A Belated Education in the Civilization of the Rest of the World (article)

After a fine education at Bowdoin College and Harvard University, I had the credentials for an academic career in Medieval European history and culture. I taught at Simmons College and post-retirement ended up at Brandeis for a decade teaching modern Japanese history—in which I had no formal credentials. What I learned along the way about historical civilization, human nature, and the hubris of my original and narrowly based Western education, will be illustrated by three short stories.

In June 1988, my wife and I made a trip to Japan to visit some relatives. Upon returning home, I wrote a 70 page typescript describing our experiences, reactions, and rapidly changing opinions about Japan. I provided copies to my dean and president, and they soon invited me to spend a semester studying Japan and then to offer a course in Japanese history. At the time, there were only five new PhD’s in Japanese studies in the whole country, which opened the door to a middle-aged neophyte like me. This opening grew into a series of grant-supported trips to Japan, so eventually I was invited to take part in creating a Japanese major at Simmons College. After accepting early retirement, I was hired by Brandeis to teach a modern Japanese history seminar, which over the next 10 years resulted in more opportunities, trips, and insights on the rest of the world.

Deep into middle age, I had another chance to keep on learning and growing through a remarkable opportunity in 1991 to be part of a 30-person trip to Vietnam. Since at that time there were only five U.S. citizens residing in Vietnam, we were heavily briefed by the U.S. Department of State, even strongly admonished to be wary of “hostile forces who do not want you in their country.” One professor and fellow-traveler had served in Delta Force before beginning an academic career, and therefore knew better than to listen to some bureaucrat. The person following him while he

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roamed the streets turned out to be a handsome woman who said in perfect English, “Hi Yank. Welcome back.” Soon enough we were roaming about the streets, interacting with the local people, in between the official and formal opportunities, such as to meet with General Trần Văn Trà (Commanding General of the Viet Cong) in Saigon and with the country’s cabinet when we were in Hanoi.

To our amazement, ordinary citizens on the street greeted us warmly, with comments like “16 years you have been gone—too long—welcome back.” When we observed the sidewalk rudeness of the Russians and the shoddy workmanship in their repairs of buildings and bridges, we began to understand that despite the horrors of the war, many people had come to the conclusion that Americans were not all bad. Often when we identified ourselves, the Vietnamese asked if we knew their relative; they were aware that we had accepted about two and a half million of their fellow countrymen, in their pursuit of a new life in America.

In September 2014, my wife and I took a trip to Turkey. On the streets, we were stunned with the cordiality of the people, the absence of hostility, and the variety of clothing. The country is building new housing by the tens of thousands, all with solar hot water; the amenities of the hotels are world class; and we were awed by the deep antiquity of human civilization within Turkey’s boundaries. We found that our whole perspective on this part of the world was skewed. Turkey has been through seven major phases over the millennia and has a serious claim to be identified as an original site of organized human historical activity. We encountered many friendly people. I now look back on my old seminar on “The Ancient Near East” (really only Greece and Rome) as pitifully narrow in focus. My old course would have to be fundamentally recast and configured to avoid the charge that it was narrowly skewed in favor of emphasizing the latter-day invaders and imperialists.

From these elements of a post-doctoral education, I have learned many lessons. The real tragedy of 20^th century Japan is that they had certainly lost the military aspect of the war by mid-1944, but their “honorable suicide ethos” prevailed until after the Nagasaki bomb when Emperor Hirohito broke the tie vote in his privy-council and opted for peace. This peace arguably was due as

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much to the Russian incursion into Manchuria as to the atomic bombs.

In 1945, traumatized by the horrors of the Pacific War and wishing to support France after their nightmares in Europe, the U.S. elected to ignore the fact that Ho Chi Minh wanted to model his postwar government on the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Then, after our European ally’s military fiasco in 1954, we chose to inherit its war. So my generation lost thousands of lives in a war that perhaps was entirely unnecessary and that I had supported in public on several occasions. Too often history has been used to justify warfare. Today I am more aware of the tragedy than of the rationalizations. Therefore, as scholars and especially as individuals sensitive to the subtler ranges of human emotion, rationalization, arrogance, and ignorance, it behooves us all to continue to learn and to admit mistakes as we progress through our lives.

So, once again, this time returning from a recent trip to Turkey, I now see the contemporary horrors of the Syria-Iran-Iraq struggle in a very different light. Just a few months ago, I would have explained with a certain air of authoritative assurance, Turkey and the area seemed irrelevant, even evil. Although it is too late in my career to go back to graduate school and start all over, I now and ever-increasingly want to be more nuanced, subtle, and inclusive in my pronouncements. So should we all.

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