Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm EDT
Zoom Event
Join us for a book talk with author Akemi Johnson on her book “Night in the American Village” and a chance to receive a free copy of the book!
About the Book
At the southern end of the Japanese archipelago lies Okinawa, host to a vast complex of U.S. military bases. A legacy of World War II, these bases have been a fraught issue for decades—with tensions exacerbated by the often volatile relationship between islanders and the military, especially after the brutal rape of a 12-year-old girl by three servicemen in 1995.
But the situation is more complex than it seems. In Night in the American Village, Akemi Johnson takes readers deep into the “border towns” surrounding the bases—a world where cultural and political fault lines compel individuals, both Japanese and American, to continually renegotiate their own identities. Focusing on the women there, she follows the complex fallout of the murder of an Okinawan woman by an ex-marine in 2016 and speaks to protesters, to women who date and marry American men and groups that help them when problems arise, and to Okinawans whose family members survived World War II.
Thought-provoking and timely, Night in the American Village is a vivid look at the enduring wounds of U.S.-Japanese history and the cultural and sexual politics of the American military empire.
We will be giving away a copy of the book to one lucky attendee!
This event will be on the record and a recording will be available on the NRC YouTube channel after the event.
Registration
The event is open to the public. Registered guests will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.
Speaker
Akemi Johnson, author, Night in the American Village
Discussant
Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University
Moderator
Kuniko Ashizawa, Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University, George Washington University
Speaker
Akemi Johnson is the author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, which was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. A former Fulbright scholar to Japan, Akemi has written for The Nation, The Washington Post, NPR’s All Things Considered and Code Switch, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Brown University, Akemi has taught writing at the George Washington University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Iowa. She lives in Northern California.
Discussant
Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University. He has published books and articles about Okinawa and translations of Okinawan literature. The book Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989 reprinted 1996) includes the novella “Cocktail Party” on which the film is loosely based. Other collections of translations are Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature From Okinawa, co-edited with Michael Molasky (University of Hawaii Press, 2000) and Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature From Okinawa, co-edited with Davinder L. Bhowmik (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). The Okinawa Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2014) is a history of Okinawan migration to mainland Japan with interviews and written accounts of residents describing their experiences. Rabson was stationed as a U.S. Army draftee during 1967-68 at a base in Henoko, Okinawa that stored nuclear weapons.
Moderator
Kuniko Ashizawa teaches international relations and serves as Japan Coordinator of Asian Studies Research Council at the School of International Service, American University. From 2005 until 2012, she was a senior lecturer in international relations at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. Her research interests include Japan’s foreign, security and development assistance policy, U.S.-Japan-China relations, regional institution-building in Asia, and the role of the concept of state identity in foreign policymaking, for which she has published a number of academic journal articles and book chapters, including in International Studies Review, Pacific Affairs, the Pacific Review, and Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Her book, Japan, the U.S. and Regional Institution-Building in the New Asia: When Identity Matters (Palgrave McMillan, 2013), received the 2015 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. Ashizawa was a visiting fellow at various research institutions, including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the East-West Center in Washington, the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, SAIS, and the United Nations University (Institute of Advanced Studies) in Tokyo. She received her PhD in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
