japanese higher education and a key response to the question of how to ensure Japan’s ongoing competitiveness in the global economy. This new strategic centrality of international students explains the apparent over-reaction to the post-3/11 Àight. Even though the Àight was a non-story in the context of the size of the Japanese population, and even though it was very short-lived and indeed possibly never really happened at all, it was signi¿cant insofar as it brought into question the capacity of government and universities to control international student movements and, by extension, undermined the feasibility of using controlled importation of foreign talent as a means to confront some of Japan’s current major challenges. Such importation is practiced in many parts of Japan’s labour force, not only in the higher education sector; the 3/11 experience may occasion greater recognition of the limitations of this approach more broadly.
Internationalisation and the agency of international students It is surprisingly dif¿cult to ¿nd a place for international students themselves in this story. Indeed, Peter Scott (The Guardian 2011) suggests that ‘internationalisation is a neologism, dating back to the 1980s at the earliest – and, disconcertingly, aligned with neo-liberalism’, which implies that the experience of international students in any advanced industrial country facing a crisis such as Japan faced in 3/11 might well have been the same. This volume’s introduction describes a
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dominant conception of ‘internationalisation’ as an active programme of change; such a conception disguises the agency of those who are neither directing the internationalisation nor undergoing it. International students in Japan occupy this indeterminate position, but the 3/11 experience brieÀy exposed them as active and autonomous participants, rather than simply as instruments of internationalisation programmes designed and implemented by government and universities. The experience did not, however, fundamentally change the way internationalisation is approached by Japanese universities and policymakers. Furthermore, it does not appear to have created more room to consider the interests of students themselves, as opposed to the priorities of government and universities. If international students’ own actions, such as their decisions to leave Japan after 3/11, are treated as an externality to the internationalisation project – in the same manner as Àuctuations in the global economic climate may be, for example – the logical result is that the actors themselves are externalised. Universities and government will ¿nd ways to proceed with internationalisation with even less consideration for students’ needs than before. While international student intake is crucial to university internationalisation in Japan, the experiences and aspirations of those students remain of marginal importance. The fact that this paradox can go largely unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged in the discourses and practices of internationalising Japan’s higher education sector, is testament to the robust ambiguity of ‘internationalisation’ itself.
Notes 1 The Yomiuri Shimbun produced a useful summary of the responses of overseas universities in relation to their students on exchange programmes in Japan (Yomiuri Online 2011a); other more detailed articles in Japanese can be seen at Yahoo! Japan News (2011). 2 March is generally the month with the highest foreign national departure numbers in any case, as graduating students move overseas to start new jobs, or because they are taking holidays before university courses start at the beginning of April. 3 Interestingly, Chinese students accounted for 59 per cent of departures in March, somewhat less than their overall representation in the international student body (around 65 per cent): see Ministry of Justice (2011a). 4 One of the most extreme examples of a low-level private university which was established primarily as a means of taking international students to earn income is the Tokyo campus of Yamaguchi Fukushi Daigaku which, under another name, Hagi Kokusai Daigaku, had already gone bankrupt once in the early 2000s before being bailed out. The campus had 506 students of whom 505 were foreign, almost all Asian, mainly Chinese and Nepali, attracted ostensibly by fees which were roughly half of the sector average. Even though many of these students were collecting bursaries from the Japanese government, many were not paying their fees or attending classes as a result of which in 2012 the university struck 30–40 per cent of them off their books (see Nikkei Shimbun Web 2012). 5 Japan had joined UNESCO two years previously, at the end of the post-war Allied occupation. 6 The 300,000 international student plan, which Japanese policymakers claimed to be inÀuenced by UK practice, included provisions for the encouragement of international
3/11 and international students in Japan 27
7
8
9 10
11
collaborations, including staff and student exchanges, credit transfer and double degrees, and the teaching of more courses in English. These government schemes have become more overtly focused on ‘Asia’ in recent years through speci¿c programmes such as the 2007–12 joint METI/MEXT initiative on ‘Asian human resources’ (Ajia jinzai: see Career Development Program for Foreign Students in Japan 2012) and Campus Asia 2011 (MEXT 2011c). Outbound student mobility has been seen as particularly problematic in recent years in Japan: at the University of Tokyo only 0.4 per cent of students took part in overseas exchange programmes in 2011; in Keio it was 0.45 per cent; in total, only eight universities out of over 700 universities across Japan sent more than 100 students abroad to obtain 16 or more credits in 2009 (Tanikawa 2012). Note headlines such as ‘Our company’s star employees are from Asia’ and ‘Why can’t Japanese students match foreign students in the job hunt?’ (Nikkei Business Magazine 2011; Sankei News 2012). While data from the annual International Student Enrolment Surveys carried out by the Institute of International Education (IIE) suggests that more universities in the US continued to see declines in the number of Japanese students enrolling in 2009 and 2010, there was an increase in enrolments in 2011 and 2012 suggesting perhaps that Japanese government policies to increase the number of students studying overseas was beginning to have an effect (see IIE 2012 and IIE surveys from previous years). It is notable from the same surveys however that the investment in US universities in recruiting students from Japan was much lower than that for recruiting students from China, India and Korea. Indeed, only recruitment in Africa seemed to see less investment, suggesting that the drop in Japanese students in recent years was partly a two-way process. The reduction in Japanese students in the US is perhaps most noticeable at the graduate level where Chinese students make up around 30 per cent of non-US students who receive doctorates, South Koreans around 10 per cent and Japanese only around 2 per cent (Yomiuri Shimbun 7 October 2010). This use of the term uchi muki shikǀ (inward-looking tendency) rose to popularity after a widely-reported survey conducted by Sanno Institute of Management in 2010, which found that one out of every two new employees in Japan had no desire to work overseas in the future (Sanno Institute 2010). The term has subsequently appeared in government policy documents on education and employment issues (see, for example, Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet 2012; MEXT 2012b).
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Cabinet Of¿ce, Government of Japan. 2009. ‘Gaikoku kǀdo jinzai ukeire seisaku no honkakuteki tenkai o’ [Full-scale rollout of policies for attracting highly-skilled foreign labour]. Available from: http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/jinzai/dai2/houkoku.pdf [accessed 6 December 2013]. Calderon, Angel. 2011. ‘Emerging Countries for Student Recruitment in Tertiary Education’. Paper presented at the IMHE-OECD General Conference 2010, Paris, 13–15 September. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/0/46130419.pdf [accessed 6 December 2013]. Career Development Program for Foreign Students in Japan. 2012. ‘Ajia jinzai shikin kǀsǀ [Asian human resources fund scheme]’. Available from: http://www.ajinzai-sc.jp/index. html [accessed 6 December 2013]. Clammer, John. 2001. Japan and Its Others. Melbourne: Trans Paci¿c Press. Council for Global Human Resource Development through Industry-Academia Partnerships. 2011. ‘Sangaku renkei ni yoru gurǀbaru jinzai ikusei no tame no senryaku [Strategies for the development of global human capital through industry-academia partnerships]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/shitu/sangaku/ 1301460.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. Goodman, Roger. 2005. ‘W[h]ither the Japanese University? An Introduction’. In The ‘Big Bang’ in Japanese Higher Education: The 2004 Reforms and the Dynamics of Change, edited by J. S. Eades, Roger Goodman and Yumiko Hada, 1–31. Melbourne: Trans Paci¿c Press. Goodman, Roger. 2007. ‘The Concept of Kokusaika and Japanese Educational Reform’. Globalisation, Societies and Education 5(1): 71–87. Horie, Miki. 2002. ‘The Internationalisation of Higher Education in Japan in the 1990s: A Reconsideration’. Higher Education 43: 65–84. Huang, Futao. 2009. ‘The Internationalization of the Academic Profession in Japan: A Quantitative Perspective’. Journal of Studies in International Education 13(2): 143–158. IIE – Institute of International Education. 2012. ‘Fall 2012 International Student Enrolment Survey’. Available from: http://www.iie.org/~/media/Files/Corporate/OpenDoors/Special-Reports/Fall-Survey-Report-International-Students-2012.ashx [accessed 6 December 2013]. JASSO – Japan Student Services Organization. 2012a. ‘International Students in Japan, 2011’. Available from: http://www.jasso.go.jp/statistics/intl_student/data11_e. html [accessed 6 December 2013]. JASSO. 2012b. ‘Nihongo kyǀiku kikan ni okeru gaikokujin rynjgakusei ukeire jǀkyǀ [Enrolment of international students in Japanese language education institutions]’. Available from: http://www.jasso.go.jp/statistics/intl_student/ref11_03.html [accessed 6 December 2013]. Kawai, Junko. 2005. ‘Academic Markets and Policy Arrangements: International Students in Japanese Higher Education’. PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley. Kudo, Kazuhiro and Hiroko Hashimoto. 2011. ‘Internationalization of Japanese Universities: Current Status and Future Directions’. In Higher Education in the Asia-Paci¿c, edited by Simon Marginson, 343–360. London: Springer. Kuwamura, Akira. 2009. ‘The Challenges of Increasing Capacity and Diversity in Japanese Higher Education Through Proactive Recruitment Strategies’. Journal of Studies in International Education 13(2): 189–202. McNeill, David. 2011. ‘Disaster Might Hasten Change at Japan’s Universities’. The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 24.
3/11 and international students in Japan 29 MEXT – Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. 2009a. ‘Kokusaika kyoten seibi jigyǀ (gurǀbaru 30) [Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization (Global 30)]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/ koutou/kaikaku/1260188.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2009b. ‘Prioritized Financial Assistance for the Internationalization of Universities: Launching the Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization (Global 30)’. 26 August. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/ a¿eld¿le/2011/02/15/1302272_002.pdf [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2011a. ‘Higashi nihon daishinsai ni tomonau gaikokujin rynjgakusei (daigaku, senshnjgakkǀ) no zaiseki/shnjgaku jǀkyǀ ni tsuite [The enrolment status of foreign exchange students at universities and vocational colleges following the Great East Japan Earthquake]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/ryugaku/1310541. htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2011b. ‘Monbukagakushǀ no higashi nihon daishinsai no taiǀ ni tsuite (daigaku kankei bassui) [MEXT’s response to the Great East Japan Earthquake (extract on university-related matters)]’. Available from: http://www.jasso.go.jp/gakusei_plan/ documents/23_guidance_tokyo_data03.pdf [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2011c. ‘Heisei 23nendo daigaku no sekai tenkairyoku kyǀka jigyǀ no kettei ni tsuite [Projects selected under the FY2011 project for enhancing universities]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/kaikaku/sekaitenkai/1312826.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2011d. ‘Rynjgakusei kankei no heisei 23nendo yosan(an) ni tsuite [FY2011 budget for international student-related projects]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_ menu/koutou/shinkou/07021403/1302242.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2012a. ‘Nihonjin no kaigai rynjgaku jǀkyǀ ni tsuite [Japanese students abroad]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/24/01/__icsFiles/a¿eld¿le/ 2012/02/02/1315686_01.pdf [accessed 6 December 2013]. MEXT 2012b. ‘Gurǀbaru jinzai ikusei suishin jigyǀ [Project for the advancement of global human resource development]’. Available from: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/ kaikaku/sekaitenkai/1319596.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. MOJ – Ministry of Justice, Government of Japan. 2011a. ‘Higashi nihon daishinsai zengo no gaikokujin shutsunynjkokushasnj [Entries to and departures from Japan before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake]’. April 15. Available from: http://www. moj.go.jp/nyuukokukanri/kouhou/nyuukokukanri01_00062.html [accessed 6 December 2013]. MOJ 2011b. ‘Shutsunynjkoku kanri tǀkei [Immigration control statistics]’. Available from: http://www.moj.go.jp/housei/toukei/toukei_ichiran_nyukan.html [accessed 6 December 2013]. Nihon Kokusai Kyǀiku Kyǀkai. 1997. Nihon Kokusai Kyǀiku Kyǀkai Yon-jnj Nenshi [Forty Year History of the Japan International Education Association]. Tokyo: Nihon Kokusai Kyǀiku Kyǀkai. Nikkei Business Magazine. 2011. ‘Uchi no Ɲsu wa ajia jin [Our company’s star employees are from Asia]’. November 8. Nikkei Shimbun Web. 2012. ‘Yamaguchi fukushi bunkadai ni tachiiri chǀsa: monkashǀ [MEXT to conduct on-site inspections at Yamaguchi University of Human Welfare and Culture]’. Available from: http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXNASDG2704N_ X20C12A9CR8000/ [accessed 6 December 2013]. Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation). 2011. ‘Gurǀbaru jinzai no ikusei ni muketa teigen [Proposals for the development of global human capital]’. June 14.
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Available at: http://www.keidanren.or.jp/japanese/policy/2011/062/index.html [accessed 6 December 2013]. Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet. 2012. ‘Gurǀbaru jinzai ikusei senryaku (gurǀbaru jinzai ikusei suishin kaigi shingi matome) [Strategies for the development of global human resources (summary of proceedings of the council for the advancement of global human resources)]’. Available from: http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/global/ 1206011matome.pdf [accessed 6 December 2013]. Sankei News. 2011. ‘Kankǀkyaku o yobimodose! Rynjgakusei 1100nin ga kankǀchi chekku, bokoku ni hasshin [Bring back the tourists! 1100 international students check out tourism destinations and report to their home countries]’. May 20. Available from: http://sankei. jp.msn.com/affairs/news/110520/dst11052017120013-n1.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. Sankei News. 2012. ‘Shnjshoku sensen ni kyǀryoku raibaru: gaikokujin rynjgakusei ni nihonjin gakusei wa naze katenai? [A powerful rival in the job hunting battle: Why can’t Japanese students beat foreign students?]’. 14 January. Available from: http://sankei. jp.msn.com/west/west_economy/news/120114/wec12011416000001-n1.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. Sanno Institute of Management. 2010. ‘Dai4kai shinnynj shain no gurǀbaru ishiki chǀsa [4th survey of global attitudes among new employees]’. Available from: http:// www.sanno.ac.jp/research/global2010.html [accessed 6 December 2013]. Scott, Peter. 2011. ‘Universities are all “internationalising” now’. The Guardian, 7 June. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/07/universities-globalambitions-internationalising [accessed 6 December 2013]. Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. 2010. ‘2010nen 3gatsu Kokuseki betsu shukkoku gaikokujin no zairynj shikaku [Departure of foreign nationals by nationality and status of residence, March 2010]’. Available from: http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?lid=000001064184 [accessed 6 December 2013]. Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. 2011. ‘2011nen 3gatsu Kokuseki betsu shukkoku gaikokujin no zairynj shikaku [Departure of foreign nationals by nationality and status of residence, March 2011]’. Available from: http://www.e-stat. go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?lid=000001074100 [accessed 6 December 2013]. Tanikawa, Miki. 2012. ‘Japanese Universities Go Global, but Slowly’. The New York Times, July 29. Terakura, Kenichi. 2011. ‘Wagakuni ni okeru Chnjgokujin rynjgakusei ukeire to Chnjgoku no rynjgakusei seisaku [Chinese students in Japan and Chinese international student policy]’. In Sekai no naka no Chnjgoku sǀgǀ chǀsa hǀkoku-sho [China in the World: General Survey Report], edited by the National Diet Library, 181–197. Tokyo: National Diet Library. Times Higher Education. 2010. ‘Japan’s open-door policy hinges on an attitude shift’. October 14. Available from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/japansopen-door-policy-hinges-on-an-attitude-shift/413828.article [accessed 6 December 2013]. Times Higher Education. 2011a. ‘“Galapagos syndrome”: Japan’s gaze turns inward’. January 27. Available from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/414933.article [accessed 6 December 2013]. Times Higher Education. 2011b. ‘Post-disaster Japan puts out a fresh welcome mat’. July 28. Available from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode= 416931 [accessed 6 December 2013].
3/11 and international students in Japan 31 Umakoshi, Tǀru. 1997. ‘Internationalization of Japanese Higher Education in the 1980s and Early 1990s’. Higher Education 34: 259–273. Yahoo! Japan News. 2011. ‘Gaikokujin, gaishikei kigyǀ no nihon taihi no ugoki [Moves to leave Japan among foreigners and foreign companies]’. Available from: http://dailynews. yahoo.co.jp/fc/world/evacuating_foreigners/ [accessed 6 December 2013]. Yamaguchi, Makoto. 2010. Nihon no Kaigai Ryokǀ [Japanese Overseas Travel]. Chikuma Shobǀ. Yomiuri Online. 2011a. ‘Genpatsu jiko, jikokumin ni taihi o motomete iru omo na kuni/ chiiki [Principal countries/regions recommending their nationals to leave Japan following the nuclear reactor accident]’. Available from: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/ national/news/20110319-OYT1T00164.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. Yomiuri Online. 2011b. ‘Oya, kuni ga iku na to . . . rynjgakusei nihon keien 4330nin [Parents, governments say don’t go . . . 4330 international students shun Japan]’. 20 April. Available from: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20110420-OYT1T00496.htm [accessed 6 December 2013]. Yomiuri Shimbun. 2010. ‘Nǀberu kagakushǀ jushǀ no yorokobi o tsugi ni tsunagetai [Connecting Nobel Prize for Chemistry success to the next step forward]’. 7 October (Morning edition). Yonezawa, Akiyoshi. 2010. ‘Much Ado About Ranking: Why Can’t Japanese Universities Internationalize?’ Japan Forum 22(1–2): 121–137. Yonezawa, Akiyoshi. 2011a. ‘The Internationalisation of Japanese Higher Education: Policy Debates and Realities’. In Higher Education in the Asia-Paci¿c, edited by Simon Marginson. London: Springer, 329–342. Yonezawa, Akiyoshi. 2011b. ‘The “Global 30” and the Consequences of Selecting “World-Class Universities” in Japan’. In Paths to a World-Class University: Lessons from Practices and Experiences, edited by Nian Cai Liu, Qi Wang and Ying Cheng. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 67–82.
3
Internationalising legal education in Japan as discourse and practice Kota Fukui and Stacey Steele
Introduction: Japanese legal education reform and internationalising Internationalisation was a key goal of the Justice System Reform Council (JSRC 2001), which energized the movement for fundamental reform of Japanese legal education in the early twenty-¿rst century. The reform process presented a unique opportunity to completely overhaul legal education in Japan from an internationalist standpoint. The Council’s recommendations, however, reÀected an idealistic view of the potential for reform. The subsequent compromise in 2004 between key stakeholders such as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Ministry of Justice, Japanese bar associations, lawyers and politicians1 gave way to the MEXT licensing 74 postgraduate law schools with over 5000 students. Belated strong lobbying against increasing the number of lawyers by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations and perceptions about the potential for a slide in the quality of lawyers saw the number of people able to become lawyers kept arti¿cially low by the Ministry of Justice; only 3,000 candidates would be entitled to pass the national bar examination and candidates had three attempts over ¿ve years to pass. Before 2004, stakeholders expected a pass rate of approximately 70 per cent; the current pass rate is less than 30 per cent.2 The result is continued intense competition to pass the national bar examination, law school courses highly relevant to the examination, and jockeying by faculties for the highest pass rate (for this and other consequences, see Kashiwagi 2010). The gap created by the reforms’ ideals and the practical realities of qualifying as a bengoshi in Japan3 has created a potential niche market for undergraduate legal education to pursue an internationalist agenda. This chapter explores the discourse of internationalising Japan in the context of legal education reform in Japanese universities,4 and uses undergraduate legal education curricula at Osaka University as an empirical case study of internationalisation.5 Undergraduate education and its curricula was largely ignored in the debates leading to reforms in 2004 except to the extent that it was criticised for perceived de¿ciencies; it was used as a means to justify the wide-reaching reforms that introduced postgraduate law schools and juris doctor courses.6 Despite the focus on postgraduate legal education, undergraduate education is still important because of its potential
Internationalising legal education in Japan 33 impact on Japanese society, economy and politics. As Levin notes, ‘a remarkable percentage of the decision makers who control Japan’s advanced administrative and professional society are graduates of the nation’s law faculties’ (Levin 2000: 1); they are important centres for developing a Japanese elite (Miyazawa 2000) and this is unlikely to change in the immediate future. The ¿rst section of this chapter analyses key discourses about internationalising legal education occurring outside of Japan, and reÀects the authors’ normative stance in favour of internationalising legal education. Secondly, we critique internationalisation discourses inside of Japan and the Council which more closely informed recent Japanese reforms. It is dif¿cult to ¿nd direct interaction on the issue of internationalisation between the Japanese discourse and global trends in legal education, although there was, and is, great interest in Japan about legal education in America in general. Next, we argue that undergraduate legal education ¿lls a niche due to the failures of the new postgraduate system, including the promotion of internationalisation. Finally, we examine in detail how the experience of legal education may be internationalised by way of an empirical case study. The analysis of Osaka University’s review and implementation of internationalisation at undergraduate level provides lessons for tertiary institutions seeking to implement international programs and highlights what internationalisation means (as well as what it does not mean) for legal education in Japan in the early twenty-¿rst century.
Global discourses and contexts in favour of internationalising legal education Internationalising legal education in Japan may be contextualised as part of a worldwide discourse on the internationalisation of legal practice (Nagashima and Zaloom 2007; Beyer 2010), law (Hiscock 2010) and legal education (Waincymer 2010; Lo 2010). Waincymer (2010: 71, 73) views internationalisation as a response to complex legal webs involving intense international trade and commercial activity. Internationalisation is not, however, a twenty-¿rst century phenomenon (Hiscock 2010: xviii; Waincymer 2010: 71–3; c.f. Clark 1995: 100). Japan’s legal system has arguably responded to rapid internationalisation at a number of key turning points in history, including the Meiji Restoration (1868) and post-war Occupation (1945–52).7 The impact of new technologies is arguably speeding up processes of internationalisation in the twenty-¿rst century. Internationalisation in the context of legal education refers to a process of introducing students to different ways of thinking about legal problems, teaching students skills to formulate legal responses about common problems in the context of different jurisdictions and also transferring knowledge about new and evolving legal jurisdictions such as bodies of international law. Similarly, Hiscock and van Caenegem describe internationalism as: a way of studying, an attitude to the law which takes it beyond a narrow technical art and into a broader sphere and more contextual situation.
34
Kota Fukui and Stacey Steele Considering the law in other jurisdictions forces one to see the law, to think about the law in context, that is against a speci¿c social and cultural background, and not as a technical, self-suf¿cient rational system. (Hiscock and van Caenegem 2010: 298)
Waincymer gives a hypothetical legal question as an example (Waincymer 2010: 83). He argues that it is not necessarily up to international lawyers to know the relevant law in each jurisdiction, but they should at least be trained to ask relevant questions which identify key issues to be answered by lawyers quali¿ed in each jurisdiction. To this, we would add, that they need the skills to interpret those responses for their own clients. Adopting a Àuid, skills-based and practically-oriented de¿nition of internationalisation means that there is room for diverse approaches, including multi-disciplinary (Clark 1995: 105). As Waincymer notes, responses to internationalisation depend on many choices and trade-offs; resourcing, including libraries are relevant; and approaches are also likely to be jurisdiction-speci¿c (Waincymer 2010: 71, 77).8 Clark also recognises that internationalisation is context-speci¿c (Clark 1995: 100). In Australia, for example, internationalisation during the 1990s translated as an increased focus on Asian law and international trade law (ibid: 101). In Japan, at least until recently, internationalisation trended towards Anglo-American (mainly American) law and English-language instruction. In this way, the discourse and practice of internationalisation of legal education may also be speci¿c to the period under discussion. The possibilities for internationalisation are limited only by the imagination, energy and resources of students, teachers and institutions, in whatever form they may take. Examples of internationalisation in practice include: classes about law in jurisdictions other than a student or researcher’s one or more home jurisdictions; classes in languages other than, for example, English or Japanese; internships outside a student’s home jurisdiction(s); subjects such as international private and public law, including international human rights law, international trade, transnational business transactions, comparative law; student and staff exchanges; double degrees; and international student societies. Whatever the means, internationalisation should involve critical thinking about other jurisdictions. Hiscock calls for an ‘intelligent understanding’, not necessarily ‘Àuency’, although specialisations for postgraduate study and professional development may take root at the earliest level, as well as a realisation of developed countries’ obligations to assist other countries (Hiscock 2010: xxiv). Lo conveniently categorises internationalising law curricula into four pedagogical approaches based on a global survey of university law schools: inclusive, integrative, experiential and preferential (Lo 2010: 120).9 An inclusive approach refers ‘to the offering of international, comparative and foreign law courses in addition to the core curriculum’ (ibid: 120–2). Debate may ensue about whether any of these offerings should be mandatory, but the success of the courses will be primarily up to the individuals charged with teaching them. Lo’s integrative approach requires international and comparative law to be ‘taught in domestic law
Internationalising legal education in Japan 35 courses’ (ibid: 123).10 The major drawback of this approach is, of course, the capacity of staff to teach about other jurisdictions. Experiential approaches, as the label suggests, involve the ‘study of foreign laws in foreign countries’ (ibid: 124) and, obviously, these programs have major ¿nancial implications for both students and sponsoring institutions. Finally, the preferential approach allows students the freedom to choose from a number of other activities, such as independent research projects, international moot court competitions, and international and comparative law journals.11 As Lo notes: the approaches are ‘not mutually exclusive’; depend on ‘¿nancial and human resources’; and the mix may change over time (ibid: 120). Lo discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches in detail and they provide a basis for our critique of the implementation of Osaka University’s programs in the last section of this chapter. The problem with Lo’s focus on the nuts and bolts of internationalisation, however, is that it does not help institutions strategically assess the emphasis to be placed on the various approaches to internationalisation (Lo 2010: 118–19). Lo sets out the pros and cons of internationalisation of legal education12 and concludes that, despite controversy, ‘the question of how to do it has begun overshadowing the question of whether it is appropriate to do it’ (ibid: 118–19). Hiscock, one of the pioneers of comparative law in Australia and a believer in the importance of internationalisation, also claims her interest is now on ‘how it will develop in the twenty-¿rst century’ (Hiscock 2010: xviii). Practically speaking, Lo and Hiscock are correct, because internationalisation as described above is already happening and developing in legal education around the world. It is still important, however, to ask ‘why’. Waincymer argues that internationalisation must form part of an overall discussion of the ‘purpose and shape’ of legal education, albeit within the acknowledged limits of resourcing, education regulation and other pedagogical goals (Waincymer 2010: 68–70). The internationalisation of legal education needs an intellectual basis to inform its goals, because different drivers likely lead to different results. Similarly, Maxeiner also argues that it is necessary to ask ‘why’ so that programs can be planned and developed (Maxeiner 2008: 46). He worries, however, that the ‘why’ question is asked too often to justify internationalisation, which he clearly believes should not need justifying (ibid: 46). From an American perspective, Maxeiner argues that internationalisation at both business and personal levels make internationalisation of legal education unavoidable, but he also points to the potential to simply learn from other legal systems as a strong incentive to internationalise. Waincymer contends that there is too much focus on the legal profession’s perceived need for lawyers to conduct international commercial legal practice;13 and even then, the legal profession tends to be de¿ned as meaning large law ¿rms as the ultimate end users of the student product produced by law faculties (Waincymer 2010: 69–70).14 Countering these drivers, he observes a line of argument in favour of internationalising legal education that uses internationalisation as a means to critique the status quo, in a similar way that gender studies may offer new approaches to legal studies.
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Internationalisation discourse as a driver for legal education reform in Japan The differing raison d’êtres found in discourses in favour of internationalisation outside of Japan also played a part in the reform of Japanese legal education in the early twenty-¿rst century. Waincymer’s (2010) internationalist agenda could be seen in the initial excitement surrounding the possibilities for reform of Japanese legal education. There does not appear to have been a direct link, however, between the discourse occurring in legal education debates in English-language literature and the discourse leading up to the Council’s recommendations, which were focused on the Japanese justice system as a whole. Further, unlike calls for international legal education by law ¿rms in jurisdictions such as Australia, internationalisation of legal education in Japan was not driven by the legal profession per se. Legal education stakeholders in Japan such as law faculties, Ministry of Justice and MEXT were traditionally insulated from criticism by end users such as corporations and law ¿rms because of the small number of bengoshi. The ¿nal recommendations, however, had a distinct focus on business needs in a way that had not existed in Japan previously. Internationalising Japanese legal education must be considered in the context of debates about the lack of bengoshi; Japanese businesses’ traditional, alleged aversion to bengoshi and litigation; recent calls for more transactional and business lawyers, tax law and regulatory expertise; and the role of law and lawyers in economic and social development. The Japanese lost decade, which followed the bursting of the bubble economy in 1991, also caused many leaders to rethink the so-called Japanese model, if it ever existed at all. Foote, a leading commentator on Japanese law, argues that internationalisation of other aspects of Japanese society increased pressure on the justice system reform process and became a key factor ‘underlying the reforms’ (Foote 2007: xxvii).15 In particular, he concludes that ‘internationalisation played an important role in generating business support for reform’, which in turn placed it squarely on the political agenda (ibid: xxvii). Foote argues that the changing tone of the discourse on internationalisation in the 1990s led to a positive change in attitudes towards lawyers and disputes (ibid: xxvii).16 The ¿nal impetus for legal education reform in Japan was the Justice System Reform Council, although reform had been discussed perennially for many decades.17 The Justice System Reform Council was established on 27 July 1999 by the Japanese government with a view to providing recommendations for a justice system to support Japan in the twenty-¿rst century.18 The Council’s ¿nal report was published on 12 June 2001 and has been discussed at length elsewhere (JSRC 2001; see, for example, Lawley 2005 and contributions to Steele and Taylor’s edited volume 2010). Increasing the legal population in Japan was one of the report’s key recommendations. The Council hoped that with more lawyers,19 lawyers themselves would expand their activities outside traditional areas of practice such as court advocacy;20 Japanese citizens would have better access to legal advice in a deregulated polity; Japanese corporations would have better
Internationalising legal education in Japan 37 access to highly-trained advocates; and there would be ‘internationalization of lawyers’ and increased co-operation and co-ordination between Japanese and non-Japanese lawyers (JSRC 2001: Chapter III, Part 3). The Council’s conceptualisation of internationalisation in the section of its report entitled ‘Part 3: Responses to Internationalization’ conÀates many of the concepts discussed in this book, including cross border transfer of ‘information, funds and materials’, global interdependence and competition, globalisation and harmonisation (JSRC 2001). As the title of the ¿nal report suggests, supporting Japan, including its global economic, political and social standing, was its key focus. Accordingly, the rationale for internationalisation was about Japanese development and improvement, with a sprinkle of outward-looking concern: In this era, it will become even more important for our country not just to respond passively to the global trends but rather to deepen the sharing of the values of the international community and to positively contribute to the formation and development of the international community, which is based on fair rules . . . Meanwhile, it is urgent to accurately check illegality based on clear and fair rules as well as to strengthen the role of the justice system in providing fair and prompt remedies to people whose rights or freedoms have been infringed and to reinforce the ability to respond globally. From the standpoint of global competitiveness and the ability of the Japanese social and economic system to meet the global environment, the justice system (legal profession) of our country will – more than ever – be required to actively respond to social needs and to make its presence felt in the provision of fair and prompt dispute resolution methods that support a free and fair society and ef¿cient market system; accurate response to international organized crime and the management of various crises; the guarantee of human rights in every aspect of society; the establishment of corporate governance, including strategic risk management and respect for the law; the handling of intellectual property, information technology, and ¿nancial technology as a matter of national strategy. . . . (JSRC 2001: Chapter III, Part 3) The Council’s initial discourse suggests that in the context of legal education its recommendations would focus on education for internationalisation; that is, designing legal education to prepare students for global engagement and leading Japan in an era of increased globalisation. The Council’s recommendations and focus for internationalisation, however, meant that internationalisation in practice resulted in adding to existing, domestic systems; not transforming systems from the inside out from an internationalist perspective. The Council condensed its recommendations on internationalisation to four areas: civil justice; criminal justice; legal technical assistance for developing countries; and the internationalisation of lawyers. Its speci¿c recommendations for internationalising each area highlight its domestic agenda; for example, it was
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mainly concerned about intellectual property litigation and speeding up cases when it referred to the ‘increasing number of international civil cases’. It noted that ‘other countries regard this as part of their international strategy relating to intellectual property and are adopting various measures to promote it’. It also called for better co-ordination of international commercial arbitration to deal with disputes arising out of the globalisation of economic activities and e-commerce across borders. The globalisation of crime also concerned the Council, so it recommended better co-ordination of international and judicial assistance systems to prevent and eradicate international crime. Furthermore, promoting legal technical assistance was also categorised by the Council as part of its responses to internationalisation. The Council saw technical assistance as a responsibility of Japan as a member of ‘the international society’ and a means of contributing to the ‘development of smooth economic activities in private sectors in the advancing globalization of society and the economy’. Similar to many aid programs instituted by developed countries, Japan seeks to inÀuence its trading partners and neighbours through assistance (Taylor 2005).21 Finally, the Council called for the internationalisation of lawyers, including ‘by improving specialization, strengthening business structure, promoting international exchange, and considering the demands of internationalization in the legal training stage’ (JSRC 2001: Chapter III, Part 3–4). The Council’s recommendations on the reform of legal education, however, did not stipulate how to implement internationalisation. Importantly, the recommendations failed to Àow through to designs for the national bar examination. At this point, the Council lost the opportunity to institutionalise an internationalist agenda. The bar examination is still focused on domestic legal knowledge; while this is understandable given that it is a domestic quali¿cation,22 the failure to challenge such a fundamental assumption has become a road block to internationalisation at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. The lost opportunity has been lamented by one of Japan’s leading legal education internationalists, Kashiwagi: [S]ubjects not included in the Bar Examination, such as comparative law, history of law, Roman law, legal thought, and law and sociology are therefore not taken seriously by most students . . . most students are unwilling to study subjects other than those that are included on the Bar Examination as either mandatory or elective subjects. Students simply do not have the luxury of spending time on these other subjects. (Kashiwagi 2010: 192) Kashiwagi’s own overseas’ work experience and research interests led him to strongly advocate legal education for internationalisation; that is, preparing students for global engagement. Other academics supported his internationalist vision (Omura, Osanai and Smith 2005), but the realities of the rush to reform meant that even where internationalisation was elevated in priority in curricula, there was a tendency to
Internationalising legal education in Japan 39 focus on the internationalisation of the education system, rather than creating legal professionals who could engage in an internationalised workplace. Law schools, for example, adopted non-indigenous educational structures and teaching approaches such as the Socratic method or a case law focus, and offered subjects in English. Even these efforts, however, have been thwarted by the pass rate of the bar examination. Kashiwagi con¿rms that despite initial efforts by law schools to ‘internationalize their curricula to conform to the recommendations of the Justice System Reform Council’, students are ‘concentrating on domestic law’ because of the bar examination and its pass rate (192). Currently, students may select one elective subject for the bar examination. Private international law and public international law are included in the electives, but are not popular amongst students. Even the Ministry of Justice has con¿rmed that the questions on the bar examination relating to international business law ‘in fact relate only to Japanese domestic law’ (192). Discourse on Japanese legal education is, however, increasingly focusing on the needs of business, including the challenges of internationalisation. Academics are suddenly interested in what corporate legal departments want; partly as a means for ¿nding more roles for Japanese graduates and documenting the changing attitudes of corporations towards lawyers. Aronson argues that changing or increasing demand for legal services is a ‘critical factor’ in judging whether legal education and other reforms will transform the role of lawyers in Japan (Aronson 2009: 226–7). An annual survey of corporate legal departments which commenced in 2010 is used to analyse the expectations and attitudes of companies towards new graduates with law degrees.23 The survey revealed that corporate legal departments expect new graduates with no experience in corporate legal work to have knowledge and skills relating to the ability to communicate (komyunikƝshon nǀryoku; 68.3 per cent of respondents), a positive attitude towards work (gyǀmu e no kanshin, sekkyoku-sei; 68.8 per cent), a sense of balance (baransu kankaku; 49.7 per cent), and be able to think logically (shikǀryoku; 53.8 per cent) and analytically (bunseki-ryoku dǀsatsuryoku; 28.5 per cent) (Kojima and Yoneda 2011: 32). The respondents’ expectations in terms of legal knowledge were very low by comparison: only 14.8 per cent expected a broad knowledge of the law (habahiroi hǀteki chishiki), and even fewer expected deep legal knowledge (fukai hǀteki chishiki; 2.2 per cent) (32). Responses in relation to legal knowledge changed signi¿cantly when departments were asked about their expectations of the knowledge and skills of new graduates from postgraduate law schools who are not admitted to practice in Japan,24 but join the departments as in-house legal counsel. The majority of respondents expected graduates to have a broad legal knowledge (58.9 per cent) and over one-third expected graduates to have deep legal knowledge (34.6 per cent). The employers still expect high levels of communication (53.1 per cent) and analytical skills (38 per cent), as well as a sense of balance (43.7 per cent), but they are differentiating between their expectations of undergraduate and postgraduate legal education. Employers’ expectations of legal knowledge dramatically increased when corporate legal departments were asked about hiring
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experienced bengoshi: 71.6 per cent thought that a deep legal knowledge was expected and 54.6 per cent thought that a broad knowledge of legal matters was expected (Kojima and Yoneda 2011: 32). From the perspective of internationalising legal education, some of the most interesting ¿ndings from the survey relate to employers’ expectations of corporate legal counsel and non-legal knowledge. The majority of employers highly prized English-language skills (54.9 per cent), with other languages lagging well behind: Chinese (4.5 per cent) and other (0.5 per cent) (Kojima and Yoneda 2011: 36). To some extent, the results reÀect the choices given to respondents: language ability (English); intellectual property; accounting; taxation; ¿nance; management; language ability (Chinese); marketing; language ability (other); and other. The outcomes also reÀect a tendency to equate internationalisation with Englishlanguage skills in Japan. Other skills which may relate to international aspects of business which were highly valued by corporate legal departments included knowledge of intellectual property (42 per cent) and accounting, tax and ¿nance matters (41.3 per cent).
The evolution of the role of undergraduate legal education in Japan Even increased focus by business on international aspects of legal education has not been enough, however, to dislodge the mindset of the national bar examination. The failure of the 2004 reforms to increase the comparative, international and foreign law25 content in postgraduate legal education or during compulsory training at the Supreme Court’s Legal Training and Research Institute,26 and the lack of stringent regulation of undergraduate curriculum content, has opened the way for universities to build on existing international programs for undergraduate law students.27 Similar to the global discourse on internationalisation of legal education, Japanese undergraduate faculties consider internationalisation important for a variety of reasons, including the ability to attract students; pedagogical possibilities; and its relationship to career paths of students including the bureaucracy, political and corporate leadership, and the law (many law undergraduates go on to study law at postgraduate level under the new system). Undergraduate legal education was largely ignored by the Council in its recommendations, although it did call for the design of the new law school system to ‘clearly de¿ne the relationship between education provided at law schools and education provided at law faculties of universities’ (JSRC 2001: Chapter III, Part 2-2(1)(c)). The relationship was not clearly de¿ned and continues to develop. Lawley observes that there was ‘very little discussion’ about what changes might eventuate or be required or desired at the undergraduate level prior to the major reforms to Japanese legal education which resulted from the Council’s recommendations (Lawley 2005: 81). He was one of the few commentators to publish on the future of undergraduate legal education in Japan at the time of the reforms. It was clear from the outset, however, that Japan would combine both undergraduate and postgraduate legal education.28
Internationalising legal education in Japan 41 Undergraduate legal education needed to ¿nd a new reason for being if the new postgraduate law schools were to have primary gatekeeper responsibility for training legal professionals (narrowly de¿ned as lawyers, prosecutors and judges). Even before the reforms, undergraduate law students did not necessarily want to be legal professionals in the narrow sense of lawyer, prosecutor or judge; they may have been focused on a career in local or national government administration, commerce or even journalism.29 These broad career goals reÀected the historical development of law departments at Japan’s elite universities in the late nineteenth century (Levin 2000). The schools were designed to produce government bureaucrats, not private or commercial lawyers. After the reforms in 2004, undergraduate legal education in Japan is still generally a four-year full-time course, with students focusing on a law major in the second two years of the degree.30 Looking ahead to a post-‘Law School’ future, Lawley argued that undergraduate faculties would produce two kinds of graduates: lawyer-generalists and law-versed generalists (Lawley 2005). According to Lawley, lawyergeneralists are produced by undergraduate law faculties as a ¿rst step in their training towards becoming quali¿ed lawyers (ibid: 89). They have a ‘sound understanding of a broad range of subjects other than law’ (ibid: 89) and are ready for postgraduate legal study. Law-versed generalists are not, on the other hand, intended for practice as a quali¿ed lawyer, although they may work in a legal department at a large company or another law-related ¿eld. A majority of undergraduate faculties themselves see their role as offering education to a diverse group of students and creating legal generalists such as bureaucrats and corporate employees (Science Council of Japan 2005: 45). Lawley did not identify internationalisation of the curricula as a focus for future undergraduate legal education, but he did suggest that a ‘balance between law and liberal arts’ was needed (Lawley 2005: 93). He also argued that English remained an important component of undergraduate legal education (ibid: 95–9; cf. Levin 2000). Students learn English at high school, and many law schools require English ability as part of admission applications. He also argued that it makes university study more interesting and may persuade students to attend university classes, not just juku, or ‘cram schools’. Further, he argued that ‘English is the international discourse’. He did not believe, however, that these same arguments applied to ‘foreign languages other than English’, which in his view might take ‘lower priority’ by making them voluntary only in the post-2004 curricula (Lawley 2005: 96).
Osaka University as a case study of internationalising a Japanese undergraduate law program31 Although more diverse and complex in practice, Lawley’s predictions of bifurcated Japanese undergraduate legal education and an internationalised curricula limited to English-language skills are consistent with the ¿ndings from a review of initial efforts to internationalise Osaka University’s undergraduate curricula. Although some academic and administrative staff are genuinely committed to the
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ideals enumerated in the Council’s recommendations, institutional change takes time and money. It is also important that Osaka avoids creating additions to existing programs which make the formal elements of its curricula and degree offerings look internationalised, but at best only internationalise the system itself without preparing students for internationalisation. Locating the Undergraduate School of Law at Osaka University The practice of internationalising legal education at the Undergraduate School of Law at Osaka University helps to locate the practice of internationalising Japan in the educational and legal sphere. The University is one of the leading national competitive entry universities in Japan, established as one of the seven designated Imperial Universities in 1931 (Osaka University 2011a). The Undergraduate School of Law is one of eleven Undergraduate Schools at the University. The University also has sixteen Graduate Schools. With approximately 3,000 academic staff, its total student population for the 2011 academic year was roughly 25,000, including 15,693 undergraduates students, 8,009 graduate students and 1,780 international students (undergraduate: 274, graduate: 1,041, research student: 465) (Osaka University 2011c). The University’s geographical position, large enrolment and high-level status mean that it is likely to play a leading role in internationalisation as a key tertiary institution in Kansai area. The Faculty of Letters and Law was established at Osaka University in 1948, becoming the Faculty of Law in 1953 (Osaka School of Law 2011). As part of an organisational restructure after the integration of the Osaka University of Foreign Studies with Osaka University, the Faculty of Law was divided into two departments in 2008: the Department of Law and the Department of International Public Policy. The relationship between these two new departments is discussed further below. The Faculty of Law employs approximately 100 full-time professors, with approximately 1,040 undergraduate students (250 new enrolments per year) (ibid).32 Reasons for internationalising undergraduate legal education at Osaka University Pre-2004 legal education at Osaka University suffered from the same so-called problems identi¿ed by the Justice System Reform Council (2001) and others (Kashiwagi 2010). It focused on black letter law and theory, with little thought given to practical skills; there were few optional subjects related to non-Japanese legal issues or language. The ability to read English, German and French was considered important only for candidates who sought an academic career. In summary, the curriculum did not reÀect legal practice; it failed to respond to employer needs and prevailing globalisation forces; and offered little support for experiences abroad. The reasons for internationalising undergraduate legal education at Osaka University reÀect many of the arguments set out above, and are supported by the
Internationalising legal education in Japan 43 information on graduate destinations. Of 175 graduates from the Undergraduate School of Law at Osaka University in March 2010 (Osaka University 2011b), 65 graduates joined private sector ¿rms, 23 took government-related positions, and 67 entered graduate school (mostly entering law schools as Juris Doctor (JD) students). Accordingly, students at Osaka are currently being groomed for a career in the private or government sectors, or planning to go on to further study at law school with the aim of becoming a quali¿ed bengoshi. It is particularly important that Osaka’s graduates reÀect corporate and government needs, including basic legal knowledge with excellent communication and analytical skills. At the same time, from a pedagogical perspective, it is essential that Osaka provides students with opportunities that they may not be able to experience in the law school environment. Internationalisation may also serve to differentiate Osaka’s undergraduate legal education from other tertiary institutions and even its own postgraduate JD degree. Maxeiner recognises the use of internationalisation as a product differentiation technique used by law schools in America (Maxeiner 2008: 36). Osaka also focuses on internationalisation because of its physical and economic closeness to Asian countries such as Korea and China. The motto of Osaka University, created by the president Washida Kiyokazu in 2007, is to ‘Live Locally, Grow Globally’ (chiiki ni iki sekai ni nobiru) (International Affairs Board, Osaka University 2009). MEXT’s tertiary review and ranking system also encourages universities to incorporate international aspects in curricula. In 2009, MEXT launched a special funding program (Global 30) designed to accelerate internationalisation at a select group of universities, including Osaka University. MEXT’s concept of internationalisation involves an increase in sending Japanese and receiving international students at these institutions, and providing degree courses in English (MEXT 2011). Internationalising legal education at the Undergraduate School of Law, Osaka University The process of reforming and further internationalising legal education at the Undergraduate School of Law at Osaka University began after the law school was established in 2004. It includes traditional initiatives such as simply increasing the number of students studying overseas and offering lectures and seminars in English, as well as interesting programs to deepening relationships with organisations outside of the University through internship programs. The approaches cover the spectrum of Lo’s non-jurisdiction speci¿c categories: inclusive, integrative, experiential and preferential (Lo 2010: 120). The new undergraduate curriculum at Osaka includes subjects taught in languages other than Japanese, reÀecting Lo’s inclusive approach to curriculum development. Courses have included Topics in Japanese Law (taught by a fulltime non-Japanese lecturer), Topics in Comparative Law, Japan’s Relations with Asian Countries, Topics in Anglo-American Law (all taught by part-time lecturers from overseas). The two main problems with these subjects is ¿nding enough interested students with competent language skills to ¿ll them, and quali¿ed
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academics willing to come to Osaka to teach them. Maxeiner argues that this ‘additive’ approach reÀects a consumer-model of law school: the ‘market of students’ decides, avoiding a high level of institutional commitment and overall faculty support (Maxeiner 2008: 37–8). The language of tuition in these courses at Osaka is English only, reÀecting the language capacity of the instructors and students. The topics, however, include jurisdictions other than the traditional subjects of Anglo-American law. The focus on English also reÀects a tendency in Japan to equate internationalisation with Americanisation.33 Internationalisation by means of integration, involving teaching international and comparative law being taught in domestic law courses, is much more dif¿cult to achieve than adding specialised subjects to the curriculum. Similar to Maxeiner’s (2008) criticism of the American legal education system, not all faculty members in Japan are supportive of internationalising education if it means a higher teaching burden; some simply do not feel quali¿ed in non-domestic subject matter. At Osaka, however, integration is being assisted by institutional developments. The institutional structure of the Osaka School of Law itself lends itself to multi-disciplinary approaches to internationalisation. The School is made up of two departments: the Department of Law and the Department of International Public Policy. The Department of International Public Policy was established after the integration of Osaka University of Foreign Studies and Osaka University in 2007, when the School of Law inherited an undergraduate course on foreign studies. The attractive combination has increased the number of students who are interested in studying overseas and international law, politics and economy. The Department of International Public Policy requires students to complete a course in English; for example, English Certi¿cate I or Project Seminar in English. Although students may take courses from each department, the educational focus of the departments is quite different. The Department of Law is focused on black letter law, and attracts students focused on entering postgraduate law schools, whereas the Department of International Public Policy is focused on other areas such as international relations. Anecdotally, however, the international focus of the students attracted to the Department of International Public Policy is having an inÀuence on the students enrolled in the Department of Law. In this way, the teaching of law at Osaka University has followed a path more or less predicted by Lawley, who argued that pre-2004 undergraduate law faculties aimed at producing ‘generalists’, not just lawyers; many of the undergraduate students had no interest or chance of becoming a bengoshi under the pre-2004 system (Lawley 2005: 85). He suggested that undergraduate legal education would become even more bifurcated, consisting of one group focused on entering postgraduate legal education and passing the national bar examination; and another group seeking legal knowledge in a broad liberal arts degree to prepare them for a variety of careers. Lawley was concerned that undergraduate legal education in Japan ‘might lose some of its signi¿cance’ (ibid: 99). Although he does not suggest internationalisation as one means of undergraduate legal education maintaining its relevance, he does acknowledge the importance of foreign languages (mainly English) (ibid: 95–6) and argues for a greater emphasis
Internationalising legal education in Japan 45 on seminar-style classes, critical analytical skills, ethical education and technological literacy (ibid: 99). Osaka’s programs for undergraduate law students to experience life abroad include long- and short-term options. In 2010, students could apply to participate in exchanges to Europe, Asia, North America, Oceania and South/Mid America (listed in order of most popular destination).34 Students may choose from summer programs of two weeks to two months abroad to the Netherlands, Thailand and England35 and short-term exchange programs of more than one semester length, mainly to the US.36 The programs are ¿nancially supported by the University and the students themselves, and usually attract ¿ve to ten students each. From 2011, undergraduate law students from Osaka will join an international seminar in Australia, a program that teaches legal English and Australian law to overseas students, coordinated by the Australian Network for Japanese Law.37 In addition to the technical skills developed through these programs, the social network created by this opportunity to mix with students from other jurisdictions can be vitally important after graduation (Hiscock 2010: xxiv). Yet, Osaka’s experiential programs suffer from similar problems to those experienced by other tertiary institutions; only a small number of students can and do participate in the programs. Financially, overseas stints can be expensive; furthermore, in the current poor economic environment in Japan, students are concerned about spending time outside of Japan, when they feel that they should be participating in the somewhat rigid and formalised recruitment activities (shnjshoku katsudǀ) based at their home universities. Currently, the Japanese government provides ¿nancial support for many exchange, short stay and short visit programs, especially to the top 30 universities.38 If funding comes under threat as part of recent austerity measures, the number of students with access to an overseas’ experience is likely to fall. As Maxeiner notes, the 1950s to 1960s saw an increased interest and commitment to internationalisation in American legal education, but funding dried up in the 1970s to 1980s as society and politicians focused inwardly; it was a shock for people who had committed to the internationalisation dream (Maxeiner 2008: 44). The opportunities for ‘preferential’, as described in Lo’s categorisation, or opt-in internationalisation by students at Osaka are still limited. Osaka offers students, for example, an opportunity to participate in the Intercollegiate Negotiation Competition hosted at Sophia University in Tokyo every December. Members of a professor’s seminar titled ‘Negotiation’ compete in English and Japanese against teams from Japan and Australia. The competition is now in its tenth year. Although not mentioned by Lo as part of her classi¿cation model, the number and make-up of international students and faculty is also an important aspect of internationalisation identi¿ed by Maxeiner (2008) and others (for example, Levin 2000). Osaka is host to 1,780 international students in 2011; 28 are enrolled in the Undergraduate School of Law at Osaka University (2010). The School of Law does not retain any full-time, non-Japanese faculty members, but it has a number of contract positions ¿lled by academics from jurisdictions such as Australia and Korea. Levin argues that the ‘presence of non-Japanese, full-time tenured teaching
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staff in the law faculty’ would better achieve internationalization than ‘even the best foreign language training might offer’ (Levin 2000: 16).
Conclusion: the future for internationalising Japanese undergraduate legal education As the Osaka case study shows, there are still many challenges for the Council’s goal of internationalisation as conceptualised in its motherhood discourse and ideal of internationalising legal education. But Osaka is making progress on its attempts to internationalise structurally, including curricula and degree offerings, and it also understands the need to prepare students for internationalisation, a key demand from stakeholders such as business and employers. Osaka is not alone in its struggle. Lo acknowledges the many challenges facing the internationalisation of legal education, including ¿nding quali¿ed staff, inventive teachers (and, in some cases, students), and accreditation and bar examination requirements (Lo 2010: 126–7). She concludes that most universities ‘are still struggling to ¿nd a feasible and effective model to internationalise the law curriculum’ (ibid: 127). Maxeiner also warns that it is dif¿cult to see how internationalisation would be sustained organically in a United States’ context; its law-making methods, both judicial and legislative, do not lend themselves to non-American inÀuence (Maxeiner 2008: 49). Although operating under a very different system, Japan has traditionally shown greater signs of foreign inÀuence in the legislative process than the United States, but its judiciary is still very insular.39 Maxeiner is also critical of American law faculties, because they themselves have not internationalised and career paths are hostile to academics interested in non-domestic issues (ibid: 50). The key to the immediate continuation of internationalising of legal education in Japan is the ability to successfully co-ordinate with educational programs at Japanese law schools. Currently, there is no of¿cial co-ordination and the law schools’ focus on training students to pass the bar examination will continue to be detrimental to internationalisation. Even at the undergraduate level, students focusing on entry into postgraduate law schools are likely to take courses that will enhance their chances of passing entrance examinations which eventually lead to the bar examination. There is still some hope that the market may speak; for example, pressure from quali¿ed Japanese lawyers who are interested in careers in global law ¿rms or legal departments at corporations involved in non-domestic transactions could instigate change. A focus on tailoring internationalisation at the undergraduate level for students who plan to study at law school may give those graduates skills and knowledge to build on after admission. Overhauling the bar examination or appeasing student concerns about it might encourage students to take a greater interest in non-bar examination subjects. Chuo Law School, for example, reviewed the characteristics of postgraduate students undertaking a short-term study abroad program at Melbourne Law School. It found that a very high percentage of participants went on to pass the Japanese bar examination. Chuo used this information to market the program to potential participants who
Internationalising legal education in Japan 47 might otherwise be reluctant to take time away from their domestic studies. Although this example is not taken from an undergraduate context, Osaka could use similar analysis of its future participation in the Australian seminar for students seeking employment or a place at law school. In the longer term, the capacity to continue internationalising will greatly depend on ¿nancial support and the strengthening of relationships. Osaka continues to compete with other top universities for funding and hopes to enhance relationships through utilising exchanges at both the student and academic level. Osaka may be able to continue based on its reputation, but the task may be impossible for smaller institutions unless they can develop a niche area of expertise. Unless an internationalist approach is adopted such that it is no longer a choice about whether to internationalise or not, ¿nancial constraints will always threaten an add-on agenda. Even if Lawley’s stereotype of undergraduates – lawyer-generalists versus law-versed generalists – is too general to describe all students to graduate from Osaka, it does raise the question of whether internationalisation should be for all students. Given setbacks such as recent natural disasters and the stagnant Japanese economy and the add-on approach still extant in Japanese legal education, the most signi¿cant constraint for Osaka and the ultimate success of the Council’s goal of internationalisation will be ¿nding the ¿nancial resources to continue internationalising.
Notes 1 Note Steele’s comments on the lack of consultation amongst wider stakeholders such as students themselves, despite wider consultation than previous shingi-kai (Steele 2005). 2 For a thorough analysis of pass rates and law school pro¿les, see Kinoshita (2011). He blames the adverse outcomes of legal education reform in Japan on the inconsistent policies of MEXT and Ministry of Justice, and the Council’s failure to provide consistent recommendations. 3 Kinoshita puts it bluntly: ‘due to the self-contradictory recommendations by the Justice System Reform Council, coupled with the poor administrative co-ordination between the MEXT and Ministry of Justice, the pass rate of the national bar examination has fallen below the 30 per cent level and the legal professional training system has run into an extremely dif¿cult situation’ (ibid: 23). 4 The scope of this chapter is limited to university-level education focusing on the potential for a quali¿cation to practice law; there are, however, many other forms of legal education in Japan, including practical legal education courses, preparatory courses for bar examinations, masters and doctorate programs and other continuous legal education courses for graduates. Internationalisation may also impact other areas of legal education, including the internationalisation of research (Clark 1995: 102), post-admission curriculum (ibid: 103), educators and students themselves (ibid: 105), and law schools and other postgraduate study (Maxeiner 2008). 5 For a commentary on the internationalisation of legal practice in Japan, see for example Beyer (2010); on postgraduate law schools, see for example Kashiwagi (2010). 6 See Kashiwagi (2010) on the perceived problems of legal education in Japan prior to the reforms in 2004. 7 Omura, Osanai and Smith (2005) also make this point in their article on internationalisation and Japanese legal education in tracking the development of Japanese law generally.
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8 Waincymer argues, for example, that responses and approaches in countries such as China, where legal education is driven by demand, and Australia, where legal education is driven by supply, should look different (Waincymer 2010: 77). In his view, these differences may lead to very different approaches to internationalisation. 9 Maxeiner offers a similar non-mutually exclusive categorisation: additive, integrative and immersive (Maxeiner 2008: 37). 10 Smith (1997) referred to this approach as ‘mainstreaming’ in the context of teaching about Asian legal systems in undergraduate courses at Australian universities. 11 Lo includes the ability to ‘choose international, comparative and foreign law courses’ under the preferential approach (Lo 2010: 125), but she also lists compulsory and optional course offerings as part of her ‘inclusive’ approach. They have been excluded from the preferential approach here to delineate clearly between the approaches for comparative purposes. 12 Lo adopts a de¿nition of the internationalisation of legal education which focuses on the means of inserting international elements into a law curricula: ‘the offering of international law programs or courses, comparative law programs or courses and/or foreign law programs or courses; participation in international moot court competitions; and undertaking of research projects on international and comparative law’ (Lo 2010: 117). 13 Waincymer (2010) is focusing on critiques of Australian legal education with these comments, but similar trends are occurring in Japan as discussed below. 14 Hiscock and van Caenegem (2010: 296) call these drivers ‘hard-edged rationales’. 15 Foote argues that deregulation and administrative reform, as well as a general groundswell of feeling that certain perceived problems could no longer be ignored, were also key drivers for the Council’s reforms (Foote 2007). 16 Foote argues that ‘in large part as a result of internationalization, though, business views shifted. Through their experiences after their companies had become involved in disputes in the United States and elsewhere, business leaders developed a greater appreciation for the valuable roles played by lawyers in resolving disputes and, through advance planning, heading off potential future disputes. Moreover, business leaders came to recognise the broader roles served by the legal profession . . . Accordingly, many Japanese business leaders came to support an increase in the size of the legal profession, coupled with an expansion in the legal profession’s role. This growing business support for justice system reform in turn served as one factor underlying the increased support by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’ (Foote 2007: xxvii). 17 See for example Rokumoto (2007). 18 See Article 2 of Shihǀ seido kaikaku shingi-kai setchi-hǀ [Law Establishing the Justice System Reform Council], Law No. 68 of 1999. This law is no longer in effect. 19 See Fukui and Fukui (2010) on the term ‘lawyer’. In this chapter, it is used to refer to a bengoshi; that is, a person who has studied at a Japanese law school, passed the national bar examination and the ¿nal examination of the Supreme Court of Japan’s Legal Research and Training Institute. 20 Fukui and Fukui (2010) have also written on traditional perceptions of lawyers in Japan as court advocates; that is, trial lawyers and not, for example, transaction lawyers. 21 Taylor (2005) is critical of Japan’s overseas development aid and legal technical assistance, although many of the problems associated with Japan’s approach are not unique and can be identi¿ed throughout the sector (see, for example, Bogdan 2010). 22 See similarly, the Priestly Eleven subjects required to practise law in Australia. 23 This survey was conducted by Hǀmubu Jittai-chǀsa Kentǀ Iinkai [Empirical Research Committee on Legal Departments] in Keieihǀynjkai [Association of Corporations with Legal Departments]; 6,110 questionnaires were distributed with a response rate of 16.9 per cent. The companies were chosen because they were members of Keieihǀynjkai (1,037 companies) or are a Japanese listed company (5,073 companies). Here, ‘new
Internationalising legal education in Japan 49
24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
32
33 34 35
36 37
38 39
graduate’ refers to those who ¿nished an undergraduate course, but it also includes responses from graduates of other schools than law. On the admission process in Japan, see Fukui and Fukui (2010) and Anderson and Ryan (2010). On the distinction (or lack thereof) between these areas of law, see Smith (1997). Beyer also notes that ‘developing practical or international skills has taken a back seat and, even where the courses continue to be offered, enrolment numbers are low’ (Beyer 2010: 84). She also blames the understandable, but unfortunate, focus on bar examination subjects. In Australia, the core regulatory subject requirements, known as the ‘Priestley Eleven’ do not include ‘international perspectives or exposure’, which has led to calls for their review (see Hiscock and van Caenegem 2010: 298). Compare this to Melbourne Law School, which adopted a pure postgraduate model in 2008, taking in its ¿nal undergraduate (LL.B) students in 2007. Steele remembers studying with one undergraduate law student during an exchange in Japan who was also studying to be a radio announcer. For a detailed and personal overview of undergraduate legal education in Japan, see Lawley (2005) and for an historical overview, see Rokumoto (2007). This section of the chapter reÀects Fukui’s presentation ‘Reforming International Programs in Undergraduate Schools of Law in Japan: An example of the Undergraduate School of Law at Osaka University’, presented at the Japanese Studies Association of Australia 17th Biennial Conference, ‘Internationalising Japan: Sport, Culture and Education’, which was held from July 4–7 2011 at the Melbourne Law School. The authors are grateful to Dr Trevor Ryan (University of Canberra) for his review and comments on drafts of Fukui’s presentation. Only 180 undergraduate students were enrolled each year prior to 2008; the number of students increased to a maximum of 250 after the incorporation of the Department of International Public Policy into the Undergraduate School of Law in 2007. There are also 82 masters of law students (LLM), 38 PhD candidates and 266 Juris Doctor (JD) students. At Osaka University, the Graduate JD Law School and the Undergraduate School of Law are in separate faculties, while the Graduate School of Law and Politics and the Undergraduate School of Law are part of the same faculty. Omura, Osanai and Smith (2005) argue that the 2004 reforms and so-called new teaching methods may look like they were based on American models, but there are many differences in practice. The exchange periods varied from short visits of one to three months and exchange programs for more than one semester (in most cases, one year). Some of these exchange relationships include the University of Groningen, Netherlands (since 2006; Osaka University has maintained an overseas of¿ce in Groningen since 2005); Mahidol University, Thailand (since 2007); and University of Essex, England (since 2010). Other countries include Canada, The Netherlands, England, France, Finland, Denmark and Taiwan. For further details about the seminar and participants, see: Australian Network for Japanese Law (2009). So far, the number of applicants to summer programs has been very small. Although participation is not by way of competitive entry, some language requirements are imposed by the University. Financial support is mainly given by the University, but in some case given by the Faculty itself, JASSO (Nihongakuseishienkikǀ) or JSPS (Nihongakujutsushinkǀkai) may provide support. This scholarship program has been part of JSPS’s G30 project since 2009. For more information, see http://www.rcnp.osaka-u.ac.jp/osaka-ip/international/g30.php [accessed 6 December 2013]. To the extent that Japanese judges ‘make law’; a debate for a different place.
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Smith, Malcolm. 1997. ‘Australian Perspectives on Asian Law: Directions for the Next Decade’. In Asian Laws Through Australian Eyes, edited by Veronica Taylor, 3–16. Sydney: Law Book Company. Steele, Stacey. 2005. ‘Legal Education Reform in Japan: Teachers Leave Us Kids Alone?’ Australian Journal of Asian Law 7(3): 264–281. Steele, Stacey and Kathryn Taylor. 2010. ‘Introduction: Globalization, Change and Contexts’. In Legal Education in Asia: Globalization, Change and Contexts, edited by Stacey Steele and Kathryn Taylor, 2–19. London: Routledge. Taylor, Veronica. 2005. ‘New Markets, New Commodity: Japanese Legal Technical Assistance’. Wisconsin International Law Journal 23(2): 251–281. Waincymer, Jeffrey. 2010. ‘Internationalization of Legal Education: Putting the “Why” Before the “How”’. In Legal Education in Asia: Globalization, Change and Contexts, edited by Stacey Steele and Kathryn Taylor, 68–88. London: Routledge.
4
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ in Japanese schools Kaori Okano
In the past decade ‘multicultural co-living’ has been the most frequently used term in the discourse related to internationalisation at primary and secondary schools. It has also been a buzzword in public discussion, although interpreted differently in speci¿c localities, sectors of the society (e.g. business, social welfare, education), and levels of public administration (e.g. national, prefectural, municipal, township). Centred on the domestic ethnic diversity brought about by globalisation, the internationalisation discourse in primary and secondary schools differs from that in the higher education sector, which focuses on engagement with other nation states, as seen elsewhere in this volume. Primary and secondary schools have encountered several trends related to internationalisation since the end of the Second World War (e.g. Okano and Tsuneyoshi 2011). They are ‘international understanding education’ (engagement with foreign countries, often with the West), ‘education for domestic internationalisation’ (addressing multi-ethnic student populations brought by foreign migrants within Japan), ‘intercultural education’, ‘multicultural education’, and ‘education for multicultural co-living’. These are not mutually exclusive and have co-existed. There have been changes in the levels of support for each of them over the years depending on changing local circumstances and, to a lesser degree, national policies. This paper examines shifts in emphasis in practices and discourse related to, and arising from, ‘internationalisation’ (as de¿ned in the Introduction to this volume), and discusses them in relation to national and local government educational policies. In so doing it advances our understanding of ‘multicultural coliving’ as a historical product, in particular how ‘multicultural co-living’ has evolved into its current form by the incorporation of three dominant strands. Multicultural co-living (tabunka kyǀsei) is a concept similar to the liberal multiculturalism pursued by Western liberal democracies, but is speci¿c to Japan, reÀecting its own history and immediate conditions. It can be an idea or interpretation on the one hand (which often tends to be normative), or the actual conditions that people understand and experience on the other. Multicultural co-living often means different things to different people, both as an idea and in terms of existing conditions (Iwabuchi 2010; Shioya 2010; Enoi 2011). The term is said to have emerged in interactions amongst multi-ethnic groups in the aftermath of post-earthquake Kobe in 1995 (Takezawa 2008), and has gained
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popular currency in civil activism and discussion. It then began to be used by local governments, and by the national government in 2005. That year the Sǀmushǀ (Ministry of International Affairs and Communications) established a research committee on the advancement of multicultural co-living, which in 2006 issued a report entitled ‘A local community multicultural co-living advancement plan’ (Chiiki ni okeru tabunka kyǀsei suishin puran). The paper identi¿es three distinct strands of practice and discourse relating to internationalisation in primary and secondary schools, and argues that these have gradually been woven into ‘multicultural co-living’. They are: (1) international (understanding) education (kokusai kyǀiku) in the form of engagement with external nation states (often the West); (2) domestic internationalisation (uchinaru kokusaika); and (3) human rights education (jinken kyǀiku) for long-standing minorities. It will show how each of these strands has gradually made a ‘connection’ to one of the other strands at national government, local government, and school level. The dominant connection in the national Ministry of Education (MOE) has been ‘international understanding education’ (including Japanese returnees) and ‘education for newcomer foreigners’ (domestic internationalisation). At local government level, the dominant connection has been ‘human rights education’ and education for newcomer foreigners. At schools both of those links have been prevalent, although their relative dominance varies signi¿cantly depending on local circumstances (see Table 4.1). I begin by tracing the three strands as they are practised on the ground in primary and middle school. The focus then shifts to national policies and local government policies, which have maintained different emphases over the years. My examination draws on government documents, my ¿eldwork (in Kobe, Osaka and Aichi in 2006–10), and secondary sources.
Primary and secondary school: internationalisation – domestic internationalisation connection, and domestic internationalisation – human rights education connection The ¿rst awareness that schools needed to be more internationalised emerged amongst teachers when increasing numbers of Japanese returnees started arriving in their classrooms in the 1970s. This was one of the unintended consequences of Japanese companies’ success in expanding their business around the globe; Japanese expatriates uprooted their families and returned home. These children, often without a level of literacy equivalent to that of local students, found themselves having to learn Japanese and the cultural mores embodied in behavioural patterns (e.g. Goodman 1990; 2003). Affected schools soon set up pull-out classes in language and ‘adaptation’ for these children, with extra teachers (kahai) funded by education boards. In order to make the process more effective, local education boards designated some schools to cater for these children. As the children moved up the school ladder, education boards created special entry systems and quotas for them in order to enable their entry to senior high schools (Nukaga and Tsuneyoshi 2011).
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 55 Table 4.1 Three strands of discourse on international education and human rights education at national, local and school levels (1) Strand One International understanding education Kokusai (rikai) kyǀiku
(2) Strand Two Education for domestic internationalization (Education for foreign residents in Japan) Zainichi gaikokujin kyǀiku
Main target population
Japanese returnees Newcomer migrants (kikoku jidǀ) Zainichi Koreans
The year of commencement
1967 nationally
Initial major players Current major player Connections of the three strands at the Ministry of Education Connection at local governments and education boards Connection at individual schools
(3) Strand Three Human rights education Jinken kyǀiku
Buraku people (initially) Zainichi Koreans (subsequently) Pre-war – Buraku people 1945 – Zainichi Koreans
1980s – schools, and then local governments/ education boards; 1991 – Ministry of Education National Schools, and then local School, and then government governments/education local governments/ boards education boards National and local Schools, and local Schools, and some governments governments/education local governments/ boards education boards Strong connection between Weak connection between (1) and (2) (2) and (3) Weak connection between (1) and (2)
Strong connection between (2) and (3)
Connections amongst strands (1), (2) and (3). Relative strength of connections varies between schools, depending on individual school student population.
Then in the 1970s grandchildren of war-displaced orphans and women in China began arriving in local primary and middle schools. These orphans and women had been left with Chinese families by Japanese families at the chaotic time when the Soviet Army came south into northeast China at the end of the Second World War. These displaced Japanese people went to Japan in search of their relatives, following the 1972 normalisation of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, and some decided to settle in Japan and to bring over their extended families. Their grandchildren started attending local schools in the public housing areas where most of them lived. These children and their parents did not speak Japanese, and were unfamiliar with the culture of Japanese schools. The 1970s also saw refugees from Indochina. They were in settlement centres at ¿rst but then moved to public housing or working-class areas where unskilled employment opportunities
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were available. The entry of Japanese returnees, grandchildren of war-displaced Japanese in China and Indochinese refugees to local government schools challenged the existing practice of schooling, which had assumed that all students shared a Japanese language background and ‘culture’. This occurred at primary and middle schools when the central government was advocating the ‘internationalisation’ of education in the higher education sector, as will be mentioned later. The MOE’s ‘internationalisation’ of education emphasised ‘international understanding’, which encouraged Japanese students to learn English for communication in foreign countries and for greater interaction with foreigners; and the foreign countries often intended were ¿rst-world countries of the West (e.g. Kubota 1998; McConnell 2000). When Japan experienced the ‘bubble economy’ of the 1980s, workers Àocked to Japan from Asia and South America in order to ¿ll shortages in unskilled labour. The number of foreign workers suddenly increased with the 1990 amendment to the immigration act which granted work visas to South Americans of Japanese decent to work in manufacturing. For example, the number of foreigners doubled, from less than one million, between 1989 and 2004 (Hǀmushǀ Nynjkokukanri Kyoku 2009). They often came with their children, and/or produced children in Japan. These Portuguese – or Spanish-speaking Latin American children – as well as other foreign children, started attending local government schools in large numbers, which teachers were not prepared for. It was around that time, that is, by the mid-1990s, that the term ‘domestic internationalisation’ (uchinaru kokusaika) emerged to describe a large number of visible foreigners residing and working in Japan. The term was used in contrast to ‘internationalisation’ (simply kokusaika) which had been in vogue and, in the ¿eld of education focused on the opening up of an insular Japan to external foreign countries through the learning of English and other foreign languages as communicative tools, overseas travel, invitations to foreign teachers and students, and having visible foreigners as guests. ‘Domestic internationalisation’ departed from ‘internationalisation’ in that visible foreigners were now to live with Japanese as residents of the community on a long-term basis, rather than to visit Japan as transient tourists. Japanese returnees, grandchildren of war-displaced Japanese in China, Indochinese refugees, and children of guest workers from Asia and South America in combination brought an urgent need for schools to change their practices. Individual schools’ responses, when faced with new migrant children and homeroom teachers struggling to manage the situation, were to resort to the existing infrastructure to manage ‘different’ students within the schools. Schools experienced in accepting Japanese returnee children asked their ‘international classes’ (kokusai kynjshitsu), designed for Japanese returnees, to absorb these migrant children. Schools which already had a designated human rights education teacher (jinken kyǀiku tantǀ) in relation to children from buraku backgrounds (descendants of a former feudal outcaste population) and zainichi children also enlisted their expertises. Zainichi Koreans originally denoted Korean nationals (i.e. not Japanese citizens) descended from colonial subjects of the Japanese
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 57 Empire; but gradually came to include those who have taken up Japanese citizenship. The human rights education teacher coordinated scholarships for, and maintained contact with families of, minority students to support and encourage them in their schooling. Therefore, at some schools, new immigrant children were grouped together with Japanese returnees (who were often from an upper middleclass background), while at other schools they were categorised with zainichi Koreans since both were foreign nationals. Schools without any of the above infrastructure had to start building it. They set up withdrawal classes in Japanese as a Second Language (JSL) and ‘cultural adaptation’, and employed extra teacher(s) (kahai). Some schools appointed veteran teachers as international class coordinators, who oversaw the special classes, liaised with mainstream homeroom teachers, and mediated with the ethnic community members (e.g. Kobe Shinryodai Primary School: see Okano 2012). As the children acquired the language, they were gradually shifted to mainstream classes. On application, education boards designated selected schools as specialist schools accepting Japanese returnees and newcomer children and gave the schools extra funding. By the mid-2000s, ‘international classes’ (kokusai kyǀshitsu) had Japanese returnees and a wide range of immigrant children. While Japanese returnees and newcomer children share ‘international classes’, it is newcomer children who struggle to keep up with school work and to gain entry to senior high schools via entrance examinations (Okano 2012; CastroVazquez 2009; Shimizu and Shimizu 2001). This is because families of Japanese returnees are often upper middle class and have highly educated mothers who are familiar with the education system and effectively assist their children’s school work by using a range of educational resources such as juku (after-school cram schools). Newcomer children, especially those of Latin American background, have found Japanese school increasingly dif¿cult as they move up the school ladder, and some drop out of the system altogether (Sakuma 2006; Miyajima and Oota 2005). They either enter the unskilled labour market or attend Latin American ethnic schools (Sekiguchi 2003; Gekkan-Io 2006; Haino 2010; Okano 2013). In order to assist these students, local education boards have designated senior high schools to offer special entry schemes to newcomers (including quota systems). While the initiatives had some impact on newcomer Chinese students (Shimizu 2008), there have been no studies of how Latin American children bene¿ted from a similar system. While the discourses of internationalisation and domestic internationalisation have differed in signi¿cant ways, there have been some shared concerns. Concerns arising from internationalisation centred on returning Japanese upper middleclass businessmen and full-time housewives. In contrast, internal or domestic internationalisation was concerned with immigrant families, who were marginalised. Their parents did not speak Japanese, were in unskilled, poorly paid employment, were unfamiliar with the Japanese education system, and were unable to help their children with their school work. The children, due to their overt difference from the majority Japanese children, experienced discrimination. Discriminatory experiences include bullying by majority Japanese peers,
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uninformed teachers’ stereotypical conceptions of newcomer children and their families (e.g. parents’ indifference to schooling, lack of reserve, and sexual promiscuity amongst teenage girls), and their low expectation of the academic skills of new migrant children. There were two bottom-up processes of connection whereby schooling for newcomer children became linked to education for descendants of former colonial subjects of Korean heritage, commonly grouped under the category of zainichi Korean education in certain localities. This led to what I call the interface of education for ‘domestic internationalisation’ and ‘human rights education’. The ¿rst connection was made when newcomer children’s similarities with longstanding minority counterparts began to be acknowledged by teachers who had taught buraku children and zainichi Korean children decades previously. While the Japanese language was not a problem for long-existing minority children, family disadvantage, discrimination and identity issues were too similar. The second connection emerged when it was recognised that newcomers’ of¿cial status as foreign nationals disadvantaged them in the same way as it had done zainichi Koreans. Because of these connections, grass-roots human rights education movements, which had underpinned civil rights activities by the longexisting zainichi Koreans, gradually (and reluctantly at ¿rst) started to include newcomer education issues in their concerns. We see this nuance-¿lled process of connection in a teachers’ professional organisation, the National Association for Research on Foreign National Education (Zenkoku Zainichi Kankoku Chosenjin Kyǀiku Kenkynj Kyǀgikai) (Okano 2006b). The National Association for Research into the Education of Resident Koreans in Japan (Zenkoku Zainichi Chǀsenjin Kyǀiku Kenkynjkai, or ‘ZZCKKK’) is a grass-roots activist and professional group which has studied and discussed the situation of Koreans in Japanese schools since the 1970s (Nakajima 2004). It was formed by teachers who taught in after-school school-based ethnic classes (often on a voluntary basis) in the late 1960s in response to demands from concerned parents and teachers in mainstream schools with large numbers of Korean students in Kyoto and Osaka. Wishing to exchange ideas on practice and to develop new strategies, these practitioners held their ¿rst annual conference in 1979, established ZZCKKK as the organiser of these meetings in 1983, and started involving practitioners from other regions. The association became an important agent in disseminating knowledge about education for zainichi Koreans and in illuminating the situation of Koreans in Japanese schools and their special needs. The response of the association’s members to the arrival of newcomers in schools was initially cautious. There were mixed opinions regarding the public treatment of the issue of newcomers’ education. On one hand, some were cynical that the sensational media coverage of the sudden ‘discovery’ of ‘ethnic diversity’ reinforced the myth of a homogeneous student population in Japanese schools. Others felt that the public discourse trivialised the education of Korean students which they had long pursued as a human rights matter, since Koreans were said to have no JSL needs and were invisible in the eyes of many (Matsunami 2004: 182).
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 59 I suspect that the opposing views also derived from the fact that the public, as well as the central government, did not feel as uncomfortable discussing newcomers as they did ethnic Koreans, a minority created by the state and marginalised by the society. Presenters at the association’s annual meetings gradually became convinced that, having been actively involved in the education of Koreans since the 1970s when the issue was silenced in the public discourse, they had something to offer. Papers on newcomers emphasised the danger of assimilating them, which had occurred to zainichi Koreans. The association subsequently renamed itself Zenkoku Zainichi Gaikokujin Kyǀiku Kenkynjkyǀgikai (National Association for Research into the Education of Resident Foreigners in Japan) in 2002, by replacing ‘Koreans’ with ‘resident foreigners’ (Nakajima 2004: 8). This change not only reÀected the focus of the annual conferences, which increasingly included papers on newcomers, but also signalled the association’s intention to focus of¿cially on the issues of both groups. The change was ¿nalised cautiously after careful debate; the association had, in 1997, adopted a transitional name which inserted ‘foreigners’ after ‘Koreans’. Papers on newcomers were ¿rst presented at the 1992 annual meeting; and their number increased gradually to account for half the papers at the 2002 conference (Matsunami 2004). The proportion remained unchanged for the 2010 conference that I attended. ‘Education for foreign children residing in Japan’ (zainichi gaikokujin kyǀiku) is the term linking education to address ‘domestic internationalisation’ and human rights education in local government and education board secretariats which had long maintained active human rights departments or committees (e.g. for buraku people and zainichi Koreans). These departments or committees were asked to also take on responsibilities for newcomers (e.g. in Hyǀgo-prefecture, Osakaprefecture, Kawasaki-city, Kanagawa-prefecture); and as a result discussion on the education of newcomer children gradually became connected to zainichi Korean education. The term ‘education for foreign children residing in Japan’ gained currency and was adopted by other local education boards. The term soon became obsolete and inappropriate in the eyes of educational practitioners at ground level, however, since an increasing number of children were Japanese nationals but possessed non-Japanese heritage solely, or additionally, in the case of international marriage. Increasing numbers of Japanese were marrying foreign nationals, both long-resident Koreans and newcomers. In 2007 approximately 6 per cent of all marriages were inter-ethnic in Japan, while the percentage was even higher in metropolitan Tokyo, nearly 10 per cent (Sugimoto 2010: 181). Children born to a Japanese parent are entitled to Japanese citizenship at birth, as a result of the 1986 revision of the Nationality Law which replaced the former patrilineal system of nationality inheritance. The revision also allowed children of zainichi Korean men and Japanese women to retrospectively apply for Japanese citizenship. Some schools and local education boards in Kansai region coined more inclusive terms and started using them in the public area by early 2000s: ‘children with foreign roots’ (gaikokuni rnjtsu no aru seito jidǀ) or ‘children with special relation with foreign countries’ (gaikoku to tokubentsu na
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kankeiga aru jidǀ seito). It was only in April 2011 that the MOE started using the latter term and created a homepage for these children. In contrast, when local governments and education board secretariats lacked departments or committees for human rights education, they placed newcomers within the international education department or committee (kokusai kyǀiku ka) (e.g. Toyota city, Toyohashi city). In this case, education for domestic internationalisation became linked to ‘international understanding education’, rather than to human rights education as seen above. The arrival of new immigrants led schools, local governments and education boards to make connections between upper middle-class Japanese returnees and new migrants on one hand, and between long-existing minorities (the target of human rights education) and new immigrants on the other; and the three groups gradually began to be discussed in the combined discourse of internationalisation and human rights. These connections enabled zainichi Koreans to discuss their issues more visibly in public, by linking their concerns to those of new immigrants.
National policies: connection between international education (for Japanese returnees) and ‘education for domestic internationalisation’ Japan’s central government has not formulated a comprehensive national policy to address the cultural and ethnic diversity of the student population, only issuing a range of ad hoc ‘notices’ regarding the treatment of foreign nationals (both zainichi Koreans and newcomers). The current basic position is that all Japanese citizens are required to attend mainstream schools, and non-citizens are expected to do the same, although this is not compulsory. Within the MOE, two of the three strands have converged in two ways. The more explicit of the two is that Japanese returnee education has become a model for newcomer children’s education (Mabuchi 2002). The division created by the MOE for Japanese returnees eventually expanded its focus to include the education of newcomer foreign children under its new name of ‘international education’. The other, much weaker connection occurred when the MOE required local education boards to send school enrolment notices to all foreign national parents, both zainichi Koreans and newcomer children. The national policy regarding the education of zainichi Koreans has a complex history (Okano 2011), but suf¿ce to say here that the MOE’s 1953 notice (Chǀsenjin no gimukyǀiku shǀgakkǀ eno shnjgaku ni tsuite, released on 11 February 1953) established the basic post-war ‘principle of simple equality’ (treating everyone in the same way). It stated that Korean permanent residents were to be treated in the same way as Japanese students; schools were to accept them with the provision that the Korean students follow Japanese laws; but they were initially required to pay school fees (which did not apply to Japanese nationals). Free compulsory schooling for Koreans came in 1965. Under this policy, however, some teachers questioned this simple equality principle, and have continued to support such activities as ethnic lessons and Korean cultural
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 61 study clubs. This passive policy was unchanged for the next 25 years. Then, in 1991, the MOE advised local education boards that it now formally acknowledged the operation of ethnic classes for Koreans at government schools at local government discretion, and approved their continuation, stating that ‘ethnic classes during extra-curricular hours are exempt from the “no special treatment” clause in the 1965 circular’. It also suggested that local governments send the parents of Korean children of school starting age a letter informing them about local school entry, as was the practice for their Japanese counterparts. The MOE went on to stipulate that this approach be extended to other foreign nationals (including newcomer children). This was the ¿rst time that the MOE made a connection between long-time minorities and newcomers; and signalled both of¿cial recognition of diversity amongst foreigners, and categorisation of the student population based on foreign nationality. Meanwhile, the MOE was more active in responding to the needs of Japanese returnees, which I suspect was due to the effective lobbying power of the upper middle-class parents. Japanese returnees’ fathers all worked for large corporations which had forced the families to re-locate. In 1967 the MOE began designating ‘research cooperation schools’ to accommodate returnee children (Sato 2001). This was followed by legal and institutional rearrangements to ease their entry to the Japanese education system in the 1970s, such as recognising overseas quali¿cation equivalent to compulsory education completion for entry to senior secondary schooling, and creating alternative entry schemes and quotas to selected senior high schools and universities (Nukaga and Tsuneyoshi 2011). The MOE also established the Japan Overseas Education Service (Kaigaishijo Kyǀiku Shinkǀ Zaidan), in which the business world was to provide correspondence study courses and guidance for affected parents. These moves were consistent with the national government’s deliberate efforts to make higher education more ‘internationalised’ in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. enhancing engagement with foreign countries through increasing the number of overseas students and academics in Japan and by sending more students and academics to overseas universities), and via the enhancement of English language education. For primary and secondary education, the MOE continued to pursue international understanding education through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) which began in 1987, whereby native speakers of English are recruited as assistant language teachers (ATLs) in schools. It also introduced English to primary schools, and instituted ‘Super English Language High Schools’ to enhance English language learning (153 schools in 2006) (Kubota 2011). In this context, Japanese returnees were considered as the spearheads of a model of an internationalised person and began to be seen in a positive way. It is important to note that the MOE saw little connection between the education of zainichi Koreans (who were born in Japan, speak Japanese as a ¿rst language and often use Japanese names) and that of Japanese returnees and ‘international understanding education’. The MOE responded to the inÀux of newcomers by using the model of Japanese returnee education (Mabuchi 2002). The emphasis was on Japanese language instruction and ‘cultural adaptation’. In 1991, the MOE started collecting data on
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the number of students who required JSL, in order to plan appropriate programs. The Ministry created the detailed JSL curriculum for primary schools in 2003, and for middle schools for 2007; and a guidebook was given to parents of foreign children (‘Guidebook for Starting School’) in several languages in 2005 (MEXT 2003a; 2005; 2007). In March 2011 it produced a 68-page guidebook for schools and teachers about accepting ‘foreign children’ (MEXT 2011c), an addition to the large number of existing professional books of this kind. The MOE renamed the ‘overseas returnee children division’ the ‘international education unit’ (Mabuchi 2002: 92), expanding the focus to international understanding education and addressing also the education of newcomer foreign children. In 2001 the MOE introduced policies which simultaneously targeted Japanese returnees and foreign newcomers. This was seen in the 2001–5 project which designated 33 districts as promoting the internationalisation of education with Japanese returnees and foreign students (kikoku gaikokujin jidǀseito to tomoni susumeru kyǀiku no kokusaika suishin chiiki) (MEXT 2006). In 2006 the MOE launched a project to explore a model support system for Japanese returnee and foreign students (Kikoku gaikokujin jidǀ seito kyǀiku shien taisei moderu jigyǀ), and a second project was launched in 2007, to promote the incorporation of returnees and foreign children (ibid). The Ministry now provides a homepage devoted to ‘children living abroad and returnees’ (Kaigaishijo kyǀiku kikokugaikokujin jidǀseito kyǀiku nado ni kansuru hǀmu pêji, CLARINET) (MEXT 2011a) and only in March 2011 set up another homepage which provides information for ‘students with special connection to foreign countries’ (Gaikoku ni tsunagari no aru jidǀ seito no gakushnj o shiensuru jǀhǀ kensaku saito, CASTANET) (MEXT 2011b). Being a recent innovation, the latter is not as extensive as the former. The current national curriculum guidelines (gakushidǀ yǀryǀ, of¿cially translated as ‘course of study’) reveals a slight departure from the simple equality principle in educating newcomer children. These were issued for primary school and middle school in 1998, and for senior high school in 1999; all were updated with slight modi¿cations in 2003. All three advocated the need for the special treatment of ‘Japanese returnees and those in similar situations’, including a clause that ‘schools should promote their cultural adaptation to the Japanese school environment, and provide education that would effectively build on their prior overseas experience’ (Chapter 1.5.2.7 in the primary school guidelines; Chapter 1.6.2.7 for the middle school guidelines; and Chapter 1.6.5.7 in the senior high school guidelines) (MEXT 1998 and 2003b; 1998 and 2003a). A more signi¿cant development is observable in the latest national curriculum guidelines implemented in April 2011. For the ¿rst time, the guidelines acknowledged that experiences brought by foreign students will bene¿t Japanese students, and recommend that schools consider giving foreign students opportunities to learn their own language and culture (Chapter 1.4.2.8 for primary schools; Chapter 1.4.2.9 for middle schools) (MEXT 2008a; 2008b; 2011d). These documents still adopt the category of ‘foreigners’; but as we will see later, such a category is arbitrarily interpreted at local and school levels.
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 63 Given the vague terms that these national government policies adopt, local education boards and individual schools exercise their discretion to interpret and implement them at school level in order to suit their speci¿c environments. A result is a signi¿cant degree of variation in how local government and individual schools accommodate new migrant children. Variations across localities can be seen as a positive sign of responsiveness to their unique conditions. On the other hand, a lack of enforced national standards can be unfair to children who happen to live in localities and schools indifferent to the needs of migrants (e.g. Sakuma 2006). Individual schools would be under pressure to respond if the local government had developed policies on multicultural co-living (tabunka kyǀsei) to accommodate cultural diversity.
Local government policies: ‘human rights education’ and ‘education for domestic internationalisation’ connection At local government level, in contrast to the MOE, the interface is more prominent between human rights education (for long-existing minorities) and education for domestic internationalisation (for newcomer foreign children). We can see this connection in local multicultural education policies that are created independently of the central government. In 2007 approximately 80 local governments maintained ‘policies for the education of foreign nationals in Japan’ (zainichi gaikokujin kyǀiku hǀshin or shishin) (Zenkoku-Zainichigaikokujin-KyǀikuKenkynjkyǀgikai 2007: 26–8). The earlier policies focused on Korean residents, and later became inclusive of new migrants with reference to the latter’s speci¿c needs. The names of the policies are indicative of such changes. The earlier policies tended to refer only to Korean nationals, but in the 1980s references appeared to ‘foreign nationals (mainly Koreans)’ and then in the 1990s only to ‘foreign nationals’ in general (ibid: 26–8). Nonetheless, all policies began with references to Korean nationals in their main texts. Seven major elements are commonly observed in most of these policies (Okano 2006a). The ¿rst three elements concern the education of all students (both foreign nationals and Japanese): (1) involvement of the whole school population (not only minority students); (2) dissemination of accurate knowledge regarding Japan’s colonial past and racial prejudice regarding other Asians; (3) promotion of respect for cultural differences and human rights (in reference to the Japanese Constitution, the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, and the Dǀwa education principles of the 1970s). The next four elements give speci¿c consideration to foreign national students in Japanese schools: (1) school assistance to establish post-school destinations for minority students; (2) JSL provision; (3) mother tongue maintenance; and (4) the creation of a school culture accepting of minority students. The shared elements of these local policies are widely observed in similar policies elsewhere in the world (Grant and Chapman 2008; Banks 2010). Described as multicultural education policies, these Japanese local policies display two distinctive features. One is the adoption of human rights education as
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the framework, and the other is the use of the term ‘foreign nationals’ in the titles of such policies. The policies affect school-level practices in many ways. A tangible impact is the availability of local government funding for relevant projects (or projects that a school can justify as relevant for migrant students). Teachers can legitimately take leave to attend professional development workshops on migrant education.
Conclusions There have been three major strands of practice and discourse relating to internationalisation at primary and secondary school in the last ¿ve decades. They are: (1) ‘international (understanding) education’ as engagement with external nation states (often the West); (2) education for ‘domestic internationalisation’; and (3) ‘human rights education’ for long-existing minorities. I have examined shifts in emphasis in these three strands and how the strands have made connections and evolved into a more inclusive discourse of education for ‘multicultural co-living’. At the national government level, the dominant connection in the three strands has been ‘international understanding education’ and education for newcomer foreigners (domestic internationalisation). ‘International understanding education’ initially emerged in the context of students’ engagement with the outside world, following the UNESCO initiatives in the 1950s, and later in response to Japanese returnees in the 1970s. The MOE created a unit for Japanese returnee education, which later began to address newcomer children in the 1990s by providing language instruction and cultural adaptation classes, and by designating schools to effectively accommodate both Japanese returnees and newcomer children. There was only a weak connection between human rights education and newcomer education in central government policies. In contrast, at the local government level, the dominant connection was human rights education (for zainichi Koreans and buraku children) and education for newcomer education (domestic internationalisation). Local governments which had already maintained active human rights education policies and infrastructure simply absorbed newcomer education in the context of human rights education. Those without such a history channelled education for newcomer children to ‘international understanding education’. At school level, both connections were dominant: ‘international understanding education’ and education for newcomer immigrants (the internationalisation– domestic internationalisation connection); and education for newcomer immigrants and for long-existing minorities (the education for domestic internationalisation–human rights education connection). The relative strength at a school of each of these connections has been inÀuenced by speci¿c local conditions; hence there have been variations across localities. ‘Multicultural co-living’, which many schools have adopted increasingly, denotes a form of ‘international understanding education’ that has evolved since its initial emergence (i.e. engagement with the West external to Japan) while making connections
From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 65 amongst three major strands (international understanding education, education for domestic internationalisation and human rights education, addressing, respectively, Japanese returnees, newcomers and zainichi Koreans). Education for multicultural co-living, although it is still in the formative process, is becoming more inclusive and is integrating other groups of people who are different (e.g. the disabled, homosexuals), in some localities.
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From ‘internationalisation’ to ‘multicultural co-living’ 67 Perspective, edited by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, Kaori Okano and Sarane Boocock, 213–41. London: Routledge. Okano, Kaori. 2006a. ‘The Global-local Interface in Multicultural Education Policies in Japan’. Comparative Education 42(2): 473–91. Okano, Kaori. 2006b. ‘The Impact of Immigrants On Long-lasting Ethnic Minorities in Japanese Schools: Globalisation From Below’. Langauge and Education 20(4): 338–54. Okano, Kaori. 2011. ‘Ethnic Koreans in Japanese Schools: Shifting Boundaries and Collaboration With Other Groups’. In Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan: An Interactive Perspective, edited by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, Kaori Okano and Sarane Boocock, 100–25. London: Routledge. Okano, Kaori. 2012. ‘Languages and Citizenship in Education: Migrant Languages in Government Schools’. In Language and Ctizenship in Japan, edited by Nanette Gottlieb, 58–78. New York: Routledge. Okano, Kaori. 2013. ‘Ethnic Schools and Multiculturalism in Japan’. In Japanese Education in the Era of Globalization: Enduring Issues in New Contexts, edited by Gary DeCoker and Christopher Bjork, 85–100. New York: Teachers College Press. Okano, Kaori and Ryoko Tsuneyoshi. 2011. ‘Introduction: an Interactive Perspective for Understanding Minorities and Education in Japan’. In Minorities and Education in Multicultural Japan: An Interactive Perspective, edited by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, Kaori Okano and Sarane Boocock,1–26. London: Routledge. Sakuma, Kǀsei. 2006. ‘Gaikokujin no Kodomo no Fushnjgaku: Ibunka ni Hirakareta Kyǀiku Towa [School Non-attendance Among Foreign Children: What is Education Open to Different Cultures]’. Tokyo: Keiso Shobo. Sato, Gun’ei. 2001. ‘Kaigai/ Kikokushijo Kyǀiku: Atarashii Rinen no Kǀchiku ni Mukete [Education For Foreign Children and Returnee Children: Constructing a New Understanding]’. In Tabunka Kyǀseishakai no Kyǀiku, edited by Masaharu Amano and Yukuo. Tokyo: Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppan. Sekiguchi, Tomoko. 2003. ‘Zainichi Nikkei Burajirujin no Kodomotachi: Ibunka Kan ni Sodatsu Kodomo no Aidentiti Keisei [Japanese-Brazilian children in Japan: Identity Formation of Children Growing up Across Cultures]’. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Shimizu, Kokichi, ed. 2008. ‘Kǀkǀ o Ikiru Nynjkamâ: Osaka Furitsu Kǀkǀ Nimiru Kyǀiku Shien [Newcomer Children at Senior High Schools: Educational Assistance Offered By Osaka Prefectural High Schools]’. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Shimizu, Kokichi, and Mutsumi Shimizu, eds. 2001. ‘Newcomer to Kyǀiku [Newcomers and Education]’. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Shioya, Yoshikazu. 2010. ‘Henkakusuru Tabunka Shugi e: ƿsutoraria Kara no Tenbǀn [Changing Multiculturalisms: a Perspective from Australia]’. Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppan. Sugimoto, Yoshio. 2010. Introduction to Japanese Society. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Takezawa, Yasuko. 2008. ‘The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and Town-making Towards Multiculturalism’. In Multiculturalism in New Japan: Crossing the Boundaries Within, edited by Nelson Graburn, John Ertl and R. Kenji Tierney, 32–42. New York: Berghahn Books. Zenkoku-Zainichigaikokujin-Kyǀiku-Kenkynjkyǀgikai. 2007. ‘Dai 28-Kai Zenkoku Zainichi Gaikokujin Kyǀiku Kenkyukyǀgikai Kyoto Taikai Shiryǀshnj [The 28th Conference of the National Association of Research on Education of Foreign Nationals Living in Japan]’. Kyoto: Zenkoku-Zainichigaikokujin-Kyǀiku-Kenkynjkyǀgikai.
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Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia Im-perfect translations Iori Hamada and Carolyn S. Stevens
Introduction Japan’s internationalisation process may be de¿ned as the ‘conscious, positive, and planned’ interaction between entities (Introduction, this volume), which would require a ‘translation’ of language, ideas, values and functions from Japan to the target partner (and vice versa). The translation process of internationalisation is vividly illustrated in the universal and everyday action of eating. Food is a powerful cultural symbol that carries multifarious meanings, yet its central place in human life transcends cultural borders. Accordingly, food (as a material object) and culinary culture (the history, ideology and practices that surround it) are a useful context in which to interrogate the dynamics of cultural and material internationalisation. How food and food practices are translated into other cultures not only demonstrates the relationship between the participating partners, but also the ways human beings negotiate these relationships through embodied practices. Because internationalisation is frequently a ‘conscious action’, it not only creates transnational relationships between different actors, but also illustrates the often hierarchical nature of those relationships. In this chapter we offer the case of Japanese restaurant culture in Melbourne, Australia as a window into the internationalisation process, and the delicate relationship between host cultures and migrant cultures. This particular relationship, unlike those described in some of the other chapters in this volume, cannot be entirely controlled (planned, coordinated, or managed) by an ‘of¿cial’ Japanese institution (such as MEXT, the Sumo Association or Urasenke); instead it is a process awash with individual opinions and agency, simultaneously guided by the norms in a post-capitalist consumer society where each actor is seeking to maximize his or her own economic, social and cultural capital. Within this ‘ecosystem’, new cultural forms that are associated with ‘Japan’ are emerging. In this chapter, we argue it is not necessarily suf¿cient to describe these forms just as a ‘new hybrid cuisine’ (Cwiertka 2001: 2) seen across Asia as part of globalisation, but instead a kind of culinary translation, resulting from the crosscultural production and consumption of Japanese cuisine. Sushi, for example, has been called a ‘hybridised globalised food’ (Sakamoto and Allen 2011: 100; see also Bestor 2004: 157), but we would argue that the ‘hybrid’ label is to be reserved
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 69 for some culinary forms. It cannot fully explain power imbalance inherent in the process of the cross-cultural production and consumption of Japanese cuisine. Furthermore, looking at these forms as a translation rather than a separate hybrid product allows us alternate ways of viewing, reading and understanding what Japanese food ought to be (i.e. claims of authenticity), vis-à-vis who is and should be the dominant audience. Translation can transgress spatial, temporal and ontological boundaries, and therefore has the potential to break from a ¿xed set of codes constituting a cultural tradition. Yet, the translation is seen ¿rmly as ‘Japanese’ by its consumers, not simply as a ‘new’ hybrid, or fusion cuisine. This chapter interrogates Japanese food in Melbourne, Australia, as a ‘foreign’ text, and demonstrates how this text is translated into the intelligible, as well as the palatable, within domestic representations. Melbourne is an apt site for the study of the intricate phenomena of culinary translations in Australia for a number of reasons: it is the second largest city in Australia, with a large proportion of its population overseas born, constituting a culturally (and socio-economically) diverse community.1 It is also frequently called ‘Australia’s culinary capital’ (Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre 2011) because of its vibrant restaurant scene. We consider the ‘Japanese restaurant’ as a speci¿c site for cross-cultural translations. The Japanese restaurant operates to produce the ‘exotic’ within the dominant Anglo-European Australian market (Hamada 2011: 84–102). The exotic highlights a particular representational form that is ‘different’ and ’foreign’, yet at the same time ‘makes sense’ to the domestic mainstream audience. This mode of the exotic can be distinguished from traditional forms of exoticism that uncritically locate a subject monolithically within narrow stereotypes. Jonathan Friedman (1994) de¿nes earlier formation of exoticism as a set of aesthetic values closely tied to images that are seen as utopian, paradisiacal and pleasurable; exoticism is one of the ways that the ‘Other’ is allegorically represented by European Western hegemony (ibid: 7). As a site of producing the paradoxical effects of the exotic, the Japanese restaurant works through the acts of connecting and separating; it makes itself available to the domestic market, while also being circumscribed in a category of reception that is marketed, consumed and re-produced as ‘Japanese’ within exoticism. Translation is a practice that enables this ambivalent process so that Japanese food as a ‘foreign’ text becomes intelligible without completely losing its cultural odour (see Iwabuchi 1998). Within the knowable boundaries of an exotic ‘Other’, perceived ethnicity becomes the category’s formula; the Japanese restaurant functions to construct, and anxiously reproduce ‘Japanese’ ethnicity, suggesting an ‘authentic’ experience for the consumers while simultaneously invoking ‘suspicion’ towards its authority.
The politics of transgressive translations Food and food practices can serve to transgress socially accepted boundaries such as ‘us’ and ‘them’; they mark, translate and disorient, as they cross over contested but discrete notions of location, culture and identity. In In Place/Out of Place
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(1996), Tim Cresswell writes that ‘[t]o have transgressed [. . .] means to have been judged to have crossed some line that was not meant to have been crossed’ (Cresswell 1996: 23). Cresswell (ibid: 9) believes that transgression can be seen as ‘a form of politics’, as it reveals where power lies. While the act of transgressing does not necessarily rewrite boundaries, it does provide a critique of topographies of power, suggesting the possibility of transformation (ibid: 166, 176). Accordingly, people’s use of Japanese food and related practices in the Australian context also has the potential for political expressions, since it involves transgressive translations of culture that are ‘out of place’.2 The mobility of products, practices and signs, moulded through individual human agency, makes food a powerful lens by which to understand these potentialities. Mobility enables transgressive translations between ideological (as well as physical) boundaries. Yet precisely because of this Àexibility, mobility produces anxieties over the potentiality for disturbance of an ‘order’ and ‘misrecognition’ of the self through contact with the Other. The need to control the mobility of products, practices and signs is clearly a reaction to danger that arises from ever-increasing symbolic crossings, resulting in ‘disorder’. There is also desire for recognition, while the rise to that recognition creates anxieties over ‘misrecognition’. The Japanese government’s intervention into overseas Japanese restaurant industries in 2006 is the most conspicuous example of this ambivalence. Under a ‘certi¿cation system’ for Japanese restaurants overseas, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) authorised undercover inspectors, dubbed as ‘Sushi Police’, to visit Japanese restaurants located overseas and inspect the ‘legitimacy’ of their products, practices and visual signs, according to a set of criteria (Daliot-Bul 2009: 257).3 A desire for explicit control over their increasingly internationalised cuisine resulted from the MAFF’s ‘concerns about the quality and authenticity of dishes marketed as “Japanese”’ (Chiteki Suishin Keikaku cited in ibid: 257). The then Minister of the MAFF Matsuoka Toshikatsu4 commented in an interview in the Washington Post that ‘ . . . our real purpose [of introducing the certi¿cation system] is to set benchmarks for how Japanese food is made overseas. We take our food very seriously’ (Faiola 2006). In the article, implying the ambivalence of the Ministry’s cultural promotion and cultural protection, the writer warned that ‘[s]ome observers here have suggested that the government’s new push for food purity is yet another expression of resurgent Japanese nationalism . . . So beware, America, home of the California roll. The Sushi Police are on their way’ (ibid). The institutionalised control over the overseas restaurant industries can be thus understood as an expression of their fear of a symbolic contamination of their nationally celebrated food culture through overseas purveyors’ ‘mistranslation’ and consumers’ ‘misrecognition’ possibly led by it; clearly, the lawmakers identi¿ed Japanese cuisine with their national identity and therefore felt the need to safeguard its ‘purity’. This policing of ‘Japanese-ness’ in food and food practices is contradicted when we consider how the government utilises the perceived ‘purity’ of Japanese cuisine, re-packaging it into ‘Cool Japan’
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 71 discourses5 – both as cultural promotion and cultural protection; in other words, the Japanese government was willing to cross the borders of nation-states and circulate certain images of Japanese-ness within their fantasy of a ‘pure’ Japanese cuisine for their cultural, economic and political ends, but did not allow this for others. The MAFF’s reaction to the circumstances where the exchanges of the meaning between different cultural contexts did not allow a ‘perfect’ translation is important. In March 2007, the government compiled a proposal draft of the program written in a more moderate tone, responding largely to international media’s criticism about their nationalistic posing (and their naiveté over the fact that the operations of Japanese restaurants overseas inherently require translation to ‘make sense’ what is provided within the site), although they still attempted to control what images of Japanese-ness are to be circulated (Council of Advisors for the Recommendation of Japanese Restaurants Outside Japan 2007: 4; DaliotBul 2009: 257–8). As Michal Daliot-Bul argues, the cross-cultural translation of Japanese cuisine represents many tensions: it contains a number of fundamental anxieties regarding politico-economic status, national identity and authenticity (ibid: 259). In the context of Japanese cuisine in Australia, these anxieties can include the fear that Japanese-ness might be subsumed into a ‘Pan-Asian’ identity, and that Japan’s ‘special place’ in the Asia Paci¿c has been lost to the rising power of China and other growing economies in Asia.
‘Homolingual’ and ‘heterolingual’ addresses The MAFF’s actions illustrate Cresswell’s comment that ‘the control of mobility is foremost in the minds of those who have an interest in maintaining their own de¿nition of order’ (Cresswell 1996: 87). In cross-cultural contexts, this reveals aspects of fantasy, desire and identi¿cation inherent in the condition of translation; that is, to be translated expectedly means to correspond one systematic entity with another. In Translation and Subjectivity, Naoki Sakai (1997: 2) de¿nes this condition as an ideology that makes translators believe that what they are using in translation are two discrete linguistic systems, therefore meaning can be equally transferable between them. Sakai refers to this ideology as a ‘homolingual address’, suggesting that although languages are not uni¿ed, homogenous entities, translation does allow this fantasy, desire and identi¿cation.6 This linguistic theorisation of translation can also be applied to other kinds of ‘texts’: cultural products and practices can be expressed as homogenous unities through equating them with an ethno-political identity (in this case, ‘Japanese cuisine’ as a monolithic entity equated with a Japanese national-cultural identity). In terms of culinary translation, this relates back to an ongoing formation of the notion of a ‘national cuisine’, which often con¿nes a certain set of food and related practices as a ¿xed, homogenous category in identi¿cation (Cwiertka 2006: 12). As we have seen with the ‘Sushi Police’, this becomes problematic when one participant evaluates one way of translating a cuisine as superior (or inferior) to the other, implying that cultural products and practices within and
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across different categorical spheres should not interact, or transform; if they do, there needs to be a monitoring body to control and potentially legitimise any variations. Alternatively, Sakai (1997: 15) argues that ‘[t]here should be many different ways to apprehend translation in which the subjectivity of a community does not necessarily constitute itself in terms of language unity or the homogenous sphere of ethnic or national culture’. What he calls a ‘heterogeneous address’ is one alternative approach that can see translation as ‘a practice producing difference out of incommensurability (rather than equivalence out of difference)’ (ibid: xiii). The heterogeneous address does not desire a ‘perfect’ translation or an equal exchange between homogenous unities; it acknowledges that ‘every utterance can fail to communicate because heterogeneity is inherent in any medium, linguistic or otherwise’ (ibid: 8). In the cross-cultural translation of Japanese cuisine, this approach is instructive, as it allows us to consider how Japanese cuisine as a particular culinary category is not a homogenous entity, and how different points of view produce different translations and receptions of meaning.
Example of cross-cultural translations The ¿eldwork that supports discussions in this chapter was conducted in 42 Japanese restaurants in Melbourne from 2008 to 2011. Twenty-seven establishments were selected from the inner city, six establishments from the inner suburbs, and nine establishments from the outer suburbs of Melbourne. These restaurants included take-away sushi shops, casual outlets, pub style (izakaya) eateries and high-end restaurants (some of which specialise in particular food items, such as tempura). Hamada’s interviewees included those who have been involved and previously involved in Japanese food industries (restaurants, shops and wholesalers) in Australia, Japan or/and elsewhere. Interview questions for the participating proprietors focused upon the history of their restaurant, shop and/or company, their cultural and professional backgrounds and culinary practices. This chapter draws on these 42 interviews, but here we focus on two key ¿gures in the Melbourne Japanese culinary scene: Atsushi,7 a Japanese-born owner of an urban Japanese dining restaurant; and Shoji, a professionally trained chef in kaiseki ryǀri, or traditional Japanese haute cuisine, who runs an upscale restaurant in Melbourne’s Chinatown. Each provider’s story presents a different perspective on the (transgressive) translation process occurring in Melbourne, differentiated by the type of restaurant and the training and values of the individuals involved. While their separate opinions represent different views of translation practices, their experiences can be linked through the process by which ‘Japaneseness’ is re-presented to the Australian public. To illustrate how their translations are perceived, the providers’ stories are followed by a response from customers of Japanese restaurants: Sophia, an Anglo-European Australian frequent customer of Japanese restaurants in Melbourne. Taken together, these three stories illustrate how cross-cultural translations can present internationalisation as a process that allows Àexible production and consumption of Japanese-ness through material
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 73 culture, which serves in many cases not to smooth out hierarchies and difference between translated texts, but to expose them by making visible how the foreignness of the ‘original’ text is attempted to be preserved, while still ‘¿tting’ into the domestic mainstream market. The primary examples supporting this argument come from restaurants from the central business district in Melbourne, the cultural and economic urban centre of the metropolis and state capital of Victoria. As previously mentioned, Melbourne is often tagged the ‘culinary capital of Australia’ (City of Melbourne 2013) because of its well-developed restaurant scene, its proximity to the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and other world-class vineyards, and its foodie mecca, Queen Victoria Market, which provides high quality fresh and processed foodstuffs to the public six days a week. First held in 1993, the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is another event that marks the city’s love affair with food. Eating out is part of this culinary culture, and according to Melbourne’s commercial telephone directory, there are approximately 120 Japanese eating establishments in the central business district (CBD), ranging from quick takeaways to elegant dining rooms. The restaurants included in this chapter are drawn from examples deemed moderate in price: ‘sit down, table service’ restaurants with prices ranging from A$5–10 for small dishes to A$20–30 for mains, and licensed to serve liquor.
Shoji from KOHARU: whose de¿nition of order? Our ¿rst case study comes from the restaurant KOHARU, run by Shoji, a professionally trained chef in kaiseki ryǀri. His experience in Melbourne exempli¿es his struggle as to who has access to, and control over, the order of Japanese cuisine. Shoji ¿rst came to Australia in 1988 to start a restaurant in Sydney. ‘I came here because I felt the urge to correct the wrong idea about what Japanese cuisine really is that some people hold overseas’, he says.8 His de¿nition of Japanese cuisine has formed predominately through his prolonged training in Japan as a kaiseki chef. Shoji had been working in renowned Japanese ryǀtei restaurants, specialising in kaiseki ryǀri that is often represented as the pinnacle of Japanese cuisine. While kaiseki ryǀri is not everyday fare in Japan and even more rari¿ed in Australia, Shoji decided to use this culinary tradition as the dominant codes operating his restaurant in the central business district. Shoji opened the upscale multi-storied dining room tucked away off a main street in Melbourne’s Chinatown in 2004. The location of KOHARU limits its audience to those who speci¿cally choose to seek it out. Divided into six Àoors, KOHARU provides the space for different target audiences with different interests and purposes. The basement and ground Àoor welcome a relatively wider range of clienteles from students to business people, serving affordably priced meals (from A$25 for set lunch), such as traditional Japanese yakiniku BBQ and other kinds of set menus. On the ¿rst Àoor is traditional Japanese horigotatsu style seating, providing both a la carte and set menus. On the second Àoor is a sushi counter, served by trained sushi chefs in a quiet atmosphere. On the upper levels are
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karaoke rooms and a bar lounge, speci¿cally targeting business executives and exclusive upper-class clientele. The website Urban Spoon states this restaurant is ‘liked’ by 89 per cent of its voters, suggesting that the restaurant is doing well in this competitive market, and in 2012 this restaurant received ‘one hat’ from the widely read The Age Good Food Guide. KOHARU’s menus show their innovative culinary practices, which skilfully incorporate traditional Japanese and European (mostly French) cooking styles, with highly aesthetic presentations. They provide dishes such as salmon carpaccio, steamed savoury egg custard, grilled red king taraba crab legs and steamed quail thigh in a green tea scented bamboo leaf, which are part of set menus, ranging from A$100 to A$180 per head. While this menu may appear to have certain aspects of ‘fusion’ cuisines apparent (the carpaccio, for example) through Shoji’s explanations we can understand that the menu is much more about translation than it is about hybridity. In the interview, Shoji expresses his anxiety and frustration over ‘misrecognition’ of Japanese cuisine, while claiming the ‘correctness’ of his de¿nition of order. To keep control over this process, Shoji applies his (mediated) conceptual rankings of ingredients, cooking methods and menus, to the authorisation of what Japanese cuisine needs to be and who has access to it. Japanese dashi stock is one of them. In his opinion, homemade dashi stock is considered the quintessential element that makes Japanese cuisine genuinely ‘Japanese’, whereas processed dashi products are rendered inappropriate to deserve the status. ‘People say, “Your place is different”. Of course, it is. We make dashi ourselves out of katsuo bushi [bonito Àakes]. We’ve been working hard to maintain this basic line of Japanese cuisine for the past ¿ve or six years without cutting any corners. In fact, this is why our restaurant can earn a number one reputation in the industry.’ His understanding of this hierarchical order (e.g. homemade dashi versus instant, store-bought dashi), however, is not necessarily shared in the industry where different restaurants use different standards to read the text of Japanese food. This is, for example, suggested in the fact that the local Japanese restaurants that are not using homemade dashi equally receive a favourable reputation as Shoji’s restaurant in the ¿elds of consumer culture, restaurant industry and media (such as food reviews). He remarked: ‘What really gets me is that even renowned Japanese restaurants here use Hondashi [a product name of commercially produced instant bonito ¿sh stock] for their miso soup. It’s just unbelievable. If you take much out of your customers’ pockets, then you should give them what they paid for.’ There is therefore a gap between what is translated and how the meaning is actually received; this makes it dif¿cult for establishments like KOHARU to communicate to customers their extra effort, differentiating themselves from
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 75 other competitors. Shoji’s perception of gyǀza, or the Japanese version of Chinese dumplings, also highlights this gap. He said: ‘People often ask us, “Don’t you have gyǀza here?” But we say, “No, we don’t. And gyǀza is not Japanese”. Then, they say, “Well, at other [Japanese restaurants that] we go to, there is always gyǀza there, though”. So, we’ve been blamed for [not serving gyǀza].’ Gyǀza, a Chinese-based dish common in Japan’s everyday food spaces (Cwiertka 2006: 140–1), has become a sign signifying ‘Japanese-ness’ popularly used in Australia and elsewhere. Shoji, however, sees gyǀza as a product of transgressive translations, travelling from China to Japan to Australia, thereby locating it as a ‘foreign’ element in the political topography that he has formed through his professional training in the culinary area of kaiseki ryǀri. He said: ‘When we get asked that kind of question, we usually say, “There is a Chinese place across the street”. Those places serving food like gyǀza as Japanese food have been mostly run by Chinese people.’ [Could Japanese-run restaurants in Melbourne be included in this as well?] ‘Some of them are. They call themselves “Japanese restaurant”, but what they are really doing doesn’t seem to me to be quite right. I think that they are partly responsible for why people see gyǀza as Japanese cuisine.’ Despite his ¿xed ideas about Japanese identity in food, Shoji is, however, no member of the ‘Sushi Police’. He does not seek to expose other restaurateurs for their transgressive translations, nor does he escape any kind of change in his own establishment. Instead, he exerts control over transgression within his own de¿nition of order, by deploying a variety of strategies that seek a compromise between maintaining the authority of the ‘original’ and being recognised in the domestic market. In order to compromise, Shoji crosses over boundaries between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, and ‘East’ and ‘West’, providing ‘closeness’ to the clientele while specifying ‘difference’ to other establishments. Shoji commented that: ‘I suppose how we present our food and space is modern. Modern style ¿ts well in here [in Melbourne], and a unique combination of traditional and modern can also differentiate us from other restaurants . . . But then again, how we actually cook and what we use for cooking, like basic ingredients for seasoning, dashi broth and all that, are all traditionally Japanese. Although we use a modern presentation, we won’t go beyond the base line of our traditional roots. So, we play them out on the edge.’ Shoji further explained these strategies, using tropes of the ‘inside’ (‘nakami’) and the ‘outside’ (‘sotogawa’) to suggest how the inside or interiority of Japanese
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cuisine can be addressed and preserved through camouÀaging it with the outside. He said: ‘We’re using a modern style as a way of carrying the inside [nakami], which is for me not so important as the outside [sotogawa]. It’s just the surface in the end. What really matters to me is always content [naiyǀ]. So, the box [hako] wouldn’t be really an issue, as long as it allows me to put in whatever I think is right.’ Although this inside-outside status is not a ¿xed set of codes, Shoji utilises it paradoxically as a way of promoting, as well as protecting, the interiority or ‘authenticity’ of Japanese cuisine, which also keeps his own de¿nition of order ‘in place’. Shoji’s translation of the outside (or form) thus operates as a super¿cial yet strategic way to allow the inside (or the content) to be understood with a visual appeal. What Shoji’s compromise suggests is thus the very condition of translation, which is essentially ‘im-perfect’, for ultimately it is the reader, not the translator, who makes the translation possible. In further considering why providers like Shoji are made to compromise in their translations, it is necessary to examine who are formed as the (dominant) audience and how the readership of translation affects the providers’ translation practices and ultimately their end products. The next section will deploy the concept of ‘domestic subjects’ to explore how Japanese food as a ‘foreign’ text becomes intelligible, as well as palatable, through cross-cultural translations in the Australian context.
Translating a ‘foreign’ text, forming ‘domestic subjects’ Translating Japanese cuisine locates its text as ‘foreign’, thus requiring domestication. In The Scandals of Translation, Lawrence Venuti (1998: 114) writes that ‘domestication occurs with any translating and indeed is necessary if the foreign text is to become intelligible and interesting to domestic readers’. As a particular mode of cross-cultural translation, domestication operates to give a foreign text a certain intelligibility, or in other terms, familiarity. What enable this, Venuti suggests, are ‘domestic subjects’ who represent the moral codes, interests and agendas of dominant domestic groups. The process of translation, or more speci¿cally domestication, is thus not merely literary and aesthetic, but also social and ideological: it positions diverse audiences in domestic intelligibilities that can read a particular foreign text of cultural products within dominant domestic values. In the Australian hegemonic structure, the cross-cultural translation of Japanese cuisine de¿nes domestic subjects as ‘white Anglo-European Australian’. This particular representative group also works in tandem with a class status that is socio-economically privileged (middle to upper class) to access the particular gastronomic site. In the interviews, providers describe how they structure their products and practices for their dominant clientele, located in the privileged
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 77 socio-economic group. The notion of their dominant clientele is constructed both through a particular ethno-demographic condition in Melbourne, and through their recognition of who is ‘Australian’. The dominant clientele of Japanese restaurants in Melbourne is local residents, most of whom are Anglo-European or Asian, but not Japanese due to its relatively small population.9 While this ethnodemographic condition constructs who the providers recognise as the dominant clientele, their recognition does not necessarily reÀect the dominant clientele exactly, and instead constitutes a ‘stereotype’ to whom they conform. The producers’ stereotypical vision of their customers is about expectations, both on the part of providers and their perceived notion of the consumers’ desire, which is also informed by the socio-cultural reality. The implicated formation of the dominant clientele has had an impact on the operation of well-received Japanese restaurant ROKU in the CBD. Atsushi, a Japanese man in his thirties, manages ROKU with his Japanese wife and small staff. He bought it as an already successful established business from another Japanese restaurateur in 2005, and he and his wife have kept the restaurant’s pro¿le similar to the original successful formula: a limited menu, and a quiet and sophisticated atmosphere with a subdued modern decor. The menu consists of an a la carte offering, with guests choosing from a range of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ small dishes rather than the European standard of ‘entree’ and ‘main’. One interesting characteristic of this restaurant is its ‘hidden’ location; ROKU displays a very small sign next to its entrance in an off the road alley way in the CBD, which is easily missed. Client recommendation rather than overt advertising is its main promotion strategy, and despite its understated atmosphere, the restaurant has been successful in the past ¿ve years; it is listed in the top 100 restaurants on the Urban Spoon website, making it one of the top ten Japanese restaurants in Victoria (Urban Spoon 2011). On their individual restaurant website, 89 per cent of the site users said they ‘liked’ the restaurant. When asked about the way he envisioned his restaurant meeting the needs of the clientele as well as conforming to his production values, Atsushi noted that ‘because we don’t have many Japanese people here and can’t expect foreigners [gaijin san] to understand Japanese food as much as we do, we need to make an adjustment, [and] do something easier for them to understand’. The Japanese word ‘gaijin san’, generally translates to a polite form of ‘foreigners’ or ‘outsiders’, paradoxically locating the referent as domestic subjects, while simultaneously positioning Atsushi as a ‘native insider’ within the site. He then reworded this problematically generic word ‘gaijin san’10 as ‘Westerners’ (uesutanƗ), explaining to whom and why such an adjustment becomes necessary. He commented that: ‘You know, Westerners have their own taste preferences and they tend to stick to them. So tastes like either something salty [karai] or something sweet [amai] are well received, but subtle ones, like the taste of ingredients [sozai no aji], are not very appreciated. For example in terms of menu, we make sure that we have the food that we think they like and the taste that they are
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In this context, the word ‘Westerners’ is used to refer to a particular ethnic/racial category that is ‘white Anglo-European Australian’. Here, it is important to note that the category, which is tied to a class status, is also a product of cross-cultural translation: that is, it is this particular collective image and representation that cross-cultural translations construct and maintain so that a foreign text can gain entry into, and success in, the domestic (white) market. Arguably, within the discourse of ‘whiteness’ there has been a perception that Australia’s status being as ‘the White’ has declined over the last two decades with the increase of Asian migration and rise of Asian economies (Hage 2000: 85–6). Yet at the same time, a narrative of ‘white Australia’ still has its own currency within the established hegemonic structure, and the operation of establishments like ROKU does rely very much upon it. In this regard, Atsushi’s comments provide an example of how cross-cultural translations construct, and are constructed by, domestic subjects and why they enable a foreign text to become intelligible within the domestic (white) market. Domestication allows this in the way that it can produce familiarity as an effect. Shoji from KOHARU also described this process, suggesting how the foreign text of Japanese food can be domesticated to ‘¿t’ clients’ interests and expectations. He remarked: ‘If we made it too Japanese, then they probably wouldn’t be able to sense it because it would taste too blunt for them. So, take clear suimono soup for example. Suimono, I mean, really good suimono, gives us a rich aroma of dashi, but because the Àavour is so delicate, it might not taste much. It’s almost like plain hot water [sayu]. They wouldn’t enjoy that kind of thing, would they? So, we make it taste fairly strong so that they can actually taste it and enjoy it.’ Shoji’s comments show that he speci¿cally acknowledges that the Australian audience will probably not appreciate the delicate Àavour of a clear suimono soup. Nevertheless, Shoji’s domestication of his soup recipe (purposefully intensifying the stock’s Àavour) does not only work to ¿t the clients’ demands, but it may also inform who the domestic subjects should be and what they would expect from the Japanese restaurant within domestic values and norms. From here, it therefore becomes clear to see how this formation of domestic subjects through translation shapes consumers’ way of reading a particular foreign text. In Hamada’s interviews, this is suggested in how consumers judge the quality of their dining experiences in local Japanese restaurants, based upon the text’s intelligibility, as well as its palatability, to them. Sophia, an Anglo-European Australian social worker in her forties, said that when it comes to dining out in a
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 79 local Japanese restaurant she is concerned about how much the food and atmosphere provided are ‘authentic’. She remarked: ‘[Authenticity is] absolutely important. Even though I haven’t been to Japan, [at a Japanese restaurant here,] I’d expect to have authentic Japanese food. I would rather go to restaurants that have been run by those who have been to Japan and know what the authentic Japanese food is so they properly reproduce, not in the exact sense, but try to bring pretty much authentic food and atmosphere as you might get in Japan.’ Like many of other consumers interviewed by Hamada, Sophia, who has never been to Japan yet is partial to associated cultural products such as anime, forms her judgment relying on what is already familiar to her. She suggested that there is a different kind of authenticity that does not necessarily match with her expectations and recognition (or misrecognition). She made her claims of authenticity, not based upon what she knows and experienced, but often on what she wants to consume. While consumers seek authenticity and make judgments based on claims of authenticity, what is intelligible as genuine as well as palatable is often a different thing. Sophia’s following story of a Japanese friend of hers who cooked her a meal during his stay in Melbourne is illustrative of this ‘consumable authenticity’. She described that what the Japanese friend cooked and proclaimed as ‘Japanese’ was ‘very strange’ and ‘different’ to what she had expected and been familiar to. She commented: ‘I didn’t know a terrible amount of Japanese food, but I remember once I met a young male Japanese student. He came over and gave me an extensive meal of true, you know, Japanese food and a lot of them, I found it very strange, you know, compared to what I’ve sort of been used to through the, yeah, taste-wise. There was black jerry seaweed you know, there were a few other things. I’m sure I’ve developed the palate for it . . . but I’d say it was a bit of culture shock initially. And there was tofu, which, I like tofu but the way he did with tofu was very different [to what I know]. His father owns a restaurant in Japan so there was obviously the stuff that he was able to experience. In fact, he said “this is really true Japanese cooking”, but that’s not, you know, what’s normally [for] Western palate. It’s interesting. Because my palate used to a lot of garlic and spice, so you see? ‘So the ¿rst experience was, there was lots of stuff that I thought, ahh, how can I say? Ahh, very humble, I would say. There were a lot of humble sort of meals. Like I expected a lot of ¿sh, you know, [that] sort of thing, but he didn’t serve a lot of ¿sh . . . but the ingredients themselves were quite expensive, [I know this] because when I’m out and purchase them so it wasn’t cheap. It was just unfamiliar to me . . . but having said that, I also like to dine, you know, having Japanese foods, so a bit of contradiction.’
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To Sophia, what and how the Japanese student cooked seemed supposedly ‘authentic’, yet the ingredients he selected (such as the ‘black jerry seaweed’) and the way in which he translated them (such as the preparation of tofu, although the ingredient itself is relatively familiar to Sophia) did not ¿t her ‘Western palate’, and therefore failed to resonate with her as ‘Japanese’ – something both intelligible and palatable. Importantly, her ‘Western palate’ also reÀects institutional constructions through personal, bodily experiences: they refer not merely to individual taste preferences, but also to a certain ethnic identity which she recognises as her own. Venuti (1998: 78) posits this identi¿cation process as ‘mirroring’ or selfrecognition. He writes that ‘the reader recognizes himself or herself in the translation by identifying the domestic values that motivated the selection of that particular foreign text’. For Venuti, this self-recognition is also ‘misrecognition’ as dominant domestic values are taken for readers’ own (ibid: 78). What produces this self-recognition (or misrecognition) is then a social and ideological system where certain cultural norms and resources operate to constitute the self and de¿ne it as a domestic subject. In this sense, it can be said that domestication works as a way not only for providers (or translators) but also consumers (or readers) to recognise their position of intelligibility within domestic representations, as it allows them to select, read and represent the foreign text that ‘makes sense’. To what extent are these restaurants ‘successful’ in their culinary translations? One way we can judge their achievements in the competitive market in Australian’s ‘culinary capital’ is through longevity. Both restaurants appear to enjoy a favourable reputation amongst amateur foodies. Postings to the Urban Spoon website primarily from native English speakers are plentiful, suggesting that the restaurants are not exclusive ex-pat gathering places. Neither of the restaurants advertise on major internet sites for Japanese speaking short-term and long-term residents of Melbourne, such as Dengon.net. On the Urban Spoon page, several posts regarding KOHARU state that the contributors had ‘stumbled’ into the restaurant after being unable to ¿nd tables at the two prominent Asian restaurants located on the same street, constituting a ‘Melbourne Asian foodie’s trinity’. To the Australian customer, KOHARU is as much a ‘Japanese’ restaurant as it is an ‘Asian’ one, and succeeds in the Asian market as well as the specialist Japanese one.
Conclusion In this chapter, we have argued that the cross-cultural translation of Japanese cuisine is a discursive practice that involves both individual and institutional constructions and exchanges of meaning. Using the notion of transgressive translations, we have demonstrated that translation, as a cultural practice, attempts to transfer meaning from one cultural context to another; in food, there is heterogeneity in its mediums, consumption and understanding of meaning. Examples discussed in the chapter showed this ecosystem of translation, suggesting how the practices of translation allow Àexibility, and therefore produce
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 81 difference, instead of equivalence. Acts of domestication thus necessarily function to deal with this rupture in translation. The interrogation into the cross-cultural production and consumption of Japanese cuisine exempli¿ed the tensions involved in translation between making its text consumable and maintaining the authority of the ‘original’. Lawrence Venuti’s notion of domestic subjects in this case provides a useful frame to show how translation de¿nes a certain identity as dominant and legitimate, and how it enables the Japanese restaurant as a site of crosscultural translation to produce the exotic that is both ‘foreign’ and ‘familiar’, and therefore become ‘marketable’ within the domestic context. Interviews with both providers and consumers provided demonstrations of the ecosystem where consumers’ interests, expectations and intelligibilities shape, are shaped through, speci¿c social interactions and institutions (such as the Japanese restaurant in Australia). It is not only translators (the providers, in this case) but also domestic subjects (the dominant clientele, in this case) who partake in, and oppress, the formation of domestic representations of a ‘foreign’ text. Speci¿cally, we have employed the translation metaphor over one of hybridity or fusion because translation allows us to identify and analyse politics in this particular internationalisation process. Cultural hybridism binds the strands together; it often ‘undermines the conÀict between the obsessions with native uniqueness and the indifference of origins’ (Koh 2010: 393). Translation, instead, can provide a way to examine how a particular cultural product and practice is internationalised while simultaneously being localised in a clearer and more nuanced way. Moreover, the metaphor has the ability to depict cross-cultural discourses between and amongst producers and consumers, through which a strategic, conscious and planned interaction is structured.
Notes 1 Victoria’s population is 4,932,422, coming from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds; 22.2 per cent of its residents were born overseas (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006). 2 See Douglas (1984) for a discussion of the way cultural practices actively work to manage physical and ideological pollution, or matter and concepts ‘out of place’, as a threat to the status quo social order. 3 The criteria include ingredients, culinary skills and knowledge of food safety, atmosphere, service, menu, food preparation and presentation (Daliot-Bul 2009: 257). Also see ‘Proposal for Japanese Restaurant Recommendation Program (Draft)’ by Council of Advisors for the Recommendation of Japanese Restaurant Outside Japan (2007: 4). 4 Matsuoka Toshikatsu was the Minister of the MAFF (2006–7) in the Abe Shinzǀ’s Liberal Democratic cabinet. He committed suicide in 2007 after allegations of ¿nancial misdealing. 5 See Daliot-Bul (2009) and McGray (2002) for further discussions on ‘Cool Japan’ and its implications both in Japan and overseas. 6 In his interrogation of the formation of Japanese national/ethnic subject, Sakai (1997) conceives of this ideology as a way to imagine the homogeneity of linguistic and cultural communities, suggesting its broader application to areas other than language. 7 All informants’ and restaurants’ names presented in this chapter are pseudonyms.
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8 All translations from the Japanese in the interview data are by the authors. 9 The number of Japanese-born residents in Melbourne is 5,287, according to the 2006 Census (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006). The Japanese-born residents indicate people of Japanese ancestry who are resident in Australia, whether through birth or immigration. The 2006 Census excludes Australian-born persons of Japanese ancestry, and Japanese in Australia as overseas visitors (and would include non-Japanese born in Japan). By comparison, the 2006 Census shows that the Chinese population is 182,550; these are residents who identi¿ed themselves as having Chinese ancestry (either exclusively or with another ancestry). 10 See, for example, Curtis (2011).
References Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2006. ‘2006 Census QuickStats: Victoria’. Available from: http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/2006census-quickstats-victoria.pdf [accessed 26 October 2011]. Bestor, Theodore. 2004. Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World. Berkeley: The University of California Press. City of Melbourne. 2013. ‘The City of Melbourne’. Available from http://melbourne2013. org.au/city-of-melbourne/ [accessed 10 December 2013]. Council of Advisors for the Recommendation of Japanese Restaurants Outside Japan. 2007. ‘Proposal for Japanese Restaurant Recommendation Program’. Available from: http://www.maff.go.jp/e/soushoku/sanki/easia/e_sesaku/japanese_food/pdf/proposal_e. pdf [accessed 9 December 2013]. Cresswell, Tim. 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Curtis, Daniel. 2011. ‘The Gaijin at Home: A Study of the Use of the Word Gaijin by the Japanese Speech Community in Sydney, Australia’. New Voices 4: 33–57. Cwiertka, Kasia. 2001. ‘Introduction’. In Asian Food: the Global and the Local, edited by Kasia Cwiertka and Boudewijn Walraven, 1–15. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Cwiertka, Kasia. 2006. Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity. London: Reaktion Books. Daliot-Bul, Michal. 2009. ‘Japan Brand Strategy: The Taming of “Cool Japan” and the Challenges of Cultural Planning in a Postmodern Age’. Social Science Japan Journal 12(2): 247–66. Douglas, Mary. 1984. Purity and Danger. London: Ark Paperbacks. Faiola, Anthony. 2006. ‘Putting the Bite on a Pseudo Sushi and Other Insults: Japan Plans to Scrutinize Restaurant Offerings Abroad’. The Washington Post. Available from: http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112301158_ pf.html [accessed 26 October 2011]. Friedman, Jonathan. 1994. Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage. Hage, Ghassan. 2000. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. New York: Routledge; Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press. Hamada, Iori. 2011. ‘The Japanese Restaurant as an Exotic Genre: A Study of Culinary Providers’ Practices and Dialogues in Melbourne’. New Voices 5: 84–102. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 1998. ‘Marketing “Japan”: Japanese Cultural Presence under a Global Gaze’. Japanese Studies 18(2): 165–80. Koh, Dong-Yeon. 2010. ‘Murakami’s “Little Boy” Syndrome: Victim or Aggressor in Contemporary Japanese and American Arts?’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 11(3): 393–412.
Fitting Japanese cuisine into Australia 83 McGray, Douglas. 2002. ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’. Foreign Policy 130: 44–54. Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. 2011. ‘Plan an Event: Melbourne and Australia’. Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Available from: http://www. mcec.com.au/plan-an-event/melbourne-australia-intl/ [accessed 9 December 2013]. Sakai, Naoki. 1997. Translation and Subjectivity: On ‘Japan’ and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Sakamoto, Rumi and Matthew Allen. 2011. ‘There’s Something Fishy about that Sushi: How Japan Interprets the Global Sushi Boom’. Japan Forum 23(1): 99–121. Urban Spoon. 2011. ‘Best Victoria Restaurants’. Urban Spoon. Available from: http:// www.urbanspoon.com/lb/71/best-restaurants-Victoria [accessed 26 October 2011]. Venuti, Lawrence. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York: Routledge.
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Internationalising Japanese culture Australian interpretations of Urasenke Chadǀ (the Way of Tea) tradition Stacey Steele1
Introduction: internationalising Urasenke Chadǀ This chapter uses Urasenke, a dominant Japanese tea tradition, as a touchstone to examine both discourse and practice relating to internationalising Chadǀ (the Way of Tea) traditions. The discourse of Urasenke Chadǀ and internationalisation is inextricably linked to perceptions of modernity and Japaneseness. It also reÀects two competing goals: ¿rst, the adaptation of an ancient tradition to the realities of life in the twenty-¿rst century, even within Japan; and secondly, the genuine and pragmatic desire to take tea to a wider, non-Japanese audience. In practice, Urasenke Chadǀ has also become a vehicle for internationalisation by providing a ¿xed point around which individuals organise their own identity as Japanese, Australian, cosmopolitan or something else. The internationalisation of Chadǀ often involves a Japanisation of personal identity to create that ¿xed point. Because of this dual process of internationalisation and Japanisation, the tradition of Urasenke Chadǀ itself is not necessarily changing per se; its spirituality and traditions are not lost in the forces of modernisation or transplantation. Tea remains a constant in the cultural landscape, despite changes in Japanese language, fashion, values and beliefs. The ¿rst section of this chapter traces the internationalisation of Chadǀ by the Urasenke organisation. Since the 1950s, a key driver for the leaders of Urasenke Chadǀ has been spreading the Chadǀ tradition outside of Japan. On one level, internationalisation is simply a mechanism for enhancing the reputation and number of people practising Urasenke Chadǀ outside of Japan; but, on another level, the heads of the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition are ordained Zen Buddhist priests, and they also preach a cultural message of peace and harmony as part of their mission. These alternative drivers give tea a multivocal heterogeneity, and make the international ascendency of Urasenke Chadǀ and its process of internationalisation all the more interesting. The Urasenke administration made a clear decision to extend itself overseas and thus distinguish itself amongst the various Japanese Chadǀ traditions while still maintaining their traditional values. My analysis of internationalisation in practice in the second section of this chapter arises from participant observation of a small, but committed community of practitioners of the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition in Melbourne, Australia who are members of the Urasenke Chado Tankokai Melbourne Association (‘Melbourne
Internationalising Japanese culture 85 Association’). Today, tea begins as a hobby for most people in both Japan and Australia; however, it has the potential to become a way of life, a philosophy, a community, a vocation, an identity and even an obsession. In Japan, Chadǀ has also been described as useful etiquette training (Corbett 2009), and a means of displaying social status or improving social status (Kato 2004). Incentives such as linkages to cultural identity or building symbolic and cultural capital, also explored in this chapter, only partially explain Japanese migrants’ everyday commitment to tea in Melbourne; although they may help to explain why most of the practitioners in Melbourne are of Japanese background. More importantly, however, is the idea that Chadǀ may perform a function outside of Japan for a participant that is not as important in Japan: for example, it provides an opportunity to re-examine ‘traditional’ Japanese culture or network with people from similar backgrounds. But even these functions are presumably possible within Japan and are not unique to Chadǀ outside of Japan. As Kato observes, even in a Japanese urban context, Chadǀ means many things to different people (ibid). Chadǀ’s complexity as a ‘serious ritual pursuit’, which takes a great deal of time and ¿nancial commitment, also reÀects recent literature focusing on the conÀation of leisure and work, and shared identities through practice (see, for example, Kohn 2007: 177, 184; Kohn 2011). This chapter helps to make sense of the complexity involved in internationalising Chadǀ traditions in an Australian context.
Urasenke Chadǀ: a history of spreading Chadǀ traditions outside of Japan Urasenke Chadǀ claims to be ‘the largest tradition of Chado both in Japan and around the world’ (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008a). Its tradition is based on the Chadǀ developed by Sen Rikynj, a merchant and Shogun-con¿dant, in the sixteenth century (Sen and Sen 2011) and his descendants (Sadler 2008: 265). Omotosenke, also based on teachings by Rikynj and his descendants, is the second largest tea tradition in Japan from the perspective of practitioner numbers (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008a).2 The difference between Urasenke and Omotosenke may be explained as akin to the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism from a non-Christian person’s point of view: they share the same origins, but diverge in practices, procedures and administration.3 As Sadler notes in his classic book ¿rst published in the 1930s, ‘both carry on the same tradition and are in no way to be regarded as greater or lesser, but only as perhaps differing in emphasis on certain details’ (Sadler 2008: 265–6). The other major tea traditions which have their origins in the practice of tea by Sen Rikynj are: Mushanokǀjisenke, Yabunouchike, Koborike and Yamadake. Kato estimates, however, that there are at least 14 active tea traditions in Japan today (Kato 2004: 39). During the Meiji period (1868–1912), successive Urasenke Chadǀ administrations saw internationalisation as a key element of Japan and Chadǀ’s modernisation and survival, as well as a natural progression if practitioners apply and live by the precepts of the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition. The eleventh-generation Iemoto,4 Gengensai Seichnj (1810–77), is known historically for having Chadǀ
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of¿cially recognised by the government as a ‘serious cultural and spiritual pursuit’ (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008f). Other traditional Japanese so-called cultural pursuits were classi¿ed by the government as ‘performing arts’ during the Meiji period (Sen 1988: 12), which arguably had a negative impact on their capacity to attract private patronage and followers. Like many traditional pursuits associated with feudal regimes, however, tea practitioners and teachers still lost important patronage during the Meiji period (1868–1912). Gengensai also began to modernise Chadǀ by developing methods of serving tea which accommodated the craze for all things Western, which began after Japan’s embargo against the West was lifted of¿cially in 1868. Even today, the ryurei-style procedure, which is attributed to Gengensai, allows guests to enjoy tea sitting on stools or chairs, rather than kneeling on tatami, which can be considered one of the ¿rst ‘internationalising’ changes in the practice of Chadǀ. The procedure not only helped to bring tea to new audiences (both Japanese who had veered toward the West in their cultural pursuits as well as foreign guests), but it also reÀected the Urasenke Chadǀ philosophy of ‘acting with the utmost consideration toward your guests’.5 From a tea practitioner’s perspective, asking Western guests in the Meiji period – or even today – to sit in Japanese seiza, a formal sitting style, to enjoy tea could have been perceived as rude and inconsiderate towards guests. Gengensai’s nineteenth-century perspective reveals the tension between ancient traditions and modern realities, and the inextricable link between modernisation and internationalisation, which are important to our understanding of tea today in a global context. Urasenke juxtaposes its own tradition, which creates status and legitimacy, with the need to remain relevant by modernising and expanding. Internationalisation takes at least two forms as a result: ¿rst, updating existing methods to reÀect non-Japanese inÀuences – such as sitting on chairs; and secondly, by taking Chadǀ outside of Japan in both traditional and modi¿ed forms, but always with a view to retaining its status and legitimacy through continuity. The tension for Urasenke Chadǀ reÀects push and pull factors of internationalisation discussed elsewhere in this volume. Urasenke Chadǀ’s focus outside of Japan has also led it to internationalise its organisation. The fourteenth-generation Iemoto, Mugensai Sekisǀ (also known more commonly as Tantansai) (1893–1964), ¿rst formalised the organisation of Urasenke Chadǀ domestically and grasped the ¿nancial and administrative imperatives of the twenty-¿rst century (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008f). Tantansai established the Urasenke Foundation (Zaidan Hǀjin Urasenke Konnichian), a non-pro¿t corporation, whose ‘purpose is to preserve and foster the cultural heritage of Urasenke’.6 Tantansai also established the non-pro¿t International Chado Culture Foundation on 1 May 1947 to spread Chadǀ overseas (Sen and Sen 2011: 108). During Tantansai’s term as Iemoto, The Shadan Hǀjin Chado Urasenke Tankokai, an incorporated non-pro¿t organization, was registered in 1953.7 The aims of Tankokai are to: ensure the standardization of the Urasenke chanoyu rules and tea-making procedures (temae), support research, encourage cooperation and exchange
Internationalising Japanese culture 87 among all members, promote the practice of the principles laid down by the grand master, and expand the chado population around the world. (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008e)8 The Tankokai and the Urasenke Foundation work closely together, but the International Division was moved from the auspices of the Urasenke Foundation to the supervision of Tankokai in 1999. Hence, the Melbourne Association’s of¿cial name: Urasenke Chado Tankokai Melbourne Association. The move to internationalise Tankokai perhaps highlights a desire to expand its unifying and legitimising role outside of Japan. The Tankokai organisation ensures an underlying authenticity to Urasenke Chadǀ’s outreach, because it is directed and administered through Urasenke’s headquarters in Kyoto where the Iemoto resides. Regular seminars outside of Japan and visits to Kyoto by teachers and practitioners are designed to encourage practitioners to deepen their knowledge; they also perform a control function over content and style to ensure continuity of the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition. Urasenke Chadǀ has an English-language newsletter sent to members, which publicises its international activities and Tankokai’s recent publications in English include a Japanese-English tea vocabulary (Tankosha Editorial Section 2007) and textbook (Sen and Sen 2011). Urasenke Chadǀ’s international ambitions have been most keenly realised in the last 60 years in line with Japan’s increased economic and cultural inÀuence.9 The ¿fteenth-generation Iemoto, Hǀunsai Hansǀ Genshitsu (1923–), ¿rst travelled to the United States in 1950 on a ‘Peacefulness through a Bowl of Tea’ tour (Sen and Sen 2011: 109). The Former Grand Master was Iemoto10 from 1964 to 2002, and made internationalising tea one of his primary goals: Over the past ¿fty years, I have personally sought to impart the spirit of this Way [Chadǀ] to people worldwide, expressing my goal through the phrase, ‘Peacefulness through a Bowl of Tea’. I sincerely hope that, through this Urasenke Konnichian web site, knowledge of Chado will reach far and wide around the globe, and its ideals might further contribute to the attainment of genuine World Peace and Happiness, the mutual goal of all humanity. (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008c) According to this of¿cial narrative, the idea of promoting Chadǀ outside of Japan stemmed from the former Iemoto’s time in the air force division of the Japanese navy during World War Two (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008c). Like many Japanese of his generation, his experience of World War Two created a desire for peace, which he and others saw as an international project. In this period, the discourse used by Urasenke Chadǀ as part of its internationalisation focuses on the export of Chadǀ from Japan as part of the Àow of ideas and culture also explored by Hamada and Stevens in this volume in relation to the production of Japanese food in Melbourne. Internationalisation in practice in this contemporary context focuses on demonstrating and exporting Chadǀ to non-Japanese countries. Urasenke Chadǀ has Foundation and Branch of¿ces in many countries, including Australia, Brazil,
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Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands and the United States.11 There were Urasenke Tankokai associations in 35 countries outside of Japan as at 2011 (Sen and Sen 2011: 109). The establishment of an of¿cial group overseas may be based purely on chance when a practitioner who is a quali¿ed teacher moves to another country. In other cases, Urasenke designates a member or institution to promote the tradition in that area. Urasenke also offers scholarships for non-Japanese to study tea in Kyoto and sends senior teachers from Kyoto to international branches. The teachers present seminars to locallybased practitioners in the Kyoto style. Urasenke’s activities and publications also continue to focus on ‘culture and peace’, as evidenced by events such as Sixth East Asia Tea Culture Symposium & Sixth Panel Discussion on Culture and Peace in East Asia in Beijing, China in May 2011 (Urasenke Newsletter 2011: 6).12 Another recent key international outreach was the current Iemoto Zabǀsai Sǀshitsu’s (1956–) visit to Melbourne in November 2011 to celebrate the Melbourne Association’s Twentieth Anniversary.13 Urasenke Chadǀ as an international commodity for consumption The internationalising processes encapsulated in the spread of Urasenke Chadǀ outside of Japan involve ‘the stable component’ of consuming the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition (Black 2010). In a thoughtful exposition on the production of culture using Japan as his case study, Black notes that ‘the international movement of [cultural] styles can erode their local speci¿city, as suggested by the traditional focus on hybridization and domestication taken by studies of cultural exchange’ (ibid: 7). Urasenke Chadǀ, however, has been largely successful in establishing itself outside of Japan without the loss of its traditional, Japanese identity. Perhaps this is because, as Black also argues, ‘consumption practices are always localized, but the one stable component of consumption is of course the artefact itself’ (ibid: 7). Urasenke Chadǀ as an organisation is not an artefact, closed to negotiation or localisation, but it may be seen as a relatively stable commodity, or set of principles, which may be consumed inside and outside of Japan. The physicality of practice, however, is altered by the non-Japanese environment (Kohn 2007: 174).14 At its most re¿ned and elite levels, Urasenke Chadǀ requires various speci¿c utensils; at its most fundamental level, however, Chadǀ may be practiced, for example, with a round tray, whisk, kettle, bowl, cloth and scoop (this procedure is known as raku bon). One of the obstacles to studying Urasenke Chadǀ outside of Japan at elite levels is the limited availability of traditional utensils. The lack of utensils, however, can lead to innovation such as the meetings held by the Melbourne Association to teach members to make their own tea scoops and tea cloths, and the support of local artists by practitioners. Innovations such as ‘Japanese Tea encounters’ developed by Margaret Price on the Gold Coast underscore an alternative approach to developing an Australian tea culture based on Japanese Chadǀ traditions (Price 2012). Ms Price’s approach gives practitioners an opportunity to display Àair and perhaps a new understanding of Chadǀ traditions.
Internationalising Japanese culture 89 The stability of the objects and the aesthetic principles of ‘tea ceremony’ do not mean that the practice is ‘frozen’ in time either. Urasenke Chadǀ’s expansion outside of Japan was also an extension of its adaption to modernising and internationalising within Japan. As Black (2010) argues: successful cultural production – like the production of all commodities today – largely hinges on the creation of an identi¿able style, and international cultural consumption is increasingly about the consumption of such styles, rather than homogenized, non-culturally speci¿c products. The popularity of particular products within a region might rely in part on the sharing of values and ideas within that region, but at the same time, national industries must seek to differentiate themselves and produce a distinctive and valued style in order to compete. The nature of Urasenke Chadǀ’s popularity within Japan and outside is linked to its ability to remain relevant to practitioners, whilst at the same time maintaining an aura of traditional authenticity. The concept of tea and its traditions and practice being a cultural commodity is not new. Ikegami traces the political origins of ritualised tea as it developed at the end of the ¿fteenth century and into the sixteenth century (Ikegami 2005: 120–6). She identi¿es that even from its earliest days, tea already reÀected elements of ‘social rewards’, a place for networking, status accumulation, political intrigue, ‘aesthetic consciousness’ and a ‘material fetishism’ concerning utensils (ibid: 121–2, 125). Ikegami’s narrative reÀects a traditional account of tea’s political and social development, emphasising the personal brilliance and sacri¿ce of Sen Rikynj, who she calls an ‘artistic genius with a strong independent mind who came too close to the power of an absolutist ruler’, referencing Sen Rikynj’s tragic suicide at the command of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (ibid: 120). She also describes how the merger of feudal and capitalist traditions to form the iemoto ‘franchise system’ in the mid-eighteenth century cemented the economic and social stability of traditional arts such as tea (ibid: 165–70). In twenty-¿rst century Japan, the importance of tea as a commodity generally has even been con¿rmed in legislation under the Law in Relation to the Promotion of Green Tea (Ocha no shinkǀ ni kansuru hǀritsu, Law No. 21, 22 April 2011). The law only has 11 articles that run over two pages, and may be summarised as follows: The law intends to promote both business and cultural aspects of tea. It encourages prefectures to establish tea promotion plans. The national government and the prefectures are to make efforts to support tea producers, to improve the technology of tea processing and distribution, and to improve tea quality. They must also make an effort to promote the consumption and export of tea as well as tea culture. (Umeda 2011)
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Although the law is aimed at the production and consumption of tea and not Urasenke Chadǀ per se, it reÀects the tensions inherent in the Urasenke tradition of Chadǀ and its relationship with the modern. On one side, tea is promoted as a traditional element of Japanese culture which deserves government patronage; however, on the other hand, tea production and marketing must modernise to adapt to twenty-¿rst century desires and needs. As Urasenke Chadǀ notes, ‘with its re¿ned culture and arts of entertaining guests, chado stands out in the world as a form of traditional culture of which Japanese can be justly proud’ (Sen and Sen 2011: 176). The law’s references to tea’s cultural signi¿cance offer a similar insight into its Japanese-ness. The key purpose of the law, however, is to secure government funding for the promotion of tea consumption and export (Yahoo Japan 2013). Tea is one of the fastest growing Japanese exports to the United States for example: tea exports increased by 30 per cent, and the tea industry was worth US$36.5 million in 2011 (United States Bureau of Statistics 2013). Tea as a cultural commodity is not a uniquely Japanese phenomena either. Tea is also being used to promote a discourse of Chinese-ness in China. d’Abbs argues that the rediscovery of ‘tea art’ and ‘tea culture’ in China ‘draws on enduring elements of Western “orientalising” discourses’ (d’Abbs 2011: 9). There is an overt political aspect to the new-old tea tradition in China, which seeks to establish itself as ‘an authentically Chinese alternative to individualism, consumerism and the pursuit of democratic rights, and a source of legitimacy for the party-state’ (ibid: 11). d’Abbs argues that in China, the resurgence of tea is based on four factors: an increase in marketing and production; technological advances in production; increasing evidence and understanding of tea’s health bene¿ts; and the spread of ‘tea culture’ through ‘tea art houses’ (ibid: 6). To this list, it is also logical to add the increasing cultural hegemony and con¿dence of China (ibid: 8). Similarly to the Chinese tea phenomenon, the popularity of Japanese tea traditions and, in particular, Urasenke Chadǀ, outside of Japan also tracked Japan’s increased international inÀuence as a result of its economic prosperity.
The Urasenke Chadǀ tradition in Melbourne, Australia The Melbourne Association is an example of Urasenke Chadǀ’s successful transplantation outside of Japan. Its development reÀects opportunistic expansion involving mostly Japanese practitioners who moved to Melbourne for personal reasons. The Melbourne Association works in collaboration with the Urasenke administration in Kyoto, Japan. Because Japanese migrants in Melbourne have mainly fostered the organisation’s development, classes are taught predominantly in Japanese. Their current audience is other Japanese, or at least those with Japanese background or a high level of in-country experience. Some practitioners have practiced tea in Japan, while others come to tea as part of their migrant or even Australian or Japanese cultural exchange experience. Membership of the Melbourne Association consists mainly of women who enthusiastically work towards tea gatherings, demonstrations, training sessions and other events through
Internationalising Japanese culture 91 regular okeiko (practice and instruction). The members follow the key principles of wa, kei, sei, jaku (harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity). A reÀection on research methodology: questionnaire survey, interviews and observation? As a member and practitioner of Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne, I am in a position to observe the functions of the Melbourne Association as both a researcher/ observer and a participant, giving me particular insight into the ways Chadǀ is undergoing change overseas while maintaining its cultural traditions. My position vis-à-vis the research subject calls up a methodological discussion of the values of my observations. Many Urasenke Chadǀ practitioners outside of Japan are trained to discuss Chadǀ with ‘foreign’ audiences. I have also trained to perform this facilitator task; I regularly practice tea as a member of the Melbourne Association; and I also provided interpreting for the Grand Tea Master during his visit to Melbourne in November 2011. My involvement in the Melbourne Association gives me intimate access to practitioners and okeiko (see similarly Chiba 2010); however, my status as an insider is also likely to affect questions that I ask and my interpretation of any answers. Observations gathered from two respondents to a pilot survey also inform my perspective of the practice of Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne as presented in this chapter.15 Both respondents are over 55 years of age, female, long-term residents in Australia of Japanese background with excellent English-language skills. They both hold university degrees and have been learning Chadǀ for decades. One respondent commenced Chadǀ in Japan because a relative was a tea teacher, and the other respondent commenced her study after moving to Melbourne. Based on my knowledge of the Melbourne Association, they represent fairly typical, although long-standing, members of the group. They attend okeiko regularly where class is taught predominantly in Japanese. Although typical, their responses by no means provide a comprehensive survey of tea practitioners in Melbourne, but the observations they provide offer some interesting insights by which I can contextualise my participatory observations of the group. Neither respondent agreed to be interviewed. Interviews may have been awkward given my personal closeness to the subject matter. Further, interviews may elicit ‘correct’ answers, rather than ‘truthful’ answers; and responses may depend on many factors, including the time, place and context of the interview (Kato 2004: 10).16 People who complete questionnaires and agree to be interviewed may also see themselves as ‘culture brokers’ (Murray 2000). As part of his research on Haka dance culture, Murray conducted ‘of¿cial’ interviews with managerial, administrative or team leaders involved in haka. He calls these interviewees ‘cultural brokers’; that is, ‘a kind of person specialising in mediating various positions between individual self-interest, indigenous and non-indigenous social, economic and political interests’ (ibid: 349). Cultural brokers would tend to focus on ‘the other’ and the exotic nature of Chadǀ. Some of these problems
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inherent in questionnaires and interviews are mitigated by the use of observation, which I rely on heavily in this section of the chapter to form conclusions about the practice of Chadǀ in Melbourne.17 Observation also gives me a Àexible, rich, qualitative mix of information and a perspective on issues such as the ‘gossip and competitiveness’ and expense involved in Chadǀ which Chiba also observed in her detailed research on Urasenke Chadǀ practices in Akita, Northern Japan (Chiba 2010: 8).18 Elements such as competitiveness contradict the essential teachings of Urasenke Chadǀ, but they ¿nd their place throughout the history of tea traditions. Establishing and developing a tea tradition outside of Japan The Melbourne Association was established in 1991 to promote the study and dissemination of the Urasenke tradition of Chadǀ. It plays an important role in harmonising diverse approaches and needs of tea practitioners in Victoria, Australia, similar to the role played by its parent organisation in Japan. The Melbourne Association is an incorporated association registered under the Associations Incorporation Reform Act 2012 (Vic). Tea had been practised in Melbourne and elsewhere in Australia for decades before the establishment of the Melbourne Association, but registration in Victoria and local corporate governance highlights the impact that different legal jurisdictions may have on the organisation of Urasenke Chadǀ outside of Japan. Registration meant that the Melbourne Association had to adopt the corporate governance structure of an Australian incorporated association with an elected Chair and appointed President. Australian law also requires the Melbourne Association to have an annual general meeting and keep ¿nancial records. In its formal Australian incarnation, the Melbourne Association helps to protect Urasenke’s standing and legitimacy, as well as Kyoto’s ability to control its own tradition of tea. In turn, the Melbourne Association is given support and legitimacy through its connection with Tankokai in Kyoto. Tankokai’s reach outside of Japan is an attempt by a private organisation to avoid ‘mistranslation’ of Japanese culture in a similar way to the attempt of the Japanese government to enforce a certain view of Japanese food through the ‘Sushi Police’, as described by Hamada and Stevens in this volume. Constraints in Australia to do with aspects such as food and seasons do not allow for a ‘perfect’ translation of Urasenke Chadǀ; similarly, to Hamada and Stevens’ observations about the food presented in Japanese restaurants in Melbourne. Unlike the Japanese government’s attempt to control the translation of Japanese food, however, the Urasenke Chadǀ administration, or at least the proponents of its tradition in Melbourne, accept that a certain amount of change is necessary; for example, due to the availability of utensils and the differences in seasons. But there are limits to unorthodoxy too: for example, the method of using those utensils and reÀection on the seasons from a Chadǀ perspective are aimed at complying with the standard interpretation of the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition. The tempo and style of teaching and okeiko in Melbourne is also similar to Japan;19 for example, students take turns at being host
Internationalising Japanese culture 93 and guest, work in the miyuza (preparation area), enjoy social conversation and critique each other’s practice. The gendered nature of Chadǀ practice and other demographic comparisons One of the key similarities between the practice of Chadǀ in Australia and Japan is its gendered nature. In Japan, the preponderance of female adherents of tea20 has resulted from a number of factors, including tea becoming like a ¿nishing school for women to learn etiquette and manners, despite efforts to preserve it as a serious cultural and spiritual pursuit (Corbett 2009). Even Urasenke Chadǀ argues that ‘[B]esides the fact that chado is an art of highly re¿ned performance, we must not forget that its disciplines and manners originated in Japanese daily life’ (Sen and Sen 2011: 177). Corbett notes that from as early as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, families began to view tea as a means to display women’s social and economic capital, and increase a woman’s prospects of a good marriage (Corbett 2009: 82).21 Corbett reviewed Meiji and Taisho period guides for women’s edi¿cation and concluded that women used tea as part of the ‘civilizing process’ sweeping Japan during that period (Corbett 2009: 85). The guides gave guidance on feminine correctness in everyday actions, such as moving through the house, washing hands and eating meals (ibid: 85). Tea became synonymous with feminine cultivation and so ubiquitous that it entered ‘the common cultural “database” of the general population’ (ibid: 85). Corbett concludes that in the early modern period, ‘the reasons given for why women should study tea, as well as the limited range of tea practice recommended for women, indicate that the purpose of women’s tea . . . was to learn etiquette and deportment’ (ibid: 91). Kato is critical of social perspectives of tea in contemporary Japan, arguing that middle-class female practitioners in urban Japan are building symbolic and cultural capital in its Bourdieun sense (Kato 2004). Chadǀ provides a vehicle for practitioners to learn, in no particular order: Japanese history, ceramics, food, cooking, table manners, spirituality, art appreciation, calligraphy, gardening, Àowers, textiles, lacquer ware, incense, poetry, kanji and more.22 As a result, Kato argues that Chadǀ helps women in Japan improve their status vis-à-vis men and women, and gain respect from other women (ibid: 3–4, 5). She also argues that research on Chadǀ overlooks the complexity of meaning of Chadǀ for women because it takes a historical approach and ignores or denigrates contemporary women practitioners (ibid: 14–15). Kato’s gender-studies’ perspective provides a highly informative response to Japanese male academics who, she argues, provide a sexist, condescending, ridiculing and jaundiced view of tea practitioners, without acknowledging the social capital which is being built.23 These alternative views of tea in Japan are relevant to the case in Australia, for despite the preponderance of women practitioners in Melbourne, the ultimate goal of learning etiquette and deportment also does not completely explain the motivations of the diverse members of the Melbourne Association. The Melbourne
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Association is not a ¿nishing school for young women (Australian or Japanese). The Melbourne Association also has its share of issues and tension. One respondent said that the thing she likes least about Chadǀ is the ‘politics’, presumably referring to these issues. Crystallising the practice of Chadǀ in a formal setting such as an incorporated association makes governance tensions almost inevitable, but it is interesting to ¿nd that they occur even in an informal shachu setting in Japan as described by Chiba (2010). The gendered nature of Chadǀ can also be understood in the context of demographic trends in Australia, where the predominance of female practitioners also reÀects the gender bias in favour of females in the proportion of Japanese-born residents in Australia. The proportion of Japanese-born residents in Australia has increased from 0.9 per cent in 1990 to 1.7 per cent of the total population in 2010, with an estimated resident population of 52,111 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2010: 39). Over the past decade, settler arrivals to Australia from Japan have not changed considerably, ranging from 553 in 1999–2000 to 755 in 2005–6 to 602 in 2009–10 (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2010: 8). Over the same time period, the average age of Japanese residents has increased, with the current average estimated at 31.9 years of age in 2010 (30.1 years for males and 32.7 years for females) (ibid: 8). The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that the sex ratio of the Japanese population in Australia is just 56.3 males to every 100 females (ibid: 44). This is one of the lowest sex ratios for people born overseas in Australia. In line with data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Japanese government sources also show a signi¿cantly higher proportion of female (63.6 per cent) than male (36.4 per cent) sojourners and settlers (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2010: 13).24 There has been a signi¿cant trend towards an increase in female Japan-born residents in Australia since the end of World War Two,25 many of whom are seeking educationrelated (for example, teaching, researching or student) and lifestyle opportunities. The trend is particularly acute when ‘long-stay’ or ‘permanent residents’ are considered. According to data collected by the Melbourne Consulate-General,26 the number of Japanese people in Australia is 71,013 (2010 total): 34,218 are listed as ‘long-stay’ (12,213 males and 22,005 females) and 36,795 are listed as ‘permanent residents’ (13,232 males and 23,563 females) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan 2010: 42, 43). Because of this highly gendered population, it is not surprising that the majority of practitioners in Melbourne are female. My initial inquiries may suggest that the reason there are more women practicing tea relates to the ‘traditional’ division of labour in gendered terms: according to my two respondents, women have ‘more time’ for Chadǀ. Although they did not elaborate, these women in the Melbourne Association may believe women have more time than men because they are not working full-time, but this is not universal and there are many tea practitioners in Melbourne with full-time employment, including myself. To explain this contradiction, one respondent suggested that women are ‘more communal’ in nature, and it may be that they seek out the company of other people through organisations such as the Melbourne Association to help build their networks in Australia and enjoy their leisure time.
Internationalising Japanese culture 95 I also suggest that like attracts like; in other words, it would be interesting to see whether more men practicing Chadǀ, meant more men would be attracted to it. Chiba’s research on the meaning of Urasenke Chadǀ in the lives of women in Akita (Chiba 2010) ¿nds that Chadǀ is used as a means to acquire a sense of gender empowerment. The women of Akita are traditionally discriminated against in the labour market and in the household. Through Chadǀ, however, they acquire knowledge of Japanese history and culture and develop artistic skills such as calligraphy and pottery; this affords them a sense of cultural superiority over their husbands. Chadǀ is also a means of class empowerment: allowing practitioners to distinguish themselves from other ‘non-cultured’ women in Akita city. For many respondents, constant personal improvement and the intellectual stimulation they receive when practising Chadǀ also provides a sense of life purpose or ikigai. Chiba also found group dynamics in Japan to be very hierarchical. Other aspects of the demographic of tea practitioners in Melbourne also reÀect those found amongst practitioners in Japan. Traditionally, practitioners of Chadǀ in Japan are younger women who are unmarried, their numbers gradually falling off towards the ‘30s and spiking upwards again once their children reach school-age.27 Similar trends can be observed in the Melbourne Association. Unlike Japan, however, Urasenke Chadǀ in Australia is most likely to be an urban pursuit. ReÀecting Australia’s urban populations focused on the east coast, Urasenke Chadǀ has a Branch Of¿ce in Sydney, a Liaison Of¿ce in Brisbane and Associations in Melbourne and Cowra in New South Wales.28 Accordingly, Urasenke Chadǀ is predominantly practiced in urban centres in Australia, whereas in Japan it is practised in more diverse communities (see, for example, Chiba 2010). Despite the ambitions of the Urasenke administration to draw non-Japanese to the study of Chadǀ outside of Japan, very few Melbourne Association members are from non-Japanese backgrounds. Language is a key obstacle to non-Japanese practitioners, despite excellent English textbooks, such as the Urasenke Chadǀ Textbook by Sen and Sen (2011), and teachers who speak excellent English. Members who come from a non-Japanese background, such as myself, usually have some connection with Japan; for example, language studies, having lived in Japan or being married to a Japanese spouse. Membership numbers have also remained fairly static over the two decades of the Melbourne Association, which commenced with 30 members. Membership also does not appear to follow any strict social hierarchy and there does not appear to be any overt class perspective when it comes to joining the Melbourne Association (c.f. Chiba 2010). Entry into the Melbourne Association is democratic and open, but once a person becomes a member Japanese social hierarchies such as teacher/student and senior/junior are observed, which may be off-putting to the average Australian. Choosing to study Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne One explanation for the motives of Japanese participants studying Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne is related to the practitioners’ migrant status. Chadǀ is a way
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of using a familiar (that is, Japanese) cultural medium to access new communities and identities in a new home. The Melbourne Association and Urasenke Chadǀ provide a ¿xed point around which individuals can organise their own identity and the solid core is the ‘tradition’ embodied by the Urasenke Chadǀ organisation. Individuals experience, interpret and use the tradition in their own ways, without necessitating change to the tradition itself. Urasenke Chadǀ’s ubiquitous presence in Japanese society and its push outside of Japan makes it an important touchstone for the internationalisation of traditional Japanese cultural practices. It is also very active and visible amongst the Japanese community and bene¿ts practically from the status and membership of Urasenke Chadǀ in Japan; practitioners arriving in Melbourne from Japan for the ¿rst time, for example, seek out the Melbourne Association as a known cultural reference. Traditional practices such as dance have also been linked to cultural identity in Indian immigrant communities in Australia (Ram 2000: 267). Ram argues that part of the attraction is that dance is easily transportable. Ram also links dance to female socialisation and class status in immigrant communities (ibid: 271). For some Japanese practitioners, the quintessential Japanese nature of tea may help them to forge, continue or recreate links with what she or he perceives as their own Japanese cultural identity. Chadǀ and membership of the Melbourne Association also offers practitioners a shared identity through practice and the creation of networks, which are based on experience, not nationality or blood, similar to Kohn’s work on aikido communities (Kohn 2007: 77). The groups of tea practitioners which surround each teacher are what Kohn describes as ‘small activity-generated communities’ (ibid: 177). In the tea community, there are currently seven private teachers (six female, one male) across Melbourne in geographically diverse, but urban, locations.29 As in Japan, each group operates autonomously under their teacher, coming together as Urasenke members for tea gatherings, demonstrations and annual meetings. In addition to regular okeiko sessions, 2011 saw a variety of activities, as Association members participated in tea demonstrations for various schools and cultural festivals, and hosted an annual tea gathering. According to one respondent, these demonstrations ‘give other people [an] opportunity to understand Tea culture’. It was one of the things least liked about Chadǀ by the other respondent, although she did not state why. My observation of demonstrations is that they have a tendency to focus on the unusual aspects of tea (from the Australian perspective), similar to ideas of the ‘exoticism’ of Japanese food in Melbourne, described by Hamada and Stevens in this volume. Demonstrations are certainly time-consuming and require a serious commitment by the Melbourne Association’s volunteers. Most people in Japan join a tea tradition or school by coincidence or otherwise spontaneous ways (Kato 2004: 39), which is also likely to be the case in Melbourne. Geographical proximity of a teacher, for example, is likely to inÀuence decisions about where and what to practice, and having a friend already involved in the Melbourne Association makes entry easier in terms of introductions and social relationships. Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne offers the same sort of opportunity
Internationalising Japanese culture 97 to socialise and network that tea provides in Japan as noted by Chiba (2010: 7). As one of my respondents noted, she enjoys the ‘company of others’, which Chadǀ provides, as well as the ‘sharing [of] knowledge’. My observations also suggest that members in Melbourne are conscious of and attracted to the sense of deeper understanding fostered in part by the Zen-tradition of Chadǀ. The Melbourne Association has held memorial tea gatherings to commemorate Rikynj, highlighting the spiritual aspect of tea and reverence for its founder. One respondent said that the ‘essence of discipline’ is the most attractive aspect of Chadǀ for her, and the other described the ‘philosophy of Tea’ as ‘universal’. My ¿ndings in this regard are somewhat at odds with research about other tea communities, such as Da Rocha’s observations in Brazil (Da Rocha 1999).30 Da Rocha’s research is based on a historical survey of the development of tea in Brazil and the idea of ‘translating tea’ to different jurisdictions focusing on issues such as geographical disparity; seasonal differences and getting utensils. Her ¿ndings seem to have been inÀuenced by the involvement of mostly nisei (second generation) and sansei (third generation) Brazilian-Japanese as survey respondents, whose parents’ focus on assimilation meant that there is a gap between: (1) the initial movement of Japanese to Brazil; and (2) the Àexibility to pursue Chadǀ afforded by economic prosperity, longevity in Brazil and old age. Da Rocha argues that similar tendencies are found in tea in Hawai’i: that is, focusing on Chadǀ as ‘social activity (socialibility) and as a way of instilling social values (socialization)’ (Da Rocha 1999: 294). Da Rocha’s conclusions about the subordination of Chadǀ’s spirituality would also not be out of place in the case of Urasenke Chadǀ as sometimes practised in Japan and highlights the Àexibility, complexity and layers of tea study and practice (see also Chiba 2010). The Japanese community in Melbourne has been forged in a very different environment to the Japanese community in Brazil as described by Da Rocha. Japanese culture is well known and celebrated, and the relationship between Japan and Australia is highly complex and occurs on a number of levels. Because quintessential ‘Japanese’ components of Urasenke Chadǀ are preserved in Melbourne, another attraction to Urasenke Chadǀ for non-Japanese practitioners is the ability to retain links to their Japanese experiences. Accordingly, an increase in non-Japanese practitioners in Melbourne might not necessarily lead to greater domestication as Hamada and Stevens found in relation to restaurants and their discussion of domesticating Japanese food in Melbourne. In terms of Chadǀ, it may be that it is the quintessential ‘Japanese-ness’ and window into Japanese culture, history and tradition that makes Chadǀ attractive to nonJapanese practitioners. For me personally, Urasenke Chadǀ and my own okeiko (practice) allow quiet reÀection akin to a Zen experience; an opportunity to socialise with like-minded practitioners from all walks of life; and a connection with my Japanese identity formed as an exchange student and Japanese-language speaker. I can only imagine the complex reality for Japanese practitioners in Melbourne.
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Conclusion: the future is internationalisation As this chapter suggests, Australia offers future opportunities for internationalising Urasenke Chadǀ and the study of push and pull effects of internationalisation. After a successful visit by the Iemoto to Melbourne in 2011, the former Iemoto will visit Sydney in 2014, deepening relationships between Urasenke Chadǀ headquarters in Kyoto and its organisation in Australia. Diversi¿cation to non-urban Australian centres might also lead to different practices and approaches. Future research on tea in Australia might include a survey of the increasing number of tea merchants and growers in Australia and the interplay between food, agriculture and Chadǀ in Australia. I have discussed Hamada and Stevens chapter on food in this volume, but more focused research could explore Urasenke Chadǀ as a site for what they term ‘cross-cultural translations’. There are also a number of other traditions practiced in Australia of which even less is known than Urasenke Chadǀ. Our understanding of internationalisation might be deepened by research into the impact, if any, of transplantation on their discourses and practices, when compared to Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne. The complex nature of the tension between the desire to expand Urasenke Chadǀ overseas and maintain status, authenticity and tradition may be dealt with differently and less formally in other traditions. As I highlighted in the ¿rst part of this chapter, the current Urasenke administration displays a strong belief that tea can be practiced outside of Japan and by non-Japanese. Urasenke Chadǀ argues: The enduring allure of the Way of Tea is proof of its profound meaning for people – not only Japanese, but people of all cultures. Having been nurtured on Japanese soil, it represents the quintessence of Japanese aesthetics and culture. But, over and beyond this, people far and wide have discovered that life is beauti¿ed by this Way – by the spirit that guides its practice, as well as by the objects which express that spirit and are an integral part of its practice. The principles underlying this Art of Living are Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquillity. These are universal principles that, in a world such as ours today, fraught with unrest, friction, self-centeredness, and other such social ailments, can guide us toward the realization of genuine peace. (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008b) The philosophy evidenced by this statement suggests that an element of Said’s Orientalism (1978) is being sold to practitioners and consumers of the Urasenke Chadǀ tradition. The tradition is also, however, attempting to link Chadǀ to so-called universal concepts such as peace and harmony. Former Iemoto Hǀunsai clari¿es the approach: ‘the practice of Tea is the passing on of traditional culture . . . We learn from such traditional culture not simply to imitate Japan, but to acquire the wisdom taught in the world of tea that can enrich our hearts and minds’ (Sen and Sen 2011: 11). For at least some of the teachers and practitioners
Internationalising Japanese culture 99 that I have observed in Melbourne, the spiritual and intellectual need underlined by the former Iemoto’s observation is their real and continuing motivation for the study of Urasenke Chadǀ. A memorial tea gathering for the passing of Sen Rikynj, attendance at instructional seminars and small tea gatherings hosted by individual practitioners, also suggest the complexity of incentives for practitioners studying Urasenke Chadǀ in Melbourne. The Melbourne Association also demonstrates the complexity of the various levels at which internationalisation may occur. National agendas and organisational pushes in favour of taking Chadǀ overseas reÀect Japan’s soft power and organisational goals that cannot be separated from individual practitioners’ experiences of Chadǀ in non-traditional contexts outside of Japan. Those practitioners develop identities of their own through Chadǀ, whilst at the same time use it as a vehicle for socialisation, knowledge-building and spiritual development. Chadǀ forms the fulcrum at the centre of all these layered activities and represents a cultural commodity which is being utilised and enjoyed for multiple purposes.
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Appendix 1: Questionnaire
Questionnaire Project: “Internationalising Japanese culture: Australian interpretations of chado (the Way of Tea) traditions” Thank you for agreeing to participate in this research project by completing the questionnaire below. Involvement in this questionnaire is voluntary and participants are free to withdraw consent at any time, and to withdraw any unprocessed data previously supplied by contacting Stacey Steele, Asian Law Centre, at [email protected] or on 03 8344 1001. The questionnaire should take about 30 minutes to complete. Age:
Gender:
Suburb or postcode (optional): Teacher’s name (optional):
Occupation:
English language level: Beginner
Intermediate
Female
Excellent
Male
Fluent/Native
What level of education have you attained (e.g. graduate of high school or university)? Citizenship: Japanese
Australian
Other (please specify)
If you have selected ‘Australian’, please go to question 1 on the next page. If you are not an Australian citizen, what type of visa do you hold? Permanent resident
Working holiday
Student
Other (please specify)
How long have you been living in Australia? How long do you intend to live in Australia? How do you identify yourself ? (e.g. Japanese, Japanese-Australian, other) Why did you come to Australia (e.g. study, spouse’s work, your work)?
Internationalising Japanese culture 101 1. How old were you when you started learning tea? 2. How long have you been learning tea and what tea quali¿cation do you hold? 3. Where did you start learning tea? 4. Why did you decide to start learning tea? In particular, if you did not learn tea in Japan, why did you decide to learn tea in Melbourne? 5. What do you enjoy most about learning tea? 6. What do you least enjoy about learning tea? 7. How often do you attend tea classes (okeiko) (e.g. once per week)? 8. Do you participate in demonstrations of tea in Melbourne? Please explain why/why not. 9. Do you participate in the annual tea gatherings for the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Melbourne Association? Please explain why/why not. 10. Do you think that your tea group should try to encourage more Australians to practice tea? How/why? 11. Why do you think more women than men practice tea in Melbourne? 12. What is the language of instruction in your classes? If it is both English and Japanese (or another language), please nominate a percentage for each language. If you would be willing to be contacted by the researcher to participate in an interview about your responses (in Japanese or English), please provide your name, telephone number or email address. Participation in an interview is voluntary. Name: Contact details:
Notes 1 Stacey Steele has been a member of the Urasenke Chado Tankokai Melbourne Association since 1995 and has served on its organising committee. She thanks Reegan Grayson-Morison and Anesti Petridis for their research assistance in preparing this chapter. 2 The Urasenke and Omotesenke English-language websites both support Urasenke’s claim that it is the most active tradition outside of Japan. 3 On the history of tea schools, see Chiba (2010). 4 Iemoto is a term used to describe the head of family lines responsible for carrying forward certain forms of traditional culture including the Urasenke tradition (see meaning given in Tankosha Editorial Section 2007: 76). On the politics and development of tea traditions and Iemoto systems, see Ikegami (2005), especially 120–5 and 160–9. 5 This is one of the seven rules of Chadǀ attributed to Sen Rikynj (1522–91) (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008b). 6 The Foundation was registered in 1949 (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008g).
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7 Although Tankokai was established in 1940 to streamline the administration of various groups in Japan, it was not registered until 1953 (Urasenke Konnichian Website 2008e). 8 On the importance of Tankokai, see also Sen and Sen (2011): 108, 130–1. 9 See Black (2010) on the ‘ideas of international power and national character’ in the context of Japan’s development and cultural inÀuence. 10 Upon becoming Iemoto, Sen Genshitsu became known as ‘Hǀunsai’. When he passed on the role of Iemoto to his son in 2002, Hǀunsai changed his own name from ‘Soshitsu’ to ‘Genshitsu’, and became known as ‘Daisǀsho’. In this chapter, he is referred to hereafter as Hǀunsai. 11 For a full list and contact details see Urasenke Konnichian Website (2008d). Mugensai built tea rooms in Honolulu and Brazil which are described as ‘strategic in Urasenke’s international exchange activities’ (Sen and Sen 2011: 131). 12 This edition of the newsletter in English also reported on the Iemoto’s visit to Germany and Tankokai’s North America Intensive Seminar in New York. 13 Other international visits include France in February 2008 to emphasise friendship exchange between children (Urasenke Newsletter 2008). The newsletter includes ‘News from Abroad’; in this particular edition, focusing on a ‘New Year’s Event Celebrating the Centennial of Japanese Immigration to Brazil’ and ‘Chado Introduction in Iceland’ (ibid: 9). 14 As Da Rocha found in Brazil, practitioners in Melbourne also adapt practice to the season, architecture and availability of utensils and food ingredients (Da Rocha 1999). 15 Initially, I planned to ask members of the Melbourne Association to complete a questionnaire survey in relation to their own practice of tea. I devised the questionnaire from discussions with teachers and practitioners, and after reading research produced on the basis of other ¿eldwork (Da Rocha 1999; Mizukami 2007). I am also grateful for comments from participants at the Japanese Studies Association of Australia 17th Biennial Conference hosted by the University of Melbourne, 4–7 July 2011, where I presented an outline of my research methodology and questionnaire. A copy of the questionnaire is set out in Appendix 1 at the end of this chapter. I hoped that the use of a questionnaire survey would enable comparisons with previous research (e.g. Da Rocha 1999) and may help identify key trends. The small and intimate group of tea practitioners in Melbourne made collecting responses dif¿cult, however. 16 Kato also points out in relation to her research about Chadǀ in Japan that these narratives are also impacted by mainstream discourses maintained by academics, the Grand Tea Master and media (Kato 2004). Kato is critical of research which only takes into account interview data, because participants want to give the ‘correct answer’ so that Japanese culture will be seen in the best light (ibid: 10). She is also critical of institutionalisation and research ‘sponsored’ by any of the tea traditions, but sees interaction and dialogue as an important way to avoid ‘observation without conversation’ (ibid: 6). 17 Kohn (2011) uses observation in her research on Aikido to examine ‘foreign’ cultural practice in different locales and the impact on ideas of self, culture and society. 18 Chiba took a similar personal approach to her research, using her family connections to Urasenke Chado to gain access to tea practitioners in Akita (2010: 11). She questions whether Bourdieu is applicable to tea practitioners in Akita (ibid; see especially Chapter 4). According to Chiba, gossip and in¿ghting amongst teachers and students is ‘motivated by the politics and power relationships in Urasenke Chado’ (ibid: 6). 19 Chiba’s lengthy description of okeiko at a teacher’s house in Akita, Northern Japan, for example, bears a remarkable resemblance to the ‘emphasis on bodily memory’ and ‘ritual’ in the practice of Chadǀ observed in Melbourne (Chiba 2010: Chapter 3). 20 As many as 90 per cent according to Kato (2004: 1). 21 Corbett concedes that other non-dominant groups have used tea to acquire ‘symboliccultural capital’. See her discussion of Etsuko Kato’s The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-Presenting the Past (Corbett 2009: 90).
Internationalising Japanese culture 103 22 Arguably this was not the case in at least the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries based on Corbett’s review of guides for the edi¿cation of women (Corbett 2009: 86, 87). She argues that women at the time were encouraged to study tea in a limited way, enabling them to ‘become graceful’; rather than obtain a ‘deep and thorough’ knowledge of tea procedures (ibid: 87). Of course, Chadǀ also does not represent Japanese culture in its entirety but only a small, idealised segment of it. 23 Lee argues in relation to Korea fans in Japan that ‘although they are not homogeneous in terms of class or age, their consumption style and the economic impact of that collective consumption is homogeneous enough for them to be categorized as a demographic with a distinct market sector pro¿le’ (Lee 2010). Lee emphasises the classlessness of the Korean wave, whereas researchers of tea emphasise cultural and upwardly mobile class mobility. Like the social capital created and shared through other feminine consumer practices, Japanese female fans of Korean ¿lm and television dramas, are also miscast as obasan (middle-aged women) (ibid). 24 These percentages accord with the Paci¿c region, however; the number of Japanese citizens in Australia constitutes the vast majority of Japanese people in the region (71,013 people of 91,189). 25 See for example Mizukami (2007: 50) for an extensive examination of the resident Japanese population in Australia up to the early 2000s. Recent data shows that the trends he identi¿ed have continued in the late 2000s. Tokita and Yano (2007) argue that the gendered nature of Japanese residency and settlers in Australia reÀects AustraliaJapan’s relationship. 26 Mizukami questions the reliability of this data, because it relies on the Japanese people overseas to register with their local embassy or consul-general and does not take into account internal movements within a particular country (Mizukami 2007: 63). 27 Kato estimates that 50 per cent or more of practitioners are aged 40 or older and are married (Kato 2004: 1). 28 The Sydney Branch Of¿ce has its own website which outlines the groups of practitioners and teaches in Australia: Urasenke Foundation Brisbane Liaison Of¿ce, Chado Urasenke Tankokai Cowra Association, Chado Urasenke Tankokai Melbourne Association and Chado Urasenke Tankokai Sydney Association (Urasenke Foundation Sydney Branch 2008; Urasenke Foundation 2008; Urasenke Tankokai Cowra Association 2008). 29 See Kato (2004) on urban practice in Japan and Chiba (2010) on regional practice in Akita, Japan. 30 Da Rocha’s research on Chadǀ in Brazil suggests that tea practitioners generally practise tea to feel closer to Japan or get in touch with their Japanese identity (Da Rocha 1999: 293). She concludes that there is a ‘lack of concern among Japanese Brazilians for spiritual aspects of chanoyu’, because there is no tradition of Zen Buddhism and Japanese immigrants to Brazil were concerned initially to assimilate (ibid: 292–3).
References Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2010. Measures of Australia’s Progress 2010. Cat 1370.0, ABS. Canberra. Black, Daniel. 2010. ‘Cultural Exchange and National Speci¿city’. In Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power and East Asia, edited by Daniel Black, Stephen Epstein and Alison Tokita, Chapter 6 (non-paginated). Sydney: Monash University ePress. Chiba, Keiko. 2010. Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony: The Voices of Tea Practitioners in Northern Japan. London: Routledge. Corbett, Rebecca. 2009. ‘Learning to be Graceful: Tea in Early Modern Guides for Women’s Edi¿cation’. Japanese Studies 29(1): 81–94.
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d’Abbs, Peter. 2011. Chinese Tea Culture as a 21st Century Moral Discourse: Zhang Tianfu’s Four Principles. Paper presented at Melbourne Conference on China, Melbourne, August 6–7. Da Rocha. 1999. ‘Identity and Tea Ceremony in Brazil’. Japanese Studies 19(2); 287–95. Department of Immigration and Citizenship. 2010. Settler Arrivals: 2009–2010. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Ikegami, Eiko. 2005. Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kato, Etsuko. 2004. The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-Presenting the Past. London: Routledge Curzon. Kohn, Tamara. 2007. ‘Bowing Onto the Mat: Discourses of Change Through Martial Arts Practice’. In The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of ‘Recreation’, edited by Simon Coleman and Tamara Kohn, 171–86. New York: Berghan Books. Kohn, Tamara. 2011. ‘Appropriating an Authentic Bodily Practice from Japan: on “Being There”, “Having Been There” and “Virtually Being There”’. In Ownership and Appropriation, edited by Veronica Strang and Mark Busse, 65–85. New York: Berg Press. Lee, Hyangjin. 2010. ‘Buying Youth: Japanese Fandom of the Korean Wave’. In Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power and East Asia, edited by Daniel Black, Stephen Epstein and Alison Tokita, Chapter 7 (non-paginated). Sydney: Monash University ePress. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. 2010. Annual Report of Statistics on Japanese Nationals Overseas [heisei 23 nen sokuhouban]. Available from: http://www.mofa. go.jp/mofaj/toko/tokei/hojin/11/pdfs/1.pdf [accessed 16 December 2013]. Mizukami, Tetsuo. 2007. The Sojourner Community: Japanese Migration and Residency in Australia. Leiden: Brill. Murray, David. 2000. ‘Haka Fracas? The Dialectics of Identity in Discussions of a Contemporary Maori Dance’. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 11(3): 345–57. Price, Margaret. 2012. ‘Japanese Tea Encounters’. Available from: http://www. japaneseteaencounters.com.au [accessed January 2012]. Ram, Kalpana. 2000. ‘Dancing the Past into Life: The Rasa, Nrtta and RƗga of Immigrant Existence’. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 11(3): 261–73. Sadler, A. L. 2008. Cha-no-yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sen, Genshitsu and Sǀshitsu Sen, supervising eds. 2011. Urasenke Chado Textbook. Kyoto: Tankosha. Sen, Sǀshitsu XV, ed. 1988. Chanoyu: The Urasenke Tradition of Tea. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum. New York: Weatherhill. Tankosha Editorial Section (Henshnj Kyoku), ed. 2007. A Chanoyu Vocabulary: Practical Terms for the Way of Tea. Translated by the Urasenke International Association. Kyoto: Tankosha Publishing Co. Ltd. Tokita, Alison and Jun Yano. 2007. The Japanese Settlers in Australia: From Sojourner to Settlers. Australian-Japanese marriages – a Work in Progress. Paper presented at Japanese Diaspora Special Workshop, Melbourne, 31 August. Umeda, Sayuri. 2011. ‘Japan: Green Tea Promotion Adopted by Law’. Global Legal Monitor, Japan, 5 March 2011. Available from: http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/ lloc_news?disp3_l205402655_text [accessed 8 June 2012]. United States Bureau of Statistics. 2013. ‘Foreign Trade: U.S. Imports from Japan by 5-digit End-Use Code 2002–2011’. Available from: http://www.census.gov/foreigntrade/statistics/product/enduse/imports/c5880.html [accessed 27 January 2013].
Internationalising Japanese culture 105 Urasenke Foundation. 2008. ‘Chanoyu’. Available from: http://www.jpf.org.au/jartists/u/ urasenke/urasenke.htm [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Foundation Sydney Branch. 2008. ‘Cha-no-yu’. Available from: http://www. users.bigpond.net.au/urasenke/ [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008a. ‘Chado – The Japanese Way of Tea: History’. Available from: http://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/chado/chado2.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008b. ‘Chado – The Japanese Way of Tea: Introduction’. Available from: http://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/chado/chado1.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008c. ‘Greetings from Former Iemoto Sen Genshitsu (Soshitsu XV)’. Available from: http://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/greetings/greetings.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008d. ‘Overseas Urasenke Foundation Branches and Liaison Of¿ces’. Available from: http://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/world/agency.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008e. ‘Shadan Hojin Chado Urasenke Tankokai: Chado Urasenke Tankokai’. Available from: http://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/organ/tankokai/ index_tan.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008f. ‘The Urasenke Legacy – Family Legacy: Seichu Soshitsu (Gengensai) (1810–77)’. Available from: http://www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/ legacy/lineage1.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Konnichian Website. 2008g. ‘Urasenke Foundation’. Available from: http:// www.urasenke.or.jp/texte/organ/konnichian/index_kon.html [accessed 8 June 2012]. Urasenke Newsletter. 2008. No. 110, March 1. Chado Urasenke Tankokai. Kyoto: Japan. Urasenke Newsletter. 2011. No. 120, July 1. Chado Urasenke Tankokai. Kyoto: Japan. Urasenke Tankokai Cowra Association. 2008. ‘Chanoyu’. Available from: http://www.jpf. org.au/jartists/u/urasenke_cowra/urasenke_cowra.htm [accessed 8 June 2012]. Yahoo Japan. 2013. ‘Min’nanoseiji: Ocha no shinkǀ ni kansuru hǀritsu-an [Everybody’s Politics: Bill on the Promotion of Tea]’. Available from: http://seiji.yahoo.co.jp/ gian/0177017701006/ [accessed 8 June 2012].
7
Uneven cosmopolitanism Japanese working holiday makers in Australia and the ‘lost decade’1 Kumiko Kawashima
Introduction Young people with overseas experience are a driving force behind Japan’s internationalisation. Although under-represented in the scholarly literature, youth sojourns abroad have become extremely popular among the Japanese. Tens of thousands of young people leave Japan every year to live abroad. In 2010 alone, nearly 590,000 Japanese people aged 20–49 years old left Japan to stay abroad for one month to two years (Immigration Bureau 2011). One popular way for young Japanese to go overseas is the Working Holiday (WH). The WH schemes are based on reciprocal agreements between two nations that allow youth to enter each other’s countries to temporarily live, study, work and holiday for the purpose of grassroots cultural exchange.2 The conditions of WH visas vary depending on the receiving country. In the case of Australia, the visa is for people 30 years old or younger at the time of application, and is valid for up to two years from the arrival date. Visa holders are allowed to study for a maximum of four months, and work for six months for the same employer. The WH scheme is designed to provide an overseas experience within a limited timeframe, giving it an interim or liminal status in the lives of those who participate in it. The number of Japanese Working Holiday Makers (WHMs) has steadily increased since Japan entered into an agreement with its ¿rst partner country, Australia, in 1980. For Japanese WHMs, Australia has always been the most popular destination. In the ¿rst year (1981), 884 WH visas were issued to the Japanese, and by 2008, over 160,000 Japanese WHMs had visited Australia (Japan Association of Working Holiday Makers, hereafter JAWHM, 2008). This is twice as many as the number of Japanese WHMs who have chosen the second most popular destination, Canada (JAWHM 2008). Between 2004–5 and 2009–10, when the bulk of my ¿eldwork was conducted, over 49,000 Japanese WHMs were granted their visa to enter Australia (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2011). Developing a cosmopolitan identity and mastering the English language were two commonly cited reasons why young Japanese in my study chose to go to Australia. The image of living and working in an English-speaking white Western society such as Australia remains a major attraction for many of those who seek new and exciting experiences in a foreign environment. Based on ethnography,
Japanese working holiday makers 107 this chapter explores the meaning of a WH to Australia, as a form of temporary migration, in the lives of Japanese youth and its connection to broader social and cultural change. My focus is on the ongoing period of recession Japan has experienced since the market crash of late 1989. The ¿rst ten years was called the ‘lost decade’ (ushinawareta jnjnen), characterised with the gradual collapse of the ‘bubble’ economy. The country’s economy has never fully recovered since then, and the current period is sometimes called the ‘lost two decades’ (ushinawareta nijnjnen). By linking Japanese social trends in this era to major characteristics of late modernity, my case study examines some of the ways in which discourses of internationalisation (and later globalisation), and shifting social and cultural practices create possibilities for new subjectivities and life courses. In particular, I will discuss three important factors that shape individuals’ cosmopolitan desires and aspirations: the rise of the Japanese ‘migration industry’ that promotes and markets international mobility; individualisation, neoliberal subjectivity and the culture of consumption as characteristics of late modern Japan; and changing socio-economic conditions for young workers in recessionary Japan, including the group called the ‘lost generation’, who entered the graduate employment market during the ‘lost decade’. Through an investigation of migratory expectations before departure and access to cosmopolitan jobs upon returning, I explore how powerful interests in society can exert inÀuence on young people in their transition to adulthood. The wide reach of mass mediated messages and the neoliberal subjectivity encourage the youth to become entrepreneurial individuals in their search for a cosmopolitan identity. However, I argue that one’s socio-economic location still affects their aspirations and life choices. Ultimately, this chapter is a critique of dominant discourses surrounding Japan’s internationalisation that mask the uneven grounds on which ordinary individuals attempt to develop a socially desirable identity.
Fieldwork This paper is partly based on ¿eldwork data obtained in Australia and Japan between 2005 and 2010. The ¿eldwork mainly focused on interviews and participant observation in Sydney and Tokyo, while occasional visits were made to other metropolitan cities such as Melbourne and Osaka, as well as some regional and rural areas of both countries. Participant observation involved visiting migration agency of¿ces and browsing their notice boards, going to interviewees’ homes and workplaces, attending events targeting Japanese migrants and generally socialising with them in their everyday environment. I also monitored websites targeting young Japanese in Australia (both commercial and not-for-pro¿t). In order to recruit interviewees, I used advertisements on Japanese language websites targeting those living in Sydney, Àyers at migration advisor of¿ces, and personal introduction. The data used for this paper came from semi-structured interviews with a total of 31 WHMs: 14 while in Australia, nine after returning to Japan, eight in both countries. The gender balance was almost equal, as 16 of them were female.
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Participants’ ages ranged from 21 to 34, and the median age was 27.6 years old. All of them entered Australia on a WH visa, and a minority of them extended their stay in Australia by obtaining a student visa. These students attended private colleges studying the English language, business, tourism, beauty therapy, and in one case, kung-fu. Many more participants attended English colleges to take short-term courses while on a WH visa. All the interviews were conducted in Japanese, and translated by the author. All the names of interviewees that appear in this paper are pseudonyms.
Sojourns in Australia, cosmopolitan dreams and the migration industry Two themes were nearly always present in interview narratives regarding the sojourners’ motivations for travel to Australia. One was the attainment of a cosmopolitan identity through experiences of worldliness outside the ‘parochial’ national domain. The other was the attainment of English pro¿ciency, not only because it was associated with a desirable subject position, but also because it was believed to bring practical bene¿ts to one’s job prospects. Comments such as the following were extremely common among my interviewees, both females and males, young and less young: Taking diving trips was one of my motivations (for a WH), but also I like living abroad. In Japan, you just can’t do things like sharing a house and having a barbeque on the weekend. (Female, 29) I can’t speak English but I love it. I love just listening to it even, so it makes me happy that I can live in an English-speaking environment [in Sydney]. [. . .] I want to re-live my visit to America, where I ¿rst became interested in English. I was so impressed with the big American fridge in the kitchen, a huge supermarket . . . it was as if I was in the movies. (Female, 26) The number one reason for going to Australia is because I want to speak English. I think it will expand my career options later. (Female, 23) I had an interest in Germany too, but I chose Australia because, whatever the case, English would become a necessity in the future. (Male, 25) For all but a few sojourners in my study, mastering English was a powerful motivator behind their decision to go to Australia. This was so prominent that occasionally, the interviewees felt the need to explain, without being prompted, that learning English was not their reason for leaving Japan. As the quotes above
Japanese working holiday makers 109 show, the desire for the English language was not only utilitarian, but frequently intertwined with the desire for a cosmopolitan identity. An advertisement for an English school from nearly 20 years ago may still resonate with the sentiments of sojourners: ‘If you dream in English, you are a kokusaijin (internationalist)’ (Nakamura cited in Kubota 1998: 303). It is hardly a coincidence that attainment of a cosmopolitan identity and English pro¿ciency – major ‘positive outcomes’ of sojourns in Australia – are widely marketed on the Internet, the main vehicle through which businesses promote WH and other forms of youth international mobility. For example, migration advisors, often called rynjgaku Ɲjento (study abroad agents) or rynjgaku kaunserƗ (study abroad counsellors),3 sell the WH as a marketable ‘product’ using typical marketing lines such as the following: Slip out of Japan to make a long stay abroad. The experience of daily contact with local people is most precious and ful¿lling, because it can give you an understanding of not only the language but also a foreign culture. (Last Resort 2011)4 The following is an example of how migration advisors promote English courses: Improve your career by learning English in Australia! [. . .] From now on, using English might become a necessity for the working Japanese. As UNIQLO and Rakuten [major corporations and popular employers of graduate job seekers] have done, more companies are expected to move towards adopting English as the common language at workplaces. (Japanese Educational Information Centre 2011) In one sense, the overlap of marketing images and individual expectations indicates that both sojourners and migration-related businesses are picking up on Japan’s century-long curiosity and social longing for the cosmopolitan West and the English language. For example, the West was seen as a positive model to emulate in Meiji Japan, mainly due to its scienti¿c, technological and military knowledge. In their quest for creating a modern nation through internationalisation, intellectuals and policymakers of the time began treating English both as a tool of communication to negotiate with intruders on an equal ground, and a key to gaining new knowledge and technology (Stanlaw 2004: 54–5). Since then, waves of the ‘English boom’ have swept Japan. The end of World War Two saw intellectuals as well as ordinary Japanese people become eager to learn English, the language of the Allied occupation force. Eigo ni Tsuyokunaru Hon (of¿cially translated as Strengthening Your English Skills) became an instant bestseller in 1961 in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics and later Expo ’70 in Osaka. Later in the mid-1980s, former Prime Minister Nakasone’s pledge to internationalise Japan (kokusaika) led major corporations to produce bilingual handbooks in their effort to promote an understanding of Japan’s ‘unique’ culture to English-speaking foreigners (Yoshino 1995: 173–8).
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In contemporary popular cultural imaginings, Meiji images of the West as progressive, modern and advanced still persist. For example, an analysis of over 2500 Japanese television advertisements featuring ‘foreigners’ found that ‘white people’ were overwhelmingly and consistently portrayed as signi¿ers of modernity with an ‘international Àair’ (Prieler 2008: 6). The conÀation of ‘Western’, ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘whiteness’ gives the Westerners a special status, and ‘parochial’ Japanese identity is to be transcended through association with them.5 For the majority of interviewees, the English pro¿ciency they sought involved speaking like native speakers. The act of cultivation, maintenance and performance of the cosmopolitan identity through English speech occurs in the presence of those who are seen as the ‘naturally’ cosmopolitan (in other words, Western) interlocutors. In other words, conversing with Westerners in English functions as recognition from the ‘real’ English speakers, as a seal of approval. Although Japan has by now surpassed most Western economies, there remains a certain degree of desire to be recognised as equal. In this thinking, true cosmopolitanism exists outside Japan, which largely excludes the discursive possibility of Japan as a cosmopolitan nation.
Individualisation, neoliberal subjectivity and consumption in late modern Japan Notwithstanding these longstanding social trends, contemporary social characteristics create a speci¿c environment in which youth migration is imagined, experienced and promoted. This section explores interrelationships between individual agency of WHMs and changing social circumstances in Japan as part of a wider shift towards late modernity. While my interviewees talked about various interests and feelings about their migratory experience and expectations, they all communicated a strong sense of themselves as decision-making individuals with particular desires to bring about changes in life. This way of describing their experience contributes to, and is a reÀection of, the individualistic nature of Japanese youth mobility to Australia. None of the interviewees had children, and all but two undertook their sojourn alone, as opposed to being accompanied by a friend or a partner. As if to mirror such a tendency, promotional materials developed by migration advisors exclusively address the singular ‘you’. The following advertisement is typical: ‘I want to keep the cost low!’ ‘I want to enjoy life in the destination!’ ‘I want to learn the language!’ Let us start from listening to your wishes. Based on the [trip’s] cost, purpose etc., staff with a great deal of experience in study abroad will suggest unique plans just for you! (Tam International 2011) Theorists of late modernity, such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, have extensively discussed individualisation of society whereby individuals’ sense of self is no longer bound by birthplace or parents’ occupation. The prevailing sense
Japanese working holiday makers 111 is ‘We are, not what we are, but what we make of ourselves’ (Giddens 1991: 75). This ‘freedom’ to choose one’s life course has not only opened up new opportunities, but also new risks associated with navigating uncertain terrain without the guidance of ‘tradition’ (see Giddens [1990; 1991] for his discussion on ‘risk culture’). Beck further points out that this prominence of individualised lifestyles does not mean risks and opportunities are evenly distributed in late modern society: ‘wealth accumulates at the top, risks are at the bottom. To that extent, risks seem to strengthen, not to abolish, the class society’ (Beck 1992: 35). In Japan, a stronger emphasis on the ‘freedom’ to craft individualised and ‘unique’ life paths had already been evident since at least the mid-1980s, during Japan’s shift to a post-Fordist, post-industrial economy. The serious economic downturn in the 1990s exacerbated these tendencies. Dominant social aspirations of the time – embodied in the ideal of the ‘salaryman’, whose breadwinner role at home was supported by his housewife partner, employer and the state – became less accessible (Brinton 2008: 27–34) for a generation of Japanese youths. They had to venture into unknown territory, where past expectations and choices were limited, but patterns regarding new pathways had not yet been established. Since the late 1990s, neoliberal discourse and its emphasis on the role of the self-responsible individual gained public prominence much more centrally than during the high growth period or the bubble economy eras. In discussing Japan’s future in a globalising world, for example, a report delivered to the then Prime Minister Obuchi in 2000 titled The Frontier Within states: In the twenty-¿rst century, [. . .] the bedrock imperative is that the Japanese empower themselves as individuals, that they possess a robust individuality. The kind of individual needed is, above all, one who acts freely and with selfresponsibility, self-reliantly supporting him- or herself. This tough yet Àexible individual takes risks on his or her own responsibility and tackles the challenge of achieving personal goals with a pioneer spirit. (Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the 21st Century [hereafter PMC] 2000) Individuals living in the age of neoliberalism are obliged to view their lives as built by a series of choices, and therefore, they must continuously choose (Rose 1999: 87). This idea perfectly ¿ts the late modern treatment of life as a reÀexive project, because individuals are encouraged to continuously analyse and question their conduct – ‘in order to better govern themselves’ (Dean 1999: 12). The sojourners in my study exhibited their understanding that any successes and failures would be brought about by their own doing. The youth’s proactive decision to go to Australia was strongly underlain by their sense of responsibility for risk management and their entrepreneurial eagerness to create and grab chances. The interview comment below is typical in this regard: I think everyone has unlimited potential hidden inside. Seeing and experiencing different things, meeting and talking to different people broaden
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Despite the rhetoric of individual freedom and personal choices, ‘autonomous’ subjects are, in reality, highly inÀuenced by external pressures to adopt certain identities, and consumption plays a powerful role in this regard. In discussing young people in late modernity, Ansell (2008: 221) notes that: [t]ime is supposed to be used in ‘constructive’ activities, the organisation of which is increasingly commodi¿ed. Constructing a successful middle-class identity takes time, effort, and money. As capitalist enterprises seek to maximise consumption, ‘lifestyle choice’ has come to be more or less equated with consumer choice. The market increasingly moulds what lifestyle options become available, and thus highly commodi¿ed lifestyle choices become major elements of individual narratives of self (Giddens 1991: 197). As Harvey explains, ‘rampant individualism ¿ts into place as a necessity, though not a suf¿cient condition, for the transition from Fordism to Àexible accumulation’ (Harvey 1990: 171). The service sector accommodates the market need for fast-moving, perpetual consumption in a way that durable material goods cannot (ibid: 157). As a ‘service product’, youth international mobility has certainly become highly commodi¿ed, notably through professionalisation and institutionalisation (Baranowski and Furlough 2001: 6; Simpson 2005: 449í55, 464í7). In the Japanese context, the consumer market of the post-war period saw a politicised pursuit of individual pleasure as a reaction against the wartime, nationalist repression of individual interests and expressions of personal aesthetics (Oguma cited in Satsuka 2009: 75). The market Àourished during the subsequent economic growth of the 1960s and 1970s, and has since shifted from material goods to quality experience (Kelly 1992: 78í9). As an attractive experience one can purchase, international mobility gained in popularity. It is no surprise then, that the migration industry is one of the fastest growing international businesses (Castles 2007: 361). The migration industry is ‘a broad spectrum of people who earn their livelihood by organizing migratory movements’ (Castles and Miller 2009: 201). In Japan, it comprises of hundreds of migrationrelated businesses, such as brokers, guidebook publishers, transport operators and accommodation providers. Michael P. Smith argues that the rise of new forms of mediation and brokerage services is a major aspect of contemporary transnationalism that breaks from the past, and considers the extent unprecedented as to how such services have become organised, often globally (Smith 2005: 411–12). The Japanese migration industry has become prominent with the growth of the tourism market in general, and independent forms of youth travel in particular. During the 1980s, when the tourism sector grew and diversi¿ed considerably, migration advisor businesses were few. Instead, independent travellers primarily
Japanese working holiday makers 113 relied on guidebooks, such as the very popular Chikynj no Arukikata. This situation had not changed much in the mid-1990s, as a survey on WHMs in Australia revealed that guidebooks were still a common method of research concerning Australia for Japanese respondents (Murphy 1995: 33). Since then, the marketing of international travel is conducted on a much higher level. The range and types of migration ‘consumer products’ offered have multiplied over the years, creating greater revenue-making opportunities. Within a matter of a few decades, migration service provision has become a multimillion-dollar industry in Japan.6 WHMs are an integral part of their ‘client base’, and all my interviewees bought a range of products and services even before arriving in Australia, typically valued at a few hundred to several thousand dollars. The sojourners I interviewed and the advertisements of the migration agencies introduced so far emphasised enthusiasm to improve individual abilities – whether it was for a newly improved sense of self, better English pro¿ciency or broadening career choices. However, they also hint that self-improvement is necessary in the face of a potential threat posed by globalisation. In particular, mastering English is often portrayed as a weapon against the inevitable dominance of the foreign language in Japan, especially in the workplace. This sense of imminent threat is shared by policymakers since the onset of the 1990s recession. For example, the aforementioned Obuchi Government’s report states that: English has become the international lingua franca, a process accelerated by the Internet and globalization. So long as English is effectively the language of international discourse, there is no alternative to familiarizing ourselves with it within Japan.7 (PMC 2000) In contrast to the past ‘internationalisation’ (see Introduction of this volume), ‘globalisation’ (gurǀbaruka) has quite a different connotation in Japan. Broadly speaking, globalisation is about ‘changing economic relationships accompanied by the increasingly rapid and intensi¿ed circulation of ¿nance, commodities, people, signs and symbols’ (Mackie 2007). Japanese policymakers began using this term to replace ‘internationalisation’ in the late 1980s, at a time when Japan’s economic competitiveness started to weaken, and policymakers and top management ¿gures in private companies alike began viewing globalisation as a threat to the national economy (Hamada 2006: 141). This is despite the fact that Japan was very much implicated in the rise of transnational corporations and other economic forces, which are partly responsible for the current globalisation of the world. On the surface, Japan’s interests in internationalisation and globalisation are similar, because both are motivated by a nationalistic concern for becoming, and remaining, an important and respected nation. But they are also different, because while the discourse of internationalisation in the 1980s was an expression of Japan’s con¿dence as a rising world power, the discourse of globalisation since the early 1990s is an expression of fear that its power and inÀuence might be diminishing. There is no longer a desire to ‘Japanise’ the world: Japan’s survival
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rests on ‘globalising’ itself (i.e., to ¿t itself into the ‘global standard’) as well as becoming self-reliant, in order to remain in the game.8 Many workers who entered the labour market since the start of the recession share a sense of surviving in a trying environment. One of the major and most brutal effects of Japan’s economic decline was its impact on youth employment, and for this reason, these workers, coined the ‘lost generation’, have come to be associated with the term the ‘employment ice age’ (shnjshoku hyǀgaki). This colloquial phrase conveys the dif¿culty of ¿nding attractive, or often any, full-time graduate positions in the tight recruitment market of this era. Youth unemployment rates shot up in the 1990s. Many young graduates were forced to take any permanent jobs that were available, commonly causing a sense of job mismatch (Honda 2004). In 2000, 36.5 per cent of university graduates left their workplace within three years of commencing graduate employment, which was an increase from 23.7 per cent in 1992 (Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare 2012). Businesses commonly reduced or completely froze recruitment of new graduates as a cost-cutting strategy, as well as shifting the weight of the workforce from costly permanent positions to ‘Àexible’ casual workers who are cheap and easily dismissed (Nishitani 2003; Rebick 2005). In February 1990, 19.9 per cent of males and 20.7 per cent of females between the ages of 15 and 24 worked casually. By February 2001, the ¿gures rose to 41.8 per cent and 42.3 per cent respectively (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications 2001). One of the trends that emerged from this mix of circumstances was an increase in changing employers. In my data, about one in ¿ve interviewees left their full-time, permanent jobs within three years of being hired as university or high school graduates. Others held the same job for a number of years, sometimes nearly a decade, but lack of ful¿lment led to a desire for new and exciting opportunities abroad. For example, one interviewee (male, 28) left his ¿lmediting job to go to Australia as a WHM, because he wanted work experience in an English-speaking environment (‘I’ve been interested in speaking English since I was in junior high school. I’ve always thought it’s cool [kakkoiinatte itsumo omottemashita ne].’). Overall, the interviewees’ narratives indicate that these young people proactively responded to wider social and cultural changes. Be it for the purpose of career building, or seeking the excitement of being associated with the ‘West’ as the imagined centre of global modernity, the image of sojourns in Australia offered a sense of hope for acquiring a useful skill and social prestige through which self-transformation might be possible. The migration industry’s promotion of WH resonates with these young people because it exploits the image of becoming a cosmopolitan person with cultural and language skills. The egalitarian marketing discourse that promotes cosmopolitanism-for-purchase to every aspiring individual, and ‘success stories’ are abundant on websites and in print publications produced by the migration industry. The capacity to access a new life abroad, or to turn such experience into one’s career advantage, however, is not enjoyed by every returning WHM.
Japanese working holiday makers 115
In search of ‘a job where I can use my English’ Despite the attractiveness of WHs, the cosmopolitan experience and skills obtained overseas, there were dif¿culties associated with obtaining a cosmopolitan job upon returning to Japan. Before leaving for Australia, the majority of WHMs in my study sought direct experience of the West, and its associated image of a cosmopolitan life. Having returned to Japan, this aspect of their WH was still something they highly valued and appreciated: It was great to have met people from all over the world. I shared a room with a Korean girl, and made many friends at my English school. I always wanted to make foreign friends. (Female, 25) I feel I’ve now seen the world out there. . . .When I was younger, I really idolised America. But Australia looks to Britain and other directions. Through my experience there, I felt there is more to the world than the American view. (Female, 32) However, starting a cosmopolitan career based on their new experience frequently proved dif¿cult. English language pro¿ciency is one barrier. Typically, the WHMs had elementary to intermediate levels of English when they arrived in Australia, but as many of them realised later, their WH experiences were often insuf¿cient to dramatically improve their language skills. Over 90 per cent of my interviewees reported that their WH experience did not result in Àuency, and many of them expressed regret about not having studied harder. For example, an interviewee called Masanori (male, 32), a four-year university graduate who spent a year in Australia, self-assessed that he had a ‘barely existent’ level of English pro¿ciency at the time of arriving in Australia. Immediately after returning to Japan, he achieved a score of 500/1000 on TOEIC (based on reading skills and listening comprehension) which he thought was a great improvement. According to a popular website promoting English language learning (Eigotown 2012), 600 is the level at which one can order food at a restaurant, presumably by using grammatically correct and culturally appropriate sentences. On the other hand, these scores do not always communicate useful linguistic ability. Kaori (female, 32) received a TOEIC score of 820 after her WH, but she reported that haken (‘temp’) agents still bluntly told her that her pro¿ciency level was ‘useless’. She lacked computer and other skills, and there were plenty of others who had scores of over 900 and still struggled to ¿nd jobs. Two months of disciplined door knocking and registering with numerous haken agencies was beginning to wear on Kaori: For the ¿rst three weeks, I de¿nitely wanted to ¿nd a job where I could use my English, but now I’m starting to give up on the idea. I might have been more advantaged if I had work experience at a Japanese trading company or something, but now, I’m starting to think any job would do.
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Furthermore, Japanese employers who offer cosmopolitan white-collar jobs view language ability as merely a tool for accomplishing the required tasks, rather than a quali¿cation in itself. This attitude is effectively summarised in the words of the recruitment of¿cer of a major foreign-af¿liated international freight company: I often receive inquiries from people who say ‘I’d like a job where I can use English’ (eigo ga tsukaeru shigoto ga shitai). My usual answer is ‘English is used in all sections of the company, so it is a simple requirement. By the way, what else can you do?’ (laughs). (Space ALC 2008) For the majority of WHMs, the question ‘what can you do at work by using English?’ proved a dif¿cult one to answer, because their English learning focused on everyday usage and attaining a cosmopolitan identity, and was not linked to concrete career plans. Rather than English pro¿ciency itself, WHMs usually understood the bene¿ts of learning a new language in a foreign environment as improving their personal qualities. Comments such as below emphasise an increased level of con¿dence, the ability to take the initiative, and broadened horizons: I’ve become more con¿dent about my ability to take on new challenges. I have more courage to speak up now. (Male, 26) I supported myself in Australia by busking and later travelled in Europe. So I know I can make a life for myself anywhere in this world. (Male, 30) These accounts resonate with the ¿ndings of a larger survey conducted in 2004, which concerned Japanese nationals and their work experience abroad (Overseas Vocational Training Association 2004). When asked about the bene¿ts of working overseas, 81 per cent of the 1,150 WHMs in this study who had lived in Australia and other WH destinations responded by saying it had given them a cosmopolitan sensibility (kokusai kankaku), the ability for cross-cultural adaptation (ibunka tekiǀ nǀryoku), and a proactive attitude (sekkyokusei), while 79 per cent said it had given them communication skills. Other high-ranking answers included a broader perspective (habahiroi shiya) (78 per cent), and perseverance and endurance (nintairyoku, gamanzuyosa) (72 per cent). By contrast, the same survey shows that more than 10 per cent of these former WHMs said that their foreign language skills had not improved at all, while 48.7 per cent indicated ‘modest’ improvement, de¿ned by the survey designer as an increase of approximately 50 TOEIC points.9 My research in Australia highlighted the same contrast between satisfaction with improvements in certain personal qualities, and insuf¿cient gain in English language skills.
Japanese working holiday makers 117 My interviewees were disappointed that the personal qualities developed through their exposure to a cross-cultural environment did not seem urgently sought after by employers. For example, Ikezawa Naomi, a ‘global career counsellor’, explained that domestic employers perceive young Japanese job seekers with study abroad experience as ‘good at asserting themselves, but poor at being humble and cooperative’ (Ikezawa 2012). A similar opinion was voiced by a ‘career expert’ at a careers expo in Tokyo, which speci¿cally targeted Japanese university graduates with experience of studying abroad. At an open seminar on interview skills and ‘impression management’, participants were told to maintain a good posture, sunny smiles and appearance (including appropriate hairstyles, make-up and dress styles). According to this expert, it was of utmost importance to present oneself as a clean and cheerful candidate who thrives on adversity and works cooperatively as part of a group. The conclusion of this seminar was the same as the routinely given message at other seminars targeting young job seekers without overseas experience: they had to ensure they possess suitable Japanese language skills for the business context. During ¿eldwork, several interviewees reported similar opinions among employers, colleagues and ‘temp’ agency staff: When I made a mistake with keigo [polite language], a senior colleague sarcastically said ‘Are you one of those kids who grew up abroad (kikokushijo)?’ (Female, 32) I was drinking water out of a plastic bottle during my break, and the older woman I work with told me off, saying ‘People who’ve been overseas (kaigaigaeri) have bad manners’. (Female, 28) In essence, ‘young cosmopolitans’ are required to re-train themselves as ‘proper’ Japanese, to ¿t into the workplace on their return to Japan. This is especially the case at small- or medium-sized companies10 where my interviewees tended to be employed. While most companies fall into this category, small- to medium-size enterprises have a lower status compared to large, ‘branded’ corporations. These smaller companies are unlikely to favour the cutting-edge, imported management practices such as ‘diversity-management’ or employees’ cosmopolitan skills. Instead, these employers tend to value ‘extra’ skills such as cross-cultural awareness and cosmopolitan sensibility only after their employees prove themselves as ‘proper Japanese workers’. This frustrating reality became painfully clear to one of my interviewees during job-hunting: I really feel I learnt a lot in Australia, and I was pretty con¿dent about my ability to endure dif¿culties and come out well. But I realise that all this means nothing if I want a job in Japan. (Female, 32)
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My empirical research showed that despite the expectation that overseas experience would make the WHMs attractive employees in jobs that used English, this was often not the case, because the cosmopolitan personal qualities WHMs cultivated through their experience in Australia were seldom valued by potential employers. Instead, employers sought work traits that were more commonly associated with in-country experience, such as re¿ned politeness strategies, group harmony, and previous educational and work experience.
Cosmopolitan jobs: the gap between ideal and reality Not all WHMs were unable to ¿nd work, but those who did manage to obtain a coveted cosmopolitan job were not guaranteed satisfaction. In fact, the reality of such jobs often further increased the sense of frustration and disappointment. Some of my interviewees found work in the travel and hospitality industries, holding positions such as tourism agents, airline ground staff, and help desk staff at international events and hotels, all of which typically absorb jobseekers with moderate English language skills. In addition, these service jobs more readily accepted candidates without previous experience for entry-level jobs. Kǀji (male, 30) worked for a discount Àight-ticketing agent with a total of 12 employees. In our conversation, he evaluated his work life as ‘not too bad’, but he used English for administrative transactions only, and his daily tasks were ‘basically of¿ce work with lots of stressful phone conversations with customers. Nothing glamorous.’ Maki (female, 28), who worked as ground staff for a domestic airline on a one-year contract, also complained of the routine nature of much of her work: I wanted to work as ground staff because I wanted to look after customers from all over the world. It looked like a really cool job. But in reality, I hardly used English while working. Actually, I hardly talked. It was like working on an assembly line rather than doing ‘customer service’. Disillusioned, she did not seek to extend her contract, and at the time of our interview, had just begun working for a small gift shop in her neighbourhood, as a way to earn money while thinking about her next move. Kengo (male, 25) gained a job as a migration agent within the ¿rst few months of returning, at a migration agency where he had had a friendly relationship with the company director. Upon realising that Kengo was looking for a job, the director offered him an interview for a newly vacant position of an ‘Australian WH specialist’. At the time of out interview, he had worked in this capacity for roughly a year. Kengo portrayed himself as more akin to a nostalgic WHM with a yearning for returning than a migration ‘expert’: People say it’s a good job because it’s permanent and I can use English and my experience in Australia. But . . . the pay is low and I do overtime like everyone else. And anyway, it’s not something I wanted to do. I’m
Japanese working holiday makers 119 sending people to Australia everyday, but I’m the one who wants to go back. (laughs). The migration industry offers a bleak reality for job seekers like Kengo. For example, the following was found on a Japanese website, Space ALC (2007): Table 7.1 Job listing for casual administrative staff at a study abroad agency, 2007 Occupation type Job description The applicants need to Hourly wage
Administrative staff for a study abroad agency Consultation with customers regarding study abroad; associated administrative tasks 1. Have the experience of (or interest in) study abroad 2. TOEIC score of approximately 700 or more 3. Basic computing skills (Microsoft Word, Excel, etc.) From 900 yen
From this description, a sobering picture emerges of the irony associated with the proposed opportunities associated with WHMs. Despite the fact that migration agencies regularly feature glamorous images of cosmopolitan jobs for marketing purposes, these companies themselves offer only menial positions and wages similar to other low status casual work, such as waiting tables at family restaurants. It was clear that in the Japanese job market of the late 2000s, the louder the marketing drum was banged for image-based cosmopolitanism, the greater the chances of disappointment for returned WHMs. This gap between expectations and reality contributed to an anti-climactic feeling for the individual who successfully gained a cosmopolitan job. While the marketing materials of the migration industry frequently featured ¿ctionalised stories of young characters who dream of becoming a cosmopolitan worker, the details of job descriptions and dayto-day tasks were seldom explicit. My research offers evidence that these cosmopolitan claims have been largely untested to date, and that they do not always reÀect the reality of young returnees. Despite the promise of prestige and social advantage associated with cosmopolitanism, many of the stories of returned WHMs resulted in career outcomes which were unful¿lling. This disappointing result is both paradoxical and damaging to the individual WHM, especially where increasing their access to a cosmopolitan job was a primary motivation for their international mobility in the ¿rst place.
Conclusion This chapter examined WHMs’ experience of return migration by situating it at the intersection of globally occurring social and cultural changes, and prevalent social trends in recessionary Japan. As individualised youths living in a neoliberalised, late modern Japan, the sojourners in my study took a proactive decision to improve themselves and their life chances. In responding to long-held Japanese social longing for mastering the English language and obtaining other attributes of the ‘cosmopolitan’ West, these young people’s personal expectations and
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migratory desires resonated with marketed images. My research critiques dominant discourses surrounding internationalisation in Japan by showing that while migration is shaped by wider social change, it can also support the existing social structures and values in certain domains, such as consumption of cosmopolitanism and the youth labour market. I echo the warning of May and Cooper (1995: 78, 79í80), who argue that the increased visibility of images and possibilities for the self-actualisation of identity does not necessarily mean their equal availability in society. As they point out, the actualisation of the ‘selfauthoring subject’ requires resources, which are not equally accessible to all (ibid: 79). The diversi¿cation of life courses in Japan, as well as other individualised late modern societies, may create new experiences and possibilities. Nevertheless, as my analysis has demonstrated, young Japanese’ access to socially desirable identity through transnational mobility is greatly affected by factors such as dif¿cult upward career mobility, increasing job insecurity and lack of alternatives to working under unfavourable conditions for ¿nancial necessity. Neoliberal discourse upholds the capable, entrepreneurial self as the most admirable model to which individuals aspire, and the migration industry invites such individuals to gain experience abroad to lift their social and economic standing in Japan. Furthermore, the government and the private sector alike are increasingly pushing for the development of ‘global human capital’ through experience abroad, including Japan Business Federation’s Proposal Towards Developing Global Human Resource (Japan Business Federation 2011) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Project for Promotion of Global Human Resource Development (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 2012). Their frequent assertion is that Japanese youths with English language and cross-cultural abilities will internationalise Japan, and this in turn will save the nation from the threat of negative outcomes associated with globalisation. However, such a call for internationalising Japan too often overlooks the fact that individuals stand on an uneven ground when it comes to realising cosmopolitan dreams. Rather than considering life’s risks as unfairly distributed and beyond their control, the sojourners in my study resonated with the discourse of self-responsibility by rationalising their disappointment, frustration and ‘failures’ as due to individual shortcomings, such as insuf¿cient efforts or the need to change strategies. Under these circumstances, the young people’s sense of individual success and ful¿lment, as well as that of social contribution through paid labour, remained goals yet to be achieved.
Notes 1 Portions of this chapter have been previously published in Kawashima (2010). 2 In 2012, there were 30 participating countries in the WH scheme. However, there is no overarching organisation that administrates it, and each country assesses visa applications according to its own rules. Singapore has its own Working Holiday Programme, which is not reciprocal and therefore not part of the WH scheme discussed here. 3 Despite what their job titles suggest, rynjgaku Ɲjento (study abroad agents) and rynjgaku kaunserƗ (study abroad counsellors) also deal with non-student mobility such as the
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4 5 6 7
8
9 10
WH and volunteering. Those migration advisors are usually not quali¿ed to give formal legal advice, therefore I distinguish them from legally quali¿ed migration agents (imin bengoshi). This and all other translations are by the author except where noted. For a discussion on the ethnicised and gendered social position Japanese WHMs and students occupy in Australia, their imagined ‘West’, and its impact on their identities, see Kawashima (2012). For example, the estimated total revenue of study abroad broker businesses was nearly 30 billion yen in 2007 (Marketing Data Book 2011). The ¿rst Minister of Education Mori Arinori in the Meiji era made a more extreme statement: ‘[O]ur meager language, which can never be of any use outside of our small islands, is doomed to yield to the domination of the English tongue, especially when the power of steam and electricity shall have pervaded the land . . . all reason suggests its disuse.’ (Mori cited in Stanlaw 2004: 65). However, such sentiment never led to the of¿cial adoption of English in Japan. Some economists state that, in fact, Japan’s trade strengthened in the 2000s at a faster rate, especially accelerating corporate foreign investments in Asia, than the previous decades (Hamada 2006: 141–2). However, whether or not Japan’s actual trade power increased is not a signi¿cant point for the purpose of my argument. It is the perception – that Japan’s overall economic power is declining and that external forces are threatening the country’s future – that is relevant. Percentages are my calculations based on the number of WHM respondents in the survey. According to the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency (2012), small businesses (shǀkibo kigyǀ) are de¿ned as having fewer than 5–20 employees, and small-to-medium businesses (chnjshǀ kigyǀ) are de¿ned as having fewer than 50–300 employees, or alternatively, as being capitalised at 50 million to 300 million yen (the numbers depend on the industries).
References Ansell, Nicola. 2008. ‘Third World Gap Year Projects: Youth Transitions and The Mediation of Risk’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 218–40. Baranowski, Shelly and Ellen Furlong. 2001. ‘Introduction’. In Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America, edited by Shelley Baranowski and Ellen Furlough, 1–31. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Translated by Mark Ritter. London: Sage. Brinton, Mary C. 2008. Ushinawareta Ba o Sagashite. Translated by Chiaki Ikemura. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan. Castles, Stephen. 2007. ‘Twenty-First-Century Migration as a Challenge to Sociology’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(3): 351–71. Castles, Stephen and Mark Miller. 2009. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. 4th ed. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage Publications. Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC). 2011. ‘Working Holiday Maker and Work and Holiday Visa Grants’. Australian Government. Available from: http:// www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/pdf/visitor/2005-06-to-2009-10-whm-wah-visagrants.pdf [accessed 10 August 2011].
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Japanese working holiday makers 123 Last Resort (Migration Agency). 2011. ‘Mokuteki de Sagasu | Rynjgaku WƗkinguhoridƝ Wa Rasutorizǀto [Search by Category: Study Abroad and Working Holidays, Last Resort]’. Available from: http://www.lastresort.co.jp/purpose/index.html#study [accessed 10 August 2011]. Mackie, Vera. 2007. ‘Reimagining Governance and Security in the Asia-Paci¿c Region’. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Paci¿c 15. Available from: http:// intersections.anu.edu.au/issue15/mackie.htm [accessed 9 December 2013]. Marketing Data Book. 2011. ‘Kaigai Rynjgaku Assengyǀ [Study Abroad Brokerage Business]’. Number 178R.0477. Available from: http://www2.mdb-net.com/member/ report/178R0477.html [accessed 10 August 2011]. May, Carl and Andrew Cooper. 1995. ‘Personal Identity and Social Change: Some Theoretical Considerations’. Acta Sociologica 38(1): 75–85. Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. 2012. ‘Shinki Gakusotsu Shnjshokusha no Zaishoku Kikanbetsu Rishokuritsu no Suii [Change in the Rate of Fresh Graduate Job Leavers Based on the Period of Their Employment]’. Japanese Government. Available from: http://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/2010/01/tp0127-2/12.html [accessed 9 December 2013]. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). 2001. ‘Rǀdǀryoku Chǀsa. Chǀki Jikeiretsuhyǀ 10. Nenrei Kaikynj, Koyǀ Keitaibetsu Koyǀshasnj [Labour Force Survey. Historical Data 10. Employee By Age Group And Type Of Employment – Whole Japan]’. Japanese Government. Tokyo: Nihon Tǀkei Kyǀkai. Available from: http:// www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/longtime/03roudou.htm [accessed 9 December 2013]. Murphy, Jill. 1995. The Labour Market Effects of Working Holiday Makers. Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research. Australian Government. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Nishitani. 2003. ‘Hiseiki Koyǀ no Kakudai ga Motarasu Mono [Consequences of the Expansion of Irregular Employment]’. Sekai 2: 91–8. Overseas Vocational Training Association (OVTA). 2004. ‘Wakamono Kaigai Shnjgyǀ Keiken Kenkynj [Research on Young People’s Experience of Working Abroad]’. Available from: http://www.ovta.or.jp/div/publishing/index.html [accessed 9 December 2013]. Prieler, Michael. 2008. ‘Racial Divide in Japanese TV Ads: Othering, Racial Hierarchies, and Identity Construction’. Paper presented at the Media and Global Divides, Stockholm, November 12. Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the 21st Century (PMC). 2000. ‘The Frontier Within: Individual Empowerment and Better Governance in the New Millennium’. Prime Minister’s Of¿ce. Japanese Government. Available from: http:// www.kantei.go.jp/jp/21century/report/pdfs/index.html [accessed 9 December 2013]. Rebick, Marcus. 2005. The Japanese Employment System: Adapting to a New Economic Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Satsuka, Shiho. 2009. ‘Populist Cosmopolitanism: The Predicament of Subjectivity and the Japanese Fascination with Overseas’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10(1): 67–82. Simpson, Kate. 2005. ‘Dropping Out or Signing Up? The Professionalisation of Youth Travel’. Antipode 37(3): 447–69. Small and Medium Enterprise Agency. 2012. ‘Chnjshǀkigǀ Shǀkibo Kigyǀ-Sha no Teigi [De¿nition of Small Businesses and Small Enterprises]’. Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Japanese Government. Available from: http://www.chusho.meti.go.jp/ soshiki/teigi.html [accessed 31 July 2012].
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Smith, Michael Peter. 2005. ‘Transnational Urbanism Revisited’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31: 235–44. Space ALC. 2007. ‘Shigoto [Jobs]’. Available from: http://www.alc.co.jp/ [accessed 15 July 2007]. Space ALC. 2008. ‘Eigo o Tsukatte Shigoto Shitai [Jobs Using English]’. Available from: http://shop.alc.co.jp/cnt/mokuteki/business1.html?afcd=leftjs_mokuteki [accessed 10 August 2008]. Stanlaw, James. 2004. Japanese English: Language and Culture Contact. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Tam International (Migration agency). 2011. ‘Rynjgakunara Tamu IntƗnashonaru [Study Abroad with TAM International].’ Available from: http://www.tamryugaku.com/ [accessed 20 August 2011]. Yoshino, Kosaku. 1995. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan. London and New York: Routledge.
8
Self-help groups for alcoholics in Japan Models of ‘recovery’1 Richard Chenhall and Tomofumi Oka
Introduction Since the Second World War, the growth in the consumption of alcoholic beverages in Japan has led to a growth in alcohol related injuries and illnesses, and a concomitant rise in public responses. The ¿rst was in the late 1950s with the establishment and growth of self-help groups that provided mutual support for individuals and their families. These groups were a part of a process of internationalisation by the then Japanese Temperance Alliance to engage in what was at the time a growing self-help movement through the US organisation Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). While the Japanese groups imitated AA in form, in content they were very much a Japanese model of mutual help, drawing on various Buddhist philosophies and approaches. Danshukai is a product of the mutually constitutive process of internationalisation and domestication, a localised variant of an international model, but also an active and distinctively ‘Japanese’ group in the international self-help movement. The second response, in the 1970s, involved the rise of treatment programs for alcoholism in medical hospitals and clinics. This occurred in the domain of medical professionals, who viewed alcohol misuse and recovery in a very different light, drawing on medical models of alcoholism as a disease that were internationally widespread at the time. The hospitals and clinics, populated by professionals, such as doctors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, provided treatment for alcoholism in the form of drugs and therapy, which were thought to lead to a patient’s medical recovery. On the other hand, Japanese self-help groups, like those styled after AA, viewed alcoholism differently. To them, alcoholism required long-term attention and management, through the attendance and participation in self-help group meetings. In such meetings, discussions emphasised the alcoholic’s new, signi¿cantly different life. This chapter argues that the tension between Danshukai’s and the medical model’s competing discourses demonstrates the internationalisation of the understanding and treatment of alcohol misuse in Japan.
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The adoption of the medical model of alcohol in Japan The medical model of alcoholism, as ¿rst articulated by British physicians in the early 1800s, was described as a disease, where the alcoholic suffered a gradual and progressive addiction leading to a loss of control over the consumption of alcohol (Bride and Nackerud 2002). At that time, alcohol misuse was viewed as a moral issue; thus, the medical model provided a new and seemingly enlightened discourse through which treatment and rehabilitation could occur. The medical model, with its attempts at developing a scienti¿c base for the disease, quickly spread throughout Europe and North America. At the same time, various temperance movements (which focused on the role of alcohol in crime, accidental injury and civil unrest), also co-opted a disease ‘concept’ of alcoholism to argue for the need for prohibitive laws against the sale and consumption of alcohol, thus transforming views of alcoholism in places like the US into a powerful political and social construct (Bride and Nackerud 2002). Further research, such as work by Jellinek (1960) in the 1960s and 1970s, sought to identify different typologies of alcoholism and this stimulated further interest in scienti¿c studies of alcoholism, including twin, adoptee and other genetic studies. Concurrently, the medical model that espoused alcoholism as a disease was criticised from within the scienti¿c community. These critiques came in the form of anomalous studies which argued that a percentage of alcoholics were able to return to controlled patterns of drinking (Davies 1962). Social scientists also emphasised that social and environmental factors play an important part in the development of alcoholism. Today, most medical researchers would argue that alcoholism is a complex disorder, with recent research suggesting that one’s individual risk for lifetime diagnosis of alcoholism is divided fairly equally between genetic and environmental factors (Crabbe 2002). This view has led to a broadening of treatment, which includes prevention and primary care approaches, although treatment still tends to be abstinence-oriented. In Japan, the ¿rst medical hospital to deal speci¿cally with alcoholism was established in the 1970s and today there are around 100 specialised hospitals treating alcoholism (Higuchi et al. 2007). For individual alcoholics in Japan, medical treatment is the norm. However, there is very little public recognition of the danger of alcohol in Japan at the national level (in the form of media campaigns or statements about national guidelines with reference to safe drinking). There are virtually no preventative or primary health care services for alcoholism. Therefore, there is often delay in receiving a correct diagnosis and specialised treatment. For students in medical and public health programs, there is no specialised curriculum on alcohol and drug issues, with the majority receiving on the job training when working at specialised alcohol hospitals. Most alcoholics receive general medical treatment for the physical side effects of their drinking before they receive specialised treatment. Medical and allied health professionals often use the term kaifuku to refer to their patient’s medical recovery from alcoholism. Similar to a minor physical injury, a patient can heal and return to their former health status and everyday
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routine. Perhaps, it will be possible to drink again in a normalised pattern, although most doctors would recommend abstinence post treatment. Due to the prevalence of hospital-based treatment for alcoholism in Japan, the medical model strongly shapes public opinion, and this has helped to decrease, but by no means eradicate, the strong stigmatisation of alcoholism as a moral failure. The medical model has also connected both professionals and alcoholics themselves to an international body of researchers and health experts, with professionals participating in conferences overseas. This allowed patients in Japan to bene¿t from various medical approaches from overseas, despite Japan’s tight regulatory drug laws. For alcoholics themselves, despite the on-going stigma of the disease, the medical model did offer hope for a return to a normal life.
Alcoholics Anonymous and recovery In the academic literature, recovery in AA is de¿ned in a number of ways. Borkman, for example, explains the particularity of the usage of the term ‘recovery’ by AA: Recovery is a special term used in AA . . . to connote the process by which alcoholics become abstinent and undergo the self-help/mutual aid journey to heal the self, relations with others, one’s higher power, and the larger world. Recovery includes the belief system and program of action, groups and their meetings, the Twelve Steps, and helping others within the context of a network of recovering peers. Recovery is a personalized and self-paced journey that is undertaken interdependently with one’s alcoholic peers and follows recognizable general stages. (Borkman 2008: 13) While Borkman’s description of recovery stresses the social relations between alcoholics, some authors pay greater attention to the spiritual side of recovery in AA (Connors, Walitzer and Tonigan 2008; Kurtz 1979; Kurtz and Ketcham 1992; Morjaria and Orford 2002; Rogers and Cobia 2008; Room 1983; Tangenberg 2005; Weegmann and Piwowoz-Hjort 2009). Despite this focus on sociality and spirituality, AA is sometimes described as an organisation that has popularised the concept of alcoholism as a medical disease, as Suissa notes: Alcoholics Anonymous has a tremendous inÀuence on the public’s view of alcoholism and the way to treat it. . . . According to this ideology, alcoholics cannot deal with their lives because of their permanent disease: allergy, loss of control, progressive disease, loss of will power, and so forth. (Suissa 2003: 206) Thus, there is disagreement as to whether AA prioritises the medical or social model (see for example Roman 1991). This complicated issue is well explicated by Kurtz who writes ‘contrary to common opinion, AA neither originated nor
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promulgated what has come to be called the disease concept of alcoholism’ (Kurtz 2002: 6). He adds: Most members of Alcoholics Anonymous do speak of their alcoholism in terms of disease: the vocabulary of disease was from the beginning and still remains for most of them the best available for understanding and explaining their own experience. But the use of that vocabulary no more implies deep commitment to the tenet that alcoholism is a disease in some technical medical sense than speaking of sunrise or sunset implies disbelief in a Copernican solar system. (Kurtz 2002: 6) There is, however, a prior social discourse around recovery from alcoholism in Japan, one that can be traced back to the Japanese Temperance movement of the late 1880s. This distinct discourse can be seen as a product of the integration of the internationalisation of speci¿c ideas about alcoholism at the time, which were localised according to Japanese understandings and approaches, and expressed in the formation of Danshukai groups.
The origins of the Danshukai The internationalisation of Danshukai began in the early 1950s. The group emerged from the Japanese Temperance movement and quickly spread throughout the country to become one of Japan’s largest self-help groups for alcoholics, with around 8,832 members (8,070 are male and 812 are female) in 2011 (Zendanren 2012). Today, 548 local Danshukai groups are af¿liated with Zendanren, the national alliance of Danshukai. In 2011, Zendanren had 1,674 meeting places and 41,836 meetings, in which the total number of participants was 727,366 (ibid: 21). This section outlines Danshukai’s formation in relation to AA, and how it localised its concepts through the ‘new life’ model. Lastly, we address the tensions within Danshukai between self-help and medical models of recovery, arguing that there are different reasons, some personally and others politically motivated, as to why different members choose to af¿liate with different understandings. During the 1880s, the Japanese Temperance movement was established through the work of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) (Lublin 2010). The Japanese Temperance Union was led by Andǀ Tarǀ, a militarist who had formed Japanese immigrant temperance groups during his service as the ConsulGeneral in Hawaii, and Nemoto Shǀ, a temperance activist who had come under the inÀuence of Methodist and Episcopal missionaries in the United States. Given the conÀicts during the 1890s between Japanese Christians and various Shinto and Buddhist groups, the Japanese Temperance Union promulgated a nonChristian ethic, focusing on the health bene¿ts gained from abstinence and other issues related to moral reform. Temperance member activities focused on travelling the country giving speeches and supporting people to make the temperance pledge (Chenhall and Oka 2009). The Japanese Temperance Union continued
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various activities up until the Second World War, including participation in the 1902 Osaka national fair. In collaboration with the WCTU, they distributed pamphlets, gave speeches and set up a special alcohol-free rest house in the fairgrounds (Lublin 2010: 142). In post-war Tokyo, the mood within the Temperance Union had changed and its new leaders were inspired by the growing civil rights movements in the US. Continuing to be inÀuenced by American activists, they reached out to those who agreed with the principles of abstinence and reform. They turned to AA as part of this process of internationalisation with various members travelling to the US and Europe to visit AA organisations (Chenhall and Oka 2009). Danshukai initiated AA styled meetings where members regularly met to discuss their own problems with alcohol. However, the Twelve Step Program and the centrality of the concept of a ‘Higher Power’ in recovery were not adopted by Danshukai (although a modi¿ed set of ¿ve principles were introduced). Unlike AA, where members attend individually, Danshukai encouraged family members to attend meetings. In the Japanese meetings, all participants told their personal story about how alcohol damaged their life (shugai taiken). While the people we interviewed, reÀected positively on the therapeutic nature of telling their stories, the shugai taiken also formulates a routinised ‘practice’ that enables identi¿cation with other members and with one’s own family at the meeting. The inÀuence of AA on Danshukai is contested amongst Danshukai’s members. Some leaders believe that Danshukai was modi¿ed from AA, while other leaders state that Danshukai is not related to, and was not inÀuenced, by AA at all. While the historical records of the Japanese Temperance Union in Tokyo do provide evidence that the early leaders were inspired to create a ‘Japanese’ AA, it is clear that the speci¿c form that meetings took were informed by various Japanese traditions, such as Zen Buddhism (see Chenhall and Oka 2009). This pattern of domestication was replicated elsewhere, with AA having both indirect and direct inÀuences in the 1940s on the formation of various self-help groups globally, including the Swedish Links movement, the French Vie Libre and later Danshukai in Japan (Room 1998). These and other self-help groups in different cultural contexts sought to modify the AA approach, particularly given AA’s links to evangelical Protestantism, which did not always sit comfortably with the host country’s religious landscape. The ¿rst Danshukai group within the Tokyo Temperance Union soon conÀicted with the temperance leaders, who felt that Danshukai was dominating temperance activities. This was a problem because their reasons for temperance were quiet different. In the Temperance Union members were not necessarily alcoholics, but abstained from alcohol due to health or moral reasons, while Danshukai members were mostly alcoholics and their wives. Subsequently, various splinter groups began to form outside the Temperance Union, but it was not until a Danshukai group in Kochi and Tokyo came together in 1963 to form Zendanren that Danshukai groups became connected through a national alliance. Zendanren produced various texts, guidelines, newsletters and yearly workshops and conferences, bringing together the rapidly forming independent Danshukai groups throughout Japan under their umbrella organisation.
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One of the main goals of Danshukai was to establish a ‘new life’ for alcoholics and their families. Sometimes the group is called Danshu-shinsei-kai, which means a group (kai) aiming at a ‘new life’ (shinsei) through practicing abstinence (danshu). The ‘new life’ model arose from the core philosophy of the Japanese self-help model, which was viewed as different to the idea of ‘recovery’ as de¿ned by the Twelve Steps of AA (Chenhall and Oka 2009; Kurube 1992; Smith 1998).
The ‘new life’ model and ‘recovery’ When Danshukai members discuss ‘recovery’, their meaning is often ambiguous. It can refer to both medical and non-medical models of recovery, and often members can accept both meanings. This Àexibility is an important part of Danshukai’s ability to retain members who have very different views of alcoholism and recovery. This ambiguity in meaning also exists in AA, as discussed earlier, where some emphasise the medical aspect of recovery, while others discuss the importance of spirituality. At the beginning of its history, the leaders and members of Danshukai never used the term ‘recovery’. Kobayashi, a former leader of Danshukai, noted the difference between these terms: When I joined Danshukai in 1967, there were absolutely no members who used the term ‘recovery’. Since the mid 1970s, when medical services for alcoholics were started, medical doctors seem to have begun using the term. In those days the term ‘recovery’ meant the situation in which the patients of these doctors joined Danshukai and regained their healthy bodies. In order to distinguish patients under treatment from patients who practice abstinence in the community, the doctors called the former group ‘alcoholics’ and the later one ‘recovered’. Thus, in the early history of Danshukai, ‘recovery’ was nothing but a medical term. On the other hand, since the beginning, Danshukai has stressed the idea that members should start a completely ‘new life’ while practicing abstinence. . . . The founder of Danshukai, Matsumura Harushige, asserted that Danshukai is a group that educates members to be a new type of person. However, many of the members thought that they had no other problems – except for drinking too much – and that they would naturally be all right only if they stopped drinking. Unfortunately, there were only a smaller number of members than expected who were ready to change themselves and create a new life. This is the case even now. (Kobayashi 2010: 3) Kobayashi goes on to tell his own personal story of having been isolated within Danshukai, partly because he relapsed while he was a member, but also because he disagreed with aspects of their philosophy. At that time I met a senior member, Mr. N. He said to me, ‘Alcoholism deprives people of important things; through abstinence, alcoholics should regain these
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things.’ This advice deeply moved me. [Similarly,] a professional stated recently, ‘Alcoholism is a disease of loss.’ I agree with this, because I am sure that the loss of self, the loss of human relations and the loss of sociality are features of alcoholism. After joining Danshukai, I began to recover from this loss of self, and made efforts to repair relations with my family and others. However, years later, I realised that I could never recover my ‘lost self’. This was because I became an alcoholic in my mid-twenties, so even if I succeeded in recovering my ‘lost self’, I would obtain nothing but that immature self. . . .[B]ecause I grew up in a dysfunctional family, healthy relationships with my wife and child were unfamiliar. I never had a normal relationship with my child because I had become a helpless alcoholic by the time he could understand what was happening. So, how could I regain or recover what I had never had? After worrying about what I should do, I came to a very natural conclusion: because I am a member of Danshu-shinsei-kai [which aims at a ‘new life’], I should not think of recovering what I lost. Instead, I realised that . . . I should create a new life for myself and build a completely new relationship with my family. When I realised this, I had been a Danshukai member for 10 years. (Kobayashi 2010: 3) These passages show two important things. First, for Danshukai members, ‘recovery’ had meant ‘medical recovery’ only; Kobayashi points out in later passages that many Danshukai members still have this medical image of ‘recovery’ in mind. Second, this type of ‘recovery’ implies that it is possible to return to an original state of being and relationships with others. A standard medical de¿nition of recovery would be ‘a return to health or consciousness and regaining a sense of balance, control, or composure’ (Everett 2009: 761). De¿ned this way, the term has nothing ‘new’ about it; ‘recovery’ is past-oriented, while ‘new life’ is futureoriented. If their alcoholism began at a young age, Danshukai members often say that they never had good relationships with families or friends. If this is the case, what could they recover? This constitutes a contradiction for Danshukai members, because this concept sets them up for failure, with an impossible goal of recovering what they have never had. It also serves to re-inscribe moral tones to the condition; being an alcoholic is equated with being a ‘bad’ person, and it is the personality and the character of the person (not merely the addiction to alcohol) that needs to be changed. Models involving self-change through self-help groups are both criticised and supported in the English language literature. Garcia (2008) has criticised the selfhelp model because of its circularity: individuals are forever committed to their status as addicts; there is no escape from attending meetings and thus members are forever committed to repeating stories about their actions in the past. This re-remembering of the past, while emphasised as an important part of maintaining sobriety within the discourse of self-help groups, has also been criticised as reinforcing a sense of helplessness. This means that Danshukai’s perspective of a
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‘new life’ can be considered a positive way to break this chain. By accepting the paradigm of ‘new life’, Danshukai members can develop a ‘new identity’: from an ‘incurable alcoholic’ to a ‘person who practices Danshu’. This latter description of their personal growth through Danshu practice is similar to the way judo practitioners regard their judo practice. In any practice, described using the kanji suf¿x -dǀ, meaning the way of, there is no endpoint or ¿nal goal. With this idea of the dǀ-spirit, Danshukai members emphasise that they should remain in Danshukai forever in Danshu practice.
Japanese features of the Danshukai model While Danshukai grew out of the internationalisation of self-help groups, especially those inÀuenced by the AA, it was also greatly inÀuenced by Japanese Zen Buddhism, which was similar to developments in other Japanese therapeutic approaches at the time. Morita and Naikan therapy, also established in the postwar era, were psychological therapeutic approaches that drew on Buddhist practices and understandings for the treatment of various disorders (see Reynolds 1980). Enomoto writes of the inÀuence of Zen Buddhism on Danshukai: In Zen practice, shikantaza (which means devoting oneself wholly to just sitting without thinking about anything else) is considered the ¿rst step to spiritual awakening. . . . [Zen practitioners] think that people will be spiritually awakened and emancipated from worldly attachments by regulating forms, which exist outside of oneself [through] meditating. In Danshukai, alcoholics ¿rst recognise abstinence as a form to regulate things around them. Thereafter, they gradually come to be able to cultivate the spirit of abstinence. While controlling their deviant (drinking) behaviour from the outside, they guide themselves to the life of abstinence step by step. (Enomoto 1985: 161) In terms of the inÀuence of Zen Buddhism, three interesting common points between Danshukai and Zen Buddhism can be observed, which will be explicated below. They include: a disinterest in dogma; an emphasis on lived experience and training for enlightenment; leading to the development of a conscious dǀ-like spirit to their activities. The ¿rst point refers to the fact that practitioners of Zen and Danshukai both show disinterest in written dogma and complex ideas, as evidenced by the observation that Danshukai groups do not use their guidebooks very much. This can be contrasted with AA’s Big Book, which plays an important part in a person’s recovery. According to our interviews, the equivalent text for Danshukai, Shishin to Kihan, is not taken seriously by rank-and-¿le members and even some leaders. Danshukai have not developed abstract rules or explicitly expressed procedures surrounding their activities. ‘Atama dekkachi ni naruna’ (don’t rely on logic) is one of their commonly used maxims. Zen has a similar tendency; the Zen master
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Suzuki expressed a similar idea in his treatise on the emptiness of abstract ideas, and the oppression and tyranny of intellectual accumulations: The mind is ordinarily chock full with all kinds of intellectual nonsense. . . . It is chieÀy because of these accumulations that we are made miserable and groan under the feeling of bondage. . . . We long for naturalness and freedom, yet we do not seem to attain them . . . [The Zen masters] want to have us get rid of all these wearisome burdens which we really do not have to carry in order to live a life of truth and enlightenment. Thus they utter a few words and demonstrate with action that, when rightly comprehended, will deliver us from the oppression and tyranny of these intellectual accumulations. (Suzuki 1961: 28) When asked what Zen was, he answered: It is, in fact, in the very nature of Zen that it evades all de¿nition and explanation; that is to say, Zen cannot be converted into ideas, it can never be described in logical terms. For this reason the Zen masters declare that it is ‘independent of letter,’ being ‘a special transmission outside the orthodox teachings.’ (Ibid: 267) A famous Buddhist thinker, Nakamura Hajime, asserted that Buddhism in Japan was simpli¿ed in an attempt to ‘avoid theoretical argument and prioritise practical understanding’ (Nakamura 1964: 557). While pointing out a similar process in the adoption of Confucianism, he stated: ‘Japanese philosophy in the past has been inÀuenced by this tendency to shun theoretical argument. . . . The Japanese scholars endeavoured to grasp only what they could utilize in . . . learning for practical understanding’ (ibid: 561). This preference for a concrete and simple philosophy is reÀected in the fact that Danshukai has few complicated approaches to abstinence or even its understanding of a complex issue like alcoholism. Simple maxims and mottos like ichinichi-danshu (abstinence for one day) and reikai-shusseki (attend meetings) are preferred over Danshukai views that AA’s steps and traditions are unnecessarily complex. Secondly, in Zen Buddhism, lived experience is valued. Similarly, Danshukai always encourages their members to talk about their experiences.2 Suzuki states: Conviction must be gained through experience and not through abstraction, which means that conviction has no really solid basis, except when it can be tested in our acting ef¿cient life. Moral assertion or ‘bearing witness’ ought to be over and above an intellectual judgment; that is to say, the truth must be the product of one’s living experiences. An idle reverie is not their business, the Zen followers will insist. They, of course, sit quiet and practice ‘zazen’; for they want to reÀect on whatever lessons they have gained while working.
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This understanding of Zen Buddhism colours our reading of Danshukai philosophy. For example, Danshukai provides no formal guidebooks save the Matsumura Goroku. Goroku means a record of words, and has been used to mean ‘containing the sayings and sermons . . . poems, and other literary works of a Zen master’ (Suzuki 1960: 73). Therefore, ‘to understand [goroku] requires some special practical training in Zen’ (Suzuki 1961: 9). Matsumura (Harushige) established one of the ¿rst Danshukai groups in Kǀchi, West Japan, in 1958. Danshukai members consider him to be a danshu (abstinence) master. Some sayings included in the Goroku are vague or opaque, much like the Zen aesthetic, but Danshukai members claim that an individual needs to understand these words through his or her own experience, not through mere contemplation. The Zen Buddhist tendency to privilege experience (taiken) over abstraction is also found in the Japanese religious landscape, especially in a group of nontraditional religions called shinkǀshnjkyǀ, or ‘new religions’. The following passage is taken from a research article on such an organisation, Zenrinkai, but we can see its relevance to the spiritual leanings of Danshukai members: Taiken are of central importance to Zenrinkai . . . Taiken, however, generally implies an experience that is both different and more important than an ‘ordinary’ experience (keiken) . . . Zenrinkai, along with numerous other Japanese New Religions, uses taiken to designate narratives of personal experience. The narratives have a speci¿c structure, moving from an initial recounting of the problems encountered in life before joining the religion, to the bene¿ts received after entering the religion and internalizing the teachings. (Anderson 1992: 319) The focus on experience shows a striking symmetry between Zenrinkai and Danshukai. In Danshukai, taiken forms an essential part of the group meetings, and individual narratives follow a speci¿c structure in recounting alcoholic experiences, suggesting these groups are all inÀuenced by traditional Japanese values (see also Sharf 1995; Shimazono 1986). Similarly, AA was also inÀuenced by the religious Oxford Movement (a movement of high Church Anglicans, whose members often associated with the University of Oxford). While both selfhelp groups drew on the internationalisation of mutual help movements at the time, they also drew on local religious forms and understanding, to respond to issues related to spirituality. The third common point between Danshukai and Zen Buddhism is the inÀuence of Zen Buddhism’s ‘dǀ spirit’ on the spiritual atmosphere of Danshukai. Enomiya-
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Lassalle de¿nes the dǀ spirit with reference to martial or aesthetic art practice in Japan: They were expressions of an inner spiritual attitude. In all these ‘ways’ there lives one spirit and that is the spirit of Zen. . . . All of these ‘ways’ have the same purpose: a unity of spirit and a uni¿cation of spirit with nature and with the universe. All of them presuppose mu-ga, the non-ego or the surrender of self. They attempt to confer on the practitioner a perfect inner harmony and peace of soul. (Enomiya-Lassalle 1973: 59–60) In the same way as the bushi-dǀ (the ‘Way of the Samurai’) and cha-dǀ (the ‘Way of Tea’, see Steele’s contribution in this volume), Danshukai also has a danshu-dǀ or a danshu-no-michi, the way of abstinence.3 This spiritualism can be found in Danshukai in four ways: in their speci¿c maxims; in their peer-led therapeutic community Danshu dǀjo (a training hall of Danshu); in the Danshu-ka (a master of Danshu); and in their attribution of speci¿c rankings. Published in the early history of Danshukai, inspiration slogans were created under the rubric of the danshu-dǀ. The author of these maxims was the ¿rst president of a Danshukai in Hokkaido, named Harada Hiroshi. He was a wellknown advocate of danshu-dǀ (Way of Danshu), and named their newsletter Danshu-dǀ, which also acted as a pun to the dǀ in the word Hokkaidǀ, which uses the same character. He wrote various pamphlets entitled Danshu-dǀ Jikkun (The Ten Warnings of Danshu-dǀ) and Danshu-dǀ Goshin (The Five Hearts of Danshu-dǀ) (Hokkaido Danshu Rengǀ-kai 1986). He also applied a well-known ten-stage growth model of Zen practice, Ten Bulls or Ten Ox-herding Pictures, to Danshukai abstinence practice (Nara Wakakusa Danshukai 2005). A second example is the Danshu dojǀ. The term dojǀ refers to the place ( jǀ) where the ‘way’ is practiced, and is frequently used in martial and other traditional Japanese arts (see Steele in this volume). The only Danshu dojǀ was established in 1965 by Kojima Masataka, on the remote island of Hachijǀ-jima, but it was moved to Wakayama in 1969. Currently, this dojǀ is maintained by Zendanren as a peer-led therapeutic community for alcoholics, as an application of dǀ spirit. Another example of this mindset is the practice of assigning ranks – danshu-ka – to members of the group. Ka refers to a person who practices dǀ spirit, such as sho-ka (a person practicing shodǀ, or calligraphy (a dan system is generally used in traditional ¿ne and martial arts and acts as a ranking system, marking both status and level of expertise of participants). In Tokyo Danshu-shinsei-kai, every Danshukai member is given a dan rank according to their length of membership, with one dan awarded per year of sobriety. What these examples have emphasised is that this process of internationalisation of self-help group movements was co-related with local practices. In this case, the overseas self-help group concept was inÀuenced and shaped by a Japanese repertoire of practices informed by Zen Buddhism. Despite these differences, both Danshukai and AA have incorporated a spiritual philosophy,
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albeit different ones, and this points to both groups’ embrace of a wider de¿nition of the recovery concept beyond the medical model. However, another key point here is that the association of Danshukai with Zen Buddhism is also a process through which members can distinguish Japanese essential principles in opposition to those from outside Japan, such as the US. Many Danshukai members oppose any similarity with US style self-help groups, as one Danshukai member states: I believe that more than half of the criticism of Danshukai and Zendanren does not deserve any attention. If we were swayed [by that criticism], Danshukai would not be Danshukai anymore, and that would weaken Danshukai. Many doctors and scholars cannot understand Danshukai, because they are admirers of the US. Such [doctors and scholars] criticise and give advice to Danshukai without understanding Danshukai. I wish Danshukai members were more con¿dent in their activities. [However,] many of them are unfortunately feeble before authority ¿gures, and they are confused [by the criticism of the doctors and scholars]. . . . We can say that Danshukai, many of whose members are Japanese, does not need any ‘Steps’ [like the Twelve Steps of AA]. Any culture has religious backgrounds. In Zen Buddhism, people are just sitting. In Jǀdoshnj [a Japanese Buddhist denomination], people are only chanting Namuamidabutsu, and in Nichirenshnj [another Japanese Buddhist denomination], people are only chanting NammyǀhǀrengƝkyǀ. These people have no Steps, but they are forever doing the same thing, and [by doing this,] they develop themselves. This is michi (dǀ). If this is applied to Danshukai, it is in the sense that we continuously talk about our experience. When you join Danshukai for the ¿rst time, you talk about your experience at the ¿rst meeting. After ten or twenty years, you still talk about your experience. This repetition is great. It is useless to discuss which is more sophisticated, this michi and Steps, because this is a cultural difference. . . . We are Japanese who want to stop drinking, and so we need to pay more attention to Japanese things. I strongly believe that if we have to practice abstinence, it is more important for us, the Japanese, to feel rather than to think, [to consider] practice rather than theories, and emotion rather than intellect. Many doctors and scholars have embarrassed us by chattering about ‘developed America,’ without considering anything Japanese. (Hiromasa Takahashi, personal communication, 19 February 2011) In this quote, Takahashi rejects foreign concepts from AA in favour of Japanese approaches that emphasise feeling over thinking and practicing over theorising. In this light, internationalisation is rejected in favour of a form of nihonjinron (theories about the Japanese), where the speci¿c qualities and culture of Danshukai is related to peculiarities of Japanese culture only, above any comparison or historical link to foreign sources.
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The effects of an international medical discourse on alcoholism As described above, the Japanese Temperance movement in Japan reached out to AA in forming Danshukai. While attempting to be part of a process of internationalisation, the group was, in the end, a distinct and localised organisation. The establishment and the growth of Danshukai demonstrates a ‘globalisation’ process, involving the adaptation of cultural values alongside incorporation of new ideas and concepts. What is interesting about this case, making Danshukai unusual in this ‘globalisation’ process, is that its organisational identity is challenged, on a number of fronts: ¿rst by the social model arising from AA, and secondly by the growing predominance of medical models of alcoholism. The international self-help movement has always had varied relationships with medical doctors, psychiatrists and other trained professionals. In the US (as well as for Danshukai groups in West Japan), professionals were instrumental in establishing self-help groups and are still involved (Room 1998). One of the ¿rst Danshukai groups in Japan, was established in Kǀchi by a medical doctor, Geshi Takamaro with his patient Matsumura Harushige, but in other areas, the groups’ relationships with medical doctors is more tenuous. For example, in Tokyo, medical professionals have had very little to do with local Danshukai; while clinical professionals are invited to Danshukai formal events and annual conferences, they are not involved in the governance of, or treatment delivered within, Danshukai. However, our own data suggests that the majority of Danshukai members have received hospital treatment, meaning that the medical model may have had an inÀuence on their perception of alcoholism before they join Danshukai. Furthermore, with decreasing memberships and an increase in the number of specialised alcohol residential and out-patient clinics, some Danshukai members have sought to strengthen their numbers through links with the medical fraternity. Despite this, some Danshukai members clearly have dif¿culties aligning their understanding of their condition with a medical concept. In one meeting we attended, a female alcoholic argued that alcoholism could not be viewed in the same way as other diseases, such as high blood pressure, because of the signi¿cant discrimination she had experienced because of her alcoholism; she questioned whether those with other types of diseases experience the same level of discrimination. Members’ opinions about recovery are mixed; with some emphasising a ‘new life’, yet others stressing that medical recovery (kaifuku) is possible. But their view constitutes a different model of recovery. The new life model suggests that an alcoholic should create a new identity, a new set of social routines, and that they must perpetually attend Danshukai meetings to sustain and develop this new life. This is a common ideology within self-help groups, including AA (see Cain 1991). Thus, Danshukai can be seen as linked to AA through this common emphasis of self/mutual-help, even though their meeting structures and philosophical approaches are quite different. Another example that demonstrates the effects of a growing international discourse of the medicalisation of alcoholism and recovery on Danshukai is the
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relationship between medical doctors and Danshukai members. From our discussion with Danshukai members, it became evident that many view their relationships with doctors as unequal; medical professions are considered to be of high status and in this regard their authority of knowledge should be respected. Many Danshukai members have been patients of medical doctors during their hospitalisation, so this means they have experience with this subordinate social context. Even if Danshukai members are quite senior in the group, when they are treated in a hospital they are treated as subordinates. This means that their relationship with medical doctors is unequal, and there is understandably some resentment in their participation in Danshukai activities. In our research, Danshukai members who ascribed to the medical view of alcoholism as espoused by their medical doctor often referred to ‘healthy practices’ with reference to exercise and eating properly – not to mental or emotional issues that could have affected their alcoholism. Some did not believe that there was anything ‘wrong’ with them before their alcoholism; this made it possible for them to return to a perceived normal life. However, others believed that this model not only failed to engage with the essential elements of their character and environment that led them to their alcoholism, but provided false hopes about the future. Despite their difference, Danshukai and medical approaches do share some perspectives. Both place the cause of alcoholism and responsibility of recovery on the individual, rather than their social, economic and political environment. For Danshukai, however, the medicalisation of alcoholism has the potential to be a threat to their membership. At its extreme, the medical model of recovery sees no place for mutual support with all treatment and post-care delivered in and by the medical sector. Privileging the role of the medical professional, mutual support involving no professional input would also be viewed as problematic. Leaders in self-help groups often have very little training in alcohol and drug support and therapy, with their knowledge and experience gained from experiential knowledge (Borkman 1999). With a professionalised alcohol treatment service, the role of such untrained experts is minimised. The medicalisation of alcohol disorders is also important from a national policy perspective. As a medical disease, alcoholism is then treatable and falls into the province of government responsibilities. Governments are responsible to care for the sick and diseased, thus it is possible to ¿nance hospital, clinics with doctors, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists and so on. It also enables the government and general public to view alcoholism as something internal to the person that will only ever affect a small number of people. There is no need to alter the market and the environment in this case. If the social aspects of alcoholism were emphasised then it would be quite a different story. The environment, the availability of alcohol and the large alcohol companies would all need tighter regulation and control so as to protect a population from possible harms. The political context is an important one with the Àow of funds and resources directed to medical hospitals. The number of specialised hospitals that provide their patients with aftercare is increasing (often making it very dif¿cult for people to have the time
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to attend a Danshukai meeting) and, when combined with Japan’s ageing population, the number of alcoholics and their families joining Danshukai has decreased. Danshukai’s position has also been challenged by recent changes and reviews of the laws associated with not-for pro¿t organisations. Danshukai’s new legal status as a public interest corporation, which was authorised in 2010, stipulates that they must provide services to the general public. What was once a fairly closed self-help group for alcoholics and their families is now increasingly having to look outward and engage in various public activities and community education programs. Much of this is centred on raising awareness of drink driving. However, Danshukai is also running groups in prisons and hospitals. Part of this gradual opening up of Danshukai is a result of the competing models of recovery, and the effects that the medical model of alcoholism has had on groups such as Danshukai. In this light, we can see competing models of alcohol and recovery (self-help versus medical treatment), existing both at the international and local levels.
Conclusion This chapter has documented how Danshukai is a product of both Japanese and international discourses of alcoholism and in this sense there are often different opinions within Danshukai membership and between professional groups about recovery. Accordingly, there can be competing discourses in the internationalisation process. In Japan, Danshukai took inspiration from Zen Buddhism and integrated this with what was the most popular self approach in AA. Both AA and Danshukai were aligned in their emphasis on spirituality and the creation of a ‘new life’, rather than one merely focusing on medical recovery.
Notes 1 This chapter is an expanded version of an article by Oka (2011). 2 The English word ‘experience’ might be misleading here. As Yuasa and Kasulis wrote, ‘Japanese philosophers use two words for “experience,” keiken and taiken, which correspond roughly to the German distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis. When the distinction seems most relevant, the authors have rendered taiken as “lived experience”’ (Yuasa and Kasulis 1987: 49). 3 Dǀ and michi both mean ‘way’, and so danshu-dǀ means the same as danshu-no-michi. Coin phrases as ‘something-dǀ’ is not unusual amongst Japanese. For example, Hashimoto (2007) introduced yakynj-dǀ, as the ‘way of baseball’, which is practiced by non-professional baseball players.
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9
Globalisation, soccer, and the sportsworlds of Japan, Australia and the United States William W. Kelly
Globalising sports–society relationships Sports are – or should be – as compelling for scholars as for spectators. Modern sports – soccer, rugby, rowing, baseball, cycling, athletics, and many more – began as organised activities in the mid-nineteenth century. Many were quickly commercialised, bureaucratised and ‘educationalised’, even as they diffused through imperial and mercantile circuits around the world. For over a century, sports – especially elite spectator sports – have become the world’s widest sphere of mass distraction and entertainment, a consequential marker of race and ethnicity, a crucible of gender, a basis for local loyalties and nationalist pride, a focus of intense personal identity, memory, and family ties, one of the very largest sectors of the world economy, the largest content provider to global media, and the most elaborated form of transnational governance. They demand our attention. The potency of sports – for those who play them, for those who watch them, for those who study them – inheres in the multiple ways in which they intersect and interpenetrate the fabric of society. Consider the following statements, each of which expresses a distinct relationship: • • • • •
sports can be refuges from everyday life – ‘islands in society’; sports can be reÀections of social forms and forces – ‘mirrors of society’; sports can be sites for reproducing society – ‘schools for socialisation’; sports can be ways of resisting society – ‘acts of rebellion’; and sports can be paths for changing society – ‘agents of reform’.
Much of the signi¿cance of sports studies for social science is in demonstrating the conditions in which one or another such relationships obtain. At the same time, their importance is multiplied by the fact that they not only have manifold relationships within societies but also between societies – and polities and economies. For a century and a half, the diffusions, impositions, adaptations, and usurpations of sports around the world have created chains of association, dynamics of struggle, and hierarchies of power that in one form or another engage virtually every nation. Since its founding in 1894, the International Olympic Committee, above all, has been the prime motive force for
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sports globalisation, but many individual sports have travelled world circuits, changing societal practices, transforming inter-societal relations, and being changed themselves through their global histories. And of all such sports over the long modern century since the mid-1900s, none has had a broader reach and a more lasting impact than soccer, recognised by Foer (2004), Giulianotti (1999), Goldblatt (2006), and many others as the ‘world’s game’. But for most of that time, there have been three glaring exceptions to soccer’s global dominance – Japan, Australia, and the United States – the three major sporting powers that effectively distanced themselves from the sport throughout the twentieth century. Soccer arrived in all three countries by the 1860s and 1870s, even as it was being codi¿ed in England and separated from rugby codes, and it has had a minor presence since then, as it grew to be the world’s most played and watched team sport almost everywhere else. But Japan chose baseball, both schoolboy and professional, as its centre sport, with traditional sumo wrestling, nationalised and sporti¿ed as a counterpoint. In Australia, soccer has languished in a marginal position as the fourth of four different football codes that dominate its national sportscape (the others being Australian Rules Football, Rugby League, and Rugby Union: Hay and Murray 2006). And in the US, soccer never found growing room in a sports year ¿lled by three distinctly American centre sports – American football, basketball, and baseball (Hellerman and Markovits 2001). All three nations have thus been sporting exceptionalists to twentieth century trends. For several decades, however, soccer has been making inroads in all three societies, especially in Japan, and in this chapter I want to explore Japan’s embrace of the sport, particularly from the perspective of ethnicity and nationality. This is a development that I initially encountered quite unexpectedly, after spending ten years or so in the world of Japanese baseball and, to a lesser extent, sumo. Baseball and sumo, since the late 1950s, have been deeply implicated in a nationalised ethnicity of Japaneseness (Kelly 1998). Each in its own distinctive way has de¿ned and defended connections between national character, playing style, social relations, and body form and comportment. The ‘¿ghting spirit’ (konjǀ) of Japanese baseball and Japanese baseball players was pitted, ideologically, against American baseball and the ‘foreign players’ who were reluctantly recruited as temporary mercenaries. Sumo was asserted to be the putative Japanese national sport, whose ‘dignity’ (hinkaku) could be properly displayed only by Japanese bodies and Japanese spirit. I ¿nally started to pay attention to J.League soccer (and to its academic literature) in the mid-2000s, and I quickly sensed some palpable differences. The passionate and Àamboyant expressions of the supporters, for instance, ¿lled the stadiums with banners, chants, and songs. Samba rhythms, references to Japanese anime characters, and European pop lyrics were all drawn into a multilingual melange. Soccer cheering seemed only somewhat less orchestrated and coordinated than the baseball cheering groups I had studied at Kǀshien, but the unrestrained and creolised exuberance of soccer cheering did contrast with the more mechanistic and repetitive styles of baseball. Certainly soccer has successfully cultivated an image of grass-roots concerns, youthful independence,
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and cosmopolitanism, and I began to wonder if this might be a basis of new connections – or disconnections of – ethnicity and nationality. My argument is quite straightforward: for 50 years or so, since the immediate post-Second World War decade, the dynamics of ethnicity and nationality in Japanese baseball and in Japanese sumo have been similar – despite great differences in the organisation of the two sports – and that in the recent emergence of soccer, the dynamics of ethnicity are operating rather differently. In this chapter, I ask what are the differences between the existing order of baseball and sumo and a possible new sporting order around soccer and why such a new order may emerge. Thus, soccer raises some critical issues beyond the world of sports itself. Surely all of us who are students of contemporary Japan would agree that one of the most pressing issues facing Japanese society today is how and how quickly it will move in acknowledging and addressing its changing cultural and ethnic composition. Sports have been part of the problem because they have embodied dominant and essentialising images of nationalised ethnicity, but they – at least soccer – may also be part of the way forward in demonstrating a more Àexible sports citizenship. Far more than baseball or sumo, it is soccer that provides Japan with a public stage for reformulating notions of civic membership and ethnic nationalism because soccer is the most global sport in the world. Globalisation has spawned a huge literature, but I suggest that fundamentally it has three elements. A scholarly consensus refers to it ¿rstly as a global interconnectivity under conditions of timespace compression. Secondly, this interconnectivity is not just of breadth but depth; the neologism ‘glocalisation’ is sometimes used to characterise the mutual conditioning of global and local forces but in fact there are far more intricate vertical chains of inÀuence up and down multiple levels. Thirdly, globalisation refers to the doubled processes of standardising (but not erasing) local differences while relativising (but not eliminating) dominating forces. Soccer demonstrates all three elements of globality. The dense linkages and Àows of players, capital, spectatorship, media images, merchandise; the multiple intersecting levels of local clubs, domestic leagues, national teams, and regional and world championships; and the transnational governance structure of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) itself – these and other features of soccer globality are forcing Japan to rethink sporting practices and sporting relationships within the society, among Asian nations, and in the world.
Soccer: Japan joins the global game As I noted above, soccer has a long history but a low pro¿le in Japan, languishing for much of the twentieth century as a minor school, company, and recreational sport. A league of company teams, the Japan Soccer League, was formed in 1965, but it attracted little public interest, and the national team fared poorly in international competition (Moffet 2002). In the late 1980s, the Japan Football Association (JFA), the sport’s governing body in Japan, began a campaign to
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convert this into a fully professional league, in order to make Japan more competitive in the FIFA soccer world and to challenge the then dominant domestic sports interests, especially baseball. The new ‘J.League’ began play in 1993 and brought several notable innovations to Japanese sports. It aligned Japanese soccer organisation with FIFA rules, but J.League clubs were deliberately structured as a combination of European club system and the American corporate model of ownership and operation. The league also was innovative in introducing a split season format (with the winners of each half-season meeting to determine the championship) and penalty-kick shoot-outs to decide matches that ended in a tie. J.League also aimed to challenge the existing school/corporate nexus of sport by fostering sport as a public good. Each club is required to invest in regional sports facilities, community outreach, and local youth training. It has actually been successful with this; soccer is now the most played youth sport, and it is played outside schools more than within a school framework (Zen-kǀtairen 2010). J.League also worked with the JFA to signi¿cantly upgrade the national teams, both men’s and women’s, although the relationship has been rocky at times and the JFA has been less helpful to the semi-pro J.League for women. Although the men’s national team has struggled in World Cup competition, the J.League itself has proven to be among the savviest marketers of all FIFA countries. From the start, it engaged Sony Creative Products to design comprehensive image brands for each team and the league and to reinforce and manage this branding across merchandise and broadcasting. These, then, were the overt agendas of the public and private interests which brought J.League soccer into being and which are now the subject of a small but insightful academic literature (e.g. Arimoto and Ogasawara 2005; Birchall 2001; Edwards 2007; Hirose 2004; Horne 2007; Horne and Manzenreiter 2008; Manzenreiter and Horne 2004; Moffett 2002; Perryman 2002; Takahashi 1994). J.League popularity and ¿nancial health wavered precariously for a decade, but the recruitment of several Japanese stars by European clubs and Japan’s co-hosting of the 2002 World Cup with Korea have placed the sport on a ¿rmer footing a decade into the new century. It has been more nimble than either baseball or sumo in addressing its ¿nancial problems and ¿ne-tuning its organisation. By quickly suspending its season and arranging charity matches, professional soccer responded far more admirably to the Great Eastern earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011 than the confused and divided responses of baseball and sumo. Despite the troubled national economy, soccer continues to grow. Indeed, comparing the recent trends in baseball, sumo, and soccer, I am led to speculate that while baseball and sumo were very much Japan’s twentieth-century centre sports, soccer is likely to replace them as the country’s twenty-¿rst century centre sport. Predictions are fraught with peril, but I think there are four reasons why soccer is well-positioned to push to the fore. The ¿rst is that soccer offers Japan a truly global playing ¿eld that neither baseball nor sumo had offered. Modern sumo, as it was reorganised in the Meiji period, de¿ned itself as uniquely Japanese, with Shinto trappings and ritual paraphernalia, even as it created generic sporting features of regular competitive
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tournaments, rankings, ownership governance, and training routines. Baseball, from its own Meiji origins to the present, has been framed primarily as a binary with American baseball, from friendly competition to ideological rival (Guthrie-Shimizu 2012). By contrast, soccer is the only major team sport that is truly global in expanse and in governance (Kelly 2007), and it allows Japan to position itself in a far wider and more complex ¿eld of sporting internationalism. Unlike sumo and baseball, soccer around the world has evolved into a distinctive competitive grid of thousands of locality-based clubs (for instance, the 18 different clubs in J.League’s Division 1, with often multinational player rosters) and more than 200 national teams, which periodically draw players from whatever clubs they play for, domestically or abroad. The result is an intricately overlapping, crosscutting, and shifting grid of rivalries and loyalties. The FIFA world is supranational rather than international in that most matters of jurisdiction, capital investment, intellectual property rights, and (soccer) citizenship are adjudicated by national and transnational sports federations and not by nation-states. A second advantage of soccer is the opportunity it provides for a robust ¿eld of East Asian sports competition. With baseball, basketball, and other major sports, the competitive imbalances among Japan, China, the Koreas, and Taiwan cannot sustain rivalries of any nationalist fervour or commercial pro¿t. By contrast, national team soccer over the past two decades has produced unpredictable swings in relative strength, passionate, even violent, encounters among the East Asian countries, and a growing Àow of players among the domestic leagues and the national teams. The World Cup qualifying structures and a 46-nation membership that stretches from Beirut to Tokyo has made the Asian Football Confederation the largest regional federation in the FIFA world. Soccer is not only an avenue to globalise Japanese sports but also a way to Asianise Japanese sports. A third set of factors that favour soccer’s growing importance in Japan are the several innovations by which it is challenging the baseball-sumo dominance. Its corporate-municipal-community hybrid ownership structure has not been seamlessly implemented but it is much more attractive and much more Àexible than the entrenched corporate control of professional baseball and the exclusive and inbred stock system of sumo. Its local clubs are required to develop youth soccer programs; its supporter associations have proved to be more open than those of professional baseball teams. Faced with the determined resistance of Japanese professional baseball for access to major stadium venues and television and newspaper coverage, the J.League was forced to distribute its teams widely across a network of second-tier cities and turn to alternative advertising. This has actually proven to be an unexpected boon to spreading the popularity of soccer and, in effect, challenging baseball from below. In matters of gender, too, world soccer has both a men’s game and women’s game, unlike baseball (for which there is only the parallel and largely ignored sport of softball) and sumo. While the women’s game still lacks equal resources and attention to the men’s game, as women’s elite sports participation and level of
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excellence have risen dramatically into the twenty-¿rst century, soccer is far better positioned to attract women as players and fans. Certainly the extraordinary success of the Japanese women’s soccer team in Olympic, Algarve Cup, and World Cup tournaments (far beyond that of the national men’s team) has generated a broad excitement and support as well as considerable commercial rewards for the players themselves. The world of soccer, like the world of work, is still far from the ‘gender-equal’ societal norms professed in government policy and legislation (Osawa 2011), but the prominent achievement of the women’s team is a case in which sport (as baseball and sumo) no longer reÀects Japan society’s dominant gender ideology but rather (as soccer) is unsettling these norms as it demonstrates an alternative future. A ¿nal set of factors concern the ways in which ethnicity and nationality are expressed and con¿rmed in the world of soccer. Here too, it is entirely possible that soccer is demonstrating a broader sense of national belonging in and for twenty-¿rst century Japan than was the case with the more rigid distinctions that characterised the twentieth-century centre sports of baseball and soccer. Very broadly, I propose that the Japanese sports world has moved through three orders of ‘sports citizenship’ over the last century or so. The ¿rst four decades of the twentieth century constituted an order of ‘imperial athletes’, a coercively inclusive and hierarchical order of belonging as ‘athletes of Greater Japan’ or Dai Nippon Senshu. The post-Second World War decades of late Showa recon¿gured sports citizenship around ethnic alterity, establishing a cultural-essentialist binary between (Japanese) ‘athletes’ (senshu) and ‘foreign athletes’ (gaijin senshu). What we see now, especially in and through soccer, is an emerging third order of mobile athletes, mutable ethnicity, and Àexible sports citizenship, determined in the case of soccer by supra-governmental FIFA norms rather than by nation-state laws. This is the topic that I turn to the next sections.
Imperial Japan: sports and the ‘Greater Japan athlete’ By the early twentieth century, both baseball and sumo had moved to the centre of Japanese sports popularity, supported by national sports associations, state ministries, the school system, and major commercial interests, including the new national press and metropolitan transportation and leisure industries. Baseball was very much the dominant sport, but sumo’s ability to present itself as both commercialised entertainment and as Shinto-ised national ritual attracted popularity, prestige, and patriotism (Tierney 2007). It was in 1936 that the ¿rst professional baseball league began play, sponsored by corporations and drawing on school and university graduates of the schoolboy game that was already Japan’s most popular sport. The clubs cast a wide net, recruiting beyond Japan proper to mainland Japanese who had gone to the colonies, to Korean and Taiwanese players educated in Japanese colonial schools, to ethnic Japanese from Hawai’i and the American West Coast – like pitcher Henry ‘Bozo’ Wakabayashi and catcher Yoshio ‘Kaiser’ Tanaka, and to several nonethnic Japanese who lived in Japan, most notably, the White Russian from
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Hokkaido, Victor Starf¿n; Starf¿n, popularly known as the ‘blue-eyed Japanese’ was enshrined in the Hall of Fame as the ¿rst pitcher to win 300 games (GuthrieShimizu 2012). Looking back, what is remarkable from our perspective is how little attention was paid to ethnic backgrounds in administrative procedures, media commentary, and fan support. It remained a largely unmarked category. This inclusiveness, however, was coercive and hierarchical. Among the most prominent and tragic examples of its imperial dynamics was the case of marathoner Sohn Kee-chung, winner of the 1936 gold medal at the Berlin Olympics. Sohn was a Korean runner who set several marathon records but who was forced to compete as a member of the Japan delegation under his Japanised name, Son Kitei. He refused to use this name as a signature and to sing the Japanese anthem, he tried to hide the Japanese emblem on his uniform on the victory stand, and he and his supporters and the Korean press suffered for this resistance (Guttmann and Thompson 2001: 124–5). In these and other sports of imperial Japan, differential political standing was more critical than differentiated ethnic status, and the common subjecthood of athletes and teams was a paramount expectation of the state.
Liminal athletes: Rikidǀzan and Wally Yonamine It was only after Japan’s defeat in the Paci¿c War that ‘Japaneseness’ as ethnicity came to serve such a crucial role as a basis for post-war national identity, and the cline of imperial citizenship became the binary of ethnic citizenship. Spectator sports were an important venue that made evident the contortions of this cultural nationalism as they came to occupy an even more central place in the emerging mass culture. The revival of a vibrant and rambunctious mass culture in the postwar 1950s was led by the new medium of television, which began with NHK (state television) broadcasts in February of 1953, immediately followed by the private Nihon Television (NTV) network. Much of the early programming – certainly the most popular programming – was of sports, especially pro wrestling, boxing, and professional baseball. Two of the biggest stars of this post-war mass culture were the professional wrestler Rikidǀzan and the baseball player Wally Yonamine. Rikidǀzan was a young sumo wrestler who quit the sport and moved to professional wrestling in 1950. He garnered an immediate national following for a series of matches against visiting American opponents, which were staged as moralistic battles between the heavy foreign ‘heels’ and the protectors of Japanese virtue. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese watched open-air televisions set up by corporate sponsors in urban parks in February 1954, for instance, to follow a three-day series of tag-team matches against the American world champions, the Sharpe brothers. Rikidǀzan and his partner endured endless painful dirty tricks and cheap shots from the Americans over and over, until ¿nally, Rikidǀzan could stand it no longer and let loose with his most famous move, a so called karate chop that brought victory (and justice) to the country. It was Japan versus the US, Asia versus the West, and Japan, in the body of Rikidǀzan, outlasted the brute strength and underhanded tactics of the foreign intruders.
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Rikidǀzan, however, was a curious embodiment of Japanese honour. Born in Korea and recruited to the mainland for sumo, he was caught in the limbo of second-class permanent resident status shared by hundreds of thousands of other Koreans. Of¿cially, his Korean background was never acknowledged and the media steered clear of mentioning it, although it was still widely known among wrestling’s fan communities. Baseball presented its own drama in an effort to make the transition from imperial defeat. It was quickly restarted in the aftermath of defeat, in part through the encouragement of General MacArthur, who thought it a properly American sport, appropriate for a new ‘democratic’ Japan. The ¿rst such player was actually a liminal ¿gure: the Hawaiian-born Japanese-American nisei (second generation) Wally Yonamine. Yonamine was signed by the Yomiuri Giants in 1951 with the encouragement of the American Occupation authorities, who were generally interested in promoting baseball as yet another democratic American practice. They thought that his Japanese descent would ease his acceptance, but in fact it was often an obstacle to his popularity. He was heckled by fans and criticised by commentators who found American nisei like Yonamine to be the worst of both sides – neither trusted by fellow Americans nor accepted as Japanese for having been a traitor on the enemy side of the war (Kelly 1998). Nonetheless, Yonamine had a very successful career. He became the best lead-off hitter in the league and was known for his aggressive base-sliding, which had not been a tactic used in the Japanese majors before. However, his relations with the Giants club remained troubled, and he was dismissed abruptly in 1960, after the legendary manager, Kawakami Tetsuharu, declared that the Giants would be ‘100 per cent pure Japanese’ (Yonamine went on to take revenge on the Giants, as player and manager of the Chnjnichi Dragons).
Post-war Japan: ethnic alterity and the ‘foreign player’ (gaijin senshu) After Yonamine, a contractual and conceptual divide was drawn between regular players (senshu) and foreign players (gaijin senshu), the latter held apart by quotas, special contracts, different training, and distinct expectations. From early 1950s to the present, almost 1,000 foreign baseball players have been hired by the 12 Japanese professional baseball teams, and more than half have lasted but a single season. The players hired from American professional ranks were largely White, sometimes African-American – like one of the best-known from the 1980s, Warren Cromartie – and occasionally Caribbean. They were and remain very well remunerated (much above Japanese standard salaries), and they are the subject of extensive news coverage and commentary, which often follows a predictable messiah–scapegoat cycle. All too often, they are hired and introduced as team saviours, they then meet with mixed success as the season wears on, and are eventually dismissed with loud public criticism of their laziness, sel¿shness, and lack of proper (which is to say, Japanese) ¿ghting spirit (Kelly 1998).
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The other side of the divide – the pure Japanese player – proved equally problematical because, as any fan knows, Yonamine was not the last of the liminal ¿gures. Consider Oh Sadaharu, the legendary power hitter of the Yomiuri Giants and holder of the world record for career home runs. He was born and raised in Japan to a Chinese father and Japanese mother. He retained his Taiwanese citizenship and remained immensely popular in Taiwan and among Taiwanese residents of Japan. Indeed, some of the greatest ‘Japanese’ players of his generation were of mixed parentage, and a roster would include such stars as: •
•
•
Kinugasa Sachio, the Hiroshima Carp third-baseman whose 2,215 consecutive games played broke Lou Gehrig's seemingly untouchable record. Given Gehrig's nickname, ‘Iron Man’, Kinugasa was born to a Japanese mother and an African-American G.I. father. Kaneda Masaichi, a Korean resident of Japan who leads the pitchers' record book with 400 career pitching victories and 4,490 career strikeouts. ‘Golden Arm’ Kaneda played 15 years with the Kokutetsu Swallows, but announced he would no longer pitch on less than three-day rest. He was traded to the Yomiuri Giants, who accepted that and other conditions. His ability to dictate such personal conditions led to his later nickname, ‘Emperor’ Kaneda. Harimoto Isao, another Korean resident of Japan, was a long time star out¿elder for the Tǀei Flyers, setting the single-season and lifetime records for batting average. His antics and independence earned the nickname, the ‘Wild Man of Tǀei’. Harimoto too was traded to the Giants late in his career.
This in fact was baseball’s version of Nihonjinron, the late Shǀwa civil religion of ethnic nationalism, shaped around claims of Japanese exclusivity and nativism. However, a conceptual dichotomy like indigenous-foreign is just that – a categorical opposition. It allows few anomalies. Kaneda, Oh, and others could be – had to be – elided, however uncomfortably, into the Japanese category, and these mixed Japanese heroes were kept on a very short ideological leash by their clubs and the media. This was done by insisting that whatever their blood-ethnic backgrounds, they all shared the experience of coming up through baseball in the Japanese school system. This for me is the most telling point. The great secret of Nihonjinron was not the false belief that the nation was built on a ‘mono’-ethnicity, a putative ethnic purity, and that baseball was complicit in this mysti¿cation. Most fans were not that duped. It was a suspension of disbelief rather than naive misrecognition that allowed them to see Oh as Japanese and the string of American players as the foreign other. Rather, the deeper myth was the contradiction at the heart of such ethnic claims. The Japaneseness that was the central tenet of cultural nationalism seemed to be about being Japanese but in fact it was much more about doing Japanese, about performing Japanese. The status of such players as Oh and Kinugasa – being ‘partially’ Japanese but being seen as performing Japanese – explains, I believe, their fascination and their popularity for so many fans: the ambivalences of their
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identity were experienced by many in the larger post-war society. Japaneseness as a tenet of national civil religion may be held to be a natural consequence of birth and blood, the intuitive expression of a homogeneous population. However, becoming this kind of Japanese for most Japanese – women, regionals, lower classes, and stigmatised minorities – has always been learned, incomplete, painful, and vulnerable. It was precisely such mutual resonance, I think, that rendered compelling such ¿gures as Oh and Kaneda. The premise of purity required the pathos of performance. Post-war sumo followed the same course as post-war baseball, from inclusive to exclusive sports citizenship. The foreign wrestler became a marked import category in the 1960s. The ¿rst such sumo wrestler was the Hawaiian-American Jesse Kuhalua, who wrestled as Takamiyama, gained Japanese citizenship in 1980, and retired to become a stable-master in 1984. He has been followed by more than 180 foreigners, from Hawai’i, Tonga, Samoa, Brazil, eastern Europe, Russia, and central and east Asia. Their receptions and success have been quite mixed. Some Sumo Association of¿cials and conservative commentators decry their presence and foreign wrestlers have come in for an inordinate amount of (even racist) criticism, not unlike that directed at baseball players. Still, over the last two decades or so, foreign wrestlers have remained at about ten per cent of the 600–700 or so registered wrestlers (roughly the same numbers as in pro baseball), drawing now especially from Mongolia. As of March 2012, 22 of the 38 registered foreign wrestlers are from Mongolia, foremost of course being the current lone yokozuna (Grand Champion) Hakuhǀ (Lédeczi 2012). Sumo remains mired in yet another – and perhaps fatal – scandal, this time over bout ¿xing, but most of the principals in this corruption are Japanese wrestlers and stable masters. Not a few commentators (and fans) are of the view that the sport would be in even worse shape without the foreigners, and the record-setting accomplishments and generally digni¿ed comportment of Hakuhǀ is at the centre of these assessments. It is curious perhaps that the most ‘national’ of Japanese sports should not only embrace a foreign-born champion but do so in the rhetoric of the most Japanese of wrestling ideals, but this is in large part a measure of the forced socialisation of sumo wrestlers through the wrestling stable system. The 620 (in 2012) wrestlers live and train in 58 stables; Japanese and foreigners alike are recruited from the bottom-up as apprentices and must endure and share the same hierarchical internal relations, the same cloistered and communal dorm living, and the same daily routinised practices of small set of drills. They become sumo wrestlers and a few become yokozuna champions, and there is but a single ideological standard, whose qualities – physical, psychological, and spiritual – are coded as Japanese.
Soccer in twenty-¿rst century Japan: mobile athletes and Àexible sports citizenship In the new century, the rigid binaries of baseball and sumo are proving to be problematic, and both sports are trying, as they did after the Second World War, to
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make a transition. Like sumo’s treatment of Hakuhǀ, baseball has shed some of its ethnic nationalism, especially through the inÀuence of Bobby Valentine, the former American major league player and manager who managed the Chiba Lotte Marines, in 1995 and then in 2004–9. In 2005, he took a team of unseasoned rookies and ageing veterans to the club’s ¿rst Japan championship in 31 years. A month later, the club won the Asia Championship over teams from South Korea, Taiwan, and China. He was the most popular manager in Japan, living near the ballpark, riding his bike to work, giving interviews in Japanese, appearing on a wide range of TV shows from the serious to the silly. He was embraced by the club’s fans, who built a shrine to him at the stadium entrance, lined ‘Valentine Way’ with huge murals, and showed up every Saturday evening to take Latin dance lessons with him before the game. He was embraced by leading Japanese corporate sponsors, voted young people’s ideal boss in a national poll. All of this was not only for a charismatic personality (and some real baseball smarts) but for espousing and succeeding with a hybrid training philosophy, managing style, and merchant strategy that unabashedly mixed Japanese and American elements. He was ¿nally released in 2009 by the club’s (Korean-Japanese!) corporate owner, but he has had a continuing impact in decentring the US–Japan alterity that had been conventionalised in the previous four decades. It is in contrast to these strenuous efforts to sustain substantive claims and ¿xed equivalences of ethnicity and nationality in the twentieth-century sporting order that emerging patterns in Japanese soccer are so intriguing. It is not that ethnicity and nationality are disappearing as markers of difference, but that their substance and their relationship to one another are mutating and their grounding in citizenship is unmoored. There are three particularly signi¿cant manifestations of these developments. The ¿rst is how willing and able the J.League has been in accommodating nonJapanese national players and coaches inclusively (although not seamlessly). Indeed, bringing in foreign stars was part of the original strategy to attract fans, to raise the level of play, and to gain the attention of foreigners and FIFA. Dozens of well known players from Europe and South America have played for J.League teams. In the last two decades, the Japan national team has had a succession of coaches from Germany, France, Brazil, Bosnia, and now Italy as well as a Japanese ex-player. Some of the foreign stars do receive higher salaries and special subsidised bene¿ts like their baseball foreign player counterparts. However, unlike the baseball world, many others are signed to regular contracts with little or no special treatment – and unlike sumo, they are not stripped of their ethnic and racial identities and disciplined into a uniform Japanese mould. The media presentations and the real engagement of many of these players with teammates and fans convey a cosmopolitan conviviality that contrasts sharply with the image (and often reality) of baseball and sumo. A second channel of transnational Àows has been the recruitment and play of Japanese players for clubs abroad in Europe and in South America. Of course, here too one is reminded of the signing of major Japanese baseball players to Major League Baseball teams in the US, but the differences are striking. As
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against the highly constraining stipulations of bi-national agreements between the two professional baseball leagues, Japanese soccer players move through a much more Àuid transfer and loan structure. More than 120 Japanese soccer athletes have played for teams in 30 countries. Fully half of the Japanese men’s team are playing for European clubs, and beginning with Nakata Hidetoshi, Japan’s ¿rst global soccer celebrity, several have attained prominence beyond narrow labels of the ‘Japanese player’. Finally, between the high pro¿le European stars coming in and the Japanese players going abroad, there is a third signi¿cant category of those who are moving across citizenship and nationality lines within Japan and across the East Asia region. For the last two decades, the J.League and the Japan national team have been vivid platforms for Japan’s engagement with South Korean players, with Nikkeijin and others from Brazil, and with its own Zainichi (Japanese-resident) Korean players, who often come out of Korean-language high schools in Japan that have long faced signi¿cant barriers in sports participation. A total of 390 non-Japanese have played in the J.League between 1993 and 2011, and the largest contingent (86) have come from South Korea, Japan’s arch regional soccer rival during those years (Wikipedia 2012). They often circulate among J.League and (South Korean) K-League contracts and appearances on the South Korean national team, garnering followings for their play with local J.League teams that is suspended when they turn up on the opposite side in international team matches. Another 48 of the 390 foreign nationals have come from Brazil, and a number of these have become Japanese nationals and members of the national team. Wagner Lopez, for example, came to Japan in 1987 when he was recruited to play for the Nissan Motors corporate team, and he moved into the J.League upon its formation. He obtained Japanese citizenship just before the 1998 World Cup quali¿cation rounds and played on the national team and in J.League for several years. After retiring, he moved back to Brazil and now manages a club in Sao Paolo that actively seeks Japanese-Brazilian players who might be sent to Japan. Alessandro dos Santos is another well known player from Brazil who began with the youth team of the Brazilian club Gremio. He was recruited to Japan at the age of 16 with a high school scholarship and joined the J.League in 1994. He was J.League player of the year in 1999. He became a Japanese citizen in 2001, adopting the playing name of ‘Santos’. He was selected for the national team in 2002 and appeared for Japan for four years, while continuing to star in J.League. A ¿nal category, small in number but equally signi¿cant for its rami¿cations for citizenship and nationality, has been the dozen Zainichi Korean players (Chapman 2004). Their roots and their backgrounds in Japan vary widely. Some have come through the regular Japanese school system while others went through the special schools operated by Chongryon, the North Korean resident association. Most well known of the latter players is Jong Tae-se, a star in Japan and a star for North Korea (Shin 2010: 25–68). Jong was born in Nagoya, Japan to second-generation Japan-resident Koreans. His father retained South Korean citizenship though his mother af¿liated herself with Chongryon. Jong was signed to the J.League club
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Kawasaki Frontale after graduating from Korea University in Tokyo in 2005. He had an immediate effect in the league as a striker and his stylish play and exuberant persona off the ¿eld made him a fan favourite especially among Japanese and Korean youth. As the 2010 World Cup qualifying rounds approached, he was courted by Japan, South Korea, and North Korea. Through his father, he held South Korean citizenship (and Japan residency), but he eventually decided to play for North Korea. Because South Korea does not allow dual citizenship, North Korea issued him a travel passport, which satis¿ed FIFA rules for soccer citizenship, so he was simultaneously a South Korean citizen, a North Korean passport holder, and a Japan permanent resident permittee! After the 2010 World Cup he signed with a German club and in 2012 he is playing with a second German club. Lee Tadanari is another popular Zainichi player, but he has taken a very different course (Shin 2010: 277–318). Born in 1985 in Tokyo to third-generation Japanresident parents (his father had played in the Japan corporate soccer league), Lee went to regular Japanese schools and joined a J.League team in 2004 after high school. He also trained with South Korean junior national teams but he was frustrated at being teased as half-Japanese. He uses a Japanese name and in 2007, he decided to take Japanese citizenship, immediately being selected for the U-23 national team. In 2011, playing for Japan’s main national team, Lee scored the dramatic overtime goal against Australia to win the Asian Cup for Japan. From 2012, he moved to the English club Southampton. These and others are examples of how soccer’s Àexible sports citizenship is upending the earlier notion that wherever one plays as a club player, he returns ‘home’ to play for his country. As Hiroki Ogasawara (2004) put it, ‘the signi¿cance of being a member of a nation is now replaced by the possibility of becoming a member’ – and, we might add, of choosing and moving among these possibilities. There are a number of reasons for why soccer is producing this Àexible soccer citizenship and what we can term a mutable soccer ethnicity. For instance, the global dynamics of FIFA have created a rather free-Àoating grammar of national playing styles, often characterised through bundles of adjectives: organised, improvised, cunning, quick, methodical, dribbling, passing, physical, creative, cautious, and so on. And like many national teams, Japan’s has had a series of foreign coaches – ¿ve in the last ten years: a Frenchman, a Brazilian, a Bosnian, a Japanese, and now an Italian. Each has had his own international playing experience, and each has articulated a distinct training and playing philosophy claimed to be distinctive to Japanese strengths. The result has been a revolving gallery of ‘national team styles’. This has not discouraged incessant commentary on what is felt to be Japanese-style soccer – just as talk continues about national styles of baseball, golf, and other sports. But with soccer, it is much more dif¿cult under these conditions to maintain hard and fast sporting ethnic verities.
Soccer’s prospects in Australia and the United States And what of the prospects of the sport in those other two twentieth-century soccer recalcitrant nations? I have focused here on Japan, and the question deserves a far
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more rigorous comparative inquiry than I can give here, but one can say the following brieÀy. Soccer in Australia has struggled to gain traction and ¿nd an identity as the fourth and least popular of its four football codes, behind Australian Rules Football, the most powerful in revenues and spectatorship, as well as Australian Rugby Union and the National Rugby League. It is hard to imagine an early diminution of passion for such an exciting sport as the Australian Football League. Nonetheless, soccer has growing rates of youth participation, and, ironically, its future potential may lie more in its new Asian connections rather than its English origins. The Australian economy is now oriented towards and integrated into the Asian regional economy, but Australian society seems much less willing to embrace the importance of Asia for itself. It was thus signi¿cant that Football Federation Australia in 2006 voted to move from the Oceania Football Confederation to the Asian Football Confederation. Australia is now an Asian soccer nation – indeed, both its Socceroos’ men’s team and Matildas’ women’s team are Asian soccer powers, and it is likely that this reorientation will have reverberations beyond soccer passions and af¿liations (Hallinan, Hughson and Burke 2007). For decades in the US, soccer has faced just as uphill a battle in gaining exposure and prominence. It is foolish to suggest that it will soon break the hold that American football, basketball, and baseball have on media, spectatorship, and corporate sponsorship, but as in Australia, its youth participation rates are rising noticeably and television interest in the European leagues and World Cup is growing. In addition, there are two other factors to consider. For the United States, Latin America is analogous to Australia’s Asia – vitally important and increasingly interconnected. Spanish is the US’s unof¿cial second language (already a ¿rst language in some parts of the country), and soccer is a means of assimilation for two language communities. A second factor is gender. Baseball and American football remain male bastions, and elite women’s basketball is thriving at the university level but is stymied at the professional level. Soccer may prove a more successful instrument towards gender parity (Edwards 2007; Kietlinski 2011). Certainly the sport’s prospects in the US depend equally on women – not soccer moms but soccer players. There are already far more female soccer players than male players in the US, and it has been the sport most affected by the Title IX revolution in women’s sports participation. It is a symbol of hope for those seeking gender sports equity that the women’s national teams of all three countries – Japan, the US, and Australia – have dominated international competitions in recent years, with Japan and the US regularly vying in the ¿nals of the Women’s World Cup, the Olympics, and the Algarve Cup.
Globalising Japan through soccer In conclusion, it may be possible, though I think unlikely, that baseball and/or sumo can reform themselves with suf¿cient effect to retain their twentieth-century dominance in Japan much longer. I think it is more likely that we are seeing a
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displacement, by soccer and by other developments, of a sports order that has been relatively stable for six decades. If so, it will have a number of implications, for Japanese sporting experience and for Japanese society, and I have focused on one of them here. My claim is not that soccer is a panacea for a Japan that is struggling to reimagine the parameters of its national community (Morris-Suzuki 2010). But more so than baseball and sumo, soccer is broadening the realm of the possible and extending the horizon of expectations, and I have suggested a few of the reasons for why this is so. Internally, it is providing an arena for a more inclusive and creatively expressed multi-ethnicity evident in team life, in stadium behaviour, in supporter association organisation, and in league promotion. Regionally, it is proving to be, for better or worse, the sports medium that most intensely and most equally engages Japan and its East Asia rivals (and perhaps expanding to a larger notion of Asia) in highly public international competition. The mobility of players and the competitive and Àexible sports citizenship of national teams in the Asian arena are decoupling the governance of citizenship from the nation-state. And most broadly, the global scale of FIFA soccer offers Japan a compelling future beyond the US-dominated bi-national frame of baseball and the even more closed and troubled world of sumo. Soccer at any level and certainly not among the FIFA pros has never presented an ideal world of multi-ethnic equality, but it may well provide for Japan an instructive venue for the fundamental rethinking of its national community that so many Japanese want and that the country so needs.
References Arimoto, Takeshi and Hiroki Ogasawara, eds. 2005. Cultural Studies of Football: Sakka no Shigaku to Seiji-gaku [Cultural Studies of Football: the Poetics and Political Science of Soccer]. Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin. Birchall, Jonathan. 2001. Ultra Nippon: How Japan Reinvented Football. London: Headline Book Publishing. Chapman, David. 2004. ‘The Third Way and Beyond: Zainichi Korean Identity and the Politics of Belonging’. Japanese Studies 24(1): 29–44. Edwards, Elise Marie. 2007. ‘Gender Lessons on the Fields of Contemporary Japan: The Female Athlete in Coaching Discourses’. In This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan, edited by William W. Kelly, 211–28. New Haven: Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University. Foer, Franklin. 2004. How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. New York: HarperCollins. Giulianotti, Richard. 1999. Football: A Sociology of the Global Game. Oxford: Polity Press. Goldblatt, David. 2006. The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Football. London and New York: Viking. Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri. 2012. Transpaci¿c Field of Dreams: Baseball and Consumer Modernity in U.S.-Japanese Relations, 1872–1952. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Guttmann, Allen and Lee Thompson. 2001. Japanese Sport: A History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
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Hallinan, Chris, John Hughson and Michael Burke. 2007. ‘Supporting the “World Game” in Australia: A Case Study of Fandom at National and Club Level’. Soccer and Society 8(2–3): 283–97. Hay, Roy and Bill Murray, eds. 2006. The World Game Downunder. Melbourne: Australian Society for Sports History. Hellerman, Steven L. and Andrei S. Markovits. 2001. Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism in Sport. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hirose, I. 2004. ‘The Making of a Professional Football League: The Design of the J.League System’. In Manzenreiter, W. and J. Horne (eds.), Football Goes East: Business, Culture and the People’s Game in China, Japan and South Korea (pp. 38–53). London: Routledge. Horne, John. 2007. ‘The J.League, Japanese Society, and Association Football’. In This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan, edited by William W. Kelly, 229–46. New Haven: Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University. Horne, John and Wolfram Manzenreiter. 2008. ‘Football, Komyuniti and the Japanese Ideological Soccer Apparatus’. Soccer and Society 9(3): 359–76. Kelly, William W. 1998. ‘Blood and Guts in Japanese Professional Baseball’. In The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its Leisure, edited by Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück, 95–112. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kelly, William W. 2007. ‘Is Baseball a Global Sport? America’s “National Pastime” as Global Field and International Sport’. Global Networks 7(2): 187–201. Kietlinski, Robin. 2011. Japanese Women and Sport: Beyond Baseball and Sumo. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Lédeczi, Bandey. 2012. ‘2012 Haru Banzuke’. Available from: http://www.szumo.hu/ fullbanz/2012Haru/MAKUUCHI.HTM [accessed March 31 2012]. Manzenreiter, Wolfram and John Horne, eds. 2004. Football Goes East: Business, Culture and the People’s Game in China, Japan and South Korea. London and New York: Routledge. Moffett, Sebastian. 2002. Japanese Rules: Why the Japanese Needed Football and How They Got It. London: Yellow Jersey Press. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2010. Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era. New York and London: Cambridge University Press. Ogasawara, Hiroki. 2004. ‘“Back to the Pitch, Reclaim the Game”: Is That Only What Matters? An Outer-National Reading of the World Cup’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5(1): 28–41. Osawa, Mari. 2011. Social Security in Contemporary Japan. London: Routledge. Perryman, Mark, ed. 2002. Going Oriental: Football after World Cup 2002. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Shin, Mukoeng. 2010. Sokoku to Bokoku to Futtobǀru: Zainichi SakkƗ Aidentiti [Fatherland, Motherland, and Football: Zainichi Soccer Identity]. Tokyo: Random House Kǀdansha. Takahashi, Yoshio. 1994. SakkƗ no Shakai-gaku [The Sociology of Soccer]. Tokyo: Nipponhǀsǀshuppankyǀkai. Tierney, R. Kenji. 2007. ‘From Popular Performance to National Sport: The Nationalization of Sumo’. In This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan, edited by William W. Kelly, 67–90. New Haven: Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University. Wikipedia. 2012. ‘J.League players and managers’. Available from: http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/J.League#Players_and_managers [accessed March 31 2012]. Zen-kǀtairen [All Japan High School Athletic Federation]. 2010. Heisei 22-nendo Kamei Jǀkyǀ [2010 Federation Conditions]. Tokyo: Zenkoku Kǀtǀ Gakkǀ Taiiku Renmei.
10 Internationalising sumo From viewing to doing Japan’s national sport Howard Gilbert and Katrina Watts
Introduction: four phases of the internationalisation of sumo This chapter argues that sumo, in both its professional and amateur forms, is a practical example through which the more general discourse of internationalisation may be understood. The internationalisation of sumo has taken place in four overlapping phases, which reÀect the subtle interplay of Japan as both an object and subject of internationalisation. The ¿rst phase focused on the arrival of Western discourses about sport and the athletic male form in the late nineteenth century and changed the way sumo was viewed in Japan, necessitating a reinterpretation of sumo as an indigenous way to train the male body: from local practices to a ‘national sport’. The second phase was characterised by increasing Japanese migration at the turn of the twentieth century and led to amateur sumo being performed by Japanese immigrants in parts of North and South America; a cultural link to their national homeland that gave sumo a place outside of Japan. During a third stage, from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, non-Japanese competitors began to appear in the ranks of professional sumo in Japan: the sumo world began to exhibit an international feel, alongside a general wave of internationalisation (kokusaika) in Japanese society. The ¿nal phase began in the early 1990s, when there arose a growing worldwide interest in participating in amateur sumo, mirroring the established presence of foreign athletes in professional sumo. In particular, the fourth phase of internationalisation demonstrates that sumo is not a monolithic entity. The authors draw upon their experience with the International Sumo Federation (IFS) to show that the professional and amateur sectors of sumo have responded to internationalisation in markedly different ways. Professional sumo (ǀzumǀ) has negotiated the increasing presence of foreign athletes by making them adhere to Japanese cultural traditions and in essence trying to ‘Japanise’ them. While large numbers of foreign-born sumo wrestlers (rikishi)1 have entered professional sumo, the sport still retains an aura of stoic Japanese masculinity.2 Nevertheless, the presence of foreigners has caused changes within the traditional structure and workings of the Japan Sumo Association (Nihon Sumǀ Kyǀkai) and inÀuenced the attitudes of Japanese fans of
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professional sumo. Amateur sumo, on the other hand, has grown from being a sport performed exclusively in Japan, or among the Japanese diaspora, to one which aspires to recognition on the global sporting landscape and, in particular, a future as an Olympic sport.
From feudal to modern: becoming a ‘national sport’ Sumo has been cast as a national sport of Japan due to its connections with Japan’s history and mythology. The precursors of today’s sumo took many forms, which have been slowly merged over the ensuing centuries (Bolitho 1987; Newton 2000; Kanazashi 2002). Although it is debatable whether these components are still applicable to the practice of sumo today, they are symbolically important because both amateur sumo and modern-day ǀzumǀ trace their lineage from them. ƿzumǀ claims an ancient history, associations with the Imperial family, religious connections to Shintǀ and agrarian rites, and a place as part of the martial training of samurai (Nihon Sumǀ Kyǀkai 2012). However, the origins of the professional sumo that we see today are arguably as recent as the late eighteenth century, and the social contextualisation of sumo has varied through the ages (Bolitho 1988). Sumo had provided popular entertainment for both rural and urban populations, often drawing the ire of government of¿cials (Tierney 2007),3 but it was a performance of sumo before the shǀgun, Tokugawa Ienari, in 1791 that legitimated ǀzumǀ’s position in society. This gave sumo a ‘veneer of gentility’ and it pro¿ted from the attention of wealthy patrons, approval from government of¿cials, and increasing interest from urban intellectuals (Bolitho 1988: 30). Despite sumo’s origins in the agrarian rites of rural Japan and its ties to Shintǀ and the Imperial family, professional sumo’s place was as part of the urban popular culture that grew during the Tokugawa period, particularly in Edo. ƿzumǀ was ‘at the cusp of fashion’ (Tierney 2007: 83) and its popularity attracted crowds to the ‘Àoating world’ entertainment districts in the three major cities where it was performed (Bolitho 1988). Sumo was not yet ‘explicitly “traditional” nor “national.” The displays were extremely varied and did not tend to fall within the modern concepts of “athletics” or “sport”’ (Tierney 2007: 70). The identi¿cation of sumo as a ‘national sport’ steeped in Japanese culture and history, but also ¿tting the modern concept of sports and athletics, evolved during Japan’s period of modernisation from the middle of the nineteenth century. Tierney (ibid.: 67–93) has shown how the acceptance of Western discourses regarding the body, civilisation and evolution, from this time and beyond, inÀuenced the way sumo was viewed and promoted. As Japan modernised in the Meiji period, ideas adopted from Europe and the United States regarding appropriate roles of the body in society came to prominence (Tierney 2002). For example, the development of the individual body became a concern for the national good; physical education and sport were introduced for youth. With a new emphasis on athleticism, trained bodies and modern sport in Japanese society, ǀzumǀ was seen as undesirably un-athletic, traditional and feudal (Tierney 2007).
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Whereas sumo had once been entertaining and impressive to the public, its popularity now began to wane and it faced criticism in the press from social commentators (Kazami 2002). The corpulence of the participants was at odds with Western ideas about the body, athleticism, and the place of sport in society. Added to a hypersensitivity to the way that Japan was viewed by those from abroad, meant that ‘[t]he wrestlers and their nakedness came to stand for Japan’s backwardness’ (Tierney 2002: 18). Indeed, such was the threat posed by these new ideas about the body and modesty, a prohibition on public nudity threatened the very future of sumo (Kazami 2002). ƿzumǀ tried its best to weather this opposition, including by having the rikishi and the organisation perform social duties, such as creating an auxiliary ¿re¿ghting unit in 1876 (Kazami 2002; Kanazashi 2002). Support from Meiji oligarchs Saigǀ Takamori, Itǀ Hirobumi, and Itagaki Taisuke was another key factor in legitimating the sport (ibid.). However, perhaps the most signi¿cant boost to ǀzumǀ in the modern period came from a performance before the emperor in 1884, where sumo’s traditional association with the Imperial family dating back over a thousand years was (re-)invoked (Tierney 2002: 91–3). For this performance, aspects of sechie-zumǀ, sumo performed before the emperor as an agrarian rite from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, were reintroduced or reinvented. The Imperial audience, and particularly its coverage by the national newspapers, did much to revive the popularity of ǀzumǀ (Kanazashi 2002). Furthermore, changes in prevailing attitudes boosted the social status of sumo once again. From the mid-1880s onwards ‘the frantic pursuit of Western things began to abate and a more critical, discriminating look at Western culture and institutions came to be taken’ (Hane 1986: 132). Renewed interest in Japanese traditions and culture, particularly Confucian thought and morals, was led by leading Japanese intellectuals, including some who previously had fervently supported the initial wave of Westernisation (ibid.; Beasley 1995). Additionally, the rationalisation and codi¿cation of martial arts (budǀ) into uni¿ed regimes provided a corps of indigenous methods to train the (male) body that were also linked to spiritual and psychological qualities seen as unique to Japan.4 The implication was that the physical/martial performances (bu) of judo, kendo and karate also possessed a philosophical ‘way’ (dǀ) that should be followed. Sumo is also often attributed with having a philosophical and moral element, or ‘Way of Sumo’ (called sumǀdǀ). However, rather than being labelled as one of the budǀ (which it technically is), sumo is most often described by the term ‘kokugi’, translating approximately to ‘national skill’ or ‘national technique’. Even though other martial arts can be, and are, referred to as kokugi, using this term predominantly for sumo implicitly nationalises and differentiates it from other sports and Japanese martial arts. At a time when Western ideas of athleticism were prominent, and many sports were introduced from Europe and the US, Western sports were marked as different in a lexical sense by the use of the English loanword supǀtsu (sport/sports) to describe them. While using kokugi to describe sumo, and perhaps consider it as a martial art rather than as
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a mere ‘sport’, is undoubtedly attractive, contemporary sumo in fact ¿ts most of the seven criteria for modern sport that Guttmann (1978) has identi¿ed: secularism, equality of opportunity and competition, specialisation, rationalisation, bureaucratic organisation, quanti¿cation, and the quest for records. With a revival in sumo’s social status around the same time as the foundation of modern sport in the Japanese school system (Kimura 2003), sumo also developed into a participant sport. Although ǀzumǀ as public entertainment and spectacle had become the most prominent form of sumo in Tokugawa Japan, sumo also continued to be performed, as it long had been, in various contexts at local shrines and in local festivals.5 These community tournaments occurred perhaps seasonally or annually but there were also other symbolic sumo performances, such as ring-entering ceremonies, the wearing of ceremonial aprons (keshǀmawashi), performance of shiko (the ceremonial foot stamping of sumo), or other links to the rituals associated with performing sumo. This was known as kusa-zumǀ, among other names, and was performed by, and for, local communities precisely for cultural purposes.6 Another name given to sumo performed outside of the professional sphere was shirǀto sumǀ, literally ‘amateur’ or ‘novice’ sumo, contrasting these participants with the specialists who performed ǀzumǀ. In the late nineteenth century, educators, literati and other elites who were fans of professional sumo worked to establish sumo as a structured participant sport for non-professionals. They aimed at creating sumo as a modern, amateur sport that ¿tted somewhere between the vulgarity and ad hoc nature of provincial kusa-zumǀ and the organised spectator sport of ǀzumǀ. They drew inspiration and a set of rules from ǀzumǀ, which was seen as the highest echelon and paragon of the sport (Shimokawa et al. 2002). Amateur sumo began in the school system, as had happened with the introduction of other modern sports in Japan.7 The so-called ‘gentlemen’s sumo’ or ‘literati sumo’8 was established in Japan’s urban areas, based around the educated and privileged young men from elite schools (Imamura, cited in Fujikawa 1982: 28). As the principal of the Tokyo Higher Normal School (Tǀkyǀ Kǀtǀ Shihan Gakkǀ), Kanǀ Jigorǀ9 advocated sumo as a necessary part of the physical education curriculum in 1900 (ibid.; Shimokawa et al. 2002). Following this lead, sumo grew as an extracurricular activity in more schools around the country, and became incorporated into sports days and commemorative ceremonies at schools as well (Fujikawa 1982). Because of its stronghold in the schools, this new sport became known as student sumo, or gakusei sumǀ (ibid.), and is the beginning of what we now consider amateur sumo. Amateur sumo remained very much in its infancy for the ¿rst decade of the twentieth century. In schools, student-athletes from other sports, such as the more established school sport of baseball, were often co-opted into school sumo teams when needed (Fujikawa 1982). The ¿rst of¿cial student sumo competition was held in Osaka in 1909 (Chikara September 1974b). It was followed the next year by two further tournaments in Osaka, and similar ones in Tokyo, where there were also Waseda-Keio intercollegiate events (Fujikawa 1982). Although the sumo bout is an individual contest, the emergence of intercollegiate competition gave
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rise to one of the peculiarities of amateur sumo, the team competition (ibid.).10 This development is perhaps not surprising given the competitive inter-school rivalries that were already prevalent in sports such as rugby, rowing and baseball (Abe, Kiyohara and Nakajima 1992). Amateur sumo, therefore, is a product of the period of increasing formalisation and uptake of modern sport in which it developed. As Smart (2007: 115) has noted, across the world ‘[t]he period from the 1870s to the 1920s represented a “take-off ” phase, an important period in which international competitions, tournaments and tours began to occur with increasing frequency.’ The desire to bring sumo into line with other sports and allow structured competitions for amateur athletes, most notably within the framework of intercollegiate sporting competition, created the sport of amateur sumo. It embodied most of the attributes of professional sumo, including the rules, the dohyǀ (the sumo ring), and the underlying principles of trying to combine mind, technique and body (shingi-tai) in the performance of sumo. Modern discourses on athleticism, the rise of amateur sport in Japan, and the repositioning of professional sumo as an athletic contest all helped in the creation of amateur sumo as a competitive sport. However, its close connections with ǀzumǀ from inception meant amateur sumo also absorbed the nationalistic and masculine underpinnings of professional sumo. Amateur sumo became embedded in the school system as an indigenous sport, drawing upon Japanese history and values that could cultivate athletic (male) bodies.
Japanese diaspora and the cultural performance of sumo While sumo was undergoing identity changes in the late nineteenth century, Japan’s geographical and cultural boundaries were also being rede¿ned. Large numbers of Japanese emigrated from their homeland to seek new opportunities abroad, precipitated by rural poverty and the desire for better prospects and earning potential. This was ¿rst inspired by a government scheme and later through private emigration services (Dusinberre 2012). In particular, high taxation had caused increased sales of land by indebted farmers, which led to high land tenancy in rural areas in the late nineteenth century (Stanlaw 2006). Furthermore, the Conscription Law of 1873 introduced compulsory military service for adult males, removing many able-bodied workers from the countryside (ibid.). Such hardship for farmers, coupled with the squeeze of a growing population, forced many to seek work abroad in Hawaii, continental North America and, later, Latin America (ibid.).11 While the Japanese state was controlling a growing territorial empire, the spread of Japanese people went further than geo-political boundaries. The settlement of large numbers of ethnically Japanese emigrants (nikkeijin) in North and South America can be considered as an informal extension of the Japanese empire.12 Their presence encouraged the performance of sumo in Hawaii, the west coast of the US and Brazil as one way of enacting Japanese cultural practices in a new, and sometimes hostile, environment.13 Sumo tournaments in the new locale
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also had meaning as a physical contest, just as kusa-zumǀ had in the Japanese countryside. Tierney notes that: [S]umo served both as a sport and also as a way of comparing the skills and strengths of the participants and, by extension, the community. Thus, that sumo was a popular activity within the hard laboring emigrant communities is not a surprise. (Tierney 2002: 315) In Japan the performance of sumo for cultural reasons was usually held outside of formal amateur sumo competitions and organisations, most usually with performances in local shrines or as part of a local festival. However, in the overseas Japanese communities the organised amateur sumo tournaments were the cultural performances. Sumo and other cultural practices, therefore, kept alive the links between nikkeijin settlements and the culture of the Japanese homeland. As will be noted below, efforts were made by both the settlements and Japanese organisations to encourage sumo among nikkeijin abroad. Japanese amateur and professional sumo groups acted to nourish the sport among nikkeijin groups. Historically, the downtime between the of¿cial professional tournaments (hon-basho) was ¿lled with regional tours (jungyǀ) to different parts of Japan, underwritten by a local promoter (Kanazashi 2002). In the pre-war period, the jungyǀ were conducted by the individual sumo stables, or by groups of stables (ibid.). These tours were designed to expose the Japanese public in rural areas to professional sumo, to supplement the income of the sumo stables, to ensure the athletes had suf¿cient regular training between tournaments, and to serve as opportunities to scout the next generation of athletes. As Japan’s formal and informal empire expanded in the early twentieth century, the ¿rst sumo tours outside Japan began as an extension of the traditional jungyǀ. In the pre-war period, groups of ǀzumǀ athletes toured Hawaii or the US mainland, and sometimes talented nikkeijin athletes were recruited into ǀzumǀ (Tierney 2002). The Àamboyant yokozuna Hitachiyama took a small group of rikishi from his own heya (sumo stable) on a visit to Europe and America in 1907 giving demonstrations of sumo (Frost 2010).14 The ¿rst exhibition match tour was in 1914 to Hawaii, where many Japanese immigrants continued their love for and support of sumo. It was followed by a visit the next year to the American mainland. In 1921, a group travelled to both Hawaii and continental US (Kanazashi 2002). That these jungyǀ were held in Hawaii and the US, just as they were in regional centres throughout Japan and in parts of Japan’s formal empire, such as Korea, demonstrates the Àuidity of ‘Japaneseness’ at this time and the discursive nature of nationality, belonging, and the ‘national’ sport of sumo. Furthermore, it shows that there was suf¿cient interest within overseas Japanese communities to warrant local promoters incurring the costs of such trips. Amateur sumo athletes also conducted goodwill tours to the US prior to the war. The All-Japan Student Sumo Federation (Zen-Nihon Gakusei Sumǀ Renmei) sent small groups to the mainland in July 1925, June 1926 and July 1927 (Chikara
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November 1974). They also sent a group to Hawaii in 1930 and a follow-up tour was taken in 1937, but thereafter war between Japan and the US halted such expeditions (Chikara September 1974a). In the post-war period, there was also signi¿cant outreach to nikkeijin communities from both professional and amateur sumo organisations in Japan. As before the war, several professional jungyǀ visited Hawaii during the 1960s and 1970s, with some carrying on to California.15 Whereas pre-war connections had focused on the appearance of Japanese sumo groups to perform sumo for nikkeijin communities and provide moral support to their local sumo organisations, post-war connections focused more on sporting interaction and Àows in both directions. The professional jungyǀ continued to be revenue earners but also became opportunities for stablemasters to scout young Polynesian talent, as happened with the 1964 jungyǀ to Hawaii. Jesse Kuhaulua, who would become the ¿rst non-Asian ǀzumǀ tournament winner, was introduced to one of the stablemasters and invited to join his heya.16 The Nihon Sumǀ Renmei, Japan’s amateur sumo ruling body, resumed its goodwill visits to Hawaii as early as 1951, and visited again in 1956, 1959 and 1973. The All-Japan Student Sumo Federation (Zen-Nihon Gakusei Sumǀ Renmei) took groups in 1960 and 1977 (Chikara June 1977), and the Ishikawa Sumo Federation sent members in May 1956 and then in May 1976. While athletes and of¿cials from Japanese amateur sumo continued to be invited to nikkeijin community tournaments, foreign teams also began to visit Japan to improve and extend their sumo experience. Hawaii sent its ¿rst team to Japan in 1961 and followed with another in 1974 (Chikara September 1974a). One of the bene¿ts of exchanges with Japan can be seen in the increase of non-nikkeijin in foreign amateur sumo teams. For example, the Hawaiian team that visited Japan in 1974 had only seven nikkeijin among the party of six administrators and 18 athletes (Chikara September 1974a). During this second trip, the Nihon Sumǀ Renmei and its prefectural sumo organisations hosted the team for two weeks of Japan-America goodwill sumo tournaments around Japan in July and August (Chikara June 1974).17 Intense competition schedules such as these helped improve the Hawaiian athletes, and also demonstrated the Japanese support extended to overseas outposts of sumo. In one tournament programme, a message from Hawaii’s Acting Governor George Ariyoshi (himself a nikkeijin) acknowledged this support from Japan: In Hawaii, where sumo has drawn the interest of our people for a good many years, we are indebted to the sumo organization of Japan which has been of much assistance in the past in the development of sumo in Hawaii. . . . We are grateful to the All-Japan Amateur Sumo Association for cooperation with the Hawaii Sumo Renmei, for without that cooperation, sumo in Hawaii would not be what it is today. (‘Nichi-Bei shinzen sumǀ kyǀgi Shizuoka Taikai [Japan-USA goodwill sumo Shizuoka tournament]’).
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Japanese groups began to directly assist Brazilian sumo as well, aided by the increased availability of trans-Paci¿c air travel. Although sumo had long been performed by nikkeijin in Brazil, it was not until 1962 that the Brazil Sumo Federation was formed (Chikara September 1976); thus centralising and orchestrating contact with Japanese amateur sumo administrators. The Ishikawa Sumo Federation was prominent in assisting Brazil, visiting seven times in three decades.18 They also invited a group of athletes to Ishikawa in May 1983 and groups of Brazilian children in August 1986 and July 1994. The Nihon Sumǀ Renmei also sent teams to Brazil at intervals, just as it had done to Hawaii. For example, Tanaka (2002) recounts his trip to Brazil in 1983 to attend a tournament commemorating the 75th anniversary of Japanese emigration to that country. These bilateral exchanges were vitally important in establishing and developing amateur sumo overseas. However, the beginning of regular competition between teams from Japan, the US and South America was perhaps as, or more, important for the internationalisation of amateur sumo. The beginnings of this took place in August 1980 in Kanazawa city, Ishikawa Prefecture (Fujikawa 1982), where a tournament was held between Japanese teams, a Hawaiian group (two teams) touring Japan at the time, and a team of Brazilian high school students that had already excelled by placing third among 40 teams at the 29th Towada National High School Invitational in Aomori earlier in the same month (ibid.; Chikara September 1980). This was the ¿rst time that the three countries had fought each other in amateur sumo, and it laid the platform for regular contact over the next decade (as a later section will show).
The internationalisation of ǀzumǀ: from kokugi to kokusaika Outreach to foreign amateur sumo groups in the 1970s and 1980s also paralleled the increasing participation of international competitors in ǀzumǀ, particularly those recruited in Hawaii. Unlike the previous two phases, the third phase of the internationalisation of sumo saw the concerted inclusion of nonJapanese athletes into professional sumo and the promotion of ǀzumǀ beyond the Japanese diaspora.19 The jungyǀ to Hawaii and the US continued through the 1960s and 1970s, and Japanese amateur sumo organisations continued to sumo support their Hawaiian and Brazilian counterparts. However, there were also other attempts to make the wider world more aware of sumo. Brief international professional sumo tours, called kǀen, were made by the Nihon Sumǀ Kyǀkai at the invitation of a host country (Kanazashi 2002). The ¿rst such international tour was to the Soviet Union in July 1965 (visiting Moscow and Khabarovsk), and there were visits to more than a dozen cities thereafter, mostly through the 1980s and 1990s (ibid.).20 Rather than seeking a pro¿t, as the jungyǀ did, these kǀen served as exhibition tours both to strengthen the friendship and goodwill between Japan and the host nation, and to introduce the traditional sport of Japan to a wider international audience. For example, the 1985 visit to
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New York celebrated 25 years of the sister city relationship with Tokyo (Sharnoff 1993), while the 1997 Australian tour marked the centenary of bilateral trade relations. As such, sumo athletes were sometimes referred to as ‘naked ambassadors’ (hadaka no taishi). However, the real ambassadors in the internationalisation of professional sumo in the post-war period were the foreign athletes who sought to break into ǀzumǀ for adventure, fame and glory. Sumo in Hawaii (and Brazil) had originally been the domain of nikkeijin, but there was growing interest among certain oyakata (ǀzumǀ stablemasters) in Polynesian recruits for their size and power. With the recruitment of Jesse Kuhaulua into professional sumo after being scouted on the 1964 jungyǀ to Hawaii, the sumo world began to exhibit a growing international feel. Competing under the ring name Takamiyama, he was the ¿rst non-Asian to enter professional sumo. Prior to him, there had been small numbers of nikkeijin from Hawaii and other Asians from areas of Japan’s pre-war empire. As noted sumo historians Andy Adams and Clyde Newton (1989: 71) have stated, ‘[t]he rise of Takamiyama in addition to overseas tours during the 1960s and 1970s to California, Hawaii, Russia and China did much to spread the popularity of sumo internationally.’ Takamiyama rose quickly through the lowest divisions, then stalled when he started ¿ghting more experienced opponents in the makushita division, but still made the salaried juryǀ ranks in exactly three years. He was in the makunouchi top division within another year. In July 1972, he made his biggest impact by becoming the ¿rst foreign-born athlete to capture a tournament title. As a result, he was promoted to the third highest rank of sekiwake but was unable to cement a spot as a consistent title contender for the remainder of his 20 year career in professional sumo. Takamiyama had his eye on the future and realised he could only remain in sumo after retirement, as a stock-holding sumo elder, if he became a naturalised Japanese citizen. In 1980, while still an active competitor, he was granted Japanese citizenship, which allowed him to acquire the Azumazeki stablemaster share to run his own heya when he retired ¿ve years later. Takamiyama had a huge inÀuence on the entrance and acceptance of foreigners into sumo. He proved that outsiders could learn and excel in sumo, which encouraged others to try. Nevertheless, sumo remained Japan’s national sport, and the foreign-born rikishi were expected to adhere to the rules and lifestyle of the sumo world, with almost no allowance made for being foreign. Takamiyama, as the pioneer, succeeded because of his work ethic and his decision to adhere to the (Japanese) expectations and norms of the sumo world. He never lost his popularity with the fans, which carried over to his second career as an oyakata. His example showed that young men from outside Japan who came to ǀzumǀ could be judged on their ability, rather than their nationality, as long as they were not too conspicuously ‘foreign’. If they adhered culturally, adapting to the language and culture and sumo norms, they would be generally accepted. Sumo wrestlers live a communal life in the heya under the direction of their oyakata and his wife. There are chores to be done in addition to strenuous sumo training and there is little independence or freedom, in particular for the lower ranked wrestlers. The rikishi depend on the heya to feed and clothe them, and
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better conditions come with rising higher in the rankings through strong tournament results. The dependence on the heya for existence means a foreign recruit cannot be fussy; the food, the lifestyle, the customs are all issues to be both enjoyed and overcome. For example, Mongolian recruits at the ƿshima stable were horri¿ed to have to eat raw ¿sh, as they had never as much as eaten cooked ¿sh at home. A Russian boy at another heya baulked at having to eat so much rice, which he thought of as lacking Àavour. Another recruit, a Muslim, tentatively asked when recruited if he would be expected to eat pork and drink alcohol and was told that he most probably would; he thoughtfully announced that he would keep his religion in his heart.21 However, facing signi¿cant challenges in adapting to this lifestyle, many foreign rikishi could not (or would not) make the necessary adjustments. Six Tongan recruits joined Asahiyama stable in the mid-1970s, at the behest of the Tongan king, and yet they all left en masse after less than two years.22 Kototenta, a 22-year-old from Canada, was undefeated in his ¿rst three tournaments but quit and left for a career in professional wrestling. He could not adjust to a system so different from his previous life in Canada: having to get up at 5 a.m. and clean the Àoors before practice, being told he could not smoke, having to be back in the heya by curfew and, worst of all, having to take orders from 16-year-olds just because they were his seniors in the heya hierarchy, by virtue of having entered before him or being higher up the rankings.23 Even among those foreign rikishi who adapted to the lifestyle and succeeded on the dohyǀ, their deportment marked their relative ‘foreignness’ and how they were accepted by Japanese fans. Konishiki, a fellow Hawaiian and Takamiyama’s junior stablemate, was less willing to comply with the rules. Starting as an 18-year-old weighing 175kg, Konishiki rocketed up the ranks, partly because of his superior size and power. He reached the second highest rank of ǀzeki in ¿ve years, the highest rank achieved by a foreigner to that point, and remained there for a further six years. As an ǀzeki, he won three tournament titles, drawing his fair share of attention in the process (Konishiki 1988). During particularly proli¿c periods in late 1989 and 1990 and again through 1991 and early 1992, there was the prospect that Konishiki might qualify to become the ¿rst foreign yokozuna, the highest rank in sumo and for which the promotion criteria requires dignity of character (hinkaku) as well as the necessary competition results. There was criticism voiced that a foreigner could not possibly understand the depth of Japanese culture and the responsibilities of the position of yokozuna, due to an innate lack of hinkaku (Kojima 1992). This was perhaps a response to Konishiki himself, rather than all foreign rikishi, but there was speculation that the guiding principles for promotion to yokozuna were applied more stringently as a result (Gilbert 2004). Ultimately, Konishiki was not promoted to the rank of yokozuna and his results faded, perhaps inÀuenced by the controversy. However, Akebono, a protégé of Takamiyama and a fellow Hawaiian, could not be denied by his back-to-back tournament titles at the rank of ǀzeki shortly thereafter. It helped too that he had inherited Takamiyama’s humble work ethic and ability to ¿t into the cultural norms of the ǀzumǀ world. Akebono followed the
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rules and understood his place in the Japanese system. When asked by the press how it felt to be the ¿rst foreign yokozuna, he replied that nationality was irrelevant when it came to sumo: he was not Hawaiian, he was a sumotori (a sumo wrestler). He demonstrated, as had Takamiyama, that sumo could transcend national limitations, albeit with the recognition that this was Japan’s national sport and their playing ¿eld. His response was also indicative of Japan’s engagement with internationalisation at the time. This internationalisation of professional sumo came at a time when Japan was pursuing greater interaction with the rest of the world. Internationalisation (kokusaika) had became a popular domestic discourse in the 1970s and 1980s (Befu 2001), at the peak of Japan’s economic might, and encompassed Japan’s growing superpower status in political and cultural spheres. Kubota (2002: 16) has suggested ‘kokusaika aims to understand people and cultures in the international communities through various social, cultural and educational opportunities. It also aims to transform social and institutional conventions to adapt to the international demands’. We might think of kokusaika partly as Japan’s re-engagement with the world, and vice versa, following cautious relations after the Second World War. International awareness of Japanese language, society and culture increased, and much scholarly and popular literature about Japan was produced.24 Key characteristics of Japan’s internationalisation in the 1970s and 1980s can be observed. Firstly, Japan was predominantly attempting to increase contact with Western countries. Secondly, kokusaika was a signi¿er of Japan’s economic success – precisely because of Japan’s economic position, international interaction was desirable and available. Having achieved parity with, or even surpassing, the economic power of major nations, Japan was now in a relationship of interdependence with North America and Europe (McCormack 1996). This rapid achievement gave Japan’s international presence a decidedly nationalistic and parochial tone: ‘with Japan’s global economic work already in full blossom, Japan needed to tell the world and, more important [sic], itself a story about its newly achieved worldwide inÀuence’ (Sedgwick 2001: 44). Likewise, McCormack (1996: 274) believes internationalisation, at least as understood in Japan, ‘did not necessarily imply the internal transformation of Japanese society; rather, it was accompanied by a continued, perhaps growing Japanese insistence that economic success demonstrated the unique qualities of the Japanese way’. With a focus towards economic powers in North America and Europe, kokusaika showed signs of justifying Japan’s presence among the powerful nations of the world. The strong nationalising tone that internationalisation in Japan took meant that ‘[k]okusaika essentially blend[ed] Westernisation with nationalism, failing to promote cosmopolitan pluralism’ (Kubota 2002: 14). Kokusaika could be seen as promoting Japan and its qualities to the rest of the world by virtue of its economic success and the newly acquired status of international superpower, but limiting the return inÀuences upon Japan. Van Bottenburg (2001: 197) has stressed that ‘the dominant direction in the spread of cultural goods mirrors the power relations between states’. This suggests relations whereby Japanese culture was revealed to the world in controlled ways, but with little or no accompanying acknowledgement
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that the world might interact with, and act upon, the ‘Japaneseness’ being exported. Furthermore, such interactions would also take place with speci¿c notions of state(s), nation(s) or culture(s) involved in the interaction or transfer. Sumo was one Japanese cultural item propagated abroad during this wave of kokusaika. Van Bottenburg (2001) further argues the popularisation of sport at a particular time mirrors the balance of power internationally. Thus, an increased interest in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s also extended to its sporting landscape. All rikishi, foreign or otherwise, who took part in overseas jungyǀ and kǀen were representatives of Japan’s national sport and demonstrated this internationally, whether for pro¿t or goodwill, as an example of Japanese culture. Those foreign athletes who ventured to Japan to join ǀzumǀ had to adhere to Japanese cultural norms, and there was little allowance made for cultural differences. Effectively, foreign rikishi had to subsume themselves to Japanese culture in their undertaking of ǀzumǀ. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, efforts by Japanese amateur sumo groups encouraged the growth and development of the sport, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, in nikkeijin communities in North and South America. Input and support from Japan to these communities promoted and reinforced amateur sumo as a uniquely Japanese cultural product: sumo was performed by Japanese diaspora, with support from both the nikkeijin communities and Japan itself, as a way of maintaining and re-enacting Japanese culture, despite physical separation and dislocation from Japan. In terms Iwabuchi (2002) might use, these displays of sumo retained a strong Japanese cultural odour because, although not held within Japan, they were performed within a Japanese-inÀuenced cultural setting. Sumo, therefore, was not only enacted as a competitive sport but rei¿ed as a cultural performance, one easily identi¿able with Japan, such that its performance could represent the country and its culture in various parts of the world. Much of the justi¿cation for this came from sumo’s privileged position as the ‘national sport’ and its presence in Japanese history and mythology. Part of the popularity of overseas sumo demonstrations, either ǀzumǀ or amateur sumo, came from them being easy to understand and the exoticness that was transposed upon the sport.25 Furthermore, the popularity of sumo abroad during the kokusaika period may be attributed to the visible foreign presence of foreign athletes in ǀzumǀ and the increased media coverage of ǀzumǀ outside of Japan.26
Amateur Sumo: from kokusaika to the Olympics Just as its professional counterpart was doing, amateur sumo began to internationalise as well. As detailed earlier, Hawaiian and Brazilian teams had begun to tour Japan for practice and competition in the 1970s. The earliest international tournament had stemmed from a meeting of Hawaiian, Brazilian and Japanese prefectural teams in 1980. Thereafter, an amateur sumo tournament in Tokyo called the All-Japan Novice Sumo Championships (Zen-Nihon Shirǀto Sumǀ Senshuken Taikai) grew beyond its established format of including only Japanese prefectural teams in the competition. From the mid-1980s onwards, invitations were also extended at different times to teams from Great Britain, Germany, India
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and up to a dozen different countries, prompting the tournament to be renamed the International Sumo Championships (Kyǀsu 1994; International Sumo Federation 2012).27 Although dominated by Japanese prefectural teams, both in terms of skill and numbers, the presence of international teams demonstrated how amateur sumo was spreading beyond Japan’s borders and ethnic connections. At the same time, overseas promotion of amateur sumo was also occurring. The Nihon Sumǀ Renmei organised goodwill trips of Japanese athletes and of¿cials to visit various cultural and sporting festivals around the world, where they conducted displays and training sessions, showcasing sumo to new audiences, mirroring the jungyǀ and kǀen undertaken by their professional counterparts. By the early 1990s, international amateur sumo had shifted from its roots among Japanese diaspora in North and South America. Athletes who had little connection to Japan, except perhaps through other martial arts, were invited to attend the newly created international tournaments in Japan, designed to give amateur sumo the same international appeal as ǀzumǀ. These efforts to internationalise amateur sumo may also be understood as kokusaika. Japan was the focal point for amateur sumo, and assisted overseas outposts in nikkeijin communities by providing technical support and resources. Later, the Nihon Sumǀ Renmei showcased sumo as a Japanese cultural icon at sporting or cultural demonstrations in other countries. Amateur sumo also slowly became a sport that could be tried by selected non-Japanese, albeit with Japan’s assistance. International tournaments gave non-Japanese competitors the opportunity to try their hand at amateur sumo and compete in Japan, as well as perhaps emulating the increasingly visible foreign rikishi in professional sumo. Importantly, the Japanese amateur sumo community was also interested in the inclusion of foreigners because it allowed amateur sumo to be recognised as ‘international’ and part of the kokusaika wave in Japan. Concerns were even expressed within the Nihon Sumǀ Renmei that without providing an international environment in amateur sumo, young Japanese athletes would be less inclined to choose sumo over other sports (Chikara June 1974). The establishment of the IFS in 1992 was a continuation of this process. Conceived of and implemented by Japanese administrators to administer amateur sumo internationally, it inaugurated the ¿rst Sumo World Championships the same year, following on from the previous International Sumo Championships. The Sumo World Championships were a truly international tournament, with dozens of countries invited to attend and with each nation only represented by one team. However, Japan remained at the heart of the organisation and tournament: Tokyo was the host, Japanese companies were the sponsors, and the IFS was primarily run by administrators co-opted from the Nihon Sumǀ Renmei. At the behest of the IFS, small groups of Japanese amateur sumo athletes and administrators continued to demonstrate sumo to overseas audiences. However, now the focus was showing sumo as a participatory sport and to attract interested participants from other sports, such as judo, wrestling and boxing. The efforts of these Japanese sporting ‘missionaries’ or ‘ambassadors’ (Van Bottenburg 2001) bore fruit, with numbers for the Sumo World Championships growing annually from 25 countries
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in 1992 to 43 countries by 1995.28 This sudden initial growth was also largely due to the ¿nancial support from the IFS and its sponsors, enabling these countries to send teams to the tournament. With a growing membership, the IFS made key decisions that shaped the international administration of the sport. In 1995, continental sumo unions were formed to develop the sport within their regions, a move which relieved pressure from the IFS to run the sport entirely from Japan. It also gave relative autonomy to the continental unions to develop the sport in their regions, and provided a degree of Àexibility to the national sumo federations also. The IFS also sought to lighten its ¿nancial load by phasing out funding to national federations for them to attend the Sumo World Championships. This placed a greater burden of self-suf¿ciency on the national sumo federations and, not coincidentally, the number of participating countries declined after this funding was withdrawn. The IFS, heavily inÀuenced by its Japanese-run Executive, remained as the central administrative unit, issuing directives and organisational information. However, the extra tier of administration the continental sumo unions represented, and the relative autonomy each was given to administer the sport in their region, meant that Japan was no longer the only centre of amateur sumo activity.29 The expansion of amateur sumo also occurred less evenly and predictably than before, dependent upon the organisational strength and vision of each continental sumo union and its collective membership. The result has been regional variations in the growth of the sport and the emergence of directions that sometimes contradict Japanese practices, or even sometimes the desires of the IFS. For example, the European Sumo Union (ESU) has introduced a new under-21 category to span the gap between the IFS supported junior (under-18 years) and senior ranks. Furthermore, the ESU has also added a new weight class for competition (under 100kg) that is yet to be recognised by the IFS. From 1996, the IFS shifted its focus from promoting sumo abroad to seeking recognition from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) so that amateur sumo might become an of¿cial Olympic event. The goal of Olympic recognition was one of the initial aims of the Japanese members of the IFS Executive when the sport was established internationally (Yomiuri Shimbun 1992), but it could not be pursued wholeheartedly until the Sumo World Championships were successfully underway and the sport had gained momentum. The IFS thought recognition by the IOC would help with worldwide uptake of the sport, but the onus was now on amateur sumo to transform itself to adhere to Olympic ideals. Undoubtedly, inclusion in the Olympic Games exposes any sport to a truly global audience, but most of the sports within the Olympic programme already have suf¿cient exposure and their very inclusion reÀects their worldwide popularity.30 Nevertheless, the IFS aimed to meet IOC requirements in a bid to elevate amateur sumo to a new, global echelon of sporting recognition that only the Olympic Games could provide. To gain IOC recognition, amateur sumo needed to have a minimum of 75 member countries across four continents, to apply the guidelines of the Olympic Charter, and to meet the global standards of the Olympic Movement.
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As a major hurdle was having suf¿cient member federations to be considered for IOC recognition, the IFS continued recruiting new nations to the sport. However, many appear to have been signed on in name only, regardless of whether they actually competed at the Sumo World Championships or continental championships. Despite the number of national federations exceeding the 75 required by the IOC, there have never been more at the Sumo World Championships than the 43 countries in 1995, even though this was before the of¿cial push by the IFS for Olympic inclusion. As the IFS focused on IOC recognition, it forced existing federations to fend for themselves, and tasked these established countries with assisting their neighbours by way of the continental sumo unions. The IFS inaugurating the continental sumo unions and focusing on the Olympic Games represents a broader internationalisation of amateur sumo than the previous kokusaika approach. Although Japan had once been the centre of almost all amateur sumo activities, the many bilateral relations between the IFS and its member nations were now replaced by a series of multi-lateral relations facilitated by each continental sumo union. To ensure equality of participation, as required by the Olympic Charter, amateur sumo decided to embrace weight divisions in competition, the inclusion of women in the sport, and the adoption of anti-doping policies. All of these developments are foreign to professional sumo,31 and most were also foreign to Japanese amateur sumo.32 Most notable, perhaps, was the inclusion of women into amateur sumo, which necessitated certain changes to remove overtly masculine elements that the IFS thought would deter potential female athletes.33 In pushing for IOC recognition, the IFS had to consider opening the sport to women because a 1994 amendment to the Olympic Charter outlined one of the IOC’s goals as ‘encourag[ing] and support[ing] the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women’.34 The inclusion of women signalled a major shift for amateur sumo, and highlights the way that the ideals of the Olympic Movement had power to bring change to the sport. In particular, in seeking new opportunities for amateur sumo, the IFS went against the tradition of excluding women in Japanese sumo, both professional and amateur. ƿzumǀ maintains a strict ban on women entering the dohyǀ owing to its sacred position as an anointed Shinto site and, until this time, amateur sumo had followed suit by excluding women as well. As stated earlier, striving for Olympic inclusion was done speci¿cally to gain international recognition for amateur sumo and to help lift its pro¿le above other sports competing for spectators, potential athletes, corporate sponsorship and media exposure. While this was a conscious move by the IFS towards further growth and security for the sport, the changes necessary for Olympic recognition unconsciously helped amateur sumo to differentiate itself further from ǀzumǀ. Although the changes made were necessary for achieving a higher station for amateur sumo by becoming part of the Olympics, they also helped further establish amateur sumo as a sport distinguishable in its own right. The changes described above were designed to align amateur sumo more closely to Olympic ideals, demonstrating how the global discourse of ‘Olympism’
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shaped the composition and governance of the sport. The IFS’s enactment of the principles of the Olympic Charter positioned amateur sumo in a global slipstream which carried it along, rubbing shoulders with other sports that adhere to the same principles. There was initial success in February 1998, when amateur sumo was granted provisional recognition by the IOC. This placed amateur sumo on a second tier of international sports federations within the Olympic Movement, awaiting their opportunity to be selected as part of the Olympic programme at some point in the future. Amateur sumo now functions on the global sporting landscape of the Olympic Movement, albeit as a relatively minor sport.
Conclusion In the span of nearly 150 years, sumo has changed dramatically, despite its seemingly staid position as a bastion of traditional Japanese culture. There has been signi¿cant overlap between each of the four stages of the internationalisation of sumo, rather than any smooth transition that the above sections might have implied. In the ¿rst instance, internationalisation meant the modernisation of sumo from a feudal pastime and entertainment for Japan’s urban masses to a modern sport with accompanying rationalisation, clear rules and protocols and the inÀuence of Western discourses on athleticism and the masculine body. This modernisation and ‘sporti¿cation’ of sumo led to the creation of amateur sumo as a participation sport for ordinary athletes, not professionals. Although this new sport began in Japanese high schools and tertiary education institutions, it spread to the general population, intertwining with popular performances of sumo at local festivals and for ceremonial purposes. Sumo was so suf¿ciently ingrained in rural communities that Japanese immigrants to the Americas performed it in their new homes. In setting up Japanese settlements, they maintained their cultural performances of sumo as an important link to the Japanese homeland. Thus sumo was enacted throughout Japan’s informal (and, later, formal) empire, as the internationalisation of the sport was tied to Japanese colonisation and migration. These outposts of sumo were supported by regular contact from amateur sumo groups in Japan and occasional tours by professional troupes. For the professional tours, Hawaii and California became viable destinations to take the show on the road to eager audiences, just as might happen throughout the Japanese homeland. As sumo took a hold outside of Japan’s borders, it was only a matter of time before there were resulting inward Àows into Japan. This came in the form of foreign (non-Japanese) recruits to professional sumo and the visits by amateur sumo groups from Hawaii and Brazil, particularly from the 1970s onwards. However, despite the increased presence of foreigners in professional sumo, in particular, their ability to succeed in the sport came predominantly from ¿tting in rather than standing out. Those that could not adapt to the lifestyle and cultural norms of the professional sumo world did not stay long enough to become successful. The increasing foreign presence in sumo came from the lure of fame and
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fortune, with Japanese economic success acting as a magnet. Japan’s ‘economic miracle’ sparked international interest in Japanese society and culture, and led to a parochial view of internationalisation. More commonly termed kokusaika, Japan’s interaction with the world was conveyed as a type of nationalism predicated upon its economic success. In this discourse of internationalisation, sumo was propagated as a Japanese cultural icon and was performed abroad for the bene¿t of those interested in Japan and its culture. The ¿nal stage of the internationalisation of sumo has been the increasing re-territorialisation of sumo and adherence to global ideals of ‘Olympism’. Through a conscious decision by Japanese amateur sumo administrators to hold international competitions and to encourage the uptake of the sport internationally, amateur sumo has begun to emerge out of the shadow of Japan-centred ǀzumǀ. In the process the practice of amateur sumo in new international settings has led to local, parochial enactments of sumo that do not rely on Japan. Each will approach the sport in their own ways, localising it according to their environment and the resources available.35 In gaining provisional recognition from the IOC, amateur sumo has a toehold on the international sporting landscape. Much of this has been achieved not through weight of numbers and growth in the foundations of the sport, but instead through an alignment with the Olympic Movement and the associated kudos. As a result of chasing the Olympic dream, this internationalisation of sumo is less about ties to Japan and the tradition of ǀzumǀ than forging an increasingly separate identity for amateur sumo, where the sumo will be compared with other IOC recognised sports. Ironically, perhaps, sumo has again become judged against Western ideals and discourses of sport, much as it was during the late nineteenth century.
Notes 1 Literally meaning ‘strong man’, this is one of the Japanese terms used to describe a professional sumo athlete, or what in English would be termed a ‘sumo wrestler’. 2 As the starting point for developing an interest and understanding of Japanese attitudes and behaviour, the world of professional sumo serves as a microcosm of ‘traditional’ Japanese society. The presence of foreign rikishi in professional sumo attracts interest from their countrymen and other non-Japanese fans, thereby providing them with a window into the wider culture of Japan. 3 In Tokugawa Japan, groups of professional wrestlers travelled widely to perform for audiences and then converged on the main cities of Edo, Osaka and Kyoto for larger tournaments. There were other types of performances as well, as Tierney (2007: 68–9) describes: ‘On the more entrepreneurial level, some street corners featured strong men who took on all challengers, while in other parts of the city, solitary men shadow wrestled imagined opponents for the delight and tips of the audience. Sumo was also not exclusively male. Huge crowds came to see female wrestlers – some troupes travelled the country featuring feats of strength and wrestling (providing a similar program to the men’s groups), while other groups showcased topless wrestlers engaged in various erotic displays . . . As a result of unruly crowds and various sumptuary laws, sumo was banned numerous times throughout this period.’ 4 For an account of the creation of judo as a modern sport, see Inoue (1998b). 5 Tierney (2002) argues that the changing ideas in Japan at this time regarding the masculine body shifted sumo back and forth between the poles of traditional and
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18 19 20
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modern, anachronistic and contemporary, corpulent and athletic, and unsuitable and suitable. Kusa-zumǀ, literally ‘grass sumo’, referred to rural/community sumo contests. The name implied a loose structure in its organisation if indeed there was one (Kanazashi 2002: 33). The introduction of modern sports such as baseball, gymnastics, rowing and rugby came primarily from European and American teachers employed in Japanese universities. This in turn sparked a top-down dissemination of such sports when graduates of these elite schools took up teaching positions elsewhere and took their interest in sport with them (Kimura 2003). Shinshi sumǀ or Bunshi sumǀ, respectively. Kanǀ Jigorǀ was an educator and sports administrator. He founded judo as a modern martial art, and was a strong advocate for modern sport in general. See Inoue (1998a). Actually, at the time, there was no individual championship winner in ǀzumǀ either. The championship Àag was contested for by two teams, east and west, determined by the ranking sheet for the athletes and competed for by the accumulated results across all days of the tournament. The individual championship did not come into being until 1926. See Thompson (1998). Emigration began as early as 1868 (Befu 2000), primarily for agricultural workers. For example, over 180,000 Japanese workers were enticed to work in Hawaii between the 1890s and 1920s, making them the largest ethnic grouping in Hawaii (Stanlaw 2006). However, increasingly restrictive immigration agreements between the Japanese and US governments, and later US laws restricting land ownership (Hirobe 2001), made destinations in Latin America more attractive for Japanese settlers (Stanlaw 2006). Japanese emigration to Brazil began in 1908, and tens of thousands of workers entered the country before the Second World War. While the earliest migrants were wage labourers for Brazilian planters, this was quickly followed by Japanese farming colonies in the undeveloped hinterland (Lesser 2003). Furthermore, many of these communities identi¿ed with being from the same prefecture or region in Japan, and many of the ‘associations and business relationships were often based on former locale, and people from the same prefecture often settled in the same areas’ (Stanlaw 2006: 43). Dusinberre (2012) explains how many of the immigrants to Hawaii were from Yamaguchi and Hiroshima prefectures. For a thumbnail sketch of sumo in Hawaii, see Cisco (1999: 271–5). Lesser (2003: 6) has also argued that the settlement of Japanese immigrants in Brazil in farming colonies developed ‘with constant cultural reinforcement from the homeland’. One of the stops on the tour was an audience with President Theodore Roosevelt, an enthusiastic student of judo (Frost 2010). The ¿rst post-war jungyǀ to Hawaii was held in June 1962, followed by trips in 1964 (and to Los Angeles afterwards), 1966, 1970, 1972, 1974, and 1976 (again to Los Angeles afterwards). In 1981, a jungyǀ went to San Jose and Los Angeles. See the following section for further details. Their tour schedule had the Hawaiian team competing seven times in head-to-head competitions against teams representing Ibaraki, Shizuoka, Gifu, and Mie (twice) prefectures, as well as an Eastern Japan high school selection and an All-Japan high school selection. For details of the Shizuoka tournament see ‘Nichi-Bei shinzen sumǀ kyǀgi Shizuoka Taikai [Japan-USA goodwill sumo Shizuoka tournament]’. Teams went to Brazil in 1978, 1983, 1986, 1993, 1996, 2001, and 2006, each time in the month of May. See Ishikawa Sumǀ Renmei (2009). The increase in non-Japanese participants entering ǀzumǀ came even though nikkeijin still had an inÀuential hand in amateur sumo in North and South America. The full list of international kǀen to date is: Moscow and Khabarovsk, July 1965; Beijing and Shanghai, April 1973; Mexico City, July 1981; New York, June 1985; Paris, October 1986; Sao Paulo, July 1990; London, October 1991; Paris and Vienna,
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22 23
24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31 32
33 34 35
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October 1995; Melbourne and Sydney, June 1997; Vancouver, June 1998; Seoul and Busan, February 2004; Beijing and Shanghai, June 2004; and Las Vegas, October 2005 (Kanazashi 2002: 53). Katrina Watts’ knowledge of sumo, and the contacts she forged over several decades of watching and commentating on sumo, meant that she has been called upon by heya to help with the integration of some of these foreign recruits. Additionally, she has had extensive interaction with rikishi of different nationalities in the course of their sumo careers. These anecdotes draw from such experiences. Following the death of the oyakata who recruited them from Tonga, there were subsequent issues of under whose tutelage they were to continue. They resigned rather than accepting a new oyakata. Such ‘culture shock’ also occurs for Japanese recruits, although it could be argued that the language and acceptance of cultural norms in sumo is harder for foreign recruits because they enter with almost no background in understanding Japanese language and lifestyle. Examples of popular works written by scholars to introduce Japan’s history, society and culture might include Reischauer (1977) and Richie (1978). Although amateur sumo demonstrations do not have quite the same rituals and pageantry as ǀzumǀ, their popularity abroad does not suggest a great distinction made by audience members (authors’ observations). Not coincidentally, the broadcast of sumo highlights outside of Japan has both mirrored and inÀuenced foreign interest in the sport. Japanese state broadcaster NHK began bilingual satellite broadcasts of sumo in English and Japanese in July 1992. Of the small number of foreign-born rikishi in the sport at this time, three were Hawaiians (the previously mentioned Konishiki and Akebono, with another future yokozuna, Musashimaru) occupying the top ranks of the sport. They were conspicuous and helped familiarize foreigners with the sport and encourage them to watch, and even attempt, sumo. Van Bottenburg (2001) has shown the model of a sport radiating from a core country to peripheral areas holds for many sports. Thereafter numbers dropped slightly, but with a still healthy plateau of at least 30 countries for the next three years. Almost echoing these administrative developments, there was an accompanying shift away from Japan hosting the Sumo World Championships. In 1999, Germany became the ¿rst international host. There are certain sports that remain minor in terms of their worldwide spread (e.g. Modern pentathlon), but they have been in the Olympic programme for decades and are included because of their Olympic heritage. The Nihon Sumǀ Kyǀkai has recently implemented drug testing for athletes, although the main concern seems to be recreational rather than performance enhancing drugs. Weight classes are used in only three annual Japanese competitions (two regional competitions and a national ¿nal, all for university students). The weight classes used are different to those in international competition, mainly because of the large number of competitors in these Japanese competitions and the need to divide them into more than the four weight classes present in international competitions. The clay dohyǀ was replaced by a polyurethane mat and the mawashi, the sumo belt which was deemed too off-putting and masculine, was replaced by a leotard and attached waist belt. Rule 2, paragraph 7. International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter, 2011. With their own national and regional tournaments, and organisational frameworks of their own, several sites have emerged as centres of growth in the sport. While Europe is particularly strong, countries such as Australia and New Zealand also have acknowledged histories of competing regularly in international tournaments.
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References Abe, Ikuo, Yasuharu Kiyohara and Ken Nakajima. 1992. ‘Fascism, Sport and Society in Japan’. The International Journal of the History of Sport 9(1): 1–28. Adams, Andy and Clyde Newton. 1989. Sumo. London: Hamlyn. Beasley, W. G. 1995. The Rise of Modern Japan, 2nd ed. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Befu, Harumi. 2000. ‘Globalization as Human Dispersal: From the Perspective of Japan’. In Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan, edited by J. S. Eades, Tom Gill and Harumi Befu, 17–40. Melbourne: Trans Paci¿c Press. Befu, Harumi. 2001. ‘The Global Context of Japan Outside Japan’. In Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe, and America, edited by Harumi Befu and Sylvie Guichard-Auguis, 3–22. New York: Routledge. Bolitho, Harold. 1987. ‘Frolicking Dragons: Mythic Terror and the Sumo Tradition’. In Sport: Nationalism and Internationalism, edited by Australian Society for Sports History, 2–22. Bedford Park, South Australia: Australian Society for Sports History. Bolitho, Harold. 1988. ‘Sumǀ and Popular Culture: The Tokugawa Period’. In The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, edited by Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto, 17–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chikara. ‘Kaigai to no kǀrynj [Exchange with foreign countries]’. June 1974, 4. Chikara. ‘Nichi-Bei shinzen sumǀ senshudan nittei [The Japan-U.S.A. Goodwill Sumo Team schedule]’. June 1974, 14. Chikara. ‘Yǀkoso! Nichi-Bei shinzen sumǀ Hawai senshudan rainichi [Welcome! The Japan-U.S.A. Goodwill Sumo Hawaii Team visits Japan]’. September 1974a, 4. Chikara. ‘Amachnja sumǀ monogatari 22 [amateur Sumo tales 22]’. September 1974b, 16. Chikara. ‘Amachnja sumǀ monogatari 23 [amateur Sumo tales 23]’. November 1974, 15. Chikara. ‘Burajiru no sumǀ [Brazilian Sumo]’. September 1976, 15. Chikara. ‘Nichi-Bei shinzen sumǀ Hawai taikai [Japan-U.S.A. Goodwill Sumo Hawaii Tournament]’. June 1977, 12. Chikara. ‘Nichi, Hawai, Burajiru shinzen sumǀ hokuriku taikai [Japan, Hawaii and Brazil Goodwill Sumo Hokuriku Tournament]’. September 1980, 2. Cisco, Dan. 1999. Hawai’i Sports: History, Facts, and Statistics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Dusinberre, Martin. 2012. Hard Times in the Hometown: A History of Community Survival in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Frost, Dennis J. 2010. Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press. Fujikawa, Seikatsu. 1982. ‘Nihon Sumǀ Renmei 35-nen no Ayumi [35Years Journey of the Japan Sumo Federation]’. In Sumǀ: Dai 30-Kai Zen-Nihon Sumǀ Senshu-Ken Taikai kinen-shi [Sumǀ: A Commerorative History of the 30th All-Japan Sumo Championship], edited by Nihon Sumǀ Renmei, 19–70. Tokyo: Nihon Sumǀ Renmei. Gilbert, Howard. 2004. ‘Wrestling with Foreign Yokozuna’. In Japanese Cultural Nationalism: At Home and in the Asia-Paci¿c, edited by Roy Starrs, 279–89. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Guttmann, Allen. 1978. From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports. New York: Columbia University Press. Hane, Mikiso. 1986. Modern Japan: A Historical Survey. Boulder: Westview Press. Hirobe, Izumi. 2001. Japanese Pride, American Prejudice: Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924 Immigration Act. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Inoue, Shun. 1998a. ‘“Budo”: Invented Tradition in the Martial Arts’. In The Culture of
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Japan as Seen Through Its Leisure, edited by Sepp Linhart and Sabine Fruhstuck, 83–93. New York: State University of New York Press. Inoue, Shun. 1998b. ‘The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kanǀ Jigorǀ and Kǀdǀkan Judo’. In Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos, 163–73. Berkeley: University of California Press. International Olympic Committee (IOC). 2011. Olympic Charter. Available from: http:// www.olympic.org/olympic-charter/documents-reports-studies-publications [accessed 23 December 2012]. International Sumo Federation. 2012. ‘A Brief Introduction to the International Sumo Federation and to the sport of Amateur Sumo’. Available from: http://www.ifs-sumo.org/ ifs-recognised.html [accessed 23 July 2012]. Ishikawa Sumǀ Renmei. 2009. ‘Renmei Enkaku [History of the Federation]’. Available from: http://www.sumo-ishikawa.or.jp/enkaku.html [accessed 1 June 2009]. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalisation: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Kanazashi, Motoi. 2002. ‘Sumǀ Dai-Jiten [The Great Dictionary of Sumo]’. Tokyo: Gendai Shokan. Kazami, Akira. 2002. ‘Sumǀ, Kokugi to Naru [Sumo, Becoming a National Sport]’. Tokyo: Taishnjkan Shoten. Kimura, Machiko. 2003. ‘Gender Relations in Japanese Sports Organisation and Sport Involvement’. In Sport and Women: Social Issues in International Perspective, edited by Ilse Hartmann-Tews and Gertrud P¿ster, 238–51. London: Routledge. Kojima, Noboru. 1992. ‘Gaijin Yokozuna wa Iranai [We do not need a foreign Yokozuna (Champion Wrestler)]’. Bungei Shunjnj 70(4): 372–8. Konishiki, Yasokichi. 1988. ‘Gaijin ga Yokozuna ni natte doko ga warui [What is wrong with a foreigner becoming a Yokozuna (Champion Wrestler)]’. Bungei Shunjnj 66(4): 318–23. Kubota, Ryuko. 2002. ‘The Impact of Globalization on Language Teaching in Japan’. In Globalization and Language Teaching, edited by David Block and Deborah Cameron, 13–28. London: Routledge. Kyǀsu, Toshiharu. 1994. ‘Sumǀ Jinsei [Sumo life]’. Chikara, March 1994, 1. Lesser, Jeffrey. 2003. ‘Japanese, Brazilians, Nikkei: A Short History of Identity Building and Homemaking’. In Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism, edited by Jeffrey Lesser, 5–19. Durham: Duke University Press. McCormack, Gavan. 1996. ‘Kokusaika: Impediments in Japan’s Deep Structure’. In Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern, edited by Donald Denoon, Mark Hudson, Gavan McCormack and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 265–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Newton, Clyde. 2000. Dynamic Sumo. Updated edn. Tokyo: Kodansha International. ‘Nichi-Bei shinzen sumǀ kyǀgi Shizuoka Taikai [Japan-USA Goodwill Sumo Shizuoka Tournament]’. Available from: http://amasumo.run.buttobi.net/friend/hawaii/hawaii1. htm [accessed 3 May 2009]. Nihon Sumǀ Kyǀkai. 2012. ‘Origin of Sumo’. Available from: http://www.sumo.or.jp/pdf/ en/sumo_introduction.pdf [accessed 23 July 2012]. Reischauer, Edwin. 1977. The Japanese. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press. Richie, Donald. 1978. Introducing Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Sedgwick, Mitchell. 2001. ‘Positioning “Globalization” at Overseas Subsidiaries of Japanese Multinational Corporations’. In Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia, Europe and America, edited by Harumi Befu and Sylvie
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Guichard-Anguis, 43–51. London: Routledge. Sharnoff, Laura. 1993. Grand Sumo. New York: Weatherhill. Shimokawa, Takashi, Osamu Futatsumori, Toshihiro Okuda, Yasufumi Koyama, Yǀichi Furuya, Kazuhiro Satǀ, Manabu Shimokawa and Tetsunori Shimokawa. 2002. ‘Sumǀ: Eibun Kaisetsu-Tsuki [Sumo: With English Explanations]’. Tokyo: Aki Shobǀ. Smart, Barry. 2007. ‘Not Playing Around: Global Capitalism, Modern Sport and Consumer Culture’. Global Networks 7(2): 113–34. Stanlaw, James. 2006. ‘Japanese Emigration and Immigration: From Meiji to the Modern’. In Japanese Diasporas: Unsung Pasts, ConÀicting Presents, and Uncertain Futures, edited by Nobuko Adachi, 35–51. London: Routledge. Tanaka, Hidetoshi. 2002. ‘Dohyǀ wa En, Jinsei wa En [The Sumo Ring is a Circle, Life is Fate]’. Tokyo: Waseda Shuppan. Thompson, Lee A. 1998. ‘The Invention of the Yokozuna and the Championship System, or, Futahaguro’s Revenge’. In Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos, 174–87. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tierney, R. Kenji. 2002. ‘Wrestling with Tradition: Sumo, National Identity and Trans/ National Popular Culture’. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley. Tierney, R. Kenji. 2007. ‘From Popular Performance to National Sport: The “Nationalization” of Sumo’. In This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan, edited by William W. Kelly and Atsuo Sugimoto, 67–89. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University. Van Bottenburg, Maarten. 2001. Global Games. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Yomiuri Shimbun. 1992. ‘Sumǀ ga; Gorin dohyǀ’ e [Sumo Enters the Olympic Stage]’. Yomiuri Shimbun 7 November.
11 The transfer of Japanese baseball players to major league baseball Have Japanese ball players been internationalised? Keiji Kawai and Matt Nichol
Introduction Baseball is now a global game and a result is the internationalisation of Japanese baseball. Baseball in Japan was insular and a national product of Japan for much of its history. But in the decades after World War Two, Japan gradually became a more open and globalised society, as described by Carolyn Stevens and Jeremy Breaden in the Introduction to this volume. Japanese baseball was not excluded from this process; the most dramatic instance of the globalisation of this sport was seen in 1995 when Nomo Hideo left Japan to become a star in Major League Baseball (MLB), igniting a trend in the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players. Baseball, as a sport and an industry, has experienced globalisation in uneven and conÀicting ways. Bauman (2000) and Appadurai (2001) conceptualise globalisation in general in terms of motion and movement. Bauman describes globalisation as ‘Àuid’ or ‘liquid’ modernity which does not hold its shape for long periods, and quickly changes. Bauman’s liquid modernity involves Àuids melting ‘solids’, shapes with ¿xed dimensions and features (Bauman 2000: 2–4). Appadurai’s construct of globalisation is similarly characterised by the metaphor of objects, images, ideas and people in motion. In local situations, the trajectories of these paths of movements can create problems, or disjuncture (Appadurai 2001: 6–7). The globalisation of baseball in Japan has been, however, less Àuid or conÀicting than the constructs presented by Bauman and Appadurai. Baseball’s globalisation has been tightly controlled over time by institutions like MLB and the Nippon Professional Baseball League (NPB) through a series of bi-lateral negotiations. We would also argue accordingly that in this case the globalisation of United States and Japanese baseball may also be viewed as an active process of internationalisation. The internationalisation of US and Japanese baseball also offers a variation on the discourse of the internationalisation of Japan described in this volume’s Introduction. Stevens and Breaden identify economics, social status and modernity as key forces in shaping the internationalisation of Japan. These forces, however, were not key catalysts for the internationalisation of Japanese baseball
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between the 1950s and 1980s: rather, until the 1990s, micro-level ¿nancial concerns encouraged an inward-looking domestic league. On the other hand, macrolevel forces of global ¿nance, perceptions of prestige and technology created ambitions among individual players in various teams and leagues, fuelling international mobility among players and creating opportunities for Japanese baseball players in the US. For a Japanese player, the attractions of playing in the MLB include a less demanding training regime, higher average player salaries, the potential for lucrative endorsements in the US and the chance to prove one’s athletic ability against the world’s best players at the highest level of competition. To manage mobility among its players, the NPB was forced to internationalise in order to control external pressures created by globalisation. More speci¿cally, this chapter argues that the internationalisation of baseball led to major changes in the NPB’s ‘private order’ of labour regulation and the willingness of MLB teams to employ Japanese baseball players. This chapter will explore the internationalisation of Japanese baseball through two signi¿cant events, and subsequent changes in the industry. First, Nomo Hideo’s transfer in 1995 forced the NPB to allow its players to play overseas, an aspect of their internationalisation. We then brieÀy examine the private legal instrument that facilitated this internationalisation, the United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement 2000 (‘the Posting Agreement’).1 The later transfers of Suzuki Ichirǀ and Matsui Hideki then opened the MLB door for Japanese players by further legitimising MLB as a career for Japanese players. Next, we examine how the internationalisation of the Japanese amateur baseball player poses an ongoing threat to domestic Japanese baseball and the NPB. Finally, we suggest that the future internationalisation of Japanese baseball players may be shaped by further ‘mega deals’ involving Japanese players, as per the January 2012 US$111 million transfer of Darvish Yu from the Nippon Ham Fighters to the Texas Rangers.
Baseball: globalisation of America’s (and Japan’s) national pastime When we speak of the globalisation of baseball, we are primarily speaking about Latin America and Asia, and these regions’ response to the ‘globalisation of Major League Baseball’2 because of the hegemonic position of the United States as traditional ‘guardians’ of ‘the national pastime’.3 Globalisation has not challenged MLB’s status as the world’s premier baseball league and, just as importantly, it has not challenged its economic power. Consequently, globalisation of baseball can be said to have resulted in growing MLB’s player talent pool and global revenue streams (Koppett 2000: 81). Hirsch and Hirsch expanded this concept to include the development of advanced scouting and the social aim of racial integration (Hirsch and Hirsch 2011: 28). Recruiting foreign players is essential to baseball’s globalisation because they ‘prop-up’ MLB’s player stocks and typically provide a comparatively cheap source of labour, simultaneously establishing new markets for the consumption of MLB products (Gould 2007: 289).
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The ¿rst instance of friction between Japanese baseball and the MLB was in 1964, when the Nankai Hawks sent ni-gun (Division 2 or minor league) pitcher Murakami Masanori to play for a San Francisco Giants’ minor league af¿liate. Murakami dominated and was ‘called up’ to the Giants’ major league team, triggering an ‘option clause’ in Murakami’s contract. Consequently, the Giants attempted to use the ‘option’ to purchase the contractual rights to Murakami from Nankai for US$10,000. Both teams claimed Murakami under their respective ‘reserve’ clause systems in an ugly dispute.4 Eventually, the NPB and MLB brokered a resolution where Murakami played for the Giants in 1965 and returned to the Hawks for the 1966 season (Whiting 2004: 72–95). In response to the Murakami incident, the two leagues entered the United States-Japanese Players Contract Agreement 1967 (‘the 1967 Agreement’). According to this agreement, each league was obligated to honour the other’s ‘reserve clause’ system.5 In practice, this obligation prevented the transfer of Japanese players to the MLB, delaying the internationalisation of Japanese players for nearly three decades. The insular Japanese baseball industry was confronted again in 1994 when pitcher Nomo Hideo ‘retired’ from the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes to join the Los Angeles Dodgers for the 1995 season. Nomo became the only Japanese player in the MLB at the time, and the ¿rst since Murakami pitched for San Francisco in 1965 and 1966 (Whiting 2004: 72–95). The immediate response in Japan from the baseball establishment and the game’s fans was hostility as they viewed Nomo’s use of the ‘voluntary retirement’ loophole as dishonest and unfair. Equally critical were Japan’s sports media, who labelled Nomo a ‘traitor’ and ‘troublemaker’ (ibid.: 106–7). Yet the perception of Nomo in Japan changed quickly. Nomo’s phenomenal ¿rst MLB season saw him earn an appearance in the All-Star game and receive the National League Rookie of the Year Award. ‘Nomo-mania’ quickly spread from the United States to Japan (ibid.: 106–9). In just 12 months, Nomo was transformed from ‘traitor’ into a national (and international) symbol of Japan. Nomo’s instant on-¿eld success created demand in the MLB for Japanese pitchers and opened the door for several NPB players to follow Nomo to the ‘major leagues’ in the 1990s, including another elite NPB pitcher, Irabu Hideki. Consequently, to maintain control over its labour force, in 2000 the NPB renegotiated the 1967 Agreement and entered the Posting Agreement. The Posting Agreement facilitated the transfer of NPB players to MLB teams, growing the number of Japanese in the minor and major leagues such that they are now a signi¿cant feature of MLB. Japanese players have featured in All-Star games, the ‘playoffs’ (baseball’s equivalent to ‘¿nals’) and the pinnacle of baseball, the World Series championship. Notable Japanese player accomplishments in MLB over the last two decades include Nomo’s two ‘no-hitters’,6 the extraordinary accomplishments of Suzuki Ichirǀ (known in Japan and the United States as ‘Ichirǀ’) and Matsui Hideki’s World Series MVP performance in 2009 for the New York Yankees. With these achievements, Japanese players exemplify MLB’s globalisation aims of expanding its talent base and growing global revenue streams.
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Conversely, MLB’s commercial expansion into Japan is built on the success of its Japanese stars. Japan hosted the MLB’s ‘season opener’ four times between 2000 and 2012. In 2009, MLB and Dentsu agreed to a six-year, $275 million deal to broadcast MLB games in Japan, signi¿cantly expanding network coverage of MLB games in Japan (Major League Baseball 2009). Prior to 2012, only MLB games featuring Japanese players were televised in Japan. In addition to free access to the existing daily MLB highlights and news provided by MLB.JP, from 2012, Japanese baseball fans can now watch every MLB game streamed live on their computer or smartphone through a variety of internet packages offered by MLB.TV (Casella 2012). In response to these pressures, Japanese baseball is gradually changing in areas of ownership, the media, fans, corporate sponsorship and marketing. Yet, we believe that the stakeholders most affected by globalisation are not the businesses or the fans but the players themselves. The globalisation of Japanese baseball has most dramatically affected Japanese baseball players’ careers paths; changing the NPB from the pinnacle of professional baseball to a pathway to the world’s premier baseball competition, the MLB, and internationalising Japanese players in the process.
Nomo Hideo and the beginning of the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players in the 1990s A discussion of Nomo Hideo’s entry to MLB in 1995 shows us the previously insular nature of Japanese baseball, while at the same time demonstrating the dynamic nature of the industry as it entered the global arena. Nomo, a righthanded pitcher, was overlooked in the NPB draft after his graduation from high school. Following strong performances in the industrial leagues after developing an unhittable ‘forkball’,7 Nomo pitched for Japan in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He was drafted by several teams in the 1989 NPB draft, and signed a contract with the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. In 1990, Nomo won the Paci¿c League’s Rookie of the Year Award, MVP Award and the Sawamura Award for best pitcher. Nomo dominated the pitching scene over the next four seasons. Nomo’s interest in playing in the MLB was fuelled by his interaction with foreign teammates and his successful performances against visiting MLB All-Star teams. Disagreements in 1994 with the Buffaloes’ new manager accelerated Nomo’s ambition to play in the major leagues (Whiting 2004: 96–102). Nomo’s ambition was thwarted by the Japanese Professional Baseball Basic Agreement 1995 (NPB By-Law) that at the time required players to complete ten years of playing service before becoming eligible to move to a NPB or MLB team as a ‘free agent’.8 MLB teams therefore could not recruit Nomo while still contracted to the Buffaloes, or any other NPB player in conÀict with this rule. Furthermore, the 1967 Agreement mandated that in recruiting players from the other league, MLB and NPB teams must honour the other league’s player contract rules.9 NPB teams also refused to negotiate with player agents representing Japanese players until 2000 (Ikei 2001). Therefore Nomo and other players interested in
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a MLB career required assistance from outside the Japanese baseball establishment to move to MLB. By coincidence, about the same time Nomo was looking to move, Nomura Don, a sports agent in the United States, was searching for a player prepared to move to a MLB team, despite the inevitable hostility in Japan. After meeting in secret with Nomo and consulting with American agent Arn Tellem, Nomura identi¿ed a ‘loophole’ found by Tellem in the NPB By-Law.10 The ‘voluntary retirement’ clause stated that retired players who wanted to make a comeback in Japan had to do so for their former NPB team: but Tellem argued that the clause could be interpreted to apply only in Japan, so that a ‘retired’ Japanese player could play in the MLB. The fact that no one would ever expect a retired Japanese player to play in the United States was con¿rmed by Nomura in a series of faxes to Kanai Yoshinaki, the NPB Commissioner’s executive secretary, who unwittingly agreed with Tellem’s interpretation (Whiting 2004: 96–117). Armed with this information, Nomo shocked the Kintetsu Buffaloes and the NPB when he ‘retired’ from Japanese professional baseball. The Los Angeles Dodgers then received approval from the Commissioner of the NPB to negotiate with Nomo, who signed a contract with the Dodgers. Kintetsu did not formally consent to Nomo’s move nor ‘release’ him from his contractual obligations, but retained the rights to Nomo in Japan should his MLB career falter (Whiting 2004: 96–117). Nomo’s move set-off a chain reaction that would open the door to the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players. The realisation of Nomo’s MLB dream had an immediate impact on NPB players. In 1996, the Chiba Lotte Marines agreed to Irabu Hideki’s request to play in the ‘major leagues’ and traded him to the San Diego Padres. Outraged at not being traded to the New York Yankees, Irabu threatened legal action in the United States and Japan, before the matter was resolved when San Diego traded Irabu to the Yankees (Whiting 2004: 130–4). Then, in 1997, Alfonso Soriano, a teenager from the Dominican Republic, ‘voluntarily retired’ from the Hiroshima Carp to embark on a MLB career after negotiations and salary arbitration failed to satisfy his salary demands: the Carp responded by initiating legal action. But a new storm erupted when the NPB advised MLB that Soriano could not join a MLB team as amendments to the NPB By-Laws had eliminated the ‘Nomo loophole’. Receiving no notice of the change, the MLB executive council declared Soriano a ‘free agent’, allowing him to sign a contract with the Yankees (ibid.: 141–5). Further weaknesses in the 1967 Agreement resulted from these two transfers, increasing pressure on the NPB to engage with the forces of globalisation and internationalisation. New opportunities were also created for lower pro¿le Japanese players. For example, a peripheral player for the Yomiuri Giants, pitcher Kashiwada Takashi, was permitted to try out for the New York Mets at spring training in 1997. The Mets expressed an interest in Kashiwada and the Giants facilitated his transfer through the use of contractual procedures to allow him to become a ‘free agent’.11 Kashiwada was not a star pitcher, spending much of his time with the ni-gun team, a critical factor in the Giants agreeing to his departure. Importantly, the Giants reportedly received compensation equivalent to Kashiwada’s salary at
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the Mets (Asahi Shimbun 2009). Kashiwada played one season for the Mets before returning to Yomiuri where he had a limited role as a specialist pitcher against left-handed hitters.
New formal arrangements: Posting Agreement 2000 Increasing player movement led the NPB and MLB to reconsider the ineffectiveness of arrangements in the 1967 Agreements in a global era. NPB teams were often disadvantaged, and MLB teams without a ‘working agreement’ with a NPB team were unlikely to secure the services of a Japanese player. The solution agreed to by the NPB and MLB that was designed to ‘level the playing ¿eld’ was the Posting Agreement. Through the Posting Agreement, the NPB secured its economic viability by controlling the recruitment of its best players by MLB teams. Meanwhile, MLB teams gained access to the professional baseball labour market in Japan and, indirectly, as will be discussed below, further access to the amateur market. At the time of writing, the Posting Agreement was still in operation12 and allows a Japanese player to transfer to MLB as an international ‘free agent’13 or through a new mechanism called the ‘posting’ system prior to international ‘free agent’ quali¿cation.14 Nomo and Irabu’s moves to MLB not only created the need for the Posting Agreement, but also inÀuenced the development of a new transfer mechanism for ineligible ‘free agents’, the ‘posting system’ and the right to terminate the agreement if either league materially alters their player labour rules.15 To gain access to ineligible ‘free agents’, the MLB needed to allay Japanese fears of a ‘talent drain’. The Posting Agreement contains the means for NPB teams to control when players move to MLB; there is also a ‘posting’ fee payable to Japanese clubs as compensation for the loss of non-free agents. Players who are not international ‘free agents’ must obtain consent from their team to transfer to MLB through the ‘posting’ system.16 ‘Posting’ involves all the MLB teams possessing the right to bid in a ‘blind auction’ for the player’s exclusive and nontransferable contractual rights,17 a rule that resulted from San Diego’s trade of Irabu to the New York Yankees. The winning bidder is only obligated to pay the ‘posting’ fee if they agree to a contract with the player.18 The NPB team exercises further control by approving or rejecting the successful bid (known as a ‘posting’ fee).19 These provisions allowed the NPB to feel that teams had control over the movement of their labour force to MLB, and were better able to exploit the athletic and commercial bene¿ts of Japanese players. The move of Nomo, Irabu and others to MLB created the prospect of losing elite players with no compensation, a situation antithetical to the ‘free agent’ systems in the NPB and MLB (Kawai 2008: 1094).20 The Posting Agreement now provides NPB teams with compensation that they (presumably) believe is fair.
The next phase of labour migration: Ichirǀ and Matsui Despite these precedents in the 1990s, in the early 2000s the insular, protective and group-oriented NPB team culture was still a barrier to Japanese baseball
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players and the industry in general. Snyder describes the uneven power relationship between NPB owners and players as ‘paternalistic’, further characterised by classic Japanese stereotypes of deference to authority and avoiding confrontation (Snyder 2009: 84). Such essentialist cultural features of Japanese baseball are said to explain the lack of agency on the part of players: there was only one strike in professional baseball history (two days in 2004); a players’ union was not formed until 1985; and player agents were only permitted to represent players in 2001. Only four Japanese players (and six in total) have challenged ownership using salary arbitration (ibid.: 84, 89–91). Embedded in this paternalistic relationship is a strong concept of loyalty (Kelly 2009: 434), represented by the traditional concept of ongaeshi (repaying one’s obligations), particularly important in Japan for taiikukaikei (sports-minded people). Ongaeshi required kohai (juniors) to repay their senpai (here, meaning senior colleagues but this would also include veteran players, coaches and ownership) (Kawai 2008: 1110). The result was a cultural environment which discouraged transfers to MLB. NPB stars Ichirǀ and Matsui not only overcame these cultural barriers, but their phenomenal success as ‘big leaguers’ also legitimised MLB as a real career option, thus inspiring many future generations of Japanese baseball players and accelerating the rate of internationalisation of Japanese players. Ichirǀ’s status as one of the great NPB players is evidenced by his domination of the NPB from 1992 to 2000, when he won three MVP awards and seven batting titles in the Paci¿c League, and played in seven All-Star games (‘Ichiro Suzuki’ 2012). Yet Ichirǀ wanted to prove his skill at the highest level. At the end of the 2000 season, and with Ichirǀ’s pending international ‘free agency’, the Orix Blue Wave ‘posted’ Ichirǀ to the Seattle Mariners to allow him to ful¿l his dream: Orix received a US$13 million ‘posting’ fee and Ichirǀ a US$12 million contract (Whiting 2004: 22–4). Ichirǀ demonstrated to elite Japanese players that playing MLB was a natural career progression, allowing them to develop and test their skill. Importantly, the fact that one of the all time great Japanese baseball players, transferred to MLB was evidence that Japanese baseball’s strict cultural protocols were giving way. By consenting to Ichirǀ’s request, Orix’s actions also demonstrated changes in ownership practices; though it would be naive to conclude that practical and ¿nancial considerations did not play a large part in Orix’s decision. Orix ‘posted’ Ichirǀ in his last year prior to international ‘free agency’ in exchange for a tidy sum, and avoided receiving no compensation for their star. Ichirǀ’s MLB career also had a profound inÀuence on baseball in Japan and the United States. Ichirǀ’s ¿rst year in the big leagues was remarkable even by US standards: he won the American League Rookie of the Year and MVP Awards and had a batting average of .350. In each of Ichirǀ’s ¿rst ten MLB seasons, he won the Gold Glove, played in the All-Star game and had over 200 hits. The Japanese media has closely reported Ichirǀ’s record-breaking achievements, which provided inspiration to Japanese amateur and professional baseballers. Ichirǀ’s success also legitimised Japanese baseball in the United States, leading to an inÀux of MLB scouts in Japan. Like Ichirǀ, Matsui Hideki was a superstar of the NPB and his transfer to MLB and subsequent success also legitimised MLB as a career for Japanese
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players. Matsui also dominated the NPB in the early part of his career but attracted greater media interest than Ichirǀ as he played for the most popular sports team in Japan, the conservative and powerful Yomiuri Giants. Between 1993 and 2002, Matsui, known as ‘Godzilla’ in professional baseball and the press, won three Central League MVP awards and three Japan Series championships, including the MVP Award in 2000 (Matsui Hideki Baseball Museum 2012). Matsui’s loyalty to Yomiuri made his decision to leave Japan dif¿cult, and team owner Watanabe Tsuneo created intense media pressure on Matsui to stay with the Giants through the Yomiuri Shimbun, a large newspaper and media conglomerate run by the team’s parent company (Whiting 2004: 231–2, 238). There was also ¿nancial pressure, with Watanabe offering Matsui a record US$64 million contract for six years (ibid.: 231). When Matsui ¿nally nominated for international ‘free agency’ however, this did not end his bond to the Giants. The Giants acted on Matsui’s behalf to ¿nd his MLB team, negotiating exclusively with the New York Yankees because they viewed the famous Yankees to be of equivalent status to the Giants, and Yomiuri’s desire to secure the exclusive broadcast rights in Japan to Yankees’ games (ibid.: 240–1). In 2003, Matsui became the ¿rst former Yomiuri Giants player to play in MLB. The transfer of Matsui from the Giants to the Yankees is important on several levels in the context of the internationalisation of Japanese players. The Giants were and still are the most popular and wealthiest team in the NPB, and so they were best positioned to resist internationalisation of their players. The Giants believed the club’s economic interests were best served through protectionism. The Giants’ Watanabe referred to Orix as ‘selling out Japan’ when accepting Ichirǀ’s ‘posting’ fee (Whiting 2004: 231), but even Giants’ players could not ignore the bene¿ts of internationalisation. Like Ichirǀ, Matsui’s success legitimised Japanese baseball, demonstrating that Japanese power hitters could perform at the MLB level. Yet there were notable differences between Ichirǀ and Matsui’s experiences. Signi¿cantly, as a Giant, Matsui faced greater pressure than Ichirǀ, a former Orix player, to remain in Japan and he had no choice in when he moved to MLB or which team he could join. Matsui was constrained because of the conservative and traditional nature of the Giants and its principal owner. Giants’ players are still required to move to MLB as a ‘free agent’ and in practice cannot utilise the ‘posting’ system to transfer to a MLB team as they are unlikely to ever receive the approval of the Giants. But Yomiuri players enjoy the prestige of wearing the Giants’ black and orange uniform, receive greater media exposure than any other sporting team in Japan and are the NPB’s highest paid players.
The internationalisation of amateur Japanese baseball players The internationalisation of Japanese baseball players is most prominent in the professional arena, but as time went on, this process began to affect ‘grass roots’ baseball organisations and their players around the country. As the NPB lacks jurisdiction in the regulation of amateur baseball in Japanese high schools,
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universities and industrial league tournaments, the Posting Agreement does not consider the transfer of Japanese amateur baseballers. Instead, an informal ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between the NPB and the MLB prohibits MLB teams from recruiting amateurs who are prospective NPB draftees. Exceptions to this rule exist: for example, high school pitcher Yamarin Yoshinori signed with the Atlanta Braves after failing to be drafted by a NPB team (Street 2009). NPB teams openly ‘snubbed’ college pitcher Tadano Kazuhito after he appeared in a gay pornographic video, allowing Tadano to sign with the Cleveland Indians in 2004 (ESPN 2004). The informal agreement was designed to protect ‘grass roots’ baseball and the NPB’s talent pool (Street 2009), but by 2008 it had begun to fall apart. Tazawa Junichi, a talented pitcher for industrial baseball tournament team Nippon Oil ENEOS, nominated for the NPB draft only to request that he not be selected in the draft. Tazawa then ‘snubbed’ NPB teams to sign a three-year deal for US$3.3 million with the Boston Red Sox (Browne 2008). Tazawa’s case evidences the increasing speed of internationalisation of Japanese baseballers at all levels of the game which had occurred by the 2000s. Tazawa remains the only amateur required by NPB teams to nominate for the draft to move directly to MLB, but amateurs no longer consider the NPB as the mandatory entry point into professional baseball. NPB teams were uncomfortable at Boston’s signing of Tazawa. The prospect of the wholesale loss of amateur talent to MLB threatened the status and the commercial viability of the NPB as the world’s second largest and best professional baseball league.21 NPB owners acted swiftly and informally agreed among themselves to ban amateur players from returning to the NPB if they bypassed the NPB draft for direct passage to MLB. In the case of high school players, a three-year ban exists. Meanwhile, college and industrial baseball tournament players face a two-year prohibition (Asahi Shimbun 2009: 19). The NPB’s response was a classic example of protectionism; an attempt to resist competition from a foreign market. The NPB’s defence is likely to focus on their attempt to balance the interests of Japanese baseball with the impact of globalisation, including the internationalisation of Japanese players. Internationalisation of Japanese amateurs and professionals is also occurring at a much earlier point in a player’s career, shaped by the success and subsequent media coverage of Japanese players in MLB. Amateur high school players now consider beginning a professional career in the US, despite the potential implications of receiving a three-year ‘Tazawa’ prohibition from playing in the NPB. Japanese high school player Kikuchi Yusei sparked controversy in 2009 when he announced his intentions to bypass the Japanese amateur draft and sign with a MLB club, expressing a preference for playing professional baseball in the US. Kikuchi later decided to stay in Japan and was drafted by the NPB’s Saitama Seibu Lions (Biggs 2009). Kikuchi’s experiences were shortly repeatedly in 2012 by another student from his high school, ƿtani Shǀhei, one of the best amateur pitching prospects in the world at the time, (Yoshimura 2012).22 The NPB’s negative reaction to ƿtani’s decision to seek employment in a MLB team
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directly out of high school in Japan demonstrates that NPB owners will not embrace internationalisation of Japanese players if it adversely affects their interests.
The ‘mega’ deal and its effect on the future Japanese baseballers The most recent stage in the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players could be termed the ‘mega deal phase’. In 2006, another pitching sensation Matsuzaka Daisuke was ‘posted’ by the Seibu Lions to the Boston Red Sox in a staggering deal: a US$51,111,111.1123 ‘posting fee’ to Seibu and a six-year US$50 million contract for Matsuzaka (Conroy & Rosner 2009: 86). Such a deal in the NPB is simply unimaginable, highlighting the large gap between MLB and NPB player salaries (Wong and Kawai 2012: 349). The money involved in Matsuzaka’s transfer represents another outcome of the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players, namely the potential escalation of compensation for both Japanese players and NPB teams. In late 2011, another pitching sensation, Darvish Yu (who was raised in Japan by a Japanese mother and Iranian father) was ‘posted’ by the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters to the Texas Rangers. Of the US$111 million deal, Texas paid Nippon Ham a ‘posting’ fee of US$51,703,411 and agreed with Darvish to a sixyear US$60 million contract (Waldstein 2011; Durrett 2012). Darvish’s transfer reinforced the expectation that the mega deal is now a conceivable option for high achievers in Japanese baseball. Darvish had agent representation in both the US and Japan, and several years before his ‘posting’ his American agent, Arn Tellem, drafted a secret ‘scouting report’ to help Darvish achieve exceptional performance in key statistics in order to maximise his value on the MLB market (Mainichi Japan 2012). Darvish’s preparation for a MLB career demonstrates a monumental change: elite Japanese baseball players expect to transfer to MLB at some stage, and do not make opportunistic or pragmatic decisions late in their careers. Only MLB’s wealthiest large-market teams like the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Texas Rangers can invest in mega deals, but the mega deals involving Matsuzaka and Darvish have fuelled the desires of many involved with the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players. Both deals received widespread media attention in Japan and the US. In Japan, the transfers increased MLB’s exposure even further. Meanwhile, US media coverage of such deals and the performance of Japanese players in MLB entices MLB teams to scout Japanese talent, putting further pressure for Japanese baseball players and team owners to consider themselves as players on an international stage.
Conclusion Since Nomo moved to MLB almost two decades ago, Japanese baseball players have been internationalised, most notably through the movement of Japanese
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players to the US. The lure of higher salaries and the ambition to play in the globally dominant professional baseball league drew Nomo to MLB. To control these movements, the NPB negotiated with MLB to develop a legal framework that facilitated but controlled the transfer of professional players and, in doing so, the Posting Agreement became an important tool in the internationalisation of Japanese baseball. The globalisation of MLB provided high demand for elite Japanese baseball players, and on the supply side, Japanese baseball players’ abilities and ambitions have internationalised rapidly. The transfer of superstars Ichirǀ and Matsui legitimised MLB as a valid career option, and their performance in the US legitimised Japanese baseball as a recruiting source, fuelling MLB interest. A number of Japanese players quickly followed Ichirǀ and Matsui making internationalisation a valid career option even for Japanese amateurs. In response, the NPB has needed to create incentives for young Japanese players to remain in Japan. The more recent case studies, Darvish Yu and ƿtani Shǀhei, represent the current trend: unlike Ichirǀ and other early MLB trailblazers, they carefully planned their move to MLB as amateurs rather than transferring as a successful professional. Unlike other aspects of internationalisation, the internationalisation of Japanese baseball players is not driven by gaiatsu (outside pressure). Instead, the pressure to internationalise emanates from within Japan. Globalisation of baseball has created opportunities in America for professional and amateur Japanese players. Baseball is a global sport, played in a growing number of countries and therefore allows mobility in employment. As baseball spreads around the globe, no longer do players view their employment opportunity in a domestic prism; instead, they envisage lucrative opportunities to play baseball around the globe. Stakeholders such as player agents, ownership and administrators have been pulled into these changes in the industry through the internationalisation of the Japanese player. Despite the discourse of cultural barriers associated with Japanese sport promoted by authors such as Whiting (1977; 1989; 2004), this has not been a prominent feature in the current internationalisation of Japanese baseball players. After the Posting Agreement removed ‘private’ legal barriers to international transfers that were embedded in the 1967 Agreement, the Àuid pressures of ¿nance and personal ambition have been the central features in the reasons why players move outside the NPB or stay within the domestic league. Japanese baseball players are athletes and individuals, and make decisions based on their personal and professional priorities. The difference now is that those priorities include international options.
Notes 1 For a summary of the key features of the Posting Agreement see Gould (2007: 283–315). 2 Gould identi¿ed the triggers of MLB’s globalisation as the decrease in talent in North America, the expense of recruiting players in the United States (top draft picks and free agents) and the pressure to generate new income streams (Gould 2007: 289). 3 See Gould (2000; 2007), Klein (2007; 2008), Koppett (2000) and Nagel (2010).
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4 The Japanese ‘reserve clause’ system was based on the MLB, and it functioned to effectively prevent opposing teams (and competing leagues) from raiding a team’s players. Absent a trade or outright release, upon signing a contract, players were unable to change their employers. Players without a contract could be placed on a ‘reserve list’ and could not sign a contract for a different team. Salary arbitration in 1975 involving Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, however, led to the recognition of ‘free agency’ (see Goldberg 2008). 5 If a player were on the team’s ‘reserve’ list, then negotiations were to proceed through the player’s team: United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement 1967, Articles 1–4. Also, the NPB Commissioner had the power to reject any deal involving a Japanese player: Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement 1967, Articles (1) and (2). 6 A no-hitter is a rare achievement in baseball when a pitcher does not allow the opposition to get a safe hit during a game’s nine innings of play. Nomo’s no-hitters were for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1996 and the Boston Red Sox in 2001. 7 A forkball or ‘split ¿ngered’ fastball is a type of fastball that is wedged between the pitcher’s index and middle ¿ngers. It is thrown with the same motion as a fastball and looks like a fastball to the hitter when released by a pitcher. The pitch is approximately ¿ve to seven miles per hour slower than a fastball and unique grip results in the pitch dropping two to three feet. 8 Nippon Professional Baseball League, Nippon Purofesshonaru Yakyu Kyoyaku [Japanese Professional Basic Agreement], 1995 [Japanese], Article 197. In 1997, quali¿cation for international ‘free agency’ was reduced to nine years service. After a change in 2008 to change domestic ‘free agent’ quali¿cation, ‘free agency’ was separated from the NPB By-Law in 2009 to form the Furiejento Kiyaku [Rule of Free Agent] 2009 [Japanese] and Article 2 regulates quali¿cation for domestic and international ‘free agency’. 9 United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement 1967, Articles 1, 2, 3 and 4. 10 Nippon Professional Baseball League, Nippon Purofesshonaru Yakyu Kyoyaku [Japanese Professional Baseball Basic Agreement] 1995 [Japanese], Articles 59, 68 and 74. 11 The Giants ‘waived’ their contractual rights to Kashiwada and no other NPB team claimed Kashiwada during his ‘waiver’ period. If a team releases a player during the period from 1 February to 30 November, the team waives their rights to this player. Any other NPB team can claim the player from ‘waivers’ during this period. A transfer fee of 4 million yen must be paid by the NPB team who claims a player from waivers: Nippon Professional Baseball League, Nippon Purofesshonaru Yakynj Kyoyaku [Japanese Professional Baseball Basic Agreement] 2011 [Japanese], Article 115 (waiver edict) and 121 (waiver transfer fee). 12 Resulting from the NPB’s failure to advise MLB of removing the ‘Nomo loophole’, the Posting Agreement remains in force until either league provides notice before 15 September in a calendar year of their intention to modify or terminate the agreement: Clause 17. 13 Prior to the introduction of the Posting Agreement in 2000, there was no NPB rule on international ‘free agency’ but theoretically a player meeting the eligibility criteria of ‘free agency’ could transfer to a MLB team as a ‘free agent’. The system allows players to move to MLB (or any NPB team) as an international ‘free agent’ upon completing nine years of service: Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clauses 5–6. Yoshii Masato was the ¿rst NPB player to transfer to a MLB team as a ‘free agent’ in 1998 under clause 197 of the Nippon Professional Baseball League, Nippon Purofesshonaru Yakyu Kyoyaku [Japanese Professional Basic Agreement], 1995. 14 Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United StatesJapanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clauses 5, 8–12.
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15 Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United StatesJapanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clause 16. 16 Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United StatesJapanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clause 8. 17 Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United StatesJapanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clause 8–13. 18 Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United StatesJapanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clause 12. 19 Nippon Professional Baseball League and Major League Baseball, United StatesJapanese Player Contract Agreement, 2000, Clause 11. 20 Compensation in the NPB for loss of a domestic ‘free agent’ is based on a player’s designation as an A, B or C ranked ‘free agent’, based on the player’s position in team salary from the player’s last season. Teams who lose a domestic ‘free agent’ can receive compensation in the form of money or money and a player from the team acquiring the ‘free agent’. No compensation is given to teams losing ‘C rank’ players. Teams are permitted to protect 28 players (effectively their ichi-gun or Division 1 roster) from transfer as compensation for the acquisition of a domestic ‘free agent’: Furiejento Kiyaku [Rule of Free Agent] 2009 [Japanese], Article 10. 21 Similar issues have occurred in other countries. Of¿cials in South Korea were furious when the Baltimore Orioles signed high school pitcher Kim Seong-min without advising the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) of discussions, thereby breaching local protocol and a Korean rule prohibiting high school players from signing professional contracts until their graduation year (Park 2012). 22 In October 2012, ƿtani announced his decision to proceed directly to a MLB team, despite nominating for the NPB draft. The Nippon Ham Fighters ignored his desire to play in MLB and drafted him in the NPB draft’s ¿rst round. Under Section 11 of the Nippon Professional Baseball League, Shinjin Senshu Sentaku Kaigi Yaku [Rule of the NPB Draft] 2006 [Japanese], the Fighters possessed the exclusive negotiation rights with ƿtani until 31 March 2013. While no written rule prevents MLB teams from negotiating with amateur players, MLB teams have honoured a gentleman’s agreement not to approach drafted players (Yamaguchi and Tabuchi 2012). In October 2012, ƿtani and his parents met with several MLB teams and the Nippon Ham Fighters, eventually changing his earlier decision to play in the US and he signed a contract with the Fighters (Suzuki 2012: 18). 23 Little is known as to the oddity of this ¿gure. But as the ‘posting’ system is a blind auction, one possibility is that Boston attempted to beat other bids that may have been $51 million.
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12 Conclusion ReÀections on the rhythms of internationalisation in post-disaster Japan Vera Mackie On 7 July 2012, a concert was held at Makuhari Messe near Tokyo.1 The concert was part of a growing movement against nuclear power in the wake of the triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011. The headline performers were the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra and the German band Kraftwerk. Since the earliest days of Yellow Magic Orchestra, band leader Sakamoto Rynjichi has forged an international career as a performer and composer, moving between Tokyo, New York and other global cities. In recent years, he has used his public pro¿le to argue for environmental sustainability,2 so that it was unsurprising that he would become associated with the anti-nuclear movement. The concert was streamed live on the internet, and could be watched from anywhere (as long as one had an internet connection). Listeners thrilled to Sakamoto’s techno reworking of the phrase ‘Saikadǀ Hantai’ (opposing the resuming of operations), the chant from demonstrations against the restarting of the nuclear power plants which had been shut down since the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear crisis.3 Disasters reveal the fault lines of a society in a particularly vivid and visceral way. This is true not only of the Fukushima disaster of 2011, but also of earlier catastrophes. The Great Kantǀ Earthquake of 1923 revealed the dark side of early twentieth century Japanese society. The aftermath of the earthquake revealed the bodies of young women who had burned to death because they had been locked away in brothels and unable to escape; the police were revealed to have murdered labour activists and anarchists; and unfounded rumours about looting and sabotage by Korean immigrants led to violent purges.4 At the same time, however, the Great Kantǀ Earthquake was a time for international connectedness, as humanitarian organisations like the Red Cross provided relief, while experts like Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) and Mary Beard (1876–1958) came to assist in reconstruction planning. The Awaji-Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 revealed the inadequacies of the centralised disaster response of the Japanese government, but this was also a turning point in the development of volunteering, culminating in the enactment of laws regulating non-pro¿t organisations (NPOs), and the development of new welfare partnerships between the government and NPOs. Despite prompt offers of assistance from international organisations and other national governments, the Japanese government was slow to take up these offers
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in 1995. The government has learned from the policy failings of 1995, however, and responses to the Awaji-Hanshin Earthquake paved the way for the handling of the Fukushima disaster (Avenell 2012: 53–77). Members of international and national relief organisations were on the scene relatively quickly in 2011, and US troops stationed in Japan embarked on ‘Operation Tomodachi’ (Operation Friend) to make their skills available for the relief effort (Robertson 2012).5 The compound disaster of 11 March 2011 was both an intensely local and an intensely national experience. Attention was focused on the impoverished prefectures of northeastern Japan, an area which hosted nuclear power plants; a region with a disproportionate number of the nation’s elderly and unemployed; and the locus of rural communities which had welcomed immigrant workers and international marriage partners. Tǀhoku University in Sendai also hosts a signi¿cant number of international students.6 The disaster also occasioned reÀections on national character, national identity and national resilience. I would like to argue, however, that the disaster also revealed much about the internationalisation of Japan, which throws into relief many of the ideas canvassed in this volume. The response to the Fukushima disaster has been a truly international one, as exempli¿ed in the abovementioned ‘No Nukes’ concert. In the crudest physical sense, this was a disaster of international dimensions. Although the earthquake largely focused on the northeast of Japan and surrounding seas, the effects of the tsunami were experienced in Hawaii, the Philippines, Paci¿c island nations, and the Paci¿c coast of the Americas, resulting in damage to ports and coastal settlements. Over a year later, we were still seeing reports of debris washed up on the other side of the Paci¿c Ocean (‘Japan tsunami victim’s soccer ball found in Alaska’ 2012; ‘Workers start cutting up tsunami dock on Oregon beach’ 2012). Traces of lethal plutonium were detected on the other side of the Paci¿c, too (Fujioka 2011). The effects of the nuclear meltdowns, explosions and the leakage of contaminated water cannot, then, be contained within the notional boundaries of the Japanese nation-state or its coastal waters. The movements of air and water are unpredictable, and the winds and sea currents take radioactive contamination well beyond Japan’s national borders. This contamination also ¿nds its way into the food chain, making it dif¿cult to ensure the safety of seafood, for we can never be certain which waters the sea creatures have traversed, and which animals further up the food chain have consumed contaminated seafood. The crisis was international in the sense of being experienced (albeit at second-hand for many) through global media and social media. People around the globe saw the devastation wrought by the tsunami thanks to footage taken on mobile phones and disseminated through Facebook, Twitter and other social media, and re-broadcast on both conventional media and the internet. All over the world, people could watch the progress of events on the national broadcaster NHK on live stream through sites like Nico Nico Dǀga. The US-based Cable News Network, CNN, immediately dispatched several journalists to Japan and provided continuous coverage. In the US, a survey revealed that close to 60 per cent of the American public were following the issue during March 2011
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(Tkach-Kawasaki 2012: 110). This was also the occasion for a global outpouring of empathy, sympathy and solidarity. As Slater, Nishimura and Kinstrand (2012) note, with respect to the new social media which facilitated communication about the disaster, ‘what were once considered the personal, private, even intimate domains of micro-sociality became engaged in an alternative politics that reached others around the world’. This emotional attachment was followed up by charity campaigns, through conventional charity organisations such as the Red Cross, overseas of¿ces of such organisations as the Japan Foundation, overseas NGOs and links from the websites of news organisations like CNN. In the US, the Red Cross advertised during the Super Bowl (one of the major sporting events of the year with the highest television viewership) to solicit donations for the Tǀhoku relief effort (Slater, Nishimura and Kinstrand 2012). In February 2012, the Japan Red Cross reported that it had transferred US$4.5 billion to affected communities, of which US$4 billion came from international donors (excluding sister Red Cross societies) (Robertson 2012). The intertwining of the national and the international was brought into focus when the Japanese women’s soccer team, known as Nadeshiko Japan, beat the US team in the FIFA World Women’s Soccer championship in July 2011 (Kingston 2012: 11). This was seen as a boost to Japan’s post-disaster recovery. It was interesting that it was the women’s soccer team, with the quintessentially feminine name of ‘Nadeshiko’, who restored national pride and feelings of resilience.7 The existence of such a team is the fruit of recent decades of engagement with the international soccer system (Kelly, in this volume). In addition to the international humanitarian focus, there was also a burgeoning international movement against nuclear power – building on over half a century of activism. As the movement against nuclear power developed, those of us who could not attend the various demonstrations watched from afar through links provided by social media. Demonstrations and commemorations in solidarity with our friends in Japan were held in various parts of the world, including New York, Paris and various Australian cities (Morris 2011b; Japan: Fissures in the Planetary Apparatus 2012; and see below). Activists in Japan increasingly addressed an international audience, such as the ‘Mothers of Fukushima’, who disseminated an English-language video on YouTube to express their concerns about the safety of their children (‘Heartfelt appeal by Fukushima mothers’ 2011; Horiuchi 2011; Slater 2011). The reference points for understanding were also international, with comparisons being made with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, the Three Mile Island incident in the US, the Bhopal chemical pollution incident in India and Hurricane Katrina in the US. Japan’s experience of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was also referenced (Stevens 2012): place names whose meaning is instantly recognised throughout the world as heralding the beginning of the nuclear age.8 The anti-nuclear movement took on the name ‘hydrangea revolution’ (ajisai kakumei), making links with the concurrent Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement and the ‘jasmine revolution’ in Tunisia (Slater, Nishimura and Kinstrand 2012; Yang 2012).
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Internationalisation within The response to the disaster reÀects two aspects of internationalisation, which I would like to refer to as ‘internationalisation within’ and ‘internationalisation beyond borders’. While much of the of¿cial discourse on internationalisation refers to government policy and economic activities (Fukui and Steele; Goodman and Breaden; and Okano, in this volume), there are also various forms of grass roots internationalisation. Members of many Japanese families have had experience of living overseas for periods of their lives, on study-abroad programs, as exchange students or international students, as working holiday makers (Kawashima 2010: 267–86; Kawashima, in this volume), as workers in transnational corporations (Mizukami 2007; Sedgwick 2008), as educators, academics and teachers of martial arts (Kobayashi 2006) and traditional arts (Steele, in this volume), as workers in the tourism and hospitality industries (Hamada and Stevens, in this volume), or as members of sporting teams which compete overseas (Kelly; Kawai and Nichol; Watts and Gilbert, in this volume). Members of such families are likely to have friendship networks which cross national borders, and their children may have international perspectives due to their experiences of education overseas (Goodman 2012: 30–53). Nevertheless, as pointed out by Kawashima in Chapter 7, the experience of internationalisation is unevenly distributed along class lines and regional lines, a situation she describes as ‘uneven cosmopolitanism’. It is no longer unusual to encounter individuals from other countries in daily life in Japan, for the country is a destination for international students, skilled workers, labour migrants, labour trainees and marriage migrants.9 Immigrant workers may be encountered working in convenience stores and restaurants, as cooks, cleaners and housekeepers in hotels, on construction sites and in factories, and as carers for the elderly and in¿rm. Banking, ¿nance, legal ¿rms, transnational corporations and academia increasingly include international workers, while working holiday programs and exchange teacher programs bring in people from selected countries (Mackie 2010: 71–85). Companies such as Uniqlo, Lawson convenience stores, and Hitachi electronics have targeted international recruits in recent years, with a particular focus on those who have graduated from Japanese universities (Breaden and Goodman, in this volume). The family itself is also increasingly the site of encounters with difference. In cases of international marriage, members of the one family may have different or multiple nationalities, cultures and languages, including children of mixed heritage. Such families mean that international connections and perspectives exist not only within the boundaries of the Japanese nation-state, but within the very home itself. In such families, the network of kin stretches beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, where the non-Japanese marriage partner has relatives in one or more other parts of the world. Even where the non-Japanese partner takes on Japanese nationality through naturalisation, these international cultural reference points, friendship networks and kinship networks remain. Some international marriages, of course, are entered into overseas, or involve domicile overseas, in the partner’s country or a third country. The ubiquity of international marriage
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in contemporary Japan is reÀected in the long-running ‘Mixed Matches’ series of articles in the Japan Times. Every fortnight since 2007, the English-language daily pro¿les an international couple, bringing home the notion that cosmopolitanism is being practised in households all over the country (Japan Times 2007–13). According to the Ministry of Health, about 5.1 per cent of all marriages, or 36,969 out of the 726,106 couples who wed in 2008, were international marriages, up from 25,626 mixed marriages in 1990 (Ito 2009). McNeill et al. (2009) report that one in every 30 babies born in Japan has at least one non-Japanese parent. Of¿cial statistics underestimate the diversity of the family, however, for they have no way of capturing those marriages where the non-Japanese partner has naturalised as Japanese. Census statistics focus on nationality rather than ethnic heritage, culture or identity. There is another sense in which the family in early twenty-¿rst century Japan has become internationalised. The family is often thought of as exclusively made up of a group of individuals who are connected by kinship ties – in vernacular terms, by ‘blood ties’. The nuclear family based on kinship is, however, an institution tied to speci¿c times and places. Feudal households were generally made up not only of kin, but also of various servants, labourers and apprentices who contributed to the family economy. In Japanese society, where adoption is practised for various purposes, biological reproduction has always been supplemented by other ways of making families. In the early twenty-¿rst century, however, other demographic forces are changing the family, so much so that many commentators are suggesting a return to the language of ‘households’ rather than ‘families’. The concept of the ‘global household’ (and the phrase ‘global householding’) is increasingly being used to describe the complex webs of kinship and connectedness surrounding families composed through international marriages (Douglass 2011: 19; Piquero-Ballescas 2009: 77–99). As members of Japanese families cope with the challenge of caring for their aging relatives, they are increasingly relying on the assistance of individuals from outside the nuclear family and kinship networks. Elderly people are being cared for by a combination of family members, volunteers, and paid carers. This may take place in a family home shared with kin, in a single-person household visited by kin, volunteers or paid carers, or in an institutional setting supported by kin, volunteers or paid carers. In some cases, expatriate family members may return to Japan from overseas at certain times of the year to assist with care for elderly family members. Until the 1990s, it seemed unimaginable that immigrant workers would be part of the solution for dealing with the crisis in elder care. In the twenty-¿rst century, however, this has become a reality. As there are not enough Japanese workers willing or able to engage in caring labour, it has become necessary to bring in immigrant workers who are quali¿ed as nurses or carers, or to facilitate their entry into the country in order to undertake training. The Japanese government has entered into bilateral agreements with the Philippines, Indonesia and, most recently, Vietnam, for the entry of small numbers of trainees who undertake training as carers (Mackie 2010: 80–1; ‘Japan to Accept Nurse Candidates from
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Vietnam’ 2012; Mackie 2013). The scale and forms of such immigration through of¿cial channels are being closely controlled and monitored, but there are also various unof¿cial channels, whereby families and NPOs are employing care workers from overseas (Piquero-Ballescas 2009: 127–38). Where the care of the elderly and in¿rm is carried out by immigrant carers with no kinship ties, then the family home itself has become the site for daily interactions between individuals of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Care provision also takes on an international dimension when the elderly reside overseas, through long-term emigration or through moving offshore on retirement. Once overseas, as in Japan, care may be provided through a combination of family-based care, volunteer work and paid care – in homes or in institutions (Shiobara 2011: 406–8). Behind these statistics is the reality of dealing with difference in everyday life. Power relationships are forged in daily encounters between partners in international marriages and their relatives, care workers and their clients, factory workers and their employers, construction workers and their bosses, night club singers and their customers. Sociologist Mica Nava has coined the term ‘visceral cosmopolitanism’ (Nava 2007: 8), which captures the insight that cosmopolitanism is not simply a matter of high culture and politics, but also involves the daily interactions between individuals of different cultural backgrounds. These interactions take place in the streets, shops, entertainment districts, service industries, sporting ¿elds and the workplace. Such interactions also take place when individuals of different cultural backgrounds form friendships, romantic relationships, partnerships and marriages. Such encounters and relationships between individuals of different cultural backgrounds, ethnicities and racialised positioning are ‘cosmopolitan’ in that they are sites for the negotiation of cultural difference. This negotiation is ‘visceral’, according to Nava, because it takes place in quotidian, intimate, embodied interactions. It could be argued that contemporary Japan also provides a site for the experience of such ‘visceral cosmopolitanism’, through daily encounters with difference in the workplace and the streets. The family (or, perhaps, the household) is also increasingly becoming the site for encounters with difference, with potential for the forging of new forms of cosmopolitan consciousness.
Internationalisation beyond borders Other families become international through relocation of family members overseas. In 2009 there were 1,131,607 Japanese people living overseas, of whom 373,559 were long-term overseas residents. Of those living overseas, 446,854 were in North America, 312,301 in Asia, 85,009 in South America, 48,764 in Europe, 46,724 in Oceania and 622 in Africa (Statistics Bureau of Japan 2012). In addition, the Association of Nikkei and Japanese Abroad claims there are about 2.5 million people of Japanese descent living in their adopted countries. Communities all over the world are also linked to Japan through sister city (and prefecture) programs. Australia alone has over 100 such relationships (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2013).
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When someone of Japanese nationality (or heritage, in the case where they take up citizenship elsewhere) resides overseas, their local connections are overlaid with cultural reference points, friendship networks and kinship networks which stretch back to Japan (Itoh 2010; Itoh 2012). They may also be embedded in Japanese diasporic communities in their host country. The Japanese government facilitates the establishment of overseas Japanese-language schools for the children of expatriates, and these schools are also supported by paid workers and volunteers from the overseas Japanese community (Mizukami 2007: 135–64). Diasporic Japanese communities are also involved in welfare activities, providing advice to international students and working holiday makers, facilitating the settling-in process for new immigrants, and providing care for the elderly in their communities (Hope Connection 2012; Shiobara 2011, 395–414). The city of Melbourne in Australia provides one example of the kinds of organisations developed by overseas diasporic communities, a pattern which is repeated with variations in other places which host members of the Japanese diaspora around the world. Melbourne has a Japan Club (Nihonjinkai) which largely caters to sojourners who staff the local branch of¿ces of Japanese companies. There is a Japan-Australia Society, which makes connections with the broader Australian community. Hope Connection is a volunteer organisation which provides information, telephone counselling and welfare services to the Japanese community (Hope Connection 2012; Mizukami 2007: 135–64; Shiobara 2011: 395–414). There are also numerous, more informal associations which bring together immigrant Japanese parents and their children (Hamano 2008). Another kind of community organisation – Japanese for Peace – was formed in 2005 (the sixtieth anniversary year of the end of the Second World War) by some members of the Melbourne expatriate Japanese community. They were concerned to go beyond the negative memories of the Second World War among some members of the Australian community (Japanese for Peace undated) in order to build new connections. The ‘3/11’ compound disaster also galvanised expatriate Japanese communities. On 11 March 2012, I stood on the steps of the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, my pulse quickening to the rhythm of taiko drums.10 Around me was a crowd of people who had gathered to commemorate the losses of the combined earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Children milled about, offering masks to the assembled crowd. The masks were yellow and black, a hybrid image of the sign denoting nuclear radiation and a face which mimicked Edvard Munch’s painting, ‘The Scream’.11 I was not able to do a comprehensive survey of the crowd, but my impression is that there was a combination of long-term immigrants and residents of Japanese heritage, academics, students, working holiday makers and tourists, Australians with a connection with Japan, Australians with a commitment to the anti-nuclear issue, and journalists. Several speakers noted Australia’s connections with the disaster, for uranium from Australian mines has fuelled nuclear power plants in northeastern Japan.12 In front of me on the library steps, a Japanese journalist practised his address to a video camera. He was preparing his report for a television station back in
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Japan. Cameras, video cameras and mobile phone cameras were ubiquitous on this occasion. People took photos and videos for their own records, to post on UStream, Facebook pages, blogs, or the websites of their organisations. The commemoration and demonstration was streamed live, so that anyone with an interest could tune in from around the world. A major sponsor of the demonstration was the abovementioned Japanese for Peace, who co-operated with other local organisations devoted to paci¿sm, the anti-nuclear cause and the issue of Aboriginal self-determination (Japanese for Peace 2012). New social media enabled a series of rhythmical feedback loops. People in Melbourne and other cities followed the progress of the anti-nuclear movement in Japan through social media, but also broadcast their own activities to their friends and comrades in Japan. Other responses to the disaster build on earlier forms of international connectedness, once again with a cyclical character but with a longer timeframe. Roger Pulvers (2012) reports on plans for rice-growers in Australia to sell short grain rice ‘back’ to Japan, building on a local rice-growing industry in Southeastern Australia which had been established by Takasuka Isaburǀ, a Japanese immigrant to Australia in the early twentieth century.13 The World Tambo Project revealed plans to send displaced farmers from Fukushima to Australia to recuperate and participate in a project to grow Koshihikari rice in Queensland. Recent events in Japan illustrate many of the themes which have been explored in this book, reÀecting elements of internationalisation, globalisation and transnational politics. The commemorations and demonstrations described above exemplify the themes of hybridity, translation and glocalisation – different modes of dealing with the complexity of our increasingly interconnected world under conditions of globalisation (Stevens and Breaden; Hamada and Stevens, in this volume). The aftermath of what has come to be known as ‘3/11’ has also brought home the importance of emotion and affect in the processes of internationalisation, globalisation and transnational connectedness, as new social media have facilitated communication across borders and the expression of solidarity and empathy across borders.
Notes 1 The Japan Times reported that, as of 8 July 2012, there had been a cumulative total of more than 216,000 online viewers for the live feed on UStream (‘Slideshow: Kraftwerk, YMO sing the No Nukes Rally Cry’ 2012; Manabe 2012). 2 See the forum ‘Conscious Inspiration: Juxtaposing Nature and Art Form’, with Sakamoto Rynjichi, architect Ban Shigeru and artist Mori Mariko at the Japan Society of New York, 23 March 2010. Sakamoto and Mori are exemplars of artists who operate in an increasingly global context. Their increasingly international pro¿le builds on such artists as Yoko Ono and Kusama Yayoi, whose work has never been contained within the boundaries of one nation-state (Holland 2010; Japan Society of New York 2010; Yoshimoto 2005). 3 For a short time, all of Japan’s nuclear power stations were shut down. The largest demonstrations were occasioned by government plans to restart the ƿi reactor, and these demonstrations have continued to the present.
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4 After the Fukushima disaster, too, there were postings on the infamous ‘2channeru’ (‘2channel’, or ‘2ch’) bulletin board, making racist comments about Chinese and Koreans (Slater, Nishimura and Kinstrand 2012). 5 For of¿cial US military reporting on Operation Tomodachi, see United States Forces Japan (2012). 6 See John Morris’s comments on some Pakistani residents in Sendai who cooked Pakistani food for residents of a refuge, and were hailed as valued members of the local community, and on Chinese and Philippine women contributing to relief efforts in their local communities (Morris 2011a and 2011b; see also Kamiya 2011a, 2011b and 2011c). On the destinations of international marriage partners in Japan, see Liaw, Ochiai and Ichikawa (2010: 49–86). On the gendered dimensions of the March 2011 crisis, see Kano and Mackie (2012: 28–9). Tǀhoku University hosted 1,497 international students in 2011 (Breaden and Goodman, in this volume). 7 Nadeshiko refers to the pink Dianthus Àower (Cayrophyllaceae), which is said to symbolise Japanese femininity. 8 To be more precise, the nuclear age started with the Manhattan Project and nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, but it is the names of ‘Hiroshima’ and ‘Nagasaki’ which have instant recognition. Oda Makoto, in his novel Hiroshima (1981), translated as The Bomb (1990), has explored the global dimensions of the nuclear age, including nuclear testing in the Paci¿c and outback Australia. 9 In 2011, there were 138,075 international students in Japan. At 3.5 per cent of all higher education students, this is below the OECD average (Breaden and Goodman, in this volume). 10 There are numerous troupes of taiko drummers in Australia, and they often perform at community events involving the Japanese community, or at events celebrating multiculturalism and diversity. This could be seen as an example of ‘glocalisation’, where cultural practices from Japan are adapted and embedded in local communities. 11 Graphic variations on the black-and-yellow sign for radiation were also a feature of demonstrations in Japan and other countries. 12 While beyond the scope of this essay, the establishment of the nuclear power industry in post-war Japan was also an international affair, involving advice from such US corporations as General Electric (Brasor 2011; Nelson 2011; Tanaka and Kuznick 2011). More recently the Japanese nuclear power industry has been involved in the international promotion of the nuclear industry in third world countries. 13 On the history of Japanese communities in Australia, see Jones and Mackie (2001).
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Index
3/11 see also Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011; charity campaigns and 197; expatriate Japanese community and 201–2; international dimensions of 196, 201; international students and see international students and 3/11; social media and 196–7, 202 100 yen shop see hyakuen shoppu 1967 Agreement 182, 185 Akebono 167–8 Alcoholics Anonymous 125, 127–8, 130, 132, 135; Big Book 132; inÀuence on Danshukai 129, 136, 137 alcohol misuse, treatment of: Danshukai model of see Danshukai; and kaifuku 126–7; medical model of see medical model of alcoholism treatment All-Japan Novice Sumo Championships 169 All-Japan Student Sumo Federation 163, 164 anti-nuclear movement 197 Asian Football Confederation 146, 155 Australian Football League 155 Awaji-Hanshin Earthquake 1995 195–6 baseball: and dynamics of ethnicity 143–4; friction with Major League Baseball 182; and gender equality 147; and globalisation and 180, 181–3, 190; in Imperial Japan 147–8; internationalisation of 180–1; and Nihonjinron 150; players see baseball players; post-War 149, 180 baseball players: and 1967 Agreement 182, 185; amateurs, internationalisation of 187–9; attractions of Major League Baseball for 181; foreign 149, 152; and
future, ‘mega’ deal 189; Japanese Professional Baseball Basic Agreement 1995 183–4; in Major League Baseball 182; ‘partially’ Japanese 150–1; Posting Agreement 2000 181, 182, 185, 188, 190; relationship with Nippon Professional Baseball League owners 185 bengoshi 32, 36, 40, 43, 44 buraku 56, 58, 59, 64 Chadǀ 9, 84, 135 see also Urasenke Chadǀ; export from Japan 87; gendered nature of 93; history of 85–6 ‘Cool Japan’ 3–4, 70 ‘cram schools’ see juku culture: associations to products 2; of consumption 107; control and protection of 71; and ‘Cool Japan’ 3–4; international movement of 88 Danshukai 9, 125; and Danshu-dǀ 132, 135; and Danshu dojo 135; and Danshu-shinsei-kai 135; family involvement in 129; and globalisation 137; goals of 130; inÀuence of Alcoholics Anonymous on 129, 136, 137; Japanese features of 132–6; and kaifuku 126–7, 137; legal status of 139; Matsumura Goruku 134; and ‘new life’ model 130–2, 137; origins of 128–30; and ‘recovery’ 130–2; relationship with medical professionals and 137–8; and Zen Buddhism 132–4, 135–6 Daiso Japan 3; internationalistion of 3–4 diaspora, Japanese 201; and sumo 162–5, 173 dǀ spirit 135 dochakuka 5 dos Santos, Allessandro 163
208
Index
earthquakes: Awaji-Hanshin 1995 195–6; Great East Japan 2011 145, 195; Great Kantǀ 1923 195 elder care 199–200 ‘employment ice age’ 114 European Sumo Union 171 expatriates 200–1 FIFA see International Federation of Association Football ¿rms, Japanese: expectations of new law graduates by 39–40; and high-skilled foreign labour 23; and international expansion 2 Ày-jin 13, 15 food and food practices see also Japanese cuisine: and concept of national cuisine 71; and politics of transgressive translations 69–71 Football Federation Australia 155 Fukushima see also 3/11: evacuation zone 14; nuclear disaster 195, 196–7 gaijin senshu 149–50 Global 30 20, 21, 24–5, 43 globalisation 53, 107, 113–14; and baseball 180, 181–3, 190; and Danshukai 137; and Japanese cuisine 68; relationship to internationalisation 4–5, 24, 113 see also gurǀbaruka; and sport–society relationships 142–4; and universities 5 ‘glocalisation’ 5 Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 see also 3/11: aftermath of 195; international dimensions of 196; and ‘Operation Tomodachi’196; response of soccer to 145 Great Kantǀ Earthquake 1923 195 gurǀbaruka 24, 113 Hakuhǀ 151, 152 Harimoto, Isao 150 heya 163, 166–7 higher education: institutions see universities; and internationalisation 19, 25–6, 61 hinkaku 143, 167 hyakuen shoppu 3: and Daiso Japan 3 ‘hydrangea revolution’ 197 Ichirǀ, Suzuki 181, 182, 185–7, 190 individualisation 107; and modernity 110–11
individualism: lifestyle choice and 112 International Chado Culture Foundation 86 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) 144–5, 146, 152, 154, 156; World Cup competition 145, 146, 147, 155; World Women’s Soccer championship 2011 197 international marriage 198–9, 200 International Olympic Committee 142, 171 international students: 3/11 and see international students and 3/11; internationalisation of agency of 25–6; and government policy 21–5; heterogenous nature of 17–19; post-war history of 19; symbolic signi¿cance of 19–23; targets, rationale for 23 international students and 3/11: Àight and return of 14–16; government response to 22–3, 26; media attention to 16, 17; post 3/11 retention and recruitment of 16–17 international studies 10–11 International Sumo Championships 170 International Sumo Federation (IFS) 158, 170–1; and Olympic recognition 172–3 internationalisation see also kokusaika: and baseball see baseball; beyond borders 198, 200–2; commercial 1; conception of 26; de¿nition 68; discourse 6, 57, 107, 120; and family 199–200; and food and culinary culture 68; grass roots 198; and higher education 19, 25–6, 61; importance of emotion and affect in 202; and Japanese cuisine see Japanese cuisine; and Japanese studies and 6–8; and Japanese Working Holiday Makers see Japanese Working Holiday Makers; and justice system reform process 36; key characteristics of 168; and legal education see legal education internationalisation; and modernity 1, 2; and ƿzumǀ 165–9; process of 1–3; relationship to globalisation 4–5, 24, 113 see also gurǀbaruka; and schools see school internationalization; and self-help groups 135; and social status 1–2; and sumo 158–9, 169–70, 173; and universities 19, 23, 25, 26; and Urasenke Chadǀ see Urasenke Chadǀ; within 198–200 Irabu, Hideki 182, 184, 185
Index 209 ‘J.League’: and branding 145; and club structure 145, 146; and foreign players 152, 153; and sport as public good 145 Japan: Buddhism in 133; and ‘English boom’ 109; and ethnic nationalism 150; and ethnic over imperial citizenship 148; and images of the West 109–10; inÀux of foreign workers to 56; inward-looking tendency of 24; and modernisation 2–3; post-War consumer market 112; and public recognition of dangers of alcohol 126; tea traditions in 85, 89, 93; youth unemployment in 114 Japan Exchange and Teaching Program 61 Japan Football Association 144, 145 Japan Soccer League 144 Japan Sumo Association 158 Japanese cuisine see also food and food practices: equation to national-cultural identity 71; and globalisation 68; and misrecognition 74, 79, 80 Japanese Overseas Education Service 61 Japanese Professional Baseball Basic Agreement 1995 183–4 Japanese restaurants: certi¿cation and control system 70–1; and cross-cultural translations 69, 72–3, 81 Japanese restaurants, Melbourne see also KOHARU, ROKU: clientele 77: food authenticity of 79–80; and food domestication 78 Japanese studies 10; internationalisation in 6–8 Japanese Temperance Alliance 125 Japanese Temperance movement 128, 137 Japanese Temperance Union 128–9 Japanese Working Holiday Makers see also working holiday schemes: attainment of cosmopolitan identity as goal of 108, 109–10, 113, 114; and career building 114; commodi¿cation of 112; destination countries 106; English pro¿ciency achieved by 115; English pro¿ciency as goal of 108–9, 113, 114; and neoliberalism 111–12, 120; reasons for undertaking 106; returned see returned Japanese Working Holiday Makers; and self-improvement 113 Jong, Tae-se 153–4 juku 41, 57 jungyǀ 163, 164, 165–6, 169, 170 Justice System Reform Council 32, 36–7, 40, 42, 46
kaifuku 126–7, 137 Kaneda, Masaichi 150 Kashiwada, Takashi 184–5 Kikuchi, Yusei 188 Kinugsa, Sachio 150, 151 kǀen 165, 169, 170 KOHARU (restaurant): and correctness of de¿nition of order 74–5, 76; description of 73–4; and transgressive translations 75–6 kokugi 160–1 kokusaika 3, 6, 23. 109, 158, 168–9, 170; critique of 6–8; contrast to uchinaru kokusaika 56; and sumo 169 kokusaika kyǀiku 54, 57 Konishiki 167 Kuhalua, Jesse 151, 164, 166, 168 Law in Relation to the Promotion of Green Tea (2011) 89–90 Lee, Tadanari 154 legal education: internationalisation see legal education internationalisation; undergraduate, evolution of role of 40–1 legal education internationalisation 32; challenges of 46; description of 33–4; and Justice System Reform Council recommendations 36–8, 40; and legal education reform 32–3, 36–40; Osaka University undergraduate program see Osaka University Undergraduate School of Law program; and worldwide discourse 33–5 Lopez, Wagner 153 ‘lost decade’ 107 ‘lost generation’ 107, 114 Major League Baseball 180; expansion into Japan by 183; friction with Japanese baseball 182; and globalisation 181, 190; Posting Agreement 2000 181, 182, 185, 188, 190 Matsui, Hideki 181, 185–7, 190 Matsuzaka, Daisuke 189 medical model of alcoholism treatment 125, 126–7; effects of international discourse on 137–9; and ‘healthy practices’ 138; and national policy perspective 138–9 migration industry 107; employment in 119; growth of 112–13 Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) 70–1 Ministry of Education (MOE) see also
210
Index
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT): 54, 56; ‘international education unit’ 62; Japanese as a Second Language curriculum 62; Japanese Overseas Education Service 61; and Japanese returnees 61; national curriculum guidelines 62; ‘principle of simple equality’ 60, 62; and zainichi Koreans 60–1 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 15, 16–17, 21–2, 24, 32, 36, 43, 68, 120 Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications 54 Ministry of Justice 14, 32, 36, 39 misrecognition 70, 74, 79, 80, 150 modernity: and circulation of information 2; and individualisation 110–11; and internationalisation 1, 2; Japanese idea of 2; ‘liquid’ 180; ‘project’ of 2; and young people 112 ‘Mothers of Fukushima’ 197 multicultural co-living 63, 64; de¿nition 53–4 Murakami, Masanori 182 Nadeshiko Japan 197 Nakasone, Yasuhiro 6, 20, 109 National Association for Research into the Education of Resident Foreigners in Japan 59 National Association for Research into the Education of Resident Koreans in Japan (ZZCKKK) 58 National Association for Research on Foreign National Education 58 neoliberalism 1; and Japanese Working Holiday Makers 111–12, 120 Nihon Sumǀ Renmei 164, 170 nihonjinron 7, 150 nikkeijin: and schools 152–3; and sumo 162–6, 169 Nippon Professional Baseball League 180, 183; Posting Agreement 2000 181, 182, 185 Nomo, Hideo 181, 182, 183–5, 189 nuclear disasters see also Fukushima: demonstrations protesting 197; Fukushima 195, 196–7 Oh, Sadaharu 150, 151 Omotosenke: difference to Urasenke Chadǀ 85
ongaeshi 186 ‘Operation Tomodachi’ 196 Osaka University Undergraduate School of Law program: process of internationalisation at 43–6; reasons for internationalisation of 42–3 ƿtani, Shǀhei 188–9, 190 ƿzumǀ 159–60, 161, 162; exclusion of women by 172; internationalisation of 165–9 Posting Agreement 2000 181, 182, 185, 188, 190 products: associations to culture 2 Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalisation see Global 30 Project for Promoting Global Human Resources Development 21, 23, 24, 120 research methodology 91–2 returned Japanese Working Holiday Makers: and bene¿ts of work abroad experience 116; and ‘impression management’ 117–18; and satisfaction with cosmopolitan jobs 118–19; use of English in career by 115–18 Rikidǀzan 148–9 rikishi 151, 158, 159, 166–7, 169 ROKU (restaurant): clientele needs balanced with production values and 77–8 school internationalisation: ‘children with foreign roots’ 59; and ‘children with special relation to foreign countries’ and 59–60 domestic internationalisation 54, 56, 59; ‘education for domestic internationalisation’ 53, 63, 64; ‘education for foreign children residing in Japan’ 59; ‘education for multicultural co-living’ see multicultural co-living; ‘education for newcomer foreigners’ 54, 57–8; emergence of 54–6; and human rights education 54, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64; infrastructure 56–7; ‘intercultural education’ 53, 60; ‘international classes’ 56, 57; ‘international understanding education’ 53, 54, 60, 61, 64; Japanese as a Second Language classes 57, 58, 62, 63; Japanese returnee education 54, 56–7, 60–2, 64, 65; and local government policies 63–4; ‘multicultural education’ 53; national curriculum guidelines 62;
Index 211 ‘policies for the education of foreign nationals in Japan’ 63; ‘principle of simple equality’ 60; ‘Super English Language High Schools’ 61; and zainichi Koreans 56–61, 64, 65 self-help groups: internationalisation of 135; relationship with medical professionals 137; and self-change models 131 Shadan Hǀjin Chado Urasenke Tankokai 86–7 shugai taiken 129 shnjshoku hyǀgaki 114 soccer, Australian: popularity of compared to other codes 155; status of 143 soccer, Japanese: cheering 143; elements of globality 144; overseas recruitment of players 152–3; ownership structure 146; and response to Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 145; reasons for future growth of 145–6; and sporting internationalism 146; status of 143; women’s national team 147, 197; and zainichi 153–4 soccer, United States: and gender equality 155; participation rates in 155; status of 143 Son, Kitei 148 sport-society relationships: globalisation of 142–4 sports: citizenship, Àexible 154; and ‘foreign players’ 149–51; Imperial Japan 147–8; pure Japanese players 150; television broadcasting 148 Star¿nn, Victor 148 status: and internationalised products 2; and internationalisation 3; individual 2 subjectivity, neoliberal 107 sumo wrestling 10; amateur see sumo, amateur; and aura of Japanese masculinity 158; as cultural performance 162–5; and ‘dignity’ 143, 167; and dynamics of ethnicity 143–4; and gender equality 147; ‘gentlemen’s’ 161; goodwill tours 170; and foreign-born wresters 151, 158, 159, 165, 166–7, 169, 173; Imperial Japan 147; international tours 165, 169, 170; internationalisation and 158–9, 169–70, 173; and Japanese diaspora 162–5, 173; Japanese uniqueness of 146–7; and kokugi 160–1; and kokusaika 169; as ‘national sport’ 158, 159–62; and nikkeijin 162–6, 169; and ƿzumǀ 159–60, 161, 162;
philosophical and moral elements of 160; post-War 151; regional tours 163, 164, 165–6, 169, 170; stables 163, 166–7; student 161–2, 173; Way of 160 sumo, amateur 158, 159, 161–2, 169–70, 171; exclusion of women by 172; recognition by International Olympic Committee 171–3 Sumo Association 68, 151 Sumo World Championships 170–2 sushi 68 ‘Sushi Police’ 9, 70, 71, 92 Takamiyama see Kuhualua, Jesse Tazawa, Junichi 188 tea: as cultural commodity 89–90; ceremonies see Urasenke Chadǀ; translation to different jurisdictions 97 Tokyo Temperance Union 129 transnationalism 5 uchinaru kokusaika 54: contrast to kokusaika 56 Uniqlo 23, 109, 198 United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement 2000 see Posting Agreement universities: decline in overseas studies 24; and globalisation 5; international standing of 25; international students and see international students; and internationalisation 19, 23, 25, 26; and legal education reform internationalisation see legal education reform internationalisation Uppsala model 1 Urasenke (organisation) 9, 68 Urasenke Chadǀ 9 see also Chadǀ; availability of utensils 88; difference to Omotosenke 85; focus outside Japan 86, 87; and gender empowerment 95; history of 85–6; as international commodity for consumption 88–90; internationalisation and 84; and modernisation while maintaining traditional authenticity 89, 98 Urasenke Chado Tankokai Melbourne Association 84, 87, 88, 90; establishment of 92; gender balance in 94, 95; motivations for participation in 95–7 Urasenke Foundation 86–8 ushinawareta jnjnen 107 ushinawareta nijnjnen 107
212
Index
Valentine, Bobby 152 Way of Sumo 160 Way of Tea see Urasenke Chadǀ Women’s Christian Temperance Union 128, 129 working holiday schemes 106, 198 see also Japanese Working Holiday Makers: guidebooks as research tools 113; promotion of by migration advisers 109
Yonamine, Wally 148, 149 youth migration see Japanese Working Holiday Makers; migration industry Yu, Darvish 181, 189, 190 zainichi 22; Koreans 56–61, 64, 65, 153–4 zainichi gaikokujin kyǀiku 59 Zen Buddhism 129; and Danshukai 132–4, 135–6 Zendranren 129