EAPSI: Orienting the Troops: Teaching and Learning Japanese cClture on a U.S. Military Base

Gabrielson Carl A, Goleta CA

Investigators

Abstract

There are roughly 100,000 Americans living and/or working on U.S. military bases located in Japan, and most of those bases require that incoming personnel undergo orientations or trainings about Japanese culture. The goal of this project is to understand what images and aspects of Japan are being taught and learned in these official instances of military-mediated cultural education. To do so, the researcher will observe these and other opportunities for cultural learning and cross-cultural interaction created by the U.S. military at Yokosuka Naval Base outside of Tokyo, and will interview newcomer Americans about their impressions of Japanese people and culture and what they feel they are learning about Japan while on the base. The researcher will use this data in his larger project of exploring how cultural education can affect U.S.-Japan relations at both the interpersonal and international levels. The study will be conducted with Dr. Fumika Satô, a top sociologist of the military and professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Utilizing participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this study will explore how understandings and experiences of a foreign culture are formed within the highly militarized environment of a U.S. base in an allied nation that is at peace. Despite the geographic intimacy of having American military installations embedded within Japanese cities, preliminary data suggests many personnel experience a strong sense of cultural remoteness that is tacitly encouraged by current U.S. military orientation contents and practices. The researcher postulates that when personnel experience banal, everyday interactions with Japanese people and culture while simultaneously being taught that Japan is alien and exotic, the resulting tension informs military personnel behaviors and perceptions, which in turn affect relationships between bases and host communities and, ultimately, the U.S.-Japan security alliance. This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.