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Doshisha University,1991‑2000

著者(英) Masahiro Hosoya

journal or

publication title

Doshisha American studies

number 38

page range 103‑112

year 2002‑03‑20

URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000001429

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I am glad to be here to be of some serv- ice, I hope, to this forum on such an ambi- tious theme, "Bringing the Social Sciences Back into American Studies." What fol- lows is a story of a bold attempt by a pio- neering academic institution in Japan to create an interdisciplinary graduate pro- gram having both social sciences and humanities.

I am a historian of foreign relations centering on the United States and Japan, not a specialist in American Studies.

However, I have been involved in launch- ing and administering a new graduate program in American Studies at Doshisha University, one of the oldest private uni- versities in Japan.1 Perhaps because I belong to the Center for American Studies where there are no teaching obligations, the University administration, from the very beginning, counted on us (three of us at first, and now four faculty members of the Center) for full commitment to the new program. As is usually the case, the university set up a committee composed of various sorts of Americanists on the cam- pus, and on the recommendation of the committee, the university applied to the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Mombusho)2 of the Japanese Government for a new graduate program in American Studies in 1990.

First of all, I would like to call your attention to the meaning of "American Studies" in Japan. American Studies in Japanese is "Amerika Kenkyu," which is different from American Studies in the United States. While American Studies in the United States as I understand it seems to be more focused on literature

103

Graduate Program in American Studies at Doshisha University, 1991-2000*

Masahiro Hosoya

1. Doshisha University was founded by Joseph Hardy Neesima (1843-1890) in 1875. Illegally boarding a ship bound for China in 1864, while Japan had secluded itself from the world since 1641, Neesima finally arrived in Boston via Shanghai in July 1865. He entered Amherst College in 1867, and graduated in 1870. He was the first Japanese ever graduated from a Western institution. Doshisha University, as of April 2001, has six faculties—Theology, Letters, Law, Economics, Commerce, and Engineering, and it has more than 450 full-time faculty members, nearly 900 part-time lecturers, close to 600 administrative and clerical staff. Start- ing with eight students in Neesima's house in 1875, Doshisha has now 23,054 undergraduate and 2,083 graduate students. It has three research institutes—Institute for the Study of Humanities and Social Sciences, Center for American Studies, and Science and Engineer- ing Research Institute. The Doshisha Corpora- tion has two universities (Doshisha University and Doshisha Women's University), four senior high schools, four junior high schools, and one kindergarten. Cf. Doshisha website at:

http://www.doshisha.ac.jp/english/index.html.

2. The Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Mombusho) was reorganized, incorpo- rating the Science and Technology Agency (Kagaku-Gijutsu cho), and renamed, in 2001, as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Mombu-Kagaku sho).

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and history, "Amerika Kenkyu" in Japan has been, from the very start, more inter- disciplinary. The Japanese Association for American Studies,3 established in 1966, defines itself as an academic associ- ation for promoting area studies of the United States of America, and the disci- plines and interests of members include history, literature, political science, eco- nomics, international relations, Japan- U.S. relations, law, religion, education, sociology, philosophy, women's studies, mass culture, ethnic studies, and others.

The Association stresses that "this variety in disciplines and interests is a great asset for cultivating a dynamic, multifaceted understanding of the United States."4 I do not have time to go over the history of

"Amerika Kenkyu" in Japan here, so those who are interested may refer to some arti- cles written in English by Japanese Amer- icanists.5

In this connection, I would like to emphasize that Professor Yasuo Sakakibara of Doshisha University was truly instru- mental in creating a graduate program in American Studies at Doshisha. An econo- mist by training, particularly economics of transportation, Prof. Sakakibara had a

vision to start a graduate program in American Studies with an interdiscipli- nary perspective from the outset. Prof.

Sakakibara had no difficulty in putting social sciences into our American Studies program, and Prof. Sakakibara's vision was widely shared by other Americanists on the campus. Ever since 1853 when Commodore Matthew Perry's four black ships shook Japan awake from more than two centuries of slumber, Japan has been closely related to the United States in peace and war, and many aspects of the United States have been taken up for aca- demic inquiry, be they military, political, economic, social, religious, not to mention history and literature. The fact that Pro-

5. See, for example, Yasuo Sakakibara, "American Studies in Japan: An Economist's Point of View,"

American Studies International, 32:1 (April 1994), 31-40; Nagayo Homma, "The Teaching of United States History in Japan," in Lewis Hanke, ed., Guide to the Study of the United States Outside of the U.S., 1945-1980, Vol. 3 (White Plains, New York: Kraus International Publications, 1985), 18-33; Shoichi Oshimo,

"Research Trends and Accomplishments: The Study of United States History in Japan," ibid., 34-50; and Tadashi Aruga, "Sources in Japanese Archives and Libraries Relating to United States History,"ibid.,51-87; and also two more articles by Aruga, "Japanese Scholarship and the Mean- ing of American History," Journal of American History,79:2 (September 1992), 504-514; and

"Reflections on the History of U.S.-Japanese Relations," American Studies International,32:1 (April 1994), 8-16. For a more recent brief treat- ment of the subject, see Hiroko Sato, "The Rise and Relevance of American Studies in Japan," in

"Roundtable: The Imagined Community of Inter- national American Studies," American Studies International,37:2 (June 1999), 14-17. For the evolution of American Studies in the United States, see, for example, Lucy Maddox, ed., Locating American Studies: The Evolution of A Discipline(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

3. The Japanese Association for American Studies was established in 1966, but its predecessor dates back to 1947. Its membership, as of April 2000, is 1,146. See the website of the Association at: http://www.jssst.or.jp/jaas/intro/introe.html.

4. This information is based on the website of the Japanese Association for American Studies at http://www.soc.nacsis.ac.jp/jaas/introe.html/, accessed on September 9, 1999. This website, however, is now moved to: http://wwwsoc.

nii.ac.jp/jaas/indexe.html, accessed on Febru- ary 6, 2002.

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fessor Sakakibara was elected President of the Japanese Association for American Studies in 1988 to serve until 1990 seems to indicate the way in which Japanese Americanists interpreted American Stud- ies in Japan.

Graduate Program in American Stud- ies at Doshisha

With Doshisha's application formally authorized by the Ministry of Education, Doshisha University started a graduate program in American Studies in April 1991. This program has no undergraduate program; it is a graduate program only. It is a so-called independent graduate pro- gram. Until then, the Ministry of Educa- tion had maintained its policy to allow only a department having an undergraduate program to extend its program to the grad- uate level. The Department of Economics, for example, could add its graduate pro- gram in Economics, and so could the Department of History have its graduate studies. In other words, there had been no graduate school without having its under- graduate program exclusively administered by its own department. However, growing criticism against such rigid government regulations and the excessively compart- mentalized, hierarchical structure of grad- uate schools in Japan, led the Ministry of Education to change its policy and approve an independent graduate program. So far as American Studies is concerned, Doshisha's Graduate School of American Studies is the first of its kind.6

The purpose of Doshisha's Graduate

School of American Studies is well sum- marized in our brochure:

The impact of the United States' poli- cies is strongly felt throughout Asia and the Pacific. The United States is also a vital partner for the stability and devel- opment of the region. Developing a bet- ter understanding of the United States could be a key factor in maintaining the new world order in the post-Cold War era. The integrated study of the United States will surely become more signifi- cant in the future. Understanding the United States requires one to move beyond the narrow confines of compart- mentalized disciplines and adopt a com- prehensive approach. The Doshisha Graduate School of American Studies will make every effort to introduce just such an approach to the study of the United States.

Thus we emphasize an interdiscipli- nary approach. As our program is an American Studies program centered in Japan, not the United States, the subject matter is viewed from an international perspective. Most of the courses offer a comparative approach, which distinguish- es our program from many of the Ameri- can Studies programs in the United States.

The Graduate School of American Studies is composed of eight faculty mem- bers, as of April 2001: an economist (Ph.D.

Graduate Program in American Studies at Doshisha University, 1991-2000 105

6. One of the exceptions may be the International University of Japan in Niigata Prefecture that has only a graduate program.

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from Stanford); a political scientist (Ph.D.

from the University of California, Berke- ley); a historian of American religion (Ph.D. from Duke); a specialist in Ameri- can constitutional law; a diplomatic histo- rian (Ph.D. from Yale); a specialist in American history (Ph.D. from the Univer- sity of Chicago); a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D. from the University of Illinois); and of course, a specialist in American Studies and American Literature. We also have arrangements with other graduate schools on the campus so that our students can take courses (eight courses in 2001) offered at various faculties such as the Faculty of Letters, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Eco- nomics, the Faculty of Commerce, and the Graduate School of Policy and Manage- ment (another independent graduate pro- gram, established in 1994). We also have agreements with noted specialists outside of our campus to offer courses such as Comparative Literature, American Popu- lar Culture, Intercultural Communication, and Japan-United States Economic Rela- tions in International Perspective. Fortu- nately, almost every year, we have visit- ing professors from the United States who run a series of seminars in our program.7 Furthermore, the Associated Kyoto Pro-

gram (AKP)8 initiated the AKP American Studies Fellowship in 1999 and we have been the sole beneficiary of this program.9 Each year, one scholar, chosen from appli- cants by both the AKP Board and the Graduate School of American Studies, holds seminars and classes for our pro- gram. The AKP has been extremely coop- erative in complying with our request to send scholars who are in the most needed areas of our program.

The Structure of the Program

Our students are required to take Introduction to American Studies (a team-taught two-credit course), Ameri- can Civilization (2 two-credit courses to be taken in sequence), and American Studies Seminar (a research seminar where all the faculty members and stu- dents discuss students' papers—we call this Integration Seminar). Students take these courses in this order.

In Introduction to American Stud-

7. Our past visiting professors, for example, are as follows: Roberta L. Wollons (Indiana Uni- versity), Richard R. Niebuhr (Harvard Univer- sity), Robert H. Walker (George Washington University), Joel C. Hodson (University of Notre Dame), Peter I. Rose (Smith College), Hiroshi Obayashi (Rutgers University), Orlan- do Patterson (Harvard University), Alan Tra- chtenberg (Yale University), and Jonathan Veitch (The New School for Social Research).

8. The Associated Kyoto Program is a two-semes- ter study-abroad program at Doshisha Univer- sity that began in 1972 by liberal arts colleges in the United States. The participating institu- tions are Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Bucknell, Carleton, Colby, Connecticut, Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, Pomona, Smith, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Williams, and Whitman.

The Program sends about 40-50 students to Doshisha where they study Japanese language and a wide range of elective courses, living with Japanese home-stay families throughout.

9. The AKP American Studies Fellows are:

Wendy Kozol (Oberlin College), Rosetta Marantz Cohen (Smith College), Elena Tajima Creef (Wellesley College), and Kevin S. Wong (Williams College, scheduled for Fall Semes- ter, 2002).

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ies, all of our faculty members share teaching based on their own disciplines.

Students are exposed to kaleidoscopic views of American society and they are required to revise their research proposals submitted at the time of their application.

These research proposals, as revised in consultation with their advisors, are sub- mitted in advance of class meetings so that at least two faculty members and two students can read them. A short oral presentation of a student's revised research proposal is followed by students' and faculty members' questions, com- ments, criticisms, suggestions, etc. with responses from the student. This takes about 2-3 sessions—one session lasting for 90 minutes. This Introductionis intend- ed to inform both faculty and students about what others are doing. Knowing other students' research proposals stimu- lates some degree of cooperation as well as competition. At the same time, all faculty members come to grasp what students, not under their direct supervision, are doing so that they can help them by pro- viding some important information such as specialists, locations of archives, etc., which otherwise may not be available from primary advisors. In further consul- tation with their advisors, students are required to submit their final revised pro- posals by the end of the first semester for grading. ("Pass" or "Failure" by two facul- ty members)

American Civilization, a two-semes- ter course, has been taught by one faculty member and it is designed to introduce students to some of the very basic issues,

problems and approaches to the interdisci- plinary study of the United States. This course normally covers such topics as Reli- gion, Individualism, Democracy, Conflict, Race and Ethnicity, Cities and Technolo- gy, Art and Popular Culture, and America in the World.

Although it is not required at present, students are strongly encouraged in the second semester to take at least one research seminar conducted by a faculty member whose discipline is closest to that of each student. Usually this faculty member is a primary advisor to them. At the end of this second semester, students are expected to produce research reports outlining major portion of research con- ducted according to their research propos- als prepared during the first semester.

Students are also strongly encouraged to do fieldwork in the United States, with their plans prepared in advance and approved by their advisors. This may involve taking graduate courses related to American Studies at colleges and universi- ties in the United States, and doing archival research at appropriate research institutions such as National Archives, Library of Congress, Presidential libraries, university libraries, museums, art galleries, anthropological/ethnographi- cal fieldwork, etc. They are required to submit research reports on their fieldwork to be approved by their advisors and even- tually at the faculty meeting.

In the third semester, students are required to make oral presentations of the research in Integration Seminar. Stu- dents' papers are read in advance by two

Graduate Program in American Studies at Doshisha University, 1991-2000 107

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faculty members and two students who act as discussants. One student has 45 minutes; we take two students in one 90- minute session. A student's oral presenta- tion (about 10 minutes) is followed by questions, comments, criticisms and sug- gestions by students and the faculty, with the presenter's responses. (Many of the faculty members enjoy these sessions more than anything, and I personally feel this is where intellectual stimulation takes place, giving me exposure to a vari- ety of topics, approaches and methodolo- gies that I may not have time to find on my own. This is interdisciplinary study at its best. I hope that our students come to enjoy it as much as we do.) Following con- sultations with their advisors, students are expected to submit, by the end of the semester, their revised papers incorporat- ing points raised during the discussion.

Some students develop these final papers into M.A. theses; others graduate without M.A. theses, by taking an additional eight credits instead.

M.A. Students

What kinds of students do we have?

In terms of disciplines, we have a large number of students majoring in foreign languages (predominantly English lan- guage), American literature, and interna- tional relations/international studies.

Others majored in history, education, journalism, sociology, philosophy, political science, law, economics and commerce.

Unlike other graduate schools in Japan, the ratio of Doshisha graduates to the

total number of students admitted is 25- 30 % at most, and we are criticized for not admitting more Doshisha students. From 1991 to 2000, we counted more than 44 colleges and universities in Japan whose graduates we admitted to our program.

This is the result of our quite "objective"

evaluation of applications and interviews, and not of our policy.10 Our international students came from the United States (4), China (7), Russia (1), Thailand (1), Cana- da (1), etc. Japanese students graduating from American colleges and universities also came to our program. By the spring of 2001, we had admitted more than 27 students who graduated from colleges and universities overseas. Obviously, those who graduated from colleges and universi- ties in the United States outnumber oth- ers in this category. As of September

10. All applicants' "Plan of Study" essays are read by two faculty members with applicants' names replaced by numbers. Their evalua- tion sheets are collected and tabulated with comments and scores. Written examinations are also graded without knowing applicants' names. It is only at the oral examination that applicants are identified by name, and each faculty member writes an evaluation sheet on each applicant interviewed. But even at this moment no faculty member knows each appli- cant's results of other stages of the applica- tion and examination processes. After the oral examination, all the evaluation scores are tabulated for each applicant. Only after deci- sions of admission or no admission are reached after discussion can we learn the names of applicants. Although applicants' names are withheld, the overall evaluation sheet does include names of colleges and uni- versities from which they graduated, but each applicant's overall scores and performance weigh more than anything else. Therefore, the final result is quite "objective." For the past ten years, we have never used an admis- sion policy of favoring Doshisha graduates.

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2001, we have a total of 191 who have completed their Master's degrees.

Careers with M.A. Degrees in Ameri- can Studies

So far as our students' careers after graduation are concerned, there is no dis- tinctive pattern. Some move on to Ph.D.

program, of course, either at Doshisha or elsewhere in Japan and overseas includ- ing the United States. Many of our stu- dents have been to the United States for further study with various scholarships such as Fulbright Program grants, Rotary Foundation Scholarships, Crown Prince Scholarships (to study for two years at the University of Hawaii) as well as Doshisha's own exchange programs. Some are working for private corporations as journalists, and others as “salaried” men and women, just as any graduates with B.A. degrees, perhaps with a bit more pay.

Some are teaching at colleges and univer- sities, and high schools (usually teaching social studies or English). Given the state of Japanese economy at present, and the short history of our program, it is difficult to foresee any clear career patterns among our graduates. It is worth noting here that a number of our students have gone into journalism. It remains to be seen if this is a potential career pattern for our M.A. degree graduates in the future.

Ph.D. Program

We began our three-year Ph.D. pro- gram in 1993, and we admitted about 43

students. Although less systematic than Ph.D. programs in the United States, our Ph.D. program is perhaps more structured than many traditional doctoral programs in Japan. Since the M.A. degree is required for admission to our Ph.D. pro- gram, our Ph.D. students are not required to take courses, unless they are specifical- ly instructed to do so. They are normally under the supervision of one mentor depending on their individual field of study.

A student in our Ph.D. program has to meet the following requirements for com- pletion:

(1) To pass a second foreign language examination;

(2) To pass comprehensive examina- tions in two fields—major and minor fields;

(3) To have a dissertation prospectus approved; and

(4) To have a dissertation approved.

A comprehensive examination in the minor field can be either (1) a written examination; or (2) a syllabus for a semes- ter-long undergraduate course in Ameri- can Studies and a lecture-form essay on one of this course's lecture topics.

The comprehensive examination in the major field is a written examination given and graded by one of the dissertation com- mittee members. In examinations of both major and minor fields, the Ph.D. student will be orally examined by the dissertation committee. A dissertation committee con- sists of one primary mentor and two sec- ondary mentors, with the Dean and one of the two Associate Deans present ex officio.

Graduate Program in American Studies at Doshisha University, 1991-2000 109

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This dissertation committee also examines the dissertation prospectus for approval or disapproval. Only after the dissertation prospectus is approved can the Ph.D. stu- dent begin writing his/her dissertation.

So far, several Ph.D. students have successfully passed comprehensive exami- nations, and some others have had their dissertation prospectus approved, but no one has completed all the requirements for the degree. As our university regula- tions stipulate that a Ph.D. student can- not stay longer than 6 years while keeping the student status, some have left the pro- gram without finishing their disserta- tions. In order to help our Ph.D. students complete their requirements, in 2001 we launched a Ph.D. workshop. It is a Ph.D. version of Integration Seminar:

all the faculty members and as many Ph.D. students as possible meet to discuss the various papers (research proposal, dis- sertation prospectus, research paper, etc.).

The papers are distributed in advance.

Ph.D. students are also encouraged to submit their papers to appropriate aca- demic journals relevant to their fields of specialization, and several have had their papers published in academic journals.

Students are encouraged also to present their papers in as many academic meet- ings as possible, and several have done so rather successfully. But none has yet written his/her dissertation. There are some reasons for this.

First, some students have started working part-time and sometimes full- time, leaving little time for writing and finishing their dissertations.

Second, some simply linger as stu- dents, with no serious plan to finish.

Third, the faculty members of our graduate program still do not have a con- sensus about the standards for our Ph.D.

requirements and precise procedures.

This is one of the core problems of an interdisciplinary program such as Ameri- can Studies. Unlike other disciplines in social sciences or humanities, we cannot possibly impose requirements proper and relevant only to a single discipline. Nor could we prescribe and set a particular set of requirements to each Ph.D. student. In other words, we have to come up with a set of requirements equally applicable to all of our Ph.D. students in American Studies. The most regrettable case would be our approval of a dissertation primarily in the discipline of economics, for example, that may be rejected as a dissertation by the Department of Economics. American Studies as an interdisciplinary study should not be a smorgasbord of kaleido- scopic components thrown in at random in terms of discipline and topic. There should be at least one solid discipline on and around which relevant components should be placed in the manner that the particular discipline requires.

There is no doubt that the graduate program in American Studies at Doshisha University has been an experiment in many ways: some are new and unique;

others pioneering by Japanese standards.

First of all, it is an independent gradu- ate program with no undergraduate department.

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Second, it has employed a two-semes- ter system from the start in 1991.11

Third, our program is the only gradu- ate program in American Studies in Japan, so there is no model program we can emulate.

Fourth, we admit undergraduate stu- dents who have not finished their senior year, provided their academic perform- ance and number of credits taken meet our standards.

Fifth, we admit those who are employed or who have engaged in other pursuits since college, including homemakers.

Sixth, we have some fund of our own to provide scholarships for international students.12

Seventh, we take applications in Octo- ber and February for April admission, and in July for October admission, with a slightly different schedule for those apply- ing from overseas.13 Those residing over- seas, regardless of their nationalities, apply and are notified of the result by cor- respondence. It means that they do not have to come to Japan for written exami- nations and interviews.

Eighth, we have recruited our faculty members (three persons) by "open search,"

except those already hired. We found all of them with Ph.D. degrees (two Japanese and one American) who happened to reside in the United States. It turned out

that only three of our eight faculty mem- bers are Doshisha graduates (either for undergraduate or graduate education), and six Ph.D.s are from noted graduate schools of the United States. These fac- tors distinguish our graduate school from others on the Doshisha campus.

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of American Studies, our program is designed to encourage students to take a variety of courses in different disci- plines. Yet students sometimes remain under rather conventional supervision by their advisors. Some advisors are more tolerant than others. This sometimes gen- erates confusion among students. Conse- quently, there is a great deal of work of coordination required by the Associate Deans (we have two associate deans—one is not enough). Many of the problems come to faculty meetings. Although we Japanese tend to follow rather faithfully the principle of harmony ("wa") in the tra- dition of the 17-Article Constitution of Prince Shotoku promulgated in 604 A.D., our faculty meeting sometimes stray far from it. Partly because we have Ameri- cans on the faculty, the language used for discussion often changes into English, which is most unusual in Japan. Our dis- cussions explore the nature of American Studies as a discipline (if any), how we should organize the curriculum, what kind of academic training we should provide our students, and what kind of results (or

"products") we expect to bring about.

The whole program was ambitiously begun, to say the least. How successful is it? We may know when we produce our

Graduate Program in American Studies at Doshisha University, 1991-2000 111

11. All the Faculties of Doshisha University adopted a two-semester system in the spring of 1998.

12. Unfortunately, this fund has been totally expended in 2001.

13. October admission has been temporarily sus- pended.

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first Ph.D. after we come to some kind of consensus on many difficult questions. It is my sincere hope that our experiences do not deter you from bringing social sciences back into American Studies.

*This is the revised and updated ver- sion of the paper on the basis of which the author made an oral presentation at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in Montreal, Canada, held on October 28-31, 1999. Time limit made my oral presentation much shorter than the paper. This particular session, "Bringing the Social Sciences Back into American Studies: A Forum," was held on October 29, 1999. Participants were as follows:

Chair--Thadious M. Davis (Department of English, Vanderbilt University); and Pan- elists--Larry Griffin (Program in Ameri- can/Southern Studies, Vanderbilt Univer- sity); Grey Gundaker (American Studies Program, College of William & Mary);

Linda K. Kerber (Department of History, University of Iowa. She was unable to come because of her injury); Jay Mechling (American Studies Program, University of California, Davis); and myself.

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