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

大约有10万美国人生活和/或工作在位于日本的美国军事基地，这些基地中的大多数都要求新来的人员接受有关日本文化的指导或培训。这个项目的目标是了解在这些官方的军事文化教育中，日本的哪些形象和方面正在被教授和学习。为此，研究人员将观察这些和其他文化学习和跨文化互动的机会，这些机会是由美军在东京郊外的横须贺海军基地创造的，并将采访新来的美国人，了解他们对日本人和文化的印象，以及他们在基地期间对日本的了解。研究人员将把这些数据用于他的一个更大的项目，即探索文化教育如何在人际和国际层面上影响美日关系。该研究将由东京一桥大学教授、军事领域的顶尖社会学家文美博士Satô进行。利用参与式观察和半结构化访谈，本研究将探讨在一个和平的盟国的美国基地的高度军事化环境中，对外国文化的理解和体验是如何形成的。尽管美国军事设施嵌入日本城市在地理上具有亲近感，但初步数据表明，许多人员经历了强烈的文化距离感，这种距离感是目前美国军事取向的内容和做法所默认的。研究人员假设，当人员经历了与日本人和文化的平庸的日常互动，同时被告知日本是陌生的和异国情调的，由此产生的紧张影响了军事人员的行为和观念，进而影响了基地和东道国社区之间的关系，最终影响了美日安全联盟。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会和日本科学促进会共同资助，隶属于东亚和太平洋暑期研究所项目，支持一名美国研究生进行暑期研究。

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