In this episode, we are joined by Prof. Leo Ching, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. Professor Ching's work explores colonial discourse studies, postcolonial theory, Japanese mass culture, and theories of globalization and regionalism. He is the author of Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation and Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia, which is also available as a digital open access version. Prof. Ching is joined in conversation with JSAP contributors Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, and Prof. Reginald Jackson. Topics of discussion include: identifications; defining home; Prof. Ching's family history; baseball in Taiwan and Japan; the Redress / Reparation movement in the US; geology; graduate school; Masao Miyoshi; California; being stopped by police in Japan; race in the US South; the category of "Asian American"; so-called "standard" Japanese vs. Kansai-ben; antiblackness and antiracism; anti-Asian violence; settler colonialism; Ainu people; "coloniality as the underside of modernity"; Palestine; and Archipelago East Asia.
In this episode, we are joined by Prof. Leo Ching, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. Professor Ching's work explores colonial discourse studies, postcolonial theory, Japanese mass culture, and theories of globalization and regionalism. He is the author of Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation and Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia, which is also available as a digital open access version. Prof. Ching is joined in conversation with JSAP contributors Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, and Prof. Reginald Jackson. Topics of discussion include: identifications; defining home; Prof. Ching's family history; baseball in Taiwan and Japan; the Redress / Reparation movement in the US; geology; graduate school; Masao Miyoshi; California; being stopped by police in Japan; race in the US South; the category of "Asian American"; so-called "standard" Japanese vs. Kansai-ben; antiblackness and antiracism; anti-Asian violence; settler colonialism; Ainu people; "coloniality as the underside of modernity"; Palestine; and Archipelago East Asia.
To learn more about Professor Ching's research, please watch his JSAP webinar, "Contrapuntal Imaginations: Reading Empires in an Undergraduate Japanese Studies Class."
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 Five Transcript: Professor Leo Ching
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Dr. Reginald Jackson: Welcome to “Origin Stories,” a podcast developed through the Japanese Studies Antiracist Pedagogy Project. Here we talk with scholars of color about their personal history, intellectual formation, pedagogical commitments, and their ongoing journey as scholars, and as human beings. This is “Origin Stories.”
Rachel Willis: Today's guest is Professor Leo Ching. Dr. Ching is a Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. His research focuses on colonial discourse studies, postcolonial theory, Japanese mass culture, and theories of globalization and regionalism. To start us off, Professor Ching, could you tell us more about how you identify?
Dr. Leo Ching: Thank you, Rachel and everybody else. I guess, legally I am, identify as Asian American. But I also see myself, depending on I guess who you're talking to, or, you know, what context I am in, I could be Chinese American, Taiwanese American. If I'm in Japan, I'm considered a kakyou, because I've spent a long time living in Japan, and we can talk about that experience later. But yeah, I think just like everything else it’s quite fluid. Unless somebody wants to pin you down. Then it's a matter of telling stories about yourself. But oftentimes people don't give you the time to tell the complexity of identity, but rather wants a quick answer. So yeah, so the quick answer will be Asian American.
Sophie Hasuo: Thank you, Dr. Ching. I also identify as Asian American/mixed race and a lot of different things. And I have found it's been a bit of a struggle navigating where I have like a sense of place and a sense of home. And I found that a lot of diasporic folks also feel similar sentiments. So I wonder if you could speak more about where you call home and maybe how that process happened?
Leo: So, I guess, you know, home is where one is, right? And for me, I guess home now will be Durham, North Carolina, since this is the longest place I've lived. And also this is where, you know, I raised a family and, you know, so on and so forth. However I also consider home Kobe, Japan, the city near Osaka, where I grew up, also where my mother still lives. So when people ask me and, you know, in the U.S, Sophie as you probably get these questions quite a bit, you know, “where you're from?” And usually, I mean, again, depending on who you're talking to or who I'm talking to, it could be Durham, it could be Kobe. If I want to be a foreigner, I have that choice, I guess. But yeah, so home is where I am now and where my mother is at.
Dr. Reginald Jackson: Thank you for sharing that, I didn't know that background. So I'm really curious to hear a bit more, particularly since you've mentioned this idea of what stories which we use to tell about ourselves, which is certainly kind of related to your work and I think the newer book in particular. Are we, are they good or bad guys, and how do we kind of identify in that kind of long story of Japanese imperialism along these lines? I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, you know, your sense of yourself in relation to someone like, say, your mom, right? Kind of how she identifies or how her experience being in Kobe or living there, I'm not sure if she was born there or kind of what her relationship is. But how interacting with folks of her generation has maybe shaped your understanding and maybe then as a pivot into your interest in studying Japan from these different positions.
Leo: Yeah. I mean, since yesterday it was Mother’s Day, obviously I called her a day before just to wish her Happy Mother's Day. My mother actually has a pretty interesting background. Interesting I mean, for me. For most people, probably not as interesting. She never finished elementary school in Taiwan, she's actually Taiwanese. My father is from mainland China. But he passed away when I was in college, quite a while ago. So my mother never finished elementary school, and yet she writes and reads beautifully, like someone who actually, you know, have much higher degree. All just based on her own kind of will to learn. And when we moved to Japan, following my father. My father had came to Japan for the Expo '70, mainly because you know as a mainlander he did not find Taiwan very hospitable. Because he had just left the military, which means that he'd left a whole lot of pension behind and moved to Japan because he had always wanted to go to the United States. But because of his sort of political views at the time, they didn't think he would be a good candidate for Fulbright. Again, my father, like my mother, never finished junior high school, learned Japanese and English completely on his own when he moved to Japan for Expo 70, mainly just to try to carve a different kind of civilian career.
So, you know, my mother and I followed in, I think ‘74, ‘75. And after my father passed away, my mother was – at the time, obviously I was in college. I was sort of asking her whether she wanted to go back to Taiwan since we don't have any relatives in Japan. And she said, no. She was comfortable in Japan and she wanted to live in Japan. And as you know, it's very difficult for a woman, not to mention a foreigner, to be in business. And at the time my father had sort of worked with other sort of Taiwanese people who had immigrated to Japan and started a restaurant business. So after he died, basically they sort of ostracized her from the group. So she basically had to leave what she has been doing for the, I guess, last twenty years while being Japan, and basically start up something on her own. And me being the only child, of course it was very difficult because I had basically wanted to just finish college and go back to Japan. And she insists that I do what I wanted to do. And I guess this is a very typical mother-son type of, you know, it's a gift, right? That parents give us the freedom to pursue our careers and whatnot. So yeah, I mean that regard, I think she herself identified not so much Japanese because she has a very, very strong accent. So you can tell that she's not Japanese. Maybe, you know, people might think that she's from Kyushu or something, you know, because. So for me, I mean, my mother has been a inspiration for me to think about, you know, issues like identity. I mean, especially, I think how gender, especially, operates in a society like Japan and elsewhere.
Sophie: Thank you so much, Dr. Ching for sharing that insight into your family a bit more. I'm also interested in how you mentioned your parents only got to a certain level in terms of formal education. It was my dad as well. He's Korean Japanese, and he grew up in Japan and he never finished high school. And when I was growing up, I always felt a sense of pressure to go on to higher education. That was seen as kind of a sign for my parents that they succeeded in a way. And I wonder if you felt any kind of pressure in terms of continuing on to higher ed. And in the same vein I wonder if you could talk a bit more about what you were reading growing up in high school and junior high and what your main interests were going into higher education, if that makes sense.
Leo: So, so this is going to really disappoint you. I did not read much in high school other than manga, especially manga on baseball. I was an avid, I mean, I played baseball, also watched, followed baseball. I mean, obviously I didn't realize at the time, but now looking back, as I mentioned, I grew up in Taiwan up till ten years old then I moved to Japan. And in Taiwan, sports, especially basketball and baseball is bifurcated along ethnic lines. The mainlanders, the waishengren that we call it from, migrated from China, basketball was the sport that they played. Baseball, because of Japanese colonial influence and whatnot, was very much a Taiwanese sport. So me being a mainlander, because you identify with your father's side.
However, because, and I mentioned that my father moved to Japan in early seventies, after my father moved my mother and I actually went and lived with my grandparents, my maternal side, who are Taiwanese. So that's how I kind of really sort of got a sense of the differences in terms of how different ethnic groups in Taiwan live. Because in school, for example, you were not allowed to speak Taiwanese. It's considered a dialect or it's considered informal speech. So in that regard, it was very much a kind of struggle. So sports became a one way for me to kind of mediate my own being mainlander at the same time, very much interested in Taiwanese, especially my grandparents' side.
So when I moved to Japan, I mean, obviously I also was following Oh Sadaharu, who, I don't know if you know. He was born in Japan, but he's Chinese. And I remember watching him even when I was in Taiwan, because at the time, even though there's the broadcasting because of the proximity between Japan and Taiwan. So the airwaves, sometime you can catch these sports or TV shows from Japan without official broadcasting license and whatnot. So, you know, at the time I was watching wrestling, you know, stuff like that. And so in that regard, I think, you know, sports has always been about ethnicity, about nationality. Because I still remember Oh Sadaharu who took his high school team into Koshien, which is the high school baseball tournament, right? The most popular tournament in Japan. And he actually, I think he reached the championship game, but he was not allowed to participate in the Japanese national sports festival because he was not Japanese, even though again, he was born in Japan, raised in Japan, probably doesn't even speak any Chinese. I was thinking about these things.
Of course, I didn't have the capacity, the intellect to, to theorize about this, but it's something I think maybe Reggie, you will appreciate it, it's sort of embodiment, right? But then you didn't really know how to think about it until much later. And in terms of the first question about higher education. Again, you know, I think being a man has that privilege in the way that my parents has always pushed me to go beyond what they couldn't have done. I think the key here is that they also realize that there was no future for someone like me in Japan, if I were to follow the Japanese track, because that means I have to get into a good Japanese university in order to get a job. And then being a non Japanese, that would have been a huge obstacle. I think that's the primary reason why they decided to send me to the United States. Because at least, I think for their mind, United States still was the land of opportunity and, you know, the American Dream, that whatever, which is quite prevalent among immigrant families.
Reginald: I think it actually will be interesting to more than just you, as a matter of fact, I think this is all fascinating. And I appreciate so much of what you just said in terms of tying, let’s say these macro level issues about your nationality, for instance, to the kind of micro level, of what's going on in your particular family at this particular time and your father's story and his kind of in immigration history in relation to the sense of what opportunities exist in different spaces. But then also I was struck by your kind of identification with this athlete. And like you said, you know, on the one hand, not being able to theorize it as a boy who just liked sports. But being aware of his ethnicity in relation to your own and that being something that's also presumably part of the appeal besides like what stats somebody is racking up.
We’re kind of anticipating thinking about what's going on later, maybe with some of your work, but I'm struck by the way that you write about some of these, these larger events, these kind of public gatherings where people are obviously very political and it's also very deeply affective. And there is this kind of question of identification as a theme that runs through much of your work and kind of how people are making sense of themselves within these larger kinds of systems and how they perform identity in these really complex ways. And I wanted to hear a bit more about, you know, you talked about your parents' desires for you and how that's also playing a part. So you didn't become a baseball player as far as I know, unless there's some secret history there. But can you talk maybe a little bit more about when, if not say the desire to theorize about these things in a more formal way, were there certain events, or were there certain moments, you know, where you were making that kind of transition, say from, say, just being a fan who happened to notice that there was some kind of shared history between you and some kind of athlete you liked. And saying, “oh, this is strange, or this is interesting, or this is some weird thing that I want to somehow learn more about or kind of get a better sense of?”
Leo: Yeah. So the baseball story actually ended very abruptly. I came to the U.S. I went to Occidental College in LA where Obama spent a couple of years and then decided Columbia was better. I tried out for the baseball team and before I even step on the ground, I realized it’s impossible. I mean, these people are just so much bigger, faster, stronger. It was a very quick decision. I mean, I'm glad I did that. I guess what I can say is this, because in a way, Reggie, you are asking not just about identity, but how, in a way, the kind of political identity, right? Because, you know, growing up in Japan, I had a pretty good, privileged, I mean, sheltered, you know, I have many Zainichi friends. At the time, I didn't understand why they all had Japanese names and yet at home, they addressed each other differently. And also that they all lived in, in a community, in Nagata-ku. So when I came to the U.S, what was, I think, inspiring for me is actually getting to participate in certain kind of political movement or activism. Again, you know, I'm not saying that somehow I dove right in and a part of it is out of curiosity, right?
So at the time there was the Redress/Reparation movement for the internment camp. This was I think during the Reagan regime. So I was curious. I had, you know, growing up in Japan I had no idea. I mean, I knew Japanese had migrated to Brazil and because, you know, all the samba stuff they do in Toyota-shi. I had no idea that the Japanese Americans were interned. So it was really out of curiosity I started attending the meetings and beginning to read about it myself. And then at the same time, at the time in Santa Monica, there was a hair salon that called itself “Japss,” J A P S S. So again, with the group that called the Redress/Reparation I joined them also to demonstrate in front of the hair salon. And I mean, their explanation was that these are just initials from the four owners of their last name. I mean, whatever.
So in a way, I think what is interesting is that for me, I really learned about racism, about imperialism, about all these kinds of questions outside of Japan. In a way, when I was in Japan, I was so sheltered, right? I mean, this was the bubble economy and all that stuff. I mean, everybody just consumed. So for me, it was actually very lucky to be in a situation where my, I guess, political awareness was developed, right? So this is part of I think the education. So when I was in Japan, I was basically going through schooling, right? In other words, you go to school because you have to, because you just, you know, need the credential or whatnot. It's only when I came to the U.S that education became important, especially education about how empire itself sort of developed and so on, so forth. So, yeah, so I think in that regard, it was I think an opportunity for me to learn by myself outside of Japan.
Rachel: Thank you. This is actually a great pivot into my next question, which is about your journey into higher education. So could you tell us more about what you studied in undergrad and how your experiences at Occidental shaped you?
Leo: So my undergraduate major was Geology, and this is not by design. I mentioned that my father is from mainland China. And he had always thought that somehow, if I can do something that could be useful to the Chinese nation or whatnot, or not so much Chinese nation, but maybe my relatives and whatnot. And geology became one of the discipline in which one can imagine mining and oil and all that stuff. You know, actually a terrible thing to say now, right? And also, I think it got me out of the law/medical field. And I have to tell you what I loved about geology is not so much the chemistry and the physics, but actually to go out into the field.
Being in Southern California every weekend, we had to drive out to the valley, the mountain, the field. It was the most exhilarating experience I've had, I mean even though most of my colleagues were from Texas and I could barely understand what they were saying. But also I think to get out of the confine of the very much, very sort of urban concrete jungle, you call it, like places like Kobe, where I grew up. I mean Kobe, of course, is not like Tokyo, but still, right? I mean, California afforded me this space to explore. But anyways, other than being on the field, I didn't really enjoy any of the work that was involved with geology. I also minored in Asian Studies and as typical, I will be in the Japanese Civ class and all my classmates they would say, “Hey, why are you taking Japanese civ, you're from Japan? You know Japan. You just want an easy A.” I mean, the truth is I knew nothing about Japan, right? So I actually didn't do very well in my Japanese Civ class, despite the fact that there's this expectation, right? That's where you’re from, therefore, you're supposed to be knowledgeable about something.
At the time as I mentioned, this was the bubble economy in Japan. So basically anyone who spoke a foreign language, especially English and got a degree in the U.S could have gone back to Japan and make a lot of money. I say this in a very regretful way because many of my friends from high school actually became quite wealthy. So at the time, obviously I wasn't going to pursue geology as a career. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to be a salaryman. That I was a hundred percent sure. But I had no clue what I was going to do with my life. I can really kind of empathize with a lot of my undergraduate students, you know, especially when they're like, “well, I don't know.” Good, right?
So then I decided that I wanted to stay in the U.S somehow. I mean, I was on F1 visa. So the only way I can stay is, you know, continue school. So I decided since I liked LA and I've had a relationship going on at the time, so I said, okay, well, I'm going to stay in LA. And I decided to apply to a Masters program in East Asian Studies at UCLA. And I spent, I think, three years there, not very much engaged with academics at all. Part of it was because I was mentioning, I was kind of involved in the political movements and doing stuff like that. So I found the classes that they offered back then, I mean, this is way before the Bourdaghs, the Lippit time, okay? So this is like, really, I will call it the Orientalist phase of UCLA’s East Asian Studies program. I found the classes very, very boring and found the classes not interesting at all. So I just barely pass and whatever. And then for some reason, someone had mentioned in a negative way about Masao Miyoshi, who eventually became my mentor at San Diego. I decided, okay, well, I'm taking all these boring classes, and yet they're saying that this Masao Miyoshi is not very good. I assume he then definitely be, you know, will be the right fit for me. So I just called him up out of the blue. I mean, this was before the internet, right? You just call the person up and say, “Hey, can I come and visit you?” So I drove down to San Diego, waiting for him, never met him before, never seen his picture. He comes, you know, walking, huffing and puffing with this, you know, sort of briefcase across his body. Without saying a word, he just said, “the Emperor should be hung.” At that time, I knew I have to study with him.
Reginald: So you'd met your intellectual soulmate in that moment.
Leo: Because at the time I had wanted to, you know, I was trying to figure out, okay, what am I going to say to him? What I'm going to study? And I had read, you know, not a lot, but you know, some of Ōe Kenzaburō’s work, who I actually liked. So I had sort of told him that I was going to study Ōe, and Masao Miyoshi and Ōe are actually very close friends. So that also helped. But then my first year there, and this is, I guess, compared to what's happening now, where, you know, being a PhD is very much a kind of professionalization process. I mean, at that time, it wasn't that at all. I simply wanted to, to learn something, not sure what.
And my first year there Masao was actually on leave. He didn’t tell me this. So I went there, basically, you know, just sort of hanging out with other classmates and whatnot. And at the time there was a professor, his name is William Tay. He's a Chinese literature person, very well established. So he sort of took me under his wing during that first year. He actually sort of say, “Hey, you know, I mean, since you read Chinese, you read Japanese and you know, why don't you want to look at colonial literature?” I, of course at the time had no clue what that even meant. I knew my relatives in Taiwan spoke Japanese to each other all the time. I knew whenever my father came back from Japan with those big Fuji apples, it will really become a big event, right? But I had no idea what that relationship, the colonial relationship at all. And, you know, at the time I wanted to establish sort of a field, as you all study something, you have to be in the field. And I was very, very lucky in the sense that I took Lisa Lowe, at the time in San Diego, she co-taught a seminar with Edward Said. That changed my life, reading, Gramsci, reading Orientalism–
Reginald: That’s amazing.
Leo: –All the way to Lisa’s work on, you know, French colonialism, reading Salman Rushdie, reading Toni Morrison. And that just blew me away. Because at the time I didn't know what theory was, right? You, you’re sort of just like, “oh, well, you know, philosophy’s kind of interesting.” So that, I think, I mean, really challenged me in terms of thinking about the field itself and how I would try to carve a space for myself because at the time very few people actually looked at Japanese colonialism in Taiwan. I mean, even in Taiwan, right? That's the irony.
So I think I was at the right place at the right time and very much blessed by the people who really helped me along the way. And then later on, of course, when I was writing my dissertation, Tak Fujitani, I know who has appeared in your program already, and Lisa Yoneyama came. I didn't take formal classes with them, but they were also very instrumental in helping me to think about, you know, sort of outside of the very sort of Marxist sort of analysis and, you know, moving more to the Foucauldian and the discursive analysis and whatnot. So I should also say someone like Stefan Tanaka was also very very influential in the way to think about Japan. As you know, his book Japan’s Orient was also another text that inspired me. Well again, you know, I think being in the right place at the right time, having the kind of intellectual community was very important.
Sophie: Thank you so much for taking us through kind of the trajectory of your education in California. That's really so fascinating, especially how you came to be engaged with such amazing scholars that I think, if I may, probably helped you solidify your own research interests as well. It's just really interesting that whole “right place, right time” as well. Thinking of place, I wanted to quickly turn back to your mention of your participation in activism for reparations for internment. You mentioned that studying geology, California really afforded a space to explore, in terms of the different fields and valleys and the different locations. But I wonder if you could speak more about how your time in California helped shape your lens towards like Japan, especially, seeing the Japanese body now as a minority in the context of the U.S. And maybe how that proximity away from Japan as like a place kind of helped prepare you, maybe, for the academic spaces that you encountered. Because like you said, all of this was really a form of education, even if it wasn't in the confines of a classroom. So I'm wondering if you could talk more about how that timing and in that place helped you in your own research, even if maybe you didn't realize it at first.
Leo: First of all, let me just say that geology and literary studies actually, not that sort of different as you think, right? Because much like reading a landscape, the rock formations, a lot of it is based on sort of analysis and imagination. You kind of try to understand, I mean, because we don't, I mean, obviously, live 3 million years ago, we can’t. So we have to like put things together, right, I mean, as a way of, of analysis. And literature, I think in that regard, is very similar, right? I mean, we don't just read the word for its meaning. We think about relationship. We think about, you know, how literary texts sort of speak to larger historical political events, that are not so codified in the kind of official discourse, right?
But being in California was on the one hand, it allowed me to understand a world that I wasn't aware of. But California actually, especially Southern California, as the Northern Californians will tell you, you know it's not a real California. And I always tell people, you know, what's interesting is I felt more of a cultural shock moving from San Diego to North Carolina in the early nineties than I felt when I moved from Japan in Kobe to California. Mainly because I already had this kind of assumption what California is going to be like, right? You know everybody surfs, skateboarding, you know, good weather, blah, blah, which partially true, right? Like all stereotypes, it speaks to some partial truth. But I was never prepared for North Carolina or the South. And then we can talk about this later in terms of the racial formation, because it's a very different understanding of race dynamics, between California and here.
But in terms of, I think my own kind of, you know, understanding about Japan and I think it's worth telling this episode of how I actually discovered racism in Japan. Like I mentioned, I have, you know, been pretty much sheltered and “passed,” right, as Japanese, because when I speak Japanese, nobody's gonna guess I'm Korean or Chinese. So one year after, this was, I think when I was at UCLA doing Masters. I go home every summer to visit my mother, obviously. And there was one time I was driving, you know, because in Japan, I think after eighteen, you get your driver's license and I had the Japanese driver’s license. One time I was stopped for illegal parking or something. I can't remember the exact details. So the policeman, you know, you know, being typical Japanese policeman, very polite, bowing and all that kind of stuff, and ask for my driver's license. So he looked at my driver's license and if you have Japanese driver’s license, you might know that there is a place that says seki, right? Where you from, kind of thing. In mine it had “Chu” like China and then “Tai,” you know, sort of in parentheses, right? So it was immediately clear I was not Japanese. So he, of course being the lawful person that he is, asked for my alien registration card. At the time, every foreigners have to carry this registration card, which I never carried, right? I mean, why would I add another little booklet to my wallet when nobody ever stopped me? So he became very, very alarmed now that I did not carry the alien registration card because that means I violated the law, right? So this is when the legality becomes something that is enforceable, right? And I say, “I don't have it.” So he proceed to, you know, talk to his colleagues and whatnot. So they decided–I think this is on a whim, I never heard this before–that I had to write a letter of apology right there. I can't remember, it was to the sōri daijin, to the prime minister, or the police chief or even the emperor, I don't remember. I had to write something in pen, like in Japanese, saying that I'm sorry, I violated blah, blah, blah, right?
And then they proceed to ask me that I need to have my stamp. You know, in Japan, people carry these stamps, right? The inkan. Of course, I mean, who in their twenties carry a stamp with them? Of course I don't have it. Well, that became another issue. So at the end they asked me to use my thumb, right? My shimon, this is as you know, it's a long history of French colonial, Japanese colonial sort of identifying the colonized, right? So I had to sort of press that and vow I will never violate another law in Japan ever again. And of course I never told them, you know, you can start drinking and smoking when you're like fourteen, because there's vending machine everywhere. Who cares? So that was disturbing to me, mainly because I didn't understand the long history of the whole fingerprinting business, right? And as you know, I mean the Korean, I mean, the Zainichi have for years sort of fought against this really incriminating, if not dehumanizing procedure. At the time, I wasn't thinking in terms of these larger sort of historical processes. But, you know, again, these experiences allow me, I think later on, it provided me the kind of raw material, if you will, to think about the larger historical events.
Reginald: Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that, Leo. This story is everything here and so it's really helpful to hear about that. And I have so many, so many thoughts at this moment and one, the first thing I thought about when you said you were stopped, was thinking about, you know, the kind of Zainichi Koreans and having the little plastic sheet or not. And, you know, what it means to have that potential criminality always marked, right? Who has to have the thumbprint on there and the fingerprint on their ID or not.
And when I was actually in Japan, I went in ‘99 and 2000, and Suzanne Gay who was a really great teacher of mine who's retired from Oberlin now, but was there in the Associated Kyoto program, was teaching a modern Japanese history course. And so one of the ways that she talked about things like burakumin, and then also Zainichi Koreans was to take out your ID. And then we realize that this little sleeve that we had that had a sticker on top of this, you know, it's very Japanese in that regard, that this complete kind of half-ass way of concealing as opposed to apologizing or doing the right thing. And so I had no idea about that until that context. So that's the first thing I thought about when you mentioned being stopped.
But I'm also really struck by what you mentioned in terms of like this kind of these intersecting privileges. So on the one hand you talked about this bubble that you're in, in some ways as a male only child with, you know, parents who want the best for you, and how that's insulates you in a certain way. But then when you're coming back, as, you know, having spent time in sunny California and learning these things, and you kind of expect, I would imagine in the way that twenty-year-olds do, you know, a in a breezy way that you’ll just kind of slot back into your old life. And so you haven't thought of yourself as an immigrant. So why would you carry things like an inkan or carry your registration card because you are so native, right, in this Japanese context, right? But this moment of confronting the law, then forces you to rethink that.
And I'm really struck by how capricious the cops are in that moment. Like, like, you know, to just kind of imagine what that's going on in their heads at that moment. It's like, why write it, right? It's also a kind of demonstration of a kind of cultural, like literacy, literal literacy, right? To see kind of as a kind credentialing. So it's not a poll tax, right, in this moment of renewed voter voter suppression, but it's in that kind of lineage. And I appreciate that you mentioned too the kind of French, Rachel focuses on the Francophone Caribbean, I think, so this is also kind of a cool connection. But thinking about how in that moment is kind of American and French colonial, and also kind of Japanese imperial colonial legacy, and all of these things are meeting at this moment to discipline you into performing, not just apology, but some kind of Japanese, you know, affinity, right? So like to kind of force you to capitulate in that way but to also understand that the offence is so minor, that it doesn't warrant, it's not serious enough for you to, you know, have to, go to the station or something like that. And they can't be bothered with that. But they can kind of in that moment reactivate this kind of scenario of colonial domination where it's always about surveillance and proving kind of how much you align with this national ideal.
So that's more me processing aloud all of the things you're saying, but I wonder maybe to phrase it as a question, if you could talk a little bit about, what it meant for you in that moment. You know, I mean, how you felt. Did you talk to your mom about this? Or your college friends, you know, with whom you were demonstrating against Japanese, you know, about the kind of discrimination against Japanese folks, how that kind of confrontation with the law did that further radicalize you? or chasten you in some ways? Or just like depress you in a way that made you want to read more about legal systems, right? Because I'm thinking about like, just in terms of the timing of that event, as you're between say, Masters and PhD, putting a very, very fine point on all of these different intersecting identities and histories.
Leo: Yeah I mean, you know, obviously, looking back that everything kind of makes sense, right? I mean, obviously at the time everything is all over the place and it's almost impossible to craft this very kind of linear, sort of coming into the kind of consciousness. And, I think for me, maybe what I learned from that incident is how racism, whether this is benign or vulgar, affects you in a way that perhaps it doesn't affect the racist or the system as much, right? In other words, if a racist slur was thrown at me, for example, it stays with me. It doesn't just fall off because we move on to a different context.
And this is where I find it very, something that's perhaps needs to be thought about a little bit more because racism is not, and we all know this, racism is not just about the legality. It's not just about, you know, sort of simple cultural formation or whatnot. It really, it's something that I think seep in deeply in your consciousness, because what you always come back to is: “what if I could have done this,” right? What if I had prepared myself to encounter the police by saying or doing something else, like running away, you know, since the Japanese probably on their bicycles, they probably never can chase me down. But of course that's not going to happen, and because, you know, in Japan cops don't carry guns. So, you know, you're not going to be shot then, you know, plus I'm not a Black person right, in that regard. I mean, it makes you wonder, right? I mean, what if, right?
So what happens is constantly comes back to you, right? I'm the problem. I'm the one who didn't carry the card with me. I'm the one who didn't have the stamp with me. I'm the one who parked illegally, right? And then you try to devise strategies so something happens next time, you're prepared, right, supposedly. But the truth is you're not prepared. You can never prepare for these encounters that just completely violates, I mean, not even rights, right? Just in terms of you know, being a human. And then I feel this the same way. And I had mentioned earlier how my experience in California in terms of race is very different from my experience here in the South, especially in the institutional setting, right? I mean, Duke University obviously, you know, has a Black-White problem, right? We have a clear race problem here, and that's not just contemporary. This goes back with the founding of the university itself.
So when I come to the South, I didn't really quite know where I fit in being a non-White, non-Black person. And at the time I still remember when I first came to the university and somebody addressed me as, “oh, hey, there's an Oriental man.” I haven't heard the word “Oriental” like in years in California, right? Because people are so polite now. They know this is a not appropriate word to address. But you know, in the South, it's not so much because they're racist, but they haven't really quite learned or acculturated to being kind of sensitive to differences. So, yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I think part of me, I always try to, especially I say this to a lot of the international students that are coming to the U.S now, mostly from mainland China, right? I always tell them, you know, you have to be prepared. Don't assume that, you know, your nationality is not racialized. They don't differentiate between Asian American or Asians, right? I mean, there's, there's no differentiation. And to understand how racism works in the U.S is the number one priority before they even come to the U.S, before they even, hopefully they will not have to encounter very racist attack and whatnot, but with the, you know, rights tension with mainland China, I actually am not optimistic at all about the issue of racism in this country.
Reginald: I wanted to follow up on a couple things you said. I mean, first of all, it struck me, I mean, and I take what you, what you say, it makes a lot of sense, right? So the idea of this 20/20 hindsight or retrospectively, we can order everything into a really linear narrative about our evolution as thinkers or scholars or something. But at the time you're just sad or pissed or happy or confused or whatever. And it takes a long time to put the pieces together in some kind of way that is comprehensible.
But I was also thinking, I think Rachel and Sophie and Harrison have talked a little bit about this, but I've never been profiled by the police until I got to Japan and identify as Black. It wasn't even the first time I went. The first time I went to Japan was ‘99-2000. I was there. And my father also passed away when I was in college actually, interestingly, so we share that. But I was in Kyoto and so there's a preponderance of foreigners, lots of tourists and so forth and so it was, it was a way in which it was completely normalized, like my being there. That's one of the things I loved and you know still think fondly on today about, you know, about Kyoto and being in Japan was, besides the peace of mind and the safety compared to Chicago, which was really just incredible how comfortable it was. Like it was, it was mind blowing to me that one, I didn't have to live and you're talking about like, imagine otherwise, but it's like, I didn't have to live in this way. And I didn't have to be afraid of folks in Japan and that was really amazing.
And when I went back to Japan in graduate school, this is after 2001, after 9/11, I was getting stopped all the time and I was in Tokyo. I was like, late for class because I would be going to class and stopped by police. And they’d searched my bag on the street and all these other things, and I could show them my Fulbright pen and that's what let me off, actually. I definitely had my inkan and I had my passport all the time, right? And more so after I started getting stopped all the time. But the thing that made me legible as not a threat was this little Fulbright pen not because I was on this. You know, speaking of American imperialism and so forth, but like the, the privilege that was afforded, because I happened to carry that with me. I didn't like, wear it, but I had it in my bookbag all the time and it gave me a pass, right?
But I'm thinking a little bit about what's going on in those kinds of interactions and you know, how these things change historically. I am really struck by how these broader geopolitical shifts actually do shape at a level, obviously in domestic policy. But then it trickles down into these kind of potentially benign, you know, kind of everyday interactions that do shape us and exert this kind of influence in different ways. And you've moved now to talk a little bit about how your regional awareness of say, California versus North Carolina is shifting. But you know, it also strikes me that there's something about, two things. One is California as this magical mystical place where people are more enlightened about some of these things, right, because of the racism, the anti-Asian racism. The way that, that plays out in California in ways that it hasn't in the United States. But then also kind of how that relates into this, this network of Asian or Asian American scholars that you’ve encountered in California, in a way, because of that as this kind of bubble, right?
So there's the bubble economy that's like allowing, you know, your friends to get wealthy, the ones who didn’t want to be geologists, but wanted to make money given their language skills. But then there's also this really interesting thing that's happening, where folks like Miyoshi, folks like Lisa Lowe, folks like Tak and Lisa, folks like Stefen Tanaka are in this space, partially because of those histories and that kind of large, you know, Asian, Asian American kind of population in California. So, I'm wondering if we can start to pivot a little bit more towards, like what that does when you go back when the summer is over and you leave Japan and you go back and you can then talk through some of these experiences and kind of process those kinds of experiences in Japan in a different way where you're thinking about say, the law, but also just kind of the embodied aspect of moving between these different locales.
Leo: I think the question about, you know, Asian, Asian American is interesting and challenging. Because obviously, as we all know, you know, “Asian American” as a category didn't emerge until the sixties and as a kind of solidarity with the Black movement and so on and so forth, right? So maybe we can think about Asian Studies and Asian American Studies, right, that difference. But just to go back to the folks that you mentioned in San Diego. So, my mentor Masao Miyoshi actually was very much against identity politics. He has always said, I'm paraphrasing, something about “politics is for others,” which I find that that’s also a kind of a privileged position to be in, to say that. I don't need anything.
Reginald: Absolutely.
Leo: But I also get the sense that because, you know, I mentioned that his relationship with Said. So, you know, one thing I forgot to mention earlier is that the Palestinian issue was also very informative and formative for me as a graduate student, to understand that the kind of continuation of empire with the Palestinians. And also in that regard, there was a kind of divide between Asian Studies and then you have all these Asian American scholars that Masao Miyoshi had some way of recruiting them to San Diego. And there was always this tension, I thought. And especially if you recall, that was a time when Japan was on the rise and there are people talking about the coming war with Japan. People were actually speculating that Japan might one day overtake the United States. I mean, you know, most of us thought that was never going to be possible as long as there's American military bases on Japanese islands, right? So how independent can you get? But I think part of what allowed me to, in a way, you know, precisely I think people like Lisa Lowe, especially Immigrant Acts, the book, and really allowed me to understand that these are not a bifurcation, right? These are not, you know, sort of separate entities. And there actually could be a lot to be learned by putting these two fields together. Because in a way I think Asian American Studies has always been much more in terms of anti-war, anti-imperialist. Whereas I think Asian Studies, I mean, as we all know the history, is much more in a way the custodians of American empire, right?
I think that tension is productive and especially now we see more and more so-called Asian American scholars sort of working outside of the domestic. I mean, part of the criticism of Asian American Studies has always been that it's very nation-based. But now we see a much more sort of Transpacific Studies that's looking mostly at American military bases, that’s looking at American culture formation outside of the U.S right? So in that regard, Asian American Studies has become much more exciting in terms of its trajectories, right? Moving away from simply the politics of recognition, the politics of representation, but rather thinking much larger issues of empire, which obviously linked with the Caribbean Studies, Latin America Studies and elsewhere. Asian Studies, I think the interesting aspect of it now, as there are all these Asian Studies in Asia conferences now, right? Whereas before Asian Studies is basically U.S-based. But now you have Asian Studies in Asia, I think, you know, it takes place in Japan, you know, Taiwan and Korea. So again, right, the fields are changing. And you know, that is something that I think is worth noticing and worth following in terms of thinking about, you know, these questions of identity and disciplined formations. Not sure that I answered Reggie's question at all, but that's what I was sort of thinking.
Reginald: No, totally. And I just, one quick thing, and I think then Sophie has a follow-up, but Masao is a deeply influential and challenging figure in lots of different forms and I think a lot of these scholars, you know, that he was kind of helped to recruit in some cases where, you know, also in very, I think understandably fraught relations. And he was a mentor to my own, you know, one of my dissertation advisors, Hideki Richard Okada, who idolized him as a Japanese American student who was very much a target of racism in that context of those legacies you're talking about, you know, Asian Studies, particularly Japanese Studies, right? And the racism, you know, by white scholars against Asian American and particularly kind of Japanese American students, you know, that was also very much, you talked about being custodians, right? What does it mean when, when the experts are trained by the military and then are gatekeepers in this institutional context of the academy and then tasked with training, civilizing folks? It's not going to be a good situation, but I also, you know, Harry Harootunian mentioned once that Chicago is that, reminiscing about Masao, that he also, like, refused to eat with chopsticks in public, right? So I mean like that kind of the pathology, right? And the trauma, right? You know, he jokes about being a war bride, right? So this notion of the emasculation as a perpetual threat in the body that he's in as a Japanese citizen, who much like Said, you know, the three-piece suit and the Rolex and the, like all of these kind of things, the respectability politics and the kind of performing of non-Otherness as a kind of shield, as a protection when one is being, you know, always dehumanized, it also sticks in my mind. So that's one of the things I laugh about when I read pieces like literary elaborations or these different kinds of critiques of identity politics, or kind of multicultural university and so forth, multiculturalism, which I understand. And I'm, you know, I understand all the ways in which that can be perverted, but I also understand the imperial legacies and trauma that also are pushing that particular desire to disidentify.
Leo: There's a way you said, it's interesting about Masao is, you know, he never spoke to us in Japanese. He refused to speak. In a way it liberated, actually, our interaction as well, because otherwise I will have to use sensei all the time, like, you know, in a bad Sōseki novel, right? But also, I mean, I think what's interesting, which I didn't mention earlier, is that I actually learned how to speak hyōjungo, standardized Japanese at UCLA because I was TAing. Because immediately I was told “your Japanese is not standard. Your Japanese is Kansai-ben,” right? So I had to actually change my intonation or accent.
Reginald: Your inflection, yeah, your accent.
Leo: Right, to learn how to speak proper Japanese in California, outside of. So when I go home, actually, you know, or home, when I go back to Japan. I remember my friends were like, “What's wrong with you? What happened to your Japanese? You know, you’re speaking like a Tokyo person.”
Reginald: Yeah, like who do you think you are?
Leo: But I mean, I think it was interesting, the kind of language and how it compels a certain kind of a sociality that I never thought my Japanese was not proper. I mean, everybody understood me, but apparently it was not. So I feel bad for all the students who actually learned, had to learn from my bad Kansai-ben.
Sophie: I think you articulated this tension between Asian American Studies and Asian Studies really helpfully, especially for potential listeners and myself as a student. I also have found myself kind of like in between both, I'd say. And I think I've definitely struggled with trying to navigate disciplines that are very limiting and really, like Professor Jackson said, tend to gatekeep what kind of studies one can do if you're enrolled in a certain program. So I'm wondering maybe how that experience of you in Japan and in the U.S and developing your own research with Asian American scholars, but also looking at Japan and anti-Japan and things like that has kind of shaped your own understanding of disciplines and how we can reimagine disciplines in a more productive way that looks at larger issues, say, of white supremacy, imperialism, and how we can connect these in a more collaborative way.
Leo: So, I mean, again, going back to San Diego, we basically didn't have a Japanese Studies curriculum. In other words, Masao never taught a course just on Japan. He might have done some undergraduates, but then it's all about Palestine. I mean, it was just like completely. I mean, everything's politicized. And once he actually boasted that he's able to teach Man’yōshū in two weeks. Basically what his point is that you learn how to teach when you have to do it, there's no formal training for you to become a good teacher, basically, that's what he’s saying. So in a way, it freed me so I can take classes from Lisa Lowe, Page Du Bois, on feminism. I mean, you know, and just many different classes that otherwise, within the East Asian program, I might have a hard time doing because of the requirements that might have taken me to be more focused on Japan. It liberates I think some students, it's not conducive to everyone.
Now looking back, right, I mean, there's this wonderful book by Jacques Rancière called The Ignorant Schoolmaster. It basically, it argues, I mean, again, I’m diluting the argument here is, is that you don't need a teacher to learn, right? He basically argues that you don't even need like a chemist to teach you how to do chemistry as long as you have the will to do, right? But he also was talking about the democratization between teacher and student, you know, that hierarchical relationship. So, in a way, I mean, I think, you know, my own experience in terms of disciplined information, I was very undisciplined. You know, we're not even talking about interdisciplinary, we're talking about undisciplined. I basically had no disciplinary training and it shows right? I mean, I think, you know, some of the writing you can tell, I mean, obviously if I had more–
Reginald: In a good way.
Leo: That's why I try to rationalize it.
Reginald: No, no.
Leo: But again, just going back to what I, about the difference between schooling and education. I think schooling drive you into a particular intellectual formation. Whereas education, something you can do on your own. So again, I think, I think in that regard, it allowed me to kind of sort of craft my own intellectual trajectory. And, and also I have to add, it's precisely I think a school like Duke, a school that does not have this long tradition in Area Studies. In fact, I don't think any of us works anything before 1945. I mean, that's not true. I mean, I have colleagues who do that, but at least. I mean, we don't have anybody in the medieval period, obviously.
So yeah, I don't think I will have gotten a job in a very kind of entrenched, you know, sort of Area Studies program. And that's why, you know, I'm in a department called Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. I mean, what the hell is the Asian and Middle East doing together? I mean, we used to be called Asian and African, right? Very much like the SOAS model. But then we realized that we didn't have any Africanists, we all taught only North Africa so we actually had to be, you know, honest about ourselves.
But, so yeah, I mean, I don't have a particular way to connect the dots, again, you know, I mean. But I think the kind of undisciplined way has worked to my advantage, I believe. I think the tendency now is like, okay, you follow a particular, like, intellectual sort of school of thought, right? If you're a post-colonial person, that's what you do. If you're a queer theorist, this is what you do. But I didn't always find that necessary. Whatever I read, if it's useful. I mean, of course you have to be very cautious about how you are “appropriating” stuff. And, you know, I mean, but also to recognize the different possibilities, right, in which the learning and education and knowledge production is actually. It's not like becoming a sushi chef, right? I mean, that you start not touching the knife, you know, for like ten years, and then, you know, I mean the kind of apprenticeship. So yeah, that's, I think that's, I guess maybe it's my roundabout way of not answering your question.
Rachel: Thank you for that. So as a sort of recap, I know you've discussed growing up as a Chinese Taiwanese youth in Japan. And then moving from Japan to LA and becoming involved in Asian American activism and then experiencing incidences of what you referred to as benign and vulgar racism in both the U.S and Japan. And coming to understand your positionality as a scholar, through the work of people like Lisa Lowe and Toni Morrison. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to how the totality of all of these experiences has informed your thinking around antiracism and its place at Duke and in the field of Japanese Studies more broadly, as well as how you mentor your students.
Leo: Okay, maybe I'll put this much more in the institutional setting, right? Because I think, I had mentioned earlier that Duke's being a university in the South is very much the racial politics is, you know, literally black and white. And obviously that's not to say that, oh, therefore, right, that is the wrong model. Of course it's the right model, right? Because that is what the history, institutional history that Duke is facing. And we need to do more, in fact, right? It's not just about recruiting Black scholars, but retention, right? Being a the school in the South has some advantage, but also disadvantage, right? We can’t compete with the other Ivy League in terms of recruitment or whatnot.
But I think, I think for me, I would like to differentiate at least provisionally between antiblackness and antiracism. Because I think if we simply combine everything under antiracism, it tends to, I think, create more friction among different oppressed groups, than if we able to at least say, okay, there's something called antiblackness that is both United States, but also global, but manifest differently. In the United States I mean, if we can argue the founding of the United States itself is based on the disposession of Indigenous people and enslavement of Black people, right? There's a long history of antiblackness, that cannot be imagined without addressing that as the kind of America's original sin, if you will. But I think antiracism can include some races that not simply in the black and white setting, right? In other words, we can think about racism without race, right? We can think about, you know, sort of like, how we understand the Zainichi situation in Japan. Is that racism? Yeah. The word racism doesn't quite capture the complexity of it, right? Because, as we know, the whole idea of nation, ethnicity and folk gets conflated in the Japanese language.
And if you can take this even to how do we think about, for example, the China and this multiculturalism, it's oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang for example, right? I mean, that would not be, you know, certain kind of antiblackness. But that will be definitely a kind of antiracism, but we can also link, I guess, go back to Reggie your earlier thing about after 9/11, right? This whole war on terror has basically been appropriated by different states to sort of establish these kinds of racist policy, right? Because that's exactly what the Chinese are using for its anti-Uyghur, sort of the education camp, right? It's precisely the terror, right?
So, that's all to say that, I mean, I don't think there is a singular strategy in terms of antiracism. And in my book, I mean, for my own writing, I don't really sort of lay out racism as the kind of clear, you know. But just the same way I don't highlight gender or sexuality as my methodology, but they are all part of it because I cannot really analyze these texts without referring to them. So in that regard, I think, you know, one thing that always kind of keeps me up at night is when Stuart Hall talks about the difficulty of articulation. So basically, you know, how does one oppressed group articulate with another, right? Usually it doesn't happen. Usually what we see is more normative is when the oppressed actually fight against each other. People ask me like, you know, “Hey, you know, look at the anti-Asian, Asian American sort of crime in recent years." And you see, there are also, African American sort of who attack these Asians, right? So what does that mean? Does that mean therefore that as Asian, we have to be antiblack? No, right? Part of it, I mean, once again, we have to recognize the formation under white supremacy, how these different group of people are brought together under very unfavorable and unequal relationship, right?
So when you have, you know, Asians since 1969 coming from Asia established their business in Black areas, mainly because of the redlining so the Blacks can never find funding to start business. Whereas, you know, when you are, for example, Korean or Korean American, you probably live in a suburb and you're able to, you know, get a loan. And you know, again, that's not to, to say one is better or one is worse. But simply that is the political reality, in which I think different oppressed people are put under. So therefore, how then do we think about solidarity? And, you know, it's very difficult. It's not just because you are oppressed therefore, right, you naturally collaborate or, you know, come together. So I think that is really the challenge, right? How do we come up with a common interest. Which, again going back to Masao, maybe the politics has to be for the others, you know. But I think the economic social interests is so strong that, right? And then, you know, antiblackness is also pretty foundational in, you know, Asia’s modernity as well, right? So we can’t, I guess decouple the two.
Reginald: Thank you so much. I mean, this is the beginning of many conversations, I'm sure, you know, because I think that this is something, a theme that also has come up in other discussions we've had with other guests too. You know, the first interview we did was with Professor Hwaji Shin. This was very soon after the Atlanta shootings. And so we were thinking, it’s still in our minds, but particularly that moment, thinking about that intersection that you just described. On the one hand, this kind of history of redlining. This history of you know, this forced antagonism in many ways. Or this kind of tactically designed antagonism between Black and Asian and Asian American communities, particularly in the postwar era, right? And how that then metastasizes over time and then was used as a wedge.
Dylan Rodriguez spoke on a panel recently and talked about exactly what you're saying, which is the ways in which moreover, you know, right-wing pundits want to emphasize that, without addressing the systemic racism and antiblackness, right, to say, you know, look at these kinds of tensions or this kind of violence without talking about Japanese, incarceration or lynching or these other types of white supremacist violence that are undergirding the entire thing. So I really appreciate, moreover, your precision in parsing between the antiracism, which is part of the title of this project. But, you know, in fact what it means, then, to center antiblackness as part of that and to understand, and to try to teach ourselves, certainly because we're all students in this as well, but also students about that, because I think that this.
As we kind of head towards the end of this interview, I was thinking a lot about what you mentioned about mentoring students. So many of the students now, I mean, at all universities and colleges are coming from mainland China. And it's been interesting to have a lot of students in classes, particularly right now where, understandably, given rise in anti-Asian racism, anti-East Asian racism in particular, in the United States, you know, with the rise of Trump and when, under the pandemic who have really felt, I think, you know, real righteous indignation around decrying that and are in so many ways, I think maybe not unlike the way you might've felt as a college student, right? Like this is an issue about like, they weren't political. They were just kind of, you know, upwardly mobile, you know, often relatively wealthy folks that are trying to get a good American education, but have found themselves in these kind of hostile circumstances now in the U.S and are awakened to this kind of racism. And so it's really important for them and one wants to support that. At the same time, they're also not necessarily equipped because they're not, much in the way that, like, your father sent you to study geology and their parents are certainly not paying for them to study critical race theory. Like, you know, there's a, very select few folks, and most of those folks are actually in my experience, Asian American students, not students that are coming from Asia who are taking those kinds of courses generally, because to go back to this notion of the institutional context, that work is not seen as valuable, frankly, in that much more commercialized, professional kind of way, right? This is much like if politics is for the Other, so is critical race theory, so, you know, these things. How do you explain to your parents that this is what they're spending full tuition on, right? When you could be an Econ major.
So I think given what you described in terms of that historical trajectory, you know, what does that mean for us now? I mean, I think that, one of the things that Sophie and Rachel and Harrison and I, and then Hwaji as well, talked a lot about with this Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy project is really working from a Black feminist framework. But also as a, premodernist, as a medievalist in Japanese Studies, I'm also very aware of how foreign that type of thinking is. And how, not even disregarded, but in some ways like metaphysically or even ontologically antagonistic to, or at least perceived as that, you know, to the kind of foundational aspects of the discipline. So I really appreciate, and wanting to get back to your own research, I really appreciate your work in terms of that undisciplined quality. So deeply rigorous, on the one hand, like being undisciplined can be in some ways, a prerequisite for a certain type of rigor and I really appreciate that. And I think with Anti-Japan, you know, your exploration of film more, too, and these other kinds of context for your work, it really strikes me that that's useful pedagogically, I can imagine, in terms of thinking about how, other media that might be useful for really emphasizing the affective capacities of things to students. Not just kind of getting students to take these classes.
But, but I wanted to, if you can maybe refocus it kind of as we close more on teaching specifically. Are there things that you're, when you're trying to explain, for instance, these students from mainland China, who on the one hand might be really interested in what you have to say about say, Japanese imperialism and colonialism, particularly as it affects, say, kind of China, but might be less ready or willing and able to talk about kind of Chinese surveillance and extermination, right, of Uyghur Muslims in China. And how do you negotiate that then? I mean, maybe this is part of what you'll talk about in the webinar too, but can you talk about that?
Because I can imagine that lots of these students see you, misrecognize you in some ways as like them, right, given your last name or given some of the things that you're talking about and perceive an affinity or solidarity potentially. But at the same time, don't recognize their own either antiblackness or their own myopia when it comes to these other types of potentials for solidarity, or just kind of what it means to be educated as opposed to credentialing themselves.
Leo: I think the notion of this sort of neither here nor there, actually what Sophie was talking about earlier. Because if I'm critical of Japan, right, people will say, “oh yeah, sure, because you're Chinese,” right? “Because you must have some historical trauma that you're working out, you know.” And if I'm, you know, sort of critical of China, usually it's like, “yeah, see, you know, because you're not real Chinese, because you had spend your time in Japan and, you know, and you had to spend time in the U.S right?” So you cannot please everybody. And another sort of a related thing is that, oh, you know, we don't have racism in Japan, or we don't have racism in China, right? That's usually the rebuttal against, taking racism seriously and so on and so forth. So I actually do find interesting how we can bring sort of different structure of oppression together and see then how they are connected, right?
So for example, I mean, there are the great work now on settler colonialism, for example. So I have always sort of thought about this, but then, you know, never quite be able to look at it more deeply. I mean, aas you are well aware that there is a connection between, you know, the policy of American subjugation of Indigenous people to the Japanese or the Ainu, right? In fact, the so-called advisors that Hokkaido, they brought over is precisely the same policy that used in American West, right? And the same way this could be also linked to what's going on in Taiwan as well. Because Taiwan is one of the few East Asian places that has this Indigenous population and the Chinese of course, and the Japanese also settled, right, in a way taking over the land and so on, so forth. So there are a lot of actually similarities that one can connect the different nodes that link these, you know, history of oppression or imperialism in the same way.
So again, I was saying earlier about how war on terror, right? If we can help students not sort of think in terms of exception, that somehow my nation, my country is somehow different, and then therefore it is better. But rather see how similar, right? So for example, war on terror in the U.S., how that has been used, how is that deployed in the United States, in Japan and in mainland China. They might not be exactly the same. And they shouldn't exactly the same because right, I mean, imperialism has to work locally as well. But if we can help students, you know, sort of somehow see the linkage and I think then it will move them away from being defensive, you know. Because you're not trying to insult their culture, their people or whatnot, because that becomes a very nonproductive conversation. So I think in this regard, I think Japanese Studies itself, again, sometimes I even wonder whether I'm actually in Japanese Studies or not. Or even I’m even being recognized as someone who participate in this discipline. Which is fine, for me it's never about membership, right? It's really about the kind of work that one wants to do. So, so I actually see that these kinds of crossing boundaries, and I'm not just talking about spatially because, I mean, I think, you know, Reggie your own work, you know, bring this new methodology in looking at what considered a very kind of isolated texts or older texts that, that somehow people imagine that has no relevance to contemporary issues, right?
I mean, so I think that regard, you know, it's so challenging the boundaries within certain kinds of knowledge formation, but also expand that formation to connect to other sort of modes of thinking. You know, whether it's Black feminist studies, whether it's intersectionality, whether it's settler colonialism, and whatnot, right. There are plenty. You know, I think only through that type of work, can we even begin to think about solidarity, right? And in other words, we cannot start thinking out of identity. Just because I'm Asian, therefore, you know, just because you're Black, therefore, right? But rather through what kind of politics, what kind of scholarship are we able to connect with each other, be able to construct that coalition. Which I think will be much more sustainable rather than the kind of one-off thing, which I think become quite popular now in the institutional and corporate setting, right?
Reginald: Yeah, no, and I think that, I appreciate everything you've said so much. I mean, it makes me think of, I mean, one of my own reservations in not just applying for funding, but to your point about that again, that parsing between antiblackness and antiracism. That dance that's done rhetorically for funding or for support, or, you know, kind of imagining allies and, you know, thankfully who's made uncomfortable by the highlighting or the foregrounding of anti-blackness in a project like this and who feels much more comfortable. And that's not just white liberals, but also I think, you know, other types of BIPOC scholars who, for whom marking it as a project about antiblackness per se, is in some ways seems confrontational to a degree that, that folks aren't comfortable with. So that's something I struggle a little bit with in terms of trying to frame this. And, you know, the ways in which people show up for, literally, I mean like what numbers, like, who feels entitled to show up and who seems interested when the question of inclusivity is highlighted, as opposed to these other things.
And I also want it to go back to something you said, because I think this is a good point, which to return to that kind of collaboration or coalition between folks like Miyoshi and Said, and the question of Palestine, right? And to your point about thinking about the ways in which racist tropes, anti-Muslim tropes, and systems can be redeployed at different moments. And just, you know, you mentioned how important the issue of Palestine and, you know, in relation to settler colonialism in Israel, was formative for you, when you were moving from, from college to your MA work. And now still, we have the situation particularly recently in the past several days, you know, where this is again an issue and Palestinians are being evicted by settlers from their homes and in particularly egregious, and this is always happening, it’s a perpetual situation. But right now I'm more keyed into it, partially because I wasn't aware of this in the eighties in the way that I am. You know, I wasn't aware of this, you know, when I was in middle school in the way I am now as a scholar. But I wonder if you could maybe talk about how issues like this, right, and particularly the issue of Palestine, you know, what lessons there might be for students of Asian Studies or Japanese Studies in particular. So you've mentioned on the one hand that you're not a probably legible Japanese Studies scholar, which I think is, like, to your credit, right? In all the ways that, like, you wouldn't be doing this kind of really rich work on Japanese imperialism when you were doing it in the way that you were doing it, if you were kind of hemmed in in some ways or kind of confined by those boundaries.
But I do wonder at this moment in the same way that you're talking to students and trying to, you used a really great phrase, to kind of help students see the linkage, how might that happen around an issue like this and you know, how to do that ethically, responsibly, but, you know, rigorously. Because I think that that might be, this might be another moment in which to kind of understand how things like racism writ large as this enforcement of conditions that lead to premature death, in this case, in the context of, say, Uyghurs in China on the one hand and Palestinians on the other, say, might actually produce a kind of a venue for thinking about these linkages for students and really palpable and powerful ways.
Leo: So one thing I learned quite a lot from my colleague, Walter Mignolo, and some of the Latin Americanists is their introduction of the key phrase “coloniality as the underside of modernity,” right? In other words, modernity is unimaginable without thinking at the same time, not just colonialism, which is a historical process. Coloniality doesn't go away unless modernity goes away, right? So that allow I think us to think about the violence modernity and especially in my own kind of research nation-states, right? So I mean, I’m not conscious when I actually was writing about this, but I see myself always trying to work around the idea of the nation-state, especially when, you know, with Anti-Japan is really about nation-state as the agent of reconciliation, right? I reject that mainly because of the kind of modernity coloniality that I just mentioned.
And going back to the Palestine issue is that I think, and again, this is why maybe premodern studies, I mean, I don't know if that's an accurate word to use, but prior to modernity is really, really important. From my understanding is that if you look at what is used to be called Palestine, the Arabs and Jews actually lived side by side in many communities. I mean, they were peasants, they were merchants, they were, right? I mean, it was not this bifurcated notion between the Jews versus the Arabs. So it's only through of course, colonialism and mostly in this regard British, that established, right, these enclaves of differences. And as Reggie mentioned, you know, now even evicting, I mean, whole process now is basically getting rid of people from the land where they belong, right?
And we know, for example, even in study of Ainu. The Ainu and the Japanese, and first of all, there was no “Japanese,” even at the time, right? I mean, the Ainu word for Japanese was, like, something like “neighbor.” So already, when we look at like a pre-sort of a modern nation-state formation, we see relationships that are very messy, that are not so easily defined or confined into a particular set of binary oppositions. So to me, I think the problem with modernity and coloniality is that it gives you the false sense that thing has always been like this, therefore, like the Palestinian issue is irresolvable because people have been fighting like this for centuries. But I think it is really important to, you know, we provincialize our own sort of understanding of how antagonism or oppression actually worked, right? That's not to say that things were much better or blissful or whatnot. No, of course not. But I think, you know, if Palestine and other areas like even the Uyghur, you know, we need to begin to first interrogate, you know, how did the Uyghur even become an ethnicity within the Chinese sort of cultural formation, right? Because that's not something that's ahistorical, right? I mean, if we can somehow, you know, alert the students or, you know, I mean, not even an alert, but just sort of tease out the different type of relationality. Because then it makes it possible for us to imagine new possibilities, as long as we recognize this relationship is not set in stone, unchangeable, and so, and so, and so forth. So that's how, I guess I, pedagogically again, try to imagine, not so much imagine, but then to rethink this type of modern colonial relationship.
Reginald: Thank you so, so much. Your students are very lucky. I think it's really useful too, for teachers and students to hear, right? So folks who are kind of constantly feel challenged or, you know, feel like they’re not equipped or kind of expert enough to kind of draw these things together, right, to kind of think about those linkages. And I really appreciate what you're saying. I mean, this is one of the reasons we find it so useful to go to the pre-modern era, to kind of, is to imagine different possibilities and realize the things we take for granted weren't always that way.
Leo: Just to add, right? Like, so like one example about when, you know, the Buddhist missionaries were coming from Korea to Japan in the pre-modern. And they will revered, right, as carrier of civilization and whatnot. So the question is what happened, what overturned that relationship, right? To create, I mean, obviously Japanese colonialism and nationalism will be one. But I think, you know, not to lose sight of the inversion that takes place through modernity, coloniality that renders this, that relationship as a kind of hierarchical one, I think it's, yeah. So sorry to, didn't mean to interrupt.
Reginald: No, no, no, I think that’s really useful. And just one quick thing, and then Sophie's going to close us out, I think with a question. But I just want to shoutout a friend and colleague’s work. Her name is Dr. Rana Barakat who's at Birzeit University, who's writing brilliant things right now about Palestine in relation to settler colonialism, and trying to kind of think about these alternatives and not take these kinds of systems that we've inherited for granted. So check out Rana B A R A K A T, her scholarship.
Sophie: Thank you so much, Dr. Ching especially, for this conversation. It was just so fascinating to get to hear you, especially after reading your works. It's really nice to hear about your own racial formation and how your academic trajectory has really gotten you to where you are. So just to close up, I wanted to ask if you had any recent or upcoming work that you wanted to highlight for us. And yeah, thank you so much for this conversation.
Leo: Thank you. I actually enjoyed it very much. I think, again, your questions are really, I mean, first of all, they're very generous, but also very generative. It really allow me to sort of, you know, I mean again, right? I mean, in retrospect, everything seemed to make sense, but obviously there are a lot of things that are completely confusing and probably still confusing to me anyways. But at least enable me to craft a kind of a narrative that one can convince oneself that, that there is a reason. But I will only say that I think is really based on a lot of generosity of other people. When it comes to, I think, you know, with students and whatnot, I always tell them, I'm simply paying it forward. I'm simply doing it because somebody has done it for me. And you know, it's not like I'm a good person, or I just somehow like teaching. It's actually simply want to accumulate good karma, right, going back to the Buddhist.
So in terms of my own work, you know, I already, I'm seeing that, you know, so Anti-Japan came out a couple of years ago. I'm working on a, on a new project that I'm calling Archipelago East Asia. I'm looking at three sites, Okinawa, Jeju Island, and Taiwan, mainlly, again, through the kind of postwar again, massacre of innocent people. I mean, of course Okinawa is during the wartime. So I'm interested because now there are more and more non-government organizations like museums and artists and literary scholars that are actually connecting the three events happening anywhere between I think ‘45 and 1954. So I'm very interested in how they articulate that. Again, I go back to the earlier Stuart Hall concept that I am trying to work through. So I'm interested in how, despite the antagonism say between Japan and Taiwan and South Korea, and despite all this other kind of inter-Asian racism or discrimination, hard artists, curators, scholars, imagine a new way of addressing some of these sort of postcolonial regimes and violence. So again, it's going to be something that's combining literature, film, interviews.
And the problem is I don't speak Korean, and I don’t read Korean. So I'm actually collaborating with former students, which again, brings up a very interesting dynamic. I'm also learning a lot, mainly because you know, when you don't know something, it’s always revealing. And also just to be able to work with scholars from the region, writing in Japanese, writing in Chinese, writing Korean that are not translated into English. That's also there, there's a certain kind of excitement. So in a way opens up, I think these Area Studies models into different type of connections and recognition, right? In other words, knowledge is not only produced by North American or European scholars, but actually there are really prominent scholars in the region, but that are not legible in the U.S. So that's where I'm kind of moving towards the next project, but thank you for asking.
Reginald: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. It's exciting. And I imagine a friend of mine, Steven Chung, you might know his work. He's at Princeton and does really great work on Korean film and has a lot of fondness for Jeju, I think. But he might be someone that to kind of tap. And I mean, there's lots of other scholars too, and you have folks there like Aimee Kwon and so forth, that would be useful in that regard. But yeah, that's seems super exciting. And it's interesting to think now at this moment, too, about what you're saying in terms of opening things up and how that requires different types of collaboration. I think that I appreciate what you said about students. I mean, I've certainly found that. Maybe Rachel and Sophie and Harrison don't necessarily feel this way, but I'm learning a lot from them too, often inadvertently. But what they're contributing in terms of what they find in the archives. Whether it's about kind of Asian and Francophone, you know, connections or things on, you know, internment, incarceration and bringing into the syllabus, right, is super useful. I think that seems like a really productive venue for this new work where we don't have all the answers and our expertise fails us, but that also opens up new things. I think that's maybe a good lesson on which to end. So thank you so much again, Leo for such an incredibly lucid and generative set of responses. For now, thank you so much for sharing with us and for all the work that you do.
Reginald: Thank you for listening to our “Origin Stories” podcast. I’m Reginald Jackson, coordinator of the Japanese Studies Antiracist Pedagogy Project, and my co-conspirators include Sophie Hasuo, Rachel Willis, and Harrison Watson. We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and additional production support was provided by Justin Schell, Robin Griffin, and Allison Alexy. Please check our website for additional resources and information.