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Responses to Anti-Semitism in Pre-World War II South Africa

September 26, 2013
By 19645

Myra Ann Houser is a specialist in African history who received a Sylff fellowship from Howard University in 2012. She conducted research in South Africa using a Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) grant from May to July 2013, collecting archive materials on anti-fascist activities during the twentieth century. Here, she describes the Jewish community’s perceptions of the growing anti-Semitism movement in pre–World War II South Africa.

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University of the Western Cape

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, South Africa was regarded as one of the most Jewish societies in the world. For about a century after 1820, it experienced a high degree of religious freedom, and the prevalence of white settlers in the region made it an attractive place for Jews searching for new homes. It possessed a high population of Jewish individuals, mostly of East European descent, who had emigrated, in most cases, to avoid anti-Semitism and persecution in Europe.

Within the Union of South Africa, particularly following the Second South African War, however, politics between English- and Dutch-descended white South Africans created divisions and distinctions within society as they jostled to gain political control, and the country’s large Jewish population often became the targets of hostilities. Manifestations of growing anti-Semitism include the 1937 mandate by rightist South Africans that the “Jewish problem” be solved and boycotts of Jewish businesses.

Such hostilities increased during the 1930s and 1940s, as South Africa’s radical right became ever more tightly bound to and admiring of European fascist regimes. Nationalists in conservative “brotherhood” organizations, such as the Ossewabrandwag and Broederbond, discovered that individuals sharing their ideals—such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini—had risen to positions of power. The nationalists became ever more admiring of them and made pilgrimages to Europe in order to hear speeches by and meet with those whom they idolized.

There is evidence that some Jews viewed South Africa as a proverbial city on a hill prior to their repression during World War II. In a 1936 letter to Interior Minister J.H. Hofmeyer, the secretary of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies cited the country’s history of religious tolerance:

South Africa has a proud past of having liberally treated those who have been compelled for reasons of religious or racial persecution to leave their native land, and seek a new country imbued with a spirit of justice. A great many South Africans proudly claim descent from the Huguenots, who were themselves refugees in a situation similar to those arriving from Germany.¹

A follow-up letter to Prime Minister J.B.M. Hertzog later that year indicated that South African Jews had voiced numerous complaints regarding their harsh treatment by both teasing civilians and the political authorities, who subjected them to increased bureaucratic harassment as nationalism increased within government and officials placed increasing immigration restrictions.² Though the letter mentions no specifics in terms of what it calls “harsh treatment,” it does allude to growing discontent among the country’s Semitic population and states that many who had come to this new land in search of calm and to avoid persecution now found themselves being harassed by both neighbors and state authorities. This presumably would have increased by 1938, when South African officials were following the policies of the Europeans they admired in enacting stringent anti-immigrant laws and severely limiting the number of Jews coming in to the country.³ As the Broderbond and Ossewabrandwag became increasingly enamored with fascist governments, their anti-Semitic propaganda also grew.

South African troop debris in the Namib Desert from World War II

A government reply to the first letter mentions “anti-Jewish activities” during “the past two years” and assures SAJDB that it is monitoring the situation. It did not, however, provide further context for the situation.⁴ These gaps can be filled in using family papers, interviews, and memoirs. These deeply personal documents chronicle the micro-aggressions that South Africa’s Jews experienced during this period, and several place the incidents—such as boycott campaigns and efforts at spreading libel against Jewish community leaders—within the larger context of international fascism. A number of documents directly compare the situation in South Africa to Holocaust-era or pre-Holocaust-era Europe.

Joan Marshall’s 2005 memoir Darling Mutti shares a slightly different perspective of Jewish immigrant life in South Africa. Marshall’s parents had come to the country in 1936 and received work papers. They became active in their large social circle, and their main experiences with anti-Semitism were during their earlier years, when they lived in Germany. They also corresponded regularly with family members in Germany and were well aware of developments in that country, but they did not refer very much to anti-Semitism in their South African lives.⁵

Much like the Marshalls, the Rahlyn Mann family benefitted from privileges of material comfort and social connections in white South Africa. Mann, the only Free State woman to be deployed to Europe as a postwar social worker, told an interviewer that she did not experience any overt anti-Semitism as a child. She did, however, experience a sense of being different from her peers. Mann was one of few Jewish students in her primary school and the only one in high school. She thus left school early on Fridays to prepare for Sabbath, in contrast to most of her peers, who remained in class for the duration of the week. Mann also told her biographer that she fought hard for Hebrew to be included as a matric subject, not taking for granted that her peers and educators would find it as interesting or important as she did. Mann eventually said that she chose to enlist in the Red Cross as a South African citizen rather than as a Jew, placing her pride of country ahead of her feelings of awkwardness.⁶

Milton Tobias, on the other hand, felt more subjected to anti-Semitism than Mann did. He recalls that, prior to Germany’s Nazification and its growing ties with South Africa’s radical right, he “hardly ever” experienced negative feelings. Following the outbreak of World War II, however, he said that anti-Semitism was “all around,” manifesting itself through micro-aggressive slurs and taunts, as well as through government policies that were unfriendly toward the nation’s Jewish population. After going to war as a Union soldier in the Royal Air Force, Tobias returned to South Africa thinking about his Lithuanian grandfather and great-grandfather in the light of the concentration camps he had seen. He recalls thinking of the similarity between their situation and his, which though not as dire as that of people living inside the camps, was nonetheless marked by discomfort and oppression.⁷

Anti-Semitism in South Africa did not begin with World War II. Taffy Adler has traced it to at least the beginning of the twentieth century, when Jewish workers began migrating to the country and its mines as industrialization increasingly brought together people from different races and backgrounds.⁸ According to Adler, many white collar workers who left Europe due to physical threats or verbal taunts found themselves among the working class in South Africa. Jewish workers in the country were thus subjected to both the micro-aggressions and class-based policies that they sought to leave behind. The harassment became more pronounced as World War II approached, and a rightist movement arose that claimed paradoxically to be “anti-immigrant” and “anti-native” (or, less paradoxically, pro-Afrikaner).

My dissertation has evolved to incorporate the subsequent oppression of socialism as well, as I believe—based on my long-standing interest in World War II—it is important to examine the interactions between these early twentieth-century developments. During the 1930s and 1940s, a number of Jewish individuals—having become aware of the marginalization occurring in South Africa’s racist structure—began lobbying for change. This would continue, as orthodox Jews began turning to radicalism during the apartheid era. It is imperative, therefore, to understand this period as being pivotal in the country’s history and protest tradition, and I will attempt a further examination of this topic as part of my dissertation and, I hope, during my scholarly career.

¹“South African Jewish Deputies Board Secretary to J.H. Hofmeyer, June 2, 1936,” British Jewish Board of Deputies Papers, Reel 66, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
²“South African Jewish Deputies Board Secretary to J.B.M. Hertzog, October 13, 1936,” British Jewish Board of Deputies Papers, Reel 66, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
³Joan Marshall, ed., Darling Mutti (Jacana Media, 2005), 23.
⁴“Minister of External Affairs to Secretary of the South African Board of Jewish Deputies, August 19, 1936,” British Board of Jewish Deputies Papers, Reel 66, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.
⁵Marshall, 1–23.
⁶Rahlyn Mann, interviewed by Barbara Linz, Sydney, Australia, April 16, 1996, USC Shoah Foundation Collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, DVD.
⁷Milton Tobias, interviewed by Padigail Meskin. Durban, South Africa, December 1, 1995, USC Shoah Foundation Collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, DVD.
⁸Taffy Adler, “Lithuania’s Diaspora: The Johannesburg Jewish Workers’ Club, 1928–1948,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 1979, 6.1, pp. 70–92.

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Voicing Violence: Constructing Meaning from Narratives by Children in Red-Light Districts of South Kolkata

August 21, 2013
By 19594

Anindita Roy received her Sylff fellowship from Jadavpur University in India in 2012 and conducted research in the United Kingdom using a Sylff Research Abroad grant from April to June 2013. In this article, she writes of children’s psychological development under adverse conditions in India, based on an analysis conducted in the UK of the field data she gathered over a year of research in Kolkata, India.

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Interests drive passion. Sometimes, they also help to shape paths that lead one to journeys of exploration. In my case, an interest in children and their development have led me into landscapes of the mind and how it constructs meaning. Specifically, mine has been an academic endeavor to understand the meaning-making process and its relation to identity formation, especially in children living in adverse environments. My research was carried out in two red-light districts of Southern Kolkata, and its participants were girls and boys aged between 8 and 14. During this year-long research, I was often asked about my choice of research site: “But, why the red-light district?”

Empowering Children in Economically Deprived Areas

Through a community involvement project I undertook at Jadavpur University, I had the opportunity to access the red-light neighborhoods of Kalighat and Khidderpore (which are the sites I chose in my research for a master of philosophy degree). The project was designed to empower children in economically and socially deprived areas whose needs and concerns, it was felt, were largely under-represented and often misrepresented. The participants of this project were trained to become radio reporters so they could express themselves on the platform of a community radio station located on the Jadavpur University campus.

There was one young and promising participant from Kalighat who suddenly stopped attending the training sessions after an enthusiastic involvement over half a year. We were informed by the institution that introduced us to the children in this sensitive area that the participant had left the city and returned to the village and would no longer be able to join the project. It was some weeks later that this participant was seen (by several members of our project) standing with a couple of young girls on the lanes of Kalighat, trying to get clients. We assumed from what we saw that the child, who was still a minor, had become part of the flesh trade. Over the course of the project, a few more children left to “go back to their villages.” (This is not to suggest, though, that they, too, entered the same profession, for unlike the first participant, they were never seen again.) I was less troubled about the truth of what we were told and why than about the kinds of thoughts that must have run through the children’s minds as they made their choices.

How did they make their choices? This was my chief concern: How do these children perceive their lives and the environments in which they live, as well as the meaning and consequences of the choices they make? The current research is part of an organic work in progress—an attempt to understand some of the questions that had seized my mind a long time ago.

Narratives of Abuse, Violence, and Suffering

Coming back to this work, made possible when my proposal was selected for a Sylff Research Abroad award, gave me an opportunity to carry out advanced research in the United Kingdom, where I was guided by scientists and teachers in the fields of psychology and childhood studies. A significant objective of my SRA project was to identify patterns from narratives created by children to understand their psychological development. For my fieldwork, participants were asked to take part in semi-structured interviews and story-telling sessions based on pictures that were presented to them.

Whether in reconstructing narratives from memories of lived experiences or in creating new tales for characters in their stories, the participants selected and conveyed narratives that were indicative of abuse, violence, and suffering. This repetition of certain information emanating from the participants’ memories defined and described their narratives. Understanding such field texts required a co-construction process based on familiarity with the field of research. Understanding violence starts from reading between the lines of what appears on tape in interviews and stories. The facts that are explicitly stated, though, helped me to categorize various expressions of violence. These categories may help lend meaning to the violence the participants recreate for their characters and elucidate the way they understand it in their own experiences.

Violence renders characters helpless. They protest but without support often succumb to the adversities in their environment. It entraps them:

“He started to hit his son, saying that he should work. The son protested, since his sister was studying, and said that he wanted to study too. He did not want to go to work. But the father hits him again and forces him to work. The son is frustrated and sad. He isn’t being allowed to do what he likes. He is not being allowed to gain an education or obtain a sense of security. The parents are forcing the son to do what they want. The boy weeps and cannot communicate.” (Participant A, story, excerpt)

The voice of the protestor surfaces but is silenced by authority—the father in this case. The “son is frustrated and sad” but has no resources that might extend support to him. In another story, the narrator finds his character equally distressed.

“One day, the boy was sent home from school for not being able to pay the fees. He went to his father and requested that he pay the fees. The father said that he had no money and that all the money was gone. The boy had to leave school. The boy requested that the father take up a job and help support the family. The father slapped the boy and said, “Why should I work? You will work.” And he sent the boy to a brick factory. The boy got 1000 or 2000 rupees a month. The father would snatch all the money from the boy and not even let him eat properly. The father would eat first and then give the leftovers to the son. The son was falling ill from not eating.” (Participant B, story, excerpt)

Death of Aspirations

In the face of discouragement, constant pressure, and abuse, the protestor’s voice is silenced. There is not only a metaphorical annihilation in terms of communication but also a physical extinction in certain cases. This reiterates the sense of seclusion, isolation, and neglect that the participants often mention in the process of their interviews, too. Not many are willing to listen or interact, and possibly the protestor may stop protesting altogether.

In the case of the first example, the narrator ends the story by saying, “He cries and declares finally that he will work, for his sister’s sake. He goes to work.” (Participant A, interview, excerpt). The voice of the character of the child in the story—the protestor—is dead. Their voice is possibly just as dead as their aspirations to study. The lack of voice eventually becomes the loss of voice.

“My parents have a fight between themselves. My mother works even in the night. My father comes in the morning and fights with her for money. He gambles and is unemployed. He comes home, eats, gambles, snatches money from my mother, and goes away. He does not let my mother sleep and hits her. I have tried so much to explain to him, but he will only beat me up. When I was seven, he hit my mother so badly that her skull cracked and was bleeding. I tried to stop him, but he slapped me so hard that I fear him from that day.” (Participant B, interview, excerpt)

Reconstructing the experience, the participant mentions the atrocities and the efforts made to check them by trying to convince the father against torturing the mother but is beaten up in response. It seems that there is no one to whom the participant can reach out for support, none that is consciously available in the participant’s mind at least. In the lack of support and a sense of helplessness, there arises the emotion of fear, which eventually swallows the participant’s voice in expression.

Perpetuation of Violence

Children celebrating Durga Puja, the biggest festival of West Bengal, where the author conducted interviews for her research

In some cases, the expression of violence as a ‘should’ is also prevalent. This norm is in keeping with a social code of disciplining the child, for example: “If I were to choose between the father and the son, I would want to play the role of the father. I will have to become a father once I get married. I am hitting the boy because he doesn’t listen to me. I asked him to get a bucket from the market but he ran away.” (Participant C, story, excerpt)

It is as if, just like the character who feels he “will have to become a father” once he gets married, he will “have to” hit his children to help them learn. Another participant tells in a story, “If I were to play the role of the father, I would hit my son, too. I would hit him, if there is a need, to get things done. Sometimes it is important to hit, or else children become disobedient.”

Very few cases look at violence through the lens of characters that resort to violence for the sake of it or for the fun of it. “There are some people who only need a trivial reason to pick up fights. They are always ready to fight.” (Participant D, interview, excerpt) The readiness to fight seems to be reason enough for a fight as well. Another participant says in a story, “And this older boy is now hitting the younger boy. The older boy just feels like it. The reason could be anything—he just feels like beating up this boy, or he may just feel like creating trouble. If he creates trouble, he will have fun.” Few in number, but qualitatively significant, is the concept of characters deriving pleasure from the troubles they create (usually for others). “We might wonder why the man should hit the boy at all; but the man might be enjoying this act of hitting a boy.” (Participant E, story, excerpt).

Succumbing to violence, whether as oppressor or oppressed, is the dominant pattern in most plots. The characters suffer physically through beatings, psychologically through trauma, and emotionally through frustration and anxiety. The characters’ sufferings could be reflective of the participants’ own suffering, including from the inability to choose more positive alternatives, even in the realm of imagination. I do not present these patterns as predictions about individual development or social adaptation. I only propose that these constructions be regarded as voices that demand understanding and keen attention. There must be an attempt to understand what the narratives mean to the ones making them. In the case of my research, an attempt has been made to understand the meaning of violence as a first step in understanding the environments within which these children live and grow.

Is Schooling Synonymous with Learning?

In the recent past, the field of child development has been focusing on approaches to promote sustainable growth. While social theories and large-scale data have been constructively prevalent in India, so far, very little attention has been paid to children’s development from the perspective of understanding the child’s mind, emotions, and imagination. Well-meaning programs and policies have been formulated to accelerate growth in adverse conditions. In education, for example, programs have been introduced aimed at improving learning, such as a mid-day meal and free schooling until a certain age to promote education, especially for families in economically deprived conditions.

However, children may not necessarily equate schooling with learning. For example, in the course of data collection, some of my participants said that they would like to go to school, knowing that education is important, but also admitted that they are more interested in either the mid-day meal or in playing on the large school grounds from a lack of space in their own homes or their neighborhoods. The mid-day meal might thus help improve attendance at school but may not help improve learning. If school for these children means food and a place to play, then education will not be their first synonym for school. This is the dimension I hope to elucidate.

Such meanings will become clearer and more audible when the children are allowed to express and speak their minds. But sometimes, their realities are too difficult to share, even if they want to share them. In other parts of my research I have, therefore, analyzed the techniques of narrative construction as a means of expression and as clues to the understanding of the child. Henceforth, it would be interesting to explore and analyze the realm of the imagination and the use of it by children to renegotiate with their realities (or, maybe, to chance upon a completely new understanding).

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Bulgaria and Japan: From the Cold War to the Twenty-first Century

August 14, 2013
By 19617

The following article is based on Bulgaria and Japan: From the Cold War to the Twenty-first Century, an exhaustively researched 2009 book by Evgeny Kandilarov—a Sylff fellow at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” who used his fellowship to conduct research at Meiji University in Japan in 2005. The Tokyo Foundation asked the author, who is now an assistant professor at his alma mater, to summarize his findings, which have revealed intriguing patterns in the history of bilateral ties and international relations over the past several decades.

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The book Bulgaria and Japan: From the Cold War to the Twenty-first Century is almost entirely based on unpublished documents from the diplomatic archives at the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In order to clarify concrete political decisions, many documents from the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Comecon, and State Committee for Culture were used. These documents are available at the Central State Archives of the Republic of Bulgaria. For additional information, memoirs of eminent Bulgarian political figures and diplomats who took part in the researched events were also used.

This article aims to give a brief overview of the political, economic, and cultural relations between Bulgaria and Japan during the Cold War and the subsequent period of Bulgaria’s transition to democracy and a market economy.

Exhaustive research on the bilateral relationship between Bulgaria and Japan have revealed specific reasons, factors, and causes that led to fairly intense economic, scientific, technological, educational, and cultural exchange between the two countries during the Cold War. Furthermore, the study raises some important questions, perhaps the most intriguing one being: Why did the relationship rapidly lose its dynamics during the transition period, and what might be the reasons for this?

The study also poses a series of questions concerning how bilateral relations influenced the economic development of Bulgaria during the 1960s and 1980s, throwing light on the many economic decisions made by the Bulgarian government that were influenced by the Japanese economic model.

Five Distinct Stages of the Relationship

The analysis of Bulgaria-Japan relations can be divided into two major parts. The chronological framework of the first part is defined by the date of the resumption of diplomatic relations between Bulgaria and Japan in 1959 and the end of state socialism in Bulgaria in 1989, coinciding with the end of the Cold War. This timeframe presents a fully complete period with its own logic and characteristics, following which Bulgaria’s international relations and internal policy underwent a total transformation at the beginning of the 1990s.

The second part of the analysis covers the period of the Bulgarian transition from state socialism to a parliamentary democracy and market economy. This relatively long period in the development of the country highlighted the very different circumstances the two countries faced and differences in their character.

The inner boundaries of the study are defined by two mutually related principles. The first is the spirit of international relations that directly influenced the specifics of the bilateral relationship, and the second is the domestic economic development of Bulgaria, a country that played an active role in the dynamics of the relationship. In this way, the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s (through 2007, when Bulgaria joined the EU), and the years since 2007 represent five distinct stages in the relations between Bulgaria and Japan.

The first stage began with the resumption of diplomatic relations in 1959. This was more a consequence of the general change in international relations in the mid-1950s than a result of deliberate foreign policy. After the easing of Cold War tensions between the two military and political blocs and the restart of dialogue, the whole Eastern bloc began normalizing its relations with the main ideological rival, the United States, as well as with its most loyal satellite in the Asia-Pacific region—Japan. From another point of view Japanese diplomatic activity toward Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, was motivated mostly by the commercial and economic interests of Japanese corporations looking to extend their markets.

This period in Bulgarian-Japanese relations in the 1960s was characterized by mutual study and search for the right approach, the setting up of a legislative base, and the formulation of main priorities, aims, and interests.

Analyses of documents from the Bulgarian state archives show that Bulgaria was looking for a comprehensive development of the relationship, while Japan placed priority on economic ties and on technology and scientific transfer.

Budding Commercial Ties

One of the most important industries for which the Bulgarian government asked for support from Japan was electronics, which was developing very dynamically in Japan. In the mid-1960s Bulgaria signed a contract with one of Japan’s biggest electronics companies, Fujitsu Ltd. According to the contract, Bulgaria bought a license for the production of electronic devices, which were one of the first such devices produced by Bulgaria and sold on the Comecon market. The contract also included an opportunity for Bulgarian engineers to hone their expertise in Japan.

In the 1960s the first joint ventures between Bulgaria and Japan were established. In 1967 the Bulgarian state company Balkancar and the Japanese company Tokyo Boeki create a joint venture called Balist Kabushiki Kaisha. Another joint venture that was established was called Nichibu Ltd. In 1971 these two companies merged into a new joint venture, Nichibu Balist, engaged in trading all kinds of metals and metal constructions, forklifts and hoists and spare parts for factories, ships (second hand), marine equipment, spare parts, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and chemical products.

Bulgarian prime minister Todor Zhivkov and Japanese Prime minister Eisaku Sato, 1970, Japan.

In 1970 Bulgaria and Japan signed an Agreement on Commerce and Navigation, which was the first of its kind signed by the Bulgarian government with a non-socialist country. According to the agreement, the two countries granted each other most-favored-nation treatment in all matters relating to trade and in the treatment of individuals and legal entities in their respective territories.

At the end of this stage of Bulgarian-Japanese bilateral relations, by participating in the Expo ’70 international exhibition, Bulgaria already had a clear idea of the “Japanese economic miracle” and how it could be applied to Bulgaria’s economic growth.

The Bulgarian government led by communist ruler Todor Zhivkov were very much impressed and influenced by Japan’s industrial, scientific, and technological policy, which led to the so called Japanese miracle. That is why the economic reforms and strategies adopted in Bulgaria over the following few years, although conducted in a completely different social and economic environment, were influenced to some extent by the Japanese model, especially in the field of science and technological policy.

Peak of Political and Economic Activity

The second stage in bilateral relations in the 1970s marked the peak of political and economic activity between the two countries. The goals set during the previous period were pursued and achieved slowly and steadily. The legislative base was broadened, and the number of influential Japanese partners increased. The international status quo in East-West relations, marked by the Helsinki process, presented the possibility for Bulgaria and Japan to enjoy a real “golden decade” in their relations.

In 1972 the Japan-Bulgaria Economic Committee for the development of trade, economic, and scientific and technological ties between the two countries was established in Tokyo. Committee participants included a number of large Japanese manufacturers, financial institutions, and trading companies. The head of the Committee was Nippon Seiko (NSK) President Hiroki Imazato. The same year in Sofia, Bulgaria established the Bulgaria-Japan Committee for Economic, Science, and Technical Cooperation, headed by Minister of Science, Technologies, and Higher Education Nacho Papazov.

In the mid-1970s the Bulgarian government undertook some legislative changes regarding the rules for foreign company representation in Bulgaria. These changes were influenced mainly by the attempt by the Bulgarian government to encourage the further development of Bulgarian-Japanese economic relations. After the legislative changes Japanese companies received the right to open their own commercial representative offices in Bulgaria, and in just a few years 10 Japanese companies opened offices: Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo, C. Itoh, Fujitsu, Tokyo Maruichi Shoji, Nichibu Balist, Marubeni, Nissho Iwai, and Toyo Menka Kaisha. In 1977 the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) also opened an office, greatly contributing to the promotion of the trade and economic relations between Bulgaria and Japan.

Historic Summit Meeting

Bulgarian state leader Todor Zhivkov and Japanese Prime minister Takeo Fukuda, 1978, Japan.

A political expression of the peak of Bulgarian-Japanese relations during the 1970s was the first official summit visit in the history of bilateral diplomatic relations—the visit by Bulgarian state leader Todor Zhivkov to Japan in March 1978 for a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda.

During the visit, the two sides agreed to establish a Joint Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation, which has held working sessions every year, engaging both governments to further promote and extend the bilateral economic relationship.

Bulgarian state leader Todor Zhivkov and Japanese Emperor Hirohito, 1978, Japan.

Following the state visit by Todor Zhivkov, the Bulgarian government created a very detailed strategic program for the development of Bulgarian-Japanese relations for the decade up to 1990. The main focus of the program was the following idea: “The strategic direction in the economic relations between Bulgaria and Japan consists in the rational use and implementation of modern and highly effective Japanese technologies, equipment and production experience for the promotion of the quality and efficiency of the Bulgarian economy.”

The Crown Prince Akihito during his official state visit in Bulgaria, October 1979.

Another key point was that the Bulgarian government would focus its efforts on strengthening cooperation with leading Japanese companies in such fields as electronics and microelectronics, automation and robotics, heavy industries, chemicals, electronics, and engineering.

In response to the Bulgarian state visit in 1978, the next year, in October 1979, Bulgaria was visited by Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko as the official representatives of Emperor Hirohito.

1980s: Broadening Spheres of Cooperation

During the third period of Bulgarian-Japanese relations, the momentum of the preceding stages still kept the relationship stable and growing. The sphere of cooperation and mutual interest widened, and the Bulgarian government relied more on the Japanese support and the advantages offered by the Japanese economic model.

At the beginning of the 1980s the Bulgarian government undertook another step toward the liberalization of the Bulgarian economy. It gave an opportunity for Western companies to invest in Bulgaria by concluding contracts for industrial cooperation and creating associations. These changes in the Bulgarian economy caused great interest among Japanese economic circles, and within the next few years six Bulgarian-Japanese joint companies were created. The names and activities of the joint companies were as follows:
— Fanuc-Mashinex with the participation of Japanese company Fanuc Co: Service and production in the fields of electronics, automation, and engineering.
— Atlas Engineering with the participation of Japanese companies Mitsui, C. Itoh, Toshiba, and Kobe Steel: Design, supply, and implementation of projects in Bulgaria and third countries in the fields of mechanical engineering, chemicals, and metallurgy.
— Sofia-Mitsukoshi with the participation of Japanese companies Mitsukoshi and Tokyo Maruichi Shoji: Production and trade in the field of light industry as well as the reconstruction of department stores.
— Tobu-M.X.: Manufacture and sale of machinery for magnetic abrasive treatment of complex-shaped parts. Production was based on Bulgarian technology, and the products were sold in Japan and in third countries.
— Medicom Systems with the participation of Japanese company Tokyo Maruichi Shoji: Research, production, and sale of equipment and software for the medical and education markets.
— Farmahim-Japan with the participation of Japanese company Marubeni: Collaboration in the pharmaceutical field.

1990s: Transformation of the Relationship

The subsequent crisis in East-West relations in the 1980s, the growing economic crisis in the Communist bloc, and changes in the political leadership in Moscow brought about the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era in international relations. During the 1990s, these new factors completely transformed the relationship between Bulgaria and Japan.

In the next period, during which Bulgaria began a long and arduous transition to a democratic political system and functioning market economy, an abrupt switch came about in the direction of Bulgarian foreign policy. The governing parties during this period made every effort to incorporate Bulgaria into the Euro-Atlantic military and economic structures, namely, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

This required a great deal of effort to transform the political and economic systems. The focusing of national energy on these social transformations created a totally different environment for Bulgaria-Japan relations. Bulgaria became a developing country and was placed in an unequal position in terms of the international hierarchy. For a long time, relations between the two countries consisted largely of Japanese disbursements of official development assistance (ODA).

Despite the dialogue between Bulgaria and Japan from 1959 to 1989, the 1990s was a period of steady decline and stagnation in the bilateral relationship, being reduced, to a large extent, to one between donor and recipient.

All this led to a paradoxical situation: economic relations between Bulgaria and Japan were much closer when the countries were politically and ideologically far apart than during the period after 1989, when they stood in the same ideological framework. The underlying reasons for this are related to the question of what were the driving forces of the relationship during the Cold War.

Nurturing a New Partnership

A detailed study of the relationship between 1959 and 1989 shows that for the most part the initiative came mainly from the Bulgarian side, which showed keen interest in and reaped benefits from the relationship. Bulgaria was driven by commercial and economic interests and the need for scientific and technological cooperation. Moreover, Japan was both a good model and a suitable partner for Bulgaria. Japan saw in Bulgaria and other socialist countries an opportunity to expand its export markets and to import cheaper food commodities and raw materials.

At the same time, ties with a highly developed country like Japan provided an opportunity for the Bulgarian government to identify the defects and shortcomings of the closed, centralized, planned economy. This underlined a persistent set of problems, the major one being the lack of competitiveness of Bulgarian products stemming from poor quality, low labor efficiency, poor level of technology, unstable stock exchange, limitations in the number and variety of goods, mediocre design, and the failure to adapt to a highly dynamic and competitive market environment.

As late as January 1, 2007, both countries took a step to set up a new partnership framework on equal terms. After Bulgaria joined the EU, relations between the two countries became almost entirely dependent on the geopolitical, economic, and to some extent cultural interests of the respective counties in the region. From this perspective, the starting points of the relations between Bulgaria and Japan at the beginning of the twenty-first century did not seem very strong. This could be clearly seen in the empirical data on Japanese investment in Bulgaria, financial transactions, the traffic of tourists, cultural presence, and other areas, as well as in the peripheral position of Bulgaria in Japan’s foreign strategy toward the region, underlined by then Japanese foreign minister Taro Aso’s 2006 concept called the Arc of Freedom and Prosperity.

Unfortunately, even almost seven years after Bulgaria joined the EU there has not been any significant change in Bulgarian-Japanese relations, which remain very much below their optimal potential. The reasons for this can be found both in the lack of political and economic stability in Bulgaria as well as in the continuing economic instability of Japan over the last 20 years. Whether Japan and Bulgaria will once again see a merging of interests and revive a mutually beneficial relationship is a matter for another analysis. The most important thing is that there is already a very good base for a fruitful relationship, even though it was set during the Cold War, and it should be used as a starting point in the attempts by the Bulgarian government and its Japanese partners to find a more efficient and beneficial approach in developing bilateral relations.

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A Friendly Midsummer Get-Together in Tokyo

July 29, 2013
By null

All participants of the Sylff Fellows Gathering

Around 20 Sylff fellows and steering committee members attended the first Sylff Fellows Gathering, a relaxed and informative midsummer evening get-together held on Wednesday, July 10, at the Tokyo Foundation.

The gathering was organized to update fellows and SSC members of recently launched Sylff support programs and to give an overview of the Tokyo Foundation, including its policy research activities, as well as to provide opportunities for visitors to ask questions, offer comments, share their own news, and, of course, to get to know one another better.

Masahiro Akiyama

The first half of the get-together featured presentations by the Foundation and two Sylff fellows: Jonathan Shalfi, a master’s degree student at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, UC San Diego; and Takehiro Kurosaki, who received a doctorate in anthropology from Waseda University and is now the deputy director of the Pacific Islands Center.

Special guests included Dr. Vladimir Bumbasirevic and Dr. Ivanka Popovic, the rector and vice-rector of the University of Belgrade—Serbia’s largest and oldest university—and Professor Edgar Porter, a member of the Sylff steering committee at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Beppu, Japan.

Welcoming remarks were made by Tokyo Foundation President Masahiro Akiyama, who expressed his hope that the gathering would be the first of many more productive forums for the exchange of ideas, and by Tatsuya Tanami, Executive Director of the Nippon Foundation, the donor of the Sylff endowments.

Tatsuya Tanami

Tanami recalled that Sylff was the brainchild of the late Ryoichi Sasakawa, who, toward the last stages of his life, realized his dream of establishing a fellowship program that would produce leaders to bring positive social change in countries around the world.

The initiative has been highly successful, Tanami noted, providing opportunities for research and social engagement for around 15,000 graduate-level students in 44 countries. He added that Sylff is one of largest of around 25 human resources development programs involving the Nippon Foundation which may total more than 30,000 people, and expressed his hope that these people could one day be integrated into a single network to facilitate communication and understanding.

One of Japan’s Leading Think Tanks

Tokyo Foundation Director for Public Communications Akiko Imai then gave an overview of the Foundation’s activities, emphasizing the unique combination of policy research and the nurturing of change-makers that makes the foundation one of Japan’s leading think tanks.

Akiko Imai

“We’re financially independent of any political or commercial interests, and this allows us to set our own goals,” she noted. “Our central location makes it easy for members of the National Diet and senior government officials to join us for both small-group workshops and public forums.”

Policy research at the foundation covers a broad range of areas, ranging from foreign, security, and trade policy and energy resources to health and nursing care, tax reform, and corporate social responsibility. “These are all interrelated,” Imai said. “Healthcare issues, for example, are closely linked to tax and social security, and could be significantly affected by the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So our research fellows work closely together in a cross-disciplinary way to ensure that our policy proposals are relevant from a cross-issue perspective, and we actively communicate those proposals through our network of leading policymakers, journalists, and scholars, and global think tanks.”

Cultivating Leaders of Tomorrow

Takashi Suzuki

A summary of the Sylff program and updates on additional support available for fellows from the Tokyo Foundation were provided by Director for Leadership Development Takashi Suzuki.

Sylff is one of four major leadership developments programs in which the Tokyo Foundation is engaged. The aims of Sylff, he said, are to cultivate leaders of tomorrow who will contribute to the common good of humankind while transcending national, ethnic, and other boundaries and respecting the diversity of cultures and values; and to support the education of outstanding students pursuing graduate-level study in the social sciences and humanities.

Suzuki introduced two fellows who have gone on to become outstanding leaders in their respective communities following graduation: Dejan Šoškić, a graduate of the University of Belgrade who was appointed governor of the National Bank of Serbia in July 2010; and Loukas Spanos, a Sylff fellow at the University of Athens who has played a key role in the reconstruction of the Greek economy as the director of the Minister's Office at the Greek Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

Noting that one of the Tokyo Foundation’s main tasks regarding the Sylff program is to support the activities of fellowship recipients, Suzuki provided an outline of Sylff Research Abroad (SRA), which supports fellows’ research in a foreign country for their doctoral dissertations, and Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI), aimed at encouraging Sylff fellows to address important issues through social action initiatives or workshops to bring about positive change. “In addition,” Suzuki said, “we’re planning to launch global forums for Sylff fellows on an annual basis starting from fiscal 2015.”

Integrating Renewable Energy into the Grid

Jonathan Shalfi

Two fellows then made brief presentations on their recent activities. The first was Jonathan Shalfi, a master’s degree student at IR/PS at US San Diego, who is conducting research this summer at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, on the challenges of integrating renewable energy into the electric grid.

“It’s one thing to place electric panels on rooftops and another to actually integrate solar-generated power into the grid,” Shalfi emphasized. “This is what I’m studying. There’s no question renewable energy is becoming a more important part of the energy mix, but the issue of integrating it into the grid hasn’t been studied much yet.”

He noted that Japan faces one of the toughest integration challenges, since there are 10 largely independent, investor-owned electric utilities in the country with very little transmission capacity between them. “Transmission presents great difficulties. Hokkaido has the most wind potential, for instance, but it’s isolated from the big population centers. The situation for solar is quite similar, with most of the potential being located in rural areas. Another challenge is stability, since there must be a way to meet power deficits when the sun suddenly goes away or the wind dies down.”

Looking at Japan, where the production of renewable energy has risen sharply with the introduction of the feed-in-tariff system during the administration of the Democratic Party of Japan, is very important as a test case, Shalfi added, for there are many lessons to be learned by other countries.

Close Ties with Pacific Island Countries

Takehiro Kurosaki

The second fellow to make a presentation was Takehiro Kurosaki, deputy director of the Pacific Islands Center who was a fellowship recipient in 2007 while studying cultural anthropology at Waseda University.

He recalled that the fellowship enabled him to conduct fieldwork in the Marshall Islands and neighboring countries, interviewing high-level bureaucrats, business leaders, and politicians—including the president—about the cultures and political systems of the region.

The fellowship, Kurosaki said, opened doors to his subsequent academic and professional career and to his current position at the PIC, an international organization established in October 1996 by the Japanese government and the Pacific Islands Forum—a consortium of 16 independent Pacific countries, including Australia and New Zealand—to promote the sustainable economic development of the Pacific region, encourage trade and investment from Japan, and bolster tourism.

“Japan has very close historical ties to these countries,” Kurosaki noted. “The president of Micronesia, Emanuel Mori, is the great-grandson of a Japanese samurai from Kochi Prefecture who married the daughter of a traditional chieftain. The Moris are a large clan numbering around 4,000 people in Micronesia, and they have a big impact on the country’s economy and politics.”

Diplomatically, the Pacific islands are important supporters of Japan in international forums like the United Nations, and Japan depends on the region economically for around 80% of its imports of tuna and bonito and as a sea lane for the transport of mineral and energy resources. Japan will also be a major market for the liquefied natural gas produced in Papua New Guinea beginning early next year.

“Japan is one of the top donors of development assistance to the region,” said Kurosaki. “The support has been used to build these young countries’ socioeconomic infrastructure and address challenges posed by global warming and natural disasters, such as typhoons, tsunamis, and drought.”

PIC also organizes exhibitions and stage shows in Tokyo to enhance the visibility of the Pacific countries in cooperation with the Japanese government and the Pacific Islands Forum. “The Pacific countries regard Japan as a friendly and important partner, while Japan attaches great value to them in the global community. I think we need to expand our ties, not just among governments but also in the private and nongovernment sectors.”

Following the presentations, participating Sylff fellows and administrators had an opportunity to talk with Tokyo Foundation program officers and research fellows as well as with one another at the reception, sharing ideas and deepening friendships over food and drinks.

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Japan’s Ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

May 20, 2013
By 19657

Salla Garský,¹ a Sylff fellow at the University of Helsinki, used her Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) award to research the process of Japan’s ratification of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC). She presents an objective explanation of why Japan’s ratification was prolonged until 2007 after voting for the Statue in 1998.

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Salla Garský, in front of the Okuma Auditorium at Waseda University’s main campus.

The Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted in 1998 by 120 countries, including Japan. Since 2002, when the Rome Statue came into force, the ICC has been a permanent and independent institution. Its establishment was a historical achievement that permanently conferred jurisdiction to punish the masterminds behind heinous crimes, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. No one who commits these crimes will thus be able to escape the consequences.

However, the power of the ICC depends entirely on member states because it has no resources of its own to make arrests and is financed by the state parties. Therefore, it is important to study the ratification process of the Rome Statute and explore potential obstacles for states’ decision to join the ICC.

Japan acceded to the Statute fairly late. While most ICC member states had ratified it by 2003, Japanese ratification did not come until July 2007². The objective of my research in Japan was to gather empirical evidence to answer the question: Why did it take almost 10 years for Japan to join an institution that it presumably supported from the beginning? Literature on Japan’s accession to the ICC has thus far focused on the legal aspects³. My research is aimed at contributing a political aspect to this literature by analyzing different political motivations behind the ratification process. This short article discusses some of the findings of my research in Japan.

Although I am interested in the political aspects of the ratification process, it is impossible to deny the role of the legal aspects. When countries consider joining the ICC, amendments to national laws are usually necessary. The Japanese legal system is a mix of civil and common law, with civil law characteristics, adopted from the German legal system, dominating the system⁴. Japan’s ratification of the Rome Statute required the deliberation of three main legal issues.

The Peace Bell, which Salla rang on her trip to Hiroshima.

First, Japan had to consider whether and how to accommodate the crimes under the jurisdiction of the ICC with the national Criminal Code, which is very specific and, as such, takes time to amend. As Arai et al. point out, Japan decided not to amend the Criminal Code because almost all crimes under the ICC’s jurisdiction, with a few, rather irrelevant exceptions, are already covered by Japanese laws.⁵

As Meierhenrich and Ko elaborate, another legal issue, related to the jurisdiction of the ICC, was Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution:

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”⁶

Because of this paragraph, legislating war-related laws was initially complicated, as this would imply the hypothetical possibility of Japan engaging in war-related activities. This obstacle, however, was overcome in 2004, when the Diet adopted a package of emergency legislation that enabled Japan to ratify the 1977 Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions.⁷

The last important legal issue was cooperation with the ICC, which Japan resolved by adopting the ICC Cooperation Law, consisting of 65 articles⁸. Altogether, the elaborate legal review of national laws and the Rome Statute, as well as the preparation of the ICC Cooperation Law, slowed down Japan’s accession to the ICC.

Besides legal questions, according to the interviews I conducted in Japan, the US policy on the ICC also delayed ratification. While the Bill Clinton administration was not enthusiastic about the ICC, the George W. Bush administration was openly opposed, starting a global campaign against the ICC and not hesitating to voice its dismay about the institution in bilateral and multilateral forums⁹. Since the United States is Japan’s most important ally, this US policy affected Japan’s willingness to join the ICC. The US opposition against the ICC started to ease after 2005, though, when the UN Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC. Shortly thereafter, Japan started to consider ratifying the Rome Statute.¹⁰

Another aspect that delayed Japan’s ratification of the Rome Statute was money. Due to its high gross domestic income, Japan was slated to become the main contributor to the ICC. Article 117 of the Rome Statute, defining the assessment of the contribution, left some room for interpretation, and Japan initially calculated that its contribution to the ICC would be 28% of the total budget.

Japan wanted to apply the UN ceiling of 22% to its ICC contribution, but the European Union hesitated to accept the proposal. Eventually, the ICC Assembly of States Parties approved the 22% ceiling, and ratification began to materialize.¹¹

Words of Pope John Paul II to the people of Hiroshima, which have been the beacon guiding Salla's research.

To conclude, unlike the European countries, most of which wanted to join the ICC quickly in order to show their support for the new Court, Japan was not in a hurry to ratify the Rome Statute. Rather, Japan wanted to wait and see how the newly established ICC would develop before it joined. In general, there was not much political pressure in Japan to join the ICC, but the UN Security Council’s referral of the Darfur case to the ICC clearly had a positive influence on Japan’s decision.

The impact of the Jun’ichiro Koizumi administration on the ratification process has not yet been researched in depth, and this will be the subject of my future research. Tentatively, the delay in ratification can be explained in terms of the Japanese way of dealing with international treaties, which was described in many of the interviews I conducted.

Today, Japan is an active member of the ICC, and one of the Judges, Kuniko Ozaki, is Japanese. I hope that in the future, Japan will start to actively promote the ICC in Asia, as the region is clearly underrepresented in the organization.

¹ I want to thank the Tokyo Foundation for making my research in Japan possible. I also wholeheartedly thank my Japanese advisor, Professor Mariko Kawano of the Waseda University’s School of Law, for allowing me to visit her institution and for her warm and most helpful guidance with my research in Japan. I am also grateful to Professors Shuichi Furuya (Waseda University), Akira Mayama (Osaka University), Osamu Niikura (Ayoama Gakuin University), and Hideaki Shinoda (Hiroshima University) for discussing and sharing their experiences regarding Japanese policy on the ICC with me and Keita Sugai (Tokyo Foundation) for his helpfulness. Furthermore, I am indebted to the Embassy of Finland in Tokyo, in particular Ambassador Jari Gustafsson and First Secretary Jukka Pajarinen, and the Delegation of the European Union to Japan. Lastly, I want to thank Juha Hopia, Suvi Huikuri, Sergey Kryukov, Riikka Rantala, and Asaka Taniyama for making my stay in Japan unforgettable. Unless otherwise mentioned, the opinions expressed in this paper are solely my own.
² United Nations Treaty Collection, “Status of Treaties,” Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, 2012. Available at: <http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ParticipationStatus.aspx> (visited March 8, 2013).
³ Kyo Arai, Akira Mayama, and Osamu Yoshida, “Accession of Japan to the International Criminal Court: Japan’s Accession to the ICC Statute and the ICC Cooperation Law,” Japanese Yearbook of International Law, 51 (2008): 359–383; Kanako Takayama, “Participation in the ICC and the National Criminal Law of Japan,” Japanese Yearbook of International Law, 51 (2008): 348–408; Yasushi Masaki, “Japan’s Entry to the International Criminal Court and the Legal Challenges It Faced,” Japanese Yearbook of International Law, 51 (2008): 409–426; Jens Meierhenrich and Keiko Ko, “How Do States Join the International Criminal Court? The Implementation of the Rome Statute in Japan,” Journal of International Criminal Justice, 7/2 (2009): 233–256.
⁴ Veronica Taylor, Robert R. Britt, Kyoko Ishida, and John Chaffee, “Introduction: Nature of the Japanese Legal System,” Business Law in Japan, 1 (2008): 3–8; CIA, The World Factbook: Legal System, March 5, 2013. Available at: <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2100.html> (visited March 8, 2013).
⁵ Arai, Mayama, and Yoshida, “Japan’s Accession,” p. 365ff.
⁶ The Constitution of Japan, November 3, 1946. Available at: <http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html> (visited March 8, 2013).
⁷ Meierhenrich and Ko, “Rome Statue in Japan,” p. 237ff.
⁸ Takayama, “Participation in the ICC,” p. 388.
⁹ John R. Bolton, “Letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,” Digest of United States Practice in International Law 2002, Sally J. Cummins and David P. Stewart, eds., 148–149, Office of the Legal Adviser, United States Department of State (Washington, D.C.: International Law Institute, 2002); H.R. 4775, Title II, American Service-Members’ Protection Act (Washington D.C.: Congress of the United States of America, January 23, 2002); H.R. 4818, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2005. Washington D.C.: Congress of the United States of America, January 20, 2004; Human Rights First, “U.S. Threatens to Cut Aid to Countries That Support the ICC,” December 7, 2004. Available at: <http://www.iccnow.org/documents/HRF_Nethercutt_07Dec04.pdf> (visited March 8, 2013); John R. Bolton, “American Justice and the International Criminal Court: Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute,” Washington, D.C., November 3, 2003; Philip T. Reeker, “Press Statement: U.S. Initiative on the International Criminal Court,” U.S. Department of State, June 13, 2000.
¹⁰ Masaki, “Japan’s Entry to the ICC,” p. 418ff.
¹¹ Ibid., p. 415ff.

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Qualitative Research as a Collaborative Enterprise

April 15, 2013
By 19651

Paulina Berrios, a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York, Albany, and a Sylff fellowship recipient at the University of Chile, shares the experiences of her field research (conducted with a Sylff Research Abroad award), during which she interviewed a number of part-time professors at Chilean universities to understand what they do inside and outside the classroom.

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Qualitative Research as a Collaborative Enterprise:How I Learned from Other People’s Experience and Developed as an Interviewer

The research process is itself a learning process. You discover new facts, identify new relationships among variables, and realize the many implications that the focus of your study can have on reality. On the other hand, you also come to master research skills that will be long lasting. As a research project usually involves many people and often multiple institutions, you also have an opportunity to network, which is an important skill to develop over time. My experience researching abroad fits this learning process too.

Paulina at the library of the State University of New York, Albany.

Currently pursuing my PhD in educational administration and policy studies with a concentration in higher education at the State University of New York at Albany, I went to Chile—my native country—to collect data for my dissertation. This research project deals with the academic work of part-time professors at universities in Santiago, Chile, and how institutions treat, value, and regulate their academic work.

The purpose of my research abroad was to conduct in-depth interviews with both part-time professors and university administrators. Having to conduct at least 60 interviews taught me many lessons. Among the most important were that qualitative research is a collaborative enterprise and that the skill of interviewing develops during the research process.

Focus of My Research

The research for my dissertation pays special attention to what part-timers do inside and outside the classroom in Chile, a country where part-time professors have a predominant presence at both public and private institutions of higher education. In addition, my study asks the question: What is the academic work of part-time professors? Because this is conditioned by many variables, an exploration of the academic work of part-time professors needs to be seen through multiple perspectives. By bringing together sociological, historical, and organizational perspectives into the analysis of part-time professors, research can be conducted that will help elucidate how institutions, organizational arrangements, national contexts of higher education, and individual dimensions like gender and age condition the academic work of part-time professors.

Research Hypothesis

Researchers have found that US part-time professors engage mostly in teaching activities (NCES 2002; Kezar 2012) and that they teach an average of 1.6 undergraduate classes and 0.2 graduate courses (NCES, 2002). So, I started by assuming that even though the data is for the United States, the Chilean case will not be dramatically different. In other words, I hypothesized that teaching, and more specifically, undergraduate teaching, would represent the main chunk of the academic work of the part-time professors at sampled Chilean universities. However, given the literature on differentiation in higher education, I expected that patterns would vary by both system factors, such as academic discipline and professional field, and individual factors like gender and age.

Selection of Cases

Regarding the selection of institutions for the fieldwork, geographical location and range of academic programs were the two main criteria. As a result, nine academic programs at five universities were selected. Specifically, these five universities were of three different types: research universities (Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Santiago, and Pontificia Universidad Catolica), a selective, large private university (Universidad Nacional Andres Bello), and a nonselective, large private university (Universidad San Sebastian). The nine academic and professional programs selected were mathematics, chemistry, sociology, history, education, engineering, nursing, odontology, and architecture.

Andrés Bello National University

Preliminary Findings

As for the major findings, to a certain degree, the academic work of part-time professors in Chilean universities matched the literature on this topic worldwide: Generally, part-time professors focused on teaching, but the teaching was executed differently, depending on the academic or professional program. Their work was also treated very differently by the various academic departments and schools. One manifestation of this differential treatment was the salaries offered to part-time professors; another was the institutional mechanisms introduced as incentives to retain part-time professors.

My research at Chilean universities revealed that some academic departments and professional schools were highly dependent on their part-time professors. Although their employment was not secured, part-time professors at these universities were offered very good salaries and incentives for their teaching services. As this study was not intended to be representative of the Chilean higher education system as a whole, these findings pertain only to the types of institution that were selected for this study, namely, public research universities and both elite and serious private universities.

The Researcher and the Fieldwork

In a qualitative study such as mine, collaboration proved to be critical. This is not to say that other types of research (e.g., quantitative) do not engage in collaboration, but in my case I could not have achieved all I did in the field without having both institutional support and good advice from relevant actors.

Good Advice Makes a Difference

Reality is not always what you expect. When engaged in the field, I found that what I learned about my research topic—that part-time professors are invisible to many—had a practical manifestation: When trying to contact part-time professors for interviews, I realized that they were hard to reach, since their contact information was not easily available. Information for full-time professors could be found by just navigating a university’s or department’s website, but this was not always the case for part-time professors. While I had some initial success in making connections with part-time professors, I realized that I would not reach my goal if I continued trying to contact them on my own.

Paulina attended a higher education seminar at the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice

So I asked a Chilean professor, who is a member of my dissertation committee, for advice. He suggested that in order to deal with the logistics issue, I should change my strategy and consider a top-down approach. I thus decided to establish contacts first with department chairs and deans at the selected universities and academic programs to not only learn how institutions manage, evaluate, and monitor the academic work of part-time professors but also obtain a list of potential interviewees. This turned out to be very good advice, as I was able to interview department chairs and deans for my study and, at the same time, gain their trust. This also enabled me to receive additional information, such as institutional documents that facilitated access to additional participants. The good advice made a big difference, turning potentially discouraging and unsuccessful fieldwork into a very positive experience. In the end, I was able to conduct not 60 but 70 interviews!

Support Is Critical

Carrying out qualitative research is costly in terms of time and economic resources. As the process of collecting data is time consuming, and in my case, I had to travel to another country in which meant I had to invest significant resources and get support from others. Thanks to the Tokyo foundation’s SRA program that provides support for academic research related to doctoral dissertation in a foreign country, I was able to plan a 13-weeks stay to conduct my fieldwork in Chile.

However, after engaging in my fieldwork, it became obvious that the original allotted time of 13 weeks was too ambitious, which led me to extend my time in the field to 35 weeks. Because of this unexpected turn, I had to talk with the many people who were supporting my research and get from them not only their consent but also their support to keep moving forward in my research despite the hardships encountered along the way. Fortunately, at the end of the process, I was able to achieve successfully my field work’s goals thanks to the institutional support given by the SRA program, my sponsor and fieldwork supervisor –Dr. Rosa Deves- at Universidad de Chile, my committee member professor –Dr. Andres Bernasconi- at Pontificia Universidad Catolica, my institutional liaison at Universidad San Sebastian –Vicerector Gonzalo Puentes-, and my academic advisor –Dr. Daniel Levy- from the State University of New York at Albany.

San Sebastian University

The Interviewing Experience

Learning from others can be a priceless and unforgettable experience. As I traveled far to explore what Chilean part-time professors do inside and outside the university classroom, I gained a deeper understanding of what these professors do and what motivates them to work part-time in higher education. And while interviewing university administrators, it became clear why they were employing these part-time professors and how much they relied on them. In some cases, part-time professors were regarded with such high esteem that I wondered if this was the case in other countries as well.

My research also helped me to master the skill of interviewing. Can you imagine trying to interview someone who does not know anything about you but just the topic of your research? Even more, how would it feel when your interviewee sits down in front of his or her computer and does not pay any attention to you? It can be very hard to get started indeed! During my first interviews, it was difficult to deal with people I did not know, not to mention how nervous I was! But as I kept interviewing, I learned how to grab the attention of the interviewee from the outset and, more importantly, how to gain their trust about the seriousness of my research.

People are often very busy, and they want to know immediately how they were chosen for the interview; sometimes it is hard to break the ice. So, in some ways an interview is a performance from the very first moment you greet your interviewee to the minute you end the conversation. Moreover, the performance needs to be executed in a transparent manner so that you gain the trust of your interviewee and makes him or her willing to collaborate with your research and respond with valuable information to your questions. People are curious about you, so sometimes you have to talk about yourself as well. It is a two-way exchange, and as an interviewer you have to be open to the needs of the participants too.

Finally, the fieldwork evolved from being almost impossible to achieve and highly exhausting to execute (interviewing 70 people meant I had to contact many more people!) to a completely satisfying endeavor with a strong sense of accomplishment. Without doubt, it was an experience that I would recommend to anyone planning to conduct qualitative research. If you are one of them, good luck with your future endeavors! As for me, I now have to start writing and analyzing all the rich data I have managed to collect in the field.

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Lessons That Will Last a Lifetime

March 18, 2013
By 19649

I learned about the Michinoku Wind Orchestra project in spring 2012. I had a wonderful time on an earlier visit to Japan, so I was eager to travel there again. I also wanted to do something for the areas decimated by the March 2011 disaster. There was a limit to what I could do on my own, but I felt I could be of some help by participating in this project.

Damage from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami was truly shocking. I couldn’t sit still while watching the images of the destruction broadcast on television in the days following the disaster. While preparing to travel to Japan for the workshops in Tohoku and the concert at Suntory Hall in mid-August 2012, I was at once excited about being able to perform with other outstanding musicians who had volunteered to participate in the project and apprehensive about how I should communicate with the students who had gone through such a tragedy.

I arrived at Sendai Airport on August 12. This was the same airport that I had seen being engulfed by the tsunami, with its runway being strewn with planes, cars, and even homes. As far as I could tell, though, the airport seemed fully recovered from that horrifying event a year and a half ago.

Workshop at Tohoku High School

The next morning, the other Sylff fellows and I departed for Tohoku High School by bus, and there I met the Tohoku students I would be teaching. My first impression was that they were very shy and nervous. Other Sylff fellows felt the same way. We wondered that perhaps the traumatic events of March 2011 had caused them to become withdrawn.

I later learned, though, that the students were so reserved because they didn’t know each other either. They had come from various schools throughout Miyagi Prefecture, and many were meeting fellow members for the first time. As we practiced our parts, they grew more relaxed and cheerful, and I realized that my initial concerns about emotional wounds were ungrounded. Despite their youthful innocence, they also displayed the kind of maturity and inner strength that no doubt were an outgrowth of the hardship they had gone through.

Their resilience also melted away any apprehensions I had harbored prior to my visit. The workshops with the students, held over three days in Sendai, were a wonderful opportunity to make many young friends through the medium of music.

No Borders to Natural Disasters

Before moving to Tokyo for the concert at Suntory Hall, I and the other Sylff fellows visited Ishinomaki, which suffered heavy tsunami damage, and performed a mini-concert. I was appalled to see the destruction firsthand on the tour of the city. We visited a music store whose owner was repairing the pianos the tsunami washed away. While they can probably never be fully restored, the pianos were being painstakingly repaired, the owner said, so they could be used in concerts as a tribute to all those who lost their lives in the disaster.

The Ishinomaki Concert

The Ishinomaki concert was organized as an event to offer hope and encouragement to local residents, but we wound up being on the receiving end, moved and uplifted by their indomitable spirit and their will to live. I have only the highest respect for them.

It was a very hectic week, and I was quite tired by the time we reached Suntory Hall, but I thoroughly enjoyed all the rehearsals and the concert itself. At the reception following the performance, all the performers overcame the language barrier and our very different backgrounds and shared a strong sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.

There, I met a local student musician who introduced herself as a Zainichi—an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan. While I was happy to meet a fellow Korean in Japan, at the same time I realized that natural disasters have no borders and that anyone can become a victim.

The students in Tohoku had not lost their dreams and aspirations despite the difficult circumstances and seemed to truly enjoy the chance to perform. Seeing how dedicated they were, I couldn’t help but feel that music was a factor behind their bright outlook on life.

It hit upon me, then, that music can be very effective way of helping people maintain a healthy frame of mind. I also realized that music is not just something that is performed to be heard. The week I spent with the students working toward the goal of a Suntory Hall concert taught me that it is also a medium of communication. These are insights that will stay with me throughout my musical career. I also resolved to actively participate in any similar projects in the future.

The Michinoku workshops and concerts turned out to be a very valuable experience for me. I am very grateful to the Tokyo Foundation for giving me this opportunity, and I would also like to thank the teachers at the Tohoku middle and high schools, the other musicians who donated their time and energy for this project, the students at the Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, and most of all the student performers from the Tohoku area who traveled all the way to Tokyo and performed so admirably at Suntory Hall.

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Armed State-Response to Internal Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

March 7, 2013
By 19662

Sreya Maitra Roychoudhury, a Sylff fellow at Jadavpur University in India, conducted research in Sri Lanka using a Sylff Research Abroad (SRA) award. The purpose of her research was to observe the realities in Sri Lanka and deepen her insights into the “securitization” of two armed states—India and Sri Lanka—which is the central theme of her dissertation. Her report below makes clear that the purpose of her research was fulfilled and that the visit to Sri Lanka has become an important asset in writing her dissertation.

* * *

I arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on November 1, 2012, for a field trip essential for my doctoral dissertation, which examines the historical causes and the implications of armed state responses to select internal ethnic conflict situations in India and Sri Lanka and critically analyses their efficacy.

The University of Colombo , which hosted Sreya during her field research

I have been fortunate to receive mentoring and support at Jadavpur University, India, where I also had the opportunity to apply and be selected for a Sylff Research Abroad award from the Tokyo Foundation at a very opportune moment of my PhD research. This was not only because my nascent ideas on state approaches to insurgency very much demanded the filling in of ground-level realities but also because Sri Lanka is currently at a very critical juncture of its political history.

National security and socio-political stability can be significantly undermined by violent internal conflict or insurgency in any country. While authoritarian regimes unilaterally use their military to combat such challenges, modern democracies have historically sanctioned the deployment of armed forces on a short-term basis only by declaring them as ”emergencies.” Within the purview of international relations, the latter approach has been delineated by the “securitization theory” à la the constructivist paradigm founded by the Copenhagen school.

India and Sri Lanka have labored to establish consolidated democracies in South Asia, never experiencing any spell of total military rule or a civil-military regime, unlike some of their neighbors. Multi-ethnic democracies are expected to handle internal conflicts with the structural norms and practices of a democratic order. India and Sri Lanka have behaved exceptionally and tackled these by active securitization through much of the post-independence period.

Existing literature does not highlight the reasons for the continuance of conflict zones, and there is hardly any comparative empirical work on the subject. Moreover, insecurities and rebellions persist in most cases, like in India’s Northeast, Jammu and Kashmir, and, until 2009, in Sri Lanka. Additionally, due to India and Sri Lanka’s geographic contiguity and ethnic overlap, the impact of Sri Lanka’s internal conflict has been deeply left by India.

The deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in 1987 and its subsequent failures, together with the cross-border operations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, have created mistrust, inducing excessive caution in bilateral interactions.

During my month-long stay and extensive interaction with the intelligentsia, activists, and local population in Colombo, I came across a society that has suffered deep scars in its socio-political and economic fabric due to the prolonged war of the state against an ethnic community. However, it was also stated by many quite unequivocally that any challenge to the sovereignty of the state—democratic or authoritarian—must be legitimately resisted with the sanction of force and the armed machinery of the government. Detailed studies and opinions have revealed that the unyielding stance of the leaders of the separatist group precluded any scope for meaningful, peaceful reconciliation.

In the present situation, Sri Lanka has transcended war but not the conflict situation, as underlying grievances of the Tamil community continue to simmer. While ground-level opinions, observations, and reports substantiate the argument that the heavy-handed securitization approach of the state has combated militancy and terrorism with unprecedented success, it is quite clear that it also has further fragmented the already linguistically divided society, alienating the minority Tamils and establishing a ”Sinhala state.”

The field trip was significant in enabling me to collect primary data to corroborate the historical-sociological approach I had chosen for my study to gain an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of a seemingly terrorist-political problem in Sri Lanka. The instrumental role played by the monopoly of the Sinhala language in consolidating ethnic fissures is a much observed phenomenon in Sri Lanka’s history and politics.

The field trip rendered an unmediated exposition into the incremental unfolding of this phenomenon by the ruling political leaders through the turbulent decades (especially the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) and the subsequent, almost obvious deepening of the majority-minority ethnic divide, the virulent manifestation of which was the Tamil demand for secession and autonomy espoused by violent outfits like the LTTE.

The sole documentation of much of the parliamentary debates and official proceedings under the presidency (since 1976) in Sinhala and the conspicuous absence of their translation in English and Tamil languages at the National Archives of Colombo was, to my mind, a significant indicator of the calculated steps taken by the ruling elite to use “language hegemony” in asserting Sri Lanka as a Sinhala state, thereby fuelling the ongoing ethnic politics of the times.

At the National Archives of Colombo

Moreover, the informal and formal interactions at the local level rendered it quite evident that even in postwar Sri Lanka, the most sympathetic Sinhala vis-à-vis the Tamil autonomy movement would not voice any explicit statement against the present process of increasing the geographic isolation of the Tamils in the northern and eastern provinces and the conscious effort to maintain the presidency’s direct control over them by abstaining from establishing functional Provincial Councils.

To my mind, the potential for renewed conflict between communities cannot be ruled out, much less so because of a strong Tamil diaspora that continually foments a sense of marginalization. Any meaningful resolution of the internal conflict situation thus requires fundamental changes in the constitution to include greater accountability of the president, the devolution of power to Tamil representatives at the local level, and the rebuilding of a sense of trust between the ethnic communities that have been brutally eroded and lost in the ravages of the war and the unilateral, authoritarian style of governance.

While the operational political systems of India and Sri Lanka differ (parliamentary versus presidential system), they could actively engage through common multilateral forums like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to articulate state responses beyond securitization measures that can be implemented to resolve their respective insurgencies on a sustainable basis.

Even though Sri Lanka is a consolidated, democratic nation in South Asia, my field trip rendered stark the realities and nuances of administrative functioning that transpires in a presidential system, as compared to the parliamentary model of India. Divergences in the operational political realities of Sri Lanka, issues in the functions of the constitution, and aspirations of the people were rendered clear only in the course of my studies at the local level. Other interesting and related facets of society like education, community development, and the changing role of the military in postwar Sri Lanka also became vivid, providing a comprehensive overview.

Being an endowed fellow, the credibility of my research was instantly recognized by the interviewees and interested researchers and students.

My research is focused on providing a systematic explanation for the war that prevailed, prescribe ways to avoid the military option on a prolonged basis, and guarantee basic human rights and security to citizens. The insights I gained on the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka also helped me to build a comparative study of armed approaches to insurgency in two democracies, keeping in mind the differences in their operational dynamics.

I also seek to explore possible state responses beyond the military option that can be implemented by the democratic, multi-ethnic countries of India and Sri Lanka to resolve their respective insurgency issues on a sustainable basis. This would hopefully enhance bilateral ties and move regional peace keeping initiatives in South Asia a step forward.

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A Prescription for Halting Deflation

February 21, 2013
By null

Yale Professor Urges Bolder Actions from the BOJ

Koichi Hamada, the Tuntex Professor Emeritus of Economics at Yale University and the mastermind behind Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policy for economic revitalization—dubbed “Abenomics”—visited the Tokyo Foundation recently to share his thoughts with research fellows.

Hamada has been at the center of Japanese media attention for strongly endorsing Abe’s antideflation strategy. The professor’s remarks were widely quoted by the Liberal Democratic Party leader during the campaign for the December 16, 2012, House of Representatives election, which the LDP won by a landslide.

Hamada’s remarks significantly boosted the LDP’s standing among the public, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet. He advocates a bold quantitative easing policy to halt deflation and reverse the steep appreciation of the yen. Following the election victory, Hamada was appointed by the prime minister to serve as a special advisor to the cabinet.

* * *

Professor Hamada was a key Sylff steering committee member when the Sylff program was established at Yale in 1989, playing an instrumental role in building the program at the university during the crucial early period.

Joined by Tokyo Foundation Senior Fellows Shigeki Morinobu and Yutaka Harada—experts on the economy and fiscal policy—and other Foundation research fellows at an informal Tokyo Foundation meeting on December 14, Koichi Hamada asserted it was high time for the Bank of Japan to overturn its cautious monetary policy. “Real or structural problems in the Japanese economy, like higher oil prices that have little to do with the currency system, can’t be addressed with monetary policy,” Hamada noted. “However, since deflation and the yen’s steep appreciation are issues related to the domestic and foreign value of money, they should be dealt with policies that directly address currency values.”

Hamada believes, though, that Japan’s monetary authorities have been trying to treat the symptoms with the wrong medicine for the past 15 years. “It’s like trying to cure a stomach ailment with drugs for a heart condition.”

The Bank of Japan contends that its zero-interest-rate policy already furnishes enough funds to the market and that any additional quantitative easing will not lead to increased lending. “All you have to do is look at the Federal Reserve’s purchases of mortgage-backed securities in the United States to realize that such arguments don’t hold water,” Hamada contended. “In Japan, the BOJ can easily purchase CPs, EFTs, REITs, and foreign currency denominated bonds.”

Just as expectations of deflation can in itself have a negative impact on the national psyche, “the belief that deflation is going to be overcome will have a positive effect,” he added. Indeed, the yen has depreciated by more than 10% since November, hitting a two-and-a-half-year low of around 91 per dollar in late January.

“Monetary policy is something that must be applied when the market needs it most,” Hamada emphasized. “It’s common knowledge in economics that monetary policy is more effective than fiscal policy under flexible rates. A bill was passed last year to raise Japan’s consumption tax to 8% by April 2014 and to 10% by October 2015. “Raising taxes first and then relaxing monetary policy is precisely what you shouldn’t do,” Hamada warned. “You need a recovery from deflation first, and then you can use a tax hike to control it, if necessary. And the consumption tax should be the last thing you raise. A much better idea would be an environment tax,” he said, which could encourage innovations in eco-friendly technologies.

Is the Yen Really Too Strong?

Shigeki Morinobu, left, and Koichi Hamada.

While admitting that deflation can be mitigated with monetary tools, Tokyo Foundation Senior Fellow and Chuo University Law School Professor Shigeki Morinobu cautioned that real-world trends must also be taken into consideration, such as the end of the Cold War that opened the floodgates to cheaper labor in Eastern Europe and demographic changes toward an aging society in Japan. “Inflation targeting can be effective,” he said, “but there remains the question of whether it can be stopped once the target is reached, say, at around 2 percent.” He also pointed to the negative consequences of having to make higher interest payments for one’s debt once inflation kicks in.

Morinobu also questioned the common assumption that the yen is too strong against the dollar. “In terms of purchasing power, comparing the prices of fast food in Japan and the United States, for instance,” he said, “I don’t think 80 yen is intolerably high. In fact, companies claiming the yen is too strong might simply be trying to cover up for the shortcomings in their own projections.”

Senior Fellow and Waseda University Professor Yutaka Harada took issue with this view, pointing out that just before the global financial crisis of the late 2000s, the yen was trading at around 120 yen per dollar. “When it steadily climbed to around 80 yen,” Harada said, “many Japanese businesses were forced to lay workers off or halt production of items that no longer paid at that exchange rate. Curtailing production,” he emphasized, “means fewer jobs.” Many companies have been able to survive as a result of these adjustments, but the ranks of the unemployed have swelled, and promising R&D projects have been abandoned. “Many of these technologies were picked up by companies in South Korea and elsewhere,” Harada noted, further compounding the woes of Japanese manufacturers.

Yutaka Harada, right, and Koichi Hamada.

The general lowering of income levels from higher unemployment and sluggish corporate profits, Harada commented, has been affecting demand in the nonexport sectors of the economy as well, exacerbating deflation. “There’s no denying that the exchange rate has presented a serious challenge to many Japanese companies,” Harada added.

Because the yen’s value is the rate vis-à-vis the US dollar, it is bound to rise if the United States expands the amount of money in the economy through quantitative easing while Japan does nothing. “The Fed doubled the money supply with QE1 and tripled it with QE2,” Harada said, as a means of overcoming the financial crisis. The money supply in Japan, which was not as severely affected by the crisis, has expanded by only around 30%. “That’s not nearly enough,” Harada asserted. “If Japan had at least doubled its money supply, the yen wouldn’t have shot up as high, and jobs wouldn’t have been lost.”

Working at a Disadvantage

Economists have pointed to the fact that while Japan’s per capita gross domestic product is nearly identical with that of South Korea in purchasing power terms, it is twice the South Korean figure when calculated using exchange rates, suggesting that the yen is disproportionately strong against the won.

“The Korean won depreciated by 30 percent against the dollar while the yen appreciated by 30 percent,” Harada said, “so there’s obviously going to be a big gap in the values of the two currencies.”

South Korea has been known to intervene directly in the currency market to adjust the exchange rate, “But the BOJ can do the same if it wanted to,” asserted Hamada. “It’s been overly timid, thinking that if it aimed for the green it would overshoot it, so it’s been using a putter to get itself out of a bunker for the past fifteen years. Many excellent studies have shown the extent to which Japanese companies have been placed at a disadvantage by this policy,” the Yale professor said, “but such studies have categorically been ignored by the central bank and the major media in Japan.”

The issue of Japan’s huge public debt cannot be overlooked, however, and the Abe administration has announced a fiscal stimulus package that is likely to exacerbate that debt. “Under the circumstances, there’s really no choice but to opt for reflation and somehow get the economy to a state close to full employment,” Hamada said. “Only then can we gauge how bad Japan’s fiscal condition really is. Any hike in the consumption can wait until then.”

Morinobu, though, pointed to the potential risks of higher interest rates on the real economy. “Higher interest will mean that the value of government bonds held by Japanese financial institutions will depreciate,” he claimed. “A 1 percent rise in interest rates will mean a decline of 10 trillion yen in the book value of these bonds. Such a drop will surely affect the capital adequacy ratio, and could lead to a credit squeeze.”

Harada offered the reminder that this has been the argument given by the Bank of Japan for not adopting a quantitative easing policy. “Bonds aren’t the only assets financial institutions own,” Harada said. “They also have loans, equities, and real estate. The bigger banks also have overseas assets, so a cheaper yen will boost those values. If quantitative easing can produce a lower yen, higher nominal GDP, more jobs, and increased tax revenues, there’s no good reason not to take this step.”

“The points we discussed today have been pondered at great length by economists over the past 250 years,” Hamada said in closing, “but our arguments have often gone unheard, even by central bankers. So in that sense, the attention given me by Mr. Shinzo Abe has been a source of great joy for me. At the same time,” he said, “I’m humbled by the fact that it takes politicians to get our message across to the media and the general public.”

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A Real Conversation through Music

December 10, 2012
By 19639

Our expedition began at the Charles de Gaulle airport, where Dylan, Carl-Emmanuel and I had agreed to meet. Excited and impatient, we journeyed in a superb Airbus 380: the flight went perfectly. Upon our arrival in Japan, there were 12 more hours of travel, and jet lag set in… I never adjusted completely to the time change: my body was tired but my spirits alert!

A very full program awaited us—perhaps too much for just seven days—the principal aim of which was for us to meet and exchange with Japanese students between the ages of 12 and 15, and to prepare them for our joint final concert in Tokyo. The experience was a fascinating one: I discovered an entirely different educational system! The students were very shy, making communication almost impossible the first day.

A typical day involved our departing together by bus from the hotel in Sendai at about 8:15, arriving at Tohoku High School 30 minutes later. Classes began at 9 am, and I would work on a rotating basis with groups of five to six students, according to their instrumental level. We worked on warm up techniques—these vary considerably between countries.

It was thus that I was able to work with three horn players at the highest study level—without translators—and to have a real conversation about our instrument. They asked me all sorts of questions related to the horn, to the music, and even about me! And I discovered that they were curious, eager to know more!

As a result of this exchange, they in turn confided in me, speaking of the impact the tsunami on their lives. Virtually all of the students had lost a member of their entourage during the catastrophe. I was very surprised and honored that they had chosen to confide in me, for this felt unusual. I shared a truly special moment with these young people, and the final concert in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall was very moving indeed.

Throughout our stay, we were extremely well cared for—the Japanese team was most attentive to all our needs.

Our group gave a concert in Ishinomaki, a town situated on the eastern coast, north of Sendai. Around 90% of the town had been destroyed. We visited an old residential neighborhood that had been totally devastated and in which we saw only the remains of houses. I found this extremely upsetting and moving—almost embarrassing. While I’d thought I could imagine the horror of the catastrophe, in fact its reality came home to me for the first time in Ishinomaki. I felt the extraordinary Japanese determination to reclaim their lives, without giving in to despair. It was amazing.

I was thrilled to meet other Sylff fellows from New York and Vienna. I already knew the oboist Merideth Hite, as well as Bärli Nugent, who had coordinated the Sylff Chamber Ensemble project at the Juilliard School in January 2011. I performed Poulenc’s brass trio with two Viennese musicians, Dietmar Nigsch and Panju Kim. Our encounter was a warm one, though the very tight schedule and lack of time made it hard to manage everything.

Performing together again is something we’d all like to do—though perhaps difficult to realize! For the moment, we are staying in touch and beginning to think about a new project…