The archivists were incredibly friendly, and warned me in advanced that they didn’t think they would have too much from the period I was looking at. After providing the letters of introduction that are required at most archives in China and having the way paved for me thanks to a phone call from a contact I made in Jinan, I was allowed to search for documents using their digital database. They even gave me a free lunch from their cafeteria on the first day and a free copy of a book they had published that I was interested in getting containing documents from the wartime period.

Unlike the provincial archives, this archive found their collection manageable enough to scan and store digitally copies of all the files and make them available for viewing by visitors in place of the originals. Unfortunately, I was not given the option of looking at the originals instead. Also unlike the provincial archives, the online search of their database seems to return results from a much larger proportion of materials that are found by searching for the same on their internal database.¹ They did not allow me to save any of the digital TIF image collections of individual documents onto a USB drive² but I was allowed to print documents and, after their contents was checked over by the archivist³, to make off with these environmentally less friendly non-digital printouts.

Unfortunately, almost everything that could have been done wrong with this digitization program and its presentation to the visitor did. So let me list of the issues as a warning to other, especially smaller archives, that might consider going the digital route. I have listed them from the least worrisome to most serious:

1) Environment: The computer designated for viewing of documents had a cheap monitor with little screen brightness (even when set to full) which faced a window where sunlight beamed into the room (even when I convinced them to partially lower shades), providing a horrible viewing experience and harm to the eyes. An uncomfortable mini-mouse, horrible chair, and a table with almost no spare room for visitors to put a notebook or their laptop made this a nightmare to spend any length of time looking at documents.

2) Software: The custom built database software had an advanced query system which is useful for advanced users and archivists but requires multiple stages to search and although I quickly got used to it, I think it would confuse users not used to such systems. Also, when it shows images of archive files, a lot of vertical screen space is wasted on software options and interface components, which leads to a great deal of scrolling at any zoom level that makes reading possible.

3) Page Numbers: At the archive in question I requested a lot of documents where essentially local versions of other documents that I had seen before from other districts. Having seen many originals of this kind I know most of them are one small A5ish sized sheets of very thin paper that are held together with string. Despite the age of these documents, surprisingly I have never run into paging issues at the provincial archives, mostly because I’m seeing them still stringed together. By contrast, pages were all over the place in these documents in their digital form. While it is possible they were already unstringed and in messed up order when the contractors got the documents, I suspect that they got messed up through negligence when the originals were unstringed in order to be scanned.

4) Indexing: This is a very serious problem I found with all but two of the 70 or so documents I looked up during the two days I was at the archive. Before coming to the archive, I used the online database I made a list of file names and file numbers for documents I was interested in. I brought these to the archive and looked up the same numbers in the internal database. Each file number, unfortunately, corresponds to a packet of multiple files ranging, at least judging by what I saw, from 15-50 or so in number. I could then easily locate the appropriate document by its file name and open the images directly in the system. To my horror, in all but two of the cases, the documents in the file images did not correspond to the file name. For each document I would have to hunt through the other dozen or several dozen documents in the same general area to find the images for the file I was looking for. Sometimes I was never able to locate the file, suggesting that those images are probably found in other file groups, if at all. Now, what am I supposed to do as a historian when I cite the documents I did find? I’ll record the correct file numbers, found in the database, but any other historian wishing to confirm the information I am citing will look them up and find a completely different document unless the archivists have gone in and fixed all the indexing issues throughout their scanned collection.

I asked two of the archivists about this issue and I essentially got a, “That is funny. Well, just hunt through the rest of them and find your document. It’s probably like that for this whole collection. We paid a contractor to have it done and didn’t have the resources to check all their work.”

5) Quality: The documents I’m looking at are Communist public security bureau reports and Communist party internal reports. Some of them are hand written or are characters carved onto a special surface that allows a sort of reproduction process frequently used in the 1940s (any printing history buffs know what this ancient photocopying method is called?). In either case, they are very difficult to read, faded with time, on surfaces that are themselves often in poor condition, and most importantly, written in tiny sizes. If you are going to digitize these kinds of documents, then, you need to digitize them with a much higher quality. As I mentioned in my posting on triage in the archives, I have had to sometimes completely skip some of the more hopelessly unreadable documents or those for which the pages per hour drops to a rate that makes the investment of time not worth it. I would say that this happens in perhaps 1/10 documents I look at here.

Now, take these same kinds of documents and scan them. If you scan them well, at high resolution and with color, then you can actually make those difficult to read but important sections more readable thanks to the power of zooming in on parts of the image. However, that is not what happened here.

The contractors here decided to take these extremely difficult to read originals and scan them in black and white (not even in greyscale!). Now I know the evidence seems to suggest that if you are going to run a massive scale OCR program on historical newspapers, for example, then black and white is not significantly worse than greyscale. However, OCR is not even worth trying on these hard documents, unless there are some major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. If, however, you are trying to use human eyes to read difficult to read handwritten or carved Chinese characters on poorly preserved mediums, you need to preserve as much of the quality of the originals as possible. The cost benefit analysis done in this case resulted, in the case of many documents, in completely unreadable digital copies.

This really left me depressed. In the case of the completely botched indexing described in number four above, an archivist or the hired contractor can go back and meticulously re-index the documents so that they point to the correct images. Since some of the documents have visible page numbers, messed up page numbers might also be fixed in those cases. However, I suspect it is harder to go back and explain to the budget committee, “Ya, our contractor blew the scanning job and made thousands of once barely readable documents in our collection now completely unreadable to visitors. Can we pay to do the scanning all over again?”

I came back to Jinan yesterday morning and felt incredibly happy to go back to reading similar documents in my own hands.⁴ Digitization can do amazing things for improving access and preservation. When the Japanese national library set about digitizing all Meiji and now Taisho period publications I found myself complaining mostly about the slower speed at which I could browse or skim through the books. I didn’t find that readability itself suffered too much during the process. In a case like these far more difficult to read wartime Communist documents, however, sloppy digitization of these documents, only gradually opening up to researchers and historians, actually reduces rather than increases access.

1. When I asked one of the archivists at the provincial archives why they did not provide full online access to the database, rather than a very small sampler of the full internal database so that visitors could come prepared with a list of documents to request, I got a bewildered and serious look, “Do you want to put me out of a job?” This answer only makes sense if you realize that one of the primary duties of two of the archivists is to sit at the database search engine and help first time visitors search for documents. Given the fact many of the, especially older, visitors are completely computer illiterate, however, I still believe their services would continue to be required to help elderly comrades who come to search for their records.
2. though, as was the case with the Korean national archive, it would have been simple enough for a less scrupulous person to do this given the access to the “Save As…” option in the file menu and apparent lack of any security on the machine I was given access to. In fact, in the case of the Korean national archive at Daejeon, web browser access was restricted but I was able to confirm, at least as of 2008, the DOS command line still gave me FTP access to my server where I could have uploaded hundreds of pages of Korean archive documents they were requiring me to wastefully print and pay for, had I been so inclined to disregard their rules.
3. A bizarre and surely unnecessary step, since the documents have been screened once when they were added to the database for classified information. I could easily note down in my notes anything I read in the documents before printing them so not letting me keep the print outs hardly serves to prevent sensitive or privacy violating information from leaking out. If privacy issues are primary there should be a system, like the one at the Korean national archive, which charges the visitor to process accessed documents to redact out the names of people mentioned. At the Pusan branch of the Korean National Archive I paid about $50 and waited three days to get access to some old police logs. It took that much time because they had to go through and erase the names and provide me copies. However, I’m still grateful I got access at all. Although this is an important issue that deserves consideration, I generally feel that the privacy laws of Korea and Japan are far too strict and that they seriously inhibit serious historical work from the 19th through the period I’m working on in the mid-20th century
4. Note to super friendly archivists: if you encourage a visiting PhD student to eat while looking at the documents by suddenly (and generously) giving him a handful of juicy baby tomatoes, you might end up with a bit of tomato juice on one of the pages of part two of the 1946 treason elimination report from the Donghai public security bureau of the Jiaodong district.

I couldn’t help noticing that the locals gave me more than the usual amount of attention with a much higher frequency of gasps, cries of “Laowai!” and in one case a mother in a grocery store giving a short lecture to her child, surely too young to understand, about what this monster in their midst was (“You have never seen one of those before, have you? Don’t be scared. A foreigner is someone from another country and they don’t all look like us…”). This is nothing new, of course, to those who have traveled outside the major cities of Asia and I simply attributed this to the natural curiosity for non-Asians I have experienced throughout the countryside of Japan, Korea, and China.

During that first evening, though, I learn something about Changdao almost by accident. Walking back to my hotel late in the evening I passed by a TV shop where my iPod detected a wireless internet connection. I stopped outside the shop to download some email, and, since I really knew nothing about the place I was visiting, at least downloaded the Chinese and English wikipedia articles for the islands on my little offline Wikipedia client on my iPod. When I read the article later that evening, I found the English page had these two surprising paragraphs:

Changdao Island is closed to non-Chinese nationals. Westerners found on the island are swiftly taken to the passenger ferry terminal and placed on the next ferry back to Penglai by the islands Police service. Islanders promptly report all “outsiders” to the islands police service. (First hand experience) Police explain the reasons for this, due to the high number of military installations on the Island.

The Changdao Islands are now open to non-Chinese nationals, including westerners This was agreed by the local and national governments as of 1st December 2008.

Given the fact that non-Chinese nationals have apparently only been permitted on the island since December, and the tourism season hasn’t really started, the relative isolation of these islands may not have been the only reason there was extra surprise at the sight of a (visibly identifiable) foreigner in their midsts.

The next day, I checked out of the hotel, and made my way back to the ferry terminal. On the way, I walked over to the nearby TV shop to download my morning email (I know, I’m an addict). A middle aged man across the street yelled at me to stop. None of the many townspeople I had come across the day before had stopped me but armed with my new knowledge about the island I nervously complied. He came up to me and asked me if I had registered with the police. I told him I hadn’t. He asked me what I was doing on the islands, where I had stayed, etc. I answered honestly. Although he was polite, he said he wouldn’t let me go until he had called the police to ask if I had registered yet. I explained I hadn’t registered but I had only arrived the night before¹ and, at any rate, was now on my way to the ferry terminal to return to the mainland. “Ah, he said, but why are you going this way, when the ferry terminal is that way?!” Fortunately, a little more explanation made him understand that I simply wanted to walk a few more meters up the road to steal a wireless connection I had come across to check my email before hopping into a cab and going to the ferry terminal. At any rate, I avoided this concerned citizen’s detention, and the potential time-consuming process of going to the Changdao county police station to register myself.

Two notes to the Changdao authorities:

1. If I hadn’t downloaded that Wikipedia article, I never would have known there was any special status for the islands or any kind of military installations. Only the English wikipedia entry, and this 2005 blog entry from someone who was blocked entry some years ago alerted me to the fact, and only after I had checked into my hotel on the island. If foreigners need to take care to register when visiting the scenic islands or are subject to other restrictions, perhaps a sign anywhere in the ferry terminal², or perhaps somewhere on the nice English language website for Changdao county where I am welcomed to the, “peaceful, sincere, civilized and beautiful Changdao for business investment and holiday!” If there is some kind of required registration procedure, can I recommend that one be able and asked to do this upon arrival at the ferry terminal or when one checks into the hotel (the hotel didn’t even look inside my Norwegian passport when I checked in). Finally, if a potentially military adversary like the United States really wanted to send a spy to reconnoiter your military bases on the islands, do you really think it would be a good idea to send an easily identifiable caucasian instead of one of its many citizens of Asian or similar complexion or even better, a hired local?

2. Is it just me or is it possible you asked to have your islands erased from Google maps? Your large islands are all invisible from medium zoom levels even when much smaller islands like Liugongdao near Weihai are visible at the same zoom levels.³ If so, I can sort of understand why you might ask Google to completely erase this large group of islands from Google maps, even if they can be found on any regular Chinese map:

The invisible Changdao county on Google Maps.

The Changdao islands on a map found on the Yantai city government website.

However, if you are going to erase the islands from Google, you might want to erase them at all zoom levels. Zoom in a little bit and the islands suddenly appear out of nowhere, at least when I looked up the GPS point I marked at the ferry terminal:

Since this is a somewhat surprising omission, I assume it is a google imaging issue.

1. I think foreigners are technically supposed to register with the police everywhere in China within 24 hours of their arrival, and I did register in Jinan soon after my arrival, but almost no tourists traveling in China register in every city they stay in, At any rate, this registration he spoke of is not thus a Changdao specific requirement. Technically though, I hadn’t yet reached the 24th hour and I was off the island before my time ran out.
2. I confirmed there is no special information in either Chinese or English posted about the status of the islands when I returned to Penglai
3. It is possible however, that this is just a google technical problem: it could be that Google just faded to the blue of the ocean too quickly. These islands are further out in the sea than Liugongdao which is right off the coast before Google maps fades the image to blue.

A young history masters student who has been helping me out since I got here and showing me around the libraries of the university invited me to join him for a trip to the used book market here. He told me he makes the trip down there every two or three weeks to look for good deals on academic history books on his period.

The used book market is open on weekends from around 8am until noon in Sun Yatsen park (中山公园). There are perhaps close to a hundred bookstore stalls and open-air table-based vendors. The selection varies widely of course, with some stores specializing in books on Chinese medicine, others on test prep books, others on Chinese literature, but most have a wide selection of what appear to be left over stock from bookstores. I’m guessing this since many books are cut partly on the spine to distinguish them from new books. I was surprised to see such a large selection of academic and especially history books, including collections of historical materials, obscure reference books, and historical journals. Amazingly, and thanks to the good eyes of my friend, one of the 18 books I bought today for just over $10 was a very useful pamphlet put out by the office of the Shandong provincial historical society that I had noted down for future copying only a few days earlier in the library of Shandong University’s history department. It has an index of periodicals published in Shandong from before 1949, with list of extant issues and which library or archive in the province still has those issues (建国前山东旧期刊目录1903-1949).

The price of the academic books on history I was looking at currently seem to average around 5 RMB (less than $1) but many books go for 1, 1.5, or 3 RMB. Sometimes, and I have no idea what market forces are at work here since it really seemed quite arbitrary, prices could go as high as 10 or 30 RMB. Perhaps a bookseller catches a glint in the eye of the purchaser indicating that he desperately wants a copy? Regardless, considering that many of the books in question go for 30-50 RMB new, these books are quite heavily discounted, in contrast with the Japanese used book market for academic works.

The used book market clearly draws a lot of students and there was an excellent showing from the department I’m affiliated with. I was told there are currently 13 graduate students in the history department of Shandong University, mostly masters students. A good half dozen of these were in the book market today prowling for good deals. These students would often keep an eye out for books each of them might have particular interest in and sometimes made cellphone calls to friends absent who might appreciate them snapping up some bargains. They would also compare prices with each other and use it in their efforts to bargain. One student found a Chinese translation of a volume of the Cambridge History of China for just over $1, while another who heard about this was frustrated in his efforts to bargain down a separate copy found elsewhere to under its $5 price. I was also interested to hear that students had been directed to snap up available copies of one of their professor’s books to give them. While the professors can buy somewhat discounted copies of their own books from the publisher, it is even cheaper to get them, or have their students get them from the used book market, perhaps for use as gifts to friends.

I’m really impressed at how much some of these graduate students seem to know about Chinese history works coming out the US and with their excellent critical skills and strong curiosity for new approaches to history. One student invited me to some kind of history reading club in the afternoon and said he wanted me to share with them what good stuff was being published in the US academic field on Chinese history. I explained that I had been out of the country for a while and had been reading mostly Korean and Japanese history of late so that I wasn’t really up to date on trends in English language scholarship on China, but that I was willing to pass on a few orals lists used by graduate students in the US. I was surprised to be assured that this wasn’t necessary since all they really needed were Chinese history books newly published in English in 2007 and 2008!

More pictures available in a variety of sizes can be found here.

It is the little things about life here that really just make me smile. To give one little example, for the 3rd time in a row, as I walked home from the NTU library around 21:00, I saw a group of elderly residents of a neighborhood I pass through lounging in one of the many small parks and watching a Kung Fu movie on one of those large projector screens. The event doesn’t look very formal or organized, so I can only imagine that one of the locals dragged out the projector and large screen so the neighborhood could all watch it together.

We ended up not climbing any of the hills on the island, which in any case average around 350 meters. I’m actually glad, the hordes of other climbers, all clad in standard Korean hiking uniforms and equipment reminded me of climbing on Halla-san in Cheju-do where we essentially stood in line to get up the mountain behind hundreds of people (including groups of women sweating through their heavy make-up). Much more enjoyable was the wonderful and quiet stroll along forested country roads we got on Saturday afternoon when a local told us how to get through the hills to the coast the fastest way by an older road not marked on many maps. I recommend these country strolls in Korea as a wonderful alternative to the industrial tourist staircase that is so much hiking in Korea. You can often find yourself behind so many mountaineers you might have guessed you were on a subway stairway at rush hour if it weren’t for the fact that everyone is wielding useless metal poles and carrying plastic mats to keep the rear of their expensive and fashionable hiking pants from getting any dirt on them when they sit down.

A few places that got saved on my GPS from the weekend:

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

In order to enter the “Shandong local materials” room on the fifth floor I had to sign in at the door. I like the fact that people I have met in China over the years are not often surprised to see that I can write Chinese characters, in stark contrast to the amazement this frequently generates if I write in the simple Korean writing system in Korea or the mix of writing systems used in Japan. However, around two thirds of the time, when Chinese people notice that I’m writing with my left hand they will express their surprise by telling me, “You write with your left hand!” I usually just smile, agree, nod, and keep writing instead of adding that, unlike many of my fellow lefties in places like China, I was not subject to abuse throughout my childhood that forced me to use my right hand.

Today however, there was an interesting addition to this common exchange when a cleaning lady who had come over to watch me sign in added her own observation.

Librarian: 你是用左手的！ You use your left hand!
Me: 对. Yup.
Cleaning Lady (with confidence): 对，他们都是用左手的！ Ya, they all use their left hand!

Why not study at home? I do study at home as well, but there are a number of reasons why many of us spend hundreds of hours a year studying outside of our homes. Sometimes I have only a few hours between engagements and like to use the time for a reading session in a comfortable place. Sometimes I like the mix of background noises provided by the average coffee shop. Sometimes I want to get away from the potential distractions of the internet and the risk of napping on my bed or a couch. Sometimes I like being around other people. Sometimes my desk is a complete mess and I want a clean surface to work on without having to clean up my room. Why not study in a library? I very often too, especially when they allow me to bring in coffee or other beverage and especially when they are 24 hour libraries with coffee shops open until 3am. Sometimes though, there are no seats available in a nearby library. Sometimes they are closed. Sometimes I am not near a library.

Coffee shops, of course come in all different kinds. Sometimes they have rocky little round tables that are useless for putting anything on. Sometimes they have horrible light for studying. Sometimes their music is really annoying. Sometimes their coffee is way too expensive to become a frequent haunt. Sometimes they are too popular and can’t be guaranteed to have seating available just when I want them. Sometimes they close long before I am ready to go.

Sayaka and I once discussed what we thought would be the absolute ideal student coffee shop and how we might make it a profitable business. Here are some of the things we thought it should have: 1) largish stable tables with room for a computer and a book 2) bright but not obnoxiously bright lights suitable for reading 3) decent chairs not designed to make you leave quickly 4) strong wireless signal provided under three possible systems a: whenever you make a purchase of some minimum amount you get 1.5 hours of wireless or b: you get an unlimited usage of the wireless for a reasonable (that is to say, not the ridiculous prices they charge now) subscription rate c: have “free wireless happy” hours during those hours the cafe is not crowded to attract customers 5) sell healthy snacks/sandwiches 6) nap couches/seats such as those provided in various Japanese 24 manga lounges 7) printing and photocopy services 8) some computers for quick “shots” of internet for those who did not bring laptops 9) group study rooms

Japan and Korea seem to have the kinds of places that provide some but not all of these services. What the above looks like is something like a mutant combination of the Japanese/Korean coffee shop/manga cafe/PC lounge/karaoke rooms

The place which comes the closest I have ever seen to this kind of ideal coffee shop is right here in Seoul, Korea located near Exit 4 of Shinchon station:

Meeple – http://meeple.co.kr/

Meeple is a coffee shop and cafe but provides most of the things I listed above: 1) It is nicely lit 2) Offers array of drinks and foods with decent prices compared to nearby coffee shops (2800 coffee, compared to over 3000 for Starbucks, their delicious teas are more) 3) Has completely free and strong wireless connection with no stupid subscriptions 4) Two computers for free use 5) Printer/photocopy machine 6) Coffee shop lounge area 7) a kind of TV lounge with wide-screen TV 8) Plugs in the floor near all tables in the coffee shop and most interestingly: 9) Over a dozen study rooms which can be occupied free with a drink or food purchase. These study rooms contain 2, 6, or a dozen chairs, whiteboard, plugs, table, and a phone for room service (much like a karaoke room has).

I don’t know if they can survive the ruthless competition in the neighborhood. There are at least half a dozen coffee shop chain stores (including Starbucks and Caribu Coffee) located on the same block and they are located in the B2 basement instead of on the street-front but I think the concept is great and could well attract students from the nearby Yonsei, Sogang, Hongik, and Ehwa universities.

Some pictures:

But in the meantime, what sort of place is this town of Bartlesville?

It is the kind of town where it is apparently necessary to place signs on many of the doors of office buildings and other businesses to indicate you don’t want people wandering in bearing firearms.

It is the kind of town where a novel in the local Mid-High school library may get banned for containing two lesbian characters, who, shock and horror, kiss. At least a few local librarians and other concerned community members are showing their opposition to the ban (including my sister) but we’ll see how things turn out. As one editorial by a concerned mother puts it in the local Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise,

“How sad it is to me that people are outraged for a parent to try to protect her child from the message that ‘being homosexual is ok and acceptable.’ God’s word teaches us otherwise. What has happened to our nation in 400 years? We have gone from fearing God’s word to ridiculing it.”

Oh, what a travesty that a junior high school child might haplessly stumble upon a novel in their own Mid-High school library with two lesbian (though one was apparently “experimenting”—even more frightening!) characters. Who is responsible for installing that sort of smut? If only this book was removed then surely the children would be safe to walk the library aisles and bask in the grace of God’s law.

It is the kind of town where, as happened to me only a few hours ago, should your lunch at the Subway sandwich store amount to $6.66, you will be invited to buy a cookie, or at least accept a trivial $.01 “miscellaneous” charge so that the number of the Beast will not mark your purchase.

It is, as you can see, almost like another country.

They were painted by Ezra Winter back in the 1920s. Each mural appears to be representing a nation or culture, but I was puzzled by the choices made.

To represent the English we had Lancelot, a fictitious legendary figure. The Russians got Igor, the Spanish got Don Quixote, the Germans got Faust and Margaret. I thought the theme was fictional characters from literary works, but there were real historical figures as well: John Smith and Pocahontas for Americans, Dante and Virgil for Italians (though I realize they are probably taken from within the Divine Comedy), and Confucius for the Chinese. See the full list here.

I concluded that they were all chosen as figures which might reasonably pop up, fictional or otherwise in a classical education. However, I still found the choices somewhat bizarre when juxtaposed with the nation or culture they are supposed to represent.

I confess I didn’t recognize the characters for Japan: Otohime and Urashima Tarô, until I looked up the familiar story (J) online. The two are apparently now available in Hello Kitty versions.

The only Otohime I remember coming across in Japan was the device occasionally found in bathrooms to conceal the noise of one’s bowel movements. Only now do I realize that the name was not just a “Sound Princess” (音姫) but was at least potentially an additional play on the pronunciation of a version of the name of the mythical characther (乙姫).

Sept 6

– In only a few hours this island has really caught my interest. However, I clearly need to come back with a whole lot more money. Unless you just want to hit the “blue lagoon” heating swimming area on the way from the airport, be prepared to rent a car or spend serious money to get to any of the beautiful areas on all the postcards. Come to think of it, the same is true for Norway.

– Even in the short fifty or so kilometers from the airport to Reykjavík and the view from the edges of town I’m already fascinated by the Icelandic landscape. In some areas it looks like the tundra of Northern Norway, in others the rocky but bright green grassland of Jæren south of my hometown. In some places along the coast it is all rocks covered with lichen and mosses of many colors. Barren and pointed hills rise out of nowhere, and you can catch glimpses of massive asteroid crater like pits of dark sand, or shaded black fields dotted with bright white pillars of steam. From the town’s harbor you can see a towering mountain hanging over the waters edge off to the North. That mountain looks so familiar, as if it were a cliff along one of the fjords back in my own Rogaland county. However, it seems darker and somehow more impressive. When I returned to my room after an early evening walk I caught a glimpse of it again in the distance, but only as a completely black background to the city, disappearing into a soft blanket of white clouds above. Everything contributes to a kind of desperate but somehow empowering feeling of loneliness, which I really find moving. Like I said, I really need to return with more money so I can visit the many different areas of the island and perhaps hike some of its hills. As for a place to live though, I think I would miss the forests too much.

– Reykjavík, or at least the center of it, doesn’t feel any bigger than any medium-sized Scandinavian fishing town, but imagine if you will a medium-sized fishing town where everyone dresses way cooler than you.

– Laugavegur The “Main shopping street” (which they kindly announce in English on signs at either end) Laugavegur reminds me a lot of the main shopping street in Sandnes outside my hometown. It’s cute, but not exactly impressive. There are, however, a number of cute coffee shops, fancy clothes stores, and delicious smelling Thai restaurants.

– Internet The “Kaffi vín” towards the eastern end of Laugavegur has an unprotected open wireless network, you can download your email here from the pavement outside. There are lots of internet cafes around but why pay?

– Gothic Is it the “desperate but somehow empowering feeling of loneliness” I was talking about the reason Reykjavík seems to be a mini-gothic capital of the world? Or is there just some kind of gothic get-together going on this week?

– Food Icelandic bread isn’t the greatest, but otherwise the stores are stocked with many if not most of the same things (and in many cases even brands). Lots of yoghurt products…yummm… Prices in the grocery store ranges from (Norwegian prices +10%) to (Norwegian Prices +100%), that is to say, expensive.

– Icelandic, with its close connection to Old Norse, is easily one of the most bad-ass languages in the world. I also feel like I’m in some kind of weird drugged dream whenever I hear it spoken. Often times I catch the beginning or end of a sentence or a conversation and I could swear they are speaking regular Norwegian. Then when I tune in for the rest, their perfectly understandable speech degenerates into complete nonsensical combinations of familiar sounds, which just adds to my fascination. Add to this the fact that Icelandic gains instant sexiness from its frequent use of the letter ∂, with a slash through it. Oh ya, the funky p (which I can’t figure out how to type on this keyboard) is also kind of neat but ∂ is still my favorite and I think we should all reintroduce it into our own alphabets.

Sept 7

– Bicycle Rentals and Hitler You can rent a bicycle at Hverfisgata 50, which runs parallel to Laugavegur. They rent out mountain bikes with a lock included for 2000kr per 24 hours which I found to be great if you want to bike around the town’s back streets and visit its parks and museums. I would have used it for a day ride out of the city but today the weather was terrible in the morning. The door to the mountain bike store had strange yellow index cards wedged into various posters hanging there. If my Icelandic-guessing engine is functioning, each card posed strange open-ended questions like, “Is Israel part of Europe?” and the more bizarre, “Was Hitler evil?” (Var Hitler vondur?). This reminds me of the kind of tactic used by any cause trying to problematize some widespread idea, e.g. “Did evolution happen?”

–Back-streets and Houses I spent the morning biking around the west and northwestern areas of Reykjavík. The older houses often have a pretty normal scandinavian color and design found in other towns, but as to be expected there is much less wood. Instead, what looks like wooden boards from a distance on closer examination turns out to be sheets of metal siding. Newer houses and larger structures in the town mostly seem to be made of stone. There is a surprising amount of graffiti in a town of this size, both downtown and in the neighborhoods. There is much the same in many places in Stavanger, Oslo and other Scandinavian areas but I somehow expected there to be less here. There quite a high density of schools and lutheran (the state religion) churches in the city given its small size. They also have quite a few parks, both in the interior of the city and along its coastline.

– The Culture House The Culture House can be found at Hverfisgata 15. It houses an exhibit of Iceland’s prize medieval manuscripts, information on the history of the Sagas, and an area dedicated to the history of book writing. There are also temporary exhibits on the 2nd and 3rd floors, a gift shop and a small cafe.

The “Medieval Manuscripts: Eddas and Sagas through the ages” on the 1st floor was wonderful. It gave an interesting overview of the history of the sagas, and had many of the rare manuscripts on display, but at least half of the exhibit was historiographical. There were sections on the role of these various texts in the romanticism and nationalism of Iceland and the North, their appropriation by the Nazis for its Aryan crusade, role in pop culture, and even a description of how the street names and layout in Reykjavík were structured to mirror the sagas and nordic myths (see separate posting). Translations of captions into English were available throughout with Danish also in the manuscript display rooms (many of these manuscripts were returned by Denmark in the early 1970s). Most of the manuscripts on display are early 13c and almost all in Old Norse. Latin works were quite rare in Iceland, which probably has to do with the particular relationship between Christianity and society on the island and perhaps the generally non-Latin educated nature of much of the writing class.

I really think the exhibit was great for several reasons: 1) It had a tight narrative which combined history and historiography in a way that the visitor never felt patronized. 2) It combined informational captions, maps, displays, lighting and artifacts skillfully. However, it also made good use of documentaries shown by TVs, the occasional iMac set up for visitors to check out online resources (For example: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi (If you understand Icelandic, check out their online section of Folklore recordings here and their Digital Manuscript Collection) and a flash story site called “Europe of Tales“). Perhaps the only thing I could complain about was the use of some images without providing context. For example, when describing the medieval parliament, they used a painting depicting it made during romanticist movement of the 1800s. That would have been nice to include for context, because the image and the way it portrays the parliament are useful in understanding the nationalist idealization of Iceland’s independent commonwealth period prior to its subordination to the Norwegian (late 13c) and later the Danish crown (14c).

Currently the 2nd floor has a fantastic exhibit “Reflections on Iceland” which I really enjoyed. It had put maps and travel literature about Iceland on display from throughout the centuries. It was interested in giving the visitor glimpses about what others had to say about the island and its people throughout the ages, both good and bad. The descriptive captions were in Icelandic but along the wall was a packet of laminated sheets with English translations of everything. What made the displays especially effective was that they lined up the works roughly chronologically and put works which referred to each other in juxtaposition. For example, one caption would describe how one writer, who may never have actually been to Iceland, said this, that or the other, then next to it we would find the next publication by some author determined to refute the slanderous writings of his predecessor. I only wish that much of this display’s information and captions were available online, something I will have to check when I post this and get online.

The 2nd floor also had an interesting exhibit dedicated to the Mormons of Iceland and, in particular, the migration of over 400 Icelandic Mormons to Utah. It followed their history from conversion to their long and troubled journey via England to the United States.

– Outdoor Picture Exhibit Throughout the downtown area there is currently an outdoor picture exhibit. These are a great way to give visitors and residents a feeling of connection to the past. The pictures dated from around 1905 through to the 1970s and offered scenes of importance and the every day often with interesting trivia added about the development of a particular sector of the city, and important events that had left their mark by pointing out things in the background.

During World War II Britain invaded Iceland and would have done the same to Norway if the Germans hadn’t gotten there first. They later turned control over to the US, which became the only military defense for the island until this year (the American Icelandic Defense force is shutting down completely this month, I believe). In one picture around the time of the 1944 declaration of an Icelandic republic, which finally severed the final tie that the island had to the Danish crown, I was surprised to learn that the Danish king, then in his own German-occupied Denmark, actually sent a letter of congratulations to the Icelandic people. It is not the benevolence of the king which surprises me, there isn’t much he could have done about it, but rather that he could do such a think while he was in a post-1943 (when German control strengthened in Denmark) occupied Denmark sending congratulations to the inhabitants of an island occupied by his occupier’s enemy.

– Kaffitár The rain compelled me twice to seek the comfort of coffee shops. I spent a few hours today continuing my reading the second volume of Ingar Sletten Kolloen’s biography of Knut Hamsun. In one very nice coffee shop on Laugavegur, Kaffitár (a chain I also saw at the airport and shopping mall, unless it just means generic cafe), I was surrounded by Macintosh users downloading their internet from the cafe’s free internet connection. If you buy coffee, and you are faced with several options, the one starting with “Sel…” something is “Dark Roast”

– The National Museum After more biking around in the early afternoon I paid a good 3 hour visit to Iceland’s National Museum. My notes on this got long enough for a separate posting which I’ll upload separately.

– See some pictures from my two days in iceland via the picture page, or directly here.

UPDATE: Nathanael of the Rhine River blog has a few notes on the Gothic architecture of Reykjavik.

If you want street signs examples, there are plenty of them. I’m sure the whole Nordic pantheon must be represented within just a few blocks of the downtown area of Reykjavík. I’m not always familiar with the spellings, but I’m pretty sure they are the same guys. It would actually be great fun to teach kids some of the old myths, and then drag them through the town to look at signs and have them identify things. For example, “Hey kids, what is the name of this health food store from?”

Then you could cruise up on the hill to that funky Lutheran church and point at the massive statue in front and say, “Hey kids, who is this big hunk of a viking? I’ll give you a clue, he wasn’t no Lutheran, and he sold a map to Columbus…Hey no cheating…nobody is allowed to look at the names on any of the streets connected to this roundabout or the name of that bed & breakfast across the street…Hey Jón, I didn’t say you could read the inscription on the back…”

The Culture House (which I mention in my posting on my “Notes from Iceland”) had a great little section talking about just this phenomenon in its great historiographical section:

“In the first half of the 20th century, street names in Reykjavík drew heavily upon the sagas, and the layout was even intended to reflect their plots. Skarphé∂insgata (“Skarphedin’s street”) lies east and south of streets named after his parents, Bergpórugata and Njálsgata and between the couple is Barónsborg kindergarten, recalling their fate when they lay down to die in their burning farmhouse with their grandchild Thord Karason between them.”

Ok, so imagine working at the kindergarten and giving some new parents the tour, “Oh ya, did I mention that our kindergarten is conveniently located in such away to remind everyone of the burning corpses of Bergpóru (sp?) and Njál?” Above the caption was a map to show some of the examples:

Like many nationalist historical museums, the permanent exhibit tries to describe the centuries needed to accomplish “The Birth of the Nation” which, appropriately, was the title of the exhibit. The structure of the Icelandic national historical narrative is very similar to that of the Norwegian one (and dozens of other national narratives around the world). There is a glorious, if violent golden age which is celebrated as the source of national virtues, symbols, and heroes. This is followed by a decline and corruption of this noble tradition, followed by a long dark domination by a foreign power when the culture and independence of the nation are suppressed. The nation then emerges once again from the darkness as its glorious past is remembered and the national spirit awakens during its struggle for freedom from its oppressor.

In the Norwegian case, the Viking age, when we raped, burned, and pillaged Western Europe are the “good old days.” Mongolian nationalists know exactly what I’m talking about when they think of their own “good old days.” I mean, this was the period when we showed the world what it really meant to be Norwegian. This is the age from which the national symbols, stories, and heroes are taken. This is followed by the “500 years of night” when we were under the control of the Danes and our language and culture were suppressed by those evil Danish overlords. Apparently nothing of any real consequence happened at night, except that Reformation thingy. We then have a century of a kind of pre-dawn frost under Swedish domination, during which Norwegian nationalists rediscover their pure language and culture and rant about those horrible centuries of damaging Danish dominion and followed by full independence in 1905.

The Icelandic case shares much of this story but with less raping and pillaging, more democracy, and Norway gets to play a brief role as the bad guy. The roots of the Icelandic nation, if I have absorbed the narrative correctly, is to be found in the democratic and individualistic glory of the Commonwealth period, dating from the settlement of Iceland in the late 800s until it finally came to an end with Norwegian domination in the mid 1200s. The democratic legislative/judicial role of a kind of parliament (the althingi-mabob, can’t remember how to spell it) is a central source of pride. The next great source of pride is the incredibly rich production of literature – which all of Scandinavia and Germany have shown their great respect for. This glorious age was followed by the dark ages of domination first by Norwegians and then the Danes. Lots of nastiness ensued, granted, not all of it Danish. The Black death came late in the early 1400s and carried off half the population. The Reformation thingy went really bad. A Danish monopoly on trade for two centuries begins in early 1600s. Volcanoes erupt in late 1780s, including one under a glacier which all caused a terrible mess. Then, by a series of steps towards independence beginning in the late 1800s and later in 1905, 1918, the nation finally completed its lengthy birthing with the founding of the republic in 1944 while, perhaps a bit ironically, under US wartime occupation.

The museum was wonderful, especially since the population of the entire country is smaller than the last Tokyo suburb I lived in. Like the Cultural House, they did a fantastic job of presenting the materials with lots of little subject-specific areas. They also had about two dozen short documentaries available for viewing at screens place throughout the museum. Each screen had 1 to 3 mini-documentaries, which in turn were divided into 2-5 chapters. Each chapter in turn had supplementary pictures and texts covering aspects that were mentioned during the documentary chapter. It was interesting, effective, and in case someone is hogging a screen with documentaries you want to see, at the end of the 2nd floor there is a “Reading Room” with half a dozen computers that have all the documentaries viewable (unfortunately, all the books in the Reading room were in Icelandic, and thus, unreadable). They also had “touch and feel it” rooms with various clothing and other items. They had little telephones you could pick up which would tell about the daily life and stories of one particular individual (such as a fisherman). They had examples of their four kinds of national dress.

I was also impressed that the visitor was not treated like an idiot (although the little cartoon-like figures in the documentaries were slightly cheesy they helped the viewer recognize and identify players in the sometimes complicated power struggles described). I’ll give one cute example. One of the mini-documentaries surrounded the theme of Christianization of Iceland around 1000. The documentary faithfully described the process as it is recorded in the sagas (I can’t remember which, but every documentary had a “references” button with a full Icelandic language bibliography). It basically says that the entire country converted together (allowing pagan worship in private) because that was the reasonable thing to do. “An unlikely story,” I thought to myself. Then I noticed the title of the last chapter was, “Is the story true?” When it started playing, the English language voice started, “An unlikely story?” It then confesses that we cannot always trust the stories handed down but that overall, the process of Christianization did proceed quickly and with relatively little violence. How many Korean, Chinese, and Japanese museums have I visited where I wish I could push the “Is the story true?” button…

The only disappointing thing about the museum is perhaps partly due to the fact that the theme of the exhibit was “the birth of the nation.” You see, once the nation is born, there isn’t much else to say, is there? This means that the 20th century, as in the case of many other historical museums got very little space. I get the feeling that the museum’s designers just took all their 20th century material, put it in a pile and said, “What should we do with all this stuff?” Then, after a few desperate moments of silence, perhaps someone piped up with the idea, “Hey let’s put all this stuff on a kind of revolving conveyor belt, kind of like in the airport baggage claim or like one of those sushi restaurants!” Apparently everyone thought that was a good idea because that is what happened to Iceland’s history in the 20th century. I was a bit depressed to see a little pile of items labeled “World War II” as its place on the conveyor belt creaked slowly by me. There was a little more than just the conveyor belt, but considering the huge changes on the island in the last hundred years, a lot more space could have been given over to it.

My hometown, Stavanger, is on a peninsula, north of which are to be found countless islands and the thousand meter tall cliffs that hang over the deep fjords such as Lysefjorden. To its south until one reaches the town of Egersund there is a stretch of land known as Jæren. The land south of Ølberg already resembles the larger region of Jæren and the terrain, which is mostly farmland up this point, is dominated by rolling hills and very rocky grassland, dotted with the occasional grazing grounds for sheep. The coastline is also very rocky, and one can occasionally find fascinating layered rock formations there.

After basking in the sun on the rocks near Ølberg, I rode a few kilometers south to the village of Tjelta before turning back towards Stavanger. Tjelta is a strange place and along the coast there I found a number of huge houses that I could only describe as decadent. Apparently some rich construction magnate lives here. He may have been the old man I saw driving an antique automobile back and forth along the road I passed. He may have been related to the child I passed who was driving a full-sized golf cart down the hill towards another house (the kid could not have been more than eight or nine years old, his head barely reached over the golf cart’s steering wheel. I almost fell off my bike staring at him in wonder).

One thing I thought about as I rode was how the landscape of Norway’s coastline still bears the scars of World War II. I must have passed at least half a dozen German bunkers on ride today. The thing which stands out the most at the small harbar at Ølberg is the bunker on top of the hill. Throughout Stavanger and the entire region (probably most of the more strategically important coastline of Norway) the empty shells of these bunkers can be found along the beaches, coastal cliffs, and embedded in the hills near the coast. Some of them have been filled in by local farmers, others serve as hangouts for local youths and gangs and are filled with graffiti and trash. The remains of the bunker at Ølberg was somewhat more elaborate than most, as a number of passageways and the concrete base of what may have once mounted a coastal cannon or other structure also remains (some more pictures here, here, and here) They are a constant reminder of the fact that German forces once occupied the country and peered across the water on the lookout for any potential British invasion force.

I’m sure these bunker remains and other similar sites are to be found in many places around Europe and these visual reminders of the war must invoke complex memories for many. For children, however, these sites are often just exciting or mysterious locations to play games or engage in mischief. In my own case, the German bunker in my grandmother’s neighborhood where I played every summer as a child (on the hillside less than 60 meters from where I now type this blog entry) was filled in by a local farmer. That didn’t stop me and another childhood friend from trying to pry loose a large rusted piece of something (it was a long tube of some kind) from the rocks in the bunker. We imagined it was part of some wartime weapon. As I lifted the piece and my friend tried to remove some of the rocks under it. However, I lost my grip and the rough edge of the rusted metal badly tore the skin from the back of my friend’s hand as he tried to remove it. I took it at the time as a sign that such things are best left undisturbed.

A Swedish Speaking Immigration Officer

At Narita airport I decided to use my Norwegian passport. My US passport is out of pages, falling to pieces (one immigration officer in Amsterdam thought it was forged and tried to pick off the already peeling plastic from the front page), and is generally not as convenient to travel with these days (shorter visa-free stays in some countries like Korea and expensive visa fees in places like Chile). As I was going through the passport control I was met with an unusually chatty inspector. The only other pleasant and friendly passport control inspector I have met was in Taiwan, where once I was asked about visiting Sayaka, learning Chinese, and whether Sayaka enjoyed living in Taiwan or not.

This time, the inspector look at my passport, smiled, and said, “Hei!” I thought he was speaking to me in English and that I was thus being greeted with an exclamation of some kind. I looked around to see what he might be trying to bring my attention to. He then said, “Can I say…Hei!” Then I realized: He is saying “Hei” in Norwegian – that is “Hello.” He said, “In Swedish I can say Hei! Can I say Hei! in Norwegian?” I said, “Yes, it is the same in Norwegian.”

My immigration officer went about continuing to process my visa and after a few seconds he looked up and said, “Norwegian and Swedish is all the same right?” I replied, “Umm…ya Danish, Swedish, Norwegian are all very close, think of it as something like Osaka dialect and Tohoku dialect.”

A few more stamps got issued and mysterious commands entered into his computer as he went back to looking like the stern mechanical immigration officer I have come to expect. Then, suddenly, he asked, “Can I say, ‘Jeg elsker deg.'” I felt a bit weird, looked around to see if there were any laughing Scandinavians nearby but smiled and said, “Yup, in Norwegian ‘I love you’ is also ‘Jeg elsker deg.”

He seemed delighted. He finished processing my entry into Japan, handed me my passport and said something like, “Takk så mykke” (sp?) I explained that while that made perfect sense in Norwegian (with a slightly different pronunciation), there were other terms for “Thank you” that we used in Norwegian if he wanted to master our particular Scandinavian dialect. He took note of my suggested alternatives on some piece of paper and continued to the next person.

An Apologetic Train Conductor

On the Keisei line train I rode from Narita airport into Tokyo, I frantically continued translating portions of my English seminar paper into the 30 minute Japanese presentation I was to deliver the next morning (I would finish at 5am and Sayaka, who was still in the US would return an emailed copy of this in corrected real Japanese only two hours later in time for my trip to the conference).

Suddenly the lights in the train went out and the train slowed smoothly to a stop. As soon as the lights went out the conductor’s voice could be heard on the intercom, “Please wait just a moment.” When the train had completely stopped the same voice explained, “I passed a signal light which I was not supposed to pass. As a result our train and an oncoming train have both automatically been forced to come to an emergency stop. The train will resume moving in just a moment. My deep apologies for the inconvenience I have caused everyone.”

Sure enough the train started moving again a moment later and passengers around me looked at each-other, some showing their disapproval that such an error could occur. I, on the other hand, was impressed at the forthright confession I had just heard, then I remembered what country I was in.

Asian Values

The conference I presented at, “The Second Annual International Conference of Prospective Researchers on Contemporary Asia” was sponsored by Waseda’s Center of Excellence – Contemporary Asian Studies and brought together some very interesting papers and presenters who were mostly young professors, post-docs, and graduate students. I was once a research assistant at the center and enjoyed seeing old friends and professors. It is difficult to spend much time active with the center without noticing its strong desire to further the creation of an “Asian community” or an “Asian identity” of one sort or another. Their motivations are of the most admirable kind: the multinational group of professors and graduate students active in COE-CAS want to overcome the deep distrust and tensions between Japan, Korea, and China, as well as welcome stronger ties with Southeast Asia and Mongolia. They are often highly critical of US arrogance, and of Western claims of universalist values. They are sensitive to the failures of previous efforts at Asian community building and especially the dark legacies of Japan’s own government support for pan-Asianism during its period of imperial expansion. Some of the supporters of an Asian identity or community at the center have highly nuanced and fluid conceptions in mind, emphasize the importance of multi-layered idenities, and some, such as in the case of my own advisor, have a deep awareness of the complex issues related to large scale world migration.

Despite this, however, I have deep reservations about the center’s mission. In debates and discussions with friends there I have on many occasion expressed my own doubts about the need for the active creation of a regional based “Asian identity” which is constructed at the hands of intellectuals or political policy based on what will inevitably be a contradictory set of perceived commonalities between participants. Also, beyond economic integration, I don’t see the need or necessarily the desirability of the creation of an institutional “Asian community” since I fear the potential for a gradually increasing exclusivity built into the concept.

Some of these concerns can be seen in the content of the conference’s final talk. At the end of the conference, Iwate University president and former Waseda professor Taniguchi Makoto gave a speech about Asian community in English. I was the only non-Asian at the talk (or at the conference for that matter) and couldn’t help noting the irony that English was the necessary choice of language given that some of the guests from Thailand and Mongolia didn’t speak Japanese (they were also the only participants not to make their presentations in Japanese). Taniguchi speaks fantastic English and his eloquent presentation fit his Cambridge education and long years of experience working for Japan’s foreign ministry, the UN, as deputy head of the OECD, and elsewhere. After an interesting analysis of Japan’s recent failures in negotiations related to the formation of “an Asian community” (indeed, he argued that after losing control of the movement, the foreign ministry is actively trying to torpedo all attempts to make anything meaningful out of the concept), he launched a critique of “Western values”. In passages that remind me of the confidence of the bubble period Japan or Asian leaders before its humbling economic crisis, Taniguchi suggested to the audience that Asia should take pride in its own values and take a more critical stance towards the West.

He offered two pieces of evidence for the inferiority of Western values. He recounted a story of when he was criticized by colleagues in France for having dined with his own chauffeur, thus violating the aristocratic separation of classes. His second anecdote lamented the inhumane behavior of New York City police officers he witnessed rudely expelling the homeless sleeping in Grand Central Station. The message was clear: Asian values have a higher degree of compassion and are less class conscious. The problem, of course, is that this is absolute nonsense. I have indeed accompanied Chinese company managers when they have dined and socialized happily with their chauffeurs in Beijing, but I have also seen Korean executives treat their chauffeurs as barely human slaves on the streets of Seoul. And as for compassion towards the homeless, it is interesting to note that one of Japan’s leading headline stories today (January 31st) is about violent clashes between Japanese police and homeless being evicted from a park in Osaka; their blue tarp tents being torn down.

If you want to look for a critique of Western “values” or enlightenment universalism, you can’t do it by attacking class inequalities or lack of compassion for the poor. Liberal reformers and socialist revolutionaries around the world, who are born in of the fires of enlightenment thought, attack these same problems. I think a sophisticated and careful look at the contradictions of enlightenment thought is needed, and Western arrogance always needs a good cutting down to size, but this clearly doesn’t work.

More than this, however, what concerned me is when the speech (and this is not the only time I have seen this) started to make heavy use of “We” versus “them” kind of language, throwing around essentialist descriptions of “The West” and assuming that there is some unproblematic “Asia” to which a whole host of generalizations can be applied to. I was trying, for example, to imagine what some of the Mongolian participants (who incidentally spoke an excellent English laced with a sharp and distinctively Russian accent that I found delightful to listen to) could claim to share in common with their Thai counterparts, and yet did not share with me? While all sorts of unexpected forms of identification can develop organically, why spend so much effort explicitly attempting to form a common identity which include these two, and yet excludes a New Zealander, a Lebanese, or a thoroughly identity confused Norwegian-American. When I asked this of someone at the evening reception, I was informed that I did not have to personally worry about being excluded myself since I was an “honorary Asian.”

While I was obviously in no position to make this point at the conference without confirming everyone’s worst stereotypes, I am equally suspicious of a discourse of “resistance against the West,” especially when it proposes the defense of some presumably superior set of particularistic values but even when it proposes a presumably unmolested coexistence. Why does universalism, for all its historical associations with imperialism and oppression, have to be countered by particularism? This particularism will inevitably contain its own internal kernels of dissent and seeds of contradiction that bear the same relation to the whole as that whole bears to universalistic claims. This is precisely the problem with multiculturalism, for instance. This is an issue that I still struggle with…

Tenshoku Boom

The “tenshoku” (changing jobs) boom, which was already very prevalent when I was in Japan continues unabated I see. I passed many train advertisements everyday advertising job related websites, many posing questions to workers about their current job or future expectations (are you learning cutting edge skills? are you valued for your ability?) which I know rarely entered into any realistic equation of consideration for my friends when they graduated from college.

I also saw a number of advertisements specifically targeting women, but in one way or another was directed to career women and not for those who might be satisfied with “office lady” jobs.

Yokoso Japan

Japan is currently running a new tourism promotion public relations campaign. Sayaka’s father, who is a professional “tourism producer” and has worked for various city and provincial governments promoting tourism through events and campaigns once explained to me the many struggles that Japan’s local governments have with trying to attract foreign tourism. He lamented the serious infrastructure, language, and cultural problems which prevent Japan’s beautiful countryside from attracting more than the most adventurous backpackers and Japanese speaking foreigners, and he has tried all manner of drives to overcome some of the issues one by one. Whether it is the language obstacles of getting foreigners comfortably housed in Japanese minshuku or ryokan inns or the fact that English on signs throughout Japan exhibit some of the most creative use of grammar and spelling of the language in the world, the problems are manifold.

On this trip to Japan I noticed that considerable advertising revenue is being spent promoting a new “Yokoso Japan” (Welcome to Japan) program. The posters are not targeting foreign visitors but the Japanese themselves – trying to get them to actively participate in “making foreigners feel welcome” in Japan. I wonder how likely it would be to find this kind of plea coming from the government in the US or in Norway. In a year when keeping unwelcome visitors out is the priority, can you imagine a sign in New York saying, “Let us work together to make foreigners feel welcome”? There is of course at least one famous example of such a sign in the city, at the Statue of Liberty no less. However, I occasionally feel that Lou Reed’s rendition of the lines is more accurate (e.g. “Bring us all your huddled masses and we’ll piss on them…”).

Prominent in many of the signs are pictures of a smiling or laughing Japanese posing next to a grateful looking blond Caucasian. While they may be out there, I have yet to see any posters with non-Caucasian foreigners, which may allow us to say something interesting on the racial level. At the bottom of each poster is request for submissions of pictures of foreigners and Japanese interacting with each other. As a blond caucasian perhaps I should submit all my photo albums from my three longer stays in Japan, in which one can find hundreds of pictures of me standing next to or interacting with some Japanese person, many of them almost complete strangers, who I owe a great deal of gratitude. Whether it is a child expanding my Japanese vocabulary and knowledge of Cicada anatomy in a Tateyama kindergarten, a Kisakata family taking my uncle and I for a hike deep into a mountain forest in Akita, or an old man who I met in a Yokohama park taking a whole day to guide me through his favorite temples in Kamakura, almost every fond memory I have of being in Japan is appropriate material. I wish all visitors and migrants who come to Japan might be as spoiled as I have been.

On that note, I was delighted to read in today’s Asahi that Osaka Prefecture has launched a program to train about a thousand “official” volunteers to help its over 200,000 non-Japanese residents with problems in their daily life and in emergency situations. The program apparently includes some training in six different languages. It apparently also includes volunteers who are themselves non-native speakers of Japanese but who can operate smoothly in Japanese society.

UPDATE: I found an online site where you can see some more of these posters here thanks to this posting by Mutant Frog.

The Classical Cafe

My friend Tony took me to a most unusual cafe yesterday. We met in Shibuya for coffee in the afternoon and the bustling district was as noisy and exhausting a place as it always is: advertisements were being blasted from every corner, smokers left their poisonous trails all along the sidewalk, and the sickening smell of thickly applied makeup emanated from every passing female. And yet, somehow in the middle of this, there is a place of serenity to be found. A little further up the hill from the station, hidden amid cheap sushi restaurants, shops selling gaudy knickknacks, and at the gate of Shibuya’s love hotel district is an old cafe serving classical music.

Inside the cafe is barely lit, as if to hide the dusty, cracked and discolored walls. The walls on three sides are covered in old portraits but against one wall is a huge speakers system, looking almost like a large church organ. Classical music is played with concert quality (when I first entered I thought there was a grand piano hidden somewhere) from the speakers into the silent darkness of the rest of the cafeteria. The cafe itself spans two floors but most of the seats are found in twos, side by side, facing the speakers, and each sharing a small table for drinks or books or papers. Besides us were perhaps half a dozen mostly elderly types, listening to music but also almost all reading or writing on a pile of papers in front of them.

A brochure reveals the day’s music repertoire, while a waiter introduces music between pieces in a voice so soft that one might think he is afraid to awake any dozing guests. When the day’s music has been played the speakers will blast some other classical music requested by a patron to the cafe. If they made the place non-smoking and added a few desk lamps for the tables, it would be a great quiet place in Shibuya to camp out and study while drinking the cafe’s unusual hot or cold “egg milk” drinks.

Definite Match

Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese I speak to often claim that they can identify their own. Indeed, the clothes people wear, the way they walk, or even the movement of their head can betray their origin and allow someone to be identified as coming from one country or other, even from a distance. Just last week, a Korean friend of mine who I showed around Yokohama for a day was able to correctly identify a group of Koreans from behind a full two floors away in Landmark plaza shopping mall. On the other hand, I know for a fact that the “hit rate” of correct identification among some of my friends for recognizing “their own” is a lot lower than many like to think. What about Europeans though? Sometimes someone looks distinctly southern European, but how much better can you get just judging by facial features (not even accounting for the growing ethnic and racial diversity of European countries today)?

Today, passing through emigration at Narita I saw a man ahead of me that I was absolutely 100% sure was a Norwegian. What does that even mean? When Japanese ask me if I can tell likely Scandinavians out of a crowd without hearing them speak, I usually say no (even though I venture the occasional, often mistaken guess), since even “stereotypical” Scandinavian-looking types can turn out to be French, Dutch, British, Russian, not to mention American, etc. Somehow though, today as I was waiting in line, I couldn’t get it out of my mind that this guy could be nothing but Norwegian. If ever there was a “representative type” of the Norwegian male, a racial stock image that could be plastered on nationalistic posters with a viking helm or fishing cap for good measure, this guy was it.

When I finally tuned in and overheard his conversation with another more “generic” blond man, sure enough, he spoke in an extremely heavy northern Norwegian dialect, marked by (to my southern ears) erratic patterns of intonation and emphasis that so many other Norwegians (myself included) often patronizingly think of as, “cute.” His fellow traveller responded in Oslo dialect. I felt a sudden and strong pang of home sickness. Then, suddenly becoming self-reflective I wondered if that feeling really told me anything at all meaningful about my attachment to the cold north? The answer, I concluded, was no, not at all. I tried to remember the last time I felt the same feeling and the result was a bit surprising. It happened last time in Bergen airport last summer. I was on my way back to the United States after spending a month in my hometown, Stavanger. Before that I had been in Seoul for two months. I was standing in line for the flight to London when ahead of me I saw half a dozen elderly Asian tourists. When I heard them speak Korean to each-other I felt exactly the same pang that I felt today in Narita airport and suddenly yearned to go back to Korea or at least be together with my Korean friends in Japan.