Eye Magazine
The Magazine of The International Academic Forum | Issue 4 | Summer 2014

Who is taking charge in East Asia?
Craig Mark on Lessonsof Leadership Diplomacy
Michael Liam Kedzlie on Japan’s
New Defence Posture
Rev. Prof. Stuart Picken on The
Yasukuni Shrine Debate

Summer Features
Star Trek and International Relations
The Hillary Scholars on Everest
Chemistry in the Kitchen
John Hope on Internationalization

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 4

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17
14

20

18

22

4.
From the Editor
An introduction to the latest
edition of Eye Magazine
by Michael Liam Kedzlie

17.
The Yasukuni Shrine
DebateLooking At The Other Side
by Rev. Prof. Stuart Picken

6.
Becoming Engaged
Japan’s New Defence
Postureby Michael Liam Kedzlie

18.
At the Tipping Point
Abenomics and Director
Training
by Nicholas Benes

10.
Making It So
Using Star Trek to Illustrate
Concepts of International
Relationsby Joel R. Campbell

20.
Crisis Through a Camera
Lens
Paul Lowe’s career as aphotojournalist

CONTENTS

14.
Lessons of Leadership
Diplomacy
World leader visits andforeign policy
by Craig Mark
2 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

22.
Chemistry in the Kitchen
Learning about scienceand cooking with Harvard
University

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 4

26

30
26.
A Step Higher
Experiencing Sir Edmund
Hillary’s Influence in Nepal
by Greg O’Carroll
30.
Lessons Learned
The Future of Education isInternationalization —A profile on Dr. John Hope

34
36

38.
Becoming Rather thanBeing
The mimicry of culture
and the modern Japanese
woman in Junichiro
Tanizaki’s Naomi
by Rachel Kwok
40.
NatioNILism
Patriotic Nation-less-ness
Belongingby Yoshi Joanna Grote

34.
La Chinesca
A Chinese Community in the
Mexico-U.S. Borderlands
Cover Photograph by
by Scott Warren, Donna
U.S. Department of
Ruiz y Costello, and Wan Yu Defense.
36.
Hearts and Minds
An ensemble piece thatgives the Vietnamese aspace in their own history
by Wajiha Raza Rizvi

38
40

Eye Magazine
Issue 4 | Summer 2014

EditorMichael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor
Lindsay Lafreniere
Admin AssistantMiho Tanaka
Subscriptions
magazine@iafor.org

Copyright © 2014, Eye Magazine

If you would like to subscribe to Eye Magazine,
or would like to contribute to the magazine,
please contact us via magazine@iafor.org
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 3

A word from the editorW

elcome to the Summer 2014 editionof Eye Magazine, the International
Academic Forum’s own in-housee-magazine publication. To us at IAFOR, Eye is aplace for you to focus and to share interdisciplinary
knowledge and research synergies. Its aim is
to provide opportunities for the latest researchpresented at our conferences and subsequently
published in our various official proceedings
and journals to be available to a new and wider
audience beyond our own research silos. It, ofcourse, is also the place to go creative and gointerdisciplinary with your own original thoughts,
essays, and opinion pieces. We, the editorial staff,
trust that this edition of Eye Magazine will be an
informative, interesting and exciting way for us tocommunicate with you, and you in turn with us.
In this latest edition I wish to thank thosecontributors who have kindly written articles
and submitted photos to make it all happen andto make it an interesting and vibrant read. This
edition has some fabulous articles ranging from
Joel Campbell’s superb study of Star Trek and its
synergies with International Relations, throughto Craig Mark’s exposition on the contemporary
political event trends within the Asian region andto Stuart Pickens’ staunch defence of the rights
of Japanese to worship at Yasukuni Shrine. This
edition also has an insightful update by Nicholas
Benes on the recent policy initiatives regarding
corporate governance in Japan. It is also a pleasure
to publish Greg O’Carroll’s experiences leading
the Sir Edmund Hillary Scholars to the base campof Mount Everest.
Eye Magazine has had the opportunity tointerview a large number of people over the last
few months. Due to issues of space we could
not immediately publish everyone for this issue,
however we were fortunate to be able to provide
for you in this Summer edition interviews with

4 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

leading photographer Paul Lowe, Pia Sörensen
from Harvard who is helping to shape Science andCooking, and hugely experienced education leader
John Hope.
In this edition Wajiha R Rizvi, of the Film
Museum Society Lahore, takes a 40th anniversary
retrospective of Peter Davis’ Vietnam era
documentary film masterpiece, Hearts and Minds.
We are also pleased to introduce to Eye Magazine
readers a group of young and emerging academics
who are taking interdisciplinary academia into newand exciting places. In this edition I have research
articles and essays from Scott Warren, Donna
Ruiz y Costello and Wan Yu from Arizona State
University, about Chinese communities livingon the Mexico-USA Borderlands. Universityof British Columbia’s Rachel Kwok looks into
the world of Junichiro Tanizaki’s Naomi and themodern Japanese woman of the 1920’s. Yoshi
Joanna Grote from Kyoto Sangyo University
provides a thought provoking insight into thosepeople who live their lives in the ‘Third Culture’.
As Editor, I must give special thanks to my
Assistant Editor Lindsay Lafreniere and IAFOR’SMedia Manager Thad Pope for their assistance ingetting this magazine together and looking sogood. Together, Lindsay, Thad and myself are very
excited by this particular edition of the magazine.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we have enjoyedputting it together for you.
Michael Liam Kedzlie
Editormkedzlie@iafor.org““

FROM THE EDITOR

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 5

EDITORIAL
Photograph by Official U.S. Navy Page/ Flickr

Becoming Engaged
Japan’s New Defence Posture
BY MICHAEL LIAM KEDZLIE

E

ver since Shinzo Abe reclaimed
the Japanese Prime Ministershipin December 2012, he has sought
to put Japan on a more normalised
footing with respect to the country’s
defence posture.
Though Japan has long played amajor role in the international scenethrough diplomacy and flexing its useof credible soft power, only recently
has it begun to develop international
defence relationships with regionaland global peers beyond its traditional
ally - the United States.
The main barrier to Japanese
engagement in the wider regionaland global defence umbrella has

6 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

historically been its interpretation of
Article 9 of its Postwar Constitution.
Though initially interpreted to forbid
any offensive capability over thesubsequent decades, this interpretation
has evolved to the point whereby Japanhas, through its Japanese Self Defence
Force ( JSDF), possessed a modern,sophisticated military capability thatcovers all three essential elementsof combat operations – land, air andmaritime.
Most seasoned military commentators
regard some aspects of the naval
capability of its Maritime Self
Defence Force (MSDF) as being on
par with the established French andBritish Navies. Though not possessing

force projection of aircraft carriers andnuclear submarines, unlike its French
and British counterparts, its fleet of
surface combatants, which include
the Aegis equipped Kongo Class
destroyers, are hugely formidable andin recent years they have started tobuild helicopter capable amphibious
vessels. The Japanese Air Self Defence
Force (ASDF) has also ordered aroundforty F-35B joint strike fighters,
which will be assembled locally underlicense. The ability to operate large
flat-top amphibious vessels, coupledwith the F-35B, leave some to assume
that if need be Japan could very
quickly redevelop its aircraft carriercapability if extraneous tensions in theregion unravel towards conflict.

Tokyo defence pundits point out that
future defence purchases by Japanmay include the RQ-4 Triton, a largehigh altitude long range maritime
UAV that is able to link in with the
future US Navy-led Broad Area
Maritime Surveillance (BAMS)
capability that a number of UnitedStates allies in the region are actively
pursuing. In the meantime, all threearms of the JSDF, including the
150,000 strong Ground Self Defence
Force (GSDF), are training with their
allies and particularly in the area of
Humanitarian and Disaster Support.
This month, Japan took the leadership
position in a large exercise amongst
nations with friendly relations topractice its skills set in this most valued
capability. Officials in Canberra,
Singapore and Washington feel thisis an area in which Japan can not justcontribute to in the future, but in fact
be a regional leader and expert.
Though the chequebook may beout for Japan to upgrade its defence
capability to reflect the current andshifting patterns of power within theregion, the Abe administration wishes
to develop Japan’s defence sector
exports. Japan is looking to cash in on
its high technological industrial basewith built in dominant engineering
andelectronics
manufacturing
capability, producing defence products
for foreign sale. In what can be
described as a move to start to pickapart the nation’s self-imposed banon the exportation of defence-related
equipment, the Abe government
this April eased its 1967 “threeprinciples” restrictions on weapons
exports. Currently under development
and eventually available for sale toforeign buyers are the large Kawasaki
C2 military transport aircraft as wellas its sister aircraft the Kawasaki P1
patrol aircraft. The Indian government
has also approached ShinMaywa
Industries’ of Hyogo Prefecture with aview to acquire their US-2 amphibious
surveillance aircraft to secure thatemerging power’s littorals.
Of more immediate interest is thatJapan’s Soryu Class submarine fleet
are so highly regarded that close US

Allies, the Australians, are looking
to Japan to assist in the technicalsolutions required to replace theiraging fleet of Collins class submarines.
The potential deal between Japanand Australia, worth billions to theJapanese economy, is one of the mostclosely watched developments in theregion. Australia is a nation known
for only buying top-shelf militarycapabilities, usually American, andwould be seen as a commercial successfor the Japanese, who being new tothe international defence equipment
markets, could use the Australian deal
as a indicator of their relevance as ahigh-end low-risk defence contractor.
These nuances of constitutional
interpretation and revision of export
policy restrictions can only go sofar. As always, any fundamental
constitutional law requires black andwhite certainty as interpretationsof policy can always be revisitedand tinkered with - this potentially
undermining the integrity of thestate and the constitution. Japan is
no exception in this case. Therefore,
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 7

8 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

Photograph by Official U.S. Navy Page / Flickr

This is how Korea, Australia, New Zealand,
Singapore and others in the region engage
with each other, so why not Japan?

many in the Abe camp feel that as Japan has developed
into a modern democracy, it needs to tune its Constitution
to reflect what the country actually is within this globalised
21st century construct. Japan needs to develop normative
defence relationships with its like-minded friends,
neighbours, and trading partners throughout Asia andfurther afield. This is how Korea, Australia, New Zealand,
Singapore and others in the region engage with each other,so why not Japan?
It is the view of Shinzo Abe that Article 9, after nearly 70
years, has now run its course. This clause in the Constitution
has become an albatross that keeps Japan from engaging in
a whole raft of defence relationships and joint security tasks.
They consider that Japan has played its part as a positive
global citizen and the normalization of its defence posture
will benefit the region by allowing its Self Defence Forces
to play their part as a positive democratic contributor to arules-based international security environment.
For those of a more measured and less hysterical nature,
Japan’s re-engagment with the wider international defence
community is seen as a step in the right direction andhighly welcomed. Though defence forces the world overare designed to defend sovereign territory and economic
interests, they are also a tool for the protection of economic
sovereignty and territorial integrity. Not just at the intrastate level, but also at the regional level as well. The move by
the Abe Government to normalize the role of the Japanese
Self Defence Force is seen as a proactive one and not
provocative within the world’s more mature and progressive
democracies. Countries like Australia, Singapore, New
Zealand and India welcome the move by Japan into thefold after a long hiatus, either recently establishing defence
ties or steadily moving towards them. Both the Philippines
and Vietnam have in recent years begun a constructive
dialogue with the Japanese government regarding thedevelopment of defence and security ties. To these nations,future changes to Article 9 are not seen as a reckless return
to militarism of decades past, but as another mature stable
contributor to a rules based international community.

In real terms, any revision to article 9 will see the Japanese
Self Defence Forces be able to offer their modern militarycapabilities to not just United Nations Security Council(UNSC) Chapter VI events such as Peacekeeping Missions
or to Humanitarian and Disaster Support Operations,but also make a valuable military contribution to UNSC
Chapter VII events such as complex Peace Enforcement
Missions. It also means that Japan will become more
visible in the maritime realm of the region and further
abroad in the essential constabulary role of keeping the Sea
Lines of Communication (SLOC) open and safe acrossinternational waters. Free and open waters that Japan has
long benefited from but has, through its constitutional
restrictions, not been able to assist with. International
markets and economies require stability and security toassist in the flow of trade and Japan’s ability to add to theweight of maintaining this stability and security helps easethe cost and burden of other nations who will continue todo so.
Due to the world being far more interconnected in the 21st
century and with multi-lateralism in both trade and defence
relationships now to the fore, Shinzo Abe has perceived
that Japan needs to and is ready to contribute to the wider
regional security umbrella. His move should be seen forwhat it is. Not as one striking out on an independent selfabsorbed stance, nor, as a subservient dependency to thepre-eminent global power, the United States. To Abe,
Japan’s move is clearly one of interdependency in alliancewith regional and global friends. This is a response that
other mature democracies have long realized. To be truly
influential, and indeed successful over the long term, anation has to contribute and support its neighbours, build
positive relationships rather than threats and posturing.
Japan is a proud nation, yet in the 21st Century it is not anarrogant one.
Michael Liam Kedzlie is the Research and Policy
Manager for IAFOR and is the Editor of Eye Magazine.

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 9

Photograph by Matías Ferreyra / Flickr

10 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

Making It So

Using Star Trek to Illustrate Concepts of International Relations
by Joel R. Campbell

In one of my favorite episodes of the original series of Star
Trek, Captain James T. Kirk encounters Zefram Cochran,one of the founders of a future United Earth, kept alive
and young on a habitable asteroid for nearly a century.
Cochran, out of touch with Earth affairs for decades, asks
Kirk how humanity is doing. Kirk enthusiastically answers,“we’re on a thousand planets and spreading out!” That wasa magical moment for me as a boy, when I pondered theshining possibilities of our collective endeavor. Maybe we
could make it and find a bright home among the stars.
Gene Roddenberry, creator and guardian of the Star Trek
franchise for its first generation, crafted an optimistic
future in which humans have solved most of the age-old
problems: war, racism, inequality, poverty, hunger, anddisease. We have emerged from our adolescence and weknow the way to live, with ourselves and other intelligent
species. At its best, Star Trek has been about ideas andinspiration, with action and romance secondary.
Now, I’m all grown up and teach international relations(IR), and I have discovered that my cherished television
franchise is a perfect tool for illustrating concepts of IR
in the classroom. That’s the beauty of science fiction: it
tells us as much about our societies and politics here andnow as it does about future societies out there in space.
The original series spawned three movie serials, plus four
additional television series. Each is a reflection of thetimes in which it was made, and each instructs us about
the changing nature of the international system. To
the original list of problems overcome in the future themore recent series have added sexism, homophobia, andterrorism.
The original series aired on America’s NBC television from1966 to 1969. This was at the height of both the Cold
War and the Vietnam War, an era of civil rights, youth andantiwar protests. The series presented the basic elementsthat would inform all subsequent series: a multi-ethnic
and multinational crew, on a peaceful mission serving
the Federation of Planets, which is a kind of interstellar
combined U.N. and NATO. Underlying it all was a mythic
friendship among the three lead characters: coolly logical
Vulcan Science Officer Spock, emotional and intuitive Dr.
Leonard “Bones” McCoy, and Captain Kirk, who has tocombine reason and feeling to make the right decisions.
Reflecting its Cold War origins, the dominant IR approachin this series is structural realism: the universe is a self-help
system, in which planets (read states) seek to maximize
their planetary (national) interests through balance ofpower, projection of military power, and alliances. Like
the U.S. in the Cold War, the Federation faces off against
two authoritarian rivals, the Klingon Empire (standin for the Soviet Union) and the Romulan Star Empire(China). In episodes such as “Balance of Terror,” it’s allabout keeping the balance of power, protecting neutral
zones, and not letting one’s enemy gain a technological or
military edge. In “A Taste of Armageddon,” two planets
have been waging a computer-driven war for generations,as a way to maintain a fragile peace.
A key plot device is the prime directive, a basic Federation
rule to not interfere in the normal development of aplanetary civilization. In the original series, Kirk andcrew frequently violate the prime directive, yet seemtroubled by stepping over the line. This may have reflected
American preoccupation with intervention in developing
countries during the Cold War, seen as necessary in
pursuit of the Containment doctrine, but disturbing
to many Americans who remembered America’s anticolonial origins and wanted to respect those countries’
own paths of development. The series also contrasted
democracy and authoritarianism, as Kirk and crew soughtto spread democratic values to various closed societies. The
Federation’s openness and inclusivity contrasted with theclosed and oppressive Klingon and Romulan societies.
The original series was cancelled after only three years, butquickly found a second life in TV reruns due to its legionof young fans. The cast returned in a series of films, sixof which premiered between 1979 and 1992. The movie
most pertinent to IR is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered
Country. Leonard Nimoy (Spock) helped draft the storyidea, and suggested that the story deal with recent events.
It thus became a parable of the fall of the Soviet Union.
An explosion on a major energy facility (read Chernobyl)
triggers a crisis in the empire, and a reformist Chancellor
Gorkon (Gorbachev) comes to power. Like many leaders
working for peace (Gandhi, Sadat, King, or Kennedy),
Gorkon is assassinated. Kirk has to put aside his hatred ofKlingons and work with Gorkon’s daughter to bring abouta Klingon-Federation peace conference.
Due to the continued popularity of the franchise,Paramount studios decided in 1987 to launch a new Star
Trek television series, to be set eighty years beyond theoriginal series and called Star Trek: The Next Generation,
but could not find a network to carry it. The studio thus
settled on an innovative approach involving first-run
syndication, meaning a variety of independent TV stations
would all run first-time episodes within the same week.
The approach proved wildly successful, and by the early
1990s the series became the most popular in the franchise’s
history. Captain Jean-Luc Picard embodied the more coolrationality that Spock carried in the original series, while
his “Number Two,” Will Riker, was more the Kirk-likeshoot-from-the-hip character. This series reflected the
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 11

Photograph by Matías Ferreyra / Flickr

Federation conflict. Commanding thespace station was the franchise’s firstlead black captain, Ben Sisko, assistedby Bajoran Colonel Kira Nerys. The
longest and most fascinating story
arc concerned the Dominion Wars, inwhich a group of shape-shifters (theFounders) try to invade this part of thegalaxy (the Alpha Quadrant) througha worm-hole near the DSN spacestation. The Federation is able to put
aside all conflicts and forge a WorldWar II-like grand coalition with theKlingons, Romulans, and several
other species to fight the invasion.
Only the Cardassians support theFounders and, like the Japanese in
World War II, are forced back to theirhome planet and suddenly surrender.

[ STA R T RE K ] R EF LE C T ED T H E LI B ER A L I N S T I T U T I O N A LI S T VA LU ES T H AT CA M E T O
D O M I N AT E T H E P O S T- CO LD WA R WO R LD.

liberal-institutionalist values that came to dominate the post-Cold War world:
the importance of diplomacy and negotiations, respect for diverse cultures,closer adherence to international law and humanitarian interventions to protectabused populations. As such, the Federation was able to reach a quasi-alliancewith the Klingons and achieve peace with the Romulans. A new authoritarianfoe, the Cardassian Empire, appeared but the Federation was able to make deals
with them fairly quickly. The one foe with which the Federation was unable
to accept was the Borg, a hive-like society that absorbed (or “assimilated”) as
mindless drones all those it encountered. This may have reflected burgeoning
concerns across the world about the advance of globalization.
The next two series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, continued
in the vein of The Next Generation, but with slight variations. Deep Space Nine
departed from previous incarnations in setting its stories primarily on a spacestation, using story arcs spread over several episodes, and introducing intra12 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

The eponymous Starship Voyager isstranded on the far end of the galaxy,commanded by Captain Kathryn
Janeway, the first female captain tohead a series. The journey home
could take decades.
Along theway, a crew cobbled together fromFederation personnel and rebels
encounters various new civilizations,but eventually meets some old foes
from the Alpha Quadrant, including
the Borg. The Voyager crew runs
into a particularly implacable interdimensional enemy, Species 8472. Inline with the liberal frame of mindof all the 1990s series, all it takes toreach a modus vivendi with themis improved communication, with
Species 8472 representatives helping
out by taking human form.
Star Trek: Enterprise was the first series
produced after the 9/11 Incident. A
prequel set before the founding of
the Federation, the show reflects thewonder of the human race as it firstmoves beyond the solar system, andthe occasionally fumbling efforts todeal with strange new civilizations.
9/11 plays a particular role in theseries in a season-long story arc about
a sudden attack on Earth by the Xindi,a shadowy consortium of species

Photograph by James Vaughan / Flickr(insectoids, arboreals, aquatics, humanoids, etc.) froma remote part of the galaxy called the Expanse. Thisperhaps illustrates Americans’ revulsion to al Qaeda andits radicalism, with the enemy reduced to a collection of
uncomprehending animals.
Enterprise was considered the least successful of the recent
series: unlike the others, it was cancelled after only four
years on air. To many the television franchise had runout of steam, or perhaps the Next Generation momentof popularity was an anomaly in the glow surrounding
the end of the Cold War. It seemed that Star Trek was,for the moment, dead. But Star Trek found an unlikely
savior in the form of uber-director J.J. Abrams, creator of
the wildly popular Lost television series. Like the nearly
contemporary Dark Knight series of Batman movies,
Abrams was determined to reinvent the movie series bygoing back to its origins. Thus, a rebooted Star Trek was
introduced to a new generation in 2009. Also a prequelto the original series, it presents a younger Kirk, Spockand crew. Unlike the original series, it places action
ahead of intriguing ideas. Both Star Trek and its sequelStar Trek: Into Darkness are essentially confrontations
with implacable villains who cannot be reached throughreason and negotiation. Star Trek has returned to realism,
but a primitive variant wherein all that foes understandis force. This may demonstrate contemporary Americanlack of interest in the international system, and a growing
disillusionment with traditional diplomacy, balance ofpower, and alliances as ways to structure the world.
But true Trek fans want to try. Another priceless Star Trek
moment happens near the end of Star Trek: First Contact,probably the best of the films with the Next Generation cast.

Picard and crew had to travel back to the late twenty-first
century to stop the Borg from preventing the first meetingof humans and Vulcans. Toward the film’s end, Lily Sloan,
a twenty-first century woman who helped Picard, tells himthat she envies him and the world to which he is returning.
Picard replies that he envies her being at the beginning of
a whole new world. It’s one of those unexpected exchanges
that brings tears to the eyes as it reveals the wonder of auniverse unfolding. That’s the magic of Star Trek.
Joel Campbell is an Associate Professor of Political
Science in the Pacific Region ( Japan and Korea) of
the Global Campus program at Troy University. He
teaches in the Masters of Science in International
Relations (MSIR) program. He has taught at Tohoku
University, Miyazaki International College and Kansai
Gaidai University in Japan, as well as three universities
in Korea. He has published extensively on his principal
research interests, the politics and political economy
of Northeast Asia, along with technology policy andinternational security.
Amit Gupta. 2013.
“Star Trek and International
Relations.” e-international relations, June 2. http://www.eir.info/2013/06/02/star-trek-and-international-relations/(accessed 10/22/13).
¨IPE Zone. 2011. “Star Trek Shows Demise of theAmerican Idea,” May. http://ipezone.blogspot.jp/2011/05/
star-trek-shows-demise-of-american-idea.html(accessed 10/22/13) .
¨Topher Morrison. 2012. “How Star Trek Can Save U.S.
Foreign Policy, May 14. http://www.greenewave.com/
how-star-trek-can-save-u-s-foreign-policy/(accessed 10/22/13) .
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 13

FEATURED ARTICLEFEATURE : Craig Mark

Lessons of Leadership Diplomacy
by Craig MarkW

hile political theorists often discount the ‘great man’ approach to analysis of international relations, high-level
leadership visits do indicate the direction and intentions of a nation’s foreign policy, and can potentially result inhighly significant, even historic diplomatic results. Patterns of national leaders’ visits in the Asia-Pacific and the wider
world therefore indicate some important trends in international diplomacy.
Prominent in the Asia-Pacific region recently was US President Barack Obama’s trip in April, delayed due to the US
government ‘shutdown’ crisis of 2013. This tour was a demonstration intended to show that the US remains determined
to continue its ‘Pivot’ of the majority of US maritime forces into the Pacific. Obama’s visit was thereby an overt show of
support for its major regional allies, Japan and South Korea, and also for the Philippines, with the announcement that
the US military would return to use base facilities there, reversing the abandonment after the Cold War (Obama also
visited Malaysia). The underlying purpose of Obama’s Asia-Pacific visit was to reinforce the USA’s potential deterrencerole against China, reasserting that the US security treaty with Japan covers Japan’s control over the Senkaku (Diaoyu)
Islands in the East China Sea, while not making a final determination over their sovereignty.
14 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

Australian Prime Minister Tony
Abbott has also given clear directions
in Australian foreign policy, in
his first series of diplomatic visits.
Abbott’s first visit as Prime Ministerto Indonesia in October 2013 was
not able to smooth the path forJakarta to accept the new LiberalNational Coalition government’s
controversial ‘Operation Sovereign
Borders’ policy, of towing back asylum
seeker boats back towards Indonesian
waters. Revelations of past espionage
by Australia against Indonesia also
damaged relations. At his first APEC
Leaders’ meeting in Indonesia, also
last October, Abbott declared Japanas Australia’s “best friend in Asia”,
effectively siding with Japan in its
territorial dispute with China. Thiswas confirmed during Abbott’s trip
to North East Asia last April, where
an Economic Partnership Agreement(EPA) was secured with Japan,
along with moves for more intensive
security cooperation (an EPA was also
confirmed with South Korea). These
increasingly closer ties with Japanposes a dilemma for Australia, given
China is its largest trading partner;
Abbott thus led a large businessdelegation to China on the return legof his North East Asia trip, aiming toreassure Beijing, albeit not altogether
convincingly. The ultimate prize of an
EPA between China and Australia is

yet to be secured.
Abbott recently made a return visit toIndonesia,on the way to attend the 70th
D-Day commemorations in France, asign that the damaged relations with
Jakarta are going some way to being
restored. Abbott then went on to his
first official visit to North America,
where the Australian government’s
relative lack of action on climatechange was highlighted. Promoting
trade and investment was the main
focus of Abbott’s North America
visit, stating that climate change is“not…the most important problem
the world faces”. Abbott teamedwith fellow conservative CanadianPrime Minister Stephen Harper tocriticize carbon pricing, citing risks
to economic growth of the heavily
commodity-dependent
Canadianand Australian economies. In the US,
Abbott cancelled a visit to the World
Bank, due to its active policies totackle climate change; instead, Abbott
met News Corporation chief Rupert
Murdoch, and potential Republicanpresidential candidate Jeb Bush.

Photograph by cmccain202dc / Flickr

Photograph by Stephen Harper / Flickr

Obama was also concerned about
encouraging better relations between
South Korea and Japan. He was able
to broker a meeting between JapanesePrime Minister Shinzo Abe andSouth Korean President Park GeunHye at the Nuclear Security Summit
in the Netherlands last April; despite
this, improved long-term cooperation
between the neighbouring statesremains elusive. Obama’s visit to South
Korea also reassured US support
against a determinedly recalcitrant
North Korea, with little chance of the‘Six-Party’ talks resuming to resolve
North Korea’s possession of nuclear
weapons. Some lower-level diplomacy
between North Korea and Japan has
resumed though, with the potential
for resolving the abduction of Japanesecitizens in the 1970s and 1980s.

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 15

The June G7 summit in Brussels wasa clear reflection of the geopoliticaltensions that have emerged between
the major Western powers and Russia,
currently excluded from the G8 groupof major economies, due to its role in
the ongoing Ukraine crisis. Obama
incorporated his G7 attendance withmeeting recently elected Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko, a clear
signal of diplomatic support for
Ukraine, and a direct rebuke to
Russian President Vladimir Putin(the D-Day commemorations saw
Putin attend, although he was booedby the crowd at the main ceremony!)Shinzo Abe’s participation at the G7
presented a dilemma for Japan, whichcannot afford to alienate Russia,
due to ongoing negotiations tosettle the dispute over the Northern
Territories/Kurile Islands dispute.
While accepting the G7’s financial
and diplomatic sanctions against
Russia, Abe made sure to declare that
he wanted to see dialogue kept openwith Russia.
Shinzo Abe has kept up a high tempo
of diplomatic activity since coming
to office in December 2012, having
visited all ASEAN states in his firstyear, and has made a number of visits
to Europe, as well as the US, theMiddle East and Africa. In his visit
to Australia in July, Abe will delivera rarely granted joint address to
Parliament, reflecting closer JapanAustralia ties. However, these efforts
contrast the relative lack of diplomatic
progress with Japan’s main trading
partner, China. Given the ongoing
territorial tensions in the East China
16 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

Photograph by Number 10 / Flickr

Abbott’s meeting with President
Obama reinforced the alliance
between the US and Australia, withthe announcement of a Force Posture
Initiative, which is likely to extend
the US military presence in Australia.
Abbott’s visit nevertheless exposed an
uncomfortable contrast with Obama’s
recent firm policy stance for stronger
action on climate change.

Sea, there is presently little hope of a
China-Japan leaders’ summit any timesoon, although lower-level diplomatic
exchanges have occurred, such as
the 2014 Meeting of APEC Trade
Ministers’ at Qingdao in May.

and a number of the ASEAN states.
The unresolved tensions on the
Korean peninsula and in the Taiwan
Strait could also become part of themix of worsening hegemonic rivalryin the Pacific.

However, China’s territorial disputes
in the South China Sea havecontinued to worsen, particularly
with the Philippines and Vietnam.
At the last Shangri-La Dialoguein Singapore at the end of May,
delivering the Keynote Address, Aberemained determined to revise Japan’sconstitution, to allow wider use of
the Japanese Self Defence Forces.
While this is generally welcomedby the US and Australia, China’s
representatives have replied with more
confrontational language, concernedthat the US and its allies are steadily
moving towards a potential strategic‘containment’ of China. To counter
this, at the Conference on Interaction
and Confidence-Building measuresin Asia (CICA) summit in Shanghai
last May, China’s President Xi Jinping
hosted a visit by Vladimir Putin,
securing a $400 billion gas purchasefrom Russia, the largest Liquified
Natural Gas deal in history. Russia
and China also held naval exercises,
displaying an increasing level of
security cooperation. The dangerous
scenario of a more Cold-War styleof geopolitics could therefore be
threatening to emerge, where a RussiaChina military bloc confronts the US
and its regional allies; Japan, Australia,

The upcoming November APEC
Summit and East Asia Summit
Leaders’ Meeting (in China and
Myanmar, respectively) are thus
important opportunities to address
regional tensions. Also in November,
the G20 leaders’ summit will be hosted
by Australia in Brisbane, but will the
Abbott Coalition government be up
to the diplomatic challenge? During
his Canadian visit, Tony Abbott called
Russia a ‘bully’; but Vladimir Putin
would still be welcome at the G20.
Prioritising trade and economic issues,
Abbott is reluctant to have climatechange on the agenda of the G20
Brisbane Summit, risking diplomatic
embarrassment from the leadersdemanding more action, such as
Obama, German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, and British Prime Minister
David Cameron. It remains to be seen
whether high-level diplomacy is up
to the challenge of delivering calmer
relations in the region, and effectively
addressing the wider problems ofglobal governance.
Craig Mark is an Associate Professor
in the School of International
Studies at Kwansei Gakuin
University, Japan, and also teaches
in the School of Law and Politics.

PERSPECTIVESThe Yasukuni Shrine Debate
Looking At The Other Side

Photograph by Jose / Flickrr

By Rev. Prof. Stuart Picken

The Chinese Consul General in Edinburgh, Mr. Li Ruiyou,
published an article asking why the Japanese should
worship war criminals in which he displayed the normal
stereotyped ignorance about the nature and function of
the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Yasukuni Jinja was createdto honor those who died on both sides during the Meiji
Restoration conflict of 1868. It also enshrines several
thousand Japanese, including nurses and medical orderlies
who died in World War I providing support to the Royal
Navy. None of these could be called “war criminals.” All
war dead including the modern Self-Defense Forces are
now enshrined there. Two atomic bombs ended the PacificWar, which most reasonable people think was more thansufficient payback. Old scores are surely settled, or perhaps
not for China?

that demonstrated the questionable reasoning behind theidentification of A-class war criminals. During the Korean
War (1950-53) into which China entered on behalf ofNorth Korea, their status was revoked by the Allies.
Post-war China, after 1949, can hardly be described as amodel of calm and tranquility. The endless propaganda
bombing of Taiwan was extremely aggressive. The Cultural
Revolution was brutal and bloody as was the crushingof dissidents at Tiananmen Square, neither inspiringconfidence in a peace-loving China.

So long as China, in its belief that it is a super power,
makes belligerent noises about Japan, or anyone else forthat matter, the Japanese will naturally look to their own
defense. Perhaps it is time for the Chinese government to
The statement regularly made claiming that the shrine was calm down and demonstrate some diplomatic maturity
the spiritual instrument and symbol of Japanese militarism that befits a country of its size and history. But when ain its war of aggression could actually have come from nation has serious unresolved domestic issues, it is not an
U.S. anti-Japanese propaganda. Hollywood was engaged, uncommon strategy to create a distraction by attacking
even before Pearl Harbor in 1941, in creating a narrative outside forces. And what if Japan were to do as China has
attacking Japan. An example is the Alan Ladd movie asked, would that be the end of the matter? Personally, I
China, an anti-Japanese movie which was released in 1940, doubt it.
before Pearl Harbor is an example. “State Shinto” was held
responsible in U.S. documentaries of the period, although, Although now a resident of Scotland, Professor Picken
as has been demonstrated by numerous academics and maintains his interests in Japan, as Chair of the Japanother groups since then, notably the so-called Kyoto School Society of Scotland, and through his Chairmanshipof Buddhism, were overtly nationalistic. The civil war in of the IAFOR International Advisory Board and the
China (1945-49) between Mao and Jiang is ignored, but IAFOR Research Institutes. Professor Picken is also
the resultant slaughter is often attributed to the Japanese. the Chairman of the Academic Board of New College,
The late George Furness, who was Prime Minister Tojo’s Birmingham, UK.
defense lawyer, wrote the defining work Victor’s Justice
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 17

Photograph by Steigenberger Hotels and Resorts / Flickr

ABENOMICS AND DIRECTOR TRAINING

AT THE TIPPING POINT
BY NICHOLAS BENES
Historically, May 23rd, 2014 willprobably be seen to be the date when
the ruling party of Japan, the LDP,
“changed its spots”, mutating from the
Old Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
to the New Liberal Democratic Party.
It was on that day the LDP’s key
growth strategy committee agreed
upon its new “Japan Revival Vision”,
a detailed 74-page document, which
definitively separated the LDPfrom many of the vested interestsand obsolete structures that havedominated its past.
18 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

The Abe administration has set forth araft of new policies within the context
of Japan’s impetus for revolutionary
growth. It is these policies that will set
the reduction of cross-shareholdings
to “as low a level as possible” as well asdraft what they hope to be a world-classcorporate governance code, covering
best practices for the handling ofwhistleblowers, the role of executive
officers, and director training andqualifications. Furthermore, the newcorporate governance code rules will
require independent outside directors,
and be enforced on a “comply or

explain” basis. Changes are also afootwith respect to the governance andmanagement practices at the Japanese
government’s massive pension fund,the GPIF, the largest pension fundin the world, and to transforming thegovernance and utilization of funds atuniversities such as the drawing upon“sleeping deposits.”
At last, the “third arrow” hads
arrived, setting the base for Prime
Minister Abe’s “Japan Revitalization
Strategy” revision at the end of June.

Photograph by jamesjustin / Flickr

It was not perfect and it is not finished yet. It went largely
unnoticed by the foreign press, because it was in Japanese.
But it was real progress. It had meat and coherent strategic
direction in it, and was grounded on economic realities
and cogent analysis. And it did the hardest thing to do inJapan: it gored some sacred cows, in order to create a much
more sustainable future for the nation.
The Board Director Training Institute of Japan (BDTI)
has been advocating these changes to corporate governancein Japan since it’s inception. I am proud to say that the
BDTI, and I personally, played a significant role inthe “thought leadership” for some of the key corporate
governance-related policies listed above, by writing
articles, educating key Diet members ( Japanese Lower
House of Representatives) over a number of years, making
presentations to the LDP’s committee, and holding two
seminars on the topic of “corporate governance codes”, thesecond of which was attended by the proposing LDP Diet
members. I daresay also that BDTI’s focus on directorship,
governance, and compliance training for more than three
years, in both Japanese and English, has contributed to arising tide of awareness about the importance of knowledge
about governance “best practices”.
The promulgation of Japan’s first “comply-or-explain”

corporate governance code means that Japan will becatching up with the rest of the world in one of the areasthat affects economic productivity the most. For the
first time institutional investors will be getting detailed,standardized disclosure about the most important aspectthey need to assess in order to be good stewards: corporate
governance practices and quality at each company. This
disclosure arises naturally when companies must either
comply with best practices, or explain why they did not.
At last, a “virtuous cycle” will emerge between enhanced
transparency and disclosure, investor stewardship and“engagement”, and improvement of corporate governancepractice. In the case of Japan, where people respondquickly to rules when once they are made clear, shareholder
rights are strong, and a huge amount of corporate cash isunderutilized, the potential upside of this dynamic should
not be underestimated.
Nicholas Benes is Representative Director of The Board
Director Training Institute of Japan, a non-profit“public interest” organization certified by the Japanese
government. Benes was a featured speaker at the Fourth
Asian Business and Management Conference held inOsaka, November 21 to 24, 2013.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 19

CRISIS THROUGH A CAMERA LENSPaul Lowe is an award-winning photographer; his photos have appeared inTime, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The

Independent. His work has taken him around the world, covering such events as

the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release and the breakup of Yugoslavia.
“Photography, for a variety of reasons, was the thing I
was really captured by,” says Paul Lowe, award-winningphotographer and Course Director at London College ofCommunication, University of the Arts London. “You don’t
have to translate a photograph. I can take a photograph andsomebody in Japan, in China, in London, or in Germany
can engage with it without having to worry about written or
spoken language.”
Lowe hit the ground running as a photojournalist. Halfway
through a history degree at Clare College, University ofCambridge, he rounded up friends to dabble in documentary
filmmaking. Rather than shooting scenes in his hometown,
they went right for the exotic – Nicaragua, 10 years after the
Sandinista Revolution.
“We made a 16mm film in which I was the cameraman, but
I also shot a lot of still photographs,” says Lowe. “Making
a film was a pretty complex process even for a straightforward documentary. The number of people who need to
be involved is quite large and also, in film making, you have arole but with photography it is always
under your own control.”Following the history degree andexcursion to Nicaragua, Lowecompleted a two-year postgraduate
course in documentary photography
at the Newport School in South
Wales, a school known for producing
famous photographers – “the Newport
Photographic Mafia”, as he calls it.
He was able to have his photographs
commissionedbynewspapers,
generally stand alones on page three.
This evolved into shift work with the
Sunday Telegraph.
“It was during the student riots in thelate 1980s, during the Thatcher era,”says Lowe. “I was sent out to cover
the demonstrations and there was afight between the protesters and thepolice. I got a good photo of the police
standing in their riot gear outside theHouses of Parliament, fighting backthe hoards of unwashed youth as it
were, and it made the front page.”
From here it was on to documenting
more pivotal moments in history, suchas Nelson Mandela’s release and thefall of the Berlin Wall.
“[My editor] said ‘get the first planeout there’,” says Lowe. “I arrived
in Berlin as the wall was falling. I
got some great pictures of the East
Germans coming over the wall for the
first time, meeting the West Germans,
and the wall being torn down.”
He stayed in Europe for a few more
weeks, covering current events in

20 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

Photograph by Matt Clegg / Flickr

the Czechoslovakia and Hungary,
before returning home. His photos
were widely published, including
one on the cover of The Economist.
Yet again he was on a plane when
Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu
was overthrown during the Romanian
Revolution.
“The editor called the Daily Mail and
The Telegraph and between us they
chartered a private jet with gold taps
and everything, it was like being a
superstar footballer,” says Lowe. “It
flew us to Bulgaria and we landed in
the middle of the night in this very
remote airport called Varne. The local
guards were probably thinking wewere very important, wondering why
we were arriving in the middle of thenight in a large private jet.”
Lowe was taken on as part of the start
up team of The European, a weekly
newspaper that ran for less than adecade. He continued covering war
and political stories, from the First
Gulf War to the breakup of the former
Yugoslavia, from locations around theworld.
“The real defining story I worked
on was the conflict in Bosnia andin particular the siege of Sarajevo,”says Lowe. “I spent the better partof three or four years going in andout of Sarajevo covering that as aphotographer.”He met his wife, a journalist, inSarajevo and still has a powerfulrelationship to the place, with houses
in both Bosnia and the UK. Despite
this, Lowe had what he calls a moral
crisis of confidence, in the late 1990s
and early 2000s.
“I was questioning the role of themedia, like a lot of journalists in
Bosnia,” says Lowe. “We could clearly
see that there was a moral issue here
– that there was a right and a wrong,an aggressor and a victim. There wasclearly a case for intervention, a clear
case that the Bosnians should bearmed and should be able to defend
themselves. But the narrative coming
out of Western governments was that
this is an ancient ethnic crisis and wecannot do anything about it and it
would turn into another Vietnam.”This questioning led him to deeper
research and readings of the criticism
and literature on the role of media.
When a position at the London
College of Communication, Universityof the Arts London, working with apast teacher from the Newport School

opened up, he jumped.
“In parallel with that I have kept myown practice as a photographer andalso, more importantly now, I havestarted to think more and more about
research and the role of a photographer
in contemporary society, particularly
using things such as genocide, war
and human rights issues,” he says.
Lowe now runs the Masters
program in Documentary and Photo
Journalism, which hosts more than 30
students from around the world. An
online version of the course is aimed
at mid-career professionals; somestudents are 20-year veterans or staff
photographers from the AssociatedPress and Reuters. He has publisheda book called Bosnians, documenting
ten years of war and post-war life in
the country, and is currently working
on a book on genocide in the former
Yugoslavia.
Paul Lowe was a featured speaker at
the Fifth Asian Conference on theArts and Humanities, held April 3
to 6, 2014, in Osaka, Japan.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 21

22 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

CHEMISTRYIN THEKITCHEN

Molecules and enzymes may
not sound delicious, but they are
when you’re talking about making
paella or cooking steak to perfectdoneness.
Science & CookingX is a ten-week,
online course, modeled after the
popular classroom-based course
held at Harvard University. It’s
hosted on edX, created by Harvard
and MIT to deliver courses tostudents around the world. The
class features guest chefs alongsidescientists, explaining how thechemistry behind the cooking
works. Experiments are conductedin the student’s own kitchens.
“There are so many overlaps, not justin the sense that food and cooking
can be explained in chemistry andphysics, but also in the way that achef approaches a new recipe andfollows certain procedures, is very
similar to the creative process that ascientist goes through in designing
an experiment,” says Pia Sörensen,
Preceptor of Science and Cooking
at the School of Engineeringand Applied Sciences, Harvard

hear the world Harvard and they
become interested in what people
are doing. Also, Ferran Adrià wasinvolved and started this venture.
He is incredibly connected andbasically he summoned his friends,
who are other amazing chefs
around the world, and boughtthem to us.”
Sörensen emphasizes, though, thatthese classes are also successfulwhen taught with local chefs, who
can devote more time to projects.
She recounts how Wylie Dufresne,
from New York’s WD50, led a classand discussed making noodles outof shrimp using an enzyme.

“The question was how do you
make things without protein suchas a chocolate noodle and thus came
one of the student problems about
University. “This is where this idea making a peanut butter noodle,”
was to teach chemistry and physics says Sörensen. “This is of course
through cooking.”
one of the examples where you canhave somebody who is local, a local
Topics range from the simpler chef, to work with as these things
end of things, like how to make come out of real conversations.
aioli using emulsions, up to the A lot of the scientific themes are
mystifying, like spherification, the the same whether they are hauteprocess of turning a liquid into a cuisine or not-as-fancy cooking.”
sphere.
Sörensen was the lead producer in
The course has proven to be the remodeling of the course into
incredibly popular, with more than its online version, which she found
90,000 people registering around more difficult than expected.
the world. Teachers in the 2013
course included Ferran Adrià, “The process is so long and crazyfrom the elBulli Foundation and and you find yourself doing things
possibly one of the world’s most you never thought you would
influential chefs; David Chang, ever be doing,” says Sörensen.
of the wildly popular Momofuku “Suddenly you are standing inrestaurant chain; and Nathan front of a camera and you now
Myhrvold, author of Modernist have to make sense of material in
Cuisine: The Art and Science of a way that you are not used to. We
Cooking, the mammoth 2400 page become so used to working withencyclopedia.
an audience in a class, playing off
people’s faces and expressions.
“These chefs we were working with Suddenly you are trying to do thiswere incredibly busy and we were by looking into a camera or trying
so lucky that they took the time to rework your material into aout of their schedules to work with graphic that is going to make senseus,” says Sörensen. “Most people to an online audience.”

Photographs by Chris Zielecki/ Flickr and arbyreed/ Flickr

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 23

Photographs by Kent Wang/ Flickr and Robert S. Donovan/ Flickr

There was also the issue of presenting scientificexplanations to people from non-sciencebackgrounds. One way to successfully do this was touse more parallel language.
“When talking about the movement of particles as
the temperature increases, you can talk about thatin very chemical terms, you can talk about kinetic
energy and the vibrational and rotational energy,”
she says. “But you can also say that the molecules
jiggle. Now, scientists would be very offended withus using the word jiggle, but that is an example ofparallel language, the sort of example to help themget the concept.”
Past lectures are available to the world on YouTube,on the “Science and Cooking” playlist on Harvard’s
channel. Home and professional chefs can better
their recipes and learn a bit of chemistry at the sametime.
“That is exactly what we are trying to create here,”says Sörensen. “At the very least you can say that wehave 90,000 people interested in science or along theroad to be coming a scientist, with an appreciation or
knowledge of chemistry and physics.”

24 | Eye Magazine Third Edition

Pia Sörensen presented “Chemistry in the Kitchen:
How the Online Version of Science and Cooking
made 90,000 Chemists” at the Fourth Annual
Asian Conference on Language Learning. She
will be a Featured Speaker at the IAFOR North
American Conference on Education 2014, being
held September 25 to 28, 2014, in Providence,
Rhode Island.

“[T]he way that a chef
approaches a new recipe andfollows certain procedures,is very similar to the creative
process that a scientist goes
through in designing anexperiment,” Pia Sörensen.

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 25

A STEP HIGHER

Experiencing Sir Edmund Hillary’s Influence in Nepal

By Greg O’Carroll

Inspired by the nation’s greatest
adventurer, Sir Edmund Hillary,
who along with Tenzing Norgay
conquered Mount Everest in 1953,
the Sir Edmund Hillary Scholarship
Programme educates future leaders
at the University of Waikato, whilst
providing them the opportunity to
excel in academia, sports or creativeand performing arts. Over the pastseven years I have held the role of High
Performance Student Manager at the
University of Waikato in Hamilton,
New Zealand. It is a role which I
very much treasure as it has enabled
me to work with some exceptionallytalented young people as part of the
Sir Edmund Hillary Scholarship
Programme.
The Sir Edmund Hillary Scholarship
Programme is unique to the Universityof Waikato, and in my opinion
26 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

there is no other tertiary scholarshipprogramme like it anywhere else in
the country. Various professional
development
opportunities
andfinancial support are provided forscholars who are inspired by theview that “together, we believe
the impossible is a summit to beconquered”.
It was through my work with thesetalented students that a unique
opportunity arose. Over the years I
have spent a lot of time discussing
aspirations and goals with thescholars, not to mention celebrating
their successes and supportingthem when things didn’t go quite asplanned. Through the programme wehave also created opportunities for thescholars for personal development,
often aligned with the values that Sir
Edmund held dear to his heart. In

2012, a new initiative was developedthat enabled a small group of Hillary
Scholars the chance to travel to Nepal
and visit the Khumbu region in the
Himalayas; the area that Sir Edmund
loved dearly and did so much for interms of assisting the local Sherpa
people. The Hillary scholars can apply
for what is known as the Step Higher
Award, and three fortunate scholars,
along with a group of several others
associated with the programme, ended
up having an incredible experiencein February 2013. They returned
with marvellous stories of the Lukla
Airport, thigh deep snow, the effectsof altitude and the strong bonds they
developed as a group. I was thrilled
for them, as I knew them all very well,
but wasn’t aware that twelve months
later I would have my own uniqueexperience in the Himalayas.

Photograph by Greg O’Carroll

Not long after the 2014 recipients of
the annual award were announced, I
was asked if I would like to join thegroup that would be traveling to Nepal.
Not only that but my employers, U
Leisure at the University of Waikato,
would support me in doing so. It was
an incredible opportunity that was
not to be missed, despite the factthat I would be away from my wifeand three children for three weeks.
It was with a mixture of excitement
and trepidation that I started to reallyconsider what was before me. Since I
stopped playing cricket a number ofyears back, and further enhanced mypassion for BBQs, I wasn’t exactly thefittest 40 plus male around. I was also
concerned about the great unknown,
which is altitude. How would it affectme? Would I be a burden to the restof the group – which comprisedof several fit young people in their
twenties, including four Step Higher
Award recipients – all of whom areathletes? It was time to prepare.
The wonderful thing about preparing
for such an experience is that I could
involve my children. Weekend hikes
ensued with regular trips up the
Wairere falls near my old home townof Matamata (Hobbiton to those notfamiliar with the rural Waikato town
on New Zealand’s North island) andalso the ‘Steps of Doom’. The steps of
doom I refer to are a 1500 step climb,
known officially as the Hakarimata
Summit track – a local ‘bush walk’
near the town of Ngaruawahia. On
my first attempt at this ‘walk’ I took
my extremely energetic seven year old
son who, I was soon to discover, is a bitof a mountain goat. He raced ahead ofme and at one point, as I leaned on a
post gasping for air, turned and yelled“Come on Dad! You wanted to do
this!”. I had a lot of work to do.
On the 8th of February 2014 we
departed New Zealand via Auckland
International Airport en route toKathmandu. We were a party of 9.
The four Step Higher Award Hillary
Scholars, Steve Rae, Luke Coxhead,
Natalie Good and Sharee Hamilton the main reason for the trip, as well as
their support team in another Hillary
Scholar in Adam Burn, a talented
rugby player, Kylie Rae, Sam Good,
Robina Hamilton, and myself. From
Kathmandu, we took an early morning
flight to the spectacular HillaryTenzing Airport at Lukla sitting
pretty at 2,860 metres above sea level.
This was our first experience of Sir
Ed’s influence as he helped develop
the initial airstrip and as such assisted
in opening up the Khumbu region to
the many climbers and trekkers who
visit the region each year. The runway
is only 460 metres long and has a
12% gradient, so you are effectively
landing uphill whilst surrounded byincredible peaks. Our first taste of theHimalayas was truly magnificent andsignificantly thrilling.
Our trekking took place overtwelve days and we were staying incustomary tea houses enjoying the
local hospitality. Being late winter,
we were fortunate to be blessedwith outstanding weather, but thetemperature did drop considerably atnight – down to a balmy minus 15

in some places. I noticed the altitude
immediately as we disembarked theplane at Lukla. There was the obvious
chill at these heights, but the thinnessof the air was something I had notexperienced before in my life.
Each day we would trek along the
Khumbu Valley following the pathof the Dhudh Kosi River as we
acclimatised and slowly gained inaltitude. Stopping at villages such as
Phakding and Monjo allowed us to geta feel for the area and a taste of things
to come. The paths were very well used
as it is essentially the main highway
to the Everest Base Camp. But as we
had chosen to visit in essentially the‘off season’ we didn’t have to deal withlong trails of trekkers, porters, mules
and yak.
Many river crossings took placeover swing bridges, including one
particularly high bridge just prior
to the steeper climb up to Namche
Bazaar. This was a bit of a personal
test as heights and me have a historyof disagreeing with each other; but I
conquered my demons and actually
enjoyed the experience. On this climb
we had our first experience of fallingsnow as well, which added to themagic.
We were extremely well looked after
by our guides who ensured that ourneeds were met and that we weretrekking well. Our head guide, Manoj,
in particular had a wealth of experienceand knowledge. He was very vigilant
with respect to how we were copingwith the effects of altitude, constantly
asking us how we were feeling, ensuring
we kept our fluid intake at a suitablelevel and monitoring what we ate.

Photograph by Matt Werner / Flickr

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 27

Photograph by Greg O’Carroll

For the better part of the trek weavoided meat and dairy products in an
attempt to reduce the risk of stomach
upsets. Carbohydrates formed a hugepart of our diet with rice, potatoes,
noodles and breads featuring heavily.
By the end of the trek I didn’t want
to see another spud. Another thing we
did to look after ourselves was not toshower for the duration of the trek.
Showering can lower your core bodytemperature which may subsequently
bring on the onset of altitude sickness.
So we didn’t smell too good by theend!
The Sherpa people are magnificent,friendly, welcoming, humble andstrong. They live in challenging
conditions but always seemed tohave a smile on their faces as well
as a warm greeting. I can totally see
why Sir Edmund fell in love withthis place and these people. And his
influence is everywhere, from theschool at Khumjung and the healthclinic at Khunde, through to therebuilt monastery at Tengboche. It
was certainly fantastic to witness thisall first hand. And one of the most
special moments for me was to see thelook on the faces of that small group28 | Eye Magazine Fourth Editionof Hillary scholars as we witnessed
Mount Everest for the first time on an
absolutely stunning Himalayan day.
It was a spine tingling moment that
I will treasure for the rest of my days.
At that occasion my thoughts wereactually for my late father, whom had
spoken with me at great length as achild about Hillary’s adventures andwork with the people of Nepal. He
would have loved to have seen this; so
I reserved special thoughts for him atthat unique time.
However it wasn’t all smiles andmagical moments for me. There wassome tough trekking that challenged
me, in particular the climb to
Tengboche. I had been sufferingfrom a chest cold and the trek up
this never ending dusty trail pushed
me significantly. I just couldn’t seemto get any air. I would take ten paces
and rest, ten paces and rest; almost
walking in unison with a group of
porters who were lugging enormous
pieces of timber up to the monastery.
I felt so pathetic struggling with myday pack while these incredible people
carried a load that was probably
the equal, if not more, of their own
weight. I learned valuable lessons thatday, not just about myself but a greater
understanding of what the people ofthis region have to go through on adaily basis. All of a sudden our daily
routines in New Zealand of rushingaround and stressing about things likemeetings or the WiFi not working
seemed so vastly insignificant.
Our twelve days in the Himalayas wasjust a taste for us. We did experiencea brief blizzard not long after wearrived at the village of Pangboche
at 3,985 metres, but it did clear very
quickly and enabled us a spectacularclimb the following day to the Ama
Dablam base camp. Ama Dablamis an incredible looking mountainthat rises to 6,170 metres above sea
level. We didn’t go that high, ofcourse, with the challenge of reaching
4,800 metres to the base camp being
sufficient for us. This was our pinnacle,
our ‘Everest’, and we celebrated withhandshakes and huge smiles. I cannot
imagine how it must have felt for
Hillary and Tenzing to have gone anadditional 4000 metres up to conquer
Everest, and it is something that I do
not want to experience. Looking uponthat peak, and the others, was enoughfor me.

Photograph by Greg O’Carroll

Looking upon that peak, and the others,
was enough for me.
The University of Waikato now has aunique link with this place thanks to
Sir Edmund and his values. Throughthe Hillary Scholarship Programme,
the scholars are reminded of his
contributions to the area andcontinue with this legacy. The scholars
undertake fundraising each year for
the Himalayan Trust that Sir Edmund
helped establish to assist the people of
the region. They have held bake sales,
movie nights, raffles and performances
so that the trust can continue to do
the good work that it does for thesewonderful people and this wonderfulregion.

On 18th April of this year a large
avalanche took the lives of 16 Nepaleseguides near Everest Base Camp.
This had a significant impact on thelocal communities. The challenging
elements of the region mean thatthe work of the Himalayan Trust iseven more important as it helps thosefamilies significantly affected. Whenwe were in Khumjung in February
I met a local gentleman kicking aball around with his son. We got totalking and he said he had attended
the Hillary School at Khumjung, andnow his children attend, and that
he was thankful for everything that

Hillary and the trust had done forthe region. I asked him what he did
as an occupation and he told me he
was a mountain guide. He told me
he had climbed Everest nine times. I
will never know if he was one of thevictims of that tragedy.

Greg O’Carroll is the High
Performance Student Manager for
U Leisure Ltd at The Universityof Waikato, in Hamilton, New
Zealand.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 29

FEATURED PROFILE
30 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

Photograph by Archives New Zealand / Flickr

FEATURED PROFILE

Lessons Learned

The Future of Education is Internationalization
John Hope talks to Eye Magazine Editor
and fellow ‘Kiwi’ Michael Liam Kedzlie
Dr. John Hope is the Associate Dean of International Programmes at the University of Auckland, New
Zealand. Initially beginning his career as a classroom primary school teacher, he quickly moved throughthe teaching profession to become a principal of the largest metropolitan primary school in Auckland,
New Zealand. Following soon was a move into the role of Inspector of Schools, followed by a stint in asenior curriculum writing and development role within the Ministry of Education. As the keynote speakerat the recent 2014 Asian Conference on Technology in the Classroom, Hope drew upon his 49 year
career in education, to survey the current educational scene in Asia through a New Zealand perspective,and discuss his recent research project that uses blogs to assist in the improvement of home-schoolcommunication as well as his passionate views about the need for the further internationalization education.
“A career in education and theteaching profession in particular wasembarked on due to teachers in highschool telling me I had leadership
potential,” says Dr. John Hope.
In their view, teaching was just thesort of career where a young John
Hope could harness that leadership
potential and make his mark. Thosementors were proven right, as John’s
career has grown and prospered into a
number of senior education positions
over the years and proven that earlyleadership potential.
By the early 1990’s and seeking further
challenges, John then embarked onan academic career at the Universityof Auckland. Since joining the
Education faculty at Auckland, Johnhas been a Lecturer, Program Directorof Primary Teacher Training, and thena Principal Centre Director. Ten years
ago, John moved into his current roleas Associate Dean of International
Programmes, a role which sees him
travel extensively throughout theuniversity world, building academic
alliances and establishing partnerships
with a particular emphasis on the

Asia-Pacific region and with othermember universities of the global
Universitas 21 group.
As Associate Dean of International
Programmes at a large research
university for the last decade, John
feels both privileged and fortunate.
He has the chance to represent
the university, his country and his
profession as an educator and get therich cultural experiences of travel.
“My job has a lot of international
travel, which I enjoy,” he says. “Travelis something you have to enjoy to do it
well. For example, I have been coming
to Japan for the last five years regularly
and this is probably the tenth time
I have been here. This time the newexperience for me was joining in witha number of Japanese colleagues tocelebrate the sakura or cherry blossom
festival. Opportunities like that arewhat this job provides.”A large part of John’s internationalrole is to set up research links between
universities and maintain contacts
with other partner universities aroundthe globe. With the University of

Auckland being one of the major
Pacific Rim Universities, this meansthat Asia is a key focus and John
spends many weeks a year travellingthroughout the region. For example
prior to his keynote address at the
ACTC 2014 conference, John wasbusy in liaison work with Mie andHiroshima Universities and setting up
links for the University of Auckland
Medical School, to bring people overto Japan to continue the university’s
pediatric and cancer research.
John’s role also involves the care ofinternational students, encouraging
them to become more international,
and the oversight and quality
assurance of the university’s various
international programmes.
One of the areas of modern educationthat John is most passionate about isthe internationalization of education.
To him it is a personal privilege towork building bridges between both
institutions, cultures and peoples. In
John’s view the case of New Zealandinternationalization is the key tosurvival in academia and education in
general.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 31

access that underpins the tomorrow’s
school process is transformative.

“To most people we are a small country
on the other side of the world,” says
Hope. “The only way you can survive
is by being truly international and byhaving a very research based culture inyour country. You have to get better
than other people. At the moment,
New Zealand has a very strong
economy, one of the strongest in theworld. One of the reasons for this isthat it is coming from a lot of good
research. “John is an advocate for improved
home – school communication
and believes that by having parents
engaged actively with the school
improves not just the child’s
educational progress but strengthens
the local school community. During
his ACTC Conference Keynote
Address in Osaka, John was keen to
share the New Zealand experience of
this home – school relationship andin recent years his research has moved
toward ways in which technology canbe harnessed to improve it. As John
points out, the basis for all of thisstems from the Tomorrow Schools
policy that New Zealand enacted
25 years ago as it moved from acentralized top-down big government
approach to running schools to one inwhich the local school governed itself.
As John notes one of the problems
with schooling is that parents do not
get to know what happens on a daily
basis in their child’s classroom or theirprogress within that classroom. To him
the ethos of community and parental
32 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition“I have seen the old top-down style ofapproach as I was a school principal at
the time, says Hope. “I do think thatthe best thing about the Tomorrow
Schools changes are that it allows
more community involvement in the
day to day running of our schools andthis has become one of the strengthsof the New Zealand education system.
Our schools are governed by Boardsof Trustees, and not by the Ministry of
Education. Each school has a Boardof Trustees comprised of seven electedparents, the principal, one elected staff
member and in the case of secondary
schools, an elected student. So ourschools have a great deal of autonomy
to make their own decisions, with
the Boards of Trustees even deciding
which teachers to hire, and whom tohire as principal.”Half of all PhD students at Auckland
are international students and they arefrom all over the world. One of themost successful and popular policiesof the University of Auckland is its
drive to encourage foreign Doctoral
students to study at the university.
This initiate is multi-faceted and isa smart way to address a number ofcontemporary issues that face boththe university and New Zealand as anation.
“In New Zealand we have a small
population base from which to draw
students, the need to maintain asolid world-class research base, andthe need to develop an innovativeand expanding economy, says Hope.
“The university has introduced ascheme by which, because of our low
population, our government will givean international student who qualifies
for a scholarship to come and do a
PhD in New Zealand. It means thatyou do not have to pay internationalfees, which are quite high – you just
pay the standard fees New Zealander
student’s pay.”
The scholarship is proving very
popular as the university is now in theplace where it can be very selective

to get the best students as demandis greatly outstripping supply. The
initiative, with the backing of thegovernment brings into play a numberof advantages over other programmes.
“Having the government’s support
is vital and as such allows theinternational doctoral student to notjust study and research but to work
part-time and bring into the country
with them a spouse or partner,” says
Hope. “The sponsorship allows forthe opportunity to get highly sought
after residency visas to remain in New
Zealand following their Doctorate. I
should add that we are not trying topoach people from other universities
we are just trying to create more
research in our country. Because weare a country of not many people along way from anywhere in the world.”
But it is not all one-way traffic.
John says that the university actively
encourages its own students toexperience life and opportunities inother tertiary institutions abroad.
“And I have seen massive growthand massive benefits for our students,
as well as those students whom weinteract with from other countries,”
he says. “Ten years ago, when I shiftedfrom my role as Director of Primary
Education to my international role atthe University of Auckland, it was notreally yet quite international and I was
asked to push that in the university.
Over the past, things have changed
dramatically and the university
now has a policy that it wants more
students to go abroad.”
It is John’s personal feeling that theinternational component of education
does not end just with students orbuilding partnerships with otherinstitutions but also for teachers. John
feels that because of the complexity
and change that globalization andimmigration has brought, educators
now need to be international andintercultural. This is particularly sowith respect to classroom teachers
within local schools whom in thecourse of their career will teachhundreds of students many of which
will come from diverse backgrounds.

Photograph by Greg Whitby / Flickr“Having grandchildren and being
old has made me think that I wantsomething better for my own
grandchildren,” says Hope. “In myview, the way to achieve that is to haveevery teacher get a chance to havetheir own international experience ina country completely different fromtheir own, different food, different
language, and I think that will makethem a better teacher and they can pastthat experience on to their students.”
In John’s view, education throughout
Asia is constantly evolving andeducators need to celebrate thesuccesses and rise to the challenges.
University rankings are one area
in which John sees a real challenge
for the tertiary education sector,
but realizes that it is a reality in themodern era of internationalized
education. Generally New Zealand
always ranks well in international
rankings for all of its education levels.
However, international rankings at
New Zealand universities never werea consideration in the past. This hasconcerned John greatly.
“We knew that we provided a highstandard of tertiary education. We
have always benchmarked ourselves
against the better universities overseas.

However, ranking entering into themix has changed it all and has become
a valid concern,” says Hope.

It gives John a chance to partake ina couple of his cherished past-times.
Visiting a couple of his favourite
restaurants and cafes as well as driving“To me, in my role, it is a valid his beloved Alfa Romeo car. The loveconcern and a worrying one at that,” of the automobile and technical things
says Hope. “The listing of institutions is one of the other aspects of John’s life
by a number ranking from the top to that he talks with equal passion as hethe bottom… We at Auckland and does for education. John Hope is not
the other universities in New Zealand just a senior academic professional.
never had to think about it much in He is also a keen amateur racing
the past. Probably because we did driver and still hankers a passion for
not think much of this American- fast motorcycles.
style ranking approach, but now it is
becoming a real issue because it has Though he has had a working career inbecome the main determinant for education touching on 50 years, John
many in the Asia region, and we now still looks ahead to the future and stillcompete for the best students in Asia. seeks to find how education can have
My own faculty, Education, is ranked a positive role in it.
in the top 25 in the world and I am
not going to argue about that. Because “I have possibly a misplaced sense of
I know we do pretty good.”
well being compared to a lot of thepolitical events that are happening
It is not just hard work, international in the world,” says Hope. “But whentravel and no play for Dr. John Hope. I go around educational institutions
When he and his wife, an Auckland I see a lot of young people who
Primary School Teacher, get any free have a very different view of what istime from their respective positions, happening in the world, and in mythey take every chance they can view the way to solve that is throughget to unwind and relax at their internationalization. I am passionate
vacation place in the coastal town about this and I think that the futureof Whangamata two hours drive of the world depends a lot uponsouth of his Auckland home on the internationalization.”picturesque Coromandel Peninsula.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 33

La Chinesca

A Chinese Community in the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands
BY SCOTT WARREN, DONNA RUIZ Y COSTELLO, AND WAN YU

The desert depression north of the Gulf
of California and west of the Pacificcoastal mountains is, geographicallyspeaking, a single valley. Politically,
however, the Mexico-U.S. borderdivides the valley into north andsouth. North of the line it is called theImperial Valley, and south of the line
it is called the Mexicali Valley. This
desert has long had a fierce reputation
for its inhospitable climate, but
irrigation canals brought water andcash-crop agriculture to the area morethan 100 years ago. Agriculture andmanufacturing, in the form of the socalled Maquiladoras, are today driversof a cross-border regional economy
that operates on a global scale.
The sense of scale is reinforced by thesheer size of those fields and factories.
Fields harvested by busloads of farmlaborers, factories with hundreds ofworkers, massive warehouses, andsteady streams of semi-trucks givethe impression that the expansionof capital and its movement across34 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

borders is unlimited. Meanwhile,
migrants and laborers face increasing
surveillance and restrictions on their
movement. In the same year that
the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) threw open
continental borders to the movementof capital, new walls and roving border
patrols sealed off traditional crossing
routes in the cities and pushedundocumented border crossers out
into the deserts and mountains.
Thousands of crossers died along the
Mexico-U.S. border as a result.

to develop the region.
Chineseimmigrants, for instance, were
founding pioneers. Facing pervasive
discrimination and having been denied
entry to the United States by an actof American Congress, the Chinese
found some respite in the somewhat
autonomous and geographicallydistinct Mexican region of Baja
California. Chinese migrants playeda leading role in building the border
town of Mexicali, for example, giving
the Mexican community a distinctly
Chinese feel.

This desert, however, has been thesite of a cultural encounter ever sincethose first canals delivered Colorado
River water just over 100 years ago.
That encounter was colonial, in thatan American company diverted waterfrom Mexico and routed it back intoa part of the United States that had
recently been wrested from Mexican
and indigenous control, and it wasalso global, in that labor and capitalfrom around the world came together

The Chinese that settled in Mexicali
and the surrounding desert were partof a larger network that connected
Chinese migrants in Tijuana, San
Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Many Chinese, for instance, arrived in
Mexico as contract laborers bonded
from San Francisco. Others undertooka more perilous journey. To the southand east of the Mexicali Valley there
are place names that commemorate
the deaths of Chinese migrants..

In some cases these migrants walked
well over 150 kilometers to reachsettlements in the Mexicali andImperial valleys, being preyed upon by
unscrupulous guides and bandits, andbattered by the unrelenting heat andaridity of the desert.
Even in Mexicali, though, Chinese
settlement
restedon
shakyfoundations.
The Chinese faced
occasional persecution in Mexico, andthey used hidden tunnels to travelback and forth across the border into
Calexico, Mexicali’s American twin
north of the line. As in other cities,
the Chinese lived and worked in atightly bounded district called La
Chinesca, or, the Chinatown.
Our own encounter with Mexicali’s
La Chinesca began with a field
mapping exercise a few years ago.
With a map showing the locationsof historic Chinese-owned businesses
from geographer James Curtis in
hand, we visited Mexicali with theintent of completing a new mapof the contemporary Chinatown.
Much had changed, of course, in the
100-plus years since the founding of
the city. Mexicali had grown froman agricultural settlement of a few
thousand people to an industrial
city with a population of nearly one
million. La Chinesca had mostly

faded from the urban landscape, as
Chinese residents and businesses had
diffused outward with the city as it
expanded across the desert.
Several Chinese businesses, however,remain in the core area that had once
been La Chinesca. Most of these wererestaurants, serving a distinctive fareof borderland Chinese food. Acrossthe international line at the landmark
Yum Yum restaurant, for example, we
enjoyed a traditional Cantonese-style
Dim Sum breakfast with Menudo, aslow-cooked Mexican stew.
We chatted with several Chinese
residents of Mexicali. Most of thesewere business owners and employees
who spoke Spanish and Cantonese.
One restaurant owner explained thatmany of Mexicali’s current Chinese
migrants came in the late 1980s andearly 1990s, originating from justtwo villages in China’s Guangdong
province. This restaurant owner herself
arrived in Mexicali in 1992, at a time
when Chinese foreigners could notopen businesses in Mexico nor acquire
Mexican citizenship. She related how
many Chinese migrants in Mexicali
felt their presence on either side of
the Mexico-U.S. border to be quite
tenuous at the time. In fact, another of
our interviewees described how many
Chinese migrants found temporary

work in Mexicali restaurants, with theintent of crossing clandestinely into
the United States.
Michael Dear and Gustavo Leclerc
include the city of Mexicali in their
hopeful and imaginative geography
called Bajalta California. For theseauthors, Bajalta California spans the
Mexico-U.S. border, connecting thecities of Mexicali, Tijuana, San Diego,
and Los Angeles into a single urban
agglomeration. Mexicali’s remnant La
Chinesca and the imprint of Chinese
immigrants in this desert city is an
example of that hopeful geography,offering an alternative narrative tothe discourses of border militarizationand separation.
Scott Warren, Donna Ruiz y
Costello and Wan Yu are PhD and
Masters candidates at ArizonaState University. Their research
focuses on the Mexico-USA
borderlands, particularly the regionsof the Sonoran and Mojave deserts.
Interviews with local residents,
research in historical archives,
collaboration with photographers,
and traveling and living in the
Arizona-Sonora-California-Baja
California borderlands informs
their work.

Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 35

HEARTS AND MINDSAN ENSEMBLE PIECE THAT GIVES THE VIETNAMESE A SPACE IN THEIR OWN HISTORYBY WAJIHA R RIZVI
Forty years ago, the provocative documentary on the Vietnam War
Hearts and Minds (1973) received a rapturous premier at the Cannes
Film Festival. Yet its release created such vitriol due to its demonstrative
anti-war stance that legal action, protests, and refusal of distribution bymajor theatre distributors and studios besieged the films release. The
film is a landmark piece in the history of war documentaries winning theAcademy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 47th Academy
Awards in 1975 and inspiring a new generation of young documentaryfilm-makers such as Michael Moore and Roger Weisberg.
“The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of thepeople who actually live out there,” said President Lyndon B. Johnson
at the time of escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam
War. Though Peter Davis, the director, used Lyndon B. Johnson’s
vocabulary to name his film, according to critic Judith Crist, Heartsand Minds, the film renders a greater concern for the hearts and mindsof the American public compared to the concern expressed by the
President. Edited down to about a 1:100 shooting ratio, Hearts andMinds compiles incidents, anecdotes, popular music, news footage andinterviews, and Hollywood movie clips to reveal paradoxes of public
rationale in juxtaposition to the Vietnamese vignettes. Hearts andMinds avoids the use of chronology because of its specific treatment. It
uses the incongruity of opposing arguments to mirror the reality of theparadox of the ten-year long Vietnam War: a high number of American
casualties, countrywide demonstrations and protests, unsavory
Photograph by manhhai/ Flickr

36 | Eye Magazine Fourth Editioninternational reputation, and bitter
political and social repercussions. As
such, Hearts and Minds challenges
the notions of American ideology
and dreamscape, patriotism as wellas personal and political ethics andprinciples that are amplified by thepassage of time.
Hearts and Minds is a historical,
antiwar,non-chronological,
compilation film. It contains thehighly controversial and contradictory
imagery of the international anddomestic turmoil over American
involvement in Vietnam. The film
brings together, what Judith Crist
calls, “Davis’ directorial style”
dedicated to “even-handedness incounter-pointing the American andthe Vietnamese experience.” Heartsand Minds outlines the American
hawkishness in Vietnam throughcompiling the news footage andinterviews of the Vietnamese, French,and American hawks and doves,politicians, statesmen, advisers, andsenior officials, that Crist says, wererecorded in 1972 and 1973. The film
mirrors the duplicity of the Russian aswell as the American vested interests,
diplomatic and economic, in theregion, the key reason behind theRussian support for the Communist
North and the American support for
the French rule in South Vietnam.
As a documentary, Hearts andMinds reveals the paradox of theAmerican war against Communism
in the contradicting statements of
the American Presidents - Johnson,
Nixon, Kennedy and Eisenhower who state that the French colonialinterests were taken up by theAmericans to continue the exportof “the tin and tungsten.” This film
sequence juxtaposes devastating war

By contrasting the American public
rationale to the Vietnamese vignettes
Hearts and Minds reveals the apathy of
the irrational, but hilarious meanings.
The shots of GIs chatting about their
American girlfriends while fondlingthe Vietnamese women in adjoining
beds are edited with GIs burning
thatched huts, herding old villagers
and children, or striking young men
to the ground with their rifles. A
sequence reveals a paradox of a Saigon
businessman confused about wartime
losses that can be covered throughAmerican franchises in the time ofpeace. A worker polishing pink plastic
turns out to be a technician fitting a
prosthetic leg onto a veteran patientin a hospital. A Massachusetts couple
judges the system’s performanceagainst the loss of their son; aparaplegic veteran laments his loss ofan ideological commitment; a former
bomber pilot is transformed into aremorseful parent; and a “Victoryin Vietnam” parade juxtaposes anamnesty debate to “give peace achance”; and General Westmoreland
devalues the “Oriental’s” moralityof life and war against the West incontrast to a Native American veteran
who expresses his wartime desires “togo out” to “kill some gooks!”
Hearts and Minds continues theinter-textual juxtaposition by using
the images of political repression tochallenge the ideological systems
with the reconciliation question. Theinterviews of some of the estimated
100,000 to 200,000 political prisoners
contrasts the interview of Father
Chan Tin, a Dominican priest, andthe interview of Diem Chau, theeditor of a Saigon magazine, Trinh
Bay. We hear the Father say: “People
can be arrested at any moment by
any organization and then tortured
in inhumane ways … because they

Photograph by manhhai / Flickr

imagery mirroring the Vietnamese
situation, rage, frustration, suffering,
poverty, prostitution and decadence,and the exiled leaders.

dare to tell the truth, to ask forpeace, for national reconciliation.”
The filmmaker questions Diem Chau
about the kind of freedom Americans
could give to the Vietnamese byimprisoning the compatriots withoutcharge.
Hearts and Minds makes a moral
comment by creating a humanizedpicture of the Vietnamese without
turning them into victims of fate.
The film creates marvelous empathy
by giving both North and South
Vietnamese a space in their own
history; for example, it does notcelebrate the death of the enemy, ayoung North Vietnamese ingénue,or subsequently the pain of her
family in a U.S. bombing raid on
civilians. Hearts and Minds also does
not celebrate the business boom ofa wartime blank-eyed coffin makerfrom South Vietnam who, Crist says,“wonders aloud when the killing
will end.” These horrific pictures ofcommon people are loaded with grief,
anxiety, fear, pain, and uncertainty
that, Brigham says, challenge the“efficacy and ethics” of the Vietnam
War. The intertextuality of thesesequences raises a question of thepolicies and politics of representationof the innocent victims.
In the film, director Peter Davis
confronts the stereotypes of theVietnamese government and themilitary corruption, the American
ideology and policies, and the media
politics of specified terms andconditions. It is a political commentof the tedium, apathy, and treacheryof the war of South Vietnamese
independence being fought by therevolutionary postcolonial American
freedom fighters who are turned into
compulsive winners who desire to “killthe competition” on all grounds, frombattlefields to football fields. This spirit
is mirrored in the contradicting viewsof Colonel George S. Patton III who
calls his hawks “reverent, determined,a bloody good bunch of killers” anda high-school football coach who
directs his team to play for victoryand says, “Win! Kill ‘em, Win!” Heartsand Minds shows the Vietnamese
as culturally resilient enemies who,
Crist says, can counter the hawks’technology with “sheer human effort
and remarkable ingenuity.” The intertextuality of the narrative confronts
the paradoxes of international policies,
peace, liberation, and reconciliation as
the last interviewee says, “Americans
don’t understand that these people
are fighting for their freedom.” A
marvelous ensemble piece mirroring
multicultural positions of Vietnam,
Heart and Minds desires the audience
to rethink the Vietnam experience bymaking a political comment of theAmerican involvement in Vietnam
War.
Wajiha Raza Rizvi is founding
director of Film Museum Society
Lahore. She collects the archives ofPakistani cinema, conducts research,
produces films, and provides
consultancy to established media
institutions.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 37

Becoming Rather than Being
The mimicry of culture and the modern Japanese woman
in Junichiro Tanizaki’s Naomi
by Rachel KwokW

ith her short hair cut, highheels and western fashions, shewent to movies and dance halls, andwas open and hedonistic. In Junichiro
Tanizaki’s Naomi the archetypal
modern girl in Tokyo is embodied in
the title character.

Photograph by Magdalena Roeseler / Flickr

In the story, Joji, the protagonist, layseyes on a teenage girl named Naomi, as
he is attracted by her almost Western
appearance and sculpts her into amodern, western-looking beauty, whoends up dominating him.
The serialization of Naomi first started
in March 1924 in the Osaka Asahi
newspaper. After the newspaper
ceased the serialization in June 1924
due to government censors and publicpressure, the serialization resumed
in the magazine Josei. The fiction
was written after the Great Kanto
Earthquake, which devastated Tokyoand Yokohama in 1923, and forced
Tanizaki to evacuate to Osaka. The
reconstruction of Tokyo turned
the city into a modern metropolis,
filled with mass transportationand new architecture. The national
38 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

modernization sparked the infatuation
with the West in Japan and produced
an explosion of new images ofdynamic women – one of them being
the iconic, bobbed-haired, shortskirted modern girl.
Who is this modern girl?
As a Japanese phenomenon of theearly 1920s, the modern girl wasoften described to be a flamboyant,westernized who woman disobeyed
the Japanese conventions. According
to Kitazawa Shuichi, the modern
girl liberated herself from ageold traditions and crossed genderboundaries. Scholars such as Miriam
Silverberg understood the modern
girl to be a media construct, which
represents the anxiety towards
Westernization and also a powerful
symbol of consumption and massculture.
Naomi’s transformation“Who’s there?”“It’s me.” The door flew open with abang, and a large black shape like a bear
burst into the room from the darkness
outside. Whipping off a black garment

and tossing it aside, an unfamiliar young
Western woman stood there in a pale blue
French crepe dress. The exposed arms andshoulders were as white as a fox. Aroundher fleshy nape, she wore a crystal necklacethat glowed like a rainbow; and beneatha black velvet hat pulled low over hereyes, the tips of her nose and chin werevisible, terrifyingly, miraculously white.
The raw vermilion of her lips stood out
in contrast.
“Good evening,” she said when she took off
her hat, the first glimmer of recognition
flashed across my mind. As I studied theface, I finally realized that it was Naomi.
(Tanizaki, 207)
Becoming rather than being, Naomi
mimics the West and becomes a byproduct of modernization. Througha series of pretensions, Naomitransforms into an unfamiliar womanthat Joji almost could not recognize
and subsequently finds her sense of
belongingness in the changing societyof the Meiji period.
In the close examination of Naomi’s
physical transformation, it is evident
that culture is reduced to personaldecorations in order for Naomi toliterally put on a new layer of identity.

As a café waitress, Naomi settles into
wearing traditional kimono and does
her hair in the traditional Japanesestyle. However, as the story progresses,
Joji accompanies Naomi to “drapers
and department stores together tolook for fabric…[and] they studied
the outfits of Westerners thatpassed on the street and scrutinized
every shop window.” (Tanizaki 37)
Fashion is one of the many
pretensions, which Naomi performs
in order to become a modern girl, tobelong and to gain distinctiveness.
Naomi becomes this fashion-addictedyoung woman, which I would argue,
represents the empowerment ofconsumerism. As Sato describes,
consumer culture can be viewed as an
expression of decision-making where
women are active role players. It isalso noteworthy that Joji compares
Naomi’s clothing to “containers – avariety of packages” and commodifies
her by treating her as a “rare, precious
doll and an ornament” (Tanizaki 39).
However, her various outfits such as
the “three-piece, black velvet suit thatshe said was inspired by a costume
she’d seen a man wear in an American
movie” alludes to her role playing andforeshadows the reconstruction ofgender that follows (Tanizaki 39).
Empowered by phrases like “mixwith the Westerners” and “like a
Westerner”, Naomi studies theactresses’ movements in movies. She isvery good at imitating and she mimics
the Westerners’ body language tocapture their mood and idiosyncrasies.
To further enhance her pretensions
and aid her transformation in
becoming a modern girl, she also
undergoes various lessons in piano,
singing, dance and English. Despite
the fact that Naomi’s English tutor,
Miss Harrison, tells Joji that Naomi
has beautiful pronunciation and she
will soon master the English language,
Joji expresses his concerns for Naomi’stranslation skills. Language is a cultural
practice and translation takes very
high knowledge of the two languages,
which implies a high degree of generalknowledge of the two cultures. Thishints at her unwillingness to convey
ideas in Japanese or shift between two
cultures.

from a past in which who you werein society was a matter of social andeconomic class. In this interpretation,
the roots of her social and economic
class no longer defined Naomi at
the end of the novel. Through selfcultivation and the mimicry of culture,
she breaks free from the birdcage that
Joji had intentions of keeping her
in and she does become a modern
girl who acts freely upon her desires.
Arguably, we can also read the personaldecorations and layers of identity thatshe puts on as containers or a varietyof packaging that Naomi tries to mask
her identity with. In this case, she may
have transformed on the surface levelbut spiritually she hasn’t changed. Thisis, however, debatable as the fiction
is written from Joji’s perspective.
Towards the end of the novel, Naomi It is questionable whether Naomi
speaks like a man and she uses the has swiped her national identity
Japanese masculine tone. Whereas clean and adopted this new modern
Joji regresses so much that he reverts identity, but nevertheless, socially andback to playing the “horse” for Naomi psychologically, Naomi has alteredto sit on. Typically, such “horseplay” her life and redefined her identity as ais considered as a father-child modern girl in many ways.
dynamic where the child takes charge.
Undoubtedly, Naomi’s masculinity Rachel Kwok is currently a Masters
spells the disruption of gender candidate and holds a Bachelor ofcodes and reflects the modern girl’s Arts in English Literature and inreadiness towards liberating herself Japanese Language & Culture fromfrom conventional beliefs.
the University of British Columbia,
Canada. Her study included a year
Identity redefined
as an exchange student at Sophia
University in Tokyo, where she
As Stewart Ewen puts it, a new way focused on Liberal Arts, Japaneseof understanding oneself in relation Language and Literature.
to society was emerging. Linked tomatters of personal decoration, it broke
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 39

FEATURED STUDYNatioNILism
Patriotic Nation-less-ness Belonging
by Yoshi Joanna Grote“Where are you from?”
This seemingly innocuous questionis asked around the globe wheneverstrangers meet. It is a question thatmany people view as factual andtherefore have little trouble answering. Yet for some, this question provokes answers of varying complexity
dependent on context and others areleft frustrated by their inability toanswer in any appropriate way at all.
Some of these people are Adult Third
Culture Kids (hereafter referred toas ATCKs), from which the sample
group for this research was taken.
The term “Adult Third Culture Kid”
was originally coined by Ruth Hill
Useem in the early 1960s but popularized by Pollock & Van Reken in
their seminal text “Third Culture
Kids: Growing up Between Worlds”(2001). In brief, ATCKs are people
who spent a significant part of theirformative years overseas, outside
their birth culture and often outside
the cultures of either of their parents. Research thus far in the field
has already highlighted the fact that,
due to their peripatetic upbringing,
ATCKs may position themselves differently in relation to the concepts of‘nation’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘home’ thanthose with a less mobile background.
Further, their sense of belonging canmanifest itself either in encapsulated
or constructive marginality. Bennett’s(1993) concept of encapsulated marginality refers to a feeling of belonging nowhere. In contrast, constructive marginality refers to a feeling of
belonging everywhere. This article
briefly introduces the concept of
NatioNILism as a term for one more
40 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

direction that some ATCKs, andpossibly others, are finding a senseof belonging towards. It introduces
NatioNILism as an emerging phenomenon in the cultural identities ofsome ATCKs.

subsequently 29 ATCKs willingly
participated in qualitative interviews,
which asked respondents to consider
the concept of their belonging, especially in reference to how they answer
the question “Where are you from?”

This term resulted from a qualitative“Chat-typing” interviews were held
study, which set out to discover what, with 29 participants online. Theseand to where, ATCKs who identified interviews generally lasted between
with the concept of “nation-less-ness” one and two hours. Computer
felt a sense of belonging.
mediated communication was theobvious choice for a sample group
The purpose of this research was tospread across the globe. This style ofdiscover whether a diminished orinterview also had the added benefit
absent sense of nationalism amongof greater consistency in the wording
ATCKs merely leads to liminality,of questions, a clearer turn-taking
marginality and an infinite plethorasystem and the chance for the interof various senses of belonging toviewees to self-correct and thus miniother people, places and things, or if
mize misinterpretation that could
these ATCKs feel empowered by ahave arisen from transcriber error. A
sense of belonging to each other and/ record of this chat was sent back toor a global third culture or something interviewees for review to make sureelse entirely. This study provided
their intentions were not misrepreadditional insight into those ATCKs
sented. The same was done after thewho do feel a sense of nationlessinitial study was written to assure
belonging and asked; if not nation,
their words had not been taken out ofwhat/where/when or who do thesecontext. These interviews were thenATCKs feel a sense of belonging to,analyzed by placing keywords into aand how do they feel they belong totheme-table.
it? Therefore, the research question
posed was:
Although a proportion of the participants within this study had some
When Adult Third Culture Kids do
North American links (11 with the
not identify with a sense of belongUSA as their “country of birth” anding towards nation, do they feel
20 holding American passports) the
a common sense of belonging tomajority represented a plethora ofsomething else, and if so, how?
nations and affiliations, reflecting toa great extent, the diversity of the
In order to examine this concept, an
ATCK phenomenon itself. 70 particialert was posted on online Third Cul- pants completed and returned demoture communities and selected Inter- graphic surveys. . Of these, 19 hadnational School networks in order tonot been born in the same country assource interviewees. 70 participants
the passport they held, 38 had at least
completed demographic surveys andone parent born in a different countryPhotograph by Nicolas Alejandro/ Flickr

to them, 26 had bicultural parents and A similar trend was visible in the
only 29 of the 70 had been born in the answers to the question, “Where is
passport country and had parents born home?” Typical answers ranged from,in that same country. 70 participants “Where the heart is,” “Where I canheld 89 passports as some had dual be myself ” or “Wherever I am at thenationality.
moment with the understanding that
it will change” to “It doesn’t really have
Out of the 29 interviewees, only 11 a geographical location, I couldn’t find
had both parents born in the same it on a map.”country as them, 7 had one parents
who was born in a different country In terms of the question, “How doto them and 11 had both parents you usually answer the question,born in countries different to their ‘Where are you from?’” ATCKs reown birth country. Additionally only sponded in different ways. The initial
18 had passports that matched their demographic survey was returned bybirth country. The average number of 70 participants and only nine people
countries lived in before the age of 18 gave a simple, one country answers
was 3.7, with the average number of to this question, without feeling theschools at 5 and the average number need to qualify it at all. Of the otherof languages participants indicated a 61 answers there were those gavecompetency in was 3.7.
responses such as, “nowhere in particular” or “homeless nomad”. TheseIn terms of conceptualizing their kinds of responses may be results ofbelonging, nationless ATCKs largely the orientation that Bennett (1993)
shunned labels in favor of the abstract. would have termed “encapsulated
To illustrate, when asked the question, marginality”. Next, there were those“Where do you belong?” responses who provided answers like, “everyvaried from negating the label: “I’ve where” or “planet earth” – responses
never been at a point in my life where Bennett (1993) may have considered
I felt I belonged in a country...” to typical of a “constructive marginal”.
embracing the abstract: “The place Third, there were those who felt they
I really, deeply belong is change”. belonged in the list of all the coun-tries they had lived in. Their answers
to the above question resembled thisexample:Well, I was born in the UK because myfather is British, but my mother is Polish and we have relatives in the US. I
only lived in England for 1 year because
I grew up in Poland, Germany, Japan,
Hungary, Singapore and Egypt. I went
to university in England, Finland,
Switzerland and Holland and haveworked in Tanzania and Japan.
However, there were also respondents
who simply could not answer thequestion. When asked, “How do you
usually answer the question, ‘Where
are you from?’” these respondents
said things like, “With a blank stare,a laugh, or a convoluted explanation
which usually leaves the other person
rather confused.” However, regardlessof their inability to answer “Where
are you from?” and questions concerning their belonging and home withgeographical locations, not many purported to feeling “lost.” Conversely,
many voiced real pride in their nationless identity. Here are a few examples of their comments on the topic:
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 41

Photograph by Angela / Flickr

42 | Eye Magazine Fourth Edition

My feeling of nation-less-ness forms an integral part of mypersonality and attitudes in much the same way as anotherperson’s association with a single country does.
I can immediately relate to and find commonalities with others
who share the same belonging to nation-less-ness, regardless ofthe different countries they have lived in.
Without being arrogant, I am very proud of my nationlessidentity. I have chosen to define myself as a nationless ATCK
and this, I strongly feel and believe, is an identity in itself.
I do feel that my sense of belonging to nation-less-ness is inmany ways comparable to how other people might feel towards
their nation, and towards people within that nation. I feel
patriotic about my nationless identity in that I will defend its
validity if challenged to do so... I will not allow people to makea mockery of the concept of nation-less-ness. Why? Because itis the essence of who I am, and my identity is as important tome as it is to another who identifies with another culture orcultures. Patriotism comes in many shapes and forms - Why
not nationlessness?
The sense of pride expressed by these participants is what I
termed NatioNILism.
The question “Where are you from?” isn’t always easy toanswer. Globalisation and its byproduct of multicultural
identities is fast turning the answer to this question fromthe black and white to a grey scale. There is a growing
number of people who have no adequate solution to how
to answer this question without sounding pretentious “I’ma child of the world”, showing off “I’ve lived in 34 different
countries”, being vague “I’m not really from anywhere” oropening up to an inquisition into their lives that they may
not welcome at the first-contact stage “Where did yourmother give birth? Where is home? Where do you belong?
What are you in your heart? etc.”
Although there is no easy way to circumvent this situation,
it is important to acknowledge that there are people who
feel nationless and what’s more, that many are proudof their nationless identity. Through my research, I
discovered that space, not place, is necessary for belonging.
Previous research acknowledged that some people felt they
belonged everywhere or nowhere and yet I felt these terms
are still lacking. No one truly belongs everywhere, even if
they can belong more than others. Equally, the conceptof belonging “nowhere” has a negative connotation. What
NatioNILism does is take away the “where” and define a
community of individuals characterised by their mobilityof habitat and lack of identification with nation.
For successful communication, we need to be open to new
categories of identity all the way up and down the grey
scale. We need to be able to hear someone claim to be
100% Nigerian, 60% American, situationally Chinese or
only Dutch on the weekends when their great aunt Anniek“I feel patriotic
about mynationless identity.”
is visiting. We also need to hear the people who adamantly
claim they are nationless, regardless of what their
documents or experiences may indicate. When someone
is answering the question of where they are from, they arealso answering the question of who they are. Therefore it isimportant to listen well and engage in what Ting Toomey(1999) terms mindful communication. In her words:
In order to communicate effectively with dissimilar others,
we need to be mindful of how others prefer to be “named”
and identified. Other people’s perceptions and evaluations
can strongly influence our self-conceptions, or our views ofourselves. Mindful intercultural communication requires us
to be sensitive to how others define themselves on both groupmembership and personal identity levels. The feelings of being
understood, respected and supported and viewed as criticaloutcome dimensions of mindful intercultural communication.
References
Bell, L. (1996). Rolling Stones Smooth Out Nicely.
In C.D. Smith (Ed.),Strangers at Home: Essays on
the Effects of Living Overseas and Coming ‘Home toa Strange Land. (pp. 165 – 176). New York: Aletheia
Publications.
Bennett, J. (1993). Cultural Marginality: Identity Issues
in Intercultural Training. In M.R. Paige (Ed.), Education
for the Intercultural Experience. (pp. 109 - 134). Maine:
Intercultural Press.
Fail, H., Thompson, F. & Walker, G. (2004). Belonging,
Identity and Third Culture Kids. Journal of Researchin International Education, 3 (3) pp. 319 - 338. doi:
10.1177/1475240904047358
Pollock, D.C. & Van Reken, R.E. (2001). Third Culture
Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds.
London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing in association with
Intercultural Press.
Ting-Toomey, S. (1999). Communicating AcrossCultures. New York: Guilford Press.
Useem, R.H. (1993). Third Culture Kids: Focus of Major
Study – TCK ‚mother pens history of field. Newslinks –The Newspaper of International Schools Services, 12 (3).
Princeton, New Jersey.
Yoshi Joanna Grote, author of “NatioNILism:
Belonging to the Spaces Between,” currently teaches
English Language and Intercultural Skills at Kyoto
Sangyo University. Her research focuses on exploring
adult third culture kid identity and belonging. Yoshi’s
has maintained her peripatetic lifestyle, living in her
eleventh country, having travelled to over forty.
Eye Magazine Fourth Edition | 43

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Issue 4 - Summer 2014
Editor: Michael Liam Kedzlie
Produced by:
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Published under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International Licence
ISSN: 2187-8935