Friday, Aug 07, 2020

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I arrived in Japan in 1992, incredibly anxious about the fact that less than six months earlier I had shaved my head. I felt very butch, much too raw, and totally unprepared to navigate the sophisticated cultural and gender dynamics that I suddenly found myself engulfed by as a young American woman teaching English. Most of my colleagues in the Japanese English Teaching program run by the Ministry of Education had their eyes set on a career in diplomacy or business. Prior to my arrival, I had been tearing down drywall for a housing rehabilitation program, teaching neighborhood kids how to read, and volunteering at a photo gallery. At night, I waitressed at a coffeeshop-slash-bar, dressed in my thrift-store best. As a recent graduate of a liberal arts program with a penchant for semiotics, I was trained to analyze and critique the dominant social and power structures of the American culture wars—when suddenly I was working for a foreign government and tasked with representing my own... Interview by Lesley A. Martin