Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.261
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)

Our Challenges and Triumphs:
Female Asian Faculty in Leadership Positions in
U. S. Colleges and Universities

Guest edited by

Satoko Suzuki and Junko Mori

New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.247
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)
Our Stories as Female Asian Leaders: Introduction

Satoko Suzuki and Junko MoriThis special section presents stories from eight female Asian faculty who
have served in leadership positions in U. S. institutions of higher education.
Our purpose in putting together this special section is threefold: tocelebrate female leadership, to inspire future leaders by discussing the
lived experiences of our challenges and successes, and to offer some
practical advice.
Women leaders have been in the spotlight recently both in the UnitedStates and in Japan, with, for example, Kamala Harris becoming the U. S.
vice president and Yuriko Koike becoming the governor of Tokyo. In the
broader world we see young female leaders such as Malala Yousafzai (aPakistani activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work
advocating education for girls). Female leadership in higher education has
also attracted attention with the publication of titles such as Women andLeadership in Higher Education (Longman and Madsen 2014) andSurviving Sexism in Academia: Strategies for Feminist Leadership (Coleand Hassel 2017).
In addition to being women in academia, which has been characterized
as a “masculine” field (Czarniawska and Sevón 2008: 235), all of thecontributors were born and raised in Japan and are of Asian descent. Kim,
Twombly, and Wolf-Wendel (2012: 44) observed that international
faculty as a group “are often overlooked and frequently underestimatedand misunderstood.” Among international faculty, women of color, as
Hernandez, Ngunjiri, and Chang (2015: 534) noted, must confront thedaunting “triple threat” of being foreign-born, female, and non-white. We
may also add that our being raised in Japan, where women’s status isconsidered extremely low in international comparisons, intensifies thechallenge.1 In this special section, we are putting a spotlight on female
Asian faculty who have overcome (or at least are in the process ofovercoming) these multiple obstacles to achieving leadership status.
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

212 | Japanese Language and Literature

As its readers are aware, Japanese Language and Literature typicallyfeatures outcomes of research and pedagogical innovations. However, we
proposed this special section because we believe the journal can play apivotal role in the professional development of its readers in the area ofprogram development and administration. In this special section, we will
discuss our experiences of coordinating and advocating for our
departments/programs/divisions, applying for grants, and managing
interpersonal relationships in the workplace. We are grateful to thejournal’s coordinating editor, Dr. Hiroshi Nara, and the language andlinguistics editor, Dr. Yumiko Nishi, as well as the Executive Director of
the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ), Ms. Susan
Schmidt, for their encouragement and support.
In selecting contributors for this special section, we took care to
represent diverse experiences and perspectives. Some are literature
specialists while others are theoretical or applied linguists. Our institutions
also range from liberal arts colleges and private universities to public
universities. The leadership roles we have occupied include chairing
departments focusing on East Asian languages and cultures as well aslarger departments that include European, Slavic, and/or Arabic language
faculty, directing Asian Studies programs and various institution-wide
projects, and serving as associate dean of a college. Some of thecontributors are relatively new to leadership responsibilities while others
are seasoned veterans. In addition, although it was not planned in advance,
after receiving the essays, we realized that our journeys originated indifferent regions of Japan (Kantō, Kansai, Kyūshū, Hokuriku, Shikoku).
We asked each contributor to tell her own story, but requested thateach essay address the following three areas:(1) Journey to their current position(2) Challenges and triumphs in their leadership roles(3) Advice to future leaders

In covering these areas, the contributors refer, to varying degrees, toaspects of their private selves. Some of us discussed our upbringing or our
ethnic or socioeconomic background, while others wrote about personaland inner conflicts experienced along the way, including lack ofconfidence in one’s English, struggles with ascribed identities, post-tenure
blues, and juggling a career with motherhood. As editors of this special
section, we are delighted to see our contributors generously open theirhearts to readers. We are proud to say that each essay provides a richJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Satoko Suzuki and Junko Mori | 213

narrative of the lived experiences that are so rarely glimpsed in academic
writing.
As you will see, the contributors’ journeys touch on several recurring
themes. One thing we would like to highlight is that none of us dreamedof becoming a leader at an American institution during our youth. Thanks
to encounters with life-changing teachers, mentors, or programs, we were
inspired to study and work outside of Japan and to launch careers inteaching and research in the United States. In this process, our potential as
leaders was recognized by others who encouraged us to step up. With somehesitation, or under compulsion in some cases, we took on these challenges
out of a sense of responsibility to others in our communities. Through ourexperiences, we continue to learn and grow, and to find renewed sense of
purpose in our work. We hope that our readers, who may or may notconsider themselves leader types, will find these stories relatable andrecognize their own potential.
We also observe that the journeys of these contributors, all born andraised from the late 1950s to the 1980s, are shaped by some aspects ofJapan’s period of rapid economic growth. By expanding the notion of oya
gacha ‘parental lottery; fate or luck of being born to particular parents’,
which was Shōgakkan’s 2021 selection for new word of the year, Kano
(this volume) eloquently discusses the impacts of “nation gacha” or“generation gacha” on this generation of Japanese women.2 Behind thesecontributors’ appreciation of English as an enabler of personaltransformation and their desire to explore opportunities abroad we candiscern Japan’s positive outlook and outward orientation at that time. At
the same time, the slow progress in the improvement of women’s status in
Japan, as exemplified by the limited impact of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Law of 1985, also appears to have affected the contributors’decisions to leave Japan. Incidentally, some of the contributors
acknowledge their mothers, who assumed domestic roles themselves but
nevertheless supported their daughters’ ambitions to study and work
abroad. Further, the rise of Japan’s economic power (1980s to early 1990s)
and soft power (from the late 1990s on), which contributed to the
expansion of Japanese language and culture programs in the United States,
coincided with the time these contributors began their academic careers in
the United States. This climate of the times is reflected in all of thenarratives, despite our diverse backgrounds and the very different aspectsof our lives that each contributor decided to foreground in the limited
space.

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The contributors’ accomplishments in leadership roles, on the other
hand, illustrate how different types of institutions as well as types ofadministrative positions give rise to different kinds of challenges andtriumphs. In light of this, we hope these essays serve to demystify the workof administrators and help the readers, especially those who have not yet
assumed such positions, develop a better understanding of the kind of
considerations that go into the operation of different units and activities on
campuses. Indeed, we believe that improving awareness of how oureveryday practices as educators and researchers are situated in the local
dynamics of respective institutions is an important way to increase
empowerment for all.
In the first four essays, for instance, Suzuki, Fukunaga, Lee, andDollase discuss how they developed, expanded, and represented theirrelatively small Japanese programs. They worked tirelessly to advocate for
their programs, as they organized many extracurricular and outreachactivities, negotiated with colleagues who specialized in other languages
or subject matters, and persuaded some unsupportive upper administrators
to continue or expand Asian language programs. In some cases, they wereconfronted with rather blunt statements from colleagues questioning theneed for a Japanese program or dismissing them as full-fledged membersof the campus community. The nature of the politics they have had tonavigate differs, however, especially depending on whether their Japanese
program is situated in a department of East Asian languages and cultures(Suzuki at Macalester College and Dollase at Vassar College) or in a
department of modern languages (Fukunaga at Marshall University andLee at Lehigh University).
The next four essays, by Kano, Sadler, Kondo-Brown, and Mori, on
the other hand, reveal different aspects of the operation of R-1
universities.3 In these larger universities that offer graduate education andemphasize research productivity, the Japanese program had been fully
established by the time these contributors began their appointments, andtheir programs’ continuation has not been under threat. The challenges
they have tackled instead lie in coordinating a larger number of colleagues
spread over the campus to identify common goals or to establish a senseof community. Kano at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance,
discusses her work as a coordinator of an annual faculty writing retreat,
which supports faculty across different departments, and as a graduate
chair, responsible for leading and managing a program with a few dozen
Ph. D. and M. A. students. Sadler at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Japanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Satoko Suzuki and Junko Mori | 215

Champaign serves as a director of a National Resource Center for East
Asia, which serves nearly a hundred affiliate specialists on East Asia on
campus. One of her most critical responsibilities as the center director isto secure the Title VI grants for international and foreign language
education awarded by the U. S. Department of Education. The final two
essays, by Kondo-Brown and Mori, both refer to the processes oforganizational restructuring that have taken place at a number of public
universities in recent years. Kondo-Brown at the University of Hawai‘i at
Mānoa writes about this process from the perspective of an associate deanof a college that houses over three hundred faculty members and twentyfour hundred undergraduate and graduate majors in seventeen academic
departments. Mori at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the other
hand, shares her experience of leading a faculty committee that developeda restructuring proposal and had to secure buy-in from members of two
departments and three different area studies centers contributing to AsianStudies.
Despite these differences in contexts, positions, and experiences, ourvoices resonate with each other when it comes to advice for future leaders.
Indeed, our recommendations tend to reflect a few fundamental principles
of professional conduct, as epitomized below:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Communicate clearly, honestly, effectively, and efficiently.
Strive to be rational, fair, consistent, and patient.
Value and nurture your colleagues and act as a team player.
Maintain a bird’s-eye view and develop a vision, but also remain flexible.
Understand that the work of a leader can be invisible and thankless, butalso rewarding and gratifying.
Identify role models and mentors, and learn from them.
Create support mechanisms and try to keep a work-life balance.
Trust yourself and own your decisions.

Embracing these principles in one’s professional life can help anyone
develop their potential as a leader. While the future will likely bringdifferent sets of problems and solutions, we believe these fundamentals
will remain the same and help future leaders keep their teams on an evenkeel as they navigate the challenges they will surely encounter.
When we began conceptualizing this project, we were a little
apprehensive about our ability to persuade a sufficient number ofcontributors to share their experiences, which we expected would include
some delicate matters. We were also not certain we could convince theJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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216 | Japanese Language and Literaturejournal to accept this unconventional proposal for a special section.
Nevertheless, we pushed forward because of our conviction that we areresponsible for passing on our collective knowledge and experiences tothe next generation. The final outcome is beyond what we hoped, and we
thank the contributors for taking a chance and joining forces with us. We
also would like to acknowledge the existence of a number of other female
Asian leaders—our predecessors or contemporaries—whose visible andinvisible work has established, defended, and enriched our field. We hope
they will also enjoy reading this special section, perhaps with nods andsmiles of recognition, and consider adding their own voices to this
discussion and celebration through formal or informal channels.
Finally, we want to stress that although this special section is framed
as stories of female Asian faculty, some elements of our stories will berecognized as common to all female faculty, or all leaders, regardless of
their ethnicity or gender. We conclude this introduction with optimism that
we will continue to see a number of female Asian faculty rising to theoccasion and that someday it will become unnecessary to discuss theiraccomplishments as remarkable because of their gender and ethnicity.
NOTES
1Japan ranked 121st out of 153 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report 2020.
https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf

2

Daijisen ga erabu shingo taishō 2021. (2021 New Words Awards selected by
Daijisen.) https://daijisen.jp/shingo/

3

See Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education for information
regarding the classification framework. https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/
classification_descriptions/basic.php.

REFERENCES

Cole, Kirsti, and Holly Hassel, eds. 2017. Surviving Sexism in Academia:
Strategies for Feminist Leadership. Abingdon, U. K.: Routledge.
Czarniawska, Barbara, and Guje Sevón. 2008. The Thin End of theWedge: Foreign Women Professors as Double Strangers in Academia.
Gender, Work, and Organization 15 (3): 235–287.

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Satoko Suzuki and Junko Mori | 217

Hernandez, Kathy-Ann C., Faith Wambura Ngunjiri, and Heewon Chang.
2015. Exploiting the Margins in Higher Education: A Collaborative
Autoethnography of Three Foreign-Born Female Faculty of Color.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 28 (5): 533–
551.
Kim, Dongbin, Susan Twombly, and Lisa Wolf-Wendel. 2012.
International Faculty in American Universities: Experiences ofAcademic Life, Productivity, and Career Mobility. New Directions for
Institutional Research 155: 27–46.
Longman, Karen A., and Susan R. Madsen, eds. 2014. Women andLeadership in Higher Education. Charlotte, N. C.: Information Age.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.249
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)
Hold Your Head HighSatoko Suzuki

In the spirit of sisterhood, I address this essay to young female scholars
and teachers who will take leadership positions in their institutions. I teachat Macalester College, a liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I
chaired the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (which started
out as the Japanese Language Program) at my institution from 1995 till
2015. Here is my story.
In the Beginning
My mother did not go to a four-year college and did not have a professional
career, but she brought me up as a feminist. Most heterosexual women I
know in my private life regardless of nationality and cultural background
put their partners’ (men’s) needs before theirs. My mother is one of a very
few who doesn’t. When I was growing up, she often told me I should not
get married until I was at least thirty. She herself married young (she wastwenty-one) and lived with a difficult and conservative mother-in-law (mygrandmother) who insisted on total control of every aspect of their family
life. My mother tried to rebel against Grandma’s reign, but she could only
do so much in a provincial town in Shōwa Japan, where the rights ofdaughters-in-law did not really count. When she was young, she loved art
but was not able to go to art school because her family could not afford it.
So, after Grandma passed away, she earned a junior college degree in art
by doing a correspondence course. She is now thriving as an amateur
sculptor and painter. Her life undoubtedly affected my thinking as I grewup.
My father is politically liberal and socially conservative. I say thelatter because he hampered my mother’s freedom. For example, he told
her that she could not start the junior college correspondence course when
their kids were young because the course required her to be away fromhome for an extended period of time. However, he never inhibited me fromdoing anything, and he encouraged me to go abroad during college (a huge
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

220 | Japanese Language and Literature

double standard, I know). He also instilled in me a love of writing (he still
writes our family newsletter at the age of eighty-six) and books (heintroduced me to Anne of Green Gables and The Diary of Anne Frank),
and was a role model as a leader and public speaker (he volunteered tolead the PTA at my schools for multiple years).
Professionally, my journey to my current position started when I met
a great English teacher at my local public high school in Niigata. While
my other high school teachers came across as just doing their job—doing
the bare minimum—to earn a salary, Honma sensei gave his all. He taught
English passionately, gracefully, and comprehensively, and delighted in
lecturing on the finer points of English grammar and pronunciation (inmuch greater detail than what regional high school kids needed to passtheir college entrance exams). Plus, he suffered no fools. His intensity,
poise, and professionalism had a powerful impact on me and inspired me
to pursue studying English in college. At that time, my future career goal
was to teach English, like him, in a Japanese high school not too far frommy parents’ home.
My plans changed in college. I got to know my American teachers,
David and Pat, who introduced me to other Americans and Canadians
living near the college. These new friends asked me to teach them Japanese,
which opened my eyes to another career possibility. I found the teachingof Japanese to be much more challenging and thus interesting thanteaching English, because I did not really know how to do it. I also studied
in England during the summer break of my junior year, and participated ina workshop on internationalism with Thai and Japanese students in mysenior year. All of these experiences made me want to see the world aftercollege and possibly teach Japanese language abroad someday.
When I had finished my undergraduate degree, the RotaryFoundation’s Ambassadorial Scholarship brought me to the University of
Minnesota. After a year, I applied to graduate school and started teaching
Japanese as a teaching assistant. I loved teaching Japanese! While ingraduate school, I learned about Macalester College, its small classes,
progressive students, emphasis on internationalism, and charming campus.
I thought teaching there would be my dream job. I requested an
informational interview with two professors, who later offered me a classto teach. I started teaching there as a part-time faculty member while stillin graduate school. A few years later, when Macalester announced a search
for the chair of its Japanese Language Program, I hesitated to apply
because I certainly did not intend to chair a department at such an earlyJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Satoko Suzuki | 221

stage of my career. However, several senior faculty members I had cometo know at the college encouraged me to apply. They said they expected
to open a second tenure-track position the following year, and they might
be able to convince the administration to hire both a senior faculty member
as the chair and me as an assistant professor during the current search. Sothat is what happened. My chair and I were hired at the same time. I was
ecstatic. Little did I know then that my chair would leave after only a year
and I would have to start leading the Japanese Language Program in mysecond year on the tenure track.
Being the Chair
I thus landed my dream job, but with hugely added responsibilities. In
order to get tenured, I obviously needed to teach classes well and publish
my research. At the same time, I had to keep the fledgling Japanese
Language Program running. In addition, I started a family. All of thesegoals and needs clashed with each other and competed for my time. For
example, during my pre-tenure sabbatical leave, I had to search for atenure-track replacement of the senior faculty member who had left, while
I was also caring for my first-born, who seemed to pass through every
possible childhood illness that year. I was always pulled in different
directions and especially torn between the need to get my research done
and the perceived societal pressure to be an attentive mother.
At that time, I did not possess a grand vision for my program because
I was not at all prepared to be the chair. My first priority was to get tenured
so that I could discuss having a vision from a stable perch. During theseearly years, it was not clear whether or not the Japanese Language Program
was going to continue to exist at my institution. In chairs’ meetings,
several of my senior colleagues often mused about the fate of my program,rather insensitively, in front of me. These men would casually say things
such as, “We should introduce Chinese language classes because China’s
going to be a great economic power, and then we could get rid of Japanese.
We don’t need two Asian languages, do we?” I played deaf and focusedon my research. I survived, and so did my program.
I received tenure, and I ended up chairing my program for twenty
years because nobody else got tenured in that time. During most of those
years, the upper administration was either indifferent or hostile towards
my program, as well as towards other language and culture departments.
Although my circumstances were a bit peculiar, I believe it isunfortunately quite common for college/university administrations in theJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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222 | Japanese Language and Literature

United States to not be supportive of Japanese language education. Thus,
the following story of my program’s survival and eventual triumph may
be of interest to you and readers in general.
By the time I got tenured, I had ideas of what the future program
should look like. I now had “a vision.” The Japanese Language Programat that time was staffed with three full-time faculty (one non-tenure track
and two tenured/tenure-track) who taught Japanese language and culture
courses. In addition, we had received some funding to start Chinese
language courses, and thus housed two part-time faculty who taught
Chinese. We offered a Japanese minor but not a major. I wanted theprogram to become a full-fledged department with three full-time faculty
for Chinese and three full-time faculty for Japanese, and to offer a major
and minor in both Chinese and Japanese. The chance to take a step towards
this ideal came during my most difficult year as the chair, when an
administrator I will call Bill (a pseudonym) tried to restructure theJapanese Language Program.
Bill’s idea was to take the non-tenure track position from the Japaneseside of the program and give it to the Chinese side. The college would
provide another full-time Chinese instructor position. Then, this new
structure, which would be called the Department of Asian Studies, would
have two full-time positions in Chinese and two in Japanese. The
department would offer an Asian Studies major in which students would
choose either the Chinese or the Japanese track. This plan, which might
have looked reasonable to outsiders, did not at all please me, the othermembers of the program, or the members of the Asian Studies Steering
Committee (we already offered an interdisciplinary Asian Studies major).
It did not make sense to us to reduce the number of instructors in Japanese
when we had received a grant to start Chinese on the basis of the strengthof our Japanese curriculum. Also, practically speaking, having only two
positions in each language would have meant that the department would
offer only language courses (which had healthy enrollments) and noculture courses. The curriculum would be completely diluted, and wewould end up with a mediocre Japanese program and a mediocre Chinese
program.
Therefore, we proposed an alternative plan in which the new
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures would house three facultyin Japanese and two faculty in Chinese (the college had already promised
one; another would be funded with a grant) and would offer a Japanesemajor. I explained the merits of our alternative plan in email messages sent

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Satoko Suzuki | 223

to all the faculty. My colleagues and I campaigned for our position
intensely and extensively. We were able to more or less count on the
support of our colleagues in the Humanities, Fine Arts, and Social
Sciences, from which the Asian Studies Steering Committee members
came. The unknowns were the Natural Sciences and Mathematics
departments (Bill was a scientist). I went door to door to visit each one of
my science and math colleagues in their offices and to explain our plan.
Some of them were surprised to see me in their building. Most of themwelcomed me and listened to my arguments with an open mind.
On the day of the all faculty meeting, Bill presented his idea first,
followed by me and my two Asian Studies colleagues. That was the firsttime I took the podium at a faculty meeting. I was nervous but somewhat
optimistic. After our presentations, faculty in the audience spoke. One
after another expressed support for our position. It was gratifying to hear
our colleagues from the Natural Sciences departments speak on our behalf.
When the time came for a hand vote, we won by a landslide. This is how
my department was established and the Japanese major was launched. A
few years later, Bill wrote me an email. He said he had recently seen thehigh number of Japanese majors in the college’s institutional report, that
it was a wonderful testament to me and my colleagues that we had built
such a successful program, and that he had been wrong to try to push fora reduction in the Japanese language faculty. I must admit that I was
thrilled to receive this message, and I appreciated his candor.
Since then, our department has added tenure-track positions to theChinese side and started offering a Chinese major and minor. It is nolonger a fledgling program but a well-established department.
Advice to Future Female LeadersFirst and foremost, seek older female mentors and friends on campus. Ifthey are people of color or immigrant/international faculty, all the better.
Find the people who will empathize and laugh with you about theunnerving or funny encounters with sexism and racism that you are likely
to have. Listen when they share the obstacles they faced, thedisappointments they endured, and the strategies they developed. I givethis advice emphatically partly because when I was young, I had not one
but two chances to develop such relationships, and I failed to do so.
Juanita was a charismatic Spanish instructor from Mexico, who loved
literature and art and cared deeply about the underprivileged. She was awell-known figure on campus with many friends in different departments.

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She took a liking to me and invited me to dinners and poetry readings.
Mahnaz was a fashionable Iranian sociologist who wrote about race,
ethnicity, immigration, and family. She was a bit reclusive, but we hit it
off and often went to lunch. She was the first and only faculty member on
campus who told me about the pain of academic rejection. She said whena journal rejected her article, she was so heartbroken that she could noteven look at the article for the longest time. I was in awe of her honesty
and willingness to show her vulnerable side. Both of these women were so
generous and inviting, but I did not realize the value of their friendship
until later. As I was raising young children, I saw them less and less.
Neither of them had children, and I foolishly thought that meant we didn’t
have much in common. As my children grew up, I thought aboutreconnecting with them, but by then it was too late. First Juanita and then
Mahnaz died of cancer right around this time. I still wish I could talk tothem sometimes about what it means to be an immigrant faculty or afemale senior faculty member, but they are gone. Thus, from my sad andbitter experience, I urge you to reach out to older female colleagues, who
are likely to have rich life experiences and could become confidantes andmentors to you.
Second, you should be direct and honest in your communication withcolleagues. This is hard to do, especially when you have to tell colleagues
that they need to improve their teaching or research. When I was a young
chair, I did not dare to do this because it was so uncomfortable to give thattype of feedback. Plus, at that time I thought: who am I to tell others what
to do? I thus neglected to do an important part of my job, guiding nontenured faculty. My lack of candor and confidence probably contributed
to the instability of the department personnel in those early days (nobody
else got tenured in my department for a while). Since then, I try to becompletely honest in my communications. I believe being forthright is
especially important when you are mentoring junior faculty. A candid
conversation in which you tell your colleagues that they need to publish
more or that they should teach differently is often not well received. Most
people do not like to hear about their limitations and often become
defensive, at least initially. They might resent you sometimes. However,most people will eventually come around to appreciating your advice andrespecting you as a leader. They will know they can trust you because you
always tell the truth. But even if you are not lucky enough to receive yourcolleagues’ gratitude, you still need to give them honest guidance, becausethat is your job. Try not to shy away from your responsibility.

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Satoko Suzuki | 225

Lastly, remember to hold your head high. Much of a leader’s job isinvisible (unfortunately, managing interpersonal conflicts amongcolleagues or fighting against budget cuts cannot go on your curriculum
vitae!). Our job is also often thankless. For example, if you are adepartment chair, you are expected to pay attention to your departmentcolleagues’ wellbeing and ask them to go to lunch with you or invite themto your home, but the invitations tend not to be reciprocated. Thus, you
might occasionally feel dejected or lonely, and start to wonder why onearth you are doing all this hard work. During these times of distress,
remember that younger women (especially younger Asian women) areoften looking up to you, even when they don’t show it. Earlier this year, I
received an email from a Vietnamese American student who graduatedfifteen years ago. She wrote that my style of teaching, advising, andleadership in and out of the classroom had had an impact on her, and stillinfluenced how she tries to present herself in the workplace. I was
surprised and thrilled to receive this message. She had never mentioned
any of this when she was a student. Comments like these remind me of theimportance of serving as a role model for students and junior faculty on
campus, as female Asian leaders are still scarce in higher education in the
United States. Hence, my advice is to keep your cool and hold your headhigh.
I wish you very best in your journey.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Penelope Geng and Junko Mori for reading earlier versions of theessay and giving me encouragement and suggestions. I am also grateful to
Laurie Durand for her excellent editorial assistance.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.256
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)

Becoming a Woman Leader in the United States: Finding a
Place to Shine
Natsuki Fukunaga

Introduction
My path to a leadership role as a woman in higher education has been longand circuitous, made possible thanks to the impact of many womenpioneers before me and leaders in my own life. Starting with my strongwilled mother, my first English teacher in Kagoshima, my former boss
who taught me “American English,” my Australian professor at college,
my advisor in graduate school in the United States, and the department
chair at the time of my job interview were all women. One of the mosteffective mechanisms of ensuring a bright future for women in higher
education is for women to mentor each other to pursue the degrees andqualifications necessary to pick up the leadership torch and bring it into
the next generation.
In this essay, I am going to explore how I came to earn a Ph. D. degreeand share my experiences as an Asian woman in the US in leadership
positions, including director of a Japanese-language program, chair of the
Department of Modern Languages (MDL), and mentor for a Japanese
outreach coordinator. With COVID-19 and the continuously changing
landscape of higher education, we are facing many unanticipatedchallenges, yet with these challenges also have come new opportunities
for Asian women as leaders in academia, language teaching, and in theirrespective communities.
Formative Years in Kagoshima
I grew up in Kagoshima, Japan, dreaming about living and working
outside Japan. Kagoshima is a beautiful place known for fantastic food,onsen (natural hot springs), and Mt. Sakurajima, an active volcano.
Unfortunately, Kagoshima is also infamous for the prevalence of adanson-johi ideology (respect for the male, contempt for the female). In
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

228 | Japanese Language and Literature

middle school, the class president was automatically a male student, whilethe vice president was a female student unless someone insisted otherwise.
When family members gathered at my grandparents' house, women
usually stayed in the kitchen cooking and serving food while the men sat,talked, ate, and drank. My brother was not expected to do much of thehouse chores while my sister and I were supposed to keep the house clean,
wash dishes, fold laundry, cook and serve food. I felt that gender inequality
was part of my daily life.
One day, my kindergarten teacher introduced some English words
with flashcards in class, unaware that this would truly change the courseof my life. I went home and shared what I had learned with my mother.
“This is amazing. I can communicate with people in different countries if
I know how to speak English!” My mother found my enthusiasm
remarkable and found English lessons with a young woman who spentsome time in the United States. I entered the world of learning English asa five-year-old girl.
I continued English lessons on and off, and English became my hobby
in a way. I would try to listen to English lessons on the radio in the morning,
identify places on my globe that I wanted to travel to, listen to The Beatles,
watch some of my favorite films in English multiple times to pick up
phrases wherever I could. By the time I was in high school, I had set mymind on becoming a Japanese teacher outside of Japan since I wanted touse English and live somewhere else in the world. I started taking English
conversation lessons with my future boss. Deborah was from Virginia andran a small English conversation school with her Japanese husband. She
looked, talked and acted differently from any other women I had met. She
also challenged us when we tried to stay quiet during classes. She became
my ideal image of a strong woman with several pierced earrings.
The fastest and cheapest way to achieve my goal was to study at a
local women’s two-year college and become fluent in English. Attending
a women-only college, I felt free from expected gender roles for the firsttime living in Kagoshima. All the classes were taught in English byteachers from Australia, the United States, Japan, England, and New
Zealand. The students participated in a six-week homestay program inAustralia at the end of the language pledge experience. I enjoyed my timeat my host family's home in Perth, Australia, especially when I observed
and assisted Japanese classes.
After returning, I sought ways to work in Australia, but I did not haveenough money or connections, so I got a job in Kagoshima and saved up

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money. After working as an OL (office lady) in a small company for a few
months, I received a phone call from a former professor in my college
about an opportunity to be an assistant Japanese teacher in Ipswich,
Queensland, Australia. My parents encouraged me to take the chance since
it was apparent that I was not enjoying my current job. The female workers
were expected to come thirty minutes earlier than men to clean and servetea. By the time I resigned from this full-time job, I had severe stomach
ulcers due to stress. I returned to Australia and served as an assistantteacher of three Australian female teachers in Japanese classes in the fifth
to twelfth grades.
I get nostalgic thinking about how inconvenient (yet fruitful) life waswithout the Internet, computers, and smartphones. I was the only Japaneseperson in the small town, and I depended on others to get by. When we
had an open day event at school, I served Japanese matcha tea in the sadōstyle. I had only taken a few lessons and hoped that nobody knew theproper manners of the traditional tea ceremony. I was very nervous whena Japanese family showed up out of nowhere. Fortunately, they kindly
overlooked my amateurism and thanked me for sharing Japanese culture
with their community. This experience made me realize that simply being
Japanese is not enough to teach the Japanese language and culture. After
returning to Japan, I started taking sadō tea lessons and re-educating
myself in Japanese cultural practices.
I hoped to go back to college to earn a four-year degree and teaching
license, but my parents were not happy with the idea of bearing thefinancial burden of tuition since I was the youngest in the family. Luckily,
my former English teacher, Deborah, offered me a job to teach children
English conversation and do some office work. I commuted from myparents’ house and saved every penny while studying and teaching English
simultaneously. During the pre-Internet era, I completed myundergraduate degree via tsūshin kyōiku (traditional distance learning) via
mail at Nihon University and earned an English teaching license at thesame time.
Thanks to a generous scholarship from Kagoshima Ikuei Zaidan, I
came to Georgia to earn my master’s degree in teaching English as asecond language. I was fascinated with all the students who began learning
Japanese because of their interest in pop culture, especially anime andgames. As the result of my interest, I conducted a qualitative interview
study as a master's thesis. Initially, I intended to complete a master’s
degree in two years and become an instructor of Japanese. However, myJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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230 | Japanese Language and Literatureadvisor, Dr. Betsy Rymes, suggested earning a Ph. D. degree bycontinuing my research on language learners’ identity, motivation, andpopular culture, which would create more opportunities, including
applying for tenure-track positions. My father said “Why? What for? Just
come home,” but my mother was supportive of the idea. Thanks to theassistance of Dr. Rymes and others, I was able to obtain a graduateteaching assistantship that allowed me to teach Japanese as a graduate
student with complete tuition remission for six years. During my studies,
my advisor and other teachers who recognized my efforts in teaching andresearch offered encouragement. While my new life in the United States
freed me from the restraints of gender discrimination and mistreatment inJapan, I simultaneously became more conscious of racial discriminationin the Deep South.
Becoming a Woman Leader in the United States
What does a Ph. D. do to an educator? It opens up many opportunities in
the United States. The idea of “having choices” as a racial and genderminority in the United States was one of the biggest reasons I endured thelong struggle of being a broke and overworked Ph. D. student. Once I
finished writing my dissertation, I accepted a tenure-track position as an
assistant professor of Japanese and the coordinator of the Japanese
program at Marshall University. My primary duty was to establish a newprogram with a minor and a major in Japanese in West Virginia. With myappreciation for all the non-Japanese teachers and friends whom I met in
Kagoshima, I chose to come to a small city with the mission of sharing my
joy for learning foreign languages.
Department Politics

During the first three years, I was busy creating new classes, devising thecurriculum, advising all Japanese students, working with graduateteaching assistants who taught Japanese with me every semester, andlearning how to get by in higher education. I did not miss a day of workand dedicated myself to completing the never-ending tasks. One day, afaculty member came to my office and abruptly said, “Not everyone ishappy to have a Japanese professor here. I know you are working hard, but
you are going to burn out pretty soon, so watch out.” I was thankful that
he was honest with me, but I was genuinely shocked and at a loss for words.
I realized I had entered the realm of academic department politics.

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In the Department of Modern Languages (MDL), there have been
French, German, and Spanish majors and two-year language sequences of
Arabic, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese for several years before I started
working. Due to high demand, a Japanese major was added in 2007, one
year after I joined the department, while Arabic, Chinese, Italian werediscontinued due to budget constraints and a lack of qualified instructors.
Adding a new tenure-track line resulted from taking a position from otherlanguage programs, which created tension and rivalries within thedepartment. Showing positive results was the only way to prove that
adding a Japanese major was the right decision. Within five years, thenumber of Japanese majors successfully reached the highest in our
department.
To promote the Japanese program, it was necessary to increase Japanrelated events and cultural learning opportunities on campus and local
communities in West Virginia and increase library resources. To do so, I
applied for several grants. The successful acquisition of external funding
and the execution of events were made possible by relentlesscommunication and collaboration with Marshall University administrators,
the Japan Foundation, the Consulate General of Japan of New York, West
Virginia Department of Education, K-12 public schools and libraries, andJapanese business communities such as Toyota in West Virginia. What
has been particularly successful is the Japanese outreach coordinator
position, which has been sustained for more than a decade. The Laurasian
Institute offers a Japan Outreach Initiative (JOI) program which sends acultural coordinator from Japan to a U. S. host site for two years. We had
the first on-campus JOI coordinator in 2010 and have continued to secure
a coordinator in the surrounding area for the next ten years. Eventually,
Marshall University was able to establish its own Japanese outreachcoordinator position.
“Live to Work” or “Work to Live”

Soon into my appointment, the department chair stopped me in the hallway,
asking, “Are you okay? You look pale.” I had severe pain in my lower
abdomen, but I said, “My stomach is bugging me, but I am fine.” Sheinsisted that I see a doctor right away, so I had to leave. The doctor toldme I would have to be hospitalized and have surgery that day. Later thatday, I had an emergency surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy. My
surgery turned out fine, but it forced me to take a hard look at my life.
This experience taught me how to balance my desire to achieve with myJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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nascent desires to have a life of my own. My husband would frequently
offer tough-love advice, saying, “Do you live to work or work to live?”“Nobody says ‘I wish I would’ve worked more’ on their deathbed,” and“Don't be a workaholic.” Admittedly, it took the birth of our two daughters
for me to truly take his words seriously. I am now aware that I cannot doeverything, so I must keep my priorities straight. Thankfully, I love mywork and my family. With many friends and my family’s help, we havesurvived as a double-income family sharing all the duties fifty percent
during our children’s early childhood.
Art of Adapting Communication and Leadership Style

In 2018, I was elected to serve as the chair of MDL after our former
department chair retired. Many faculty members, including myself, were
not interested in serving as department chair and taking up that leadershiprole. While there are advantages to being able to make decisions andinfluence policy, it is challenging to navigate relations with opinionatedprofessors from diverse backgrounds and schools of thought, each withconflicting goals. While I could focus more on my own aspirations in thepast, in a leadership role I have to balance the divergent aspirations ofmany with those of the institution. Historically, there have been tensions
between European and Latin American faculty members, and our current
members are more diverse than ever, hailing from Canada, France,
Germany, Japan, Poland, Puerto Rico, Spain, Russia, and the continental
United States. I am the only faculty member from Asia, which brings with
it its own series of challenges in obtaining mutual understanding despite
differences in communication styles.
At first, I made conscious efforts to send detailed emails, avoiding
confusion and misunderstanding. To my surprise, while some respondedwith “Thank you for taking the time to write this out,” others would reply,“Too long. I don’t feel like reading this.” A separate challenge was dealing
with how faculty members differed widely in their average expected
response times. Over the weekend, some do not check emails while others
reply and expect immediate responses. Setting a shared work ethic is an
essential yet incredibly challenging task unique to leadership roles.
Making final, consequential decisions was a challenge for me, in part
because I have tried to listen to everyone and come up with the bestsolution. Saying “no” was also challenging since I prefer avoiding
conflicts. When I think about past exchanges of emails and communication
as a chair of MDL, there are times I should have talked with individual

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Natsuki Fukunaga | 233

faculty members on the phone or in-person instead of solely depending on
email exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have realized thatbeing a leader requires problem-solving strategies and the ability to adapt
one’s communication and leadership style to the situation as it changes.
Technology

Computer and technology skills are one of the unwritten qualifications as
a leader in the post-COVID-19 society. I do not consider myself the mosttech-savvy person, but to my surprise I found myself sharing tips on
technology with other faculty members. Some displayed “tech anxiety,”but university leadership and I helped them to overcome these challenges
with multiple workshops, certifications, virtual meetings, and emails. We
converted all the classes into an online/virtual format, and thanks to thetremendous effort of each faculty member and on-campus technology
service personnel, and the patience and diligence of our students, we wereable to provide choices between different delivery modes during the
pandemic to meet students’ needs.
This technology adaptation has, unfortunately, brought back healthissues. I identified unhealthy habits, like constantly having my smartphoneand checking emails 24/7. I ended up suffering from Heberden’s nodes
with hardened joints on my fingers because of intense keyboard andsmartphone use. Many middle-aged women worldwide suffer fromdifferent types of premenopausal and menopausal symptoms, including
physical and mental issues. They are part of aging that we cannot ignore
as working women. This topic has also become a bonding opportunity for
our female faculty members in MDL. As a woman in a leadership role, I
can openly discuss women’s health issues and exchange helpful
information.
Since the beginning of COVID-19, we have spent long hours using
technology at work and at home. Our daughters spend much time withclasswork on their school iPad, and watch YouTube on their phones. As afamily, we recently started doing meditations at night twice a week. It
encourages us to wind down and unplug ourselves from technology—asmall effort for a better work-life balance.
Conclusion: Finding a Place to Shine
A few years after the bubble economy burst in the early 1990s in Japan,
second baby-boomers entered the job market with fewer opportunities.
Many young Japanese felt hopeless after enduring extremely competitive

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entrance exams, ijime (bullying), and rising suicide rates. I tried to take theexpected role of a responsible full-time worker, shakaijin, but I was nevercomfortable doing so. I made many mistakes in my life, but I wasdetermined to follow my future vision and I did not fail to do so. Nobody
told me to study English or made me go to graduate school, but I chosemy path. When I encounter difficulties, I tell myself, “I decided to be here
and do this job. If I cannot tolerate it, I can pick up everything and leaveanytime.” This feeling of not being bound to any one place and having
many choices open to me helps me stay afloat when I feel down.
The field of foreign language education in the United States is one area
in which women are well-represented. Many department chairs are women,
including the last two chairs in my current department, making it
undoubtedly easier to picture a woman as a leader compared to a similar
position in Japan. However, Asian women leaders are a minority sincemost women leaders are white. It is my hope to encourage future Asianleaders by sharing our stories and experiences.
There are different pathways for success to be a foreign language
educator in the United States. If you wish to teach in K–12 settings, youneed to earn an undergraduate degree in education. If you have a master’s
degree, you can teach in K–12 and colleges. Earning a Ph. D. will also
expand the choices of teaching and taking a leadership role in K–12,
community colleges, and universities. I strongly recommend taking
advantage of the graduate assistantship (GA/TA) system in higher
education in the United States since earning a graduate degree can be more
affordable and more accessible than earning an undergraduate degree as
an international student. As a graduate student, you have the freedom tofocus on what you want to study while also gaining needed experienceteaching. I realized later in my life that qualifications and education cannot
be taken away from you whether you are poor, a woman, or a non-native
English speaker. As I shared in this essay, I was a poor international
graduate student full of ideas and determination. I appreciate all thehardships I encountered since I grew personally and professionally fromthem. As I have been the benefactor of assistance from many before me, I
strive to provide an example for women in the coming generation ofleaders in academia.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.254
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)
Learning to Lead
Kiri LeeI am a professor of Japanese in the Department of Modern Languages andLiteratures (MLL) at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. I was the directorof the Asian Studies Program from 2012 to 2021, and I was the MLL
department chair from 2015 to 2021. I came to Lehigh to take a non-tenure
track position in the mid-1990s when I was still ABD, and I took ameandering path to get to where I am now. It is my hope that through mypositionality as a foreign-born female of color in American higher
education, my essay will give some perspective to young female Asian
academicians who are or will be in leadership positions.
Where I Began
After I finished college in Japan, I came to the United States to study at a
graduate school. At the time, I was not planning to have an academic
career. I just wanted to get out of Japan, see the world, and become fluent
in English. My desire to go beyond Japan had a lot to do with mybackground. I was born in Osaka to a Japanese mother and a Zainichi
Korean father.
My mother was very supportive when it came to my education. In fact,
she really encouraged me to find a career that would be transferable
internationally. In a way, her reasons were very ironic: she thought I was
not marriage material because of my half Zainichi Korean background andmy bookishness. I don’t think she imagined I would find a partner outsideof Japan, either. My father spoke English pretty well. He once told me that
his English teacher told his students they should know their enemy throughlearning English. It was during the Pacific War, and English classes werebanned in most schools in Japan. So, this was very unusual. After the war,
my father did not take over his family business as he was expected to do
as the first-born son. Instead, he became a jazz musician. He had a jazzband and performed on the US bases in Japan during the US occupation. I
had a chance to talk with his musician friends when I was in college. They
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

236 | Japanese Language and Literature

told me they got more gigs than other bands because my father spoke
English. He thought knowing English was crucial in the postwar world.
He sent me to a private elementary school where they taught English fromthe second grade. My parents had no objections to my coming to theUnited States to study after I graduated from college with a degree inEnglish linguistics.
The first master’s degree I received was a professional degree in crosscultural communication. Somewhere in my mind, I wanted to be involvedin supporting young people who were caught in a multicultural situation,
specifically kikokushijo “returnees.” Actually, about twenty years ago, I
returned to my passion for supporting bi/multilingual young people, andJapanese heritage language education became another field of my research.
After my first master’s degree, I taught the Japanese language for several
years at the college level. During that time, I met academics who
encouraged me to go on to a doctoral program in linguistics.
I cannot talk about my life in the United States without mentioning thepeople who had faith in me at crucial moments. To name just a few: mypartner in life; my mentors at Harvard graduate school, Professors Susumu
Kuno and the late Tazuko Monane; and at Lehigh, the chair who hired me,
the Japanese-American provost when I received tenure, and the first
openly gay dean, who saw something in me and appointed me toleadership positions. Without their support, I could not have accomplishedwhat I did. I feel extremely fortunate. At the same time, there werenumerous episodes where I felt that I was excluded and stereotyped. Someof them were simply based on gender, but some were more specificallybecause of my status as foreign-born, female, and Asian faculty.
What I Encountered in My Workplace
At Lehigh, all the languages are taught in the Department of Modern
Languages and Literatures, and the Japanese language was the last
addition to a very Eurocentric department. When I joined, I was the first
Asian non-tenure-track full-time faculty member. I am not certain, butwhen my position became tenure-track later on, I may even have been thefirst female Asian to hold a tenure-track position in the humanities there.
As is probably characteristic of language departments, my department has
been predominantly occupied by female faculty. However, culturally andracially insensitive comments come from people regardless of their gender.
While it is human nature to be threatened by the “unknown,” it is not
excusable to be insensitive or rude to them/us.

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Kiri Lee | 237

Once when I was cleaning up loose tea in my tea pot, for example, awhite female professor told me to make sure I cleaned up the sink because“it looks disgusting.” In addition, I was often profiled because of myJapanese accent. One time I called HR for some benefit clarification.
When a staff member answered the phone, I hesitated a bit. Immediately
after they recognized that I spoke English with an accent, they said, “Youare an adjunct, and a non-US citizen.” When I told them, “No. I am an
assistant professor and a US citizen,” they just said, “Oh.”Sometimes people don’t realize they have unconscious biases. One of
the associate deans said to my Japanese colleague and me, “I want to know
your culture.” I am certain they meant well, but the comment made it clear
to me that language and culture courses were not taken seriously as
academic subjects. We are not teaching “our culture” or “our language.”
In fact, there are several faculty members in the department who are not“native” speakers of the target languages.
I also encountered many instances of male dominance. Here is aclassic example. I met with a curriculum committee as chair to present our
department’s proposal for reinstating language requirements forundergraduate students. My associate chair, who was older than me, nonAsian, and male, accompanied me. Throughout the meeting, senior malemembers of the committee dominated the conversation, and wheneverthey had questions, they directed them to the associate chair, not to me.
How I Responded to Challenges in My Leadership Roles
I became the director of the Asian Studies Program in Fall 2012, and thatwas my first leadership position at Lehigh. I held that position for nine
years. I should also mention that I was the first Asian person to be thedirector. The Asian Studies Program was a very comfortable and safe
place for me. It is an interdisciplinary program that transcends
departmental boundaries, with faculty members from the Departments ofInternational Relations, Religion Studies, Sociology, Music, and Modern
Languages and Literatures. We are all united in promoting Asian Studies.
As director, I attempted to foster a safe space for those who are interested
in and have connections to Asia on campus. We already had a major andminor in Asian studies, but its requirements consisted of mostly language(Chinese or Japanese) courses. The Chinese major was established around2010, and the Japanese major in 2016. Before that, students who would
have majored in Chinese or Japanese otherwise only had the option ofmajoring in Asian Studies. So, I initiated changes in the requirements forJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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the Asian Studies major so that it would be more of an “area studies” major,
distinct from the language majors.
While I was serving as director of the Asian Studies Program, I
concurrently served as chair for my department from 2015 to 2021. This
was a lot harder than being the director of the Asian Studies Program. The
MLL department offers Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, andJapanese. These languages each have majors and minors. In addition, weoffer Arabic and Hebrew language courses. Every year we have about
1,200 students studying languages in our department, and half of them areusually taking Spanish. That means the Spanish program constitutes about
half of the department, and the five other language programs constitute therest. As you may all know, enrollment in language courses has been
declining in the past decade, especially in French, German, and Russian,and that trend has led to insecurity in some language programs.
Before I became the chair, several conflicts arose between theEuropean and non-European language lines. For example, the first time I
had a chance to request a second tenure-track Japanese position, there also
happened to be a sudden retirement in one of the European language
programs. The chair at the time was from the same language program, andthe dean gave us one position and asked the chair to decide which language
program it should go to. At that time, the Japanese program had muchbetter enrollment numbers and I was the only full-time faculty member,while the other program had three full-time faculty members and declining
enrollment numbers. However, the chair decided to fill the position in her
own language, and most of the faculty in European languages went alongwith the decision, despite strong protest from the faculty in non-European
languages asking for more transparency. After that incident, thedepartment was very dysfunctional for several years.
There was another chair, a professor of Spanish, who served for one
term (three years) before I took the position. Under his calm management
style, our department had time to heal. I was able to work with him andsuccessfully argued for a tenure-track position in Japanese. In fact, he was
the one who strongly recommended me to the dean to be the next chair.
When I started my chairship in 2015, I felt the department was readyto be active again. I wanted to create a departmental culture in which
everything we did in our department was everyone’s business. I created afive-year strategic plan so that everyone was on the same page, especiallyabout hiring. I filled all the positions that had been left vacant by
retirement or resignation. I successfully added two new full-time

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positions: one tenure-track position in German and one non-tenure track
position in Japanese. Whenever we asked for any position, I thoroughly
prepared by assembling data to justify the request and to maintaintransparency. The two new faculty members hired in Spanish and German
during my chairship told me several times that, unlike modern languages
departments they knew at other institutions, in our department, “the faculty
members are talking to one another!”—and they gave me the credit forthat.
I also tried to foster equality among the faculty members regardless of
their rank. I hosted a social gathering at the beginning of each academic
year to welcome not only new full-time faculty members, but also adjunctfaculty. In a language department, it is often the case that adjunct faculty
members do much of the heavy lifting, and we should never dismiss theircontributions.
Of course, there are some colleagues with whom one would rather nothave any contact if it were possible to avoid. But if you are the chair, thatis not an option. That was probably the most difficult thing I had to
overcome. There was a male colleague who easily got emotional andtended to lash out. Every time I had to communicate with him as chair, I
took a deep breath and reminded myself not to be reactive. I also imagined
and prepared for all the possible reactions I might get from him before
meeting with him. When he got loud and started shouting, I would say tohim, “I cannot talk to you if you raise your voice.” This sometimes worked,
but other times, he just stormed out of my office. When such things happen,
don’t take it personally! And when it gets out of hand, don’t hesitate to get
help. I eventually ended up involving the dean to deal with this colleague’s
unprofessional behavior.
Interestingly, the first tenure case I oversaw as chair was for thefaculty member who had been hired for the European language instead offor Japanese several years before (as I mentioned earlier). Although thefile left our department with full endorsement, it was negatively reviewed
at the dean’s level. The biggest problem the promotion committee had wasthat most of the candidate’s publications were written in a language otherthan English. Although the candidate had published in highly reputablevenues in their field, the committee did not see the value of academia
outside of the Anglophone world. In our department, we all write in thelanguages of our research fields as well as in English, and the negative
review felt like an insult to the integrity of all of the faculty in thedepartment. Everyone in our department felt the same. I mobilized all theJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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240 | Japanese Language and Literature

senior faculty members in our department and wrote a strong response
letter. I requested meetings with the dean and the provost, and all of mysenior colleagues were present at the meetings. I had to admit that at the
beginning of the review process, I really had to convince myself to set
aside my mixed feelings towards this position, and to focus on advocating
for the candidate. After all went well, the previous chair who had hired
this person thanked me for my professionalism.
Another episode that required a lot of patience was when I worked
with the Global Studies Program to establish a joint major in Global
Studies and MLL. Their own major only required an intermediate level oflanguage proficiency, but the proposed joint major would require moreadvanced language proficiency. Because Lehigh does not have language
requirements, we have to grab any opportunity to advance language
studies. It took me three semesters of negotiation among our department
faculty to reach consensus because of strong opposition from the Spanish
faculty members. Although they were half of the department in many
respects, they were worried that the new joint major would steal minors
from Spanish. The faculty in the Global Studies Program became a bit
impatient, but I wanted to have a proposal that everyone in our department
was happy with. In the end, it was voted on in a general faculty meeting,and now students can choose the MLL-Global Studies major.
What I Have Learned
During the six years of my chairship, I learned a lot about myself and beinga leader. It was very stressful and kept me on my toes all the time. However,I feel that I have grown as a human because of these experiences. Here are
the mottos I have developed for myself, which may be useful to others in
any leadership position. And of course, there are many things you willlearn on the spot.
•
•
•
•
•
•

Be rational, not reactionary: when you receive comments or encounterbehaviors that elicit strong feelings, take a deep breath and focus onwhat you want to accomplish. If it can wait, sleep on it.
Be transparent: you have to be able to account for all of your actions.
Be fair: don’t treat anybody differently based on the position they hold.
Be consistent: don’t make any exception that you cannot defend.
Be patient: forcing somebody to do something never leads to a goodoutcome. Work with them to find a way.
Get help: when you exhaust your options for solutions, don’t hesitate to
get help.

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Kiri Lee | 241

During my longer than a quarter century career at Lehigh, I have seen
positive changes in academia. Younger faculty members have moresophisticated and nuanced ways of looking at the world. They grew up
with people who are racially, ethnically, and culturally different fromthemselves. They engage in more interdisciplinary research. I see morediversity on campus now, both visible and invisible. There is even a 2021
television show, “The Chair,” with Sandra Oh playing the role of the firstfemale Asian chair in an English department! We just have to be on thewatch and support the leaders who embrace diversity and foster dialogue
among us. I have high hopes for young female Asian academics.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.259
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)
Find Your Role Model
Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase

I teach Japanese language and literature at Vassar College, located in New
York State. My specialization is Japanese literature with a special focus
on girls’ magazine culture and literature. My research interests haverecently expanded to shōjo manga, and I am currently working on a
research project that examines women’s history and culture viewed
through manga. When I was invited to contribute an essay to this special
section, I was unsure if I was a suitable person to write about female
leadership, as I do not consider myself a typical leader type. I am timid
and a worrywart. However, I read a research article which explains thatthe “superstar role model” is not always positive; it can pressure people
and affect their self-esteem (Hoyt and Simon 2011: 154). My story is fullof struggles. However, I would like to share two pieces of advice withreaders: (1) Find your mentors and learn from them and (2) Be critical ofJapan’s colonial past. I would be happy if the readers could take awaysomething from my story.
Find Your Mentors and Learn from Them
I was born in Tokyo in the late 1960s and grew up in Osaka. I went to a
local girls’ high school and entered a women’s college affiliated with thehigh school. I was a typical joshidaisei (female college student) who
dreamed about becoming fluent in English. In the late 1980s, Japan was
enjoying the “bubble economy.” There was a type of TV drama called“trendy drama,” in which stylish career women appeared as central
characters; they spoke good English, had business careers, and, of course,
were involved in romantic relationships. I yearned for the world of trendy
drama. In fashion magazines, the word ryūgaku (study abroad) was
ubiquitous. Without deep consideration about my future plans, I majoredin British and American literature at college simply because I wanted to
be able to speak English.
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

244 | Japanese Language and Literature

During my junior year, I studied in the United States. The school that
I chose was located in a town called Alliance, Ohio. I loved the small-town
atmosphere and people’s hospitality there. However, I found classes
difficult. My English level was not high enough to take college-levelcourses. I thus always felt inferior and also found myself an outsider.
While I was there, I read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (1919),
the early twentieth-century novelist. This book was one of the first fulllength English language books I read in the original language, and I
enjoyed reading it. Winesburg, Ohio consists of short stories about theresidents of a small town. All the characters are dealing with trauma frompast experiences, suffer from inferiority complexes, and have difficulty incommunicating with others. They are nevertheless likable. Somehow, thecharacters were relatable to me and comforted me. After I returned toJapan, I purchased a collection of Anderson literature to read his otherworks.
In the early 1990s, I decided to pursue the study of American literature.
I chose Illinois State University, where an expert on Anderson, Professor
Lewis White, was teaching. By then, I could read and write fairly well but
struggled with understanding lectures and expressing my opinions in class.
I hated discussion-based classes because I could not participate. On theother hand, I enjoyed giving presentations and was good at it. It wasaround that time that I became interested in becoming a teacher in higher
education.
For the Ph. D. program, I chose Purdue University in Indiana. I
belonged to the Comparative Literature Program. Initially, I was going tostudy Sherwood Anderson and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke from a comparative
perspective. However, my research focus shifted in an unpredictable way:
I read Yoshiya Nobuko’s short story “Suzuran” (Lily of the valley, 1916)
in one of the classes I took. Immediately I fell in love with this piece. It isa story about a schoolgirl who witnesses a mysterious Italian girl playing
piano at night. The story has no climax but is beautifully written in ornate
language peppered with western imagery. I was surprised to find that suchan easily enjoyable piece could be a subject of study. For my Ph. D.
dissertation, I compared Yoshiya Nobuko with Louisa May Alcott, theauthor of Little Women (known in Japan by its translated title Wakakusa
monogatari). They share many similarities; not only did they both write
stories for young girls but they both were also feminists. They wove theirfeminist messages into their works. My journey through girls’ literarystudies had, thus, started.

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Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase | 245

I received a two-year research scholarship from Purdue, which
released me from my teaching assistantship. I was away from school andlived in Chicago with my husband, whom I married around that time. I
received (and continue to receive) so much support from him. He
proofread my dissertation and pointed out logical flaws, and we read it
over and over to make a final polish-up together. Writing a dissertation isa lonely and difficult process for anyone (I felt that it would never end).
But constant effort makes a big difference. It is important to make progress—even if each step is small.
In 2003, Japanese popular culture was thriving. My research topic—
girls’ literature and also shōjo manga—was favorably viewed in academia.
Luckily, I found a job at Vassar College and we moved to Poughkeepsie,
New York. It is conventional for faculty members in Japanese programs
at liberal arts colleges to teach language and literature/culture courses. My
experience of working as a teaching assistant in Japanese language andliterature at Purdue was a significant advantage. The year after I came to
Vassar, the Chinese and Japanese department became independent fromthe Asian Studies Program. I was fortunate to be involved in many
initiatives to help grow the Japanese program. My first mission was to lookfor exchange schools in Japan. My senior colleague, Professor Peipei Qiu(specialist in premodern literature and known for her study of Chinese
comfort women) and I visited Japan together, and ultimately Ochanomizu
University and Ritsumeikan University became our partner schools. Since
then, we have had close institutional partnerships, especially with
Ochanomizu: we held many collaborative projects, including a two-monthsummer Japanese language program at the Ochanomizu campus (which
was unfortunately discontinued in 2010), Collaborative Online
International Learning (COIL) projects, the annual international students’forum, researcher exchanges, and so on. When we had our summer
program, my colleague Yuko Matsubara and I took twenty students to
Ochanomizu every year and stayed there as directors. I was still un-tenured
at that time, so some senior faculty members in otherdepartments/programs told me that I should focus on research. However,as a Japanese language teacher, I felt that this program was an
indispensable opportunity for my students. So, I was determined tocommit myself to the director’s role. In the end, the program was
successful, flourished, and continued for four years until the world
financial crisis occurred.

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246 | Japanese Language and Literature

The four summers that I spent in Japan brought me valuable
connections and friendships. I am, in particular, grateful to the kindness ofProfessor Kan Satoko, professor of Japanese literature at Ochanomizu
University. Professor Kan’s research interest was very similar to mine. She
shared information that I could not obtain in the United States. She gave
me many opportunities to write essays and articles and to present myresearch. Regrettably, she passed away in 2011. Professor Kan was andstill is my role model. She was active in interacting with researchers
overseas and cared for students and junior faculty members. I am sure that
I am not the only one who admired her and wanted to become like her. My
work ethic and ideas about leadership come from Professor Kan.
Thanks to many friends and colleagues’ support, I managed to gettenure in 2010. Since then, I have been involved in college committee
work, including serving as the department chair. However, I often feel
nervous around people and constantly wonder if I am fitting in and notdisappointing others. Lack of confidence has always plagued me. One of
the major reasons for my lack of confidence is the fact that I am a nonnative speaker. Research shows that a “clear marker that draws a line
between white and non-white, citizens and immigrants, competency andnon-competency, and mainstream and periphery” is attributed to one’s
accent in English (Hoyt and Simon 2011: 169). The number of non-native
Asian women leaders in the arena of American higher education is small.
My colleague, Peipei Qiu is one of a few Asian female leaders on campus.
I feel fortunate to be able to work with her and, more importantly, learn
from her. I always tell myself that as long as I do what she does, nothing
will go wrong. Of course, mere copying is not always good, but we cangrow only through learning from others. You can eventually cultivate yourown style. It is, therefore, important to find a role model near you fromwhom you can learn.
Although I have always suffered from insecurity, lately I feel myself
slowly overcoming it. Fifteen years after I completed my dissertation, I
finally published a book, Age of Shōjo: The Emergence, Evolution, andPower of Japanese Girls’ Magazine Fiction (SUNY Press 2019). This isa diachronic study of girls’ magazine culture, examining the birth of shōjo
shōsetsu (girls’ stories) and following the development of this genre. I
discuss women writers’ resistance against male-centered society andfemale gender norms presented via the voices of girl characters. There
were always stereotypes associated with girls’ story writers—their stories
are viewed as immature and only for children—but they as feminists

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Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase | 247

fought against male critics who trivialized them by pulling their female
readers to their side as their allies.
Some people may consider that girls’ magazine stories are commercial
products and, therefore, their readers are passive consumers. However, theauthors constantly encouraged readers and taught them to believe in theirpotential. I am one of the readers who grew up reading girls’ stories andwas empowered by them. Encouragement by the female writers—
sometimes optimistic and sometimes unrealistic—is a manifestation offeminism. I believe in the positive energy and power residing in girls’
culture.
After I completed this book, I arrived at one realization: I do not haveto be constantly worried about people’s opinions about me, but I should
secure my own community in which I feel comfortable. My job now is tooffer a healthy and non-hostile academic space where young scholars canfeel safe, encouraged, and motivated, just like my role models have always
done for me.
Be Critical of Japan’s Colonial Past
Since the fall of 2021, I have been serving as the director of the AsianStudies Program at Vassar College. Before I came to Vassar, I did not have
many opportunities to interact with those who are in the Asian Studies
field because I always belonged to the Foreign Language Department,
English Department, and Comparative Literature Program. After coming
to Vassar, I was suddenly surrounded by colleagues and faculty members
who specialize in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. Lately, I
feel a strong need to learn more about Asia and think about myself as an
Asian.
An incident made me realize how indifferent I had been to Japan’scolonial history and its residue embedded in today’s culture. When I
became in charge of the fourth-year Japanese-language course, I
introduced material about Yamakawa Sutematsu, one of the five girls whocame to the United States as ryūgakusei (study abroad students) in 1872;
Sutematsu studied at Vassar. Upon graduation, she returned to Japan,
helped Tsuda Umeko, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, establish her
English school, raised funds to establish a nursing school, and also got
married to Ōyama Iwao, a general in the army. As teaching material, I used
an episode of a TV show called Rekishi hiwa historia which focused on
Sutematsu. Her support of her husband during the Russo-Japanese war(1904–1905) is described thus:

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In 1904, the Russo-Japanese war broke out…. When Ōyama Iwao was sent
to continental China as the supreme commander of the Japanese army
forces, his wife, Sutematsu, took it upon herself to support the Japanese war
effort (koko de katsuyaku shita no ga Sutematsu desu). She advocated forJapanese interests abroad. Sutematsu actively sought media coverage using
her position as the wife of an army commander and her English language
skills, appearing in media worldwide to promote international support andunderstanding for Japan…. As a result, the Japanese were able to end thewar as victors (kono kekka Nihon no shōri to iu katachi de sensō o oeru kotoga dekita no desu). (Ōyama Sutematsu 2012)

Sutematsu’s contribution is glorified, which is evident from the terms thatare used, katsuyaku (contribution) and shōri (victory). But one Chinese
student in my class pointed out: Yamakawa’s katsuyaku is katan (to beaccomplice) for the invasion of the Chinese continent. Indeed, the RussoJapan war took place in Manchuria, northern China (Ōyama Iwao served
as a commander in the Sino-Japanese war [1894-1895] as well andcaptured Port Arthur). After the war in 1905, Korea was made a Japaneseprotectorate. “The Russo-Japan war” and the word “invasion” for the firsttime were linked in my mind.
Because of the influence of popular historical novels, films, and TV
dramas, Meiji figures, including those involved in wars, are often
portrayed as brave and respectable hard workers who devoted themselvesto the modernization of Japan. However, it is dangerous that thispopularized and dramatized world is taken as truth without broader
colonial historical context. The positive portrayals of the Sino-Japanese
War and the Russo Japanese War in NHK’s 2009–2011 TV drama Clouds
above the Slope (Saka no ue no kumo), which is based on Shiba Ryōtarō’s
novel, for instance, have been criticized (Daigo 2010). These views toward
the Meiji era parallel the national rhetoric of the government (Gluck 2020:11). Abe Shinzō’s 2018 New Year’s Day address compared the gravity ofJapan’s economic crisis today with conditions in the Meiji era when Japan
faced an increase of foreign power in the region and asserted that, just as
the Meiji people built a modern nation in response to their problem,
Japanese citizens should face this new situation with “a sense of urgency”(Abe 2018) and strive to rebuild the nation. The wars of the Meiji era werelegitimized and transformed into positive historical memories, where theidea of Japan as colonizer is absent. Historian Keiichi Fujiwara (2006)
states: “War memories…have been highly selective and significantly
different from neighboring Asian countries. The disparate historicalJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase | 249

memory has become an area of contention” (145). Today, it is crucial toexamine the history of your own country in context and be the most criticalperson of Japan’s colonial history. This might sound obvious, but weshould be aware of the fact that there are still many issues that have notbeen resolved since the war. Indifference to and ignorance of our own
country’s past is disrespectful to others. Now I often incorporate readings
on Japan’s colonial history into my language class.
I often ponder why teaching a language is important. I teach Japanese
not because I want to teach Japanese culture or to increase the number of“fans of Japan” but because I want students to understand the importanceof diversity and respect others’ opinions. In upper-level language classes,
I treat Japanese as “a lingua franca”: Just like English, Japanese can be acommon linguistic means through which people of different cultural andlinguistic backgrounds can communicate and exchange opinions. The
annual student forum, part of the COIL project, initiated by Professor
Moriyama Shin (Ochanomizu University), is held based on this belief(Moriyama 2021: 4). The participating students, using English and/orJapanese, collaboratively research pressing global issues (environmental,
climate, racial, and geopolitical issues, for example) and discuss how they
can work together to create a better future. Through this experience, I havelearned how important it is for us to develop cultural sensitivity and anunderstanding of other cultures, which are essential tools for conducting
harmonious yet robust global communication.
Final Remarks
The Asian Studies program at Vassar has over thirty years of history andover twenty faculty members. Serving as the director of this program is asignificant challenge for me. But I am at the same time excited about
learning new things. I struggled a good deal over the course of myacademic career. Before getting tenure, I was always worried about myresearch and publications and sometimes neglected other important
aspects such as socialization and fulfillment of my private life. I realizethat harmony between people creates a healthy academic environment.
Now, I am making an effort to participate in the college community more
actively.
I hope that my pieces of advice—finding a role model, belonging to acommunity where you feel protected, being critical of Japan’s colonial
past, and nurturing cultural sensitivity—will be beneficial to you, future
Asian leaders. Just like I did, you might encounter some hardships on theJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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250 | Japanese Language and Literature

course of your academic career: publishing scholarly articles, for example,
is not an easy task. However, struggles only make people strong. If you
fail, you only need to correct your mistakes. You don’t need to make all
your achievements at once. The most important thing is to make constantprogress while aspiring to become like your role models.

REFERENCES

Abe Shinzo. 2018. “New Year’s Reflection by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.”https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_abe/statement/201801/_00001.html.
Accessed on January 30, 2022.
Anderson, Sherwood. 1919. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: B. W. Huebsch．
Daigo Satoshi. 2010. “Saka no ue no kumo no doko ga mondai nanoka”(What is the issue in Clouds above the Slope).
https://kgcomshky.cocolog-nifty.com/sizudai2.pdf. Accessed on
January 12, 2022.
Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. 2019. Age of Shōjo: The Emergence, Evolution,
and Power of Japanese Girls’ Magazine Fiction. Albany, N. Y.: State
University of New York Press.
Fujiwara, Keiichi. 2006. Imagining the Past: Memory Wars in Japan.
Policy and Society 25.4: 145–153.
Gluck, Carol. 2020. Tanjun na monogatari no kikensei: Meiji ishin 150
shūnen ni saishite (The danger of simple stories: Regarding the Meiji
Restoration 150th anniversary). In Meiji ishin o toinaosu: Nihon toajia no kingendai (Questioning the Meiji Restration: The modern era
in Japan and Asia), ed. Matthew Augustine, 11–40. Fukuoka: Kyūshū
daigaku shuppan-kai.
Hoyt, Crystal L. and Stefanie Simon. 2011. Female Leaders: Injurious or
Inspiring Role Models for Women? Psychology of Women Quarterly
35.1: 143–157.
Mayuzumi, Kimie. 2008. ‘In-between’ Asia and the West: Asian womenfaculty in the transnational context. Race Ethnicity and Education
11.2: 167–182.

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Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase | 251

Moriyama, Shin. 2021. “Model Case 04.” COIL: Collaborative Online
International
Learning.
https://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/global/u9gsah000001zvgc-att/web.pdf.
Accessed January 8, 2022.
Ōyama Sutematsu: Rokumeikan no hana (Ōyama Sutematsu: The flowerof Rokumeikan). 2012. Rekishi hiwa hisutoria (Historical
documentaries). September 19, 2012, NHK. The quoted passage wastranslated by Levi Canon.
Yoshiya Nobuko. Suzuran. (1916) 1975. Yoshiya Nobuko zenshū (Thecollection of Yoshiya Nobuko literature) 1: 11–12. Tokyo: Asahi
shinbunsha.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.257
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)

Chance, Choice, and Cheerful Chaos: A Journey to
Leadership
Ayako Kano

The Parental Game of Chance
I usually think of myself as coming from a rather ordinary middle-class
Japanese family. Ordinary middle-class can mean different things at
different times, but around me, it meant a father who was employed fulltime at a large corporation and a mother who stayed at home to take careof the kids. What was not so ordinary—and affected dozens of women myage, perhaps hundreds if you think of my decade or generation—is that myfather’s job took the family outside Japan, first to Germany, and then to
the United States.
A recent phrase making the rounds in Japanese social as well as
mainstream media is oya gacha. It combines the words for “parent” andgacha-gacha, the onomatopoeic name for the toy-capsule vending
machines ubiquitous in shopping malls. The idea is that you cannot choose
your parents—as with these capsule toys, it is all a matter of luck whether
you end up with excellent parents, or shitty ones. The phrase has also cometo stand in for a sense of social inequity and lack of social mobility. One
cannot choose the social class and family circumstance one is born into,
and these factors seem to play an increasingly determinative role in one’s
own educational and employment prospects. The phrase “parent gacha”
bluntly encapsulates the idea that one might be lucky or unlucky in where
one is born, and that this is the end of the story. It denotes resignation aboutsocial mobility, which is no doubt in decline in twenty-first century Japan.
By contrast, it was my parents’ generation, born in the 1930s andcoming to adulthood in the postwar decades, that probably had the mostmobility in modern Japanese history, both upward and downward.
Specifically, this was the historical moment when a boy born to humble
circumstances could aspire to get into a good college by working hard, andthen get a good job and become economically comfortable. That was the
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

254 | Japanese Language and Literaturecase with my father, who was born in the northern hinterlands of Japan,
and whose family’s business had gone bankrupt when he was still a child,
but who was able to attend a national university on a scholarship and thenwas hired by one of the big banks that eventually sent him abroad.
Being born as his daughter was my good luck. But as other observers
have pointed out, “parent gacha” tells only part of the story.1 We must also
talk of “nation gacha” and “generation gacha.” The fact that I was born asa child in Japan in the 1960s to a set of parents whose trajectory matched
the social mobility of the postwar years, and that my father was part of thegeneration of worker bees being sent abroad on the wave of Japanese
economic expansion—it is not an exaggeration to say that this determined
where I ended up today.
I bring this up because when we speak of leadership or career paths, it
is tempting to speak primarily of our individual choices. I have decided toemphasize the generational nature of my own experience, although it goesagainst how it “felt” to go through it: I have felt like an oddball and outlier
for much of my career, a minority among minorities. It is only in the last
few years that I have come to see my own career within the larger story of
postwar Japan. (There is also a story of postwar U. S. higher education andits gender and racial dynamics that plays an important role, but I am going
to set those aside for the sake of brevity.)
Dreaming of Equal Employment
I became a freshman at a co-educational Japanese private university in
1985, the year the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed. Thislaw made it illegal, but not really punishable, to discriminate in the hiringand promotion of female versus male employees. As most Japan observers
know, this did not exactly result in doors to corporate management and top
government positions flying open to welcome women (see for example
Nemoto 2016).
I had arrived at Keio University because it was one of several that had
started accepting graduates of foreign high schools through a special exam.
And I had graduated from a high school in the suburbs of New York City
because my father had been assigned to a job in New York by his company.
Earlier he had been assigned to a job in Frankfurt, so I had spentkindergarten and part of elementary school in Germany. If it were not forthis set of circumstances, I do not know whether I would have ended up at
one of the highly ranked Japanese universities, and I also doubt I would

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Ayako Kano | 255

have landed there with a firm sense that women deserved to be treated as
equals of men.
But despite that belief, and despite the recently passed law, all aroundme were women who assumed the path to a career was narrow and perilous.
Most assumed that they would work in an office of some kind for a few
years, then marry and have children. They might continue working if
circumstances allowed, but they might also quit, and then return to work
later, creating a so-called M-curve of employment. Nearly 70% of womenof my generation quit work by the time their first child was born. Most did
not return to the same kind of full-time position even after the children
were older.2
Nonetheless, it is probably also true that in the mid-1980s, at the
beginning of the EEOL era, female college students like myself wereallowed to dream of having careers in a wider range of fields than everbefore, and that we were not yet jaded from decades of mere lip-service
being paid to the idea of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The
ideas were still a bit new, and the energies of the women’s liberation
movement could still be felt in certain pockets of society. It was also thebeginning of the era of feminist scholarship, and the presence ofcharismatic and articulate women scholars in the classroom and on thepages of an increasing number of books. 3 This surge in feminist
scholarship would eventually face a backlash, as I have described
elsewhere (Kano 2011). But the 1980s and early 1990s was still a headytime for feminist scholarship.
It must also be said that our generation of female college students wasreceiving an ambivalent message about women’s roles in society.
Although we might dream of having careers, the greatest source of awoman’s happiness and social belonging was supposed to be marriage andmotherhood. Combining these with careers was understood to be
extremely difficult. No one knew of a high-profile female politician, or
female business leader, who had managed to combine these roles. There
was Ogata Sadako, who would eventually become the head of the UNHCR,
but at that time she was not yet well-known. In 1980 Takahashi Nobuko
was appointed as the first female ambassador from Japan (to Denmark).
But these were rare exceptions.
On the one hand, my generation was strangely ambitious. And it wasmaterialistic, in direct correlation with the bubbly economic climate. But
on the other hand, it was a generation that had been actively demobilized
from the student movement of the previous years. I can remember fromJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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256 | Japanese Language and Literatureexperience how much the “deprogramming” of students took placethrough the warning of our professors to avoid any political activities thatmight harm our future. And I want to remember that for female students
at the time, this “future” was only recently made to include a potential
future career, under the banner of equal employment. In the 1980s we had
more to lose perhaps, than female students in the 1960s and 1970s who
courageously demonstrated in the streets and barricaded themselves inside
campus buildings. We might have a chance at a career, and we did notwant to jeopardize it through involvement in political activism. That thiswas a generational experience is also something I have been learning
through scholarship of experts of the 1960s and 1970s (Schieder 2021,
Steinhoff 2018).
But instead of activism, and instead of a career in Japan, or marriage
and motherhood in Japan, I launched myself side-ways into an academic
career in the United States. This also was not unique, but a little less usual,and is related to my being an oddball. But here I must acknowledge thatwhat allowed this side-ways launch was precisely the cultural capital(English, German, knowledge of European literature and culture) that was
gained through my lucky “parent gacha” and growing up near the financial
capitals of the world. In other words, without fluency in these languages,
and a deep interest in comparative literature that included German andBritish theater as well as Japanese, I would not have landed in a Ph. D.
program in the United States.
Academic Career and Challenges
Landing at Cornell University was probably the most consequential goodluck of my academic career. I chose it over six other programs for anumber of reasons, but I had never talked to a single person there. It turned
out that Cornell was at the time one of the most interesting places to do
Japan Studies anywhere in the world. And I was lucky to be able to find
three feminist professors (one each in German, English, and Japanese) toserve on my dissertation committee, and several people I would go on toconsider important mentors and internal interlocutors.
When I landed at the University of Pennsylvania in January of 1995,
having defended my dissertation just the previous month, I was naively
fearless. Youth and naive fearlessness are wonderful things—I cannot
imagine anyone now being hired for a tenure-track position who knows aslittle as I knew back then, but I also wonder how much more pressure
someone starting out now must experience.

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Ayako Kano | 257

To cut twenty-six years into a few sentences: I finished my first book(2001) and got tenure (2002). And then I decided I was ready to have ababy (2004). And then another baby decided to join the fun (2006). And
before I knew it, ten years had passed since my first book, and I needed todecide whether or not to climb the mountain of writing a second book,which at my institution is considered essential for being promoted to full
professor.
This is where this story becomes a story connected to leadership. Fora good while, I was not sure whether I wanted to aim for the promotion. It
would come with very few concrete perks, as far as I could see. I would
stay in the same office and do the same amount of teaching and research.
I would probably serve on more and more committees and spend more andmore time on administrative work. I had already been undergraduate chair
for a number of years as an associate professor. As a full professor I could,
and would at some point be expected to, become graduate chair or
department chair, two leadership positions at the departmental leveltraditionally open only to full professors. But who in their right minds
wanted to take on those roles?
In the end, I decided that the consequences of my not being a full
professor were serious enough that I was willing to climb the mountain (ormove the mountain, which is what it felt like at times) to write the second
book and go through the process of applying for promotion. I needed to beable to speak up as a full professor in some situations. And I wanted to put
an end to feeling beneath others in rank. Writing the second book andgoing up for promotion was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It
felt harder in some ways than the first book and going up for tenure,because I had been in my institution for almost twenty years by that point,
and I was no longer young, naive, or fearless.
But I wrote, and I got promoted. I believe I am the first Asian woman
to be promoted to full professor in my department. Meanwhile I was
raising two young boys. Raising them is of course the hardest thing I haveever done, but also the most cheerful chaos possible. I was living the
juggling life that I could only vaguely imagine when I was in college. One
consequence of how hard it has been to get to this stage is that I havelacked the bandwidth to be very active in our local community ofPhiladelphia, in the children’s schools, and so forth. But at the university,
I have sought out friendship beyond my department, and have foundopportunities to create connections in many places.

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One of the larger communities I have taken a lead in sustaining is anannual faculty writing retreat. It takes place during the first week of June,and about 20–30 faculty members from a number of different departments
at Penn gather in one space and write from 9 am to 5 pm. We break forlunch and conversation in the middle of the day. Free coffee, snacks, andsome editorial consultation is provided as well. This program was initiallystarted by two senior faculty members in 2012, and I signed up out of
curiosity. It turned out to be so helpful that I decided to make sure that it
would happen the following year, and the year after, and the year after. At
some point I pulled together a grant proposal and received funding fromseveral different administrative offices on campus. We have continued
now for nine more years, including the last two years in online format
because of the pandemic. Helping colleagues enjoy writing has been forme a deeply meaningful exercise in leadership, because this is part of ourjob that we tend to do alone. Seeing a large group of other faculty members
writing intently hour after hour, day after day, and then sharing struggles
and strategies about writing, building a loose but life-sustaining sense ofconnection year after year—this has changed the way I view my profession
and my university.
Half-Baked Advice
I have been Graduate Chair of my department (East Asian Languages andCivilizations) for the last three years, which came with the promotion to
full professorship. Our graduate program has about a dozen Ph. D.
students and 20–30 M. A. students. It is a complex organism with many
challenges, and I am still trying to figure out how to lead and manage theprogram in the best possible way. Perhaps in another decade I will be able
to reflect and distill the lessons.
But because I have been advising graduate students for many years,
perhaps I can pass on some general advice about leadership from thatperspective. Most graduate students enter academia not because they want
to become leaders, but because they love to read, think and write, andsometimes to teach. Teamwork and leadership are often not the forte ofgraduate students, and because I recognize the lack of training in theseareas in my own career, I would urge students to seek out opportunities
during their early graduate years. At Penn, our department’s graduate
students have organized graduate conferences for the last few years. It
requires a lot of negotiating with each other, with faculty members, andwith university bureaucracy, but I heartily encourage the effort. I would

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Ayako Kano | 259

encourage students everywhere to become involved in these types ofactivities early.
Finding good role models is also crucial. I was lucky in having many
women leaders as role models throughout my academic career. I met
extraordinary female professors at Keio and Cornell and at the Universityof Pennsylvania. As I write this, our university president, Amy Gutman, isclose to the end of her term. Her predecessor, Judith Rodin, was president
when I first started teaching here. Her soon-to-be successor M. Elizabeth
Magill, will assume the presidency on July 1, 2022. There have been
multiple female deans and associate deans throughout the School of Arts
and Sciences. Not many Asian or Japanese women have been in leadershiproles, but I have found it relatively easy to identify with women of otherraces (typically White, but also increasingly Black and Latino women)
who have navigated the various challenges of leadership in academic
environments.
I remember reading a few years ago that women leaders find it easier
to exert their power on behalf of others, than to wield it for themselves(Amanatullah and Moris 2010 cited in Sandberg 2013). I don’t know if
this is always true, but I have found it rings true for myself: I made a
conscious decision to step up, rather than side-step the promotion process,when I felt like I might be able to help other people, specifically juniorfaculty colleagues, by having more power.
So, be open to the idea of helping others through leadership—I think
if I could go back to dispense advice to my younger self, that is what I
would say. Be open, be prepared, and try to keep a sense of humor in thecheerful chaos.

NOTES

1

Doi Takayoshi, interviewed by Inagaki Naoto, “‘Oya gacha denaku, kuni
gacha’: Ronsō no hitsukeyaku ga kataru sedaikan gyappu” (‘It’s not parental
luck but national luck’: The instigator of the debate discusses generational gaps),
Asahi shinbun dejitaru, October 7, 2021, https://www.asahi.com

2

On obstacles facing women’s continued participation in the labor force after
marriage and childbirth, see Nemoto (2016).

3

For my own formation as a scholar, the most inspiring were sociologists Ehara
Yumiko and Ueno Chizuko, as well as philosopher Kanai Yoshiko (Kano 2002).

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REFERENCES

Amanatullah, Emily T. and Michael W. Morris. 2010. Negotiating Gender
Roles: Gender Differences in Assertive Negotiating Are Mediated by
Women’s Fear of Backlash and Attenuated When Negotiating on
Behalf of Others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98(2):256–67.
Kano, Ayako. 2002. Nihon no 1970 nendai–90 nendai feminizumu(Feminism from the 1970s to 1990s in Japan). Feminizumu no meicho
50 (50 masterpieces of feminism), eds. Ehara Yumiko and Kanai
Yoshiko, 501–518. Tokyo: Heibonsha.
Kano, Ayako. 2011. Backlash, Fight Back, and Back-Pedaling: Responses
to State Feminism in Contemporary Japan. International Journal of
Asian Studies 8(1): 41–62.
Nemoto, Kumiko. 2016. Too Few Women at the Top: The Persistence of
Inequality in Japan. Ithaca, N. Y.: ILR Press, imprint of Cornell
University Press.
Sandberg, Sheryl. 2013. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
New York: Knopf.
Schieder, Chelsea Szendi. 2021. Coed Revolution: The Female Student in
the Japanese New Left. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press.
Steinhoff, Patricia G. 2018. The Uneven Path of Social Movements inJapan. Social Movements and Political Activism in Contemporary
Japan: Re-Emerging from Invisibility, eds. David Chiavacci and Julia
Obinger, 27–50. London: Routledge.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.250
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)
The Two Faces of the “Ocean”
Misumi Sadler

Introduction
Growing up in a tiny seaside town in Kōchi, I always had an ambivalentrelationship with the ocean. The sounds and smells of the waves, the rocky
beaches, and the sea breezes could make me feel tranquil or uneasy. Once
I left my hometown, I thought I had lost touch with the sea. Yet as I
contemplate my journey—from my arrival in the United States, throughmy public high school–teaching days, summer teacher-training programs,
and graduate school, and to my current academic life as a professor at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (“Illinois” hereafter)—I
realize that the ocean has always been an important part of my life andshaped me into who I am now. The “ocean” I’m referring to here is rather
metaphorical. It comes and goes with different voices and in different
forms or shapes, just like each type of ocean wave is distinct. Sometimes
it appears as my grad school advisor or a faculty mentor, and sometimes
as a challenge such as the constant struggle of balancing the multiple roles
I play—researcher, teacher, and administrator. This essay describes how
a rather timid and introverted person looked beyond what she thought was
the horizon, and how this metaphorical “ocean” has been instrumental in
my continuing professional journey.
Journey to My Current Position: Leaving My Sanctuary
My acquaintances are often mildly surprised to learn that I am a shy person,
and a homebody. I thrive on routine and prefer to stay in my comfort zone.
During the current pandemic, unlike many of my colleagues and students,
I’ve enjoyed working from home. Nevertheless, my current comfort zone
is quite different from the one I inhabited when I started my job as an
assistant professor at Illinois eighteen years ago, which consisted ofteaching Japanese, coordinating the Japanese language program, andsupervising and training graduate student teachers (GSTs). That was the
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
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262 | Japanese Language and Literatureplace I felt safe and confident; it was where I knew I could make acontribution and could tell what worked and what did not. During my pretenure days, however, this safe space was often threatened by the raging
ocean waves of the pressure to publish and teach courses outside of myexpertise, as well as constant worries that Japanese-language classes
would be cut due to chronic shortages of GSTs and funding. Each angry
wave attacked my self-confidence and tried to pull me down. Yet even in
the midst of such difficult moments, I found I could still hear the calm
voice of a peaceful sea—especially when I listened to the guidance ofothers such as my husband, my research mentor, my department head, andmy friends—which encouraged me and kept me sane and healthy.
It was a great relief when I finally got tenure after six long, agonizing
years; it was one of my happiest moments, and my stress levels decreased
significantly. Once again, I felt quite safe and cozy, and I thought, “Now
I can do the things I always wanted to do!” Then it happened; it was
something I hadn’t expected or prepared for. I lost all my motivation andpassion for teaching, researching, or, really, doing anything. Even thethings I used to do for fun weren’t fun anymore, as waves of mental
exhaustion battered me. It took some time for me to realize that I was
experiencing a classic case of the post-tenure slump. Looking back now, I
understand that I needed a break, which is the point of sabbaticals—
however, for a variety of reasons, a sabbatical was not possible for me atthat time.
During my post-tenure blues, I desperately sought a way to regain myconfidence, energy, and enthusiasm. After some trial and error, I
eventually bestirred myself to make some changes. I, Misumi Sadler, wholoved to be in my regular groove, decided to tackle something new—something I had never done before. I first dove into the unfamiliar territoryof research outside of my field, beginning a study on the interculturalcompetence of first-year Japanese-language students and newly appointed
GSTs of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language programs. My new
research project required me to read different sorts of books and articles,
learn new methodologies, and attend workshops to become certified as atester for intercultural competence.
I also signed up for a project on the professional development of GSTs
aided by the reflective teaching framework of “Exploratory Practice”
developed by Dick Allwright in the early 1990s (2003, 2006). Exploratory
practice has seven main principles:

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1. Put “quality of life” first.
2. Work primarily to understand language classroom life.
3. Involve everybody.
4. Work to bring people together.
5. Work also for mutual development.
6. Integrate the work for understanding into classroom practice.
7. Make the work a continuous enterprise. (Allwright 2003:128–130)

These guiding principles bring attention to “the quality of classroom lifeand mutual understanding between teachers and learners,” and underscore“educational values of inclusivity, collegiality, and sustainability” (Crane,
Sadler, Ha, and Ojiambo 2011:110; my italics). The principles didn’t fully
resonate with me at the time, but as I discuss in the next section, my senseof their relevance and significance has grown during my current leadershiprole, and they have become my core values of life in general.
This project also allowed me to work closely with foreign language
coordinators, supervisors, and GSTs from other departments, which was
rather a drastic change for me because I had always preferred to work
alone, whether doing research or teaching. Not having full control has
always scared me, and I felt easily lost in a group. So I was a little
apprehensive, but it soon became apparent that this was exactly the kindof experience I needed to break free from the “port of safety” I had becometrapped in. I learned the importance of collaboration, and of recognizing
and valuing diverse voices and opinions. In addition, the interaction withother foreign language coordinators and GSTs on campus led me to reflect
on and improve not just my own language program but myself, as alanguage educator and human being.
Around the same time, I was tackling these new projects, other waves
surged in when I took on a new administrative duty as departmental
undergraduate advisor. I was reluctant to take the position, thinking that I
wasn’t qualified or competent enough, but I didn’t know how to say no,
and I unwillingly ended up accepting it. It was a struggle to learn the newjob, from advising students and monitoring their progress toward degreecompletion to understanding the related policies, regulations, graduation
requirements, course articulation system, study-abroad course approvals,
and so on, and it brought an endless sea of paperwork. So many emails
from students, so many meetings with them, and so many days without
time to eat lunch. The first year was quite bumpy, but by the end of theyear, I had started enjoying the work; I particularly relished the timeinteracting with undergraduate majors and minors, listening to their life

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264 | Japanese Language and Literaturestories and dreams, hearing about their study abroad experiences, andsharing my personal experiences of learning English. Over my seven years
as the undergraduate advisor, I learned to listen carefully to each student’s
needs and to become more compassionate and patient.
All these experiences during my post-tenure slump days helped me go
beyond the horizon, pushed me from my cozy safe place, and shaped me
into the person I am now. It was a time for self-rediscovery and selfreflection on my own passions, motivations, strengths, limits, and fears.
Challenges and Triumphs in My Current Position
My role as the Director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies(CEAPS) at Illinois came about rather unexpectedly, though I arrived at it
gradually through what I refer to as a “slide, step, and jump” process. The
first time I was asked if I would be interested in the position, the idea
terrified me due to my self-perceived lack of competence and confidence,and the five-year commitment. I declined, happily choosing to serve
another year as my department’s undergraduate advisor instead. A year
later, I was asked to serve as the acting director of CEAPS for one
academic year while the current director was on leave. “I can do it for just
one year,” I thought, and decided to slide just one toe into this new ocean.
It turned out to be the most mentally and physically exhausting year I had
ever had.
In retrospect, I still can hardly believe that I accepted the position. I
lacked pretty much everything required to be a successful director of anarea-studies center; I didn’t have much institutional knowledge beyond
what I had gained in my capacity as my department’s undergraduate
advisor, and I knew little of fields other than linguistics and pedagogy, orof the people beyond my own department. I felt I had no leadership skills,
no vision, no charisma, and no skill at communication. I suppose I thought
I could get by without any of this as merely the “acting” director, but I waswrong. Whether you’re a substitute or the real thing, people expect you tobe the director, and you have to act accordingly; I had a lot to learn.
Many of the challenges I faced that year were largely because I had
underestimated the scope of my role as the acting director. The number of
emails I received and sent increased dramatically. The number of eventsand meetings was overwhelming; I constantly felt tossed around by thewaves of my public engagements. And as soon as one event was over, we
would start preparing for the next, with no time to feel relieved or reflect
on what had gone well and what had not. I was also running around

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campus, crossing from one meeting at building A, to another—which
would start in five minutes!—at building B, and then back to building A
to teach a class or attend yet another meeting.
The tsunami of emails, events, and meetings crashed over me andnearly pushed me out to sea all semester long, but the biggest and strongest
tsunami was, without a doubt, the process of writing CEAPS’s Title VI
grant proposal. The Title VI International Educational Programs, a key
component of the congressional Higher Education Act, are intended toenhance and promote the instruction of area studies and modern foreign
languages to create and maintain a pool of international and area studies
experts who can fulfill national needs. These eight grant programs arehoused in the U. S. Department of Education. CEAPS, along with otherarea centers, focuses on the National Resource Center and Foreign
Language and Area Studies fellowship grant programs. This once-everyfour-year competition is the primary source of funding for area centers’
research, teaching, programming, and outreach activities. CEAPS and its
consortium partner, the East Asian Studies Center at Indiana University,
had been jointly awarded Title VI funding for the last three cycles (twelve
years). The pressure of expectations created enormous waves that crashedaround me through many sleepless nights. I literally knew nothing about
this type of grant proposal writing and had to learn everything from scratch.
Not knowing what to do terrified me, and I asked myself over and over
why I had taken on this task and how I could possibly do it all alone.
In what was undoubtedly my most challenging year yet, Allwright’s
exploratory practice (EP) suddenly became much more relevant to me.
Although EP was proposed to support ongoing teacher reflection andavoid teacher burnout, I found it incredibly useful in my role as acting
director, particularly as we prepared the grant proposal. In fact, at myworst moment, when I thought I was about to be pushed into unknown
depths by raging waters, reflecting on the EP principles helped meunderstand that my most important job was to develop a community where
each of us—center director, associate director, office manager, andgraduate assistants—could trust and understand each other, work together
to maintain healthy, constructive, and harmonious lives, and become
active participants in our mutual development and success. I learned that I
could listen to, trust, and respect my highly competent co-workers’
decisions and opinions. Realizing that I didn’t have to do it all alone wasa tremendous relief. The energy, tenacity, and resilience of my team were
so contagious that I eventually became eager and enthusiastic myself.

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On a daily basis, we held bootcamp-like sessions to develop our proposal.
We would carefully read the Center’s previous proposal and the reviewers’comments side-by-side to identify its strengths and weaknesses, colorcoding and taking meticulous notes as we went along. We also read otherinstitutes’ successful past proposals to learn about their programming andprojects, as well as the campus-level, regional, national, and international
impacts. We visited our faculty members in their offices to ensure weunderstood their needs. We met with faculty who had requested Title VI
funding to learn about their proposed projects and to discuss ways in which
the Center could help them achieve their goals. We also visited ourconsortium partner at Indiana University for a Title VI session to discusspossible joint activities such as the National Dissertation Workshop andthe Illinois-Indiana Faculty Exchange Talk Series. As the deadline camecloser and closer, our “bootcamp” sessions got longer and longer. We
literally wrote the proposal together word-by-word while discussing things
such as how each initiative requested by a group of faculty members wasaligned with our goals and how effectively our quantitative and qualitative
data supported these goals. We listened to and supported each other as we
exchanged ideas and concerns. We worked hard, but our daily sessions
were also full of laughter and human connection, and occasional personal
stories we all could identify with—about conflicts with friends and coworkers, successful and unsuccessful job interviews, hits and misses in ourforeign language learning experiences, and so on.
In the end, our proposal was successful, and we were awarded four
more years of funding (2018–2022). Despite the frenzy of that year andthe loss of research time, I was truly content, and I appreciated all theexperiences the acting directorship had brought me. I had no hesitation
then to take the next “step,” when I was again asked to take the interim
director position for the academic year of 2019–2020. The following year,
I took the final “jump” when I formally accepted the position of the
Director of CEAPS, and I am now in the second year of my five-year term,
still working closely with the same Center staff as well as new members,
and still working hard for mutual understanding and development. We are
now preparing our Title VI grant proposal for 2022–2026.
Advice to Future Leaders
My advice to future leaders is quite simple. First, don’t be afraid of looking
beyond the horizon. I must admit that new things can still be scary anddaunting for me. As described throughout this essay, sometimes changes
in my life have been my own choice, and at other times I have felt tossed

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Misumi Sadler | 267

around by the waves of the unknown. All things considered, however, I
now always try to think about how a little “slide” will push me to mycurrent limit and perhaps help me depart from my norm, and how that
could lead me to take the next “step,” which might turn into a “jump” down
the road. That first little slide can be something easy, like attending a talkon a subject that is not within your expertise, having a chat with someone
sitting next to you during the talk, or reaching out to a newly hired faculty
member in your department. Second, make time for self-discovery andself-reflection. Most of us are so busy with day-to-day service andteaching that we hardly ever take the time to step back and contemplatewhat’s going on in our lives and our work. A few minutes a day ofreflection can do the trick. Even noting down your thoughts and feelingsat the end of the week can help you evaluate if you are happy with what
happened that week and if you see a need for modifications moving
forward. In my case, such self-reflection during the most demanding yearof my academic life steered me to Allwright’s (2003, 2006) guiding
principles.
As I close this essay, I ask myself: Am I a good leader? I don’t know,
but I can say this: as an active participant in the CEAPS community, I am
proud of my efforts to maintain a healthy, harmonious, and constructive
community, and to continue to involve everyone as we work together
toward mutual goals and development. Although my relationship with the“ocean” has had its ups and downs, these are the experiences that have led
me to who I am now.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Satoko Suzuki and Junko Mori for conceiving of and organizing
this special section. Both editors provided much needed guidance andfeedback on various iterations of this manuscript. Many thanks to myhusband, Randall W. Sadler, for proofreading the initial draft. I cannot
express my gratitude enough to Laurie Durand. Her careful, thoughtful,and meticulous editing and proofreading were an indispensable part of thecompletion of my work.
REFERENCES

Allwright, Dick. 2003. Exploratory Practice: Rethinking Practitioner
Research in Language Teaching. Language Teaching Research 7 (2):
113–141.

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268 | Japanese Language and Literature———. 2006. Six Promising Directions in Applied Linguistics.
Understanding the Language Classroom, eds. Simon Gieve and Inés
K. Miller, 11–17. Basingstoke, U. K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Crane, Cori, Misumi Sadler, Jeeyoung Ahn Ha, and Peter Otiato Ojiambo.
2011. Beyond the Methods Course: Using Exploratory Practice for
Graduate Student Teacher Development. AAUSC Issues in Language
Program Direction 2011: Educating the Future Foreign Language
Professoriate for the 21st Century, eds. Heather Willis Allen and
Hiram H. Maxim, 107–127. Boston, Mass.: Heinle/Cengage Learning.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.251
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)

A Story of an Associate Dean in Higher Education in Uncertain
and Challenging Times
Kimi Kondo-Brown

Journey to the Current Position
I was born and grew up in Tokushima, Japan. When I was a high school
senior, I wanted to get out of my hometown and go to a university in Tokyo
to pursue my dreams. Unfortunately, that year my father passed away
tragically, and it changed everything. I had to put my dreams on hold anddo what I thought I should do: attending a low-cost national university in
my hometown while taking care of my mother, who was a total wreck atthat time. In the years that followed, she hoped that I would never leave
her, but I knew that sooner or later, I had to live my own life and redefine
my personal and professional identities. 1 A decade after my father's
passing, I ended up in Hawaii. As of fall 2021, I have completed thirtythree years of service at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), theflagship campus of the University of Hawai‘i System. UHM has provided
me with great educational and professional opportunities to grow as ateacher, researcher, and administrator.
My career at UHM started in 1988 as a full-time Instructor of Japanesein the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL). My
responsibilities were primarily teaching and service to the department then.
In August 2001, an opportunity to apply for the position of tenure-track
Assistant Professor in Japanese pedagogy in EALL opened up, so I appliedand got the job. After that, I spent approximately half of my time on
research and the other half on teaching and service. I have taught
everything from beginning-level Japanese-language classes to advanced
graduate seminar courses on pedagogy, language education, and researchmethods for M. A. and Ph. D. students in the department while actively
engaging in research endeavors. I also provided service at the institutional,
national, and international levels. In 2006, I was awarded tenure andNew articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

270 | Japanese Language and Literature

promotion to Associate Professor, and in 2011, I was promoted toProfessor.
Between 2008 and 2020, I also served as Associate Dean of theCollege of Languages, Linguistics and Literature (CLLL) that housed six
academic departments and several funded centers or programs such as the
National Foreign Language Resource Center and the Language Flagshipprograms. I started as an “interim” associate dean, and in 2016, I had theopportunity to apply for a “permanent” associate dean position, and so I
applied and got the job. In July 2021, I was appointed as Associate Dean
for Academic Affairs in the College of Arts, Languages and Letters(CALL), following the merger of the College of Arts and Humanities,
CLLL, and the School of Pacific and Asian Studies. With over 300 faculty
members and 2,400 undergraduate and graduate majors in seventeen
academic departments, CALL is one of the largest units at UHM,
encompassing the study of the arts, humanities, languages, and area studies,with an emphasis on Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia. An organizational
merger of this scale in the middle of the pandemic has proven to be achallenge, to say the least. However, we are not alone, of course. For allof us in higher education, the past couple of years have required us toadjust our teaching, assessments/evaluations, and other educational
activities to meet changing COVID conditions (Kondo-Brown 2021).
Challenges and Triumphs in a Leadership Role
Triumphs are rare in administrative work, but there were some incremental
successes that have given me a sense of accomplishment as a leader. In
this section, I will discuss a few such accomplishments.
Initiating a College-Wide Project as a New Administrator

When I was an active and engaged faculty member in the department ofEALL, it never crossed my mind that I would one day become an associatedean. I had not even served as a department chair. So, in 2008, when the
CLLL dean contacted me and asked if I would be interested in serving as
an “interim” associate dean, my initial reaction was NO WAY. However,my colleagues advised me that this would be a rare opportunity to learn
how the university operates and that my Asian and international
backgrounds would add diversity to the UHM administration, which is agood thing.2 Also, there were other colleagues who said that I would besuited for the job and encouraged me to seriously consider the offer.
So, after giving some thought, I responded to the Dean that I would
indeed be interested in the position. Since one of my specializations isJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Kimi Kondo-Brown | 271

assessment/evaluation, I was particularly interested in working withdepartments to build evaluation capacity. In fact, a few years earlier, I led
CLLL’s efforts to assess the Hawaiian/Second language requirements(Kondo-Brown 2004). I told the Dean that if I were to accept the offer, I
would want to initiate a new evaluation project. Specifically, I wanted todevelop exit surveys to systematically get student feedback at the
program-level across CLLL departments. In general, faculty are interested
in student feedback on their programs, but in those days, none of thetwenty-five B. A., M. A., and Ph. D. programs in CLLL had systematic
procedures for getting student feedback at the program-level. Needless tosay, a survey cannot evaluate all aspects of a given program, and the
project I had in mind was not intended to do so.
The Dean agreed to support my interest (among other conditions that
I discussed), so I accepted the offer. Shortly after being appointed as theinterim associate dean, I started a conversation about the exit survey
project with the department chairs. To get their buy-in, I explained to them
how the project would benefit the departments. I also explained thelogistics, i. e., how to gather and analyze evaluation data from theirgraduating majors (e. g., feedback on the program, student
accomplishments, future plans, etc.) without excessively increasing
faculty workloads (for details about this initiative, see Kondo-Brown,
Davis, and Watanabe 2014).
I should note that this project was initiated when the university createda so-called “prioritization committee” to conduct a university-wide audit
to reorganize or possibly terminate programs. Department chairs andprogram directors seemed extremely frustrated by the process, and theirdistrust of the administration seemed to be growing. So, to gain faculty
buy-in for the CLLL evaluation project, we needed to make it clear to
CLLL department leaders that the exit survey project had nothing to dowith the university’s prioritization process and that it was intended tosupport, not penalize programs in our College. Today, the exit survey
system that started in CLLL remains a regular element of the program
evaluation. After the organizational merger, this practice was expanded toother academic programs in the merged College (CALL) for program
improvement and promotion.
Surviving Budget Crisis and Fostering New Developments

During my thirteen years as a key member of the Dean’s leadership andmanagement team, I have worked closely with five different deans inmaking programmatic, budgetary, personnel, and many other decisions forJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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the College. During my time as a college administrator, UHM has
undergone various state budget cuts, and those budgetary restrictions hit
hard in colleges like ours, in which almost all of the budget is dedicated tosalaries for our employees. For example, until the fiscal year 2011, CLLL
had been in the black, but during the subsequent fiscal years, we wereforced to draw down on the reserves to make up for shortfalls in generalfunds. At some point, CLLL had exhausted our carry-forward cash andended up having a substantial negative net balance. Then, at the beginningof the fiscal year 2015, there was a change in the CLLL deanship. The newinterim dean, the fiscal officer, and I had to continue working hard tobalance the budget by taking some painful cost-saving measures.
None of those challenges was easy, but our efforts helped CLLL makesignificant budgetary progress. When the College’s financial situation
improved, we could not only fill some vacant positions but also set asidea modest amount of “Dean’s Special Educational and Professional
Development Funds” to support students and faculty in CLLL departments.
We also created several research awards for faculty and graduate students
to celebrate their research accomplishments and support future researchendeavors. There was other notable progress as well. For example, ourlanguage programs have many faculty employees whose titles are“Instructor (I2)” in the University of Hawai‘i faculty classification. They
typically teach full-time and also provide various services to thedepartment such as advising and curriculum development. However, even
if they had taught full-time for a number of years (some for decades), they
did not have promotion opportunities as “Senior Instructors” that comewith a pay increase. In 2014, after having researched promotional systems
for full-time language teachers at other universities, I discussed a possible
in-rank promotion idea with the CLLL dean, who then reached out to otherrelevant deans as well as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic
Personnel. They were supportive of our idea, which led to a few years ofnegotiations between the university and the faculty union. In 2018, I was
thrilled by the news that the new contract for Instructors at UHM finally
included a 4-step, in-rank promotion system that comes with a salary
increase.
Advice for Future Leaders
Today, higher education faces unprecedented challenges because ofchanging COVID conditions and financial constraints (Finley 2021). So, nomatter which higher education institution one works for, the leaders arefacing daunting challenges. My experience was no exception. In the past

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Kimi Kondo-Brown | 273

two years, we have gone through the aforementioned large-scaleorganizational merger in the middle of the pandemic. The “harmonization”
process of the merged college was made even more difficult by thesubsequent system-wide budget shortfall, a hiring freeze, and curricular
recommendations and suggestions imposed by the UHM’s budget
committee.
Clearly, future challenges will continue, and current and future leaders
will need to continue providing a supportive climate for our students,
faculty, and staff as much as we can in these changing circumstances. To
be an effective leader in an educational institution, especially during these
uncertain and challenging years, we will need to build and maintain mutual
trust and collegiality with our colleagues. Without them, it is impossible
to maintain good working relationships with various stakeholders intackling various academic, personnel, and budgetary issues and difficult
conflict situations. Naturally, being a good team player is another essentialcondition for being an effective leader. I do not know any good leaders
who are not good team players. All leaders are part of a wider leadershipteam that needs to work together to achieve common institutional goals
through responsible practices.
Like many other associate and assistant deans in higher education, myjob as an associate dean has been intense and extensive throughout theyear (see, for example, Stone and Coussons-Read 2011). However, at thesame time, it has been highly rewarding. For example, I have gained
satisfaction from students and colleagues providing positive feedback on
my service. I have also felt great pleasure in promoting and congratulating
their successes. Of course, there are times when critical feedback fromcolleagues may hurt. As leaders, we all want our work to be evaluatedpositively. Nobody likes to be criticized for what they do. (That’s justhuman nature.) However, all leaders, including those perceived as the mostsuccessful leaders, sometimes have to make difficult decisions that do notmake everyone happy. I would be surprised if there were any leaders who
have never received criticism about something they did at some point intheir careers. So, it is essential to learn to take criticism and manage to use
it constructively. Also, it helps to have a support group with whom to shareconcerns and seek support when needed.
I conclude my story by talking about professional identity. Those whotransition from a department faculty position to an administrative positionat the college or university level inevitably need to cope with professional
identity transformation. For example, White, whose study focused onJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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faculty transitioning to associate deans, stated that they “must also deal
with their own professional identity as administrator versus faculty
member” (2014: 3). For many of us who begin with faculty appointments
and later join the administration, being an administrator may not be aprofessional goal, at least initially. After I joined the administration, my
identity as professor in EALL and an academic scholar in the field has
remained important. My administrative position did not stop me frompublishing books and research articles, giving talks at conferences, andproviding other professional services that faculty usually do. I would nothave continued my administrative work this long if I had to stop myacademic career or felt completely alienated from my home department or
scholarly field of expertise.
However, I admit that, like many other associate deans, my researchor scholarly productivity has declined due to demanding administrative
work (see Sayler, Pedersen, Smith, and Cutright 2019). I do not regret mycareer choice, but at the same time, I do know that I could have contributed
more to my field as a teacher and researcher if I did not accept the offer as
an associate dean thirteen years ago. That said, for those who are currently
considering a managerial or executive administrative position beyond yourhome department, it is important to know that it will profoundly affectyour professional life and identity. I recommend that you pursue it only if
you know that it will help achieve your long-term career goals.
NOTES

1

My personal narrative (Kondo-Brown 2007) describes in more detail thetransformation of my personal and professional identities in those days.

2

For example, according to the American Council on Education website, white
people represent the vast majority of all administrative positions in Americancolleges and universities.

REFERENCES

American Council of Education. https://www.equityinhighered.
org/indicators/postsecondary-faculty-and-staff/proportion-of-whitecollege-and-university-administrators/. Accessed November 20, 2021.

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Kimi Kondo-Brown | 275

Finley, Ashley. 2021. Campus Challenges and Strategic Priorities in a
Time of Change: A National Survey of Campus Stakeholder.
AssociationofAmericanColleges
andUniversities.
https://www.aacu.org/research/campus-challenges-and-strategicpriorities-in-a-time-of-change. Accessed November 24, 2021.
Kondo-Brown, Kimi. 2004. Assessing the Language Component of the
Manoa General Education Requirements: Report on the LLL
Assessment Committee’s 2002-2004 Assessment Activities. InternalTechnical
Report.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Tw2ayikLPzFYakjhzOw2EIDfN1
E1Xi1/view. Accessed November 17, 2021.
——. 2007. Ohana: Hawaii de mitsuketa jibun rashii ikikata (Ohana: My
way of life found in Hawaii). Tokyo: San’ichi shobō.
——. 2021. Nihongo gakushūsha no tame no kyōka o kangaeru: Nyūnōmaru ni taiō-suru naka de (Assessment for Japanese language
learners under the new normal). Keynote speech paper presented atthe 27th Princeton Japanese Pedagogy Forum, May 8, Princeton, N. J.
https://pjpf.princeton.edu/27th-princeton-japanese-pedagogy-forum
Accessed November 20, 2021.
Kondo-Brown, Kimi, John McE. Davis, and Yukiko Watanabe. 2015.
Evaluation Capacity Building in College Language Programs:
Developing and Sustaining a Student Exit Survey Project. American
Association of University Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of
Language Programs (AAUSC) 2014 Volume—Issues in Language
Program Direction: Innovation and Accountability in Foreign
Language Program Evaluation, eds. John Norris and Nicole Mills,
15–40. Boston: Cengage Learning. https://scholarspace.manoa.
hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/69732/2014_01.pdf. Accessed November 24, 2021.
Sayler, Micheal F., Jon Pedersen, M. Cecil Smith, and Marc Cutright.
2019. Hidden Leaders: Results of the National Study of Associate
Deans. Studies in Higher Education 44 (7), 1119–1129.
Stone, Tammy, and Mary Coussons-Read. 2011. Leading from theMiddle: A Case-Study Approach to Academic Leadership for
Associate Deans. American Council on Education Series. Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.

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White, Gary W. 2014. First-Year Experiences of Associate Deans: A
Qualitative, Multi-Institutional Study. Research in Higher Education
Journal 22: 1–29. https://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/131695.pdf.
Accessed November 24, 2021.

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Japanese Language and Literature
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese
jll.pitt.edu | Vol. 56 | Number 1 | April 2022 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2022.248
ISSN 1536-7827 (print) 2326-4586 (online)
Beyond Performing Ethnicity
Junko Mori

Who Am I?—Performing or Downplaying Ethnicity“Where are you from?” Asking Asian Americans this question can beconsidered a form of microaggression—an observation that has been so
widely circulated that, unfortunately, it is now almost a cliché. While I am
not an Asian American and not necessarily offended by this question, it
still gives me pause. I was born in Tokyo, but lived in Okayama, Ibaraki,
Kyoto, and back in Tokyo before moving to Wisconsin more than thirty
years ago. Legally, I am a Japanese national and a permanent resident alienof the United States. I have lived longer in Madison than any other city,
and as a taxpayer and homeowner, I consider myself a full-fledged
Madisonian. In the eyes (and ears) of others, however, this may not always
be the case.
A memorable event that served as a reminder of this reality occurred
several years ago when I was interviewed for a student newspaper. In theinterview request, the student writer explained that she was working on afeature about professors of foreign languages. Her email message included
the following sample questions:•••

How do nonnative speakers compare with native speakers in terms ofteaching quality, student preference, and overall performance?
What is it about our university’s language programs that attracts
foreign language teachers like you?
In America, are the foreign teachers blending in? Any challenges?

As I wanted to support this student’s initiative, I agreed to be interviewed.
During the days leading up to our appointment, however, I contemplated
how I could answer these sample questions, and “which me” I should
foreground in the process. As an applied linguist, who has often adopted
membership categorization analysis (Sacks 1992) as a conceptual
framework for research, I could not help but notice a range of
New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
This journal is published by the University Library System, University ofPittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

278 | Japanese Language and Literaturecategorization terms that appeared in the interview request and sample
questions. Among them, those that might be applicable to me included“native speakers,” “foreign language teachers,” and “foreign teachers.”
At the interview, the student’s opening question was: “What brought
you here?” This gave me an opportunity to objectify and historicize myown story, discussing how language education tends to be shaped by thesocial, political, and economic dynamics of a given time and place. I cameto the United States at the peak of the Japanese economic bubble, when
the teaching of Japanese language and culture was being heavily promoted
on both sides of the Pacific. It was the late 1980s, and I had been working
at a private firm in Tokyo but felt discouraged by a workplace climate thatshowed little impact from the Equal Employment Opportunity Law of
1985. So, I was longing for a change when I stumbled across an internshipprogram developed by the State of Wisconsin to promote Japanese
language education, and I joined the first cohort of thirteen Japanesedispatched to public schools throughout the state. The internshipexperience ignited my interest in Japanese language education. To solidify
my qualifications to pursue a career in this area, I decided to embark on
graduate study in Japanese linguistics at the University of WisconsinMadison (UW, hereafter). The student writer, a journalism major
originally from China, appeared to be intrigued by my story.
Her subsequent questions, however, often made me derail, as I felt it
necessary to challenge the assumptions behind her requests to compare
native versus nonnative speakers, or foreign-born versus American
professors. In my lengthy answers, I tried to underscore the diversity
among the people these monolithic binary categories lump together and toencourage appreciation of the different sets of qualifications eachindividual can bring to the profession. I did so with the hope that she would
consider reframing the discussion in her writing.
To my disappointment, however, the resulting article began with aportrayal of me as a “foreign” teacher, and included the following
summation: “Like Mori, many other scholars from foreign countries cometo UW to teach their native languages. These instructors bring anauthenticity to the classroom that students highly value.” In her defense,
the writer attempted to incorporate many of the ideas I had tried to convey.
Nevertheless, what her article foregrounded was the “authenticity”
associated with “foreign teachers,” or their ability to perform ethnicity inthe classroom rather than their achievements as transnational, multilingual

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scholars. This experience reminded me of the following observation
shared by Kramsch and Zhang (2015: 89):
Foreign-born, native speaker (NS) teachers enjoy a great deal of de facto
symbolic capital. They are hired precisely because of their NSship and thecontacts they maintain with the target country. . . . They are not seen as thescholars and professionals that many of them are, but as “mere” native
speakers. . . . The fact that they are multilingual, cosmopolitan individuals,
often with a high level of education, global connections, double vision, andwith a deep understanding and tolerance of paradox, remains to a large
extent unrecognized or undervalued.

When I first landed in the United States, my J-1 (Exchange Visitor)
visa was indeed justified by de facto symbolic capital. As an intern for theJapanese Language and Culture Assistant Program, I visited a number of
elementary and secondary classrooms, often wearing kimono or yukata on
request and demonstrating origami, calligraphy, or proper use ofchopsticks in not so fluent English. Performing ethnicity was precisely myraison d’être in my first year in the U. S.
However, as I have gained more competence and confidence inEnglish, received graduate training and degrees, and eventually earned
tenure, my desire to perform my ethnicity has worn off, for several reasons.
First, for scholars to obtain and maintain a faculty position at an American
institution, and to solidify our footing in academia, it is critical to berecognized by others for our professional identities—achievements gained
through years of painstaking work—first and foremost. Second, when I
began my graduate study in linguistics in the early 1990s, studies incomparative pragmatics that enhanced Nihonjin-ron “theories of Japaneseuniqueness” were prevalent. Terms such as discernment, indirectness,enryo “restraint,” and sasshi “emphatic guesswork,” were (and still are toa degree) frequently used to describe idealized norms. As an individual
who had always valued the ability to articulate one’s viewpoint clearly,
even to the extent of being considered “a nail that stuck out,” I was rather
bewildered by these static, essentialist descriptions of Japanese ways ofcommunication. Third, as will be discussed further in the following section,
as I began to assume leadership roles in which I coordinated andrepresented academic units larger than the Japanese program, I sometimes
felt my Japanese identity—performed, ascribed, or perceived—getting in
the way of developing trust and rapport. Nevertheless, given that myprofessional title—professor of Japanese language and linguistics—

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subsumes a term that coincides with my ethnicity, it has not always been
easy to deemphasize that part of me. Consequently, I have always
wondered what kinds of assumptions others might make of me based on
my title, name, and physical appearance as an Asian woman. The last three
decades thus have been a journey in which I have constantly striven for afine balance between the need to perform ethnicity and the need and desire
to downplay it.
What Can I and Should I Do?—Contributing to a Departmental
Restructuring Process
After holding my first faculty position at the University of Iowa for three
years, I returned to my alma mater in 1999 and obtained tenure there in
2002. Since the late 2000s, I have held several leadership positions on
campus, including chair of the Department of East Asian Languages andLiterature (2008–2011); interim director of the Language Institute, whose
mission is to promote language education and research on campus andbeyond (2011–2013); and director of the Doctoral Program in Second
Language Acquisition (SLA; 2014–2016). Among my various
administrative experiences during this time, one of the most memorable
was the restructuring of the academic units related to Asian studies.
In the late 2000s, campus leaders began to urge faculty to reexamine
how we conducted our research and education in order to meet thedemands of a changing society and the needs of a new generation of
students. The directive to identify ways to increase efficiency andeffectiveness was particularly pertinent to smaller departments, whichwere considered to have experienced disproportionate burdens ofadministration and possible difficulties in faculty governance. Under thesecircumstances, the need for two separate departments concerning Asia, theDepartment of East Asian Languages and Literature and the Departmentof Languages and Cultures of Asia, which covered the rest of Asia, began
to be questioned. In fall 2014, the Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities
formed a committee charged with developing recommendations regarding
the future of Asian studies on campus. Thirteen members from ninedifferent campus units were appointed to the committee, and Dr.
Thongchai Winichakul, a Thai historian who had the experience ofpresiding over the Association of Asian Studies (AAS), served as its chair.
When I received the invitation to join this committee as one of the two
language specialists, I asked myself my usual two questions: “Can I?” and“Should I?” Learning when and how to say no is one of the most important

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lessons for anyone in any profession, but I know that I am a slow learnerin this area. My internal dialogue at the time went like this:“Can I take on this responsibility while I am still directing the SLA
program?—Maybe, but adding one more task means that I’ll need to giveup some family/personal time and/or some aspects of my teaching and/or
research related activities.”“Should I take on this responsibility?—Probably yes, because therecommendations produced by this committee will likely have a major
impact on my own future life on campus.”

To me, the most salient aspect of my identities for this particularcommittee was my disciplinary background rather than my ethnicity or
gender. The significance of participating in the discussion and sharing myvoice on the centrality of language education in area studies seemed tooutweigh the possible burden. I have never regretted the decision. Indeed,
I was pleased to see that the committee’s final report included a section on
the significance of language, which read as follows:
The study of Asian languages is central to and inseparable from thescholarly and educational missions of this department…. As Asia becomesa significant partner and destination for our students in the future, UWAsian studies should facilitate the development of multilingual andtranscultural competence which enables students to operate between
languages and cultures as well as to reflect on their own roots through thelens of another language and culture.

Participating in this committee significantly broadened and deepened
my perspectives on the intricate dynamics among academic disciplines
and among different regions within Asia and beyond. It was also a
refreshing experience to be part of a committee led by Dr. Winichakul,
who skillfully balanced asserting his own vision and valuing others’
viewpoints. Subsequently, a new committee was formed and charged with
developing a restructuring proposal based on the 2014 committee’s
recommendations, and I was appointed its chair. While I knew it would bea challenging project, I did not hesitate to accept the assignment because I
wanted to make sure that the language programs would come out well inthe end. I also wanted to continue to prove that I am not a “mere” native
speaker.

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282 | Japanese Language and LiteratureWith the blueprint developed by the 2014 committee in hand, I led the
new committee, which consisted of the chairs of the two academic
departments concerned and the directors and associate directors of thethree area studies centers responsible for East Asia, Southeast Asia, andSouth Asia. While the 2014 committee’s task had been to explore
conceptual frameworks and ideal (within reason) scenarios, the 2015
committee had to articulate the exact structure of the newly proposed
department, including a detailed outline of the governance structure andprecise lists of the required personnel, physical facilities, and financial
resources.
As the idiom says, “The devil is in the details.” One of the mostchallenging deliberations in the process, for instance, was to determine
where to draw the boundaries of Asia and which languages should behoused in the new department. Previously, when I had become the chairof the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature, I had had toalter my frame of mind from focusing on the well-being of the Japanese
program to appreciating the intricate dynamics of the three East Asian
language programs. In hindsight, however, managing that transition was
relatively straightforward because of the similarities among Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean, which are the three most frequently taught Asian
languages and are spoken in relatively affluent nations. Despite the recent
push to recognize the multilingual and multicultural reality of every nation,
for better or worse, the ideology of “one language, one nation, and one
people” developed during the last century is still prevalent in Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean societies. In contrast, languages spoken in otherparts of Asia present much more complex conditions—both in reality andin ideology, these languages and their speakers are not neatly confinedwithin national or regional boundaries. Where does Asia end and the
Middle East or Eastern Europe begin? Indeed, this was one of thequestions in which the new department envisioned engaging as we began
to undertake transdisciplinary inquiries into the regions’ past and present
in our research and teaching. However, quite ironically, creating adepartmental unit meant that we had to draw an arbitrary line for the sakeof administrative efficiency. The final version of the proposal stated thatthe new department would house nine less commonly taught languages in
addition to the three East Asian languages: Filipino, Indonesian, Hmong,
Vietnamese, Thai, Tibetan, Hindi, Urdu, and Persian. Turkish, on the other
hand, would move to a different department that included German, Nordic,
and Slavic languages and beyond. This decision was supported by theJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Junko Mori | 283

majority, but not by all the voting members, some of whom filed a
dissenting opinion. Being a leader sometimes involves navigating a toughdecision-making process and being the deliverer of bad news.
In addition to this decision concerning the languages, many otherdetails had to be worked out with stakeholders who had many different
interests and perspectives. UW underscores the notion of “shared
governance,” which “gives representation to academic staff, university
staff, faculty and students, who all take part in making significant
decisionsconcerningtheoperationoftheuniversity”(https://www.wisc.edu/governance/). This means that the restructuring
proposal needed to be communicated to all who might be affected by thechange to secure their support. We held a number of listening sessions toanswer any questions they might have on the core ideas of the proposal.
Any major change can induce fear. In the listening sessions, we had toconvince many skeptics, who strongly associated restructuring withbudget reduction and/or loss of personnel. It was essential that we holdsuch sessions, make necessary modifications to the proposal, and gain themembers’ buy-in, but we also were constrained by the timeline proposedby the deans. The approval of the proposal by a series of decision-making
bodies had to be secured in a timely manner so that the launch of the new
department would align with the beginning of the new academic year. To
ensure timely progress, I thought it was important to present a clear visionand concrete ideas to which stakeholders could respond, and then to listen
to their viewpoints with care and empathy. We eventually succeeded ingaining more than a three-fourths majority vote in support of therestructuring proposal.
This proposal development process sometimes made me selfconscious about others’ perceptions of me. Would they view me as aJapanese trying to take over Asia—like a repeat of colonial history?! The
fact that the Japanese program had the largest number of tenured facultyat the time contributed to this apprehension. No one explicitly made sucha comment, but I consciously downplayed my ethnicity and the stabilityof the Japanese program.
Shortly after the submission of the proposal, I ran into a member ofthe 2015 committee at a social event. When he was introducing me to his
spouse, I heard him saying to her, “She’s the benevolent dictator!” He said
it in a joking fashion, and later apologized to me for using the epithet. I
smiled back at him, as I liked this description of how I conducted myself
in the project. It encapsulated my strengths and weaknesses as a leader andJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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284 | Japanese Language and Literature

recognized my achievements rather than my “authenticity” as a nativespeaking Japanese instructor.
The new department is now in its sixth year, and in my view, it has
grown stronger each year by adding new faculty, working out further
details, and developing a new collective identity among its members. I cansay with full conviction that the versatility established by the current
departmental structure has enabled us to survive and thrive during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Witnessing how the seeds planted by the twocommittees on which I served have taken root and flourished gives me astrong sense of accomplishment.
Who Are You? What Can You and Should You Do?—Advice toFuture Leaders
After more than thirty years in the United States, I continue to ask myself,“Who am I?” and “What can I and should I do?” If you ask my husband,
he might reveal that I often say negative things about myself. Reflecting
back on what I did or didn’t do, or what I said or didn’t say, on a given
day, I always find something that I wish I had done differently. But after
talking things over with my husband and taking our dogs for a walk, I
regain the courage to move on. Writing this article and thinking about what
I could share with future leaders reminded me of some fundamentals of
life.
First, engage in thorough self-reflection whenever an opportunity tolead (or even just participate in) a project presents itself. Before saying“yes” or “no” to the invitation, ask yourself the following questions: What
are your strengths and weaknesses relevant to the particular project? How
might you position yourself (or be positioned by others) in the project
team? And what are possible burdens and rewards associated with the
project? Asking yourself these questions and owning whatever decision
you have made, I think, are essential.
Second, become observant of others’ strengths and weaknesses, andtheir potential. This also helps you to determine which projects or tasks
you are uniquely qualified for, and which projects or tasks you should passup or delegate to others. In retrospect, I probably should have delegatedmore responsibilities to others when I was working on the restructuring
project. For fear of missing the deadline, I kept things on a rather tightleash and this might have given the people around me the impression I wasa bit of a “dictator,” albeit a “benevolent” one.
Third, from time to time, remind yourself and your colleagues to stepback and examine broader contexts, including the institutional context, theJapanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu
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Junko Mori | 285

fields of study, and the society in general, to evaluate whatever you aredoing at the moment. Where are we heading? What will our world be likein five years, or ten years? Unexpected major events, such as the COVID19 pandemic, may throw us off track, but it is important to keep the big
picture in mind, as the saying 木を見て森を見ず “You cannot see thewoods for the trees” warns.
Last, but not least, establish support mechanisms and take care ofyourself. To me, participating in multiple communities/affinity groups
within my profession (e. g., the networks of UW alumni, the American
Association of Teachers of Japanese, and the American Association ofApplied Linguistics) as well as outside of the profession (e. g., a local dog
agility group) helped me develop different perspectives and reevaluate mypriorities in life. Further, as touched upon earlier, I must acknowledge thatwithout the support of my understanding husband and my sweet dogs, I
could not have made it this far. How one establishes support mechanisms
will vary from one individual to another, but surely everyone needs
professional and emotional support to lead one’s life and to become aleader.

REFERENCES

Kramsch, Claire, and Lihua Zhang. 2015. The Legitimacy Gap:
Multilingual Language Teachers in an Era of Globalization. The
Multilingual Challenge, ed. Ulrike Jessner-Schmid and Claire J.
Kramsch, 87–114. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, volumes I & II. Malden,
Mass.: Blackwell.

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CONTRIBUTORS
Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase (hidollase@vassar.edu) is Associate Professor of Japanese language and literature at
Vassar College. Her areas of research include Japanese women’s literature, girls’ magazine culture, and shōjomanga. Her current research project focuses on Japanese women’s culture and history as filtered throughmanga. She is the author of Age of Shōjo: Emergence, Evolution and Power of Girls’ Magazine Fiction in Japan(SUNY Press, 2019). She has co-edited Shōjo Manga Wandārando (Meiji shoin, 2012) and Manga!: Visual
Pop-Culture in ARTS Education (InSEA, 2020).
Natsuki Fukunaga (andersonn@marshall.edu) is Associate Professor of Japanese and chair of the
Department of Modern Languages at Marshall University. Her research interests are language learning andteaching in educational psychology, anthropology, and socio-linguistics. “‘Those anime students’: Foreign
language literacy development through Japanese popular culture” (2006) in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy discusses ways to expand students’ learning by examining the impact of popular culture on identity
development.
Ayako Kano (kanoayako@gmail.com) is Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages andCivilizations, University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Acting Like a Woman in Modern Japan: Theater,
Gender, and Nationalism (Palgrave, 2001), and Japanese Feminist Debates: A Century of Contention on Sex,
Love, and Labor (Hawai‘i, 2016). She is also co-editor of Rethinking Japanese Feminisms (Hawai‘i, 2018) with
Julia Bullock and James Welker.
Kimi Kondo-Brown (kondo@hawaii.edu) is Professor of Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages
and Literatures at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, the flagship campus of the University of Hawai‘i
system. She is also Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the College of Arts, Languages and Letters. She has
published widely in the fields of language education and assessment and also delivered numerous
presentations and talks at conferences.
Kiri Lee (kjl2@Lehigh.edu) is Professor of Japanese in the Department of Modern Languages and Literaturesat Lehigh University. Her research areas are Japanese pragmatics and heritage language education. She
collaborates with Korean linguists on comparative analyses of Japanese and Korean pragmatics. In the field of
heritage language education, she is the co-author of Constructing the Heritage Language Learner:
Knowledge, Power, and New Subjectivities (De Gruyter, 2013).
Junko Mori (jmori@wisc.edu) is Professor of Japanese language and linguistics at the University of WisconsinMadison. Through the microanalysis of social interactions, she has investigated linguistic structures in use,classroom discourse, and intercultural communication. She has also examined issues concerning diversity,
equity and inclusion manifested in various professional communities and workplaces. Her recent work has
appeared in Applied Linguistics, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language Teaching, and Multilingua, among
others.
Misumi Sadler (sadlerm@illinois.edu) is Associate Professor of Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy, director of
the Japanese Language Program, and director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include grammar-pragmatics interface,language change, discourse analysis in social media, and pre-service teacher training. She received her
doctorate from University of Arizona in 2002.
Satoko Suzuki (suzuki@macalester.edu), DeWitt Wallace Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures, teaches
Japanese language and linguistics courses at Macalester College. Her research interests include
sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and pragmatics. Her current scholarly work focuses on language andidentity studies and language ideologies. Her recent work has appeared in Gender and Language, East Asian
Pragmatics, Japanese Studies, and Pragmatics.