UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND
Asian Studies Newsletter
Spring 2013
Abroad in Tokyo
It only really sunk in that I was going to Japan 30,000 feet
above the Pacific Ocean en route to Narita International
Airport. For months I had looked forward to the adventure,
but suddenly I found myself—to put it eloquently, “pretty
freaked out.” A hundred questions and apprehensions
attacked me. What do I do at customs? Is someone picking me
up at the airport? Should I have arranged a cellphone plan?
Should I have exchanged more money in LAX? More importantly, what was I thinking? And most importantly, did
they have Oreos in Japan?! I still struggle to describe my first
few days in the Land of the Rising Sun. I was under water, on Mars, but at the same time maybe just at a resort full
of Japanese tourists. Things were certainly different, but it escaped me what exactly it was that was off. When we
were finally permitted to open our windows on landing the first and only things I saw were a Hilton Hotel, and a
golf course—I wondered for half a second if I hadn’t just taken a ten hour flight to Miami. The first foreign obstacle
I had to overcome was the heat. To conserve energy, Tokyo had enacted an air-conditioning ban for my arrival. The
first tired weeks were sticky with sweat. However, soon fatigue of a
different sort set in on me. It was a new experience for me to be a
foreigner. Every hour I was awake was an oral exam paired with a
reading comprehension test, and this mental exertion took its toll.
An eight o’clock bed time continued a week after jetlag faded away.
When I describe my trip to my friends and family, I like to joke that
Japan was way more “Japanese” than I thought it was going to be.
Sushi at every corner, the roar of pachinko machines, and high
school girls in wild outfits in the Harajuku district did nothing to
dissuade my preconceived notions. That being said, Japan, like any
other place, can either be a sum of stereotypes or a diverse world
full of exceptions, novelties, enigmas, and surprises.
Spending time with Japanese college students was perhaps the most significant part of visiting Japan. The
eagerness, enthusiasm, and genuine good heartedness of our local peers blew me away. Part of this openness was
owing to the Japanese students’ fascination with America, but the friendships that grew from this curiosity were
genuine and heartwarming. I knew there were going to be some disconnects between us foreign exchange
students and our new environment, but what I noticed was the disconnect between me and others came in
unexpected places. There seemed to be a bigger gap between the young and the old, than the American and the
Japanese. All college students like free food, good internet, and sleeping—this was not a uniquely American
collegiate phenomenon. These small values, while seemingly arbitrary, helped put in perspective the unanimity of
humanity. We all had annoying siblings, bad breakups, lousy jobs, and too much to do.
Continued on page 8
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Upcoming Events
Andrew Barshay
Siberian Shadows: Japanese Prisoners Remember the
Soviet Gulag, 1945-1956 , April 9th 4:00pm WY 301
As the Japanese empire collapsed in August 1945, over 600,000 Japanese soldiers in Manchuria surrendered to the Red Army
and were transported to Soviet labor camps, mainly in Siberia. There they were held in most cases for between two and four
years, and some far longer. Known as the Siberian Internment (Shiberia yokuryū), this period of prolonged captivity brought
forced labor and exposure to an intense campaign of ideological reeducation in which Japanese activists played an important
role. Long before Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) appeared in the USSR, Japanese gulag veterans
began to produce not just memoirs but essays, poetry, sculpture, and painting based on their experiences. Using the work of
Kazuki Yasuo, Takasugi Ichirō, and Ishihara Yoshirō, Barshay shows the relationship between length of captivity and interpretation of the mass and variety of memory-work undertaken by former internees.
Professor Timothy Brook
Vermeer’s Hat: Understanding the Impact of European Trade on China in the 17th Century
April 17th 4:00pm WY 109
Asian Studies is happy to welcome Timothy Brook,
Republic of China Chair from the Department of History
and Institute of Asian Research at the University of
British Columbia Timothy Brook will be on campus April
9th to speak from his book Vermeer’s Hat. The book
explores globalization and the increasing dialogue between China and European powers in the 17th century.
Dear Doctor
When a beloved small
town doctor goes missing,
the police find—through
stories told by his assistants and townspeople—
that the doctor may not
have been who he
claimed to be.
(Drama/Mystery)
Tuesday March 26th
6:00pm
JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL
Norwegian Wood
A student in the 60’s
finds himself at a
romantic crossroad. He
must choose between
his introspective
relationship with his
girlfriend, and Midori,
the outgoing girl who
has marched vivaciously
into his life.
(Drama/Romance)
Monday April 8th
6:00pm Wyatt 209
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News from Abroad—Teaching at Hwa Nan
Every other year the Trimble family sends a lucky Asian Studies Alumna to Hwa Nan Women’s College
in Fuzhou China to teach English for a year. Liz Whitaker, class of 2012, sends some updates home.
“I will be starting the second semester of teaching tomorrow (Feb. 27), and I'm very happy to discover
that I will be teaching the same three classes of students. I teach one class from the Applied English
department and two classes from the Business English department; all are first-year students. Last
semester I taught all the students the same course, but this semester I will have two different courses.
I look forward to having a little more variety. In retrospect, I do appreciate having just the one course
last semester, as I think it made my first teaching experience somewhat easier than balancing many
different courses.
This picture was taken after the singing contest put on
by the Applied English department last fall. I was on
the panel of judges along with the other foreign
teachers at Hwa Nan, as well as a few Chinese
teachers. My class, I'm proud to say, earned second
place.
Over the holiday I had the opportunity to travel
quite a bit. In late January, I traveled by myself to
Hunan province to visit Zhangjiajie and Changsha.
Zhangjiajie has a famous national park, whose
karst topography is said to have contributed to
James Cameron's inspiration for the mountains in
the sky in Avatar.
My mother also visited me over the holiday. It was
her first time to China. She first came to Fuzhou
(and Hwa Nan) for a few days, and we then traveled together for a week. We visited a number of places in southern China (in the Guangxi and Yunnan
provinces). This is a picture of us in front of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.”
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Upcoming Events and Announcements
Origins of Political Order
By Francis Fukuyama.
Part of the Brown and
Haley Lecture series.
April 3rd 7 pm
Schneebeck
Asian Studies is pleased to offer the
Suzanne Wilson Barnett Writing Award
Students may submit any paper of any length written for any
Asian Studies course, including Asia-related first-year seminar
courses taught during the most recent Spring, Fall or Summer.
Authors of senior, junior or sophomore standing must have
declared the Asian Studies designation or any of the Asian
Languages and Cultures majors or minors at the time of
submission.
Please see the Asian Studies webpage or contact Lorraine Toler in
the Asian Studies office for more information
JAPAN WEEK 日本週間 April 3-8
Tuesday, April 2: Decorate with Japanese Style, Haiku Composition and sushi
Wednesday, April 3: Mountain Temple Style Tea Ceremony
Thursday, April 4: Kanji cookie sale
Friday, April 5: Mochi Making
Monday, April 8: Japanese film, Norwegian Wood
Tuesday, April 9: Lecture with Andrew Barshay
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Five Ways of Making Matcha
Nathan Pinkus writes:
Last summer, under the guidance of Professor Mikiko Ludden, Nathan
Pinkus, Jeremy Baba, and Annin Ramsing, traveled to Japan to study the
cultural significance of tea in Japan. This included an in depth look at every
part of tea’s journey, from the fields to the cup. In the fall the tea team gave
a presentation on campus of their findings.
“The short study abroad last summer was the first
time that I was able to visit Japan, so I was especially excited to be able to make use of my minor. During this trip, we were able to travel
across the entire southern half of Japan, going
just about everywhere tea is produced and manufactured. We were able to, through surveys, interviews, and observation, study both the large
variety of tea made in Japan and the cultural significance tea has to Japanese people. We talked
with people in every step of the tea process: from
producers, to manufacturers, to sellers, and of
course also to consumers. During our presentation at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center we will discuss and serve several different types of Japanese
tea (including sencha, genmaicha, kyobancha,
tengu-kurocha, houjicha, and matcha), as well as
talk about our experiences abroad and how we
came in contact with these unique teas.”
Above: The Tea Investigation Crew. From left: Annin
Ramsing, Nathan Pinkus, Mikiko Ludden, and Jeremy Baba
Below: The manager explains the tea making process at a
tea manufacturing factory
Annin Ramsing crushing up tea leaves for Tea Hour
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Professor, Nick Kontogeorgopoulos’s Sabbatical
At the request of the curious peers, students, and friends on campus Professor Kontogeorgopoulos gave us an update on
his research excursion to Thailand.
“With the support of a John Lantz Senior Sabbatical Fellowship, I am currently in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand conducting research on volunteer tourism, which is travel that combines leisure with volunteer work. Volunteering while
travelling is a growing subsector of tourism, and particular destinations in Southeast Asia, including Chiang Mai, attract an
increasing number of volunteers hoping to augment their travel experiences with opportunities to volunteer in schools,
temples, women’s shelters, medical clinics, residential homes for disadvantaged children, environmental conservation
organizations, and other sites where certain skills or labor are perceived to be in short supply. In almost all cases, volunteers interact with children, Buddhist monks, or members of marginalized communities, such as undocumented workers
from Burma, victims of domestic abuse or human trafficking, ethnic minorities from Burma that have entered Thailand as
political refugees, or people with disabilities. However, the vast majority of volunteers in Chiang Mai teach English either
in Thai government schools or in Buddhist temples (many temples have high schools so that monks do not have to delay
their education).
In the two months that I have spent thus far in Chiang Mai, I have interviewed volunteers from all over the world about
their motivations for volunteering, their expectations of the experience, and their perceived impact on locals. I have met
a wide range of volunteers, from teenagers taking a gap year between high school and college, to octogenarians hoping to
utilize their decades of teaching experience to improve the English conversational abilities of monks. Although research
in Southeast Asia can at times be difficult and unpredictable, I have greatly benefitted from the generosity and openness
of volunteers, Thai coordinators, and volunteer organization managers.
Recently, I also travelled to Phnom Penh and Siem
Reap, Cambodia, to meet with activists who are
campaigning against so-called “orphanage tourism,”
in which tourists participate in very short (from onehour to half-day) tours of orphanages. These “petan-orphan” tours have become controversial in
Cambodia because of a 2011 UNICEF study that
found that most of the children in orphanages in
Cambodia are not in fact orphans, but rather have
been brought there by a desperately poor parent
with the encouragement of private orphanages hoping to earn income from concerned tourists. While
there exist legitimate orphanages that assist children in need, the lack of government oversight, the
depth of rural poverty, and the desire among tourists in Cambodia to do something about the poverty
that they witness have created incentives for entrepreneurial but unethical individuals to create orphanages aimed at earning donations and attracting
paid visits by tourists. Fortunately, volunteer opportunities in Chiang Mai generally last for a minimum of two weeks (with an average of about one month), and usually take
place in schools rather than unregulated, privately-run orphanages.
I wish I had wild tales of adventure to share, but most of my time has been spent stuck in traffic getting from one meeting
or interview to another, or walking in blistering heat in formal business attire to meet a government or university official.
Of course, the sunlight and Thai food have largely compensated for these and other inconveniences. I look forward to
getting back to Puget Sound, and I hope everyone is having a wonderful semester. Oh, I should point out that the picture
included here was taken at a high school for monks that is housed within a large temple (Wat Sri Soda) on the outskirts of
Chiang Mai. A group picture was being taken on behalf of a volunteer who was returning home that day, and I was in the
middle of interviewing another volunteer nearby when a senior monk gestured for me to get in the picture, and specifically indicated that I should sit at the front. How could I refuse a senior monk, even if it meant being in an awkward photo?”
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Course Offerings for Asian Studies Fall 2013
ComDept
Crs Sec Course Title
ponent CO Units Days
ALC
310 A
Pre-modern Japanese Literature LEC
ALC
315
Modern Chinese Literature
ARAB
101 A
Modern Elementary Arabic
LEC
FL
1.00 MTWT__ 10.00- 10.50 Yasmine Khattab
ART
278 A
Survey of Asian Art
LEC
FN
1.00 M_W_F 09.00- 09.50 Staff
ART
278 B
Survey of Asian Art
LEC
FN
1.00 M_W_F 11.00- 11.50 Staff
ASIA
350 A
Tibet Real/Imagined/Perceived
LEC
HM
1.00 M W F
CHIN
101 A
First Year Chinese
LEC
FL
1.00 M_W_F 09.00- 09.50 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
101 B
First Year Chinese
LEC
FL
1.00 M_W_F 11.00- 11.50 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
101 CC First Year Chinese
DIS
FL
0.00 __T
11.00- 11.50 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
101 DD First Year Chinese
DIS
FL
0.00 __T
12.30- 13.20 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
201 A
Second Year Chinese
LEC
FL
1.00 M_W_F 12.00- 12.50 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
201 AA Second Year Chinese
DIS
FL
0.00 M
13.00- 13.50 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
201 AB Second Year Chinese
DIS
FL
0.00 __T
08.30- 09.20 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
201 AC Second Year Chinese
DIS
FL
0.00 __T
09.30- 10.20 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
201 AD Second Year Chinese
DIS
FL
0.00 ___W__ 10.00- 10.50 Lo Sun Perry
CHIN
230 A
Grammar and Articulation
LEC
FL
1.00 __T_T__ 15.30- 16.50 David Hull
CHIN
307 A
Old and New China in Film
LEC
CONN
369 A
Power, Gender and Divinity
LEC
CSOC
380 A
Islam and the Media
LEC
HIST
129 A
Mao's China
LEC
HIST
245 A
China to 1600
LEC
HM
1.00 T Th
Times
Instructor
14.00- 15.20 Jan Leuchtenberger
M_W_F 11 -11:50
12- 12:50
David Hull
Elisabeth Benard
1.00 M_W_F 13.00- 13.50 David Hull
CN
SI
1.00 M_W
14.00- 15.20 Elisabeth Benard
1.00 __T_T
15.30- 16.50 Gareth Barkin
1.00 M_W_F 10.00- 10.50 Jennifer Neighbors
1.00 M_W_F 12-1250
Jennifer Neighbors
1.00 M W F
Jennifer Neighbors
Resistance, Rebellion and RevoHIST
344 A
lution in China 1800- present
14-14:50
JAPN
101 A
First Year Japanese
LEC
FL
1.00 MTWTH 10.00- 10.50 Jan Leuchtenberger
JAPN
101 B
First Year Japanese
LEC
FL
1.00 MTW_F 13.00- 13.50 Mikiko Ludden
JAPN
201 A
Second Year Japanese
LEC
FL
1.00 MTW_F 11.00- 11.50 Staff
JAPN
301 A
Third Year Japanese
LEC
1.00 M _W_F 11.00- 11.50 Mikiko Ludden
JAPN
360 A
Japanese Fiction and Film
LEC
1.00 M_W_F 10-10:50
PG
372 A
Japanese Political Economy
LEC
1.00 M_W_F 14.00-14.50 Karl Fields
PG
378 A
Chinese Political Economy
LEC
1.00 M_W_F 10.00- 10.50 Karl Fields
REL
208 A
Yoga & the Ascetic Imperative
LEC
HM
1.00 __T_T
11.00- 12.20 Stuart Smithers
REL
234 A
Chinese Religious Traditions
LEC
HM
1.00 __T_T
14.00- 15.20 Jonathan Stockdale
REL
332 A
Buddhism
LEC
Mikiko Ludden
1.00 M_W_F 10.00- 10.50 Elisabeth Benard
A SIA N STU DI E S N E W SL E T TE R
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Garrett Stanford’s Abroad in Tokyo continued from page 1
The months that followed continued to remind me that I had
in fact got on the right flight, and had successfully immersed
myself head to tabi (Japanese socks) in trains, bizarre
television, and passive social encounters. Reflecting on the
four months I spent in Japan often results in a mess of strong
emotions, vivid memories, and few words of description.
Never before had my heart, mind, and been so full at the
same time. Waiting in the Narita Airport with teary eyed Japanese and American students alike, I knew that my decision to
visit Japan had been the right one. Or as my Obachan
(homestay grandmother) would often say, “I think that Japan
is very good I think.”
Asian Studies Program
University of Puget Sound
1500 North Warner St. #1054
Tacoma, WA 98416-1054
TO:
Garrett Stanford ‘14 is the current student assistant for Asian
Studies. Garrett is a recipient of the Trimble Scholarship for
Study Abroad in Asia.
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