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Japanese Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2000

Close Encounters of the Unhomely Kind:Negotiating Identity and Japan Literacy

DAVID CHAPMAN and BARBARA HARTLEY, Central Queensland University,

Australia

Asia Literacy and Japan Literacy

The imperative of Asia literacy has been a recurring theme in educational policydebates at both the federal and state levels in Australia throughout the previousdecade.1 However, the term `Asia literacy’ is often used without clear consideration ofits meaning and, consequently, has been the subject of heated debate. Regrettably, asJane Williamson-Fein has observed, these debates have sometimes been characterisedby simplistic assumptions which have worrying implications for teachers in all sectorsof education, including the tertiary arena.2 Particularly entrenched among these as-sumptions is the notion of Asia as a de® nable, unitary whole and the notion of Asialiteracy as an attainable educational outcome. Both hinge on an unproblematic readingof `Asia’ which calls for the homogenisation of an intricately complex and vastlydissimilar set of social, political and cultural conditions. Such a reading results in thebelief that a single `literacy’ is adequate for understanding the entire region.

This homogenisation, however, has not gone uncontested. The view has been put bya number of signi® cant writers that the development of `Asia literacy’ as a speci® ceducational goal is distinctly problematic as it is not readily de® nable or achievable. Ofparticular interest are the assertions by researchers such as Fazal Rizvi and MichaelSingh that any workable notion of Asia literacy must include a rethink of the Australianidentity in terms of its relationship with Asia.3 Both writers maintain that if Australiansare to effectively negotiate an understanding of Asia in all its complexity they mustcritically adjust the predominantly Western lens which has been the principal ® lter ofthe Australian geographic and historical experience.

Rizvi pinpoints the European invention of `Australia’ based on Asian representationthrough discursive practices of Orientalism as being particularly problematic.4 In thisregard, Singh calls for `an approach to studies of Asia which may realise a multi-dimen-sional, multi-vocal account of places and peoples’ .5 Such an approach ensures theproduction of knowledges which legitimates calls by people in Asia for `civil rights,

1 See, for instance, John Dawkins, Strengthening Australia’s Schools: A Consideration of the Focus and Content

of Schooling (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988).2 J. Williamson-Fein, `Facing the Tiger: The Problematics of Asian Studies Education’ , Discourse, 15:1

(1994), pp. 75± 87.3 Fazal Rizvi, `Asia and the Search for an Australian Identity’ , Social Alternatives, 12:1 (1993), pp. 23± 26.

M. Singh, Translating Studies of Asia: A Curriculum Statement for Negotiation in Australian Schools

(Belconnen, A.C.T. Australian Curriculum Studies Association, Occasional Paper 6, 1995).4 Rizvi, 1993, p. 23.5 Singh, 1995, p. 7.

ISSN 1037-1397 print/ISSN 1469-9338 online/00/030269-11 Ó 2000 Japanese Studies Association of AustraliaDOI: 10.1080/10371390020013181

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270 David Chapman and Barbara Hartley

social justice, gender equity, economic morality and environmental issues’ .6 Singhfurther advocates a recognition not only of the diversity and difference within `Asia’ ,but within the societies constituting the imagined community of `Asia’ .7

Both authors unequivocally reject an Orientalist paradigm and emphasise the needfor the recognition of an heterogenous Asia, a position which we support unreservedly.Our speci® c project in this paper is to contribute to the Asia literacy debate within aJapan-speci® c context. The discussion here relates to the Japan literacy experiences ofa group of Australian tertiary learners of Japanese. Nevertheless, our work is informedby the same notions of diversity and heterogeneity invoked by Singh and Rizvi in theirdiscussions of Asia literacy.

The process of Asia literacy, then, entails much more than gaining a set ofquanti® able skills and competencies. For the purposes of the current project, theprocess is best regarded as one of identity shift. It is our contention that the call for aliteracy of either Asia or any of its constituent locations, such as Japan, is most usefullyproblematised as a reconstruction and reformation of the multiple subjectivities of Self.8

This being the case, the notion of attempting to identify or evaluate an empiricalquantity of greater or lesser literacy becomes meaningless. Instead, as we shall explain,the task becomes one of tracking identity. This tracking is not in any sense a mappingof a teleological process of improvement, either affective or practical. On the contrary,following Hall, we consider identity to be the sum effect of discursive practices to whichthe individual is subject.9

Project Outline

The project involved 13 students from the mostly Anglo-Celtic third-year cohort of aJapanese programme conducted at a provincial university in Queensland. The partici-pants came to the study with varying levels of Japanese language pro® ciency and arange of background experiences. A feature of the second year of the course is asemester of in-Japan study. During this in-country component the participants wereengaged in a range of experiences including homestays, teaching practicum and schoolvisits. Data collection interviews for this project were conducted some two months afterthe return of participants to Australia. Interview questions were designed to enablestudents to re¯ ect on a range of in-Japan experiences with a view to understanding theirperceptions of themselves as participants in Japanese societies. In other words, wewanted the students to provide us with useful insights into the manner in which theybecame Japan-literate. Data collected from the interviews were coded and analysed forcommon themes.

The in-country component was used as the focal point of data collection because itwas felt that prolonged residence in Japan involved a signi® cant border crossingexperience. It might be argued that reconstructions of self as a Japan-literate identitybegin with the ® rst border crossing into a local second language learning environmentand that the in-country experience is merely a heightening of the unease and uncer-

6 Ibid.7 Ibid.8 See, for instance, R. Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary

Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).9 Stuart Hall and P. DuGay (Eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996).

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Close Encounters of the Unhomely Kind 271

tainty associated with that initial foray into the unknown. Nevertheless, the degree ofdisruption and fragmentation imposed on the putative unitary rational subject and theaccompanying sense of threat to what Bhabha has labelled the sense of heimlich, orhomeliness, is greatly exacerbated by displacement into Japanese society.10

The Data and the Discourses

Coding of the data revealed that participants were exposed to the in¯ uences of anumber of dominant discourses. However, of these discursive practices two wereparticularly pervasive and featured to some degree in the responses of each participant.The ® rst was Western universalism, encompassing the universalism± particularism div-ide and its concomitant problem of ambivalence. It is this ambivalence which, accord-ing to Bhabha, lies at the heart of the Orientalist project’ .11 At the simplest level, thisdiscourse was represented in the learners’ tendencies to `Other’ their Japanese counter-parts. Equally as compelling as a constitutive force operating on the students was thediscourse of Nihonjinron,12 evident in perceptions held by the students of their being`Othered’ themselves during their time in Japan.

As might be expected, participants entered Japanese society as subjects of Westerncultural hegemonies which invited them to make sense of their experience by revertingto representations of Self and Other. Nevertheless, once in Japan, they themselvesbecome subject to an ongoing process of Othering by means of which they wereinscribed with ineradicable markers of racial, linguistic and cultural differences, andeven inferiority. In the words of one student, a tall young woman who constantly ® eldedcomments about the length of her legs, `In Japan everyone stops, looks, and stares atyou like you’ re not a human being’ .

It was clear that the experiences of all participants were shaped to some degree bytheir encounters with these discourses. Nevertheless, the discursive in¯ uence was notabsolute. Many participants simultaneously struggled to occupy hybrid spaces. Thesehybrid spaces, variously described as points of suture by Hall, interstitial locations byBhabha, or emphatic proximity by Braidotti, are spaces where the impact of thedominant discourse is disrupted or suspended.13 In other words, the ongoing process ofcollision between these putatively opposing discourses creates ever-shifting faultlines oftension. While these tensions may remain unresolved, they can, paradoxically, also bevaluable sites in which productive identity negotiation occurs. In the following dis-cussion attention is given to the discursive practices and the manner in which theyimpinge upon identity negotiation processes, in addition to foregrounding the role ofthe interstitial space in this process.

10 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 5511 Bhabha quoted in Rizvi, 1993, p. 25.12 For a discussion of Nihinjinron, see Peter N. Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (London: Routledge,1986); Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry (New York:Routledge, 1992); Ross E. Mouer, Nihonjinron at the End of the Twentieth Century: A Multicultural Perspective

(Melbourne: LaTrobe University, 1995); Yoshio Sugimoto and Ross Mouer, Nihonjinron no Houteishiki

(Tokyo: Chikuma Shoko, 1996); Yoshio Sugimoto, An Introduction to Japanese Society (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997).13 Hall, 1996; Bhabha, 1994; Braidotti, 1994.

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272 David Chapman and Barbara Hartley

Western Universalism

In a stinging rebuttal of Western universalising tendencies, Sakai has discussed themanner in which the West/East opposition is less grounded in any geographic perspec-tive than serving to establish the putative unity of the West’ .14 Nevertheless, thepervasiveness of the in¯ uence of the discursive practices which support a West/Eastopposition is clearly evident in the responses of the participants in this study. Often,reliance on this discourse led to the conclusion, with respect to an unusual experience,that `It just wouldn’t happen in Australia’ . There was a clear and sometimes disturbingtendency on the part of participants to interpret any unfamiliar or uncomfortable eventas emanating from the `Otherness’ of the Japanese people with whom they wereinteracting. For instance, one participant expressed her annoyance at being quizzed byprimary school students as to whether or not there were refrigerators in Australia. Thequestion is characteristic of the type ® elded by visitors to primary school classrooms,regardless of location. To the participant, however, it was indicative of a lack ofwillingness on the part of people in Japan to familiarise themselves with informationabout `other places’ .

The perception that people in Japan are reluctant to keep themselves updated onadvances in the West is allied to the Orientalist view of the East as less modern than theWest. Certainly, there was a tendency among a number of participants to judge theircolleagues in Japan as not yet modernised, and, moreover, as `naturally’ pre-modern. Inthe words of one participant, `I just found it still very ancient in the ways that theywould discipline kids’ . This student was especially intrigued at the `discipline’ she feltwas evident among small children in Japan. She discussed the way in which she hadseen 10-year-old girls participate without protest in lengthy and complicated ikebanaclasses, something which she interpreted as particularly `Japanese’ . Unaware, appar-ently, of the large numbers of primary school girls in Australia who regularly subjectthemselves to the stringent drills of, for instance, ballet classes, she concluded that noAustralian child would be prepared to take part in an activity which required such adegree of discipline. Her interpretation invokes the observation made by ToshimiTakeuchi to the effect that the principle of the identity of the Orient lies outside itselfin that it is that which is excluded and objecti® ed by the West in the service ofhistorical progress’ .15

The trope of pre-modernity was not restricted to the sphere of children. When askedwhat came to mind when they heard the word `Japan’ , a number of participantsresponded immediately with the word temples’ . For one, a semester of in-countrystudy had entrenched, rather than disrupted, this impression. He was adamant that tothink of Japan is to:

¼ think of a culture, a really old sort of cultureÐ temples. It’ s still the samesort of image I had when I went over. The ® rst thing that comes to mind whenI hear `Japan’ is that sort of culture. So I don’ t think anything has changed.

Rather than attempting to straddle the divide of Self and Other through a hybridencounter, this student appeared securely lodged in a site of Western hegemony. AsSakai observes, the West is never content with being recognised by others, but rather

14 Naoki Sakai, `Modernity and its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism’ , South

Atlantic Quarterly, 87:3 (1998), pp. 476± 504.15 Toshimi Takeuchi, quoted in Sakai, 1988, p. 499.

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Close Encounters of the Unhomely Kind 273

seeks to triumph as the de® ning force in its interactions with the Other.16 In otherwords, the West is a supplier of recognition rather than a receiver, believing itself to`represent the moment of the universal under which particulars are subsumed, conse-quently establishing a Eurocentric and monistic world history’ .17

The most obvious example of the manner in which many project participantssubscribed to this Eurocentric project was in their repeated use of the word they’ as asigni® er for all people of all groups in all settings in Japan. The discursive object, Japan,was often expressed as a `homogenous instance’ largely con® gured outside the parame-ters of Western authenticity. For many participants, a pervasive trope was the `busyn-ess’ of Japanese people, with the hatarakibachi or `worker bee’ representation ® guringprominently in many comments. Some participants were greatly impressed by whatthey perceived as the ability of all people in Japan to gainfully occupy their time. Thiswas re¯ ected in comments such as, `everyone was always so busy’ , `I felt I was ® ttinginto their busy society’ , and `even when they have free time they don’t rest’ .

Notions of group orientation were also a feature of interview responses. One youngman felt that `Japanese people ¼ move more group-wise, they go about in groups’ ,while a young woman concluded that the `Japanese people are a very big group ofpeople. They’re there in groups’ . More explicitly dependent on the Self and Otherbinary was the observation to the effect that, `I was brought up to question and be anindividual. The Japanese are raised to be more a part of the society, to work for society’ send ¼ instead of their own’ .

And in spite of the fact that the majority of participants had forged enduringfriendships with a number of people they met, this did not prevent a condescendingpaternalism reverberating obliquely now and again throughout their observations.While they may not have judged their individual friends and acquaintances in the samemanner, there often was an inference that Europe and the West was somehow superiorto Japan.

It is interesting to note the relationship between these universalising tendencies andrace. For one participant, uninformed though she was in the ® ner points of Nakasonerhetoric, the homogeneity of Japan was clearly related to unadulterated race. `Japan isan homogenous nation. There aren’ t many Europeans there’ , she observed, thus linking`foreignness’ to `Europeanness’ . A second student, whose opinions were based on herobservations of European English teacher numbers in the area in which she homes-tayed, also commented on the increase in the number of foreigners in Japan. There wasapparently no awareness of the fact that signi® cant communities of non-Europeanforeigners are to be found throughout Japan. In this respect, the participants’ observa-tions re¯ ected the local attitude, foregrounded in the work of researchers such asManabe et al. and Millie Creighton, that only Europeans qualify for pure foreignerstatus.18 No student who discussed the issue acknowledged the possibility that anon-European might be regarded as a foreigner. On the contrary, the tendency was to

16 Sakai, 1988, p. 477.17 Sakai quoted in T. Ellis, `Questioning Moderism and Postmodernism in Japanese Literature’ , in J.Arniason and Y. Sugimoto (Eds), Japanese Encounters with Postmodernity (New York: Kegan Paul, 1995),p. 135.18 K. Manabe and H. Befu, An Empirical Investigation of Nihonjinron: The Degree of Exposure of Japanese

to Nihonjinron Propositions and the Functions these Propositions Serve (Nishinomiya: Kwansei GakuinUniversity, 1989); Millie Creighton, `Soto and uchi ª Othersº : Imaging Diversity’ , in Michael Weiner(Ed.), Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 212.

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274 David Chapman and Barbara Hartley

articulate the opposite in a manner that clearly homogenised Asia. When asked toclarify his observation that `you just don’t see many foreigners in Japan’ , the responseof one participant was enlightening: `You see some Americans and other Europeans,and of course the odd Australian, but that’ s about all’ . A `non-European’ foreignerdidn’t seem to be eligible for membership of the club.

Japanese Identity and the Other: Nihonjinron

Operating in opposition to, and yet simultaneously supporting, notions of Westernuniversalism is the ubiquitous discursive practice of Nihonjinron, with its attendantnarrative of essentialised Japanese identity and notions of ethnic purity.19 It was clearfrom the data that this highly political interpretation of what Japan is and what theJapanese are was central to the process of identity reconstruction.

The essentialisation of Japanese identity arose from the political notion of pureJapanese ethnicity. Historically, the concept of an untainted, unique Japanese race hasbeen indivisibly linked to the ethnic purity of the Japanese family nation (kazoku

kokka). The development during the Meiji Era (1868± 1912) of the concept of anorganically united populace, a Volk or minzoku, `allowed a convenient blurring betweenthe cultural and genetic aspects of ethnicity, while emphasising the organic unity of theJapanese people’ .20 According to Weiner, minzoku was critical in the development ofpopular nationalism as a response to over-Westernisation in the nineteenth century,providing a framework through which the unique characteristics of the Japanese nationcould be articulated.21 This uniqueness is used to distinguish the Japanese from otherpopulations in the formation of an identity of self and is seminal to past and presentNihonjinron discursive practices.

Weiner points out that the foregrounding of minzoku, where `race and nationoccupied the same ideological space’ , has resulted in a polarised national identity,whereby anything non-Japanese is represented as the `Other’ .22 This is further com-pounded by the fact that Japanese identity is genealogically linked: that is, in order tobe classed as `truly’ Japanese one must have pure Japanese blood ¯ owing through one’ sveins.

Sustained by the effects of this historically embedded nationalism, Nihonjinron

discourse has created a deeply ingrained ideology of `Self’ and `Other’ in the Japanesepsyche. Participants in this study were in constant collision with this Nihonjinron binary,particularly with respect to the response of local agents to their Japanese languageability. It seemed that many of their Japanese colleagues had dif® culty in coming toterms with the fact that study participants were living contradictions to the popularnotion that `true Japaneseness’ , including Japanese language pro® ciency, is the exclus-ive province of racially unblemished members of the minzoku.

Some participants found this a distressing aspect of their in-country experience, foras one young woman explained:

Some people don’ t accept. I guess there were times when they sort of looked

19 Dale, 1986; Sugimoto, 1996; Sugimoto and Mouer, 1996; Sugimoto, 1997.20 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation (New York: Armonk, 1997).21 Michael Weiner (Ed.), Japan’ s Minorities, p. 5.22 Ibid.

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Close Encounters of the Unhomely Kind 275

down at me. And when I went shopping, I’d ask for something and they sortof couldn’t believe that I could speak Japanese.

For others, the importance of language as a factor in the construction of Otherness wasre¯ ected in comments such as, `I found it strange that no-one can accept that you canspeak Japanese’ , and `People automatically think you just don’ t understand’ .

Interview data indicated that most participants were confronted with a number ofunsettling reminders of their Otherness throughout their stay in Japan. One participant,referring to her attempt to buy goods at a train station kiosk, told of her frustrationwhen forced to acknowledge her marginal social status. She explained:

The sign said knock if you want help. And we knocked and the shop assistantturned around and just glared at us, like he just went about doing what he wasdoing. And we went home and told our host mum and she said that itprobably wasn’ t the fact that he didn’t like foreigners, it might have been thefact that he thought we couldn’t speak Japanese.

When asked if they thought that there was a possibility of acceptance into Japanesesociety, participants responded with a range of answers. The majority indicated that fullacceptance would be dif® cult, if not impossible. In the words of one young man:

You’re not a Japanese person. You don’t look Japanese. You might talk like aJapanese person but I don’ t think someone that’s foreign can ever be like anative. They’ re not going to accept you like a native.

Certainly, some participants felt strongly alienated, claiming that, `It’ s like we’re adifferent species almost when we’ re over there at certain times’ . Others, however, weremore resilient. One student with quite advanced Japanese language ability felt that hehad been accepted and that `I did feel I had a role in their society’ . Some students werethemselves eager to subscribe to the myth of Japanese uniqueness, exempli® ed incomments such as, `So to me the Japanese are very unique. It’ s a unique culture. Thereis nothing like it in the world’ . In other instances the inference was more oblique, as inthe case of those students for whom foreigner’ was a synonym for `European’ .

The ongoing confrontation with con¯ icting narratives clearly made a range ofdemands on the students which disrupted assumptions, sometimes quite violently. Andwhile occasionally these demands were met with a knee-jerk and simplistic response, byfar the most interesting aspect of the project was the manner in which students foughtto resist dominant discourses. Although it was to a greater or lesser extent, with amomentum that ranged from tentative to enthusiastic, most participants eventuallycame to terms with the disconcerting experience of being located in the interstitial orhybrid space, with a number eventually wholeheartedly embracing the potential offeredfor transcending polar extremes.

Border Crossing and Hybrid Sensitivities

Data revealed that there were many instances when project participants experienced themoment of panic which signals a signi® cant border crossing experience, that is, one inwhich it is impossible to avoid confronting the unheimlich, the unhomeliness of unfam-iliar territory.23 This ranged from linguistic panic, such as fear of communication

23 Bhabha, 1994, p. 55.

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276 David Chapman and Barbara Hartley

inability, through to social disorientation arising from simple lack of understanding ofhousehold routine. Lawrence Grossberg has invoked an image of in-betweenness’ inhis discussion of border crossing. To Grossberg, there can be nothing secure orpredictable in this state, for the condition can only be marked by a `disquietingmobility, uncertainty and multiplicity of the fact of the constant border-crossingitself’ .24

Many individuals articulated a feeling of fear and uncertainty resulting from theirforay into unfamiliar territory. Sometimes this uncertainty was expressed at quite anelemental level, as in the case of the participant who confessed that she never actuallycame to terms with the sound of her Japanese colleagues noisily slurping their noodles,or loudly snif® ng their noses. For another, the impression was more resistant toarticulation. She commented that, `There were lots of things that occurred that I didn’tquite understand the reasons for’ . When pressed for more details she could onlyrespond, `Just the lifestyle, just lots of things, I just didn’t understand’ .

Often accompanying the panic and disquiet, however, was an enthusiasm for theunmediated encounter and the energy charge of the hybrid space. In discussing thework of Homi Bhabha, Young has noted how `hybridity becomes the moment in whichthe discourse of colonial authority loses its univocal grip on meaning and ® nds itselfopen to the trace of the language of the other’ .25 Certainly, Bhabha’ s ideas on hybridityderive from the experiences of communities subjected to the intransigencies of colonis-ation. Nevertheless, they suggest a framework by means of which agents in a variety ofsettings might legitimately negotiate for occupancy of a third space in a new com-munity, a space which rejects the binary of Self and Other. Participants in this studyworked hard to create such a space for themselves and to be accepted by theircolleagues in Japan as active social agents with knowledge and skills that set them apartfrom the conventional tourist with limited literacy. Some even actively sought todistance themselves from other foreigners, explaining that ¼ we got sick of seeingforeigners ¼ we didn’ t think of ourselves as foreigners because we’d been in Japan fora few months and had just gotten used to it’ .

Certainly, at the initial point of entry into Japan and its societies, participants weresubject to the discourses. However, with every act of contestation they con® rmed theirhybrid status. As hybrids, participants occupied an in-between space that was neitherpurely the essentialised Western identity nor the space of the Other. By defying thepolarities of identity, they challenged the essentialist notions inherent in both Japaneseand Western discourse. In this interstitial passage they were able to begin activelynegotiating the intersubjective and collective experiences’ which effectively disruptdominant discourses, and interrogate notions of imagined community, be it based onrace, gender, nation or other arbitrary construct.

For one participant, the context of a local matsuri, or festival, provided a strikingexample of the hybrid experience being openly embraced and the unheimlich becomingthe familiar. The young man gave an enthusiastic account of the ebullience of themanner in which young men from the local community carried the festival shrine. Heexplained:

They said one year they took it (the shrine) through a wall of a house and

24 L. Grossberg, Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All There Is?’ , in Stuart Hall and P. DuGay (Eds),Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 87± 107.25 R. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 22.

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Close Encounters of the Unhomely Kind 277

ended up in the living room. The idea was just to smash it. Really, from aforeign point of view, like my parents would never be able to understand whatthe hell was going on, though it made perfect sense (to me) ¼ my parentswould just look at that and think they’ re a bunch of idiots and want to takeme home.

It is interesting to note that in this observation the student actually Others his parents,who come to represent the foreign point of view’ , while to himself, as no doubt to theother young locals implicated in this performance, the whole episode `made perfectsense’ .

For many participants there was clearly a strong longing to belong somewhere in this`new’ society, accompanied by a belief in their right to belong. Often this feeling of aright to be accepted as legitimate derived from the fact that a signi® cant effort had beenmade to suppress their own cultural tendencies and to conform with local custom. Thiswas the case with one young man who made a special effort to learn a variety of localdialects. He also commented on his ability to adapt and his perception that Japanesepeople felt at home talking with him because of his cultural knowledge and linguisticability. Another participant made a conscious effort to respond to the overtures of hishost family to include him in family activities, in spite of being exhausted after hisschool practicum experiences each day. As he explained:

One of my families called me `older brother’ and `son’ all the time. So thatmade me feel good. Whenever they wanted to go and play baseball orsomething out in the street they’d come and get me after school. Even thoughI was stuffed, I’d go out and have a run with them.

A Question of Identity

It is clear, then, that Japan literacy is not something that can be measured as either aquantitative educational outcome or a set of skills and competencies. It is rather a morecomplicated process of identity reconstruction and ideological shifts of self. RosiBraidotti maintains that identity is a map of where one has been and what one hasdone.26 In other words, its dimensions are con® ned to the present and the past.Nevertheless, it is true to say that the search for identity involves the search for anability to recognise signposts that will assist in future endeavours. The identity shift ofparticipants in this study could be likened to a gradual sloughing off of an old protectiveskin, while simultaneously searching for new defences and new environmental signpoststo expedite future forays into the unmediated territory of Japan and its societies.Following Braidotti once more, it is useful to regard participants essentially as nomadsmaking their way across borders into unstable and unfamiliar territory.27 The formulaicsearch for a quantum of literacy, then, becomes an exercise in understanding how theseindividuals develop the ability to roam and appropriate the unknown, while adjustinginterpretative ® lters towards the known.

Stuart Hall has observed that identities are `points of temporary attachment to thesubject positions which discursive practices construct for us’ .28 He has also pointed outthat identity, particularly in late modernity, is increasingly fragmented and fractured, a

26 Braidotti, 1994.27 Ibid.28 Hall, 1996, p. 6.

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278 David Chapman and Barbara Hartley

consequence of its being constructed across a range of antagonistic and highly contra-dictory discourses.29 Certainly, there was nothing stable or uni® ed about the subjectpositions generated by the colliding discourses which prevailed in this study.

This disunity was evident in many study participants, who struggled with unresolvedcontradictory impressions of Japan. One student, who had worked part-time in Japan,told of how a co-worker had declined to ever speak directly to him, instead relayingmessages through other colleagues. The student could only conclude that this hadhappened, `because I was a foreigner, because I looked very foreignish and there weretimes when I didn’ t understand what was being said’ . The same student, however, alsoexpressed the view that having now been in Japan for a while, he felt that `people coulddepend on me’ , that he had become `a very, sort of, natural part of people’s day’ .Another student, when asked whether her impressions of Japan matched her expecta-tions, replied ambivalently, `Yes, it does in a way. I really didn’ t like, yes it sort of didin a way’ . This ambivalence surfaced a number of times during her interview. On theone hand, she expressed the view that `people were really open. They really acceptedme’ . Not long after, however, she con® ded that she also just felt apart’ and had cometo the conclusion that `I’ ll always be different I think, I think they’ ll always think of aforeigner as different’ . This is perhaps what Sakai had in mind in his discussionconcerning the `inquietude surrounding our identity’ .30

Braidotti, following Deleuze, warns against rei® cation of a centre, advocating theassociated dissolution of `ordinary sites or authentic identities’ of any kind.31 As JudithButler has noted, the modern sense of identity, with its reliance on unity and centraliseddiscursive practices, is by necessity exclusionist.32 In other words, it precludes thenotion of blurred borders and crossed boundaries, calling on participants to conspire inthe exercise of political power over the Other, or others, marginalised by the dominantdiscourses. However, if the student of Japan is to begin to acquire a workable level ofliteracy, there must be a foray across the borders established by discursive practicessuch as Western universalism and Nihonjinron. Following Braidotti, we are adamantthat if literacy is to be attained, there must be a ® eld of `emphatic proximity’ or`intensive interconnectedness’ between the learner and the unfamiliar.33 Without thisproximity or interconnectedness there will be no creation of the interstitial spacesidenti® ed by Bhabha as essential for the authentic community which eschews politicaldomination based on difference.34

Conclusion

The purpose of this project has been to investigate the Japan literacy experiences of agroup of tertiary learners of Japanese. For these young people, acquisition of Japanliteracy was signi® cantly more complicated than simply learning a new set of skills andcompetencies. Instead, we have concluded that the process is ultimately based on thebroader and less contained notion of identity shift and involves the ongoing reconstruc-tion of learner identity. Furthermore, like Hall, we regard identity as the sum total of

29 Ibid.30 Sakai, 1998, p. 478.31 Braidotti, 1994. G. Deleuze, Rhizome: English on the Line (New York: Semiotest(e), 1983).32 J. P. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).33 Braidotti, 1994.34 Bhabha, 1994.

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Close Encounters of the Unhomely Kind 279

discursive practices acting on the learner. In this study we have highlighted the actionof two speci® c discourses, Western universalism and Nihonjinron, which our dataindicated had impinged heavily on learner experience.

Participants took to Japan the in¯ uences of universalising Orientalist practices whichparticularise Japan. In the ® rst instance it was these practices to which they referred inorder to interpret and make sense of their experiences. However, Western universalismoffered little comfort when students were confronted with the exigencies of Nihonjinron.And in spite of their yearning to belong, study participants often found themselvesOthered and con® ned to the margins where they had few defences against the panicgenerated by the unheimlich phantoms which proliferate outside the centre.

Perhaps more signi® cantly, the data also clearly demonstrated that the in¯ uence ofthe discourses is not absolute and that the learner is no tabula rasa onto which discourseinscription occurs unchecked. While occasionally subscribing to, and being constitutedby, hegemonic practices, the majority of participants sought to simultaneously contestand disrupt dominant constructs. Often this resulted in a gradual, if tentative, accept-ance of the hybrid space and its potential for the unmediated, authentic encounter.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the study foregrounds a number of critical issueswhich demand the attention of Japanese language and Japanese studies educators.Among these is the need for ongoing review of pedagogy to ensure that students areequipped to con® dently enter the hybrid space and to actively embrace encounters ofthe unhomely kind.

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