The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 20 (2009)

Editor’s Introduction

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE
The Japanese Journal of American Studies celebrates its twentieth anniversary
with this volume. In 1981, in the inaugural statement in the first volume of the
JJAS entitled “On Starting the Japanese Journal of American Studies,” Makoto
Saito (president 1980–82) stated that he “sincerely” hoped “that our new English
language journal, a product of our new era, might serve as a channel of dialogue
with the international community of American studies specialists and make some
contribution to international American studies” (4). The early efforts of the JJAS
from volume one to ten were reviewed by Eiichi Akimoto, the third editor, in his
introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Issue in 1999. In the succeeding volumes
from the eleventh to the eighteenth, under the leadership of Akimoto and Fumiko
Nishizaki, the fourth editor, as well as Sheila Hones, the fifth editor, the missionof the journal to “serve as a channel of dialogue with the international
community” was pursued by asking questions such as the following: Whatconstitutes “Japanese” American Studies? How do we locate “national” in the“international” American Studies? How do we identify “our” community in theborderless age when cyber space and other inventions enable us to communicate
easily across the world regardless of where we physically reside?
As the sixth editor of the JJAS, I hope to follow my predecessors in providing
an academic public sphere which promotes international dialogue in an age when
the definitions of “national” and “international” themselves are interrogated andincreasingly blurred. International dialogues and exchanges, in fact, have been
an integral part of the Japanese Association for American Studies. Such efforts
are especially reflected in the programs of the JAAS annual meetings as well asother scholarly exchange projects. In this volume, we have started to include
articles contributed by U.S. based Americanists who have participated in the
JAAS international projects. Three essays in this issue, including the first article
based on a Presidential Address delivered at the annual meeting, are by thedelegates from the American Studies Association (ASA) to the JAAS annual
meetings. We also include two articles by Japanese Americanists who currently
teach at U.S. universities, where their academic careers are based.
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With a newly strengthened body of Americanists within and without national
borders as contributors, the Twentieth Anniversary Issue takes up “Peace” as the
special theme. As for the parameters of the term “Peace,” no specific definitionis given by the editorial board — whether it is Johan Galtung’s explanation on
negative and positive peace, a pacifist interpretation of peace as a prime force forany human existence, an eco-oriented postmodernist understanding of permeable
and imperfect peace, or an utopian pursuit of peace in stasis elsewhere. While thedefinition as well as the interpretation of the term varies in each article, “Peace”
can be simply conceived as the antonym to modern war as in the title of Leo
Tolstoy’s famous novel War and Peace. The contributors to this volume delve
into scenes behind this dichotomy and dissect layered meanings and consequencesthat constitute “Peace” as well as “War.” We also include in this volume one
article on the perpetual Americanist theme of the relation between the wilderness
and early American literary production.
The first article “Why Latino History Matters to U.S. History” by Vicki L.
Ruiz, former president of the American Studies Association, is based on her
address at the annual meeting of the JAAS in 2008 at Doshisha University,
Kyoto. In this article, Ruiz asks, “Why does Latino history matter?” Contrary to
media depictions of Latinos as people who arrived the day before yesterday,
there exists a rich layering of nationalities and generations of Latinos in U.S.
history. Whether carving out a community in St. Augustine in 1565, or reflecting
on colonialism and liberty during the 1890s, or fighting for civil rights in the
courts in the 1940s, Spanish-speaking peoples made history within and beyond
national borders. The essay identifies large themes, debates, and sources in thefield. Ruiz emphasizes three historical moments pivotal to reimagining an
American narrative with Latinos as significant actors: 1848 (the U.S.–MexicanWar), 1898 (the Filipino-Cuban-Spanish-American War), and 1948 (the Latino
G.I. Generation).
The following nine essays take up this volume’s special theme “Peace.” Thefirst two essays deal with U.S. diplomatic history from the Eisenhower to theJohnson administrations focusing upon the close relationship between theeconomy and the U.S. defense policy. In “The Search for an American Way of
Nuclear Peace: The Eisenhower Administration Confronts Mutual Atomic
Plenty,” Toru Onozawa argues that the 1950s constituted a major turning point
during which U.S. national security became predicated heavily on nuclear
deterrence and that the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower played a crucialrole in establishing the American way of nuclear deterrence and the rationale
behind it. Onozawa asserts that scientists’ estimates of the damage accruing froma possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union as well as the fiscal cost ofachieving war-fighting capacity eventually led policymakers, including President
Eisenhower, to create a rationale for a reliable deterrence. The American people,
Onozawa remarks, while tacitly recognizing their vulnerable state, chose not toEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

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confront the intractable conundrum of possible nuclear annihilation, but to enjoy
a nuclear peace that could be achieved rather inexpensively. Midori Yoshii, in her
article “Reducing the American Burden? U.S. Mediation between South Korea
and Japan, 1961–1965,” leads us to examine the succeeding period in U.S.
diplomatic history, highlighting the stark difference between the Northeast Asianpolicies of John F. Kennedy and those of Lyndon B. Johnson. In light of thedownward trend in the U.S. balance of payments, the Kennedy administration
hoped to reduce U.S. economic and military aid to Korea by encouraging
normalization between South Korea and Japan. The policy’s main goal was,Yoshii maintains, to have Seoul use the Japanese reparation money for its
economic development. Johnson continued to encourage normalization during
his presidency, but his guarantee of aid to Korea in exchange for securing Korea’s
troop support in Vietnam undermined Kennedy’s intent to reduce the U.S.
economic burden in the region.
The following two essays also take up the theme of “Peace” in U.S. foreign
policy, asking how the domestic debate on race and ethnicity has influenced U.S.
foreign policy. In her “Architects of a Masquerade Peace: The United States andthe 1936 Berlin Olympic Games,” Sayuri Gathrie-Shimizu asserts that the Berlin
Olympic Games have remained one of the most controversial in the history of themodern Olympiad and reveals the backstage in the U.S. domestic scene. Her
article seeks to elucidate the matrix of historical forces in which American
amateur sports leaders, civic groups, diplomatic representatives, and key officials
in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration contended with the polarizing
question of U.S. participation in the Berlin games. By examining how theiractions or inaction mirrored broader ideological strands in American society at
the time, the article illuminates the less than sure-footed approach to “peace in
our time” of the U.S. in the mid-1930s. Nikhil Pal Singh, in “Beyond the ‘Empireof Jim Crow’: Race and War in Contemporary U.S. Globalism,” also reflects on
how histories of U.S. racial construction and contention traverse the domains of
the foreign and the domestic, and disrupt their neat separation. Singh suggests
ways in which domestic racial contexts can be used to index the articulation of
U.S. foreign policy and interrogates how historically and politically distinguishable
is what Condoleeza Rice calls the “empire of Jim Crow” from Thomas Jefferson’svaunted claim that the United States was “an empire for liberty.” Singh seeks
intellectual traditions and historical precedents which might inform alternative,
more egalitarian ways of posing the relationship between race, justice, and powerin the U.S. domestic arena and in the world at large.
The next three articles discuss the relation between “Peace” and American
literature from the 19th century to today. Yoshio Takanashi’s article “Emerson
and Zhu Xi: The Role of the ‘Scholar’ in Pursuing ‘Peace’” compares Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s Transcendental thought with Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian
philosophy. In spite of the many parallels between their ideas, differences also

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can be recognized in their views of the role of the “scholar,” the act of naming,and the concept of peace. Identifying “integrity” as a keyword in Emerson’s viewof peace, Takanashi argues that for Emerson “integrity” is a dynamic process ofevolution toward a complete unity and forward realization of goodness. Zhu Xi’s
yin-yang, on the other hand, is rather a principle of interchange andtransformation. For Zhu, Takanashi maintains, “bringing peace throughout theworld” will be finally realized by letting the state of “equilibrium and harmony”
exist in perfection and letting supreme virtue manifest itself. The legacy ofChinese thought in American literature is further pursued by Naoko Sugiyama in
her article entitled “From the Woman Warrior to Veterans of Peace: Maxine
Hong Kingston’s Pacifist Textual Strategies.” The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a
Girlhood among Ghosts has been widely read and discussed as an autobiographicaltestament of a girl who gains self-esteem by identifying with a legendary Chinese
woman warrior, Fa Mu Lan. Kingston, however, later commented that as a
pacifist, she should not have presented a warrior as a hero. Sugiyama explores
how Kingston tries to present female and male heroic characters without
depending on the warrior models and extricates the writer’s alternative textual
strategies toward pacifism.
Viet Thanh Nguyen in his “Remembering War, Dreaming Peace: On
Cosmopolitanism, Compassion, and Literature” explores the theme of war andmemory by examining some lesser-known works that have been written about
the American War in Viet Nam. Instead of focusing on canonical American texts
about the war by white male American writers such as Tim O’Brien, Michael
Herr, or Philip Caputo, Nguyen looks at lesser-known works by women,
American minorities, and Asians. These populations, Nguyen asserts, tend to
produce cultural works that do not share the assumptions that characterize thework of American white men, whose points of view dominate American
perspectives on the war and hence help to create a framework of memory that
excludes the views of others. In works by Martin Luther King, Jr., Maxine Hong
Kingston, George Mariscal, Anh Junghyo, Takeshi Kaiko, and Dang Thuy Tram,readers see a greater awareness of the complexities of how war is experienced
and represented through race, class, nation and gender. Ngyen also suggests thatin their works readers also find a greater sensitivity to cosmopolitanism andcompassion, which provide a measure of hope in creating literatures and building
social movements that are not only antiwar but also pro-peace.
The last two articles on the special theme delve into human-relationalquestions, both cosmological and interpersonal. In “The Cosmology of Peaceand Father Thomas Berry’s ‘Great Work,’” Takeshi Kimura examines Father
Berry’s idea of the Cosmology of Peace and his advocacy of “Great Work” for itin the face of the environmental problem. Drawing on Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin’s thought, Berry locates the history of humanity within cosmic history.
Taking up such topics as “Berry’s view of our place in history,” “the religion-

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science dialogue,” and “‘Great Work’ for the Cosmology of Peace,” Kimura
explores Berry’s cosmological ideas on peace between human communities andthe planet. Anri Morimoto’s article “Forgiving Is Fore-giving: Reaching out for
Peace in Interpersonal Relations” presents an analysis of the concept of
forgiveness as it crystallizes in two legal cases from contemporary America.
Despite apparent differences in the outcomes of the two cases, the two stories
introduced in the article help us understand the nature of forgiveness and explore
possible pathways to move from past resentment to future restoration ininterpersonal relationship.
The last article in this volume, Kimiyo Ogawa’s “Fearing American
Wilderness: Materialism in Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly” explores
the trans-Atlantic intellectual context in which Brown’s text emerged. Althoughmany pioneers in the 17th and 18th century conceived of themselves as agents infacilitating the process of civilization, Ogawa maintains, Brown’s Edgar Huntly
portrays men who experience regression back to a Hobbesian state of nature.
Ogawa argues that Brown expresses an extreme fear of the moral degeneracy
caused by placing civilized men like Edgar and Clithero in the unexploredprimitive regions where no legal influence is accessible. Perhaps owing to his
faith in Necessitarianism, she observes, Brown believed that man’s nature isinevitably affected by the surrounding physical universe, in which phenomena
occur according to laws which are necessary. Pointing out the major influence ofBenjamin Rush’s medical texts on Brown’s ideas, Ogawa discusses the author’s
profound concern over the process of identity formation with special reference tocontemporary medical and philosophical discourses.
The publication of the Journal is supported financially in part by a grant-in-aid
for the Publication of Scientific Research Results from the Japan Society for
Promotion of Science, for which we are deeply grateful. Most of the articles inthe twenty volumes of the JJAS are available on the internet (http://www.jaas.
gr.jp). We invite responses and criticisms from our readers and hope that thejournal will continue to be an important medium for American Studies in thefollowing decades. We also would like to extend our deep appreciation to Ms.
Katy Meigs, our copyeditor in California, for her earnest support of our editorial
work with many e-mail exchanges across the Pacific.

SHITSUYO MASUI
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For those who wish to submit a manuscript to the Japanese Journalof American Studies:
1. Contributors must be dues-paying members of the JAAS.
2. Contributors are expected to observe our time schedule. They
must first submit the title and abstract (about 300 words) by
mid-January. We are unable to accept the manuscript without
this procedure.
3. The final manuscript (maximum 8000 words including notes)
is due early May. The editorial committee will inform eachcontributor of the result of the selection process by the end ofJune. If accepted, the paper will be published in June the following year.
4. The fall issue of the JAAS Newsletter will carry a “call for papers” announcement with exact deadlines and the special
theme for the forthcoming issue.
5. The JAAS will accept inquiries through email:office@jaas.gr.jp