The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 14 (2003)

Editor’s Introduction

What does “America” stand for? What is “America” and how should
the rest of the world relate with this superpower? As the repercussionsof the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. on September
11, 2001 came to sink in, those questions came to occupy the minds ofan increasing number of people in the world. After the retaliatory attacks
against Afghanistan, the United States quickly set its next target on Iraq,
called the Iraqi dictator the primary threat to world peace, and expressed
its willingness to resort to force if the Iraqi leader did not abrogate hispower of his own accord. As we ﬁnish editing this issue, we are witnessing the failure of the United Nations to solve the Iraqi problem peacefully. Standing on the eve of the American attack on Iraq, the world looks
nervously into an uncertain future, in which the United States will continue to boast its military strength, unmatched by any other nation or any
other nations combined.
One of the striking developments surrounding the United States after
the 9.11 attacks has been how the heart-felt sympathies towards the victims and the feeling of horror shared world-wide quickly gave way to a
deep-seated anti-Americanism. As the United States launched its war onterrorism, criticism against the United States’ unilateral actions mounted even among some of its closest allies. As the question “why do theyhate us?”—painfully raised in the United States after 9.11—quickly
came to be subsumed under the interrogating words “you are either withus or with the terrorists,” those who grieved with the United States increasingly started to question the course of American foreign policy. Thegulf dividing the United States and its sympathetic opponents, as well as
the gulf dividing the United States and its long-term antagonists, seems
to have become deeper than ever.
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NISHIZAKI“Images of ‘America’ in Conﬂict,” the main theme of the current issue,
seeks to address the question of why America, regarded as the bastionof hope for the oppressed, has been under such a serious challenge not
only at present but also in the past. For scholars who have chosen
American Studies as a ﬁeld this is not an easy topic to delve into. Yet
exactly because it is difﬁcult, it is our responsibility to tackle the problem at this critical point in history and share our thoughts with our colleagues all around the world.
The ﬁrst and second articles in this issue are written by the presidentsof the American Studies Association (USA) and the Japanese Association for American Studies, respectively. In a paper entitled “Race andImmigration in Changing Communities of the United States,” George J.
Sanchez describes the recent developments in the various ethnic neighborhoods in California, and analyzes the characteristics of communities
in which, due to the increase in the number of the Latino and AsianAmerican populations, there are no longer a single “majority” group. He
concludes that contrary to the common understanding that urban neighborhoods in America have been racially exclusive, as exempliﬁed byghettoes or barrios, more historians are ﬁnding out that those neighborhoods have always been racially mixed and that there have been various
inter-racial and inter-ethnic interactions working out to build a better civil society. In “A New Social Frame of Reference for American Studies,”
Kensaburo Shinkawa makes some propositions for understanding theUnited States as it stands at the opening of the third millennium, by referring back to the 1960s, which, he argues, was another critical decade inAmerican history. Indicating that in the 1960s, the New Left oriented
critique of power structures, the civil rights movement, and the selfcriticism of American interventionist foreign policy were the three conspicuous factors that led the many social movements of the 1960s towardreforming and democratizing the United States, he concludes that thestrength of American democracy, as exempliﬁed by the system of checks
and balances and the civilian control of the military, should be resuscitated while new experiments, such as the exportation of “multiculturalism” in the ﬁeld of international relations should be pursued more vigorously. Shinkawa’s paper, like Sanchez’s, was presented at the annual
conference of the Japanese Association for American Studies held at
Meiji University in June 2002.
The next three papers are devoted to this issue’s main theme, “Imagesof ‘America’ in Conﬂict.” In an article entitled “America—Homoglossic

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

3or Heteroglossic?” Konomi Ara delves into the question of “whatAmerica is and what it should stand for.” Analyzing the genealogy ofkey concepts in American history such as Christianity, “e pluribusunum,” and “Universal Republic,” she concludes that the 9.11 may havebeen both a disaster and a blessing, in that America may have been givena chance to become a truly global society, “a neutral territory” as envisioned by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which mutual development, betterment and happiness for all peoples on earth could be guaranteed. The
second paper, Katsuaki Watanabe’s “Welcome to the Imploded Future:
Don DeLillo’s Mao II Reconsidered in the Light of September 11,” seeks
to reconsider the meaning of 9.11 from a literary perspective. Juxtaposing Mao II, written in 1991, with the intentions of the terrorists to nullify all forms of speech in the world, the author emphasizes the significance of the novel, which, in his analysis, rejuvenates itself as ametaﬁctional counter-narrative that exempliﬁes the awkward yet surmountable predicament for living language after 9.11. In “A Global
Superpower or a Model of Democracy?: Images of America in Post-ColdWar Japan,” Fumiko Nishizaki delineates the conﬂicting images ofAmerica in Japan in the past decade and a half, focusing on the debatesover the issues of war, peace, and historical memories. She argues thatas the U.S.-Japanese military alliance came to be accepted widely inJapan and as the identity of Japan as a country with paciﬁst constitution
weakened after the end of the Cold War, the image of America as “theRepublic of Ideas” also dissipated. In other words, there are now fewer
people in Japan who regard the United States as a “special country.”
The next three papers deal with a variety of topics in AmericanStudies. In “Searching for Federal Aid: The Petitioning Activities of theChesapeake and Delaware Canal Company,” Hisayo Kushida explores
the Chesapeake and Delaware Company’s search for federal aid in theearly 19th century. She examines how the company tried to overcome
the apparent limitations posed by the United States Constitution, andhow its petitions contributed to the production of Gallatin’s Report on
Public Roads and Canals in 1808, which is considered the ﬁrst national
planning initiative for roads and canals, aiming to develop communications, economic markets, and national unity. In “A Strong Man to Run
a Race: W.E.B. DuBois and the Politics of Black Masculinity at the Turnof the Century,” Ayumu Kaneko explores the racial discourse employedby the African-American activist and suggests that his strategy depended
heavily on the language of masculinity and respectability describing

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African-American middle-class men. Nonetheless, he argues, DuBois
succeeded in representing himself as a “race man” because he articulated his classed and gendered position by employing the discourse of racial
identiﬁcation. “The Atlantic Charter of 1941: A Political Tool of Nonbelligerent America,” by Yui Hatcho, discusses the political backgrounds involved in the making of the Atlantic Charter of 1941. She
traces the Roosevelt administration’s intention to stand behind theBritish while remaining ofﬁcially neutral in the war, and concludes that
the Atlantic Conference, in which the United States insisted on making
a speciﬁc framework while leaving the detailed negotiations for thefuture represented what was to become the characteristic style ofAmerican diplomacy.
This journal is conceived as an important medium for American
Studies across both disciplinary and national boundaries. We welcome
active responses from our readers and hope they will consider submitting their work to future issues.

FUMIKO NISHIZAKI
EditorMarch 19, 2003

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

For those who wish to submit a manuscript to the Japanese
Journal of American Studies:
1. Contributors must be dues-paying members of the JAAS.
2. Contributors are expected to observe our time schedule. Theymust ﬁrst submit the title and abstract (about 300 words) bymid-January. We are unable to accept the manuscript without this procedure.
3. The ﬁnal manuscript (maximum 7000 words includingnotes) is due early May. The editorial committee will inform
each contributor of the result of the selection process by theend of June. If accepted, the paper will be published in Junethe following year.
4. The fall issue of the JAAS Newsletter will carry “call forpapers” announcement with exact deadlines and special
theme for the forthcoming issue.
5. The JAAS will accept inquiries through email:jaas@cd.inbox.ne.jp5