In this episode, we welcome Hwaji Shin, Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of San Francisco. Professor Shin’s research focuses on political sociology, with particular emphases on race and ethnicity, social movements, and migration. This episode was recorded in the aftermath of the disturbing act of violence in Atlanta on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 as we continue to witness ongoing abuse towards Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, and other communities of color. Prof. Shin is joined in conversation with JSAP contributors Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, and Prof. Reginald Jackson. Our topics include: the March 2021 Atlanta spa shooting; Prof. Shin’s family background; anti-Korean discrimination; supportive and unsupportive teachers; traveling to South Korea as a Korean Japanese person; creating belonging; Bon Jovi; fetishization of Asian women; professional training; graduate school; surviving vs. thriving; Charles Tilly's scholarship; anti-racist practice; racialization and racial formation; labeling, especially for Asian and Asian Americans; and Prof. Shin's book project.
In this episode, we welcome Hwaji Shin, Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of San Francisco. Professor Shin’s research focuses on political sociology, with particular emphases on race and ethnicity, social movements, and migration. This episode was recorded in the aftermath of the disturbing act of violence in Atlanta on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 as we continue to witness ongoing abuse towards Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, and other communities of color. Prof. Shin is joined in conversation with JSAP contributors Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, and Prof. Reginald Jackson. Our topics include: the March 2021 Atlanta spa shooting; Prof. Shin’s family background; anti-Korean discrimination; supportive and unsupportive teachers; traveling to South Korea as a Korean Japanese person; creating belonging; Bon Jovi; fetishization of Asian women; professional training; graduate school; surviving vs. thriving; Charles Tilly's scholarship; anti-racist practice; racialization and racial formation; labeling, especially for Asian and Asian Americans; and Prof. Shin's book project.
To hear more from Prof. Shin's work please watch her JSAP webinar on “Decolonizing Race and Ethnicity: Understanding Racial Formation in Japanese Society” and her presentation at the Center for Japanese Studies, "Contentious Citizenship: Zainichi Korean Activism in Japan."
This podcast is created with generous support from the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies. Recording, editing, and transcription support came from Reginald Jackson, Justin Schell, Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, Harrison Watson, Robin Griffin, and Allison Alexy. Please see the Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy homepage for more information.
Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy Podcast Series
Episode One Transcript: Professor Hwaji Shin
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Sophie Hasuo: Today we are welcoming Hwaji Shin, Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of San Francisco. Professor Shin’s research focuses on political sociology, with particular emphases on race and ethnicity, social movements, and migration. We are recording this episode in the aftermath of the disturbing act of violence in Atlanta on Tuesday, March 16th, as we continue to witness ongoing abuse towards Black, indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, and other communities of color. It is often difficult to find space to process and acknowledge the grief, sadness, and rage many of us may be feeling, especially within academic spaces. We are grateful to our guests and other JSAP collaborators for their continued willingness to engage in uncomfortable spaces of study with us as we discuss the intersections of race, class, and gender, and find collaborative ways to disrupt white supremacy, racism, and sexism in academia and beyond.
Professor Shin, thank you very much for engaging with us in this space. We were already looking forward to this conversation, but we’re all the more grateful for you being here, given the past event. We wanted to talk with you about your own intellectual formation, but if you’d like to share your thoughts concerning the violence last week and how you’re doing, we can start there.
Dr. Hwaji Shin: Thank you for the invitation. And I’m very happy and proud to be here. This has been a very difficult week. I think it has a cumulative effect on me. The effect of pandemic and, in full disclosure, my husband lost a job last year due to the pandemic-induced recessions, and my son’s school has been closed for 180 days. So personally, I was already in a very vulnerable space, and dealing with this dangerous virus was already in and of itself a huge challenge, but I’m trying to find equilibrium in my life to balance out. But January 6th insurrections and then also even before that George Floyd, Black Lives Matter movements, those racial reckoning that happened last year, and then that led to the January 6th insurrections, and then this. It seems as though these are not connected events, but in my mind they are very much connected. It’s not connected in a sense that it’s cause and effect, but it really brings out the vulnerability and the resilience in humanity at the same time. There’s so much thought and mixed emotions that overwhelms me. And then it definitely was a trigger for me to reflect my past trauma and including a recent trauma that I face as an immigrant woman from Asia in the height of anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States. And where I am at right now, which is San Francisco and as diverse as this city is, we also have seen a spike in anti-Asian violence. So frankly, I don’t feel safe, and I haven’t felt safe since pandemic started, but this whole chain of the events erode further my sense of security for myself and my family. So that’s where I am at right now.
Sophie: Thank you very much for your candor. I think a lot of Asian-Americans, especially, are feeling the trauma and the pain that you speak of. So I really appreciate you being so willing to share, especially considering the context of San Francisco that you’re currently located in. Going off on that, you did mention how your identity as an immigrant Asian woman puts you in different vulnerabilities. So I’d like to start this conversation asking how you identify?
Hwaji: That question is always difficult for me to answer because I really don’t have a short answer to it. Who am I, you know, how do I identify myself? I suppose I always identify myself as I am Korean minority, you know, born and raised in Japan. And I still hold very strongly to that identity. I think now I have lived in Japan and United States for about equal amount of time. And I was very conscientious about how my identity might shift, but I don’t still identify myself as an Asian American or Korean American or American. I still consider myself as a Korean minority in Japan or from Japan. Sometimes I call myself, I’m a Korean made in Japan, weird but accurate.
And where do I consider home? It’s hard. That question is even getting harder and harder for me to answer. But I think if the home is in a sense where I feel affinity with, it will be Osaka city where, you know, family lives. And I always see that city—not the country, but the city—as my hometown. So that will be probably the most honest answer. If the definition of the home is a place where I feel belonging, I suppose I don’t have one. I never really felt belong to the one geopolitical or [geo]graphical location. So I always thought there was something wrong with me in that regard. But as a sociologist who study about the nationalism, I just realize this is a pretty natural state of being. I don’t have to force myself to feel belonging to the one particular geographical location. And I don’t have that, but do I feel affinity with a certain space? Yes, I do. That will be the my hometown, Osaka city where I grown up, the dialect that I speak very proudly and very well. So, that will be my home.
Rachel: I wanted to say thank you also for your vulnerability and your candor here. We would love it if our listeners could get a sense of your academic background pre- the post-secondary space. So we wanted to ask you, kind of what were you reading in high school or maybe the beginning of college, undergrad.
Hwaji: As I just briefly mentioned, I was born and raised in Osaka city, Japan. So, I went to all the public schools up to high school in Osaka city. I was going to the Japanese public school. I didn’t go to those Korean ethnic school, like other Korean minority kids would do in Japan. I tried to condense my long, complicated, you know, college education short. But I did not go started with a four-years college. I went to the two years junior college and my parents thought that I should just go to junior college and get married or become a Korean Air flight attendant. That was my parents’ planning for me. So, I went to the junior college. That’s usually typically the most of the flight attendant would do, and study English there.
But there’s something in me—what happened in high school, I came to the United States as exchange student just for over the summer—that sparked the interest in race and ethnic relations in the United States. And it got me interested in the history of the minorities in United States and conditions, too. I started reading and watching movies along that line. And then I did go to the junior college, but I was devastated that my, you know, scholarly exploration would end in two years. And then I did not feel like becoming a flight attendant was my call.
Just against my parents’ will, I transferred to the four years college. And as I transferred, there was a good chance I might not be admitted to the four years college, so I wrote the student essay, submitted to the kind of like student essay competition sponsored by the Japanese government, got award for it, and then that became a kind of a ticket to the various scholarship. I got recognized by my professors at home and I got the scholarship. And then that got me to come to the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. And then that’s where I met Sociology as my major. I was Anthro minor. I have two BA from Japanese college: Kansai Gaidai, which gave me a scholarship to study for another BA in Sociology, in University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. My parents always said I never left the college, and there’s some truth to it, because I spent five years undergraduate to get the two BA from two countries. That’s a condensed version of my trajectory from primary education, high school, and then colleges in both countries.
Dr. Reginald Jackson: Thank you so much for that, Hwaji. I recognize that you’re trying to give the condensed version, but I kind of want to hear a slightly less condensed version. Partially because I think it’s a really interesting trajectory, and I’m really struck by what you’re describing as your parents—God bless them—their sense of like who you should be and what you should do and your trying to navigate that and how those things are in tension. Insofar as we’re also thinking about this kind of Origin Stories series as hopefully being instructive for students who might be listening as well. I mean, I can’t imagine that there’s, there’s not a lot of students, regardless of their background, but particularly students of color who are facing similar types of issues in their own homes. Families where, you know, educational aspirations are really kind of emphasized on the one hand. But also families where folks, you know, parents don’t know how to imagine their students or their their kids in these kinds of spaces.
And so, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it was in the States that you appreciated, or were you trying to kind of get out of Japan at that moment and kind of explore more and kind of how that was being perceived by folks. And also, I think, you know, you’re obviously high-achieving in all these different ways. I wonder about teachers that were really helpful, you know, but maybe not so helpful, too? And how that kind of, how that kind of negotiation was taking place in high school and college.
Hwaji: I still remember distinctively, middle school was really tough for me. You know, in primary school, the teacher was highly protective of me. I got bullied for being, you know, Korean and for various intersectional reasons: class, you know, my parents neither of them were college educated and my grandmother was illiterate. So, I already knew very early on, my family is different. And my parents have what I call it now the Clinton Doctrine, right? I mean, I could pass as a Japanese because, I don’t care what other people say, you can’t really tell the difference between Korean and Japanese and Chinese, you know? The difference is so subtle and stereotypical, and I could pass as Japanese all the time. Until I flashed my credit card and ID, no Japanese person can tell I am Korean because I speak Japanese fluently with a local accent.
So when I start going to the elementary school, my dad like, declared, “You know, at school, some people call you a Korean or pick on you on that. I make you guys go by the Japanese name because that’s the name that we gave you, but know where you are from. You have another set of the name, that’s your authentic name, that’s a Korean name. But I will encourage you to go by the Japanese name because that will take care of a lot of unwarranted daily, harsh bullying from your friends. You don’t have to advertise that you are Korean, but you don’t have to hide it.” And that’s a very contradictory message! So, “don’t tell, you know, but don’t hide.” So, it almost like don’t out yourself all the time, but, at the same time: don’t feel ashamed of yourself.
I still remember: How do I do that? As a child, I just took it that it’s okay for me to tell a close friend who I am. But I don’t think I was able to tell any of my friends who I am. Sometimes at lunchtime, I was very conscientious about it. If it’s a obento, you know, the lunchbox that we have to bring in, usually at school lunch is served. But sometimes we bring, you know, homemade lunch from home. I just suddenly become very conscious about: does my lunch tells the people that I’m Korean, because we are so used to eating Korean food at home. I was trying to understand which one is a Korean food and which one is Japanese. The boundary was very murky when I was kid.
I also remember the first grade. That’s the time when I realized I am actually bilingual, because I couldn’t read the time, a clock in Japanese, because I spent so much time with my grandmother while my parents were working. My grandmother speak Korean primarily. So, we were reading a time at home in Korean. And I was only kid in the first grade who didn’t know how to read the time in Japanese. So I felt so stupid. I was like, “I know this.” So the teacher tried to put me in like a special ed where the kids with the learning disability and so forth. And then my mom has to fight for it. “No, no, no, no, no, no. She knows this. She has this vocabulary.” So that was already a not very sound starting point in my life. That kind of lagging continued throughout elementary school. And then I remember I was constantly being subjected, like accused for stealing something from my friends, which I didn’t do. So, I already knew very early on, I had this stigma attached to me.
You either have a choice to be total conformist and try to prove yourself, you are so assimilated into Japanese culture and you are not troublemaker. Or, you fight back. And I think I choose the latter. I constantly fought back and act out. And then I just did not trust the teachers. And then teachers didn’t really make effort to present themselves as my ally, either. And they were just kind of look at me as a pity: “If you choose this path as a Korean minority in Japan, you’re destined to fail.” My brother, older brother, and sister was a little bit wiser than I was. They were very obedient and they were much more academically superior, and they did well in the school and in class, academic setting. That earned the trust and respect from the teacher. But I for some reason couldn’t choose that path and then I constantly act out and fought back.
I think in the sixth grade I stopped going to school. I told my mom it’s too much for me. I know my dad would not allow that to happen, so my mom kind of hid me in the closet when everybody’s leaving the house for work and school. And I come out of closet and I spend the days with my grandmother. And then I think that it became a big issue at school. And then principal started to come visit. And that’s when my dad find out. And, he was just like, you know, “we work so hard for you so that you can get educated, so you can go to college. What are you doing?” We had a long, big conversation as a community. And that’s when I think the school principal realized my classroom teacher was failing to understand the magnitude of pain that I’m feeling. And then he accompanied me to go to school. And that gave me a first sense of security. Somebody cared outside of my family. And he had eye on me. He wanted to make sure that I feel protected. You know, even in a playground, he was right there outside. I kinda choke up when I think about it, but he was the first person, first Japanese person, who showed the careand a sense of protection that I needed, outside of my family. You know, as I said earlier, the things that happened last week is really a trigger for me. I usually could talk these things without being emotional, but I’m a little bit more vulnerable than normal. And then being a mother and, you know, having an elementary school kid…. I sometimes worry if my son will go through something similar. The trauma resurface in a very unexpected way. And I say that all the time, and this is how it ha—, you know, resurface.
And then in middle school, I was told in, one of the first counseling, my classroom teacher was very candid. And then, “you know that you are the part of the discriminated minority groups, and you have a choice. You either study really hard, and then if you study hard in Japan, you can still be a doctor and lawyer, those certificates and diplomas are available even for you without a Japanese nationality. But all the other occupation, it’s going to be an uphill battle. And many kids ended up become, you know, working at a small business. And, you know, for you as a girl, if you ended up becoming a waitress and it might as well get married and then be taken care of by somebody.” And I think that’s where my dad came from. You become a flight attendant and in Japan, the becoming a flight attendant is actually an achievement. It is a difficult job to take, and you have to go through the rigorous training. Your mannerism and your aesthetic has to be very pleasing. Those are the occupation that many, like middle class and upper class men in Asia find it desirable to find their spouse. So my dad thought that I would be very marketable in, you know, marriage market if his daughter become a flight attendant. And then you are tall and you are thin, and, you know, you have to be at a certain height to become flight attendant in Asia. And then he thought that I would be a perfect candidate.
So when my middle school teacher told me that, that’s when I realized, “Oh, that’s the reason why my dad wanted me to become a flight attendant.” But it just, it was very challenging for me to study hard when I know what I’m supposed to do in my life. I guess I stopped going to school in the middle school, too. But at some point, I still remember, my parents sent me to this kind of like afterschool program where, you know, juku, that’s what they call it in Japanese, that many kids go to the afterschool program. That’s a privately run where you do the supplementary studies so that you’re well prepared for the entrance exam to the better high school, more competitive high school. And my parents sent me to the very rigorous afterschool program that, which I have to take a train to go to another town. And I did not go to any of those classes because I just did not feel like it. I mean, why do I have to study so hard when I know what I’m supposed to be is go to the junior college and become flight attendant only to be married to someone who is going to take care of me?
And then there’s one night I took the last train back home. And then I was kind of like worried that my parents is going to find out that I’m not studying at the school, but I’m just roaming around the city by myself. There was a drunk Japanese businessman sat next to me, and I was worried that he’s gonna like molest me or harass me. But instead, he start sobbing right next to me, worried about his futures and his job. He apparently had a really bad day at work, and he drunk to the point that he is so incomprehensive, incoherent, that he had to talk to the junior high girl who is still wearing a uniform. But he’s spilling his guts out. And then suddenly I just noticed, you know what, I’m not the only one who is feeling this way? Feeling of sense of alienation, feeling so confused. This guy, who is a middle class businessman, you know, and nice suits, is feeling just as sense of same sense of vulnerability. That, for some reason, gave me a sense of hope that it is not who I am, feeling this way. And this is something bigger than me, you know, as a person: this is about the societal issues.
With that, I kind of sprang right back to study. I had a year and a half left in the middle school to be able to bring myself to ready for the competitive enough high school that I can get to the, you know university. Because in Japan, it’s very hierarchical order of the school. If you don’t go to the certain ranked school in high school, you’re not gonna be able to get to the college either—not as easily. I did that, and suddenly I was very driven. I wanted to figure out what about our society that makes someone like me or someone like him feel the same similar sense of vulnerability.
I think that was the very first moment I had this sociological imagination, even though I didn’t know what it was. That’s when I realized there’s something about the structure of the society, it would make individual feel it in a certain way. And that was definitely the first moment of it. And that’s got me in the Japanese high school. And once I got to the high school, I was still the same way: very rebellious. I used to remember, I slept through and I just figured out how I can escape from the high school. Home economic class was the one thing that I absolutely loathe. You know, that all the boys are doing, playing sports outside. The girls have to go to home economic class and learn how to cook and, you know, sew. I always escaped from the home economic class and dive right into the soccer field and start playing the soccer with the boys.
And my home economics teacher was a feminist, who who was one of the leading feminists in Osaka city who has been always advocating to make the home economics co-ed. But then she was beheaded with the school board and being told that, “Well, kids wants to learn in this way.” She was waiting for some one kid who say, “I don’t want home economics. Why the only girl has to do it?” My intention was nothing to do with a feminist, but my act was apparently resonate with the feminist ideology. So she grabbed me and said “What you are doing is great! Let’s go to the school board together! You make the statement that you feel discriminated as a girl. That home economics become co-ed.” And I made that statement at the school board. It became a co-ed. So we also could play the soccer and the boys also have to do home economics. It just became very gender inclusive. And that gave me the first taste of, your voice matters, right? And if it wasn’t that teacher, I don’t think I had that experience. It was totally coincidental, but my act aligned with her belief, what she thought was the best. And I began to appreciate that this old lady who has been advocating for the feminism and gender equity in Japan, in education, I was somehow be able to help to advance that. And then I got what I wanted. And then, rest is history. I didn’t think I was a change maker. All I wanted to do was just get out and play the soccer, but somehow that paved the way to coed and integrating the gender equity in a curriculum in the high schools in Osaka city.
And then I want to mention one more person who really direct me in the right direction. In the junior college I met this human rights seminar professor. He was an activist, just became a college lecturer. And he spent all his life as activist for the minority rights and human rights. And then he sort of retired from the street activism, become a college lecturer and become a professor. And I took his first day as a college lecturer in the seminar on the human rights. I was so inspired by what he has to say. He was talking about the United Nation chapters of the human rights. And I had never heard of the United Nation until that day. And it just sounded so good, right? And then, so I was like, I marched to the lectern, and said, “You know what, Professor Okuda, I was so moved by your lecture. I think I decided I’m going to work for the United Nations.” [laughs] It was like a first day of the junior college. I just say, give you the sense of how clueless I was. He was just like, “Oh my God, is that what the college, becoming a college lecturer will be? You have to deal with such a nutty kid.” I’m sure he was just overwhelmed by my forthcoming, but he invited me to his office and he listened to all my life stories. And, “I’m afraid in two years I either become a flight attendant or housewife, or waitress. I mean, I shouldn’t have only one three choices in my life. How can I get out of this?” And that’s when he laid out what options that I have: “You know, you happen to be in this private college, where they actually have a transfer program set up.” In Japan, transferring to the four years college is very, very difficult. But I happened to be in the college where that track is open to the students with a good grade. He’s like, “Why don’t you study hard at this one? And then once you go through the four-year college, more doors would open.” He became really the mentor that I needed.
I went to the public schools in Japan where all the textbooks are provided for free for all the kids. So, when I went to the college, I did not know the professor won’t give you the textbook. You’re supposed to go buy them at the bookstore. And then my best buddy from the junior college was the girl that I sat next to in my Spanish class. She had a textbook in front of her. And then I ask her, “Where’d you get that?” Then she said, “You’re supposed to buy those in the bookstore.” “What! They won’t give you the books at the college?” And she thought I was such a weirdo. But we became friends after that and she showed me where I can get the books. I was like, “Oh my God, I pay so much for the tuition, now I have to pay for the books!” And then I was like, “I better get the job.” And then she still talks about it. She still remember, “Oh my God, this is the girl that she’s definitely not going to finish the degree,” you know. [laughs] And then she still thought that it was ironic: I ended up getting a PhD because even though I didn’t know, I’m supposed to get the textbook on a first day of the college.
That’s how clueless I was in the Japanese college. And then having met the Professor Okuda, who understand where I’m coming—because he was an activist and understood what kind of family that I am from and how limited I have, as for the knowledge—how to navigate in a higher ed setting…. He really became my personal coach: how to write properly in Japanese, how to read books, how to intellectually process them…. And had I not met him? I don’t think I’m going to be where I am at today. And needless to say, I still keep in touch with him. He became like part of my family. My mom made a bunch of kimchi for him many times…. [laughs] You know, we owe so much to him. I just wanted to mention the few teachers at the high school and then college who really made an impact for me.
Reginald: That’s… incredible. I’m kind of stunned. Thank you for sharing all that. I think a theme, that seems really, it seems really important to mention here, you know, I’m struck by a couple of things. One is, you know, you talked about the intersectional nature of, you know, in class and gender and ethnicity, nationality, all of these things at different moments being highlighted for you in these different experiences. But I think it’s great that you had this kind of education about Japanese society when you were cutting class. I think the irony of that, you’re getting this education about real life and that your sociological imagination, as you put, was sparked by this moment, I think is really telling, and it speaks well of you. But also that you have these folks that you’re meeting in the academy who are in their own ways are refugees, right? Who are refugees from a life of activism at a certain point, or trying to figure out how to relate to the world. And it just so happens that your wanting to play soccer aligns with this feminist teacher who has great intentions completely inadvertently. Or you meet Professor Okuda and he’s willing to enable to mentor you in this way because you’re a bad student, which is to say that you haven’t internalized all of these things.
I’m inspired by that and I hope that some of the folks that are listening are also inspired. That gut feeling that you have with that intuition about things being off, embracing that is actually what’s led you to in this very kind of circuitous, nonlinear way to achieve the things that you’ve achieved. And I’m sure to be able to inspire other people because you don’t imagine there’s only one path, which I think is another theme of some of the things you’ve talked about.
So anyway, thank you so much for sharing that. And for shouting out the teachers who were really useful and who just you know recognized your humanity? I think that that’s something else that’s really incredibly compelling. The part of what you’re saying is that folks who decided to protect you and recognize that you are a human being, like how powerful that was. Even as, you know, your parents, it sounds like wanted the best for you, but didn’t know how to imagine, you know, something beyond that really kind of strictly delineated, ideal Japanese woman. They couldn’t kind of think past that and these other people that you’re running into could. And so I think that’s really fascinating and inspiring.
Sophie: Thank you so much for all of the experiences you’ve shared so far. I think like Professor Jackson said, they’re really inspiring, especially for folks who are of mixed race or are part of diasporic communities and occupying spaces of tension within ourselves as well. That meant a lot to me, especially, to hear about your resilience and how you found spaces to resist within a really difficult space. I really appreciate your discussion, as well, on how intergenerational trauma emerges and re-emerges through past experiences. I was wondering if you could speak a bit about your own positionality towards Korea or how you thought about Korea growing up. You’ve spoken on how you knew from a very young age that you didn’t necessarily fit into what was expected.
Hwaji: Korea’s always a special country for me. In a similar yet different way that I was never really felt accepted in Korean society, either, or the people in Korea. My parents always took me to Korea every time they had an opportunity. I think my first trip was when I was nine or ten years old. My grandmother deceased and then her last wish was to brought her ashes to Korea. So she already bought the graveyard for herself and her husband before she died. She came to Japan as a colonial immigrant when a little girl, and then her mother was a single mother. Needless to say, very difficult life, she had. We always knew that Korea was a home, ancestral home to us. I had a South Korean passport and I still do. I never lived in Korea and I don’t speak Korean fluently. I understand the Korean you know, well enough to, you know, what other people are talking about. And my friends sometime make fun of me. I’m actually a North Korean espionage because I understand Korean fluently even though I don’t speak Korean at all. [laughs]
So I knew I was not fully Korean, but I always idolized Korea growing up because that’s, you know, the songs and the food we eat and ceremonies and customs that we have, and the Korean hanbok, you know, dresses. I adore the Korean cultures and histories. But when I first went to Korea, immigration officer was yelling at me for not speaking Korean. I understand fully what he was saying, and you know, even though he was speaking Korean, because I understood my grandparents. He said that if you are Korean, you have to study Korean. You can’t have the Korean nationality and Korean name and not able to speak Korean. That was very painful for me to hear. I mean, my first visit to the country that I always thought that I’m supposed to be unconditionally accepted. And then he also called me a half-Jap, right out there. That was a rude awakening. Well, thank you, bro for calling me the name! That’s what I would say today, but I’m nine years old. I didn’t know how to say it. So I was just mortified. And then my dad who is fluent in Korean, came to the rescue us. He apologized. “It’s my fault she doesn’t speak Korean.” And that made it even worse. It’s not your fault, Dad! It’s the Japanese government who brought us to here! I mean, I didn’t have that, but that’s me speaking after I learned the history. But it was so complex that why my dad is apologizing to this rude dude? But we managed and I kind of pushed that memory aside. I didn’t remember it until I was really much older, what happened in that moment. And as a kid, I just remember I met my second cousins, my uncles and aunt, you know, the beautiful mountain where we buried our grandmother’s ashes.
Korea still is a very special country to me, but I also knew that they don’t necessarily appreciate me and accept me as such. And having learned the histories and how the Korean minorities are treated by the Korean, both Korean states. There’s a lack of understanding about the hardship the Korea minority experience outside of Korea, among the people in Korea, as well. It’s a country that I love and country that I adore and, but I also feel the distance.
And funnily enough, that’s how exactly I feel about Japan as well, as a nation. And I remember when I was sixteen the first boyfriend that I had, he asked me point blank, “Hwaji do you love Japan?” And I don’t understand why he asked me that question, but I just couldn’t immediately answer that question back. And I just kind of long pause, and I just, like, sigh and I say, “you know, I think I always loved Japan, but I’m hesitant to say that because I know Japan never loved me back.” I felt the same way about Korea and Japan. And that’s that sense of being a diaspora. In some ways I feel I belong both. In some way, I know I’m not fully embraced by both, right?
At the age of forty-seven, I made a peace with that sense of not belonging and being transplanted. That gave me, actually, the resilience, because I have no place where I feel unconditionally accepted, then I have to cultivate the place where I feel like I am safe on my own. In perverse way, not having the secure place being anchored and the state to protect me and the people to embrace me, inspire me to work that much harder to be very authentic self and not to be afraid to be judged for who I am. That’s a really long answer to your question, but I hope, you know, that, answered the heart of that question.
Rachel: No, thank you. That’s, that’s amazing life advice. You’ve talked about your experiences in Japan growing up and your positionality towards Korea also, and kind of your sense of not belonging in both spaces. I’m curious to hear more about your early days in the US during college and when you were doing your PhD, and how that might’ve affected your sense of identity as someone who had been a minority in Japan, but kind of like you said, you had the same accent as everyone else. You could’ve kind of kept your head down and hidden if you wanted to. Then moving into a different country where you’re minoritized in a different way and have this sort of hyper visibility as an Asian woman in a white country. Could you talk more about kind of what that transition was like?
Hwaji: When I first came to the United States I was sixteen and an exchange student. It’s funny how I ended up being in the New Jersey. So let me just kind of explain that first part, and then I can talk about the college and graduate school. I applied for the scholarship to study, to be a homestay and be in America for like two months in the summer. And I had to write three states that I wanted to go. I only know two states in the United States, that’s California and New York. I think if you ask any Japanese person, that’s the two states that they probably think of. So I did that. But then I have to fill the third blank. And I was so into the Jon Bon Jovi, like Bon Jovi, hard rock and a big hair band at that time in the late nineties, you know, early nineties and late eighties, it was like, the Bon Jovi is is from New Jersey and they just released the album titled, “New Jersey.” Then I look at the map, it’s right below the New York, how bad it could be? So I just wrote New Jersey, and they sent me to New Jersey for that reason, right? So every time I was there, asked why did you pick the New Jersey? And I’m just like, well, because I love Bon Jovi. I was adopt sort of, kind of adopted, you know, host family from New Jersey, and their daughter was also into the Bon Jovi too. So that’s my first introduction. It was a very white suburb, I have to say, but they took me around and showed the town. And I just noticed the gaze. I get looked at all the time, this Asian girl, little girl, tagged along by the family. And then I tried to speak the language, they don’t understand. And then the most frustrating thing is that I couldn’t pronounce the word “vanilla” because the v sound doesn’t exist in Japanese. So I keep saying, I’m getting the banana flavor ice cream. And then because I was not pronouncing “vanilla” I was saying “banilla,” and that sounds like “banana” to them. So it was like, I can’t even get the vanilla ice cream at the ice cream parlor!
And then I just realize how difficult it is to navigate. People didn’t engage with me because I don’t speak the language. I don’t look like them. So I was like, does that mean I have to dress like them? It just become super aware of what I am, more so than when I was in Japan. And I somehow this romanticized naive, understanding that a country like United States is so diverse that it would just automatically embrace me. I was fifteen or sixteen years old at that time. I was thrown into this very white suburb where I am the only Asian person. And I was like, that is not what I thought America would be, right? And I might have felt differently if my host family was somewhere in Brooklyn in New York or San Francisco or LA. But I’m not saying that I didn’t have a great time. In fact, I had a great time and I become very close to that family. They’re like my second set of American family now. But it wasn’t what I thought I would experience.
And the second place where I went in the United States as an undergrad was University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. If you want to find the whitest college town in America, that would be Eau Claire for you, right? So I was just like, whoa, right? And it was very safe, you know, boring, those two are coordinated. And so I just, I became a college roommate with this very white, and I say that in a very sociological sense, her positionality was white. She think as a white person and not interested in very much about understanding others. I don’t think she’s aware of her own bias, either. I did not get on with her at all. I would not go into the details because it’s probably not appropriate in a podcast, but things she did at night just really bothered me. So I just basically, moved out of the room and then kind of joined the international students quad. So that’s where I met quite a few friends, some of them American, many of them are from Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe. We create this hodgepodge cosmopolitan space in the middle of Wisconsin on campus. And where I felt like validated, you know, like I’m not strange, I’m unique, I’m different, because each one of us felt that way.
But in college, sometimes we go out to the local club and then, you know, bars to drink. And then oftentime I became hyperaware that there is a certain male, a white male will come and wanted to talk to me simply because I’m Asian. And then I’d been told by my local friends, “Oh, that’s so-and-so, watch out. He only go after the Asian girls. He’s not interested in you. He just wanted to come onto you because you are Asian.” I saw a lot of gross, misogynistic, racialized fetishism there. I was sort of traumatized to some degree. And then I just thought, wow, in order to become friend or close to someone in America, you just have to think if this person has some kind of fetish, like I’m just an object to that fetishism. That was kind of super gross. I was just kind of feeling a little bit dismayed in social life, so I kind of created this safe haven with my international students from all over the places. And that’s where I hang out.
Needless to say, I didn’t want to go back to Wisconsin or Midwest or South, for that matter, for the graduate school. So I wanted to make sure that I pick more diverse space for the PhD. And I really wanted to go to Columbia. Well, first I wanted to go to New School and then Columbia, because Dr. Charles Tilly was my idol sociologist at that time in historical comparative sociology. That’s when I wanted to study in PhD. So I applied for the school where he was teaching. First year, he was in the New School. Then I was accepted. And later I learned that Chuck moved to the Columbia. So I waited for one more year, reapplied for Columbia. I got in, but I didn’t get the full financial package, in part because I had a scholarship from Japan. But I really wanted to get the F1 visa. For that I need like at least four years, plus my scholarship financial statement to show that I am financially not liable to the state of the United States for seven or six years to complete the PhD. But since Columbia didn’t offer that package that I needed to get the F1 visa, I went to Stonybrook. Close enough, right? And they offered me a full financial package on top of my scholarship. I took it as a sign that this program commits to me to succeed in PhD. Not really. After I got in, it was very loosely organized graduate school. You’re on your own figuring out. It was kind of diverse, but not so diverse. I have to navigate my way and understand where I am at.
I immediately realize the lack of the cultural capital that is putting me in a disadvantageous position. And one of the way that I found out was that I don’t drink that much, at least at that time. So I did not go out with advisors for drink after the seminar. I didn’t do that. Somehow I thought as long as I work hard, people will recognize me and want to help me. I always lived my life that way. But that formula didn’t work in graduate school. I have to make more personal connection with the advisor, and I have to have them interested in me and invested in me. I didn’t know how to do it. Just being a TA wasn’t enough for them to interested in my master thesis reader or track paper, that’s what we were supposed to write. By the second or third year, I really did not have a main advisor. And I look around the cohort and I realize I’m the only one who didn’t have it. And then it’s typical state school, there was a threat of the financial aid cut was issued. There was a state was going through a budget crisis and they have to cut the lines. And the department was told to cut the TA lines for some of the graduate students who did not meet the level of success at that stage. And then all our cohort wasn’t finishing the requirements at that time, including myself. Until we finished these three sets of papers by the certain date, our TA line is gonna be cut. And my cohort had this weird idea that if none of us finish it, they cannot cut all of us. That was the dumbest coup idea that you’re ever heard, right? [laughs] Immediately, I was like, yeah, as much as I want to be the part of this cohort, but I’m the only one who is on the F1 visa. If I don’t get that done, I’m out of this country. So I’m sorry, I can’t join this coup.
So I actually just decided, the paper was halfway done. I’m really not a good finisher. And then that’s part of it. I later realized it because I always felt I’m not good enough to finish this. You know, that kind of imposter syndrome was always haunting me throughout my career, really. But I had work done. It justneed to be bring this one to the finish line. With the threat over right behind me, I just finished all the three paper in a matter of a few months, because it was almost done. I just needed to find the reader. So I just went to the each advisor who I thought had a pretty good rapport and explained the situation. And if you think it’s good enough, please sign. And then it got all signed. I think I’m the only person in that cohort who finished PhD, got the tenure track. That’s the really rude awakening that cohort that I was with had zero idea my positionality and vulnerability and then shared the very irresponsible advice with me. That’s when I realized graduate school is a totally different game. Finding this kind of cuddly buddy, it’s not going to get me anywhere. It’s actually very cutthroat. And then I just come to realize that I have to mature up. I don’t need cuddly buddies. This is a professional school. This is the part of professionalization.
It’s actually quite lonely experience. I still don’t have that many friends from the graduate school days, not like a cohort close buddies. I still do have a friend. I want to clarify I do have friends from the graduate school days, but not in a sense that I had friends from college where we felt allied to one another. Those people who I competed with, that relationship wasn’t really not meant to be the lasting friendship because it was such a sort of toxic environment. I was able to find advisors and was able to finish. My advisor did come to understand who I am toward end, you know, who I am and my drive and my desire. And they also encouraged me to study about Japan. That’s how I ended up being a Japan Studies scholar.
At the beginning, I thought I came to the United States, interested in Japan, but a more comparative sense. I mainly wanted to come to this country to study about America and then compare against the issues in Japan. But I ended up writing a dissertation because my dissertation advisor got really interested in what I have experienced as a minority in Japan. And then he said, I’ve never read anything quite like it so you should write it. And that’s how I ended up writing about the Zainichi Koreans histories of social movements and history of Japanese nationalism and citizenship, immigration policies, and I’m still working on that. So that’s how I entered Japanese Studies. That wasn’t the goal that I pursued, but it happened through the conversation I had with my mentors.
Reginald: Again, I’m so excited for this to be public. [laughs] So many of the things that you’re saying, I think resonate for me personally. Judging from the nodding that I see from Sophie and Rachel, that the public cannot see, that there’s also some overlap there as well. I want to say a couple things and then we can go to some other questions about your research more specifically. I mean, you kind of headed us that way. The strange way in which you’ve kind of have this interface with Japanese Studies, but you know, that’s inadvertent, which I think is partially why what you do is so fascinating to us and I think, you know, why your voice is so important. What you did just now in some ways was historicize and give a kind of genealogy of your mistrust towards fake solidarity and stupid forms of community in graduate school which are designed to set you up for failure. I think all of those things are important for folks to hear, whether they’re in graduate school or not. But, you know, I keep thinking about this lyric, like “you give love a bad name.” The fact that you’re heading to the United States, you know, not to find love but at least to stare into Jon Bon Jovi’s eyes and rock out and eat ice cream and all these other things. And folks in Japan are really hostile in many ways, with the exception of some of the teachers and friends that you mentioned. And so you’re looking to America tto be a kind of remedy for that, or at least an escape from that. And then finding in all of these kind of soft and harder forms of white supremacy, you know, that that’s also a bankrupt proposition. And in the middle, in some ways, you start studying and trying to figure out like, what the hell is going on. I can only imagine that your curiosity is, you know, between your roommate and even the idea of being kind of fetishized or objectified as, you know, this kind of perverse form of objectifying love, to what extent that plays into her dislike of you. Besides, you know, like whatever kimchi you like or these other things, right, is part of this other kind of misogyny that’s built into this situation. And so I’m just fascinated by all of those overlapping things and wanted to maybe ask along those lines, and I’m thinking partially about your piece in the Tilly volume about trust networks.
I’m thinking about the connection between your, your own kind of biography and the work that you’re doing, not in a kind of superficial way of like, Oh, you’re Zainichi, you know, and you’re writing about Zainichi issues. But more like these kinds of affective relationships and so forth, that’s going on. That chapter about trust networks and the fraught nature of those, how they both allow things and disallow things and can be, I think the phrase you use is, the enduring kind of inequality.
Could you talk a little bit about more in terms of your research, if there is there a certain problem or certain kind of idea that you think drives your work. I can imagine that your advisors are like, Oh, you know, this stuff, and it’s really interesting. But you have a much deeper understanding of all these microaggressions and so forth. So could you talk a little bit about that?
Hwaji: Yeah, so interesting. Writing a dissertation was really for me the confronting inner demon. On the surface, I was always proud of myself being a survivor. But I wasn’t thriving. I was constantly surviving. And in a graduate school in academia, you have to some point switch the gear from surviving to thriving. And I don’t think I did that until much later in my career. I mean, even after tenure I finally thought this is enough, enough of me surviving, let me thrive, right? In the academic sense, I always felt this fear that if whatever I write is biased and tainted by my positionality. I did not embrace that as a gift, something that I will be able to see the social reality in a unique lens. And my advisor has to tell me, “no, no, no, you have a sense, you have the data that you collected. You are trained enough to be able to write it.” So I keep writing and writing and writing. But I just cannot bring it to the finish line because, who am I to be able to narrate? And then also that, I was writing a history that no Koreans in Japan wrote it in English, right? So I wanted to nail it, right? I constantly trying to be mindful of my own positional biases and then emotional attachment that I have to the subject. And then to what extent can I be objective to this subject that I’m studying about.
That’s part of the reason why that I produce very little amount of writing as compared to the other scholars in a similar stage in my career because I constantly questioning myself. But in the pieces that I publish and put it out, I’m very quite proud of it because it was so empirically driven. I just decided, I think, because I’m afraid of all my bias, I am very heavy in empirical data. I do not speak, and I do not write unless I have data to back up. So that positionality, vulnerability sort of, as a minority study about the minority subject, the person who is studying about her own person forced me to become very rigorous about the data-driven approach. I have a kind of an adverse reaction when people write without citing certain sources or not double-checking the data. I hold myself to that standard as well.
The durable inequality and trust network and all of that, Tilly’s idea, was something that I ran into when I was in undergrad. My advisor gave me a little piece of the essay that Charles Tilly wrote about, you know, this whole idea. And I disagreed with him. I thought I understood what he wrote. I disagreed with him. I wrote him a letter out of blue in my, I don’t know, sophomore year in college, and Tilly graciously wrote back and just let me know that I misunderstood him. But he also gave me the working paper, which later became award-winning piece, Durable Inequality.I really like that book, very objective, solid sociological analysis, applicable. And then he said, this piece hopefully will be useful for your dissertation writing and, and it was super useful. I’m so glad that I was given opportunity when he passed away to apply some of the concepts that inspired me to become a sociologist in a context that I was studying about. That this theory, sociological theory of producing durable inequality can be explained by this concept of trust network that marginalized group tend to use as this first as a survival mode. But as long as you stay in that network to survive, you’re not going to thrive into the main society, because the trust network the marginalized group creates is for the survival, not thriving into the main society.
But as you can see, as I write that, I didn’t realize how much that resonated with my own life. I was so busy applying this objective sociological analysis into this empirical setting that I’m familiar with. But as I read it and I used my piece in my seminar or give a talk, as a retrospect, I realized Chuck was teaching me how that resonates with his theory, like so many years later. So it just kind of in a circular motion, I come to realize that it was so important for me to write that piece. I think the significance of it, I realized after ten years after I wrote that piece, because, oh yeah, that’s the reason why I got into the Sociology and that’s the piece that I wanted to do. And I hope that I will bring that back into the book manuscript that I’m writing right now, that also incorporates some of that idea I presented. At some point group and then people have to switch off from the survival mode to the thriving mode, is that has to happen. So that’s kind of the theme of my work so far.
Sophie: Thank you for sharing how these various themes and how your own experiences have really inflected the lens that you use in your research and your forthcoming book. Going off of that, I’m interested to hear how you think of anti-racist practice, especially given your many life experiences dealing with racial tensions. So I’m wondering if you could speak a bit more about what anti-racist practice looks like in your day-to-day and your field of study, if you wanted to focus on sociology, within Japan as well.
Hwaji: My marginality was always a tool for me to survive and thrive, you know, going off of that topic. To me antiracist practice and day-to-day basis is in my teaching to my son and as well my students, and that’s the arena where I try to practice that. People think that antiracist practice is just confronting injustice everyday. I mean, believe me, it’s too exhausting if I have to fight against the micro and macro aggression everyday. I have to let go, many of them, you know, and even though it is a bit much sometimes for me, but I just process it. And then, I just don’t want to bring up too much negative angers into the household. So things that happen in a home outside of home, I try not to bring it in. But I always try to remind my husband, who is by the way, a Caucasian man grown up in Indiana. So his positionality and mine are very different and we clash in our household a lot. The way that he view the landscape of America is quite different from mine. Poor my son, hapason who is stuck in between, right? Like how does he navigate himself, his life? And that, throughout that conversation that we have in a household, race does come up and then antiracist practice and how we do it.
But it really the most conscientious practice that I see it is always a teaching. I teach race and ethnicity at the University of San Francisco and I teach race and ethnicity in CJS this past Fall. I always confront this preconceived notion that race is a category that’s a universally exist everywhere. It’s not true. It’s a local category. Racial formation happens in a very local way. And geopolitical condition and demographic conditions and economies and all of that matters to the way people imagine race. So the definition of race, it varies from time to time, from space to space. I explain that to my seven-years old, my husband, and my students in a very consistently similar way. It’s anchored in sociological theories, but also lived experience, as well.
I was racialized in the context of Japanese society. I was racialized in the context of Korean society. I was racialized when I traveled in Europe and the Middle East, and Latin America and the United States. But the way that I was racialized, it’s quite different. It’s a very locally embedded way, that how the local community perceives someone like me, that’s, you know, feed into the way that I am perceived and treated in certain ways. But nonetheless, these are all racializations and racial formations. I come to realize that racialization and racial formation, it’s a universal. But the way people imagine the race is not a universal. And I think that people need to understand that in order to really figure out how to combat against that racism. Otherwise a lot of important details get mixed. And I sometimes don’t appreciate that US-centric understanding of racism and the racial categories and intersectionality being imposed upon me. Because I know that doesn’t necessarily apply in the context of Japan where the visible markers are absent but the subtle racism, you know, continue to happen.
I’m trying to transcend this essentialistic understanding of the race and practice of race as much as I can in everyday life and as well as in my scholarly activities. And I think the heart of my work is also challenge this essentialistic definition of race and ethnicity. And I always contest against anybody who say, “you can’t talk about the race when you talk about Koreans in Japan, because they belong to the same racial group.” Well, according to youit does, but not according to the people who imagine there’s a difference, right? Because race can exist based on the visible as well as invisible differences. It’s imagined categories. As much as people manage to imagine the difference, there is going to be the racialization. That’s my response to that, yeah.
Rachel: So sort of a follow up to that, could you elaborate more on how that sort of anti-essentialist emphasis relates to current issues that we’re seeing?
Hwaji: It’s really interesting that what happened last week against Asian woman, right. We began to understand who each persons are, some of them, you know, the subject of the anti-Asian hate crimes. There might be, those victim might identify themselves as American. And then they are identify themselves as a Southeast Asian or South Asian or Northeast Asian and so forth, right? But these groups are all lumped into AAAPI, right? The differences are being essentialized and melted into this essentialized category of “Asian,” right? Because a part of the problem of Asians’ and Asian Americans’ experiences that we were being melted into the one group and the generational differences and geopolitical differences, the fact that we have internal conflict within the communities would be often ignored, right? As a sociologist, I understand, as long as we have this common enemy, white supremacists, we were united in a front. But behind that united front, there is a lot of division within the communities as well. And then to create the true coalition across the different boundaries of identities, we have to honor first in fact, the differences that we have. Hear each other’s different voices and what are the concerns? How do they identify? Sometimes I hear the people when they say “let’s stop Asian American hate,” and then some immigrant community people say, “what about the hate against the Asian immigrants, not Americans? So is it okay for foreigners to be, you know, beaten up?” That’s not what people meant about “Asian American,” but you see the labeling does matters because labels signals the way that people perceive each other. The the label makes you feel in a certain way.
I really tried to be conscientious about the differentiating the label of the group and the label of the practice. Because they are essentially, socially constructed categories, and then we put the name to it. But there is always a divergence between the label that we constructed and the actual reality of how people perceive themselves and how they practice those boundaries and navigate those boundaries.
Those are the kinds of things that I often try to be very mindful about. Especially in the context of the Asian, anti-Asian hate. What does that mean, right? The diverse group of this communities are being lumped into the one group and subject to the very monolithic stereotype that resulted in this violent hate crimes. That dynamic needs to be unpacked. As much as I appreciate the attentions that are given to this group, but I worry that we are very important diversity within that group get washed off, you know, when the label kind of start traveling by itself.
Reginald: No, I think that’s a really great point to think about, and it really, I think underscores how important your voice is in these conversations. So, not just because you’re working so hard to do the kind of empirical research that you’ve described, but also what it means for you and the body that you inhabit and with the experiences that you bring to the table to really be able to, to think write about, and remind folks in your classes and in the scholarly and other communities, more broadly, about all the ways in which these labels are insufficient to really characterize the richness and the different kind of striations that let’s say tend to get effaced, or you say kind of washed out, or diluted, maybe, in these mainstream media accounts that are, I think, as we’ve seen most recently, really not attentive to the diversity within these categories and not really invested in underscoring that. I think moreover it’s important to consider for our purposes, as we wrap up, just what it means to think about taking these kinds of conversations or these types of insights that you’re bringing and thinking about kind of how that really hasn’t been part of the larger kind of training that folks in Japanese Studies tend to get. This kind of attention to race specifically or racialization and all of its nuances, is something that one might get in Ethnic Studies, but not necessarily in training in say, modern Japanese Studies more broadly.
And I’m so excited for the book which will be amazing, I’m sure, but also just to have these kinds of conversations with scholars like you and you specifically that really, I think show how much there is to be done and really point out the gaps or the blind spots that are embedded in these disciplinary histories that are so central to how Japanese Studies has developed in the post-war period, obviously.
I just want to say, you know, we’re so grateful to you for being here and for sharing all of these insights and reminding us of the complexity of these issues. I’m super excited to be able to share this. And for other folks, students, professors, members of the general public to hear you unpack all of these different things as they relate, not only to your research, but to your biography and the hopes that you have for really encouraging critical thought about these issues, more broadly. Hearing you talk, too, about your experience, I mean, in this case as an Asian scholar who’s living in America and raising a child here and what it means to teach in an antiracist mode, both, you know, in your home, to say nothing of in the classrooms, it really reminds me of how challenging it can be, particularly given the history of Japanese Studies and its own kind of supremacist beginnings, to continue to highlight these issues and to think through these issues in an unapologetic fashion. You really modeled a way of combining this kind of rigorous empirical research with kind of aspects of biography and experience to really underscore how valuable that is. But I think that there are lots of students out there, students of color and otherwise, who are can to be really frustrated with the inability or the unwillingness, or both, of the field to really kind of think in these nuanced ways that you’re demonstrating and really kind of spelling out. So I’m really hopeful for work like yours to continue to be able to bring that kind of perspective to the table in a really generative way. I think that’s important for the field, but also for scholars who can look to people like you to be able to be affirmed, I think, in their suspicions about the field, but then also to pursue some of these questions in a rigorous fashion, even when the folks around them aren’t really able to really support that.
Sophie: Yes, I completely agree with what Professor Jackson has said. I think, especially as an Asian American woman, myself, the events of last week really rattled me and made me question, I think, the ongoing challenges that people of color continue to face within academia and really, beyond. And as he said that there’s continuing frustration and challenges that we have to navigate. I think your conversation today and your experiences show that there is also so much hope that we can gain from these experiences. To close up, I’m wondering if you might be able to share what continues to excite you about your own field of study, as well as if there’s any recent or upcoming work that you would like to highlight for us.
Hwaji: I am definitely excited at this moment, and I sometimes wish I finished PhD now than ten, twenty years ago. I don’t think it’s twenty years ago, right? But you know, some years ago, because right now, thanks to the digital technology, that what has been happened to each one of us in everyday life, it become very visible to the public and the world, right? That’s the beauty of social media. That’s the beauty of having a phone with a camera that everybody has it, everybody captures the moment. I don’t have to just explain what’s like to, you know, having this white supremacist encounter in a grocery store. Now you can see it in a social media, right? And then it has a name on it, tag on it, hashtag on it. I don’t have to explain this anymore. So this is a great environment, in a way, to present my work, because I feel like I don’t have to justify why I have to write what I do. I had to do that a lot than ten years ago when I picked this topic. I didn’t get any dissertation fellowship for that reason. People didn’t understand the meaning of it, importance of it, right?
But I think today, more public awareness of the topic and then that makes it easier for me to some extent. I can take this for granted as important, right? So in a similar sense that somebody who is writing about, you know, Japanese declining demographic, you know, the population studies and demographer don’t have to explain why this is important. But I had to explain why I have to talk about the racialization in Japan. First of all, I have to explain it to the people: racialization could happen in Japan, too. Asians are not monolithic. Something I still have to do to the extent, but not to the same extent as I had to do. And I began to see there was a surge in that among the scholars studying about this racism in Japan and minority rights. And I’m really excited by the Tsutsui Kiyoteru’s book on the Rights Make Might. As far as I know is the first book, on the social movements among the minority groups. I feel like he put the topic on the mainstream map for us. I appreciate that trailblazing effort that he made as a Japanese Studies scholar and a sociologist. But I feel like, Hey, Kiyo, now it’s my time to put my version of histories as the part of the group who have lived with family and myself have lived through that. And I hope that societies and scholars are ready to hear and see someone like me writing that similar topic.
I wanted to say, I appreciate these scholars who are not a part of this minority community writing about the topic and having an interest and promoting an interest. These are really great work. We have seen the same thing about the sociology of race in American Sociology, that many white scholars who are part of the civil rights movement began to write about the theory of the race. I’m not saying that it takes a minority people to speak of the truth. But in order for us to foster the truly diverse and inclusive community of academia, every person has to be able to share their version of understanding of the reality. And I’m very, very excited to be the part of that effort, and joining that effort. It started by people outside of my communities, and then each one of us have a responsibility to create the space for one another. And I’m excited to be that part of that effort and to present my book hopefully this year or next, you know, as I finished my manuscript to be that part of that change that is happening in the Japanese Studies. And thank you so much for that opportunity to talk about that.
Reginald: No, that’s absolutely our pleasure. I mean, thank you so much for sharing so much. It’s really our pleasure. And we want to thank you and express our gratitude for being so generous and so authentic. I think we can take for granted the kind of courage, but also wherewithal and self-possession that it can take to really, not just think through these things, but share, and kind of put the pieces together. I’m also super excited, not just for Kiyo’s book, but for what you’re saying, that the way that your own work, with the value of that lived experience in addition to the expertise that you bring to the table, really complementing that. I think it’s super important that your voice is part of that conversation and isn’t overshadowed by folks who, you know, I think can mean well and do great research, but also don’t have the same perspective. What you say about creating space and, you know, insisting on the value of your voice and your contributions, I think is really important. And I hope that ventures like this can help to continue to hold space for you and others to do this kind of work. Thank you so much again. I don’t want it to devolve into a pure love fest, but I really do appreciate just how candid you’ve been and the way that you’re so deftly able to connect in a very contemporary, really kind of tragic aspects of American society on the one hand with this kind of longer historical context of Japan, plus Bon Jovi and ice cream, and thinking about all of these different nuances and and bringing them together, I think is really, is really compelling. So thank you so much again for all of that and all of your work.
Hwaji: Well, thank you for creating this kind of opportunity to have my voice heard to the wider public. And it really means a lot, especially during the social distance era, that this is a great place where we can be connected. And that’s one thing I learned, that we can still foster the human connections through the voices, virtually. And so thank you so much, all the great questions, and I hope that I contributed in some way, and if so, I’m very humbled. Thank you.