It has been a while. Time (or lack thereof) has been the main culprit but that is no excuse for one who aspires to pursue a writerly life...eventually. But over the last few months I have had pause to reflect that it is now some thirty-five years since I first came to Japan, having just completed a university degree in Asian Studies, (formal graduation was to come in April the following year, it took a while back then), and very keen to get a start on looking at the country with which I had
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| Sun rising on a new view of life (from my office, Tokyo) |
The first three months were spent at a language school, intensifying my studies, using textbooks even older than the ones I'd just finished studying, and enduring what can only be described as the homestay, if not from hell, then most certainly a small detour via an off-ramp from the freeway of life.
Fortunately, neither the classes nor the homestay lasted forever and in April 1984 I sat in on my first classes in political science at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo and the rest, as they cliche, is history. Actually, it isn't history at all unless someone writes about it so here I am. And here you are, dear reader.
I recall reading in a foreword to a book by a Japan scholar I admire and who has been somewhat influential in my own approach to Japan, Professor Gavan McCormack, that he first came to Japan in 1962 and my first reaction was, 'gosh, before I was born!', and I thought well probably one day that will be the same for me for my students...and indeed, 1984 is a long time before many of them were born. I guess at this point, I feel it is important to put down in words what I've learnt over the years, why it takes some time to become familiar enough with another country, another culture, before you can make some inroads into understanding and, hopefully, leaving the world a little better off.
'Thirty-five years--or thereabouts' will be the sub-blog to reflect on a number of these issues, and probably non-issues, but matters worth noting. I was just going to make it one post on the anniversary of my thirty-five years but as I thought about it, made notes, and thought a bit more, well, it grew to more than one should have to bear in a post.
I haven't spent the whole 35 years here in Japan. After that first stint as an exchange student in 1984, I returned home at the end of 1985 and completed honours at Griffith in 1986. In 1987, against my better judgement (*filed under life lessons for the young ones) I headed over to the University of Queensland to start my PhD. In April 1988 it was back to Tokyo, this time the Graduate School of Tokyo University to study International Relations and do a bit of field work for my PhD. It was back to Australia in late 1989, ostensibly to continue my PhD (the topic of which I had become quite bored with, my then-supervisor even more so--*also filed under life lessons for the young ones) but I found myself applying for and getting a job in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for about a year, and where I probably would have stayed if my then director hadn't promised to derail my progress through the department (*no mechanisms to cite harassment or bullying in those days--*note to those coming through now).
So in 1991, it was back to the university, as a part-time roustabout--language tutor, research assistant, whatever was going, scraping things together. I found myself with enough resources to get back to Japan for some more research during the year, just a couple of weeks.
There was another short work trip back to Japan in 1993, research for a series of textbooks we were writing--all royalties to the department in what I now suspect was some kind of dodgy deal--and then something of a small break when I was granted a half-time teaching position (full-time workload--precarious work in the University has a long history) which had the promise of full-time, properly, at the end of 18 months.
Turned out, one of the lads needed a job, so at the end of 1995, despite having been timetabled into teaching the Masters degree and writing up course outlines for all my courses in 1996, that was it, out.
I very nearly quit the University entirely...instead, I changed departments but through much of 1996 found myself unemployed and for the first time in 16 or 17 years, 'deinstitutionalised'. I found myself working in a secondhand bookshop in Brisbane, with pretty poor working conditions but work nonetheless.
By 1997, Japan and academia were pretty much gone in my mind. What was I to make of it?
In April 1997, thrown a bit of a lifeline of sorts, I was offered a position in the office of an independent (previously ALP) senator and the latent political scientist in me, decided to take it on. Politics from the inside, I conjectured. And what a ride it was, but again, pretty far from Japan and indeed I spent some time looking at other ways to pursue a career when the position retired with the Senator in June 1999.
So, briefly, it was back to uni. I had completed a Masters along the way and was about ready to resume the old PhD topic in a new department, with a new supervisor and a little more enthusiasm.
Again supported by some part-time paid, full-time workload teaching and research assistant work, I managed to make it through.
In January 2003, I took up a position at the university just north of Brisbane, straddling both my language and politics and international relations expertise, a bargain two lecturers for the price of one as it turned out.
Still, I hadn't been back to Japan for a few years, financial reasons mostly, but I naively imagined that a full-time tenured position at a university would mean some assistance to get there, surely. With no research money available it looked bleak. At the same time, I couldn't consider myself 'authentic' if my last trip to Japan had been back in the mid-1990s.
In 2007, I was meeting with some high school language teachers, one of whom gave me pause to rethink. She mentioned she made her way back to Italy every year, on her own money, just to brush up--here she was, a single mother on a teacher's salary and making the effort...if I kept waiting around for research 'grants' and their concomitant 'authenticity', then I'd probably never get there.
So in 2008, I made my first trip back to Japan, under my own steam, in my own time. I endeavoured to do so every year., and did so until 2015, mostly to watch the elections close up...because? well, it is what I did. Unfortunately, given the system, none of the work I did as a result was validated because it didn't come as part of research grants (*a story of a system, broken, for another day)...
In 2015 I was offered my present post. I started in 2016. In April 2016, it was as a professor of political science; in April 2018, I was asked to become Director of International Relations and a member of the university's senior executive (just like a Pro-Vice Chancellor at home) and in April 2019, this year, I was asked to step up to be Chair of the Department of Political Science, at the start of my fourth year here in my current iteration of thirty-five years, or thereabouts. It is also like a twenty-year career trajectory squeezed into three short years.
All of which is to say (and thank you dear reader, if you have come this far), that in 35 years, I've spent a total of just over six and a half years living in Japan, at quite different times in its history. I guess you could say there is some longitude in my engagement with this place, if not the everyday familiarity of someone who might have spent all thirty-five of those years here. But I've been engaging and observing and reflecting and thinking and it is probably time I started putting fingers to the keyboard...there is a story or three to be told.
More to come...as they cliche.
