Critical Teaching about Asia:
Orientalism, Postcolonial Perspectives
and Cross-cultural Education

Yoshiko Nozaki

This paper explores the ways to develop a curriculum and pedagogy to teach Asian
cultures and histories to US students and by implication to students in the West from
critical postcolonial perspectives. In particular, by examining studies of Japan as an
example, it identifies and discusses several key issues, including application of the concept
of Orientalism, (commonsensical) binary oppositions that lurk in cross-cultural studies
and understandings, and cultural essentialisms and nationalisms that emerge in
(de-colonised and modernising) Asian nations. The paper argues that postcolonial
perspectives can offer us a set of useful theoretical tools to counteract the hegemonic ways
of teaching and studying about Asia.

Keywords: cross-cultural education; curriculum theory; postcolonial theory; teaching
about Asia

In the USA, teaching about Asia allows teachers and students to cross-culturally study
and learn about the cultures and histories of countries and societies other than their
own. The pedagogical avenues through which US students learn about Asia are
diverse. Asia-related materials are incorporated into various classes including art,
literature and social studies at elementary and middle school levels (Nozaki and
Inokuchi; Wojtan; Bernson; Stern), and Asian languages such as Japanese and
Chinese are sometimes taught in the middle schools (grades 68) and high schools
(grades 912), where teachers often incorporate some lessons about Asian societies,

Yoshiko Nozaki is an associate professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her co-edited book,
Struggles over Difference: Curriculum, Texts, and Pedagogy in the Asia-Pacific (SUNY Press), won the American
Educational Research Association Division B Curriculum Studies Outstanding Book Award. As a leading scholar
on the Japanese history textbook controversy, she has also published War Memory, Nationalism, and Education in
Postwar Japan, 19452007: The Japanese History Textbook Controversy and Ienaga Saburo’s Court Challenges
(Routledge). Correspondence to: Yoshiko Nozaki, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy, State
University of New York at Buffalo, 468 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260-1000, USA. Email: [e-mail]

ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/09/020141-15
#

2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/07256860902766941

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Vol. 30, No. 2, May 2009, pp. 141155

cultures and histories (Gluck; Parisi). At the high school level, some schools actually
offer Asian Studies classes. In post-secondary education, students can pursue Asian
Studies majors and minors, while taking Asian language classes and Asia-focused
classes in arts/humanities and social sciences (Hein; Kubota). The knowledge that
students gain from these classes varies; however, several studies show that the
students’ cross-cultural understandings often remain stereotypical and simplistic (e.g.
Hein; Kubota), and that the dominant discourses that speak of Asia as ‘different than
us’ are prevalent in schools and texts (Nozaki and Inokuchi; Nozaki ‘‘U.S.
Discourses’’; Kogure and Nozaki).

In other words, teaching about Asia can function as a progressive intervention or

play a major role in maintaining people’s commonsensical understandings of
themselves, others and their social relations. What Richard Shaull states about
education generally applies to education about Asia:

There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions
as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of the younger
generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or
it becomes ‘the practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal
critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the
transformation of their world. (15)

It is, thus, imperative for critical educators interested in teaching about Asia or in
cross-cultural education in general for that matter to make constant, conscious
efforts for such a transformation, or counter-hegemony. ‘Hegemony’, as used here, is
a form of domination achieved not by direct use of force but through everyday social,
cultural and ideological practices that are saturated by ‘common sense’. ‘Common
sense’ in this context refers to those particular ways of feeling and understanding our
social relations, the world and ourselves that actually serve the interests of the
dominant groups. As such, common sense is passed on and reconstituted in everyday
practices, and in this way, people of the subordinate groups consent to the ideas of
the dominant groups. In short, hegemony is a form of rule that entails the active
formation of people’s consciousness, or identities, in particular ways. Hegemony is
generally sustained by the political alliances of groups (e.g. power blocs), though such
alliances are not always stable and so constantly need to be recreated. The hegemonic
situation is one where our consent is actively sought to make sense of the world
through particular means that happen to fit in with the interests of the hegemonic
alliance of classes or the power bloc. Powers that succeed in constructing such an
identity as ‘the’ identity of the designated group are then able to establish and
maintain its hegemony (Williams Marxism; Keywords; O’Sullivan et al.).

Here, one must take a critical look at the issues of curriculum and knowledge as

they relate to teaching about Asia. Curriculum is a site of power struggles, and thus,
the outcomes of these struggles are not pre-determined. However, one should also
acknowledge that curriculum is often a means of hegemonic power, especially in the
ways it represents peoples, histories, cultures and so forth. Constructions of identity

142

Y. Nozaki

are implicated in these representations (Hall ‘‘Question of Cultural Identity’’).
Moreover, curriculum codifies a symbolic space and time ‘imaginary geographies’
(Said Orientalism) in which all identities are located. Identities do not arise
naturally from the core of beings; rather, they are structured through symbolic
representations of ‘self ’ and ‘the Other’. One knows who ‘he’/‘she’ is in relation to ‘the
Other’, those whom he/she cannot be. In theory, then, the meanings of self are not
fixed.

Nevertheless, one often encounters a seemingly stable identity like ‘the Japanese’

(or ‘the Chinese’, or any Asian national identity). It is critical to understand such an
identity as historical, as constantly reconstructed through everyday hegemonic
practices representing the Other. In this sense, one can argue that teaching about Asia
in the USA is a necessary part of hegemony because it involves representation of
the Other, or that which is not ‘American’. Hence, critical educators, must be
concerned with the ways in which a counter-hegemonic program for education about
Asia might be developed.

A cross-cultural perspective is one of the greatest assets that education about Asia

can bring to US schools and classrooms. At the same time, this perspective and the
issues surrounding it conceptual, methodological and practical pose difficult
questions for teachers and students, especially when they try to understand non-
Western experiences through knowledges and curriculum developed by Western
scholarship. In the following sections, I would like to explore several ways to develop
a counter-hegemonic, critical curriculum and pedagogy for teaching about Asia by
addressing some of the problematic relations between the West and non-West in
education and scholarship, and I would argue that postcolonial perspectives offer
some viable approaches. I would also like to closely examine a particular example
research on Japanese culture, society and education. There are merits to using ‘Japan’
as an example; the country appears to be one of the most popular Asian nations
studied by Western scholarship and taught about in US schools.

Said’s ‘Orient’ and Japanese Studies’ ‘Japan’

One of the most significant volumes ever published in postcolonial studies is Edward
Said’s Orientalism (1978), which, some critics (e.g. Dimitriadis) state, led to the
emergence of the postcolonial field. According to Said, Orientalism is ‘‘a way of
coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in
European Western experience’’ (Orientalism 1). Orientalism comprises a mode of
discourse, a body of knowledge, a political vision of reality with supporting
institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery and doctrines that expresses and
represents the Orient. The Orient represented here is actually an integral part of
European material civilisation, though Orientalism as a discourse represents the
‘Orient’ and ‘Europe’ as if they were mutually exclusive entities. In short, Orientalism
is ‘‘a Western style for domination, restructuring, and having authority over the
Orient’’ (Orientalism 2).

Journal of Intercultural Studies

143

‘Orientalism’ is at the core of the challenges that educators face in teaching about

Asia from critical perspectives. The Orientalism that Said discusses is basically a style
of thought, a specific set of discourses that have taken place in Europe’s experiences
with peoples and cultures in the region that we now call the Middle East. It is, thus,
important for critical educators concerned with curriculum and teaching about Asia
in the USA to note both the particular and the universal aspects of Said’s ideas: what
are the implications and limitations of the notion of Orientalism in terms of teaching
about Asia in the USA, the regions and geo-politics which are outside, or beyond, the
socio-historically specific setting of Said’s examination?

Stuart Hall, using Said’s Orientalism as an example (or research paradigm),

identifies the discourse of ‘the West and the Rest’ and examines its formation and its
main themes and strategies of representation (‘‘The West and the Rest’’ 29697).
Although ‘the Rest’ generally stands for the non-Western world, Hall’s study focuses
mainly on languages and images representing ‘the New World’ the regions
‘discovered’, conquered, colonised and dominated by European power(s). Just as in
Said’s Orientalism, Hall finds that stereotyping, dualism and splitting are the
ubiquitous features, and therefore the underpinning strategy of the West and the Rest
discourse. Furthermore, he points out not only that the discourse of the West and the
Rest worked its way into ‘‘classic works of sociology such as those by Marx and
Weber’’, but also that ‘‘its effects can still been seen [ . . .] in the language, theoretical
models, and hidden assumptions’’ of modern sociology and the other social sciences
(‘‘The West and the Rest’’ 318).

In essence, Hall extends the scope of Said’s Orientalism to address Western power

over the non-Western regions in general (‘‘The West and the Rest’’). This is a move
from a specific theory of Orientalism to a general (unified) theory of the West and the
Rest. As such, Hall’s work offers an encompassing framework for research, and he
does so explicitly. I appreciate Hall’s being articulate here, even though by now a
number of scholars have referred to Orientalism in an effort to name the practices
beyond Said’s boundary of Europe and the Middle East (see, for example, Lee). A
pitfall of Hall’s general theory might be that it runs a risk of reifying the power of the
West in a more singular nature than it has actually been. In this sense, the
particularity of Said’s Orientalism matters, or has its tenability. A case in point might
be Japan, one of the examples used by Hall to illustrate that the West is ‘‘as much an
idea as a fact of geography’’. As he puts it: ‘‘These days, technologically speaking,
Japan is ‘Western’, though on our mental map it is about as far ‘East’ as you can get’’
(‘‘The West and the Rest’’ 276). Hall does not, however, discuss how one should treat
Japan in relation to the West and the Rest discourse, and/or Orientalism to do so
would require a close examination of the particular relationships between Japan, the
West and the Rest, and could result in a rethinking of the general theory of the West
and the Rest.

Richard Minear, a historian of Japan, responds to Said’s notion of Orientalism by

examining the writings of three influential scholars in the field of Japanese Studies
Basil Hall Chamberlain, George B. Sansom and Edwin O. Reischauer (‘‘Orientalism’’).

144

Y. Nozaki

These scholars’ works were (and still are) studied as ‘classics’ by students learning
about Japan. While demonstrating the ways that the (Orientalist) binary opposition,
or the discourse of the West and the East, speaks through these scholars’ works, he
also notes ‘‘the striking differences in historical setting’’ between Said’s Orientalism
and the tradition of Japanese Studies (Minear ‘‘Orientalism’’ 514). The most
important difference, in his view, is that the partnership between Orientalist studies
and imperial military power did not really take place. As he put it: ‘‘Will to power,
perhaps; arrogance and condescension, certainly; but actual domination, no’’
(‘‘Orientalism’’ 515). This point leads him (and us) to an interesting, critical
question: why is it that ‘‘[e]ven in the absence of overt Western domination, the
attitudes manifested in the discourse on Japan seem to resemble closely those of
Said’s Orientalists’’ (‘‘Orientalism’’ 515)?

Minear suggests three possible ways to answer the question, but it is the third

answer that he seems inclined to employ the most, and it speaks to a general
disposition of cross-cultural perception (and so teaching and learning):

The pursuit of knowledge involves the attempt to appropriate the reality of a
subject, and is therefore aggressive; the subject is reduced, almost by necessity, to
the status of object. [ . . .] The attempt to study other cultures exacerbates precisely
that element of aggression. (‘‘Orientalism’’ 516)

Although one may wonder if ‘aggression’ is too strong a term to describe the activities
employed in studying and learning in schools and universities, the production of
knowledge whether taking place in a scholarly, disciplinary field, or in an ordinary
classroom, from kindergarten through grade school involves an exercise of power, at
least in an epistemological sense (e.g. Foucault). Indeed, representing a particular
subject or topic by drawing a line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (‘the West’ and ‘Japan’),
creating and describing these categories, and/or classifying things into these
categories is to produce knowledge. The implication here is that a style of thought
resembling Orientalism may appear in classrooms that are teaching about Asia, or in
any cross-cultural study or education for that matter. It is important, thus, to
examine the existing tradition(s) of teaching and learning about Asia and Japan to see
the kinds of discourses in circulation and the kinds of power(s) that are carried by
these discourses.

The ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ Binary Opposition

Teaching about Asia by scholars in the West in general, and in the USA in particular,
often contains, implicitly or explicitly, a binary opposition that is, the West/the USA
(‘us’) vs. the East (‘them’). This binary resembles the one that takes place in the West
and the Rest discourse (Hall), or Orientalism (Said), and I have argued elsewhere that
it is a critical part of the discourse of Othering (e.g. Nozaki and Inokuchi; Inokuchi
and Nozaki ‘‘‘Different than Us’’’). It may be important, however, to examine how the
binary works in the particular construction of knowledge as a manifestation of power

Journal of Intercultural Studies

145

relations between a specific nation in the West and a specific nation in the imaginary
geography of Asia. In this regard, the field of Japanese Studies in the USA serves as an
example from which we can gain additional insight.

Ruth Benedict, a prominent anthropologist, published her volume The Chry-

santhemum and the Sword, one of the most influential books on Japan to date, in
1946. According to Clifford Geertz, in her volume, Benedict pursued, by repeating
again and again in plain language, the Us/Not-us motif in her explanation of the
patterns of Japanese culture, a culture lived by a people who are ‘‘the most alien
enemy the United States [has] ever fought’’ (1). Geertz argues that, despite Benedict’s
repeated questioning of ‘what’s wrong with this picture’ of Japanese culture
throughout her volume, she was also skeptical of American culture, and so in
practice, she ended up deconstructing, or denaturalising, the cultural values and
beliefs of US society. In Geertz’s view, Benedict’s dismantling of ‘‘American
exceptionalism by confronting it with that [ . . .] of a spectacularized other [i.e.
Japan]’’ was extraordinarily courageous, considering that her writing of the volume
took place during the war with Japan (122). So one may conclude that the use of the
binary might not have been intended to be derogatory of Japanese culture; rather,
consciously or not, while studying on, and teaching about, non-Western cultures, she
had a progressive agenda.

Other critics have accounted differently for the connection between Benedict’s

depiction of Japan and her agenda. For example, Minear argues that Benedict’s
progressive agenda, or her strong ideological commitment to ‘‘[American] demo-
cratic heritage’’ and the ‘‘victory of democratic ways of life’’ (‘‘Cross-cultural
Perception’’ 560), influenced the way she depicted Japan. Although Benedict might
have been aware that the picture of America as the nation of freedom, opportunity
and equality was more ideal than real (Minear ‘‘Cross-cultural Perception’’ 561),
because of her commitment to democracy or American democracy she
represented domestic American reality in a strongly positive light, and Japan in a
very negative light. It is important to note that her literary device was the binary
opposition of Japan and the USA, which constructed ‘‘a single American culture, an
American national character’’ (‘‘Cross-cultural Perception’’ 560) and a starkly
contrasting Japanese culture and character (pathological and deficient of democracy).
Then she used her depiction of Japanese character traits to explain the cause of the
Japanese war with the USA ‘‘an explanation [ . . .] which is even faintly objective’’
(‘‘Cross-cultural Perception’’ 566).

There are a number of additional problematic issues. Benedict’s volume was, in

part, written in service for the wartime nation (see also Minear ‘‘Wartime Studies’’)
and could be read as a training manual on how to handle the Japanese. Though
Benedict may not have been completely comfortable with the ways her work was
assimilated into the immediate politicalintellectual contexts of the US war with, and
its occupation of, Japan, in which ‘understanding’ the enemy was urgent and critical,
she apparently took advantage of the contexts or at least she wanted to use her
discipline for societal purposes. In addition, a portion of it, more precisely a chapter

146

Y. Nozaki

entitled ‘‘The Child Learns’’, which is in fact an ‘‘unfortunately memorable’’ chapter
(Geertz 116), was for the most part based on the works of others, including Bateson
and Mead, on Bali and Balinese characters. Above all, Benedict did not travel to Japan
at all indeed, she ‘‘actually hardly went anywhere either’’ (Geertz 12328; see also
Mead). Despite all these controversies, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword enjoyed
(and still enjoys) a wide and more or less favourably disposed readership,
nationally and internationally, including by people of Japan. It is perhaps her clear-
cut, relentless use of the binary opposition of Japan and the USA that has sustained
the popularity.

Many lessons can be learned from Benedict and her volume, including a lesson on

the challenges faced by critical educators when they attempt to examine their own
cultural norms and assumptions from cross-cultural perspectives, or the lack of
control that teachers have over the social and historical contexts and consequences of
their teaching. However, Geertz’s examination of Benedict’s volume, by disentangling
many threads of the literary devices that Benedict employs to construct her
arguments (and indeed the entire volume), gives a salient example of the danger of
using binary categories in a cross-cultural teaching. It is putting forward the binary
categories and establishing a clear-cut division of the world in the imaginary
geography that serves as a foundation upon which other discourses, including
Orientalist languages, images and vocabularies, can lurk and produce knowledge(s)
(see also Nozaki and Inokuchi; Inokuchi and Nozaki ‘‘‘Different than Us’’’).

Note that a general consequence of dividing the world into binary ‘them’ and ‘us’

terms is the rise of essentialism. Whatever category is used to define people as a
group, that category inevitably stresses the similarities and disregards the differences
within the category, and so ultimately has negative effects upon the people
categorised (Nozaki ‘‘Essentializing’’). It is exclusive and polarising, and, more
significantly, it defines and defends the ‘essence’ of the people and their culture
(Japanese, or Chinese, or any Asian nationality, for that matter), rather than
promoting a full understanding of their complex identities as socio-historical
constructs (Said Culture and Imperialism). Although it has traditionally been feminist
scholars who have effectively utilised the concept of (cultural) essentialism in order to
identify the problem(s) of dominant research on women (e.g. Fuss; Scott), it can also
be employed by others in an effort to examine the tendencies of teaching about Asia,
or cross-cultural teaching and learning in general.

Occidentalism and Non-Western National Identity

Does inviting non-Western people into the classrooms to speak directly to students
thereby bringing the ‘voices’ of the Other solve the problem of the West/non-West
binary? Critical educators in the USA, wary of imposing only Western or American
views upon students, sometimes opt for having non-Westerners speak to their classes.
However, the guests may also use the binary opposition, or firmly believe in it.
Indeed, the binary opposition of the West and non-West, which constructs firm

Journal of Intercultural Studies

147

essentialist national identities of the non-Western nations, has also emerged in
movements and struggles for liberation from colonial and neo-colonial oppressions,
or in the battles against the hegemony of the West, militarily, politically, culturally or
otherwise. In the inter- and intra-national clashes of power during the colonial and
postcolonial periods, binary oppositions and Orientalist (and Occidentalist) knowl-
edges and images have also been appropriated, circulated, consumed and reproduced
by ‘native’ peoples of Asian regions.

Such an essentialist national identity may be critically important, depending on the

moment of its use. It may possess a ‘‘continuing creative power’’ in post- and neo-
colonial struggles (Hall ‘‘Cultural Identity’’ 111), and as such, it can (and should) be
used consciously in ‘‘strategic’’ ways (Spivak 11). However, one should perhaps not
assume that the strategically created national identities that emerge through
liberation movements are always and/or forever liberating in their nature and effects
(just as identities like ‘working class’ or ‘women’ may not always be libratory in their
effects when applied to diverse populations). It is, therefore, important for critical
educators to understand the particular social and historical conditions of inter- and
intra-national clashes of power in terms of the construction of nationalist, or nativist,
identity formations.

For example, Moeran argues that, in Japan, the writings of what is called

‘nihonjinron’, or ‘the theory of the Japanese’, which sees Japanese culture as a coherent
entity distinct from other cultures, have arisen both in reaction to, and as borrowings
from, representations of the Japanese in Western scholarship. That is, the Western
tradition of knowledge production, which involves a style of thought aptly called
‘Japanism’ (a term that Moeran coins after Said’s ‘Orientalism’), has been
appropriated by many Japanese both nationalists and internationalists themselves,
and as a discourse it has produced a genre of quasi-academic literature called
‘nihonjinron’ (Moeran). The nihonjinron discourse sees Japanese culture as unique,
quite different from any other culture (but it is, for the most part, the Western
European cultures that theorists have it positioned against), and argues either for its
‘inferiority’ or ‘superiority’. Critics argue that nihonjinron, as a discourse, is
essentialist and functions as a device by which certain Japanese elite forces maintain
hegemony within Japanese society as well as on an international front (see Goodman;
Miyoshi). However, it is perhaps not only elite groups that have supported this
essentialist discourse on Japan, but also popular forces. After all, Benedict’s volume
was a bestseller in Japan and, as a classical study, it is still read widely today in an
effort to understand Japanese culture and society.

Japanism, the Western tradition of producing knowledge about Japan which has

emerged and gained currency under particular socio-historical and political
conditions accompanies a series of particular vocabularies and a repertoire of
images, so it is not exactly the same as Said’s Orientalism. In a similar vein,
nihonjinron, or the Japanese appropriation of Western Japanism, may not simply
involve Occidentalism, or the essentialist, dehumanising views of the West, as it often
asserts Japan’s superiority over other Asian nations; after all, Japan has been an

148

Y. Nozaki

imperial power that has taken its own imperial and colonial practices into other Asian
nations. The (re)production of Japanism, or nihonjinron, thus needs to be examined
through a complex array of locations and interactions, one that consists of at least
three (interlocking) domains of knowledge production, where specific representa-
tional struggles take place, namely, in Japan, in the West/USA, and in a field located
between the two. That is, discourses on Japan and Japanism work in particular ways
in Japan, thus warranting a critical examination and teaching. They also function in
particular ways in the USA, requiring yet another critical research and education.
Furthermore, they define and sustain (and may possibly tactically manoeuvre)
particular power relations between the two nations in contemporary forms of
globalisation. Such understandings should highlight the political economy as well as
the related social and cultural dimensions.

Some efforts have been made to address these issues. A study conducted by Mouer

and Sugimoto and Dale focuses on the first domain, the one that is located within
Japanese society, and on the production of nihonjinron discourses, and Yoshino, in
part, investigates the consumption of these discourses within Japanese society. Studies
on the second domain centre on the production and consumption of the images of
‘Japan’ within the educational programs of other countries, particularly in the USA
(Inokuchi ‘‘United States’’; Nozaki and Inokuchi; Inokuchi and Nozaki ‘‘‘Different
than Us’’’), and the images of ‘Japanese education’ in the USA (Feinberg; Nozaki
‘‘U.S. Discourses’’). Kogure, in part, also addresses this aspect in the third domain,
where he explores the links between Japanese nationalism and American Japanist
representations. These studies have clearly shown that Japanism should be under-
stood as not only affecting relations between Japan and the USA, but also, more
importantly, as exerting hegemonic effects on people living in Japan as well as those
living in the USA. Educators attempting to resist Japanism need to recognise the
complex interactions among these three domains, even when they find it difficult to
directly deal with all of them at once in their teaching and learning.

Although it is important to understand (and work through) the particularities of

Japanism in the critical teaching of Japan, it is equally important to examine the ways
that Japanism relates to Orientalism. Indeed, since Asian Studies, including Japanese
Studies, is the successor of Orientalist Studies, it seems plausible to consider Japanism
as a strand of Orientalism, which, as a discourse, carries an ever evolving and
adjusting Western power bloc that sustains hegemonic knowledge(s) about Japan.
Japanism conveys the same theme (and power) as Said’s Orientalism (though it can
play a different tune). In other words, Orientalist language continues as the most
basic part of Western discourse to approach Japan (and Asia).

This connection between Orientalist discourse and teaching about Asia may induce

conscientious educators to withdraw from offering classes having anything to do with
the study of Asia. Or it may cause them simply to take a position of relativist
multiculturalism, one that celebrates differences, or one that takes a position of
reversed Orientalism, which simply valorises ‘Asia’ as superior to ‘the West’. None of
these, however, is desirable. The problem concerning the ideology that is embedded

Journal of Intercultural Studies

149

within Orientalist discourse cannot be reduced to that of relations between Western
and non-Western nations. Orientalism is a central imperialist discourse (Said Culture
and Imperialism; Hall ‘‘The West and the Rest’’), one that is racist in so far as it
explicitly or implicitly claims white European supremacy over non-European peoples
and cultures. Orientalism is also sexist both in the way that it describes Asia in sexist
language (e.g. Asia as an object to be raped) and describes Oriental women as sexual
objects (Said Orientalism).

Above all, what is at issue here is the construction of a singular, unified national

identity at both ends of the relationship the West, on the one hand, and the
Japanese, the Chinese and so forth, on the other. As discussed above, inherent in
many studies of Japanese culture and history is essentialism. Construction of a
homogeneous ‘‘their’’ national identity is possible only through the erasure of the
identities of ‘‘internal others’’ in the nation in question (Hall ‘‘The West and the Rest’’
280). The erasure of internal others usually takes place in and through hegemonic
processes in the realm of representation; however, it may involve the direct use of
force in the real world.

Critical, Counter-hegemonic Approaches

How should critical educators teach about Asia (and, by implication, about non-
Western countries and regions)? The key problem here seems to be the essentialist
divide, the line drawn between the West and Asia that is one of the most fundamental
operations of hegemonic power. To counteract this essentialism, teachers need to
stress the variations, multiplicities and contradictions within all Asian nations,
peoples and cultures. One useful approach here is to represent the multiplicity of
identities that exists within any Asian nation. Just like an individual’s identity, a
national identity is multiple and contradictory. Critical education about Asia can
approach this multiplicity by looking at the social and historical variations of a given
nation.

For example, ‘Japan’, which is usually represented as a homogeneous entity, has a

population that is heterogeneous in its origin as well as in its history and current state
(Murphy-Shigematsu; Lie). Some scholars have suggested that Japan needs to be
represented in terms of ‘variations across space and time’ (Mouer and Sugimoto).
The concept ‘variation across space’ urges us to recognise socially marginalised
groups in Japanese society and to consider the power differentials in relations among
various groups, and in their positions within societal institutions. The concept
‘variation across time’ presses us to attend to the historical changes that continually
emerge in these relations. Seen in terms of ‘variation across space’, there is a need to
study the relationship of each group to the dominant groups, the relationships
among the groups and how these relationships are constructed and maintained
socially and institutionally. In terms of ‘variation across time’, there is a need to study
the historical changes that take place within these relationships, and to direct
attention to the nation’s sociological differences from historical perspectives.

150

Y. Nozaki

It follows that cross-cultural education in the USA concerning a given Asian nation

should address the issues of minorities and socially subordinate groups, including
women, the lower classes and homosexuals as ‘internal others’, and represent their
histories as well as their present conditions. Historicised anthropology and
anthropologised history are valuable methods (e.g. Darnton), and in fact, this shift
in the study of Japan has already been launched to some extent (e.g. Amino Nihon;
Nihonron no shiza; Ohnuki-Tierney). In any case, critical teaching and learning about
Japan should employ an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates many fields. In
the case of the study of Japan, it includes Women’s Studies, Buraku Studies, Ainu/
Indigenous Studies, studies of Korean residents and so on (Inokuchi and Nozaki
‘Others’ in Japanese Society).

Critical educators need to be careful here, however. If power works by way of

essentialism, representations of ‘internal others’ may easily fall into other forms of
essentialism, or at least have limitations, since these groups are not internally
monolithic, either (e.g. Inokuchi ‘‘Finger-printing’’). Critical educators should
perhaps adopt a notion of ‘multiple oppression’, where there are multiple powers
that operate within a given nation, group or individual. Scholarship among women
of colour, Third World women and lesbian women (e.g. Anzaldu´a; Mohanty, Russo
and Torres) has developed this concept, and some educational researchers suggest
developing a non-essentialist representation (McCarthy and Crichlow). In this
approach, the representation of ‘variation across space and time’ must not remain a
patchwork of the minority groups categorised, and so essentialised. It must show a
multiple, fluid structure of domination (Mohanty) a picture of multiple axes of
power (race, gender, class, etc.) that continually intersect and (re)structure social
relations, assigning people to particular identities and locating their differences
through particular socio-historical contexts. Terms such as ‘race’, ‘class’ and ‘gender’
are analytic categories used to examine such relations, and, therefore, to discuss ‘race’
is not simply to discuss a racial (or ethnic) minority. The dynamics of race and
ethnicity matter for the dominant group(s) of any nation. It is crucial to allow
students to develop an analytic ability to read multiple and multilayered power
relations.

Another way to overcome essentialism is to make cross-cultural teaching and

learning stress the ‘impure’, hybrid aspects of any national and regional culture
(Bhabha; Said Culture and Imperialism). In any region, hybridity of cultural forms has
developed through millennia of migrations and conquests. The inter-penetration of
cultures characterises both the regions that have been colonised in history and the
regions from whence colonialism springs. But the notion seems especially useful for
understanding the experiences of peoples placed in the category of the Rest during
the colonial and neo-colonial periods. In many colonised countries as well as
countries going through processes of Westernisation in the name of modernisation,
many new hybrid ‘traditions’ have been invented (Hobsbawn and Ranger). Critical
teaching about Asia needs to focus on what Said calls ‘‘interactions, the actual and
often productive traffic [that has occurred] among states, societies, groups, identities’’

Journal of Intercultural Studies

151

(Culture and Imperialism 20). Through this focus though one should remember
that cultural hybridisations are never reciprocal (Miyoshi) any essentialist
construction between cultures and peoples can be fundamentally challenged and
changed.

Finally, I would like to stress the dangers of making education about Asia a

curriculum enclave. The approaches mentioned above need to apply to teaching and
learning beyond cross-cultural studies as well, especially studies on ‘our’ country,
history and culture. The constructions of a homogeneous identity (such as
‘American’) have involved erasures of the identities of internal Others. Any society
in its actuality consists of people of hybridity: those who diversely embody the traces
of particular cultures, traditions, languages and histories that have shaped them, but
who also need to come to terms with, and to make something new of, the cultures
that they inhabit (Hall ‘‘Culture, Community’’). The aspects of Other peoples and
cultures that exist in a Western nation should be well represented, and then read vis-
a`-vis those aspects of peoples and cultures of Asian nations. This could be called a
‘contrapuntal’ perspective: a vision that sees the connections between peoples,
cultures and societies, while understanding the relative autonomy of their complex
socio-historical experiences. As Said says:

[W]e must be able to think through and interpret together experiences that are
discrepant, each with its particular agenda and pace of development, its own
internal formations, its internal coherence and system of external relationships, all
of them co-existing and interacting with others. (Culture and Imperialism 32)

Contrapuntal analysis enables teachers and students in cross-cultural studies to
‘‘elucidate a complex and uneven topography’’ (Culture and Imperialism 318) within
their regions and imaginary geographies.

Critical cross-cultural studies of Asia must fight against Orientalist forms of

hegemony. At stake is the construction of identities that affect people in the West and
in other Asian countries, and with this, the relations between and among them. I have
outlined several approaches to counter-hegemonic curriculum and pedagogy in
critical education about Asia, ones that teach about the ways a particular power
works through relations between peoples, and between different elements of
identities, by stressing the multiplicity and fluidity of such relations and identities.
Additional concepts (e.g. ambivalence) developed under the rubric of postcolonial
theories may also allow teachers and students to learn in this direction (Kelly).

Moreover, the approaches discussed here should apply to critical teaching about

‘our’ society for example, what US schools teach under the name of ‘our’ culture
and history and education needs to bring ‘their’ and ‘our’ experiences into
contrapuntal connection. The approaches suggested here, if they were to be employed
only in a curriculum area that is territorialised and territorialising (which might be
the case in some areas of education about Asia), would have substantial limitations.
What is called for is a critical examination and reconsideration of the whole field of
scholarship, curriculum and instruction that is currently in place.

152

Y. Nozaki

The crucial question concerns the kind of geography imagined in this reconfigura-

tion. Any nation is, in fact, a multiple and contradictory ‘collectivity’, and its identity
should be situated within the geography of the multiple and contradictory identities,
peoples, cultures and histories of the region. This map will help one see that ‘‘we are
mixed in with one another in ways that most national systems of education have not
dreamed of ’’ (Said Culture and Imperialism 331). Moreover, only this map will enable
erased internal others in various nations to find each other’s location (so that they can
start a conversation to form a network of counter-hegemonic forces). Critical
education about Asia, or any area of teaching such as literacy, arts or science, must
offer younger generations the chance to know and understand such a geography and
the integrative realities and possibilities it comprises.

Acknowledgements

I thank Hiromitsu Inokuchi, Allan Luke, Richard Minear and Lew Zippin for their
comments on the earlier drafts and for their encouragement and support of my work.
I am also grateful to the editors of Journal of Intercultural Studies for their kind
assistance and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.

References

Amino, Y. Nihon chusei no minshu-zo: Heimin to shokunin [Portraits of the People in Medieval Japan:

The Common People and the Professionals]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980.

**

**. Nihonron no shiza: Retto no shakai to kokka [Perspectives for Theory of Japan: Societies and

States of the Archipelago]. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1990.

Anzaldu´a, G., ed. Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras. San Francisco: An Aunt Lute

Foundation Book, 1990.

Bateson, G., and M. Mead.. Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: New York

Academy of Sciences, 1942.

Benedict, R. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. New York: Meridian,

1946.

Bernson, M. ‘‘Beyond Momotaro: Using Fiction about Japan in the Elementary Classroom’’ Social

Studies and the Young Learner 10.3 (1998): 2426.

Bhabha, H. K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Dale, P. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness. London: Croom Helm, 1986.
Darnton, R. The Great Cat Massacre. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
Dimitriadis, G. ‘‘On the Production of Expert Knowledge: Revisiting Edward Said’s Work on the

Intellectual’’ Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 27.3 (2006): 36982.

Feinberg, W. Japan and the Pursuit of a New American Identity: Work and Education in a

Multicultural Age. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 19721977. Ed. C. Gordon.

Trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Fuss, D. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Geertz, C. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Gluck, 1989. Gluck, C. Japan in a World Cultures: Social Studies Curriculum a Guide for Teachers.

[S.l.]: Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse, 1989.

Goodman, R. Japan’s ‘International Youth’: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1990.

Journal of Intercultural Studies

153

Hall, S. ‘‘The Question of Cultural Identity.’’ Modernity and its Futures. Ed. S. Hall, D. Held, and

T. McGrew. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. 274325.

**

**. ‘‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.’’ Formations of Modernity. Ed. S. Hall and

B. Gieben. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. 275331.

**

**. ‘‘Culture, Community, Nation.’’ Cultural Studies 7.3 (1993): 34963.

**

**. ‘‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora.’’ Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader.

Ed.

P. Mongia. London: Arnold, 1996. 11021.

Hein, L. ‘‘Contemporary Images of Japan: My Students as Texts, My Students as Readers’’ Pacific

Historical Review 60.3 (1991): 36183.

Hobsbawn, E., and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1983.

Inokuchi, H. ‘‘The Finger-printing Rejection Movement Reconsidered: Korean Residents in Japan

Seeking New Identity’’ Japanese Society 1 (1996): 77105.

**

**. ‘‘United States Middle School Students’ Discourses on Japan: A Study of Politics of

Representation.’’ (Doctoral Dissertation, University of WisconsinMadison, 1997). Disserta-
tion Abstracts International 57 (1997): 12.

Inokuchi, H., and Y. Nozaki. ‘‘The ‘Others’ in Japanese Society and their Histories.’’ Paper presented

at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, MA, March 1994.

**

**. ‘‘‘Different than Us’: Othering, Orientalism, and U.S. Middle School Students’ Discourses

on Japan.’’ Asia Pacific Journal of Education 25.1 (2005): 6376.

Kelly, W. ‘‘Postcolonial Perspective on Intercultural Relations: A JapanU.S. Example.’’ The Edge:

The E-Journal of Intercultural Relations 2.1 (1999) Bhttp://www.interculturalrelations.com/
v2i1Winter1999/w99kelly.htm.

Kogure, S. ‘‘Othering around Technology: Techno-orientalism, Techno-nationalism, and the

Formation of Japanese Identity.’’ (Doctoral Dissertation, Buffalo State University of New
York, 2005). Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 12 (UMI No. 3203922).

Kogure, S., and Y. Nozaki, ‘‘Techno-orientalism and the Images of Japan in National Geographic.’’

Comparative Minds, Critical Visions: Working Paper Series at the Center for Comparative and
Global Studies in Education 3 (2009): 2327.

Kubota, R. ‘‘Critical Teaching of Japanese Culture’’ Japanese Language and Literature 37.1 (2003):

6797.

Lee, R. G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,

1999.

Lie, J. Multi-ethnic Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
McCarthy, C., and W. Crichlow. ‘‘Introduction: Theories of Identity, Theories of Representation,

Theories of Race.’’ Race, Identity, and Representation in Education. Ed. C. McCarthy and W.
Crichlow. New York: Routledge, 1993. xiiixxix.

Mead, M. An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict. London: Secker and Warburg, 1959.
Minear, R. ‘‘Cross-cultural Perception and World War II: American Japanists of the and their

Images of Japan’’ International Studies Quarterly 24.4.1980 (1940s): 55580.

**

**. ‘‘Orientalism and the Study of Japan.’’ Journal of Asian Studies XXXIX.3 (1980): 50717.

**

**. ‘‘The Wartime Studies of Japanese National Character.’’ Japan Interpreter XIII.1 (1980): 36

59.

Miyoshi, M. Off Center: Power and Culture Relations between Japan and the United States.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Moeran, B. ‘‘Introduction: Rapt Discourses: Anthropology, Japanism and Japan.’’ Unwrapping

Japan. Ed. E. Ben-Ari, B. Moeran, and J. Valentine. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1990. 117.

Mohanty, C. T. ‘‘Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.’’

Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Ed. C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo, and L. Torres.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 147.

154

Y. Nozaki

Mohanty, C. T., A. Russo, and L. Torres, eds., Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Mouer, R., and Y. Sugimoto. Images of Japanese Society. London: Kegan Paul International, 1986.
Murphy-Shigematsu, S. ‘‘Multiethnic Japan and the Monoethnic Myth’’ Melus 18.4 (1993): 6380.
Nozaki, Y. ‘‘Essentializing Dilemma and Multiculturalist Pedagogy: An Ethnographic Study of

Japanese Children in a U.S. School.’’ Anthropology and Education Quarterly 31.3 (2000):
35580.

**

**. ‘‘U.S. Discourses on Japanese Education: World Geography Textbooks and the

Representation of Japan as the ‘Other’ in the Age of Educational Reform.’’ Multi/intercultural
Conversations: A Reader. Ed. Shirley R. Steinberg. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 13665.

Nozaki, Y., and H. Inokuchi. ‘‘What U.S. Middle Schoolers Bring to the Classroom: Student Writing

on the Pacific War’’ Education about Asia 3.3 (1998): 3034.

Ohnuki-Tierney, E. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1990.

O’Sullivan, T., J. Hartley, D. Saunders, M. Montgomery, and J. Fiske. Key Concepts in

Communication and Cultural Studies. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1994.

Parisi, L. The Constitution and Individual Rights in Japan: Lessons for Middle and High School

Students. 1992. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED354204. Retrieved 6 December
2008, from ERIC database.

Said, E. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1978.
**

**. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Book, 1993.

Scott, J. W. Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, the Use of Poststructuralist Theory for

Feminism Feminist Studies 14.1 (1988): 3350.

Shaull, R. ‘‘Foreword.’’ Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire. New York: Continuum, 1970.
Spivak, G. C. ‘‘Criticism, Feminism, and the Institution.’’ The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews,

Strategies, Dialogues. G. C. Spivak. Ed. S. Harasym. New York: Routledge, 1990. 116.

Stern, D. ‘‘Kimonos in Clay.’’ Arts & Activities 125.1 (1999). ERIC Document Reproduction Service

No. EJ607265. Retrieved 6 December 2008, from ERIC database.

Williams, R. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
**

**. Keywords. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Wojtan, L. ‘‘Exploring Japan through Rice’’ Social Studies and the Young Learner 10.3 (1998): 1114.
Yoshino, K. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry. London:

Routledge, 1992.

Journal of Intercultural Studies

155