History of the joint comittee on Japan

A Short History of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies Rudolph Janssens, University of Amsterdam and Andrew Gordon, Harvard University The Founding of the Joint Committee In 1967 John Whitney Hall, professor of history at Yale University, proposed to Joseph E. Sitar of the Ford Foundation that they establish a committee on Japanese studies in order to “provide leadership or to serve as a clearing house for research and development.”1 For nearly 30 years the product of these discussions, the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies (JCJS), was a meeting place for Japan scholars from the humanities and social sciences. They tried to move their field into a broader intellectual discourse and introduce new ways of studying Japan. The Committee on Japanese Studies was a joint effort of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). These institutions had prior experience with cooperative projects. Several area and country Committees already were part of the SSRC, often in cooperation with the ACLS. During World War II, the Ethnographic Board was set up to aid the military. In 1945 the option of further joint research was contemplated, leading to the Committee on Slavic Studies (1948) and the Committee on Southern Asia (1949). In the 1950s, the Ford Foundation began to support financially several area committees, including a Committee on the Near and Middle East (l958), a Joint Committee on Contemporary China (1959) and a Joint Committee on African Studies (1959). 2 The JCJS was to a late entry into this tradition, as was the Joint Committee on Korean Studies. The ACLS had already played a key role in the origins and development of Japanese studies in the l930s. The ACLS had noticed that in most European nations Japanese studies programs were part of academic life, but not in the United States. It formed a Committee on Japanese Studies in 1930. To get an overview of the state of the field, the committee turned to a study published by the Institute of Pacific Relations of courses taught in 1 American academia about China and Japan.3 According to this report, of the 305 courses taught on the Far East, only 21 dealt with Japan, on topics ranging from art to history to international relations (excluding a limited number of language courses). The ACLS Committee on Japanese Studies decided on two actions: it sent young scholars abroad to become Japan specialists (the first four were Edwin 0. Reischauer, Hugh Borton, Charles Burton Fahs and Chitoshi Yanaga), and it organized from 1932 onward summer schools or seminars on the Far East, to help improve the courses being taught on the Far East and Japan. These ACLS programs were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.4 In 1938, through the support of institutions like the ACLS and the Rockefeller Foundation, Hugh Borton taught a Japanese studies program at Columbia University, which included courses on language, history and culture. A year later Edwin Reischauer began to teach at Harvard University. Despite these early efforts, when a national Conference of Japanese language teachers was held in June 1941, the entire group consisted of just 11 university teachers.5 The real boost to the field of Japanese studies was World War II. The American Government needed to train Japan experts to translate classified Japanese messages, deal with Japanese military in the field and participate in the occupation of postwar Japan. These new Japan experts were trained at various universities where new Japan programs were set up or existing programs expanded. Since the military believed its officers would deal with Japanese people in all kinds of situations, they had the trainees learn the language, culture, history and various other aspects of Japanese society. This way of teaching about Japan, different from the traditional discipline-centered model, offered an important support to the so-called “area studies” approach. After the war, in 1947, Robert B. Hall founded the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. That same year he had written a report for the SSRC on the importance of “area studies.” The Carnegie Corporation funded this Center at the outset. In the years following, several other East Asia programs were founded, mainly at the universities that had trained the military during the war. Within this context of East Asia and area studies, Japan programs were set up. During the 1950s and 1960s these established programs expanded slowly but steadily. Funding came from the Ford Foundation and the federal government, the latter clearly moved by concerns of the Cold War, as the title of the National Defense Education Act 2 (NDEA) suggests. One of Ford’s major goals was to promote international understanding and cooperation. In 1949, Rowen Gaither argued in a policy report for the Ford Foundation that the best approach to achieve these aims would be to support (international) research and education. In a 1962 report John J. McCloy, then president of Ford Foundation, supported Gaither’s ideas. Under McCloy’s guidance the foundation set up several programs to further the development of area and international studies in the United States. The two most important Ford Foundation programs for Japanese Studies were the Foreign Area Fellowship Program (FAFP), which made it possible for researchers to travel to and stay in their country of research, and the International Training and Research program (ITR). In the 1960s several universities founded or expanded Asian studies programs, including Japanese studies, through the ITR program.6 Ford was unhappy with the results of this investment. It had hoped that the area studies centers would have had a broader impact on more disciplines, and its report concluded that “foreign area programs retained a narrow disciplinary base. Senior departmental members, especially of the more universalistic disciplines of economics and sociology, saw no need to test their disciplinary theory in foreign areas. “7 The foundation was more pleased with the results of the Conference on Modern Japan, also supported through the ITR program. Through the offices of the Association of Asian Studies, John Hall and Robert E. Ward, both from the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, had proposed to organize a series of conferences on “the problems of modernization in Japan.” Ward had come up with this idea after discussions in the Committee on Comparative Politics about economic modeling based on Japan, as done in Project LINK (both the committee and the project were SSRC endeavors). The six conferences took place between 1960 and 1968. They dealt with topics such as changing Japanese attitudes toward modernization; alterations in social structure; economic and technological change; developing political ideas and institutions; changing values in thought, literature and art; and “dilemmas of growth in prewar Japan.” This project resulted in six collections of essays that set the debate in Japanese studies through the 1960s and early 1970s. Even more important to the Foundation was the cooperation of American, European and Japanese scholars during the conferences. This was the kind of international and interdisciplinary activity the Ford Foundation was aiming for.8 Consequently, Ford was willing to support Hall and Ward’s next project, which resulted in the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. These conferences were thus 3 extremely important in furthering the institutional development of Japanese studies as well as provoking ongoing debate and considerable controversy over the use of “modernization” as a framework for analysis. When John Hall wrote to the Ford Foundation about establishing a Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, he stressed two concerns. First, he felt that Japanese studies received insufficient attention as an independent field, certainly outside of Asian studies and even as a field within it. The Committee on Japanese Studies of the ACLS, for instance, had merged with the Committee on Chinese Studies into the Committee for Far Eastern Studies in 1947. A separate committee on Japanese Studies could focus the attention of Japan scholars on their own field, coordinate research and improve teaching. Second, Hall saw the impending retirement of the World War II generation of Japan scholars as another reason for a new initiative. The older generation had an excellent mastery of the language and a considerable shared understanding of the issues that constituted Japanese studies. Hall and, later, the first members of the newly formed committee expressed a fear that without a Joint Committee the field of Japanese studies would deteriorate. In one of its first reports, the JCJS noted that “Of the 2,000 American universities and colleges approximately 150 have Japan specialists on their faculties.” It concluded: “Despite its cultural and political importance, Japan does not enjoy the academic stature that France, for example, possesses in American academic life.”9 Another threat to Japanese studies at the end of the 1960s was a lack of funding. NDEA funding had decreased from $18 million in 1962 to $6 million in 1972. The Ford Foundation also changed course. In 1967, its new director, George Bundy had concluded: “the study of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America--above all the study of Russia and China—has become a necessary, built-in element of the American academic establishment. Intellectual fashions being what they are, these studies will have good times and bad. But they are [here?] to stay.”10 Consequently, Bundy discontinued the ITR program and stopped direct support to the area studies programs at various universities. Although the universities, through salaries and facilities, funded Japanese studies programs for the most part, the disappearance of NDEA and Ford money was expected to result in a decrease in research activities. 4 The JCJS and the Growth of the Field The Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, as the only national institution that initiated and supported research in the humanities and social sciences, sought to provide leadership within Japanese studies and to make it a respected field of research within disciplines traditionally oriented toward the United States and Europe. The field of Japanese studies expanded impressively during the decades that the Committee was active, mainly as a consequence of the growing importance of Japan as an economic power. Japanese studies was a small field in 1968. Between 1960 and 1968, the number of faculty specialists on Japan had increased at 22 of the 28 major institutions that provided useful figures from 49 to 124.11 In 1995 the Association for Asian Studies counted 1278 Japan specialists working at 410 B.A-granting institutes and 202 Ph.D.- granting institutes, a roughly 10-fold increase.12 As Japanese studies came to be taught by far more scholars at far more academic institutions, a consistent concern of the JCJS was to integrate this scholarship into the traditional academic disciplines. In1968 an Ad Hoc Committee on Japanese Studies met to discuss the establishment of the Joint Committee. In addition to John Hall and Robert Ward, this committee consisted of Edward 0. Reischauer, Marius B. Jansen, William W. Lockwood, James E. Morley and Donald H. Shively and John Campbell, staff. The JCJS received money from the Ford Foundation for the development of the Committee and for five conferences, and from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the State Department for scholarly exchange and joint research by Japanese and American scholars. Bryce Wood of the SSRC explained that the activities of a Joint Committee typically included making research grants to individuals, holding conferences, preparing bibliographies and commissioning studies on the state of the field. It was decided that members of the committee would be appointed for oneyear renewable terms and that disciplinary and geographical variety of the members would be desirable.13 The JCJS was to function within a recently established framework of Cooperation between the United States and Japan. In 1961, after talks between Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato and President John F. Kennedy, a United States-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) was established. CULCON met biannually to discuss problems in exchange between both nations, and make recommendations for improvement. In 1966, at CULCON 3 by discipline resulted in suggestions for new ways of research, which led in turn to a new series of conferences. In later years workshops were usually held instead of conferences. These meetings often resulted in books, some of which shaped debate within and beyond Japanese studies. The JCJS also awarded dissertation grants and postdoctoral fellowships to support quality research. To strengthen the field beyond the main centers of Japanese studies, regional programs were eventually set up. Leadership in Japan Studi, the American Committee on US-Japan Educational and Cultural Cooperation was founded to advise the US State Department on matters of educational and cultural exchange with Japan. John Hall chaired this committee, whose Subcommittee on Joint Research met with its Japanese counterpart to discuss and set up joint research projects in the social sciences and humanities.14 The JCJS became the main American party on this subcommittee, while their Japanese counterpart was the Advisory Committee for the Japan-US Cultural and Education Cooperation Program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The JCJS developed several ways to strengthen the field. It began by commissioning a report on the state of Japanese studies in the United States, to discover how many Japan programs were located where, and what should be changed. Six meetings organized es & Changes in Policies of JCJS The main characteristic of the JCJS was cooperation between humanists and social scientists. By supporting multidisciplinarity, the committee tried to make Japanese studies part of the broader debate within the traditional disciplines. For example, in its guideline for submission for new research proposals, the JCJS called for projects that contributed either to advancing theory and method in scholarly fields or devoted attention to neglected yet important research topics. It also preferred projects that would encourage collaboration among scholars or could integrate “Japanese material into the broader concerns of various social scientific and humanistic disciplines.” 15 For instance, during a JCJS meeting in 1991, it was stated that “the committee would like to continue to promote the development of the Japanese Studies field, to foster dialogue and interdisciplinary research, and to bring Japan into the center of disciplinary studies.”16 This view was also expressed in the various research projects and conferences. To give just one example, the report on the Conflict in Postwar Japan project described its aim as “to encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches both between scholars from various social science disciplines and between scholars whose work relates to the individual and interpersonal level of Japanese society and those whose work relates to the inter-organizational, institutional, and societal levels. Only by such crossfertilization can we hope to arrive at an understanding of how patterns of conflict and conflict resolution are linked or transformed as one goes from the individual up through the small group to institutional and societal phenomena.”17 Throughout its history, the JCJS debated its role in and strategy for supporting Japanese studies. It would be a mistake to read back into its history any moment of complete agreement. In 1981, the committee discussed better “ways of integrating Japanese studies into the mainstream disciplines.” There were suggestions to encourage collaborative projects with the Joint Committee on Western Europe, although such projects with members from other Asian committees had not worked well. In this context, SSRC President Kenneth Prewitt noted in 1981 that the Council was considering introducing topically-defined committees that were both interdisciplinary and cross-regional.18 In the early l 990s, the committee tried a different approach, attempting, in the words of a 1994, to “become more contemporary, more in tune with the role of Japan in the world today, and more focused on issues of significance to emerging scholars and to the policy analysis world. “ 19 There were often disagreements as the JCJS invited comments from scholars within the field. Among the responses in l980, Joseph Kitagawa found also that the JCJS was slanted primarily toward a social scientific and not enough towards a humanistic orientation, a complaint echoed by committee member William Kelly in 1991 20,21 Marius Jansen wanted more attention to (young) people working outside the major Japanese studies centers in the United States.21Solomon Levine wanted to see Japanese studies brought more into the research mainstream in order to combat the perception of Japanese uniqueness.23 Hugh Patrick believed the desire to include younger people in the committee had gone too far. He also wrote “I do not wish the Committee . . . to focus solely on a comparative approach, of course; much remains to be done in pushing back the frontiers of knowledge about Japan itself.” 24 A few years earlier, John Hall remarked that the goals of the JCJS had not been reached. He complained that “there is still too little give and take of ideas between Japanese specialists and our colleagues in American and European fields. Since World War II Japanese specialists have, as private scholars, crashed the elite levels of higher education, but we have yet to establish the value of the subjects we control to the basic concerns of the disciplines we find ourselves.”25 Another recurrent issue in debates over the role of the JCJS was concern about the loss of unity within the field as Japanese studies grew. Some scholars longed for the presumed neatness of the 1960s, when Japanese studies could be unified through the Conference on Modern Japan. Others stated that the workshops about diverse topics were more in line with the diversification of the field in general. But as one scholar noted in a 1989 review of the JCJS, “There is simply no other body in the United States that is brought together on the basis of research credentials to brainstorm about where the field of Japanese Studies should be going.”26 During its 30 years of existence, the JCJS organized or supported 118 conferences, workshops and research projects (see Appendix 1). Most of these spanned several years and involved scholars from different disciplines and countries. The majority led to publication of books or essays. The JCJS began by organizing nine conferences to survey the field of Japanese studies in different disciplines. Subsequent conferences and research projects focused on various topics and approaches. Beginning in 1975 the Committee tended to support smaller planning workshops either in preparation for, or in place of, larger conferences. Topics ranged from economy, linguistics, politics, medicine, security issues, sociology, to anthropology, culture, history, literature, law, philosophy, demography, postmodernity and religion. Conferences and research projects were typically focused on little-studied topics or new approaches to the study of Japan. All were interdisciplinary. Often the participants included scholars who received their first exposure to the study of Japan through these endeavors. Most of the time the conferences and projects included both American and Japanese scholars, and sometimes Europeans as well. Throughout the history of the JCJS interdisciplinary research and the introduction of researchers to Japanese work were stressed. For example, a 1972 report to CULCON about the early activities of JCJS noted: The American group for the [the Mutual Images project] . . . includes several participants who have had little or no experience with Japan. Most of the sociolinguistics group are both disciplinary and Japan specialists. Mr. Kravis and his associates on Levels on Living had not previously worked with Japanese data, but were experienced in international comparisons. At the farthest extreme, only one American participant in the Child Development seminar had done research in Japan, while one more had directed a major comparative research project with several countries in his sample. The other participants had concentrated their research on preschool education in the United States and related topics. The seminar was their first exposure to Japanese data and the thinking of their Japanese colleagues. 27 It is hard to assess the success of these various undertakings. Since Japan increased in power and importance during this period, many scholars would have begun to study the country, the society and its role in any case. It could be argued that the main role of the JCJS was to introduce new ways of studying Japan and bring together groups of scholars who might not have come together otherwise. In addition, many of the publications that resulted were of substantial impact. Different people will have their own lists of such achievements. This author (Janssens) would note, for instance, the Mutual Images conference, the two Conflict in Japan conferences, the Postmodernity conference and some of the conferences on historical topics, ranging from the Kamakura period to Japanese imperialism to postwar Japan as history. Postdoctoral Fellowships & Dissertation Grants The JCJS also greatly strengthened the field by making postdoctoral fellowships and dissertation grants available to researchers. The committee handed out 303 postdoctoral fellowships and 13l predissertation grants (see Appendix 2). Fellowship and grant decisions were based on the soundness of the research proposal, the quality of the applicant, awareness of the literature in the field and the likelihood that the research would make a theoretical or conceptual contribution.28 The projects did not have to fit any specific research priorities of the SSRC. Notes from a 1975 review of applications for grants, however, make it clear that comparative research was highly appreciated.29 According to the 1989 review of the JCJS, “literally no one criticized the standards and procedures.”30 The predoctoral grants were established because many candidates decided to stay on in Japan while doing research, in large part because it was hard to land a job in the United States. The JCJS members worried that an insufficient number of high-quality Ph.D.’s would enter the field.31 By 198990, no predissertation grants were awarded due to a decrease in funding. In addition, the real value of funding declined sharply over time because of inflation in the United States and the decline in the value of the dollar relative to the yen.32 Regional Programs In 1978 the regional seminars were created as an outreach program to serve scholars outside major Japanese studies centers.35 In 1991 there were six regional seminars: the Midwest (with 215 members), New England (140 members), North and South Carolina (or the Triangle East Asia Colloquium (TEAC), with 156 members), the Rocky Mountain and Southwest region (membership unknown), the South (founded in 1988; with 132 members) and the Washington-Southeast region (membership unknown). Their goal was to function as a “mechanism to promote new research, the sharing of research findings and to broaden cross-cultural understanding among scholars and nonscholars interested in Japan. “ 36 Funding The main support for the activities of the JCJS came from the Ford Foundation. The committee also received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As JCJS activities The JCJS established regional programs in order to spread Japanese studies more widely within the United States. In 1969, 62% of all Ph.D.’s in Japanese studies came from the top five academic institutes (and 46% from the top three) in the United States.33 This concentration made it harder to found and maintain Japan programs elsewhere, to the consternation of many within the JCJS. This was especially problematic because committee members in 1969 were convinced that “the minimum national need is to double the personnel resources of the field over the next 10 years, from 600 to 1200 specialists teaching in at least 200 colleges and universities 34 increased over time and the dollar declined against the yen, the JCJS tried to find other sources of support. The State Department’s decision to stop funding research and exchange of scholars meant a decline in income, as did the end of the National Defense Education Act at the beginning of the 1970s.37 As part of the agreement governing the return of Okinawa to Japan, the Japanese government was to repay the American government for support during the occupation. Robert Ward, working through the offices of the JCJS and the Association of Asian Studies, suggested using some of this money for educational purposes. Although there was some initial hesitation in the State Department, the US Congress supported the proposition and in 1975 the Japan-United States Friendship Committee (JUSFC) was established.38 The JUSFC provided the money for the exchange and research program previously funded by the State Department. It also gave supplemental funding for the doctoral research program and emergency support for the regional seminar program in 1977.39 Another important source of funding was the Japan Foundation. Established by the Japanese government in 1972, the foundation supported Japan programs in the United States. It also offered 12 annual fellowships for American researchers in Japan. From 1986 onward, the Japan Foundation supported the regional seminars. In the early 1990s it also became the home of the Center for Global Partnership (CGP) created by the Japanese government. The CGP in turn funded the Abe Fellowship program, another program for postdoctoral research administered through SSRC and focusing on study of Japan in comparative and international contexts. Throughout its history the JCJS confronted funding problems, but they accelerated in the 1980s. In 1981 for instance, SSRC President Kenneth Prewitt warned—prematurely as it turned out—that the then-current threeyear grant from the Ford Foundation might not be renewed, and he suggested looking for other sources. The SSRC review of the JCJS in 1989 suggested the committee should try to get more funding from Japan. The JCJS proved to be less successful than some universities in obtaining money from Japanese sources. At the end of the 1980s, an overall shortfall in funds to support its international programs led the SSRC to cut funding for the JCJS substantially. During the decade, the SSRC had spent its core grant for international programs from the Ford Foundation at too fast a pace, leaving the Council with an unfunded gap of two years until the hoped-for renewal of the grant. The SSRC claimed the shortfall resulted from an unexpected increase in costs of the international program, and the Ford Foundation pressed it to reduce costs. One result was a promise by the Council to reduce the number of joint area committees. A Pan-Europe working group was established as was an East Asian Regional Research Working Group (EARRWG).41 For the time being, the joint area committees remained in existence. In the fall of 1990, the Japan, Korea, and China committees began to discuss founding an East Asia Committee. Although that did not happen, administrative responsibility for the joint committees for Japan and for Korea was consolidated. Another consequence of the financial crunch was a decline in fellowship resources The maximum postdoctoral fellowship offered in 1989 was only S25,000.42 Predoctoral fellowships were suspended for two years. Financial problems were not the only impetus for change. In 1988, President Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. wrote about the limits of area studies and the lack of interaction between area specialists and international relations experts. Wakeman believed that a rapid “delocalization” of the world was occurring, in which there was less interest in area studies. As examples of this “delocalization,” he mentioned among others theme the transnational implications of labor flows, global religious fundamentalism and crossregional and cross-country sectoral analysis of capital develop ment.43 The next president of the SSRC, David Featherman, continued Wakeman’s line of thinking. He wanted to see “mission-oriented basic research.” He stated that public funding of science was more and more tied in with “marshalling knowledge via science and technology in behalf of achieving national objectives.” By working on social issues, Featherman also expected the Council to be “less likely to get lost in arcane esoterica.” He pointed to “a feeling that the world was changing and the area committee configuration inherited from the Ford Foundation in the 1950s might no longer best facilitate the Council’s goals or reflect geopolitical and research community realities.” 45 As a result, by 1994, according to one calculation, more than half of the fellowships funded by the SSRC had nothing to do with so-called traditional area studies. These studies were projects about the identity of individuals (as members of ethnic, family, race, gender or national groups), the relationship between development of markets and democracy, and development and developmental programs.46 At the beginning of 1994, the president of the SSRC appointed a task force of seven scholars to offer suggestions as to how the organization’s international research could be strengthened.47 This group recommended a restructuring of the area programs on the grounds that they would “fail to attract and engage a range of younger scholars who are sensitive to the importance of language, culture and history as tools for effective social science scholarship but do not identify themselves primarily as scholars of particular countries or regions.” 48 Especially in 1994 and 1995, sometimes acrimonious discussion about the merits of continuing to support the area committees took place within and between the Council and the committees. These discussions about the value of area studies were not limited to the SSRC. Articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Lingua Franca publicized the sometimes fierce debates to a larger academic audience.49 At the same time, the Ford Foundation and the leadership of the SSRC began to rethink the concept of area studies and consider new ways to structure and support them. Amid heated debate, as part of a shift toward support of research focusing on more than one country and addressing global or at least regional issues, the JCJS was eliminated along with all the area committees of the Council in June 1996. In one letter of response, TJ Pempel, the chair of the JCJS, reflected the consensus of the committee when he expressed his concern that a premise of the current discussions was a troubling distinction between area studies and theory. “In this view,” he wrote, “those who work on single countries, or non-Western regions, are presumed to be analytically vacuous data gatherers whose chief skills arise from their linguistic capabilities and cultural sensitivities, and whose principal contribution to social science lies in their ability and willingness to provide the raw material that can be used by the culturally-transcendent and far more analytically-rich grand theorists.”50 The chairs of other joint committees also tended to defend a more modest restructuring of the status quo. The chairs of the three East Asian committees collaborated on a letter protesting the reorganization. They argued that “the best ... research is done on a foundation of context-sensitive and culturally specific knowledge of the kind that the three Committees in the end exist to support.”51 Some members of the Council’s Joint Advisory Committee on International Programs responded critically, noting for example that “the Council is not an area studies support institution. Building Korean studies or Japan studies or China studies is an admirable goal. It is a necessary pre-condition for carrying out social science and humanities research that is grounded in knowledge of place, and to this extent we should support it and allocate resources to it. But it is not the principal purpose of our committees, and not the principal criterion on which we should make administrative and intellectual judgments.”52 In the event, the Ford Foundation did provide a new grant to the SSRC in 1996 for the purpose of putting in place what was said to be a dramatically revised international program. It goes beyond the bounds of this essay to describe or assess this program. One may note, however, that study of experience in Japan or involving Japan in relation to the rest of the world is likely to be supported to some degree in a variety of new structures, but there will be no Japan Committee with the broad mandate of the former JCJS. Place-based knowledge, a term now sometimes used instead of area studies, will still play a role in this new framework, perhaps mainly to offer material for comparative research. _ Perspectives on the Work of the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies To offer a contemporary supplement to this survey of the history of the JCJS, the committee in 1996 sent out two rounds of letters to approximately 150 people, past or present members of the joint committee, organizers of JCJSsupported conferences and recipients of grants administered through the committee. We received 43 thoughtful, often lengthy replies. What follows is a summary of the main points of consensus and contention, no doubt reflecting the prejudices of the summarizer (Gordon) as well as the view of the letter-writers. Views of the JCJS and SSRC role in Japan studies, past, present, future The respondents addressed a variety of issues. Their major concerns fall into four categories: past contributions of JCJS projects, the future of training for young scholars and individual research support, desirable directions for future scholarship and the role a body such as SSRC ought to play. There was some sharp disagreement over the wisdom of replacing the JCJS and the area committees in general with a new structure to promote international studies. Nonetheless, there were some recurring themes worth highlighting. Training of Japan scholars In cases where they distinguished between activities such as conferences or research planning and training, a number of respondents saw the latter as the greatest past contribution of JCJS and the area of highest future priority. The most important general argument was that we are in a time of shrinking support across the board for the training of students and junior scholars whose work focuses on Japan, through graduate school and early postdoctoral careers. It is crucial that we continue to nurture talented scholars with excellent language skills and in-depth knowledge of Japan. The work of such people is not only important in its own right; it is also the base upon which any successful comparative or collaborative or globally focused work must stand. So long as SSRC is promoting international studies drawing on sustained, in-depth analysis of experience in Japan, among many other places, the sorts of training support it previously administered should be continued. Numerous letter writers, now distinguished scholars and leaders in their disciplines and institutions, underscored the importance of SSRC support in the early stages of their careers. One wrote, for example, that “my own _ development has been powerfully shaped by the research experiences I had under SSRC support, the first as a graduate student. SSRC support allowed me to prolong my field research far beyond the Fulbright which originally got me to Japan. I believe that the SSRC’s effectiveness in enhancing the training of graduate students and young faculty is the area of its greatest potential. In my case, it allowed and encouraged me to branch out beyond religious studies to anthropological and sociological work which has remained vital to me. I believe that it has had this broadening effect for a great many other people. I hope that this function can be maintained under the new regime.” Implicit (and sometimes explicit) in these assertions was a view of research planning as an activity of secondary importance. To put it crudely, one could argue that even if SSRC had no role in promoting collaborative research projects, they would be likely to occur so long as sufficient numbers of scholars in a broad array of disciplines were trained with Japanese and/or other area expertise. But without continued training support, the current relatively healthy numbers of Japan specialists in North America are in themselves no guarantee they will be reproduced. One writer in the linguistics field made the additional argument that, for linguists at any rate, a non-discipline-based funding source allows researchers to find support for work that might be out of favor with the dominant paradigms in a discipline. Research Strategies Should the Council, then, place all of its resources into the training of young scholars, who would then be able to organize their research and secure funds on their own? If the SSRC were to limit itself to administering even a greatly expanded program of predoctoral and postdoctoral individual research grants, it could probably dispense with the majority of its professional and support staff and exist with a lean secretariat and a variety of annuallyconvened expert committees to vet applicants. These cost savings could be passed on directly to the recipients of its support. Indeed, some letter writers were critical of the entire enterprise of “organizations shaping research paths.” One maintained, with fair justification in this author’s view, that “Japanese scholarship that has influenced scholars outside the Japan field has most often been produced by individuals in monographic form,” and cited Ronald Dore, Chalmers Johnson and Thomas C. Smith as examples. If this is true, then the surest route to maximizing the impact of Japan-based _ scholarship on a broader intellectual community is simply to invest in the training of talented individuals and let them find their own way into various collective endeavors. The laws of organizational entropy make such a radical outcome highly unlikely, to say the least. Indeed, the majority of respondents believed the SSRC as an organization had the potential to add value to intellectual work. They wished to see such a body play an ongoing role in promoting collaborative research. Some were quite comfortable with the prospects for a new regime of regional, global or thematic committees. At a most general level, this line of reasoning holds that expertise on Japan has reached a sufficient critical mass in most all disciplines to insure that insights or knowledge of Japan will inform most any significant, relevant inquiry. But the most impressive point of consensus was case for what one might call “basic area studies.” This is the point that, in the words of one writer, “globalization of scholarly research must be built upon the foundation secured by expert knowledge of each specialized region.” It is perhaps no surprise that the opinions of a group identified as leaders of Japanese studies would incline in this direction. But the specific reasons offered for this unsurprising conclusion are worth considering. Several replies made a case for the continued importance of bringing together multiple perspectives on Japan, either within a discipline or, perhaps most important, across disciplines and across time. One writer compared an “extremely rewarding” recent SSRC-supported workshop on early modem Japan with a “similar conference on ‘early modernity’ around the world, which was also quite rewarding but qualitatively different from [the Japan] workshop. It made me feel that choosing the globe over intra-area work closes off important avenues of inquiry.” Several writers also stressed the need for and potential intellectual fruits of making comparisons across time within a single place as well as across the world at particular moments. One lamented the “lack of vital intellectual engagement among scholars specializing in different periods of Japanese history. Is there a general perception among modernists that premodern scholarship is so empirical and impossible to access through themes and concepts? Do premodernists view modernists’ works to be irrelevant to their understanding of the past?” This writer called for “initiatives that explore a common theme at different chronological points in the history of Japan” as one way to “facilitate a greater level of abstraction.” _ To put this call for continued collective inquiries that take “Japan” as a problem or unit for analysis in negative terms, the great danger of a structure giving priority to global or comparative studies is that in most projects we are likely to have a single “Japan person” sitting at the table. She or he would be presumed to bring an authoritative Japan-studies perspective to the question at hand but in fact would represent one individual’s (by definition) idiosyncratic position subject to little or no informed scrutiny. One writer called this “merely plugging one or more Japan specialists into a project of ‘global’ significance.” Another noted that “it is easily forgotten, in the rush to get on the comparative and transregional bandwagon, that these efforts only make sense and only have a solid basis if it can be assumed that a researcher has a firm grip on some actual place in depth. Comparative scholarship cannot proceed with a theoretical framework to which local ‘data’ are merely fitted in on an ad hoc basis. The study of single societies cannot be side-stepped in the misconceived hope that there is a quick way to ‘content-free’ comparative study.” Numerous respondents, including these writers, put the matter more positively as well. They argued forcefully that the great strength of the JCJS was its ability to bring together a critical mass of interdisciplinary perspectives on a problem, or a critical mass of experts on Japan within a single discipline. The results of such studies were important both in their own right and as a necessary base from which to have an impact on the various disciplines of knowledge. As one commented, “it is vital for the SSRC to maintain some commitment to area studies….Without it, efforts to ‘go global’ will not yield results of substance or endurance.” These opinions must be taken quite seriously. As one anthropologist noted, “theory depends on data just as theory informs our recognition of phenomena as data.” One conclusion emerging from a reading of these letters is that in order to avoid a situation where Euro-American perspectives, given false place of privilege as “theory,” simply incorporate the “data” offered up by a lone Japan specialist in a larger group, we need occasions where groups of people informed about Japan come together to think through matters of theorizing and data production simultaneously, without privileging either or trapping themselves in an invidious dichotomy between “theory” and “area” knowledge. To put the practical conclusion simply and specifically, future SSRC programs in international studies should retain some place for gatherings of scholars who are studying a place as “narrow” as a single country, whether Japan or India or Brazil. _ Two additional comments raised this matter of Euro-American or “Atlantic” perspectives in their calls for continued, and indeed importantly expanded, collective examinations of Japan. One noted that “the conferences and collaborative efforts, as far as the larger scholarly world is concerned, in my view represent a kind of ‘invisible’ intellectual infrastructure; this is where the materials inaccessible to non-specialists are brought to light and approaches closely tested, interpretive and analytic strategies worked out. Non-specialists can’t do this. And in our society, Western experience is still the default. So if the Council mistakenly gives up on providing forum for area specialists, we’ll end up with a ‘global’ discourse that is a mask for the hegemony of the Atlantic rim.” With a similar concern, another letter-writer noted that if the Council’s new international programs had three goals of supporting work that was more fully comparative, global and collaborative, then the last of these three was the most important. “That is, it seems to me more important that SSRC focus its efforts on affecting not so much what is studied but how ‘it’ is studied. International studies should probably mean not (only) studies of ‘foreign areas’ but studies that are ‘international’ in their formulation, composition and process, regardless of the nature of their object. (This probably means that Japan studies should become studies with rather than of Japanese...If a study is genuinely collaborative across linguistic national and other boundaries, in the sense that not only its execution but its very conception and formulation are collaborative, perhaps it is less likely to unreflectively isolate a human object of study, or to proceed unproblematically toward a culture-bound or nation-centered outcome.)” In a related vein, several respondents offered impassioned claims that understanding and knowledge of non-Western places, in particular, was crucial to any serious effort at theoretical thinking. They tended to link this claim to a critique of the universalizing pretensions of much Euro-American centered work in contemporary political science. Thus, one historian wrote “I’ve gotten the sense that the move against area studies is a reflection of the rational-choice movement that has (inexplicably) generated so much support among some political sciences and others. Having seen rational choice theorists apply their models to early-modern Japan, I’ve gotten the sense that they see regional differences (and hence the specialized knowledge that allows us to see such differences) as inconsequential and therefore irrelevant. I certainly do not feel that Japan (much less Korea or India or Southeast Asia) has become so mainstream that we can assume that any serious ‘global’ perspective would incorporate a serious consideration of how European- _ derived theories ought to be modified in light of Japanese evidence.” Others echoed this concern: “If what is called area studies is deprived of an independent basis and is subsumed by theory-driven committees, then I can well imagine theorists with no particular area expertise establishing the theoretical propositions to be tested across cultures. Area experts will then be deployed like so many research assistants to look for the facts.” And similarly, “too often Japan is simply dismissed as the odd outlier and the elimination of a Japan-focused committee would probably reinforce that simplistic attitude. The tendency of my university’s political science and sociology departments as well as many others is to reduce problems to those defined based on the experience of modern, largely American and Western societies and to assume that quantitative or theoretical work is the only serious work of the social scientist. To the extent the I have been able to observe the SSRC, it has, through this current structure and some of the programs it has sponsored, sought to keep a constructive tension between the culturalists and ‘universalists’, implicitly communicating the message that both components are essential in understanding human societies. I would hate to see that perspective compromised by abandoning area committees.” Past Contributions Asked to describe work produced under the auspices of the JCJS that achieved important results and had an impact on Japan scholars and others, many writers mentioned a conference volume or two close to their own field. In addition, the replies repeatedly mentioned a relative handful of the JCJS projects which demonstrate the ongoing need for such endeavors. Even those critical of the substance of the foundational conferences on Japan’s modernization in the 1960s, which led to the creation of the JCJS, noted that the six-volume series that resulted was a landmark in postwar American social science and international studies generally. Several JCJS projects were also identified as marking turning points or the emergence of new interpretative agendas that have had broad impact, both within the Japan studies field and outside it. These would include the volumes on Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taisho Democracy and on Conflict in Modem Japanese History (the former was not strictly speaking a JCJS project, but it did grow out of the Conference on _ Modern Japan funded by Ford, which then evolved into the JCJS). These two books reflected and furthered a new concern to bring crisis and conflict to the foreground. Some of the contributions articulated a fresh perspective on the central role of cultural history. In a similar way, the project on Culture and Identity and the work on Postmodernism and Japan were noted as efforts which not only appropriated but also has informed broader debates in the humanities. In the social sciences, a number of books with either a sole or a comparative focus on Japanese politics were noted as important contributions that have had an impact beyond the Japan studies field, such as Uncommon Democracies. A consensus emerged that projects which are informed by broader trends within or across disciplines, but which focus primarily on Japan, ought to continue to be part of the mix of activities supported by the Council. For example, one respondent suggests “convening area types on an occasional basis to assess the treatment of their area throughout the SSRC.” His motive was disarmingly honest and personal (“the benefits I received from ... meeting people from other disciplines and other parts of the country”), but this suggestion has merit on other grounds. If an objective of the SSRC’s new order is to link local and global analyses more fruitfully, as well as to break down a destructive conceptual opposition of “area” and “theoretical” ways of knowing, then it might be extremely valuable to convened occasional audits along these lines. Depending on how it evolves, the Council’s recently constituted Japan Advisory Board might play such a role or explore ways that others might do so. Directions for future scholarship Perhaps predictably, there was no clear consensus on this question. Some feel work that is “policy relevant” is a top priority, although the specific policy areas mentioned ranged from international relations to domestic social policies. In line with a project that the JCJS had been talking about in its final sessions, the importance of studying the current political upheaval or restructuring in Japan was noted by some. Current events in Japan were described as a sort of “controlled experiment” in political reform ideally suited to close study. Several writers noted that it was crucial for Japan to be brought into studies of imperialism, colonialism and postcolonialism, to break apart the still-dominant binary division of Western colonialist and nonWestern other. It would appear from a number of recent sessions organized at the meetings of the Association for Asian Studies that such work is indeed _ being undertaken. Other topics mentioned included state-economy-society relations and the relevance (or irrelevance) of Confucianism and the need for macrohistorical, long-sweep studies (whether from the 1500s to 1900s or “merely” the last century), and the importance of continued work on changing gender relations in arenas ranging from cultural studies to state-society relations to economic life. Finally, one scholar echoed the widespread dual concern for deepened understanding of Japan and broad engagement with a larger community of scholars by calling for “some projects that bring the mainstream and the periphery together and induce them to deal with one another-- perhaps even generate theory together. Among possibilities that come to mind are: 1) the construction of myths of national uniqueness, 2) how historical revisionism occurs and 3) power and empowerment in modern times. These are all themes for which Japan and other ‘areas’ provide a rich vein of inquiry, so too do Europe and America.” APPENDIX 1: Conferences Workshops, and Research Projects‘ organized by the JCJS (Note: Conferences and projects lasted more than one year will be mentioned only in the year they began. The names beside the projects indicate the chairpersons. A substantial number of research projects were in cooperation with other organizations, notably the JSPS) 1968-1969 Eight disciplinary conferences to survey the state of Japanese Studies in the United States: Political science, Robert E. Ward Modern history, Albert M. Craig Economics, Henry Rosovsky Anthropology, psychology, and sociology, Edward Norbeck Premodern Japanese history and religion, William H. McCullough Art, John Rosenfield Language and linguistics, Roy A. Miller Literature, Robert H. Browe Allied Occupation of Japan project (bibliography), Robert E. Ward and _ Nobushige Ukai Comparison of levels of living in Japan and United States, Irving Karvis and Yuzo Yamada Survey of Japanese Studies in the United States, John W. Hall and William J. Bogaty 1969-1970 Last survey conference: Japanese language, Eleanor H. Jorden. Mutual images, Akira Iriye and Shunsuke Kamei Sociolinguistics, Eleanor H. Jorden and Tsuya Kunihiro Environmental disruption and control, Shigeto Tsuru and Solomon B. Levine 1970-1971 Decision making and the structure of leadership in Japanese society, Ezra F. Vogel Industrialization and its social consequences for modern Japan, Hugh T. Patrick Premodern origins of contemporary Japanese culture, John W. Hall Leadership and decision making in Japan’s international relations, Robert A. Scalapino Comparative uses of the Japanese experience, Albert M. Craig Cross-cultural study of the influence of socializing agents on cognitive functioning, communication styles, and educability in children, Robert D. Hess and Hiroshi Azuma 1971-1972 Japanese language teaching programs in the United States Financial history of Allied occupation of Japan, Japanese Ministry of Finance and Dick K. Nanto Comparative research of the legislative process in the Japanese Diet and the American Congress, Gerald L. Curtis, Nathaniel B. Thayer and Seizaburo Sato 1972-1973 Japanese social and political organization and its relationship to decisionmaking Japan and world order Working group on restudy of villages Situational equivalence and linguistic divergence in Japan and the United States, Eleanor H. Jorden Japanese-American relations from World War I to the Manchurian incident, James B. Crowley and Hosoya Chihiro _ 1973-1974 Economic history of pre-Tokugawa Japan, Kozo Yamamura Analysis of political process leading to the return of Okinawa to Japanese control, Haruhiro Fukui 1974-1975 Conflict in modern Japan, Ellis Krauss, Gerald L. Curtis, Thomas Rohien and Patricia Steinhoff Historical conflict in Japan, Tetsuo Najita Workshop on political opposition at the local level, Kurt Steiner Concepts of time and space in Japanese culture and aesthetics, Karen W. Brazell Workshop on innovation and technology transfers in Japan, Robert E. Cole and Gary Saxonhouse Japan’s early modernization during the Sengoku period, John W. Hall and Kozo Yamamura Interdisciplinary workshop on urbanization in contemporary Japan, Robert J. Smith Occupation of Japan, Robert E. Ward and Yoshikazu Sakamoto Family influences upon school readiness in young children in the US and Japan, Victor Turner and Chie Nakane 1975-1976 City in Japan, Robert J. Smith Historical demographic changes in the family system in Japan, China and Korea, Susan B . Hanley and Arthur Wolf 1976-1977 The use of critical methodology in interpreting Japanese prose narrative, Masao Miyoshi and Earl Miner Workshop on comparative interest politics, Bernard S. Silbennan Medieval Japanese social and cultural world from an interdisciplinary perspective, Barbara Ruch Feasibility and fruitfulness of alternatives to the group model of Japanese society, Harumi Befu Assessment of responsibility and punishment in the United States and Japan, V. Lee Hamilton, Zensuke Ishimura and Yoko Hosoi Task Force on research and development in Japanese language training, Eleanor H. Jorden _ 1977-1978 Kamakura history, Jeffrey Mass Workshop on careers and life cycles in modern Japan, David W. Plath Workshop on Japanese colonial empire, Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie Policy studies on Japan, Ezra F. Vogel Task Force of humanists on medieval Japan, Barbara Ruch Interdisciplinary study of various aspects of the Kasuga temple complex in Nara, Allan Grapard and John Roserufield Nara ehon, Barbara Ruch Studies on the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman Transformations in early modern Japanese political and social thought, Harry D. Harootunian and Irwin Schreiner Interwar economy of Japan, Kazuo Sato and Nakamura Takafusa Local government and center-local relations in France, Italy and Japan, Terry MacDougall and Wataru Omon Comparative social stratification, William H. Sewell and Ken’ichi Tominaga 1978-1979 Political management of economic change in postwar Japan and Gerrnany, Haruhito Fukui and Peter H. Merkl 1979-1980 The vision of golden age in medieval Japan, H. Paul Varley . Life course development of families in Japan and the United States, Tamara Hareven Early childhood socialization in the United States and Japan, Kazuo Miyake and Jerome Kagan 1980-1981 Japanese literary theory and practice, Earl Miner Cultural criticism in Japan, 191? - 1935, J. Thomas Rime and Eugene Soviak Local institutions in national development, strategies and consequences of local national linkages in the advanced industrial democracies, Michael Aiken, Terry MacDougall and Wataru Omori Japan and Korea: social and economic development, G. Cameron Hurst Ill, Chae-Tin Lee, and Seizaburo Sato 1981-1982 Silent ideologies: social implications of Japanese art and literature, Earl Miner _ Modern Japanese business history, William D. Wray Health and medicine in Japan, Edward Norbeck Party-bureaucratic relations in one-party dominant system, TJ Pempel Terms and concepts in medieval Japanese history, John W. Hall, Kozo Yamamura and Keiji Nagahara Comparative socialization, Kazuo Miyake, Jerome Kagan and Joseph Campos Japan, the United States and the world, 1950-1980, Akira Iriye and Chihira Hosoya 1982-1983 Law and Japanese society: the legal process and the role of law in contemporary Japan, John 0. Hanley _ Comparative industrial policy, Gary R. Saxonhouse America in Japanese thought since World War II, J. Victor Koschmann and Jiro Kamishima Child development in Japan and the United States, Harold W. Stevenson and Hiroshi Azuma Japanese imperialism in China between the two Sino-Japanese wars, Peter Duus, Ramon H. Meyers and Mark W. Peattie Media and politics in Japan, Susan J. Pharr and Ellis S. Krauss Survey of academic Japan specialists and of colleges and universities in the United States that offer courses on Japan. Gender issues in the study of Japan, Susan B. Hanley and Theodore Bestor The international history of East Asia, 1550-1750, William S.Atwell and Ronald P. Toby The political economy of East Asian development, Hagen Koo The Lotus Sutra in Japanese culture, George J. Tanabe and Willa L. Tanabe Coordination of economic policy between Japan and the United States, Richard C. Marston and Koichi Hamada 1984-1985 Paris and Edo: urban growth and political absolutism in the early modem period, James L. McCIain, John B. Merriman and Kaoru Ugawa The development of emotions and emotional communications in Japanese and American infants, Joseph J. Campos and Kazuo Miyake Military and trade alliances between Japan and the United States, Martin C. McGuire and Hirofumi Shibata Asia’s new religions, Helen Hardacre, Lawrence Kendall and Charles F. Keyes Coordination of economic policies between Japan and the United States, Richard C. Marston and Koichi Hamada 1985-1986 Regional demography and development: the Nobi region, G. William Skinner and Hayarni Akira Cognition and the arts, Michael Cole and Yutaka Sayeki 1986-1987 Japanese philosophy, William Lafleur and Thomas Kasulis Postmodernity in Japan, J. Victor Koschmann and Naoki Sakal Negotiating public and private interests in contemporary Japan, Garry D. Allinson Social control in early childhood education, Thomas P. Rohlen and Catherine Lewis Inequality and the social order in Japan: gender, Mary C. Brinton _ 1987-1988 Postwar Japan as history, Andrew Gordon New strategies in Japanese textual analysis, James Fuji, Richard Okada and Edward Fowler 1988-1989 Attachment and support over the life course, Toni C. Antonucci Convention and contention: states and societies in a dialogue of discontent, James W. _ White Survey of programs for undergraduate study in Japan 1991-1992 Culture and politics in Japan’s interwar Discourses, Norma Field Female and male role sharing in Japan: historical and contemporary constructions of gender, Hitomi Tonomura Indigenous narrative tradition and modern historiography planning workshop, Stephen Vlastos Verbal and pictorial eroticism in late Edo culture, Sumie Jones Comparative fascisms: Japan and Western Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, J. Victor Koschmann 1992-1993 Opening new doors: African-American professionals cross cultures through communication arts, Linda Quander Security in the Asia-Pacific region, Stephan Haggard Agriculture and farming in Japan, L. Keith Brown Foreign workers in Japan, Glenda Roberts 1993-1994 Denuclearization of the North Pacific, Steven Rosefield The problems of literacy/orality and image/text, Naoki Sakai Invention of tradition in modern Japan, Stephen Vlastos Models of capitalist democracy and Latin American developments, Barbara Stallings Notes 1. Letter John W. Hall to Joseph E. Slater, Ford Foundation, Folder “Conference on Modern Japan,” Box 3, Papers of the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, October 3,1967. 2. Ellen Perecman, “Memo on the History of Collaborative Relations with ACLS and Federal Government,” Folder: Collaborative Relations Committee, Box: Japan, SSRC. 3. China and Japan in Our University Curricula, ed. Edward C. Carter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930. 4. See Rudolf V.A. Janssens, “Power and Academic Culture: The Founding and Funding of Japanese Studies in the United States,” Occasional Paper, Program on US-Japan Relations, Harvard University, 1997. 5. “Draft Report of Conference of Japanese Language Teachers,” “Cornell _ University, July 25-26, 1941, Folder 2286, Box 190, Series 200, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Foundation Archives. These 11 teachers were Hugh Borton, Florence Walne ( University of California), William B. Acker (George Washington University), Serge Elisseeff and Edwin Reischauer (both Harvard University), Burton Fahs, Harold G. Henderson (Columbia University), George A. Kennedy (Yale University), Henry S. Tatsunu (University of Washington) and Joseph K. Yamagiwa (University of Michigan). 6. The University of Chicago, Yale University, the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Washington all received substantial donations. 7. RH Edwards, “The Ford Foundation and Asian Studies,” August 1972, Report 003759, Ford Foundation. 8. David Finklestein, “Evaluation of Grant No.60-27 to the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.,” February 15, 1972, Inter-office memorandum, Reel 262, Grant 60-27, Ford Foundation. 9. Minutes, Joint Committee on Japanese Studies, November 1969, Folder: August 68-July 69 - SSRC-ACLS, Box 62, HUGFP 73.10, Edwin 0. Reischauer Papers, Harvard University Archives. 10. Bundy quoted in Robert A. McCaughey, International Studies and Academic Enterprise: A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 241. 11. “The Institutional Status of Japanese Studies in the United States,” n.a., n.d., Folder 2472, Box 225, Sub-series 61, Series 1, Accession 2, SSRC Papers, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC). 12. Patricia G. Steinhoff, “Trends in Japanese Studies in North America: A Tale of Two Directories,” The Japan Foundation Newsletter 22, no.1 (July 1995):1-7. 13. “Discussions of the Ad Hoc Committee on Japanese Studies,” January 78, 1968, Folder 407, Box 79, Subseries 11 Japan, Series 1 Committee Projects, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 14. “Discussions of the Ad Hoc Committee on Japanese Studies,” January 78, 1968, Folder 407, Box 79, Subseries 11 Japan, Series 1 Committee Projects, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 15. “Guidelines for the Submission of Proposals for Research Planning Activities,” Folder: Japan-Research Planning Guidelines, Box: Japan, SSRC. 16. “Minutes Fall Meeting JCJS, October 14-15, 1991,” Folder: JCJS Spring ‘92 Meeting Agenda Items, Box: 511453, Time Warehouse. 17. “Conflict in Postwar Japan: An Interim Report,” Folder 2516, Box 230, _ Subseries 61, Series 1, Accession 2, SSRC Papers, RAC. 18. “Minutes Meeting JCJS, September 4-5, 1981,” Folder 438, Box 83, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. See also “Minutes Meeting JCJS, April 27-28,1979,” Folder 433, Box 82, Ibid., in which Prewitt made the same suggestion. 19. Mimi Kim, “Memo on JCJS to Joint Advisory Committee on International Programs (JACIP, “ Folder: 12/94 JACIP, Box: Japan, SSRC. 20. “Minutes Fall Meeting JCJS, October 14-I S, 1991,” Folder: JCJS Spring ‘92 Meeting Agenda Items, Box: 511453, Time Warehouse. 21. Letter Joseph M. Kitagawa to Ronald Aqua, December 18, 1980, Folder 437, Box 83, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 22. Letter Marius B. Jansen to Ronald Aqua, January 14, 1981, Folder 437, Box 83, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 23. Letter Solomon B. Levine to Ronald Aqua, February 10, 1981, Folder 437, Box 83,Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 24. Letter Hugh Patrick to Ronald Aqua, January 30, 1981, Folder 437, Box 83, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 25. Letter John W. Hall to Ronald Aqua, February 25, 1977, Folder 427, Box 81, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 26. “Report of the Review of the JCJS,” Folder: Review of JCJS, 1989, Box: Japan, SSRC. Members of the review committee were Francis X. Sutton, John 0. Haley,Edwin McClellan, Charles S. Maier and Hugh T. Patrick. 27. Memo from John Creighton Campbell to Robert E. Ward and John W. Hall, February 24, 1972, Folder 2328, Box 208, Subseries 61, Series 1, Accession 2, SSRC Papers, RAC. 28. “Advanced Research Grant and Dissertation Write-up Competitions. Instructions for the Selection Committee, 1995-96,” Folder: JCJS Cent. Meeting - Spring 1996,Box: Japan, SSRC. 29. Grant Form, 1975, Folder 2398, Box 216, Subseries 61, Series 1, Accession 2, SSRC Papers, RAC. 30. “Report of the Review of the JCJS,” Folder: Review of JCJS, 1989, Box: Japan, SSRC. 31. “Joint Committee on Japanese Studies,” n.a., 1994, Box 512415, Time Warehouse. 32. “Report of the Review of the JCJS,” Folder: Review of JCJS, 1989, Box: Japan, SSRC. 33. William J. Bogaty, “Summary of Results for Computer Tabulation of Japanese Studies Questionnaire,” August 15, 1969, Folder 409, Box 79, Subseries 11, Series 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 34. “Minutes Meeting JCJS, November 7, 1969,” Folder 41Q, Box 79, _ Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 35. “Joint Committee on Japanese Studies,” n.a., 1994, Box 512415, Time Warehouse. 36. Letter Mary McDonnell, JCJS, to Ei’ichi Hanashi, Director Japan Foundation, January 13, 1992, Folder: JCJS Spring ‘92 Meeting Agenda Items, Box: 511453, Time Warehouse. 37. Summary Statement and Recommendations to the Ford Foundation, Folder 2326, Box 208, Subseries 61, Series 1, Accession 2, SSRC Papers, RAC. 38. See Janssens, p. 64. 39. “Minutes Meeting JCJS, April 22-23, 1977,” Folder 426, Box 81, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 40 . “ Minutes Meeting JCJS, September 4-5, 1981,” Folder 438, Box 83, Subseries 11, Series 1, Accession 1, SSRC Papers, RAC. 41. Steven Heydemann, “Intra-Office Memo: Response to Japan, Korea, China Letters,” Folder: JCJS Meeting, Box: Japan, SSRC. 42. “Minutes Meeting JCJS, February 19-20, 1989,” Folder: JCJS Meeting Oct. 13-14, 1989, Box 511453, Time Warehouse. 43. Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr., “Annual Report of the President, 1987-88,” SSRC, Task Force, 1994, Papers of Mary McDonnell. 44. David L. Featherman, “Mission-oriented Basic Research,” Items, December 1991. 45. “East Asia Program Evolution and JSPS/SSRC Program for Collaborative Research,” Folder: JCJS Spring ‘92 Meeting Agenda Items, Box: 511453, Time Warehouse. A complaint about a narrow focus of the JCJS had also been made by the JSPS in 1977, when the Japanese committee wished to discuss a mechanism to consider projects involving Japanese and American scholars working together on projects that did not necessarily deal with either Japan or the United States (“Minutes USJapan Planning Meeting on Joint Research,” June 21, 1977, Folder 2474, Box 225, Subseries 61, Series 1, Accession 2, SSRC Papers, RAC). 46. “Proposal in Support of a Program of Training for a New Generation of International Scholars. Draft for P&P Review,” December 19, 1994, SSRC, Task Force, 1994, Papers of Mary McDonnell. 47. The Task Force consisted of Arjun Appadurai, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago; Craig Calhoun, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina; John Coatsworth, Department of History, Harvard University; Rhonda Cobham-Sander, Department of _ English and Black Studies, Amherst College; Craufurd Goodwin, Department of Economics, Duke University; Margeret Levi, Department of Political Science, University of Washington; and David Soskice, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. 48. Stan Heginbotham to members JACIP, “Background Information for Discussion on the Future of the International Programs,” December 2, 1994, Box 511453, Time Warehouse. 49. See, for instance, Christopher Shea, “Political Scientists Clash Over Value of Area Studies,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 1997, A 13 and Jacob Heilbrun, “The News From Everywhere,” Lingua Franca, May/June 1996, pp. 49-56. 50. Letter TJ Pempel, Chair JCJS, to David Featherman, President SSRC, November 16, 1994, Box: 511453, Time Warehouse. 51. Letter Robert Hymes, TJ Pempel and Clark Sorensen to David Featherman and Stanley Katz, President ACLS, November 22, 1994, Box 511453, Time Warehouse. 52. Steven Heydemann, “Intra-Office Memo: Response to Japan, Korea, China Letters,” Folder: JCJS Meeting, Box: Japan, SSRC. 36 34 37 38 39 42