Pamuk on Tristesse vs. Hüzün

Tristesse is not a pain that affects a solitary individual [like melancholy]; hüzün and tristesse both suggest a communal feeling, an atmosphere and a culture shared by millions. But the words and the feelings they describe are not identical, and if we are to pinpoint the difference it is not enough to say that Istanbul is much richer than Delhi or São Paolo. (If you go to the poor neighborhoods, the cities and the forms poverty takes are in fact all too similar.) The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner—the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques—inflict heartache on all who live among them.

These are nothing like the remains of great empires to be seen in western cities, preserved like museums of history and proudly displayed. The people of Istanbul simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins. Many western writers and travelers find this charming. But for the city's more sensitive and attuned residents, these ruins are reminders that the present city is so poor and confused that it can never again dream of rising to its former heights of wealth, power, and culture. It is no more possible to take pride in these neglected dwellings, which dirt, dust, and mud have blended into their surroundings, than it is to rejoice in the beautiful old wooden houses that as a child I watched burn down one by one....

The tristesse that Lévi-Strauss describes is what a Westerner might feel as he surveys those vast poverty-stricken cities of the tropics, as he contemplates the huddled masses and their wretched lives. But he does not see the city through their eyes. Tristesse implies a guilt-ridden Westerner who seeks to assuage his pain by refusing to let cliché and prejudice color his impressions. Hüzün, on the other hand, is not a feeling that belongs to the outside observer. To varying degrees, classical Ottoman music, Turkish popular music, especially the arabesque that became popular during the 1980s, are all expressions of this emotion, which we feel as something between physical pain and grief. And Westerners coming to the city often fail to notice it....

Likewise, the hüzün in Turkish poetry after the foundation of the Republic, as it too expresses the same grief that no one can or would wish to escape, an ache that finally saves our souls and also gives them depth. For the poet, hüzün is the smoky window between him and the world. The screen he projects over life is painful because life itself is painful. So it is, also, for the residents of Istanbul as they resign themselves to poverty and depression. Imbued still with the honor accorded it in Sufi literature, hüzün gives their resignation an air of dignity, but it also explains their choice to embrace failure, indecision, defeat, and poverty so philosophically and with such pride, suggesting that hüzün is not the outcome of life's worries and great losses but their principal cause. So it was for the heroes of the Turkish films of my childhood and youth, and also for many of my real-life heroes during the same period: They all gave the impression that because of this hüzün they'd been carrying around in their hearts since birth they could not appear desirous in the face of money, success, or the women they loved. Hüzün does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Istanbul; it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.

SOURCE: Istanbul: Memories and the City, by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, 2006), pp. 101, 103-104

Two New Books on the U.S. Supreme Court

Other priorities prevented me from blogging about an interview with two guests on Monday that was one of the best I've recently witnessed on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Both experts had surprising things to say that were well researched, well articulated, and (best of all) anathema to conventional wisdom—unlike every single interview with political spokespeople (Sen. Tempest, R-Red State, vs. Sen. Tantrum, D-Blue State), and unlike the increasingly predictable punditry of the dynasty of Republican sympathizers (David Gergen, Paul Gigot, David Brooks, and many likely heirs) who debate the durable Democratic dinosaur (Mark Shields, the NewsHour equivalent of Special Report's Fred Barnes, neither of whom can think outside the party line).

RAY SUAREZ: Now, two veteran court watchers offer some perspectives on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In "The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America," George Washington University Law Professor Jeffrey Rosen examines the importance of judicial temperament throughout the court's history.

Jan Crawford Greenburg, former NewsHour regular and now a legal correspondent for ABC News, looks at the making of the current court in "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court."

I talked with them recently in the Moot Court Room at the George Washington University Law School.

Well, Jeffrey Rosen, Jan Crawford Greenburg, between your two books we get 220 years of court history. Was it always clear that the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Rosen, was going to be the important institution that it became?

JEFFREY ROSEN, George Washington University: Certainly not. When John Marshall, the greatest chief justice, took over, it was a backwater. The court met in the basement of the Capitol. People kept turning down the job of chief justice, because it wasn't considered important enough. Congress refused to allow the court to meet for two years.

It was not a prestigious job, by any means. And the progress of the court from that embattled backwater to the strong, self-confident institution we know today is largely a reflection of the personalities that made it up. That's what's so striking: It really is character and temperament that made the court into the strong institution.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you put a lot of store in your story in the personal attributes of these men who became both associates and chiefs over the years. Was this something that you even understood at first? How important personality, temperament was?

JEFFREY ROSEN: No, I was so struck by this. I just thought, why not pair justices? Take a pragmatic justice who's able to compromise with a brilliant justice who's more interested in ideological purity. And I found in these pairings that the brilliant ideologue was less successful than the pragmatic justice.

And it's surprising. Take Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Marshall Harlan. Holmes is a great liberal icon. People think he was a great defender of civil rights, but it was actually the opposite.

He was a radical majoritarian, based on his experience in the Civil War. He said, "I hate justice. If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell, I will help them. It's my job." He almost never met a law he was willing to strike down, and he upheld some of the darkest laws that were passed by Congress, including those subverting African-American voting rights.

By contrast, John Harlan, a former slaveholder, the only southerner on the court, less brilliant than Holmes. Holmes condescended to him and said, you know, he was the last of the great "tobacco-spitting judges." He was very emotional and moralistic.

But Harlan, based on his experience in the Civil War as a practical politician, understood the central achievement of Reconstruction, wrote that great dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, objecting to the court's decision to uphold railway segregation, and, because of his personal experience, was able to foreshadow the great Civil Rights revolution that the Warren Court wouldn't recognize for almost a century.

It's an incredible lesson about the importance of judicial temperament.

Personalities on the bench

RAY SUAREZ: Now, Jan Crawford Greenburg, Jeff Rosen's personalities and also events in history shape, mold the court, and sort of leave it at the doorstep for you to begin your story with the modern court and how the table was set for the struggles of today.

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG, Legal Correspondent, ABC News: Right. And I focus on the Rehnquist court, which was together for 11 years, longer than any other Supreme Court of nine justices in history, and how that court, with those justices, came to be and, in many ways, came to disappoint conservatives and the Republican presidents who nominated them.

And personalities had something to do with it. Some of the justices just didn't turn out to be as conservative as conservatives had believed. But others who came on the court with very strong conservative views affected the court in unexpected ways.

One of the most surprising stories that I came across during my research was the role, the real role of Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. Now, he came on the court in 1991. And immediately he was portrayed as kind of following in Scalia's footsteps, that Antonin Scalia was his mentor, you know, that he wasn't necessarily just thinking for himself.

But I found all these documents in the Library of Congress that showed just the opposite was true and that, if any justice that year was changing his vote to join the other, it was Scalia changing his vote to join Justice Thomas. That wasn't the storyline that we heard at the time.

Thomas came on the court with such strongly held, clear, independent views. So what happened that term is the court went inexplicably to the left. He replaced this liberal icon, Thurgood Marshall. But that year, the court moved to the left.

And the reason why is that Justice O'Connor, the justice that we look to in the middle, the moderate justice who saw herself as kind of a balanced person, she moved over to the left that term, in response, I argue, to some of Justice Thomas' very strongly argued views.

Read the whole thing. The new PBS documentary on The Supreme Court, based on Rosen's book, is also worth watching (reviewed here).

Romanian Synonymy: Horse Traders and Maize

Regional synonyms constitute a “pair” of two or more words identical in sense, known and used by a group in at least one locality at a given moment in time [emphasis in original]. Thus, with regard to regional synonymy as well, the degree to which we accept words as synonyms depends on how they fit in time and place.

Sever Pop (cf. 1929) used to note that, within the territory of Romania, the following terms can be found to denote the concept of ‘horse trader’: barâşnic, craşcadău, cupeţ, factor, fleşer, geambaş, gheşeftar, ghiambabău, gârgez, făznar, hendler, herghelier, hâmbluitor, liverant, mecler, năstrăpaş, negustor, peţer, pilar, potlogar, precupeţ, precupitor, semsar, sfârnar, sfârnăroiu, şmecher, ţânzar, ţigan, tuşer. No one doubts that all the terms listed denote the same concept. The question that arises is the following: can each and every one of these words be considered synonyms? According to some definitions, still in circulation, all words that express the same notion are considered synonyms. Glancing over the list of words above, we observe that only the word negustor, which is the general term, and to a certain degree the word geambaş, are more widely known and can be considered synonyms; the rest are known only in more or less restricted areas. For the great majority of Romanians, words like barâşnic, gârgez, hendler, mecler, tuşer, and so forth do not mean anything; they are just as unintelligible as any others in a foreign language. Of course, in many places negustor can be a synonym of făznar, and geambaş with herghelier [‘herder’], and so on, but this only happens in certain places and not across the whole territory where Romanian is spoken.

These examples prove once again that for two or more words to be considered synonyms it is not sufficient that they express the same notion. And in cases of regional synonymy, the notion of synonym must be localized and made concrete.

Situations like those discussed above are very common in Romanian; they may be found on almost every linguistic map but are not mentioned except sporadically. So, for example, Marius Sala (1958), after analyzing the distribution of terms for ‘maize’, established that porumb is synonymous with păpuşoi [cf. păpuşă ‘doll, puppet’], cucuruz [usu. ‘corncob’; Russian кукурузы, South Slavic kukuruz], mălai [usu. ‘cornmeal’]. All of these words are fairly widely distributed (cf. map 900 in the Atlas of Romanian Linguistics). At present, porumb, being the general, literary term, is synonymous with păpuşoi, cucuruz, mălai in those areas where the latter are used. But the question arises whether păpuşoi, cucuruz, and mălai can be considered synonymous with each other. In the first place, at their points of intersection, they can be completely synonymous, except in cases where certain semantic differences intervene. Second, because of their wide usage, even in literature by great writers, we can admit that they form a set of synonyms at the level of literary language, if not everywhere, at least widely enough. But what do we do with the term tenchi, borrowed from Magyar and recorded at just one locale on the same map? In every other zone, tenchi is a foreign word, and therefore cannot be synonymous with the other words that denote ‘maize’. (Tenchi may eventually become synonymous with porumb or with mălai to the extent that the latter are known and used in the locality where tenchi was recorded.)

SOURCE: "Synonymy and dialects" (4.1.1.4) in Probleme de sinonimie, by Onufrie Vinţeler (Bucureşti: Editură Sţiinţifică şi Encliclopedică, 1983) [my translation].

I don't have any problem with considering terms in different languages to be synonyms. That's what translationese, calques, and 直訳 are all about.

UPDATE: In response to Language Hat, I need to clarify that when I accept "synonyms" across separate languages, I'm thinking of communities where nearly everyone speaks at least two languages, and where people switch between them as frequently and as easily as they or others might switch between dialects of the same language. I've spent some time in such communities. In fact, my first published paper in graduate school after returning from fieldwork in a New Guinea village whose unique language I had been sent to describe was not not a paper just about the new , undocumented language but one on "multilingualism and language mixture" among the people of that village. People borrowed and calqued all the time, and even recreated for my benefit "pure" equivalents (rarely used by anyone else) in their own language by calquing backwards out of either the local church lingua franca, whose usage has since faded to the point that young people are no longer likely to recognize the source of those words; or else Tok Pisin, which supplies nearly every community in New Guinea an extra set of very general synonyms for specific words in their own languages. Romanians did much the same a few centuries ago when they borrowed a load of new vocabulary from French, then creating Romanianized shapes for many of the words. Those pairs became synonyms. Sometimes the synonyms carved up semantic space in complementary fashion, and sometimes one form gave way to the other.

I plan to translate several more chunks from Vinţeler's chapter on borrowings and synonymy. He compiled a lot of good examples.

Two Chinese Views on Mongol Writing, 1237

Peng Daya:
As regards their matters of administration, they write with wooden twigs. Their writing looks like frightened snakes and writhing earthworms; it looks like the magical writing in the Books of Heaven; their characters look like the wu, fan, Gong[?] and chi of musical notation. They are closely related to the characters of the Uighurs.

Xu Ting:
I, Ting, have concerned myself with this. The Tartars originally had no writing. Today, however, they use three different kinds.

For written communication in the Tartar lands proper they always use small pieces of wood, three or four inches in length on which they make incisions in the four corners. If for instance ten horses are to be sent, they make ten notches. As a rule they only cut the required number. Their customs are pure and their thoughts honest. Hence also their language is without ambiguity. According to their laws, liars are punished by death. Thus nobody dares to betray. Even if they had no writing, they would still be capable of founding an independent state. These small pieces of wood are the same as the wooden tablets of antiquity.

For their written correspondence with the Uighurs they utilise the Uighur system of writing. Chinqai is the master of this. The Uighur system of writing has only 21 letters. The others are formed by adding something on one or the other side of the letter.

For written correspondence with the conquered Chinese states, with the Kitan and the Jurchen, they make use exclusively of Chinese writing. Chucai [Ch'u-ts'ai] is the master of this. But apart from this, before the date at the end of the letter, Chinqai in his own hand writes in Uighur letters the words: 'To be sent to NN'. This is presumably a security measure that is directed only at Chucai. Hence every piece of writing has to be marked with such a confirmation in Uighur; without it it has no official validity. This is obviously a measure to make sure that all correspondence passes through Chinqai's hands, in order to ensure mutual control.

In the city schools in Yanjing it is mainly the Uighur writing that is taught along with translation into the Tartar language. No sooner have the pupils learnt to translate, than they begin to function as interpreters and then in company with Tartars go on violent rampages, where without inhibitions they begin to act as masters of punishment or favour and extort bribes, goods, services, and foodstuffs.

The systems of writing that the Kitan and the Jurchen originally possessed are never used by the Tartars.

"Heida Shilüe (Brief Account of the Black Tartars)," in Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing, edited by Tabish Khair, Martin Leer, Justin D. Edwards, and Hanna Ziadesh (Indiana U. Press, 2005), pp. 109-111

Pamuk on Cihangir, Istanbul

It was in Cihangir [named for Mughal Emperor Jahangir] (where we too would move as our fortunes dwindled) that I first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives—a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what—but an archipelago of neighborhoods in which everyone knew one another. When I looked out the window; I didn't see just the Bosphorus and the ships moving slowly down the familiar channels, I also saw the gardens between the houses, old mansions that had not yet been pulled down, and children playing between their crumbling walls. As with so many houses that look out on the Bosphorus, there was, just in front of the building, a steep and winding cobblestone alley that went all the way down to the sea. On snowy evenings I would stand with my aunt and my cousin and watch from afar with the rest of the neighborhood as noisy, happy children slid down this alley on sleds, chairs, and planks of wood.

The center of the Turkish film industry—which put out seven hundred films a year in those days and was ranked second largest in the world, after India—was in Beyoğlu, on Yeşilçam Street, only ten minutes away, and because many of the actors lived in Cihangir, the neighborhood was full of the "uncles" and tired, heavily made-up "aunties" who played the same character in every film they did. So when children recognized actors they knew only from their hackneyed film personae (for example, Vahi Öz, who always played the fat old card shark who seduced innocent young housemaids), they'd heckle them and chase them down the street. At the top of the steep alley, on rainy days, cars would skid on the wet cobblestones, and trucks had to struggle to get to the top; on sunny days, a minibus would appear from nowhere, and actors, lighting men, and "film crews" would pile out; after shooting a love scene in ten minutes flat, they would disappear again. It was only years later, when I happened to see one of these black-and-white films on television, that I realized the true subject was not the love affair raging in the foreground but the Bosphorus glittering in the distance.

While I was looking at the Bosphorus through the gaps between the apartment buildings of Cihangir, I learned something else about neighborhood life: There must always be a center (usually a shop) where all the gossip is gathered, interpreted, and assessed. In Cihangir this center was the grocery store on the ground floor of our apartment building. The grocer was Greek (like most of the other families living in the apartments above him); if you wanted to buy anything from Ugor, you'd lower a basket from your floor and then shout down your order. Years later, when we moved into the same building, my mother, who found it unbecoming to shout down to the grocer every time she wanted bread or eggs, preferred to write her order down on paper and send it down in a basket much more stylish than those used by our neighbors.

SOURCE: Istanbul: Memories and the City, by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, 2006), pp. 85-87

UPDATE: This post was noted by the Carpetblogger, who not only comes from a neighborhood neighboring Cihangir, but also offers some useful advice for those who wonder whether they're fit for expat life, which concludes thus:

The Buddha said the root of all suffering is desire. It's one of the four noble truths. That dude clearly spent a lot of time abroad.

Ibn Battuta's Impressions of Mali, 1352

This desert is bright, luminous. Traversing it, one breathes deeply; one is in good spirits, and safe from robbers. The desert here contains many wild cattle. A flock of them might come so near to a caravan that people can hunt them with dogs and arrows. However, eating their meat creates thirst and, as such, many people avoid it as a consequence. If killed, water is found in their stomachs and I have seen the Massûfa squeezing the stomach and drinking the water. There are also many snakes.

A merchant of Tilimsan known as al-Hajj Zaiyân was in our caravan. He had the habit of catching these snakes and playing with them. I had asked him not to do this but he would not desist. He put his hand into a lizard's hole one day and found a snake there instead. He grasped it and was about to mount his horse. But the snake bit the finger of his right hand, inflicting severe pain on him. The wound was cauterized, but in the evening the pain worsened. He cut the throat of a camel and kept his hand in its stomach all night. The flesh of his finger loosened and then he sliced off his finger at the base. The Massûfa told me that the snake must have drunk water before biting him, or the bite would have killed him.

When the people coming to meet us with water had reached us, our mounts were given water. We entered an extremely hot desert. It was not like the one we had just experienced. We would leave after the afternoon prayer, travel all night and stop in the morning. Men from the Massûfa and Badama and other tribes brought us loads of water for sale. We reached the city of Iwalatan at the beginning of the month of rabi'i [17 April 1352] after a journey of two months from Sijilmasa. It is the first district in the country of the Blacks. The Sultan's deputy here is Farba Husain; farba means 'deputy'.

On arriving, the merchants deposited their goods in a clearing and the Blacks assumed responsibility for them. The merchants went to the Farba who was sitting on a mat in a shelter. His officials were standing in front of him holding spears and bows, and the Massûfa notables were behind him. The merchants stood in front of him, and he spoke to them through an interpreter as a sign of his contempt for them even though they were close to him. On observing their bad manners and contempt for white people, I was sorry I had come to their land. I retired to the house of ibn Badda', a kind man of Sala from whom I had let a house by request.

The inspector of Iwalatan, named Mansha Ju [lit. Royal Slave], invited those who had come in the caravan to a reception. I refused to attend. My companions urged me very strongly to accept, and finally I accompanied the rest. At the reception coarsely ground anli was served mixed with honey and curdled milk. This was put in a half gourd shaped like a large bowl. Those present drank and then left. I asked them: 'Is it for this that the Blacks invited us?' They replied: 'Yes. For them it is the greatest hospitality.' I became convinced that no good could be expected from these people, and I wished to join the pilgrims travelling out of Iwalatan. But I decided to go and see the capital of their king before leaving. I stayed in Iwalatan for about fifty days in all. Its people treated me with respect and were hospitable... The town of Iwalatan is very hot. There were some small palms and they had sowed melons in their shade. Water came from underground sources. Mutton was plentiful. Their clothes were of fine quality and of Egyptian origin. Most of the inhabitants belong to the Massûfa. The women are of exceptional beauty and are more highly respected than the men.

SOURCE: "Ibn Battuta, World Traveller (b. 1304)," in Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing, edited by Tabish Khair, Martin Leer, Justin D. Edwards, and Hanna Ziadesh (Indiana U. Press, 2005), pp. 294-296

Also see Ibn Battuta and His Saharan Travels and Ibn Battuta on the Web.

Montessori Schools Turn 100, Find New Fans

The Montessori approach to education is now 100 years old, reports today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Its teaching methods once revolutionary are now used in traditional classrooms, with many public schools, including a few in Seattle, making a home for Montessori programs. Still, the trend toward standardized tests -- and the need to prepare students for those exams -- is making Montessori a little less popular in public school districts.

At the same time, the unpopularity of standardized tests is driving some parents to Montessori schools....

"It's a lot more free-form," said Troy Basel as he finished his lunch. "It's a lot easier to get to the teachers."

Montessori does have structure. But classrooms are based on creating natural connections to reading, writing and arithmetic. Children study algebra, U.S. history, Shakespeare, physics, biology and chemistry, yet are also "free to be who you want to be," added 14-year-old Kate Rzegocki.

Pacific Crest also is predominantly white -- 10 percent of its students are members of minorities. Historically, people thought of Montessori schools as dominated by wealthier, and often white, families, even though Maria Montessori created the system to serve poor children, said Laura Holt, who is on the board of the Pacific North West Montessori Association.

The image is changing around the city. Today, the Islamic School of Seattle offers a Montessori program. On Capitol Hill, one quarter of the students at the Learning Tree Montessori preschool are members of minorities, and the same percentage receives tuition subsidies, said Holt, assistant director of the school.

After a very regimented year in a Chinese preschool when she was 2 (and passing for 3), our daughter attended Montessori schools from preschool through 6th grade, and still thinks fondly of those years. I still remember how excited her teachers were when she finally found the courage to cross the threshold into the room where slightly older kids were doing their activities.

The Shah of Iran's Travel Diary, 6 July 1873

I have noticed today a curious state of mind among the French: first of all they are still in mourning over this recent war with Germany and all of them, young and old, are sad and melancholy. The women of the people, ladies and gentlemen still wear mourning dress, with few ornaments and of a great simplicity. Some of them cried occasionally 'Long live the Marshal! Long live the Shah of Persia!' I heard one cry while I went for a promenade in the evening: 'May his reign be firm and long-lasting!'

It seems that in France several parties want a return of the monarchy. Among them there are three tendencies: one wishes for the return of the son of Napoleon III; another that of a descendant of Louis-Philippe; another that of Henri V; who belongs to the Bourbon dynasty, and who is descended from the family of Louis-Philippe, but by another branch. The advocates of a republic are equally numerous, but they too are divided in opinion: some want a red republic, that is a radical one; others want a moderate republic which would have the institutions of a monarchy, but no king; others want something else again. At the moment, governing in the middle of all these parties is very difficult and this situation may have detrimental consequences, unless all these tendencies come to an agreement, and a real monarchy or a real republic is established. Once the French state was the strongest of all, and everybody had to take it into account. Now with all these numerous divergent opinions it is difficult to preserve order within the country ...

The Palace in which we reside was previously that of the Parliament, that is, the assembly of deputies of the nation. After the fall of Napoleon III and the installation of a Republic, the deputies and all the figures of State have left for Versailles and have left the city of Paris completely deprived of government administration. The city of Paris, in fact, belongs to the plebeians and the peasants. They may do as they like, the government does not have the means to oppose them. The Palace of the Tuileries, which was the most beautiful palace in the world, is now totally destroyed: the Communards set fire to it. Only the walls remain. I was very sad about it. But thank God, the Palace of Louvre, which was next to that of the Tuileries, has been preserved and has not suffered damage. The City Hall, which was a beautiful monument, and the Palace of the Legion of Honour have both been burnt to the ground. The Communards have broken down and removed the column of Vendome, which Napoleon I had built from cannon conquered from the enemy, on top of which his statue had been erected and on which scenes from all his battles had been engraved. Now nothing remains except the plinth of the column.

Paris is a very beautiful city, pretty, pleasant, generally sunny; its climate is very similar to that of Iran.

SOURCE: Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing, edited by Tabish Khair, Martin Leer, Justin D. Edwards, and Hanna Ziadesh (Indiana U. Press, 2005), pp. 258-259

WW2 Interservice Rivalry in the U.S. and Japan

Interservice rivalry existed in Tokyo, to be sure, but on the fighting front both services cooperated fully, as was evident in Malaya, where General Tomoyuki Yamashita and Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa displayed perfect teamwork. In the Guadalcanal operations, also, the Japanese Army and Navy cooperated.

The Americans at the front, however, did not yield to each other. One conspicuous example of this occurred when an emergency policy conference was held on 4 September 1942 at Noumea to discuss the Japanese counteroffensive, which was endangering the American forward lines. Present at the conference were Admiral Nimitz, CINCPAC; General Arnold, Air Force Chief of Staff; Admiral Ghormley, Commander in Chief, South Pacific; General Sutherland, Chief of Staff, Far Eastern Army; and General Turner, Commandant of Marine Corps. General MacArthur refused to come to the meeting. When Admiral Nimitz asked General MacArthur for 10,000 soldiers as reinforcements, MacArthur turned down the request, saying that he could not divert a single man from the New Guinea operations—even though he then had 55,000 men under his command. When MacArthur in turn asked Admiral Nimitz for a fleet with two carriers, one Marine division, and a squadron of large bombers for his northward operations, Nimitz refused and explained that operations at Guadalcanal would not permit such a diversion of his forces.

When the situation at Guadalcanal became critical for the United States, President Roosevelt finally took direct measures to dissolve the interservice rivalry. On 24 October 1942 he sent an emergency order, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, directing the immediate reinforcement of Guadalcanal....

Turning to Japan, we see a different kind of rivalry. The battle of the Solomons was fought mainly by the Naval Air Force. Plane losses ran to the staggering total of 7,000. The nation's capacity for plane production should have been mobilized to replenish these losses. The Army, however, insisted on one half of all aircraft production for its own use. Since the Army Air Force had sustained no losses in the Solomons, it should have relinquished its quota to the Navy, but it did not. Two decades earlier, when the Navy under Admiral Tomosaburo Kato was feverishly trying to build its 8-8 Fleet, the Minister of War, General Giichi Tanaka, offered to divert part of his appropriations to assist the Navy's expansion. Such understanding and cooperation, however, could not be expected from the Army leadership of General Tojo. The Navy's antipathy toward Tojo was extreme, and men in the Navy Ministry were correspondingly disturbed by their weak leadership in Admiral Shigetaro Shimada. In the United States, harmony prevailed at the highest level of command, while discord erupted between field commanders. In Japan, on the other hand, there was harmony among field commanders of both various services, but disunity and friction at General Headquarters.

Meanwhile, the scheduled offensives were launched by Admiral Nimitz in the Gilberts and the Marshalls, and by General MacArthur in New Guinea. Japan had no way of knowing which was the main offensive line. She abandoned the Solomons operations, gave up her outer perimeters, and was forced to withdraw to an inner defensive line along the Marianas and the Philippines. This forced withdrawal left Japan with makeshift lines which were indefensible. If she had been content with these inner defensive lines in the first place, and had devoted her efforts to establishing strong positions along these lines, she would have given a much better account of herself.

SOURCE: The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, by Masanori Ito, trans. by Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau (Jove Books, 1984), pp. 88-92

Sending Cash Home to Eastern Europe, Central Asia

Many newly liberated/orphaned economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are now depending more and more on remittances from their citizens working abroad, like so many Pacific Island countries whose economies are based on MIRAB (PDF): MIgration, Remittances, Aid, and Bureacracy.

The largest amount of remittances, as a share of GDP, was sent to Moldova.

The study, using data from 2004, indicated that money sent there by migrants was equivalent to 27% of GDP, an estimated 705 million US dollars. Bosnia and Herzegovina (21%; $1.83bn), Albania (16%; $1.16bn) and Armenia (9%; $336m) were among the larger recipients.

Russia attracted migrants from other parts of the former Soviet Union, while poorer Central Asian workers were drawn to countries such as resource-rich Kazakhstan....

About 80% of Bulgarians and 62% of Romanians said they were not sending cash back to their home countries while working abroad....

While the report focused on the ECA nations, the Bank said that Tonga was the nation which had the largest level of remittance income as a proportion of GDP.

In pure monetary value, the latest World Bank figures show that India was the largest recipient of remittances, with about 22 billion US dollars being sent home in 2005. China and Mexico were also at the top end of the table.

In that year, total remittances globally topped 230 billion US dollars of which developing countries received 167 billion, more than twice the level of development aid from all sources.

via Colby Cosh

Dancing Destroyers and Submersible Freighters, 1942–43

In November [1942] there were on Guadalcanal nearly 15,000 Japanese officers and men, thousands of whom were incapacitated by sickness—malaria, stomach disorder, malnutrition. All day they had to fight against steadily growing enemy land forces. At night they were engaged in receiving such food, ammunition, stores, and medical supplies as might be brought in by fast destroyers or submarines. The "grocery runs" were made at full speed, under cover of darkness on moonless nights.

In hope of avoiding air attacks, Japanese destroyers stayed by day at Shortland Bay in Bougainville. Yet even there they were subjected to bombing attacks by the far-ranging American planes. These regular bombings were dubbed teikibin [定期便], meaning scheduled runs.

When the air-raid alarm sounded, all ships would get underway and maneuver violently, swinging their bows hard left or right to dodge the falling bombs. These attacks came so frequently and regularly that the destroyer skippers began to look forward to them as a chance for practicing evasive tactics. Admiral Tomiji Koyanagi, commander of the destroyer squadrons, nicknamed these evasive maneuvers the "Bon Dance" because of their left and right swinging movements, so reminiscent of the dancing in the annual Bon Festival of Lanterns. The dance of the destroyers was laughable, if one could ignore the deadly consequences of a misstep....

Deplorable as was this destroyer situation, the story of misused submarines is even sorrier.

When first-line submarines were employed almost exclusively in the demeaning task of supply operations, the war for Japan on a gloomy aspect despite many great naval victories.

Early in the effort of supplying Guadalcanal by surface ship, it was realized that nocturnal destroyer runs could not bring in enough material. Accordingly, submarines were detailed to the same task. As need for supplies increased, more submarines were assigned until, by January 1943, thirty-eight submarines were eventually involved. This "submerged freight service" cost Japan the loss of 20 submarines and their seasoned crews. During this period another four submarines were sunk in the Solomons area while on regular patrol. The loss of 24 submarines in a few short months was bad enough, but it was especially painful that 20 of these aggressive fighting machines should be lost in the course of nonaggressive operations for which they were never intended.

Submarines assigned to this duty were stripped of all torpedoes, shells, and guns to make room for supplies. Crews were dejected when informed of their mission, even though they realized the importance of bringing needed materials to Guadalcanal. It was a further blow to morale when the crews witnessed enemy submarines, on proper offensive missions in the same area, attacking our ships and disrupting our supply lines.

Quite naturally our submariners felt that their proper and primary task was to cut off the line of supply between the mainland of the United States and Guadalcanal, or to attack the line of communication between Guadalcanal and Australia. Disruption of the enemy's line of communication to Guadalcanal—so much more extended than that of Japan—would have been far easier for Japanese submarines had they been allowed to pursue their proper function. And it would also have been far more profitable to the Japanese war effort.

With only three Japanese submarines engaged in offensive operations around Guadalcanal, it is to their great credit that they succeeded in sinking the enemy aircraft carrier Wasp. The poor showing of Japanese submarines in World War II, as compared with those of Germany and the United States, must be attributed in major part to their unwise employment in late 1942 and early 1943.

If the thirty-odd Japanese submarines available in the Solomons had been mobilized offensively to the east and south of Guadalcanal they could have seriously disrupted enemy convoys and been a great threat to the supply strategy of the United States. When Japanese submarines were finally released from logistic support operations and resumed regular offensive tasks, there was a marked increase in their effectiveness against enemy ships.

SOURCE: The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, by Masanori Ito, trans. by Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau (Jove Books, 1984), pp. 79-83

Wordcatcher Tales: Rengou Kantai, Ketteisen

The other old mass-market paperback that I recently bought for $1.39 was The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, by Masanori Ito (1956), translated by Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau (1962). It offers an interesting critical retrospective on the Pacific War from the point of view of the Japanese Navy's high command. It also offers a chance to combine book excerpts with Wordcatcher Tales.

聯合艦隊 rengou kantai – 聯合 rengou 'combined, united' has now been simplified to 連合. The first character also occurs in the abbreviated name of the old Soviet Union (ソ連 soren [so- is short for sobietto 'Soviet']) and in the translation of United Kingdom (連合王国 rengou oukoku). The second word, which can mean either 'fleet' (if large) or 'squadron' (if small) is composed of 艦 kan 'warship' and 隊 tai 'squad, troop'. In Japanese, navy submarines are warships, not "boats": 潜水艦 sensuikan 'submerge-water-warship'. The 隊 tai can also translate 'corps', as in 挺身隊 teishintai 'volunteer (lit. 'offer-body') corps', which is the standard term for the military 'comfort women' in Korean (chŏngshindae).

TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE "Rengo Kantai" is a familiar and honored term meaning "Combined Fleet." When World War II began, the Japanese Navy—the third most powerful in the world—included some of the mightiest ships in naval history and was a force worthy of the pride and trust of the Japanese people. Then, in less than four years, this great war machine fell from glory to oblivion. Of ten battleships riding in Hiroshima Bay in December, 1941, nine were sunk. The lone survivor, Nagato, died at Bikini Island as a target in an atomic bomb test.

As early as the spring of 1946, Bungei Shunju magazine urged me to write of the last days of the Combined Fleet. I refused because I did not wish to disturb the dead bodies of my friends. Even if I had forced myself to write, I would not then have been able to assemble all the material now available to me. In the years since Japan's defeat, the war-troubled mind of the people has been calmed, but I find that there is still nostalgia for the Combined Fleet in many hearts. It was at the request of Japanese readers that my newspaper articles were assembled into this book.

Movements to romanize our language may some day succeed [!!], but the ideographs for Rengo Kantai [聯合艦隊] will always stir Japanese hearts, just as do some of Admiral Heihachiro Togo's famous words. His dispatch as battle was about to be joined at Tsushima Strait: "The enemy has been sighted; the Combined Fleet is moving to annihilate him. The waves are high but the day is clear." [pp. 1-2]

決定戦 ketteisen 'decisive battle, showdown' – The components are 決める kimeru 'to decide', as in the Sino-Japanese compound 解決 kaiketsu 'solution, settlement'; 定める sadameru 'to decide, fix', as in the compound 定食 teishoku 'set meal'; and 戦う tatakau 'to fight', as in the compound 戦争 sensou 'war'. The term can refer to any kind of decisive showdown, whether between sumo wrestlers, gameshow contestants, or dinosaurs.

Army leaders in Japan believed that the United States could be easily defeated. But Admirals Yamamoto and Nagano knew the temper, traits, and character of the American people, as well as the military history of the country, and they had no illusions of an easy victory for Japan.

Their hope was that Japan might quickly achieve such overwhelming successes that the United States would accept a compromise peace. There was risk involved, but Yamamoto decided in favor of decisive battle. The question then remained as to where the battle should be fought. The Naval General Staff hoped that it could be in the Solomons.

The Solomon Islands, stretching southeasterly from Rabaul to Guadalcanal, could provide valuable bases for the Japanese fleet. The General Staff figured that seizure of these islands would constitute such a threat to Allied lines of communications that the United States Navy would oppose their occupation, and could then be annihilated. This concept depended heavily on the enemy's rising to the bait. If the enemy shied from decisive battle in the Solomons, Japan would be faced with a long war.

Admiral Yamamoto, on the other hand, advocated Midway as the battleground. He reasoned that Japanese occupation of Midway and the Aleutians (all part of the same operation plan), would guarantee a challenge from the United States Navy. He felt that Americans could accept the fall of Guam and Wake, but that they would not tolerate Japan's advance beyond the 180th meridian. He also felt that his Midway plan had a better chance of success than the Solomons strategy.

The Midway strategy, however, involved a greater risk. The distance from Japan's Inland Sea to Midway is more than twice the distance from Pearl Harbor to Midway. Midway's comparative proximity to Pearl Harbor would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Japan to support an island garrison. The chance was very great that the enemy could easily recapture the atoll.

But Admiral Yamamoto argued that the opportunity for a decisive battle must be expected to entail risk. Midway should be seized. If the enemy came out to regain the island, Japan's long-sought opportunity would be provided. A fleet-opposed action of Japan's choosing would lead the way to another "Pearl Harbor," in which, this time, enemy aircraft carriers could be destroyed. With the U.S. Navy's strength divided between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Yamamoto felt that the Pacific half would fall easy victim to the concentrated Combined Fleet of Imperial Japan. [pp. 52-53]

Operation Bismarck Sea, 2–4 March 1943

One reason I've been posting a bit less is that I've been reading a book that is not very bloggable—Operation Bismarck Sea, by Lawrence Cortesi (Major Books, 1977)—which I picked up for $1.39 at a used book store. It interested me because it describes a major air–sea battle in the area of Papua New Guinea in which I did fieldwork in 1976, and where I heard many stories about the Pacific War in that neighborhood. I shan't keep it. There are much better resources online these days.

The little mass-market paperback book has all the accuracy of a TV docudrama by Ollie North. In other words, it has lots of accurate and fascinating facts and figures, but it's quite one-sided. Among the earliest tipoffs that the Japanese side was badly misrepresented was the improbable name Yukata Tishayuna, a fictional captain subordinate to the real admiral Masatomi Kimura (citing the names in English order). That, plus the fact that the captain addresses his superior as the 'Honorable Kimura', and the Japanese speak in orientalized clichés:

"Before the first buds of cherry blossoms seek the sunlight of spring," the aide said, "we shall destroy the cancer at Wau."

"Banzai," Okabe answered softly with a grin.

Other names are also screwed up: a Japanese ship named Arishio (蟻潮 'ant tide'?) instead of Arashio (荒潮 'rough tide'); and an island called Undoi instead of Umboi (the former somehow distinguished from Rooke Island, the latter synonymous with Rooke Island, and also known as Siassi Island).

Nevertheless, there is one passage that seems worth quoting on pp. 182-183:

The Imperial Japanese Staff had always been too cautious, even when they possessed far superior numbers. They were never willing to commit more troops or planes or ships than necessary, especially in air and sea battles.

At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had come up short of a true knockout blow because they were too cautious to move in for the kill and perhaps occupy the Hawaiian Islands. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, though their forces far outnumbered the understrength Allies, they retired after suffering the loss of a single carrier, even though they had sunk two American carriers. In the Battle of Midway, although Japan's air and sea units had suffered losses, they still had a formidable, unscathed striking force in the area; but instead of pressing on against the depleted American carrier force, they again retired.

The same might be said of the Solomons campaign. Japanese caution was the major reason for American success at Guadalcanal. In most of the naval fights during the Solomon campaign, the Japanese task forces did more damage to the American navy than the Americans had meted out. Yet, after successful naval engagements, such as the Battles of Savo Island or Cape Esperance, the Japanese naval units retired after their victories instead of pressing forward. As a result, they had allowed the American navy to lick its wounds and regain its strength.

As to Japan's aerial strategy, the worst kind of caution prevailed. While American pilots were generally superior to Japanese pilots, and while the American P-38 was superior to the Hamp and Zero fighter plane, the Japanese could muster many more planes. Further, they were superior to the earlier P-39 and P-40 used by the American air force prior to 1943. Yet they never sent more than a squadron or two of fighter planes into an aerial engagement. They thus allowed even terms to inferior numbers of Allied army and navy units, which could rarely muster more than a squadron or two of planes to meet a Japanese challenge. So, because of the superior training of Allied airmen, the Allied pilots usually defeated their opponents.

The Japanese also followed this caution in the use of their bombers. Hundreds of Sally and Betty bombers sat on the many Japanese air bases in the Bismarck Archipelago, especially at Rabaul. Yet they rarely committed more than 20 or 30 bombers to an air attack against an Allied base. Against navy ships, the Japanese only used their light naval fighter-bombers. They rarely sent their heavy and medium bombers that were only a stone's throw from the Ironbottom Strait [or Sound] in the Solomons where most of the action took place during the Guadalcanal operation. The biggest raid ever conducted by the Japanese in the Southwest Pacific was the 5-plane raid on Port Moresby in February, 1942.

At the conference in Rabaul in February 1943, where the Japanese staff planned operation 157, Admiral Junichi Kasaka of the Imperial Eleventh Naval Air Fleet, boasted of his great airpower. He could count hundreds of planes scattered among the various Japanese airfields in the Bismarck Archipelago. Why then, didn't Admiral Kasaka maintain a cover of a hundred or even two-hundred planes over the convoy all the way from Rabaul to the Huon Gulf? Kasaka's land-based aircraft were never more than an hour or two from the route of Kimura's convoy. And, ironically, Kasaka did maintain heavy air cover over the convoy during the early part of the voyage, when the convoy was far into the Bismarck Sea and out of range of Allied medium or light bombers. But he failed to maintain this cover as the convoy neared Huon Gulf, within range of any Allied plane in New Guinea.

Moreover, Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, commander of the Eighth Outer Sea Fleet, could proclaim that he had all but chased the American navy from the Bismarck Archipelago because of his superior numbers in naval ships. Why then, didn't he allot one or even two aircraft carriers to escort the hugely important 22-ship convoy into Lae? Again, because the Japanese had an obsession with safeguarding their heavy strength. They kept planes and ships ever in reserve for future emergency.

My Reaction to the State of the Union Speech

I was only half-watching U.S. President Bush's State of the Union speech on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, but I came away very disappointed in Speaker Pelosi. Why? Well, for passing up the perfect chance to give the President a surprise shoulder-massage like the one he gave to German Chancellor Merkel. The House Speaker might have one more chance next year, but tensions between his shoulders and between the two political parties will be even worse in 2008, I expect.

Mongolia and Polynesia Have Japan Surrounded

The Champions List has now been posted for the most recently concluded Grand Sumo Tournament, the first for 2007. The winner of the highest division (Makuuchi) is, for the 20th time, the Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu (14-1). Ho-hum. The winner of the lowest (Jonokuchi) division is Hisanoumi (6-1), who hails from Tonga. About time another Polynesian worked his way up the ranks! And the winners of all the divisions in between—Juryo, Makushita, Sandanme, and Jonidan—are Japanese. That, too, is good for the future of Japan's unique sport.

Bougainville in Wonderland

The latest issue of The Contemporary Pacific (now online at Project Muse), contains a review (PDF) by Donald Denoon of what looks to be an interesting set of perspectives on Bougainville before, during, and after the worst of the recent conflict. Here's the beginning and end of the review.

Bougainville: Before the Conflict, edited by Anthony J Regan and Helga M Griffin. Canberra: Pandanus Books and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2005....

Events in Bougainville would challenge even the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1873), who sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. In 2004 the arch-secessionist Francis Ona, ignoring seven years of peacemaking and the election of an Autonomous Bougainville Government within Papua New Guinea, had himself crowned king of an independent Bougainville. His ally Noah Musingku, another fantasist and creator of fraudulent pyramid schemes, conducted the rites and became Prince David. But when Ona died, he received a state funeral from the state he did not recognize, subsidized (the ultimate insult?) by Australian aid.

Early in 2006, veterans of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and their once implacable enemies in the Resistance united to denounce Musingku’s dishonest fund-raising. The Autonomous Bougainville Government demanded that the Papua New Guinea Defense Force arrest Noah and disband and deport his Fijian soldiers. Meanwhile, the Bougainvillean minister for mines in the Papua New Guinea government offered to negotiate with multinational companies to resume copper mining at Panguna or elsewhere. Evidently anyone who understood Bougainville politics was misinformed....

It is impossible to summarize the richness of these studies, memoirs, and vignettes. James Tanis’s reflections (“Nagovisi villages”) are unusually eloquent but typical of the analytical and emotional power of these contributions. He left the university to join the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, fought to the end, engaged in peace negotiations, and served as a minister in Bougainville’s postwar government. He parted company with Francis Ona when Ona boycotted the peace process. Tanis reviews the prewar circumstances of Nagovisi and the land disputes that led to Ona’s supremacy—and his tragic descent into mysticism and irrelevance.

This is not a run-of-the-mill monograph. Like many other perceptive writers, Tanis raises more questions than anyone could possibly answer. He asks about the nature of Papua New Guinea’s stake in Bougainville; he ponders Australia’s interests in Panguna; and he wonders what unseen forces—global and regional—contributed to the destruction of the environment and years of civil war in Bougainville. And he concludes with the most radical of all questions: “After gaining political independence from colonial masters, do all third world nations enjoy only brief periods of real independence? Must they all then experience civil wars and revolutions and go bankrupt and join the queue awaiting solutions from elsewhere?”

How to End Another (Anti-)Opium War

I've been too busy with other projects lately to follow up on some news reports that relate to my recent excerpts from Rory Stewart's travels in Afghanistan, in particular Anne Applebaum's column last Tuesday advocating control rather than eradication of opium, the country's largest cash crop by far.

Of course it isn't fashionable right now to argue for any legal form of opiate cultivation. But look at the evidence. At the moment, Afghanistan's opium exports account for somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product, depending on whose statistics you believe. The biggest producers are in the southern provinces where the Taliban is at its strongest, and no wonder: Every time a poppy field is destroyed, a poor person becomes poorer -- and more likely to support the Taliban against the Western forces who wrecked his crops. Yet little changes: The amount of land dedicated to poppy production grew last year by more than 60 percent, as The Post reported last month....

Yet by far the most depressing aspect of the Afghan poppy crisis is that it exists at all -- because it doesn't have to. To see what I mean, look at the history of Turkey, where once upon a time the drug trade also threatened the country's political and economic stability. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey had a long tradition of poppy cultivation. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey worried that poppy eradication could "bring down the government." Just like Afghanistan, Turkey -- this was the era of "Midnight Express"-- was identified as the main source of the heroin sold in the West. Just like in Afghanistan, a ban was tried, and it failed.

As a result, in 1974 the Turks, with American and U.N. support, tried a different tactic. They began licensing poppy cultivation for the purpose of producing morphine, codeine and other legal opiates. Legal factories were built to replace the illegal ones. Farmers registered to grow poppies, and they paid taxes. You wouldn't necessarily know this from the latest White House drug strategy report-- which devotes several pages to Afghanistan but doesn't mention Turkey -- but the U.S. government still supports the Turkish program, even requiring U.S. drug companies to purchase 80 percent of what the legal documents euphemistically refer to as "narcotic raw materials" from the two traditional producers, Turkey and India.

Why not add Afghanistan to this list?

Registan contributor Joshua Foust notes an ominous sign that the U.S. seems to be taking the opposite approach.

President Bush has named William Wood as the new ambassador to Afghanistan.... Wood hails from Colombia, which makes sense. The theory must be that he has experience running an anti-narcotics effort. Of course, the anti-cocaine effort in Columbia is an abysmal failure, and repeating the same tactics in the anti-opium effort in Afghanistan look set to make the security problems—to say nothing of the drug problem—far, far worse.

Another Profile of Japan's Brazilian Workers

Associated Press reporter Joseph Coleman recently talked to a few people in Oizumi, home of Japan's largest Braziltown, in international Ota City in Gunma Prefecture just north of Tokyo, and just across the river from the recent Outlier haunt of Ashikaga City in Tochigi Prefecture. It's no surprise that the children of the immigrant workers seem to be having trouble fitting into either culture.

A labor shortage during the economic boom of the late 1980s produced a change in visa laws to let in descendants of Japanese emigrants. But if officials figured the immigrants would blend easily back into Japanese society, they were disappointed.

Today, Japan's 302,000 Brazilians are its third-largest foreign minority after Koreans and Chinese. Watanabe and the other foreigners of Oizumi are the human legacy of that policy.

Instead of a chain of schools to absorb the newcomers into Japan, the reverse seems to be happening.

In 1999 the Brazilian education company Pitagoras opened a school in Ota, a town neighboring Oizumi, to improve the foreign children's Portuguese and prepare them for a possible return to Brazil. Japan now has six Pitagoras outlets.

Maria Lucia Graciano Franca, a teacher at the Ota school, said many of the workers' children speak neither Portuguese nor Japanese well and have trouble fully adjusting to life in Brazil or Japan.

"They go back to Brazil, they stay for a while, and they come back here," she said as children practiced dance moves for a school concert. "And the ones who stay in Japan follow the same route as their parents - they work in the factories."

The grown-ups are torn too.

"Poor students need only love, idealism and martyrdom"

In today's New York Times, a 10th-grade history teacher at a public school in
the Bronx reviews Hollywood's latest inspirational-teacher flick.

The great misconception of these films is not that actual schools are more chaotic and decrepit — many schools in poor neighborhoods are clean and orderly yet still don’t have enough teachers or money for supplies. No, the most dangerous message such films promote is that what schools really need are heroes. This is the Myth of the Great Teacher.

Films like "Freedom Writers" portray teachers more as missionaries than professionals, eager to give up their lives and comfort for the benefit of others, without need of compensation. Ms. Gruwell sacrifices money, time and even her marriage for her job....

"Freedom Writers," like all teacher movies this side of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," is presented as a celebration of teaching, but its message is that poor students need only love, idealism and martyrdom.

I won't argue the need for more of the first two, but I'm always surprised at how, once a Ms. Gruwell wins over a class with clowning, tears, rewards and motivational speeches, there is nothing those kids can't do. It is as if all the previously insurmountable obstacles students face could be erased by a 10-minute pep talk or a fancy dinner. This trivializes not only the difficulties many real students must overcome, but also the hard-earned skill and tireless effort real teachers must use to help those students succeed.

It seems to me that Hollywood takes exactly the same short-attention-span approach to foreign policy. Each international crisis is a movie project. Activists devote their attention to it for six months or so, generating media events and raising tons of cash. When that's done, they take several months off, then they're ready for new causes, new projects, new scripts, new locations, new casts, new marriages. Nothing can't be solved by media events, cash, and lots of feel-good self-congratulation. Who cares if their solution bombs with the people it aims to rescue. They're not really the audience. They're somebody else's responsibility. And it was all somebody else's money to begin with.

Wordcatcher Tales: Iwo, Kakka, Kisamara

Yesterday I went to see the best Japanese movie I've seen in a long time: Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima (硫黄島からの手紙). Although Eastwood deserves the lion's share of the credit, and the Japanese actors were excellent (especially the leads, veteran Watanabe Ken as the commanding general and boyband star Ninomiya Kazunari as the slacker private), I appreciated above all the superb screenwriting by Iris Yamashita, who did an amazing job of bridging linguistic and cultural gaps. The wording of the Japanese dialogue and the English subtitles often diverged radically in order to make each appropriate to the context. Here are a few of the divergences.

硫黄 iou (also ryuuou, yuou) 'sulphur, brimstone' - Note that there is no /w/ in the current Japanese pronunciation of this most appropriate name for an island in the Volcano Archipelago (火山列島 Kazan Rettou) that was hell on earth for the men who fought there.

UPDATE: The Mandarin Chinese reading for this compound is liúhuáng. The second character, optional in many contexts, means 'yellow', but in this compound it is sometimes written with a 'stone' radical (硫磺). The regular Sino-Japanese match should be ryuukou (once written riu-kuwau), but both syllables of the island placename have suffered erosion: ryuu- > yuu- > yu- > i- and -kou > -ou.

閣下 kakka '(Your/His[/Her]) Excellency' - The commanding general is both addressed and referred to as kakka, a term of great deference but not a military rank. I learned my first two Japanese military ranks while watching the Japanese-dubbed Adventures of Rin Tin Tin as a kid: 軍曹 gunsou 'sergeant' and 中尉 chuui '1st lieutenant'. In English, several of the names for the officer ranks come in pairs: 1st and 2nd lieutenant, lieutenant and lieutenant junior grade, colonel and lieutenant colonel, commander and lieutenant commander, and (my favorite) rear admiral upper half and rear admiral lower half. In Japanese (and Chinese and Korean, I believe), they come in groups of three, each coming in small, middle, and large size:

• 少尉 shoui, 中尉 chuui, 大尉 taii for the company-grade officer ranks (USA/USN) '2nd lieutenant/ensign', '1st lieutenant/lieutenant junior grade', 'captain/lieutenant';
• 少佐 shousa, 中佐 chuusa, 大佐 taisa for the field-grade officer ranks 'major/lieutenant commander', 'lieutenant colonel/commander', 'colonel/captain';
• 少将 shoushou, 中将 chuushou, 大将 taishou (as in 将軍 shougun 'general of an army') for the general officer/flag officer ranks 'major general/rear admiral (2 stars)', 'lieutenant general/vice admiral (3 stars)', 'general/admiral (4 stars)'.

The much more problematical in-between ranks of 'brigadier/commodore' (with 1 star) are rendered by 准将 junshou '(lit.) quasi-general/semi-admiral'. In the U.S. Navy, commodores are now rear admirals (lower half).

貴様ら kisamara 'you collective (derog.)' - Japanese has a host of ways to translate English 'you'. (See the useful summary at the end of the Yale Anime Society glossary.) The most common ones used in the military context of the movie were the gruff, male-bonding omae (お前, etymologically 'honorable facing [person]') and the familiar, superior-to-subordinate kimi (君, etymologically 'lord'). The latter etymon is also the source of -kun, a familiar (usually male) equivalent of neutral -san 'Mr., Ms.' and polite -sama (様). As the derogation of 君 'lord' attests, the most derogatory terms often have the most noble origins. And few terms of address have dropped farther down the scale of politeness than 貴様 '(lit.) exalted/sacred-sama', which is now best rendered in English as 'you son-of-a-bitch, you bastard', in other words, the 'you' that precedes a fight.

I had heard kisama many times, but had never heard it with its collective suffix -ra—the impolite equivalent of -tachi—until I heard abusive officers use it in the movie script to address troops about to be punished, in fact, troops about to be summarily executed in one episode. That got me thinking about the contexts appropriate for using -ra vs. -tachi. At one end of the scale, you would not combine highly derogatory kisama with a neutral collective marker: *kisama-tachi sounds socially bizarre. At the other end of the scale, you would not (except ironically) combine polite anata with impolite -ra in *anata-ra (although the less respectful anta-ra sort of works, for me anyway). However, either collective suffix seems to work on the gruff, male-bonding terms: omae-ra and omae-tachi both work for 'you guys', just as ore-ra and ore-tachi do for 'us guys'.

UPDATE: Another tricky term of address I heard in the film was onore (己), which my electronic dictionary defines as either (1) 'oneself' (syn. jibun), (2) 'you' (syn. omae, anata), or (3) "Hey!; Damn it!; You son of a bitch!" [syn. kisama—J.]. In the film script, it was used by a gallant but kind-hearted commanding officer addressing his men after their situation was hopeless, telling them to do what they think is right (like Polonius: "to thine own self [onore] be true"), thus implicitly allowing them to choose surrender. The officer himself chose solitary suicide after being blinded by shrapnel.