Tradig Places [antikvár]

PREFACE I FIRST SAW Japan in January 1964 from ihe deck of the passenger liner President Wilson as it steamed up Tokyo Bay early on a cold morning to dock at Yokohama. A graduate student at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, I was on my way to complete the Japanese language-requirement of my degree, accompanied by my wife and our infant daughter Anne. Japan was not a particularly popular destination for graduate students in those days. Although the "economic miracle" had recently been announced by The Economist, many thought ofjapan as a small, somewhat exotic country whose people spoke an impossible language and devoted themselves to what was seen as the rather quaint task of trying to catch up to the United States. The action for those interested in geopolitics seemed to be in Europe and it was there that most students flocked. It was not any special clairvoyance that took me to Japan, but rather a combination of a quest for adventure and a practical father. Having lived briefly in Europe as an exchange student while in high school, I thought, upon finishing my undergraduate work, that it would be fun to go the other way to the mysterious Orient. For the United States at that time, China was still public enemy number two, after the Soviet Union; and the Vietnam conflict was Just getting under way. I was interested in foreign policy and felt that Asia would loom larger on America's horizon in the future. The East-West Center at that time was offering full scholarships to graduate students to spend a year in Honolulu followed by a year in Asia studying an Asian language. Fortunate enough to receive the scholarship, I planned initially to study the Chinese language, but my practical father—a skilled chemist who developed coatings for stainless steel welding electrodes—urged me to study Japanese because "they [the Japanese] make things." Thus, it was his advice that led me to Yokohama that cold January morning and to a lifelong interest in Japan. My wife and I had no idea of what awaited us. Friends and relatives had advised us not to go. They spoke ofjapan as if it were an underdeveloped country, and emphasized particularly that we should not go j ' i' i'' S.I' iV '