The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 33 (2022)

English-Language Works by JAAS Members
2020
The following citations and abstracts introduce recent publications written in
English by members of the Japanese Association for American Studies on topics
related to American Studies.

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS
Arnold, Wayne E. “Harold Persico Paris, Henry Miller and the Difficulties ofCreating Historical Connection.” Faculty of Foreign Studies Bulletin (University ofKitakyushu) 150 (2020): 1–31.
The author explores a potential connection between the Northern Californian art scene
in Berkeley and the Southern Californian art scene in Los Angeles by trying to uncoveran association between two speciﬁc artists: Harold Persico Paris and Henry Miller.
Paris and Miller did not know each other, but an interesting piece of fan mail sent toMiller opens the possibility of an interartist connection.

Arnold, Wayne E. “An Interview with Honda Yasunori, Professor Emeritus.”
NEXUS: International Henry Miller Journal 13 (2020): 68–79.
Honda Yasunori has been at the forefront of Henry Miller studies in Japan for over ﬁve
decades. In this interview, Honda explains his initial foray into Miller’s literature andlife. Arnold and Honda discuss Honda’s interest in Miller’s religious elements, as wellas the signiﬁcant achievements in Honda’s research.

Chan, Edward K. “Race in the Blade Runner Cycle and Demographic Dystopia.”
Science Fiction Film and Television 13, no. 1 (2020): 59–76.
In this article Edward Chan surveys the existing scholarship that treats racial

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representation in the original Blade Runner (1982) in order to trace its continuation
into Blade Runner 2049 (2017) as well as the three short ﬁlm intertexts. The authorargues that the overriding racial sentiment of the series thus far is the imagination of“demographic dystopia,” a core logic of white supremacy.

Inoue, Hiroyuki. “The World Turned Strange: Rereading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s‘Wakefield’ in Self-Isolation.” Literary Geographies 6, no. 2 (2020): 219–22.
This article is about the author’s experience of rereading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s“Wakeﬁeld,” a short story that resonates with the current pandemic circumstances.
Employing the concept of the uncanny, a mixture of the familiar and the strange thatlies at the bottom of Hawthorne’s poetics, the author discusses how alienation andestrangement function at multiple levels in this story.

Izumi, Masumi, and Joy Kogawa. “The Citizenship Question: A Conversation.”
Georgia Review (University of Georgia) (Spring 2020): 174–82.
This is an interview of Masumi Izumi by Joy Kogawa on the publication of Izumi’s
2019 book, The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law (Temple UP).
Izumi explains the diﬀerences between Japanese American and Japanese Canadianwartime incarceration, while Kogawa reﬂects on her activism regarding racial andenvironmental justice in Canada.

Kubo, Fumiaki. “Japan–US Relations in a Post-COVID-19 World.” EastAsia Forum, June 6, 2020, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/06/06/japan-usrelations-in-a-post-covid-19-world/.
Many are insisting that we are seeing a new world order emerge in the current
COVID-19 pandemic. But in East Asia there are a number of reminders that we still
live, at least partly, in the same world of geopolitics as before with a high level oftension between Japan and China centering around the Senkaku Islands.

Kubo, Fumiaki. “US–Japan Relations from Heisei to Reiwa: Huge Progress Made,
but Challenges Remain.” AJISS-Commentary (Japan Institute of InternationalAffairs), March 30, 2020, https://www.jiia.or.jp/en/ajiss_commentary/us-japanrelations-from-heisei-to-reiwahuge-progress-made-but-challenges-remain.html.
While there has been enormous progress in defense cooperation between Japan and theUS, the rise of China’s military might and its behavior and intention are destabilizing
and threatening progress in defense capabilities of Japan and the US and the deepening
cooperation between the two countries.

Namiki, Yuki. “It’s a Wise Child Who Knows His Own Father: The Figure of theAmerican Family in The Last Samurai and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”
Textual Practice (Taylor and Francis) 34, no. 12 (2020): 2131–43.

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In this article the author examines two twenty-ﬁrst-century American bildungsroman,both featuring prepubescent boys rediscovering their families, and their mothers
in particular. Each story features a bright child who is innocent and mature at thesame time and is in search of a nonexistent father. Examining their similarities anddiﬀerences serves as an important starting point in discussing family ﬁgures incontemporary culture.

Park, Soonyoung. “Frederick Douglass in Japan: Reception and Research from the1930s to the Present.” New North Star (Frederick Douglass Papers, Institute for
American Thought, Indiana University/Purdue University) vol. 2 (2020): 20–32.
Frederick Douglass studies in Japan have existed for more than a half-century, and anumber of articles and translations have been published in both Japanese and English.
This article takes as its context Black Studies in Japan and reviews the reception andresearch on Frederick Douglass, focusing on the period from the 1930s to the present.

Sato, Chitose. “Gendering ‘Hunger in the Midst of Commodity Surplus’: The Food
Stamp Plan and American Women in the Great Depression.” Women’s History
Review (Taylor and Francis) 30, no. 2 (2020): 287–301.
By examining the role of female participants in the food stamp plan that wasadministered by the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation in the late 1930 s, theauthor demonstrates that despite the newly created image of low-income women as“consumers,” their access to the plan remained limited and had no signiﬁcant impact on
their dietary conditions.

Suzuki, Nanami. “Weaving Flexible Aging-Friendly Communities acrossGenerations while Living with COVID-19.” Anthropology and Aging (Journal ofthe Association for Anthropology and Aging) 41, no. 2 (2020): 155–66.
The author presents the possibility of developing ﬂexible aging (age)-friendly
communities in Japan, allowing people to reorganize lifestyles under changing
circumstances, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The author speciﬁcallyexamines the various ways that people have developed to be connected and to work
together despite restricted face-to-face interaction.

Takeda, Okiyoshi. “NHK and ‘Black Lives Matter’: Structural Racism in Japan.”
Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 18 (18), no. 16, https://apjjf.org/2020/18/Takeda.
html.
In June 2020, NHK aired a TV program on the killing of George Floyd. A computer
graphic posted on NHK’s oﬃcial Twitter account drew widespread criticism for
distorting the image of black people. In this article the author explains the problems
with the program and considers why NHK aired it, while looking at the wider issue ofstructural racism in Japanese society.

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Takeda, Okiyoshi. “When Sister City Relationship between Allied Countries IsEnded: The Case of Osaka and San Francisco.” Aoyama Journal of International
Politics, Economics and Communication no. 105 (November 2000): 157–69.
The author argues that the dissolution of the sister city relationship between thetwo cities occurred because the mayor of Osaka did not see the whole picture of the“comfort women” statue. The statue not only rebukes the Japanese Imperial Army but
also speaks for stopping current human traﬃcking of girls, becoming a sacred place for
future reﬂection.

Takezawa, Yasuko. “Encounters with Transmigrants and a Navaho Chef: Yoko
Inoue. Special issue Trans-Pacific Japanese Diaspora Art: Encounters andEnvisions of Minor-Transnationalism.” Amerasia Journal (University of California,Los Angeles) 45, no. 3 (2020): 391–95.
The author discusses works by the New York–based multimedia artist Yoko Inoue:
Tea Taste Democracy and Upside-Down Objects. She explains how these works
were created in the context of post-9/11 New York, using the concept of minortransnationalism.

Takezawa, Yasuko. “Racialization and Discourses of “Privileges” in the Middle
Ages: Jews, “Gypsies,” and Kawaramono.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 43 (2020):193–210.
The author examines the social conditions experienced by Jews in Spain, “Gypsies”
in Romania, and the Kawaramono in Japan in the Middle Ages and claims thatracialization had already begun in Japan before European colonization. She points out avariety of parallel patterns of marginalization and racialization. This article contributes
to understanding global trends of backlash against minoritized groups.

Takezawa, Yasuko and Laura Kina. “Forum: Trans-Pacific Japanese Diaspora
Art: Encounters and Envisions of Minor-Transnationalism.” Amerasia Journal(University of California, Los Angeles) 45, no. 3 (2020): 373–76.
This short article introduces an Amerasia Journal forum by presenting reﬂective essays
by six participants from the December 8, 2018, international symposium “Trans-PaciﬁcJapanese Diaspora Art: Encounters and Envisions of Minor-Transnationalism,” which
was held in Tokyo and sponsored by Kyoto University Zinbunken Academy.

Tatsumi, Takayuki. “The Advent of Asian Speculative Fiction: In Response toWai Chee Dimock’s Reading of The Three-Body Problem.” AALA Journal (AsianAmerican Literature Association) 25 (2020): 16–26.
The rise of Chinese science ﬁction in the past two decades disturbed the status ofAmerican literature and science ﬁction. Emphasizing the signiﬁcance of Cixin Liu’s

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The Three-Body Problem and the achievements of Ken Liu’s beautiful translation, theauthor contextualizes the intersection between Asian American literature and Asian
science ﬁction.

Tatsumi, Takayuki. “Transnational American Studies: or, Trans-Atlantic, TransPacific, Trans-Chronological.” Journal of Keio American Studies (Keio
University’s American Studies Association) inaugural issue 0 (2020): 7–16.
The twenty-ﬁrst century witnessed neither the rebirth of cosmopolitanism nor theremaking of internationalism but, rather, the rise of transnationalism in the wake of the9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Keenly aware of the paradigm shift, the author creates amanifesto for establishing Keio University’s American Studies Association.

ARTICLES IN BOOKS
Iino, Masako. “Two Sisters, Two Stories: Transnational Lives of Ume Tsuda andYona Abiko.” In Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian Americans and Pacific Islander
Women, edited by Shirley Hune and Gail Nomura (New York: New York UniversityPress, 2020): 53–68.
The author examines why and how Ume Tsuda founded a school for women’s higher
education in 1900 and how Yona Abiko, Ume’s younger sister, who immigrated tothe United States and married Kyutaro Abiko, an immigrant leader in the JapaneseAmerican community in San Francisco, supported Ume in her endeavor. She also
discusses Yona’s work to improve race relations in the United States and to improve
US–Japan relations through building a network of supportive, inﬂuential American
women.

Izumi, Masumi. “The Vancouver Asahi Connection: (Re-)engagement of theFamilies of Returnees/Deportees in Japanese Canadian History.” In The Subject(s)of Human Rights: Crises, Violations, and Asian/American Critique, edited by Cathy
J. Schlund-Vials, Guy Beauregard, and Hsiu-chuan Lee (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2020): 56–73.
In this chapter the author recounts the history of a Japanese Canadian baseball teamin prewar Vancouver. Izumi also describes how the increased interest in this team’s
history in Japan helped scholars of Japanese Canadian history to ﬁnd the descendants
of former emigrants who returned or were deported to Japan before or right after WorldWar II.

Kubo, Fumiaki. “Addendum to the English Edition.” In The Japan–US Alliance ofHope: Asia-Pacific Maritime Security, edited by Nakasone Peace Institute (Tokyo:Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2020): 257–72.

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The author traces developments from 2016, when the original Japanese edition of thebook was published, to 2019, when manuscripts for this English edition were beingwritten, which are of importance to maritime security in the Asia-Paciﬁc region and theJapan–US alliance.

Kubo, Fumiaki. “Asymmetry in the Rights and Obligations under the Japan–USSecurity Treaty.” In The Japan–US Alliance of Hope: Asia-Pacific Maritime
Security, edited by Nakasone Peace Institute (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry
Foundation for Culture, 2020): 27–34.
One of the most important features of the US–Japan alliance is asymmetry of rights andobligations, in which the US must defend Japan while Japan is obliged to let the US
use military bases in Japan, in order to maintain peace and stability in the Far East.

Tatsumi, Takayuki. “Editing and Anthologizing Poe in Japan.” In Anthologizing
Poe: Editions, Translations, and (Trans)national Canons, edited by Emron Esplinand Margarida Vale de Gato (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2020):
351–67.
The author surveys the history of Poe anthologies in Japan, with special emphasis on
the act of retelling as a literary genre, the popularity of Poe in the wake of the Meiji
Restoration, and the boom in collected works of world literature in postwar years.

BOOKS
Goldstein, David S., and Shawnrece D. Campbell. Toni Morrison’s Secret
Drive: A Reader-Response Study of the Fiction and Its Rhetoric (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2020).
The late Toni Morrison was the ﬁrst African American to win the Nobel Prize forLiterature. She wove stories depicting the African American experience and exploring
the intersection of gender and race. Synthesizing some 250 scholarly works, Goldsteinand Campbell examine eight novels and a short story, analyzing the author’s techniques
for guiding readers’ responses.

Nakasone Peace Institute, The Japan–US Alliance of Hope: Asia-Pacific Maritime
Security. Edited by Fumiaki Kubo and Shinichi Kitaoka (supervisors). Translated
by Charles Stewart and Ikuo Anai (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation
for Culture, 2020).
The author-editors analyze the state of the alliance between Japan and the United Statesand discuss its future direction with respect to maintaining maritime security in theAsia-Paciﬁc region, having in mind the growing importance of the alliance.

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Takezawa, Yasuko, and Gary Y. Okihiro, eds., Transpacific Japanese American
Studies: Conversations on Racializations, paperback ed. (Honolulu: University ofHawai’i Press, 2020).
Trans-Paciﬁc Japanese American Studies is a collection of essays derived from a seriesof dialogues held in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Los Angeles on the issues of racialization,
gender, communities, and the positionalities of scholars involved in Japanese American
studies. The book brings together works by ten Japan-based and nine North America–
based scholars.

Takezawa, Yasuko, and Laura Kina, eds., “Trans-Pacific Japanese Diaspora Art:
Encountering and Envisioning Minor-Transnationalism.” Special issue, Asian
Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 6, nos. 1–2 (2020): 1–212.
This special issue of ADVA Journal sheds light on new dimensions of Japanesediasporic art, reﬂecting on the encounters of Japanese diaspora artists with othertransmigrants and/or minoritized and marginalized peoples. This issue comprises ﬁve
articles, two spotlights, and two perspectives essays.

DISSERTATIONS
Iwao, Kimihiro, “Strategies for Cultural Integration Following Cross-BorderMergers and Acquisitions.” Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) diss.,
Walden University, 2020.
The author explores strategies that business leaders use to integrate diverse workers
following cross-border mergers and acquisitions using qualitative multiple-casestudies. The ﬁndings reveal the practical knowledge and competencies that successful
leaders use during the postacquisition integration phase related to workplacetransparency, business practices and working styles, communication styles, crosscultural education, and relationship building.

Takada, Tomoko. “Atomic Evangelists: An Investigation of the American AtomicNarrative through News and Magazine Articles, Official Government Statements,Critiques, Essays and Works of Non-Fiction.” PhD diss., Kyushu University, 2020.
This author focuses on Hiroshima and Nagasaki narratives, written and told by
American war journalists, Christian ministers, nonﬁction writers, and critics, all ofwhom felt compelled to speak out about the two atomic-bombed cities. One important
purpose of this study is to uncover the authors’ innermost thoughts about the bombingsand the unintentional, inherent stories behind these discourses.