Japan in the World, the World in Japan: Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan by Center for Japanese Studies

Author:Center for Japanese Studies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies
Published: 2001-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Frustrations and Promise of a Career Involved with US.-Japan Economic Relations

Merit E. Janow

I have spent much of my career thinking about problems in international economic law and policy and in particular working on issues resulting from economic ties between the United States and Japan. Here, I shall venture no more than a few very personal observations and reflections. But first, since anniversaries are designed to allow moments of personal as well as professional reflection, please let me indulge in a moment of nostalgia.

Unlike most of the distinguished panelists and attendees at these happy celebrations, my first exposure to the University of Michigan came as an undergraduate, not as a graduate student. I came to Ann Arbor from the American School in Japan (ASIJ). My parents had been civilians in the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) Occupation of Japan. My father served in the government section as an economist and worked on exchange-rate reform issues; my mother worked on agricultural reform as a botanist. In 1947 they started an engineering consulting firm in Tokyo. Except for my father’s brief stint in the Kennedy Administration, my parents stayed on in Japan until they returned to the United States and retired. I therefore came to the University of Michigan from Tokyo, relatively unfamiliar with life in the United States.

The Japan that I remember from my youth is, of course, not to be found today. Tokyo was filled with streetcars. Kamishibai (story tellers) regularly visited our neighborhood, and so did old men banging hyoshigi (wooden clappers) to warn of fires. I attended a Japanese yochien as the only foreigner; I recall the Japanese children were unwelcoming. While in high school, I thought I had some vague sense of wanting to major in matters related to Japan, law, and economics. The University of Michigan had the good sense to send a recruiter out to Tokyo and without much additional knowledge about the school (except that it was large and excellent in many departments) I came to Ann Arbor. I’m not even sure I really knew where Michigan was located when I landed in Detroit. Kids today are much better organized and informed!

Michigan, even as an undergraduate, offered a marvelous selection of classes related to Japan and Asia. I found the Center for Japanese Studies to be a second home. As a student in Professor Roger Hackett’s seminar on foreign influences in Japan during the Meiji period, I recall taking an oral final that focused on the contributions of Lafcadio Hearn. I am also indebted to Professor John Campbell, who taught me what little I know about the structure of the Japanese political system. It goes without staying that his work on Japanese budget politics remains a classic. Indeed, some of his observations from the 1970s provided guidance for me in the 1990s when I was working on sectoral problems as a trade negotiator. I also studied Japanese language intensively at Michigan and learned with horror what I had been saying for so many years with my informal adolescent Japanese.

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