これは何ですか。What’s this about?

…”I ask him if he is ‘out’ and he looks at me, moves his head slightly forward and asks, ‘Pardon?’”

“Are you out of the closet?” I explain.

He shakes his head from side to side a little, leans in and says slowly, “I’m not gay in Japanese, I’m only gay in English.”

The above excerpt introduces Marlen Elliot Harrison’s “Discovering Voices,” an examination of language, sexuality, and identity in 21^st century Japan. After living and teaching in Western Japan for 4 years, Harrison returned to the United States to complete a doctoral program in applied linguistics. When considering a dissertation topic, he recalled a conversation in which a friend discussed being gay in one language and not in another (above) and wanted to further explore why this might be. By weaving together his own narratives about Japan and sexuality with the autoethnographic narratives of queer Japanese individuals, Harrison showcases the intersection between linguistic repertoire and those critical moments when we conceptualize, reveal, and perform our sexualities. Harrison writes:

Reflection: “So what is it like to write a dissertation?”

“So what is it like to write a dissertation?”

I suppose this question had always been lurking in my head, and I know from time to time I pondered getting to the other side of 120 pages, only the first half, especially at the time when the project was merely an idea discussed over lunch in a Middle Eastern restaurant in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill. David had encouraged me to pursue the LGBT path because it had rarely been walked before. I questioned whether or not I wanted to be the “gay” researcher and how that might affect my future opportunities. We concluded together that I would be unlikely to want to work anywhere that wouldn’t welcome this part of me, that wouldn’t allow me to explore the answers to questions I so obviously wanted to research.

120 pages handed in, and then a sense of blank, grey, quiet, emptiness.

Feminist Communitarian Moral Framework

ENGL 815: Feminist Communitarian Moral/Ethical Framework

“presumes a researcher who builds a reciprocal, collaborative, trusting, and friendly relations with the persons he or she is studying.” (Denzin, 2003, p. xii)

INTRO: While planning my dissertation project, a narrative examination of the significance of English language and communication in the lives of self-identified queer Japanese, I often considered the difficulties inherent in being a researcher from the outside looking in. In other words, how could I possibly minimize or reduce my own ethnocentric analyses while also accepting the limitations of my own etic perspective?

ENGL 815 feminist communitarian (click me to view presentation handout)

New Narrative for Chapter 4

Taking the Narrative Turn

“We are the storytellers, and we are the stories we tell.”
(McAdams, D., Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A., 2006, p. 3)

After the last bite of salad, Dana suggested we take a walk to help digest our huge reunion dinner (it had been a year since we had last met; I was living in the States working on my PhD) and I’m so glad she did! Kyoto was a familiar city of serendipitous encounters and this night would prove to be no different.

We had both eaten so much tofu and daikon that we needed to get our bodies moving, otherwise that 20 minute train ride home would be agony as I stood squashed amongst drunk college students and businessmen, my food sitting in my stomach like a boulder. So, we paid our bill, thanked the restaurant owner with gochi so sama deshita and descended the small spiral staircase leading back to the street.

Kyoto was a city I knew fairly well, having both worked and lived just minutes from the famed, one-time capital. I liked to stroll the streets around Kawaramachi admiring the various examples of architecture, browsing modern stores like Benetton and The Body Shop and enjoying ocha or ame in centuries-old, traditional kisaten and confectionaries. My favorite streets in the city, where I often brought visitors to look for geisha and maiko , were just minutes east towards Gion and the Kyoto hills. If lucky, we could catch a glimpse of the lavishly dressed women scurrying between restaurants and bars or being whisked away to parties on the Kamo river in Kyoto’s shiny black taxicabs – powdered, white faces and flowing, embroidered robes a reminder of how traditions live on in Nihon.

First Half of Project Completed!

YATTA! Hurray! Sugoi! Today I turned in the first half of my dissertation – 120 pages, 5 chapters:

• Preface explaining role of story in the project and significance of the title
• Chapter 1:  Introduction of research questions
• Chapter 2:  Language and identity; The social significance of English in the lives of Japanese
• Chapter 3:  Sexuality and identity
• Chapter 4:  Story telling, story sharing, and story analysis: An introduction to narrative, autoethnographic, phenomenological research; feminist communitarian ethical framework
• Chapter 5:  Participants and procedures

Rika’s 1st Draft

First Draft, Participant #1: English Language Learning History

Why and How I studied English and How it Affected my Sexuality

“The most comfortable thing in speaking in English was that I call myself “I”. In Japanese, there are so many words refer to yourself and it differs by their sex and age. For instance, women usually call themselves “ Watashi ” or “ Atashi “ or sometimes “ Uchi “ (Osaka dialect) and men call themselves “ Boku “ or “ Ore “ or “ Washi “( older men ). When I was in Japan, I hated and refused to call myself “ Watashi “because I did not recognize myself as a girl. But I did not want to call myself “ Boku “, either because it was too weird. In Canada, the problem was easily solved. I just call myself “ I “. Everybody call themselves “ I “ regardless of their sex or age.”

Excerpt from new chapter 3: Is Okama Okay?

Is Okama Okay?

“it is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time”[1]&

I met Minori where else but at karaoke. Having always loved to sing, especially around others who enjoy the hobby just as much as I do, Japan was a great place for me to put to good use all those years of classical voice training. Another friend of mine, Hiroe, told me that she had invited some friends of hers to join our karaoke party, friends who she said “really want to meet you.” I was flattered, but I just assumed that these friends were eager to meet Hiroe’s crazy English teacher and quickly forgot all about the additional guests that night. That is, until Minori walked in. My first impression told me that Minori was a lesbian. With short, spiky hair, no make-up, jeans and a men’s shirt, my experience in the gay and lesbian community helped me identify possible allies. Of course, there is no guarantee that my judgments are always correct.

Writing Can Be Emotional

I received the following email today from one of my participants. I thought this was a good opportunity to examine how much emotion may be involved when participating in a project of this kind by asking other participants to reflect on or respond to this email.

My response is also included. I immediately felt a sense of responsibility to my participants and wanted to be able to validate XXXX by legitimizing his concerns and responses.

Letter to Participants: Checking in

Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you happy and healthy and enjoying this season’s sakura and hanami.

I am getting very excited about my trip to Japan in May (May 18th-June 8th) and hope to meet many of you while I’m in Japan.

Excerpt from Ch. 2, On sexuality

I can remember around the age of 4 or 5 looking at a book titled “Where Do Babies Come From?” My mother, a former elementary school teacher, believed in complete honesty about the human body and reproduction, and the book was meant to help me understand the answer to the question posed in the title. What she hadn’t counted on was that I was much less fascinated by the reproductive process, let alone the illustrations of female anatomy, as I was with the illustrations of the male anatomy. There were two illustrations in particular, an adolescent male and an adult male, naked I should add, that were so stunning to me that I can actually remember staring at the illustrations late one evening when I should have been fast asleep. I flipped back to the illustrations of the women in the book for comparison, but my heart didn’t race; no spark existed when considering women. After closing the book that evening to wonder about the human body, I re-opened it to the page featuring the adult male and slid the open book under my pillow. Why would I do that? In retrospect perhaps this was a way to influence my dreams that night, “Oh man in the moon, come to South Florida and visit me…and be naked.”