^page top

Becoming Emu sapiens

PROLEGOMENA:

The Book, the Deshi, the Foundation

by

E. L. Cerroni-Long (Dr. L)

Professor of Anthropology

Half a century of intercultural life experiences, combined with international/multidisciplinary academic training, have convinced me that the cultural specificity of one's upbringing can never be substantially modified. Nonetheless, I have also come to the conclusion that one can learn about concepts or practices typical of foreign cultures, and find them so useful and inspiring to feel compelled to adopt them in one's own life. The Japanese concept of "deshi" is one of these for me, and I will try to explain why it played such an important role in the development of my book Japanese Culture in Words & Images (2019).

      The word "deshi" is usually translated with the English word "student" but this is just the superficial meaning of the word, and it does not really convey the depth and variety of meaning it encapsulates. In the context of Japanese culture, "deshi" is best understood as the counterpart of "sensei"--usually translated into "teacher" but, again, meaning so much more. For Americans, the best way to understand the sensei/deshi relationship, is to see its application in Asian martial arts training. In such a setting it becomes clear that the sensei/deshi relationship is based on long-term reciprocal nurturance and complementarity, involving mutual respect and appreciation, and dedication to activating the best potential in both members of this dyad.

      Being neither American nor Japanese, what I found most attractive about the sensei/deshi link is the intellectually energizing stimulation it offers, promising the attainment of knowledge expansion and integration through the type of dialectic engagement I thoroughly enjoyed during all of my learning/teaching experiences in my native Italy. While the balanced reciprocity of the teacher-student relationship is emphasized in Italian pedagogical theory, however, I never came across a linguistic formula that illustrates it as clearly as it is done in the sensei/deshi pairing. Also, it is only through my long study of Japanese culture, and my long residence in Japan, that I could come to fully appreciate how the sensei/deshi roles can be usefully projected to cultivate many other types of dyadic relationships that while may appear hierarchical do in fact require mutual reciprocity to flourish.

      Most remarkably, while I have been long studying and teaching in a number of international academic settings, besides my native Italy and Japan, I did not come to fully appreciate the value of the sensei/deshi relationship until I came to EMU, joining the Anthropology Program faculty (in what was then called just the "Department of Sociology") in 1987. I credit this to two factors: finding my ultimate academic disciplinary calling in the study of anthropology (as it came to be developed in American universities following the Boasian four-field approach), and in my being hired at EMU specifically to teach about US ethnicity (on which I had specialized for my UCLA anthropology doctorate). Teaching about "racial and cultural minorities" through a committedly anthropological approach--made particularly effective by the fact that, as a foreigner, I illustrate cultural differences in my own behavior--turned out to be so attractive for so many students that I rapidly gathered cohorts of "followers" I recognized to have all the characteristics of deshi.

      I believe this was due to the special characteristics of EMU undergraduate students, who are often endowed with a higher degree of motivation, and a considerably lower degree of pretense, than many of the students I supervised at other universities. Also, EMU immediately struck me as an institution in which a long tradition of real commitment to education leads to pedagogical practices that aim at "integrity & inclusion" by fostering cooperation, openness to diversity, and a willingness to let faculty develop their own teaching/learning experiences according to their interests and skills.

      In such a setting, it comes natural to establish relationships of mutuality between students and instructors, and our Anthropology Program adopted early on a system of "Faculty Mentors" offering personalized advising to our majors. Actually, in many cases, I was able to establish mentoring relationships with students who took several of my classes without even majoring in anthropology, and these relationships continued after their graduation, in classic sensei/deshi style. As a result, when I reached a point in my teaching career when I could dedicate a whole sabbatical year to compiling the final manuscript of a book on Japan I had started in the early 1970s, I could rely on the assistance of some of these students in a very direct way. Others had contributed to the book in more indirect ways. Nonetheless, I considered necessary to mention all of them in my book's acknowledgements, from which I want to quote the following section (pp. 181-183):

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to the memory of my two sensei, Prof. Paolo Beonio Brocchieri and Prof. Hiroshi Wagatsuma, because I truly believe that they helped me immeasurably in establishing the foundations for understanding Japanese culture. During my long residence in Japan, though, once I completed my post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Kyoto and started teaching, I quickly came to realize that the Japanese insistence on the complementarity of the sensei/deshi relationship is based on the recognition of a factual reality. I was learning from my students just as much as I had learned, and kept learning, from my professors. That is why, when this book project was finally launched, I was delighted to engage one of my best deshi--Yuki Hirano--in the process of cross-cultural "dialog" that Professor Wagatsuma had long advocated as a methodological necessity for cultural anthropology.

      Because Ms. Hirano is Japanese, she fully understood the characteristics of life-long mutual commitment of the sensei/deshi relationship, and I was very fortunate in being able to rely on her assistance ever since I first met her, soon after I started teaching at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) in 1987. Her pivotal contribution to the book is mentioned in Chap. 1, and here I want to further acknowledge it.

      Becoming a professor of anthropology in a setting that was also a major fieldsite for my ongoing research on American culture and ethnicity, also gave me the opportunity to shape my pedagogical objectives both along the principles I had acquired in my early academic training in Italy, and as they had been refined through my teaching experiences in Japan. Consequently, over time, I gathered a number of American deshi, all of whom have contributed so markedly to this book project that I need to acknowledge them, too, both by name and type of contribution.

      As well as Yuki Hirano, therefore, I want to give special recognition to:

* Adrienne Haywood, who has been my chief webmaster since 1995, for providing outstanding technical writing/electronic editing, and graphic development support;

* Melinda Benfield, for helping with drawings, charts, maps, and pedagogical issues;

* Conrad Louis-Charles--who has just died very prematurely--for contributing the best of all the images included in the volume (which also features pictures taken by Yuki Hirano and myself).

      While these four deshi deserve primary acknowledgement, there are quite a few other EMU students of various nationalities who have contributed over the years to the materials presented in this book, sometimes in ways they may not even have realized. These include too many names to fully list; but I must mention at least the following ones.

      I will start with Kyoko Tanaka, who took the very first class on Japan I ever offered at EMU, and gave me the idea behind the title of this book by preparing a "learning portfolio" in which she had drawn miniature pictorial illustrations of key Japanese concepts, together with exquisite calligraphic renditions of the ideograms designating them. Later, there was the brightest of my honors students, Diane Campbell, deserving special gratitude for all the great pedagogical suggestions she gave me on how to effectively introduce Japanese culture to American undergraduates. Later still, there was Jon Maravelias, to whom I am beholden for all the engaging philosophical discussions on cultural determinism and reflexivity: Ryan Allaer for his keen insights on anime, and for helping me set up the emusapiens.us student website; and, most recently, Justin Lancon, who decided to leave for Japan soon after graduating from EMU, and has embarked upon a career as an international educator in Hiroshima.

      I must also acknowledge that the original graphic representation of the "system model of culture" presented in Chap. 1 was designed by another early anthropology student, Kelley Gottschang, who went on to very successful professional engagement with digital media and computer pedagogy. A later variant of my culture model, and some related charts, were done by Marisa Ferrara, whose post-graduate professional specialization in computational linguistics made her an ideal consultant on all matters of digital translation. And finally, the only graduate student who took the study-abroad class for which I used an early draft of this book as text, Linda Harrison, helped me immeasurably both by compiling a painstakingly accurate errata list, and by assisting me and Yuki--who served as field-trips director for that class--in coordinating the experiential learning activities of a group of "first-time-abroad" American undergraduate students whose enthusiasm for studying about Japan in Japan, made for an unusual teaching experience.

      Linda was the only EMU student taking that class, which was offered in 2017 through the Japan Center for Michigan Universities (JCMU), in the wonderful "campus" they maintain just outside the small town of Hikone, and I was particularly happy to offer my class there because I served as EMU academic liaison with the JCMU since they opened the center, in 1988. The late Conrad Louis-Charles, mentioned above among my top four deshi, was the first EMU student I mentored toward receiving a scholarship for a full-year of residential study at the JCMU, and he often went on record to acknowledge the impact that experience had on his subsequent studies and international success as a professional photographer. Teaching my class--which I titled "Japanese Cultural Heritage"--in Hikone, permitted me to revisit several of the most historically significant and culturally relevant Japanese locations, and helped me further clarify and illustrate some central topics addressed by this book.

• • •

To summarize, then, the names of the deshi who helped me most with the compilation of this book, over the last thirty years, include: Yuki Hirano, Melinda Benfield, Adrienne Haywood, Conrad Louis-Charles, Kyoko Tanaka, Diane Campbell, Jon Maravelias, Ryan Allaer, Justin Lancon, Kelley Gottschang, Marisa Ferrara, and Linda Harrison. I delight in the fact that they add up to twelve, a symbolically significant number. I am also proud about the fact that none of them has become a professional anthropologist. This confirms a conclusion I reached ever since I started working as an academic and career advisor at UCLA, during my doctoral studies. I firmly believe that anthropology is one of the core disciplines that can provide crucial developmental skills for American undergraduates, laying the intellectual foundations upon which specific professional specializations of many kinds can most effectively be built.

      This is why, soon after establishing the EMU chapter of Lambda Alpha, the national collegiate anthropology honors society, only open to majors, I also put together an "interest group" named Emu sapiens, open to all of my deshi simply interested in applying the insights gained through the anthropological perspective. The ones listed above are just among the most distinguished members of the Emu sapiens group, continuing to prove its value as a mechanism of mutual support resting on the contribution of individuals who inspire me with their dedication.

^page top

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY

Recent reviews of the interpretations described below, however, reveal a possible end of the world to begin in 2020, acquiring momentum in 2022. In view of the way the Covid 19 pandemic has actually altered quite substantially our lives, this is interesting.

We shall see!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

^page top