 Rhaid i gweithio, allan, a rhaid i'r ffrwng y chymdeithasol ar gyfer ysgolwyd. Rhaid i'r ffrwng ysgolwyd ysgolwyd ar gyfer ysgolwyd ysgolwyd a'r ddweud o'r ysgolwyd ysgolwyd. Mae'r ffrwng yn ymddiolol ymlaen, fel ymgyrch yn ysgolwyd 100 yr ysgolwyd joponidol, ac yn ym 74 yr ysgolwyd, sy'n cyrchaf cyfnodau dylau sy'n gyfrwng ysgolwyd ar gyfer ysgolwyd. Yna, roeddwn ni'n gweithio'r fideo gyfyrdd yn ddwymae Bwyr, y pethau Dylai Gweith-Fall, wedi'u dal i'r awdurdod dros y year, ac mae'n ymgyrch yna o rwyf yn adreffod am y ddwymae Bwyr, a'r amdano am Dylai Gweith-Fall. Rwy'n meddwl y gallwn ni'n adreffod o'r meddwl gweithredu. Ond o fwy'r gweithio'n adreffod o'r fawr yn ymlaen i'r profesi Rhonaldor, y ddwymae Dylai Gweith-Fall, ac maen nhw'n gweld y cyfnodd fydd yn gweithio ynglyn â ymwneud yr Yfnodd Ysgrifennu. Felly, roeddwn i'n golygu i chi bod yn gweithio'r Yfnodd Ysgrifennu, ac yn dweud hynny'n gweithio, ond yna ymwneud hynny yn y 91st ystod. Ystodd ystod. Fel ydych! Yn ydych chi'n gweithio'r Dore, wedi'u ffordd am ffawr, mae'r gweithio ar y gweithio ar yw'r ysgrifennu, mae'n gweithio'r genes, felly byddwn yn yn 1940, ymwneud mewn ddechrau sydd o'r gennyrwysu, dwy'n meddwl meddwl am yng Nghymru Ronald Daw's family. Mae gennym i'r swerd o'r swerd o Dulloch Cymru, gan yr ymddangodd ac ymddangodd hysbwyr hwn o'r swerd o'r swerd o'r swerd o'r swerd. Oeddwn ni'n gweithio'n ddiadwch hysbwyr ddim yn ymddangodd hysbwyr hysbwyr hwn. Dwi'n rwy'n dechrau'n gofyn ymddi'r leiswyr ymddiadwch. Mae'r ffaith i Eileen Barker ar hyn. Eileen wedi ein sgwyddiad am yma yw'r gweithio, y gweithio a'r gyfer ythafel yw'r rhannysgul yw'r cyfriforau sy'n aelod i ddod i ddwylo i ddwylo i ddweud i ddwylo i Lleidiau Lleidiau. Yn bod yn gwybod bod gyda'r gweithio i ddwylo i ddwylo i ddwylo. Mae gynhyrchu i'r ddod ffellywyd i'r hyn sy'n gwybodaeth gyda'r hynny i'r ddweud yma, wrth gwrs yn ymgyrchu i'r ddweud yma yn y ddweud. Rydych chi'n gweithio, mae'rpal nifer y Mae'r ddweud yn gynyddol yn 1978, ac mae'n ddweud yw'r hollwch ein 30 arall ac o'r ddweud yma o'r ddweud yma, ac wrth gwrs yn gweithio i'r ddweud yma i ddweud yma, ac rwy'n gweithio i'r ddweud yma i ddweud yma i ddweud yma. Mae'r ddweud ymlaen i'w meddwl gyda Llywodraeth, Llywodraeth, Ffilm ac Meddwl, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch, Yngyrch. Mae'r ddweud yma sy'n gweld yma, ei hunain iawn i gydag yma, a'r ffordd o'r rhagleniol ar gyfer y ddweud ymlaen i Yngyrch. However, we of course do not work alone. We collaborate with our colleagues at other institutions, receive support from funding bodies and we reach out into the community. I therefore also warmly welcome various supporters and partners of the JRC here this evening. Guest from the Embassy of Japan, the Japan Foundation, the Dialwa Anglo Japanese Foundation, the Japan Society, the Great Britain Susakawa Foundation, mae holl o bwrdd ymlaenau ymlaenai UK a ymlaenau rywuneydd y Lundiiddoriaeth. Yn y llun o hyn ymlaen o gyflwyr cymlaenol awgraffol ymlaenau awgraffol ac ymlaenol awgraffol yma ymlaenol ei flynyddiadau. Mae hynny oaf, yn yshmoedd eianyael tua mae'r awgraffol yn awgraffol awgraffol yma weld hynny mae sylw yma ymlaenol mewn 8-25 sori 마e oherwydd rydw i Lund wedi'n porto'n ei gweinodol yma. ac am y rheini yw'r bwrddisionhe yn Лund tomatoionds yw'n rhoi newid o'r Llyfraskodd Ryfannol fel y gallğon nhw'n fawr i ans i yernau isio mewn ac rightsio yn ystyr ystyr ystyr i Gyfiand, Brindw i lettuce o croppedyr rhai pan nhw i'r hyn yn amyreni arall cropped commander Llyfraskodd Brindw i amdangos'u rhendLAUGHS ac wee gyda onather yn nahau beth detective a'r Llyfrans partneru hynny Dyna'r hyn acrylic spaestel ac elid Osir wedi sirwyd deall. Bydd ydyn ni'n plos o hynd wedi ysgrifennu ym mwy o'r prydau sydd yn ymlaen i'r teimlo, a dyma'r chysylltu yn rhan o'n adill o'r llenwyr. Byddwn ni'n gweithio bod hwnnw yn gofal â'r amweli Gwyrgylchedd Ymos, y llyfr yn Lywodraethol, yn schîlion amswnol i'r llyfr. Diolch i'r gwybod, ddiolch i ymchwil. Byddwn yn ddrifetio mae'r amdilygu. Dyma'n fwy ymlaen i rydyn ni yw ymweli Gwyrgylchedd. this evening. Tonight marks the start of Soas's centenary celebrations and it's fitting that we begin our centenary with a celebration of the Dullach Boys. I have to say that when I was told that I had to call you the Dullach Boys, I was a little nervous because I thought given your track record and wisdom it was rather precipitate of me to do that. But it is part of the Soas story, a very important part of the Soas story, the Dullach Boys and the Bletchley Girls. A real slice of Soas history. Tonight again as you've already heard we also celebrate 100 years of Japanese study at Soas. The Dullach Boys were instrumental in building UK-Japan relations after the Second World War and they couldn't have done it if they didn't understand and appreciate the Japanese language and Japanese culture. And as we watch crises proliferate around the world and our increasingly interconnected world also becomes more fragmented there has never been a more relevant time for Soas. As the work of the Dullach Boys showed building bridges across cultures is absolutely key. So once again welcome, a huge thank you to all of you for coming to Soas this evening and many thanks to our distinguished panellists and to Dullach School for helping to organise tonight's event. Thank you all very much. I would now like to welcome the ambassador of Japan to the UK, we're honored he's here this evening, Ambassador Hayashi, who's going to say a few words. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. I'm really delighted to celebrate with you tonight the long history, long history of Japanese studies at Soas. This unique institution marks its centenary. So although the moderator said I will give a few words, but my speech will also have to be a little long. Japan and the UK began the modern relationship in the mid-19th century. A small number of young men from Choshu and Satsuma became the first Japanese residence and students in London. Japan tried to trade with Great Britain out of the world's mightiest country at the time and learn from it for its modernisation and bilateral relationship steadily blossomed over the succeeding decades. In fact in 1884 the size of the Japanese community in Britain was said to be 264, it was a very precise number, and it had increased to more than 500 by 1910. On the other hand it is estimated that more than half of the 4,700 western residents in the 1890s in Japan were British. Our ties were really flourishing and culminated in the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1902. Furthermore the Japanese position in 1910 phenomenally boosted cultural interest in the small island nation in the far east. It is in this context that Soas was founded in 1916 at the School of Oriental Studies with the aim of training colonial administrators and fostering knowledge of the Orient and Africa. Still at the level of the general public Japan and the UK remained remote from each other simply because they were geographically so separated and Japan was culturally so different in European eyes. The opening of the School of Oriental Studies as it was called was therefore a highly significant event enabling British people to engage through the method of area studies in the Japanese language and culture. Japanese was constantly taught from the outset of the teaching program at Soas in 1917. Japan's geopolitical profile on the world scene rose. Both the army and the Royal Navy kept sending students for language training throughout the 1920s. With a tragic onset of World War II the war office needing to produce translators and interpreters quickly had no choice but to turn to Soas and linked up with the school's Japanese studies section. State scholarships were offered to select schoolboys to train as military translators and intelligence officers. Thus emerged the distinguished group called the Dalwich Boys. They were smart and highly educated. The theory is that if you had already mastered languages such as Latin and Greek, surely you could become proficient in a difficult language like Japanese. Well, I wish that it worked the other way around. If one can speak Japanese then one can already handle Latin or Greek. But for me at least that had unfortunately not been the case. Some of these wartime language students were apparently assigned to study Japanese by sheer co-incidence out of military need. For instance, Professor Ronald Dore here, if I'm not mistaken, was hoping to learn Chinese and the late Professor Louis Allen wanted to study Russian. I hope my information is correct. But from the wider and longer-term perspective of our bilateral relationship it was a fortunate coincidence indeed since many of these bright minds became leading economists, politicians, diplomats, and professors in the post-war era. They were joined by those young brave souls who somehow had the courage and perhaps foresight to choose to take up the Japanese language soon after Japan had been reduced to almost nothing but ashes. This group of Japan specialists together rebuilt the bridges of friendship between our two countries after the war. One of the towering figures of the group, Sir Hugh Kotatsu, who is just over there, a former ambassador to Japan, once declared, my ultimate wish for Japan was that it would be firmly integrated in international society. I know that based on his deep affection towards Japan Sir Hugh has always been a teacher to Japan who gives away Marx rather sparingly. But as Japanese ambassador I argue that his wish had been largely fulfilled as Japan, now firmly committed to peace, democracy, and democratic principles, is constantly seeking a greater and more fitting role in the international community to contribute to the peace and prosperity of the world. No wonder the UK's strategic defence and security review 2015 issued last autumn broke new ground by officially declaring Japan to be among the UK's allies and its closest security partner in Asia. Not just in the Asia Pacific regions, but from the Middle East to Africa, Japan is willing to show the greater responsibility, as you will see in the Syria conference this week to be held in London, in the G7 summit meeting in May in Japan, and the TICAD 6 African Development Summit this summer to be held in Kenya, as well as on the UN Security Council. And in the process, you will witness visible signs of Japan, UK cooperation and coordination everywhere. We owe so much to those Japan hands, including Dalish boys who helped bring our bilateral relationship from its post-war nadir to the heights of today. So us, including the Japan Research Centre founded in 1978, which is kindly hosting this landmark event tonight, has developed as undoubtedly one of the world's leading educational institutions in its specialised field. We appreciate not just its distinguished academic record, but also its future-oriented links with primary and secondary schools in teaching Japanese. Indeed, it remains an invaluable centre for nurturing interest in Japan, its culture and language in the UK. As we look back on 100 years of its tremendous achievements, notably in furthering understanding of and friendship with Japan, may I wish so us yet more success over the coming century and beyond. Thank you and many congratulations. Thank you very much Ambassador Hayashi and Valerie for the introductions. It now gives me great pleasure to welcome Nick Hyam, Nick who many of you will know as a journalist and most notably as a correspondent for BBC News. Nick wrote a piece on the Dalish boys and so asked last year for the BBC and subsequently was strong armed into cheering our panel this evening. So I'm delighted to now hand over to proceedings over to Nick and he's going to run the rest of the session. Thank you very much indeed. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. You will note from Helen's introduction that one thing I lack conspicuously, apart from having written that article and an accompanying feature on the Today programme on Radio 4 last summer, is any knowledge of Japan or Japanese. I have never visited the country and I cannot speak the language. The great Nicholas Tomlin, a wonderful British journalist once said that all the journalist needs is rat-like cunning and a plausible manner. So tonight I propose to see if that's true. You heard from the ambassador a bit about the history of SOAS and the Dalish boys and Japanese teaching here. We're going to celebrate that tonight I hope, but also subject SOAS's record to a little critical scrutiny and look at what the future might hold. To do that we have an immensely distinguished panel, some of whom have already been introduced to you. Rondor on the far end, Professor of Sociology jointly at SOAS and the London School of Economics in the 1960s, a man who has written many books on Japan and acknowledged expert in his field and a man who, as you have heard, got his first taste of Japanese as a bright schoolboy in 1942 here at SOAS and boarding at Dalish College. Next to him Sir Hugh Cortazzi, a former UK diplomat who enjoyed four postings to Tokyo, the last as ambassador for four years in the 1980s. He too was a wartime student at SOAS though he came slightly later as a serviceman to learn Japanese on a joint services course in September 1943 and I believe you were taught by Rondor. Is that true? You were, you were because Rondor having completed his course was drafted into the army and along with the rest of these Dalish boys and then had an accident in basic training I believe was invalided out so he was invalided out, brought back onto the teaching staff at SOAS and we'll discuss perhaps briefly why that was necessary a little bit later. Hugh Cortazzi has also written many books about Japan, worked as an advisor to British companies and Japanese companies. Next to him a diplomat of a rather more recent vintage Martin Hatful who came to SOAS for the first year of a foreign office language course in 1981 I think and was twice posted to Tokyo the second time as number two in the embassy between 2003 and 2008 he later became ambassador to Indonesia. He's now director of international public affairs for the drinks company Diagio and he is also an old boy of Dalish College I understand. Caroline Bennett went to Japan on her gap year in 1985 and liked it so much she stayed for two years and then came back to London to SOAS to study for a degree in Japanese and economics. We'll discuss the significance of that a bit later as well. She went to work in the city and while there she founded the the UK's first, forgive me I'm not sure how this is pronounced, I, Kytan, the first Kytan sushi bar in the UK. It's called Moshi Moshi, Yosushi Ichihata. Moshi Moshi got there first. That was back in 1994. One stage there were seven Moshi Moshes but now you're back to one, the original one. Still the owner. Next to her, Branwyn Darlington, born and raised in Berkeley, California, studied Japanese at college, went to Japan as an English teacher back to the United States to teach Japanese, came to SOAS in 2004 to do a master's in international management for Japan. She now works in London for a Japanese food importer and distributor called Harro, whose customers include Moshi Moshi. Not sure Caroline knew that until tonight. Finally, Professor Laura Hine, who is a SOAS centenary fellow in her day job, she's a professor at Northwestern University in Illinois in the history department there. She began studying Japan because you were frustrated with the western centric view of everybody else and thought it would be interesting to study a country which was rather different. She's published widely on Japanese politics, Japanese economy, Japan's attitude to its past during her time at SOAS. She is completing a study of Japanese efforts after 1945 to extricate themselves from what they saw as fascism. You've heard a bit of brief history. Let me just say that there were actually two institutions in Britain in 1942 after Pearl Harbour and the Japanese invasion of the Dutch and British colonies in Southeast Asia who set up Japanese teaching regimes. One was Bletchley Park, but we didn't hear about that for many, many years because everything that happened at Bletchley Park was secret. The other was here at SOAS. SOAS had been teaching Japanese since 1917, but with only a relatively small throughput of students. There were just two people who took degrees in Japanese in the interwar years, one in 1938 and one in 1939. At the late 1930s, the number of people studying Japanese at SOAS was actually declining. In 1939, 1940, there were just four full-time students of Japanese here and two occasional students, a total of six, and then came Pearl Harbour, then came the fall of Singapore. Many of the people in Britain who had learnt to speak Japanese had perforce been in the Far East and were in Japanese captivity, so something had to be done and it had to be done very quickly. And I get the impression, Ron Dore, that the course which you came on, you and the other other Dutch boys, was a rather makeshift affair that teaching materials had to be gathered together from a very poor base. The teachers were a pretty diverse bunch, and given that, how well do you think you were taught? I think we were taught really rather well. You see, the organiser of the course, Frank Daniels, was a very meticulous scholar who was with a great linguistic sense, and he was very good at analysing how idioms came to be idioms, and at giving us a sense not only of the language itself, but also of the mentality of the culture that lay behind so many of the idioms that the language used. And that meant that we had not terribly well planned, but nevertheless very effective form of teaching for these two years. I'm struck by the fact that many of you on that course, and indeed people like Hugh Cortazzi, on subsequent courses during the war, later became experts on Japan, students of Japan, important people in Anglo-Japanese relations or the understanding of Japan. And I find that surprising because you were learning the language of the enemy in the middle of a war, and yet you seem to have acquired as a result of this course a remarkable respect for Japan and Japanese culture. How come? Yes, well the answer to that is easy. We were taught by women. Nearly all our teachers were the wives of Englishmen who'd married in Japan in the war, and although their mission was to stick to taking us Japanese, which they did quite efficiently, because they were very intelligent and very good at analysing the origins of idioms and things of that kind, but at the same time they were people who were proud of their own culture and they were also extremely self-confident. And it was as it were by osmosis that they transferred to us the respect that they had for themselves and for the culture in which they'd been brought up. And that was very good for us, and that meant that beyond a linguistic capacity we also acquired a certain empathy for Japanese people and for the culture that had formed them. Hugh Cortance, you came on a later course, one of a number of courses run for servicemen, and they were short courses, just six months I think, and they were designated as either for interpreters or translators. What did that mean? They were six months courses, they were a year to 18 months. The interpreters were supposed to concentrate solely on the, or almost entirely on spoken language, the translators on the written language. It became quite clear to some of us young men in the services at the time that really this was a false distinction. You could not really speak Japanese without knowing something of the written language. You could not and you certainly couldn't interrogate and do properly, and if you were a translator you had to be able to understand the spoken language too. So gradually I think we and the staff got in a sense got together and agreed that changes had to be made. We were helped by obviously the people like Professor Eve Edwards who was the director of the school at the time, and the enemy if you like it as far as we were concerned were the service bigwigs in who simply said, we want people who can speak Japanese, we want people who can translate Japanese. We don't always waste any time. Of course it was also quite clear to all of us, anyone between an intelligent person that in order to speak and understand, read or translate, you had to learn something about the culture, and so we tried our best perhaps with we had some some interesting lectures which were given for instance by Sir John Pilcher who got everybody laughing with his wit and his pictures of Kabuki, and we got on to books. So we did begin, I should not only say begin to understand that we had to study the cultural and the historical background. Can I ask you about the teaching staff? Ron has referred to the fact that there was more than one woman including Frank Daniels wife Otome I think who was one of the the teachers, but there was a pretty motley collection. Pat O'Neill who was another member of the Dulwich Boys and who later became Professor of Japanese here at SOAS wrote a memoir in which he talked about the teachers including a former military attaché in Tokyo, a couple of Japanese foreign correspondents who've been in Britain at the start of the war, some Japanese second generation Japanese military Canadian sergeants. Did you think that you were well taught? I think as far as I was concerned we were taught as well as it was possible at that time bearing in mind that there was they had no materials on which to start. They had to I mean texts had to be prepared for categories worked out so I think the motley crew if you like it of teachers were really conscientious and did their best with what they had. Pat O'Neill in a memoir wrote that one of the texts they had was a copied from a children's magazine and it was a story about a group of school girls being shown around a wailing ship. He wrote the Japanese for flincing knife was therefore part of our earliest Japanese vocabulary. Many years later he claims to have met someone in Japan who'd been on a service course at SOAS and would with the slightest encouragement recite the whole of the first section of the story in Japanese as a party piece. I said to you that the products of the wartime courses at SOAS were very influential in Anglo-Japanese relations after the war and there are one or two quite high profile people including yourself and Ron Dore but am I am I am I right in that? I mean can we can we think of a lot of people who were influential or was it actually quite a small number? I think there were quite a large number who went into academia who achieved I'm from Charles Darden and Pat O'Neill here just two names that and then of course on my own contemporaries Ken Gardner who went to the with the librarianship and other I mean one other person I should mention is Louis Allen who went to Durham and who wrote one of the most important books on on the Burma War outside the academia I think particularly of my old friend Sir Peter Parker who was a member was a knowledge boy and who became as you know chairman of British Rail one stage he was a prominent businessman he was the chairman of the bound festival in Britain in 1991 and he was an enthusiast particularly of a haiku whenever he gave a speech he was always started with or ended with a haiku. He was particularly a particular case of someone outside who yes he was outside the academia who achieved success. He was also clearly earmarked by his contemporaries on the course as as the member of the course most likely to succeed not everybody liked him though Guy de Mobray who you saw in the video at the beginning didn't much care for Peter Parker who he called him thoroughly irritating sanctimonious and self-important but everybody else don't agree I didn't I assumed you wouldn't I assumed you wouldn't can I one other question you when you left so as you went to the far east with the services and later to occupied Japan how did you put what you had learnt here into practice how how useful was it well I think it was essential for what I was was supposed to be doing I was after all involved in intelligence work both in first of all in India and then I was in in Singapore at the time of the Japanese surrender and wept in Singapore and Malaya on historical matters the history of the Japanese power in during the war for instance and then I particularly wanted to get to Japan and I eventually managed to wangle if you like it a posting to British Commonwealth forces in the area of Iwakuni and I was in Iwakuni for about six months and another nine months in Yonago so that there I use my Japanese all the time it was essential um as as I think another person who was an ex-Saharys person for a young nish who also used his Japanese to advantage I think in the occupation. Martin Hatful can I I turn to you you came to so as on a foreign office language course as we said in 1981 um I'm not quite sure how the selection for foreign office language courses works do they say Hatful you're going to do Japanese or do you say I'd like to do Japanese please and if it's the latter why Japanese? The the way it worked then it's changed now several times along the way I think but the way it worked then was that everyone who joined the foreign office within the first few months took a quote hard language aptitude test unquote and depending on how well you scored or badly you were invited then to choose or to express a preference never to choose to express a preference for one of the range of languages which foreign office was going to be training people in they had quite a sort of um five year or 10 year program approach to language training in those days so they would say that okay this year we need x number of Japanese to train x number of Japanese speakers and Chinese speakers and so on and from that list I did do reasonably well on the test and so Japanese was one of the ones I could choose I chose it really for a mix of reasons never having had anything to do with Japan before partly because I wanted to go somewhere which I felt would be of continuing interest and stimulation throughout my foreign office career and Japan certainly filled that bill and also because I was already married at that stage and I wanted to go somewhere where I was confident that my wife would be able to work if she chose and to pursue her own career as a teacher if she chose and so that actually limited it quite a bit because there were quite a few others there well it wouldn't be the case and so I chose Japanese and never regretted it and you uh the the course you went on was a very conventional language course it was an intensive language course here at yes I mean it was it was tailor made it was at that time the foreign office commissioned so as to do all of its pretty much all of its hard language training so I was training not only with my Japanese student compatriots but also others doing Arabic or Chinese or Urdu or Korean or whatever and you know the foreign office presumably stipulated the requirements of the course but yes we went through a year of of pretty intensive basic from scratch training in Japanese does that mean there wasn't much concentration on Japanese culture Japanese economy Japanese politics anything of that sort not formally as part of the course but because we were here and one of the great advantages of pursuing the language course is so as there were there was always the opportunity to attend lectures in other aspects of Japanese culture history and and so on which you know we we took the opportunity to do when we could how did you find japan when you went in the mid early to mid 1980s describe the kind of society that you you encountered and what and your particularly your impressions of it um it was for me it was the first time I've been to Japan it was completely unlike anything that I had experienced before I travelled quite widely in Europe at that stage but not anywhere in in Asia and I think what really struck me having sort of landed in in Tokyo and my second day in Tokyo I think we had one of the most violent typhoons of the period of about five years or so and the strongest typhoon so you're immediately aware of of some of the natural forces which actually shaped people the way that people think and and the way that the culture has evolved in Japan but the fantastic contrast between Tokyo and where I went within a few days of arriving in Japan which was going to spend do a homestay in Yamaguchi prefecture in Yamaguchi she right down in the in the far west of Honshu in a very rural environment so it was the extraordinary sort of contrast I think between metropolitan Tokyo and and rural Yamaguchi which is one of the things that I remember most clearly. I'm working through the panel in chronological order because the next to attend so as was Caroline Bennett you came here in remind me what the date was 1985 89 89 having first gone to Japan in 85 again what was the appeal or the attraction of Japan for you initially I have to say I don't think I could have even put Japan on a map that's how ignorant I was of of Japan I went there straight after school and it was one of those flips in life where you could have been on a kibbut in Israel or great picking in France or VSO work in India and Japan just happened to respond to my request to be there probably before the letter had even arrived in in India so I ended up in Japan and you know that was such a pivotal moment in in my life and I'll never look back I've got so much to thank for Japan to open me up to so many things. And you were going to be a biologist a biochemist? I've been a study biochemistry and I realised after a year being in Japan that I hadn't looked at one scientific journal since I've been there and thought well perhaps now is a good time to change course. So the significance it seems to me of your experience as a degree student at SOAS was that you did a combined degree Japanese in economics and the one of the significant developments in the post-war years at SOAS as in elsewhere as we're in Japanese studies has been this broadening of the definition to to incorporate a kind of multidisciplinary approach with people in other disciplines who are expert in Japan and who will teach. How did that work for you? Was it a success? I mean it was absolutely fantastic that SOAS offered that. I think there was only one other university that did offer that ability to study outside of that so the ability to look at two different fields of study completely enriched my time whilst I was here and left me with far greater opportunities I think when you graduate to look at different aspects of what you might want to do. So yes I really enjoyed the economics here both the Japanese economics but also just the pure economics that I studied mostly through UCL but sometimes also through through SOAS and I know if I were here now I would be looking at the food anthropology department with great interest and be sort of sneaking off to lectures there. Any Japanese specialists in the food anthropology department here at SOAS? They certainly had some good lectures on the Japanese. Right we'll come back to that this issue of multi the multidisciplinary approach to Japanese studies how useful did you find it in reality it was fun to study did it help you get a job? Oh absolutely I mean my economics professor here got me my first job pretty much and he introduced me to people that he'd met and I went for interviews and that was it so I think at the time Japan's economy was so strong there were very few Japanese speakers and they were actively looking for Japanese speakers and people with an understanding of the culture as well I suppose to be able to tackle the financial markets in Japan so absolute perfect timing I mean being born in the in the year of the firehorse which apparently is very very un generally not one that won't be proud of actually served me very well so yeah I was quite happy with that. And you currently run as we were saying a business a Japanese themed business if that's not to talk it down too much Japanese how Japanese is your business? You're eminently English I can tell that. I am the only English person in my company that does that help. We have about five Japanese nationals it's become increasingly difficult to hire them I mean the visa restrictions have become such that it's virtually impossible now so the few that I have have all been on long-term visas they've all been here for many years and I have five members of the team that have been with me back since 1994 none of whom are Japanese suddenly they're Korean sorry Chinese and Filipino but I like to think that of the options out there we are peculiarly Japanese actually. I will take your word for it. Branwyn, Branwyn Darlington you came here probably 10 years after Caroline when the Japanese economy was a very different place you came to study a master's when your master's in Japanese business. International management for Japan. International management for Japan. Why that? Why choose that? I started thinking about it actually after we spoke the other day. I had actually sort of been stalking SOAS a little bit when I was in Japan on the jet program one of my good friends finished jet came back here and came straight to SOAS to do a Japanese linguistics master's and that was actually the first time I'd ever heard of SOAS growing up in the States I hadn't really heard much I hadn't really ever considered living here I've always wanted to but she came she started talking about SOAS and the Japanese language program and the linguistics program and I thought that sounds interesting but I'm not sure that I really really want to get into teaching Japanese even though I actually did and so I kept looking sort of year on year to see what other programs there were and sort of serendipitously I opened a sort of pamphlet and it said we've got this international management for Japan part of at the time it was called CFIMS the center for what's it finance management and finance and management now it's DFIMS department of and I saw that and for the first time I was actually really interested in a management degree that wasn't completely business and economics minded that was more cross cultural talking about cross cultural management cross cultural HR human resources etc and having I guess I'm one of the few people on this panel who didn't really study Japanese language at SOAS at all didn't have any Japanese language except for just internally with friends so it was a real selling point for you but for me the idea that I could do sort of a management degree and incorporate my Japanese and use that sort of a stepping stone to maybe a career path that might incorporate all the Japan that I had that wouldn't necessarily just be teaching or just be language oriented was very appealing and you were also saying to me when we spoke on the phone that the fact that SOAS was in London was a significant selling point that really did help yes because at the point when I was looking I had friends who were still in Japan I had friends who were here and I was just the one sad little person stuck in California and I thought well okay London is halfway in between Tokyo and San Francisco go that way um and so here I am so I was able to incorporate all of my sort of interests in one and you now work for this company you're a manager at Harrow which is a food importer and a Japanese food importer and distributor um can I ask you the same question that I asked Carolina how Japanese is that company it's a very interesting company in that the sales team is very very Japanese um the management is very Japanese um but the other departments are a mix of different cultures different languages um and I actually right now in what I do I don't use my Japanese very much at all um for work but I speak to my colleagues um but SOAS definitely helped me get that and helped me get the management track um versus being I don't know one of our customer service reps or something else did you ever consider you worked in in Japan as a as an English language teacher as you said did you ever consider going back to Japan to work oh I always wanted to yeah I never wanted to leave Japan really I was really homesick for Japan when I went back to California the first time um but I found at the time um it was very difficult to get a work permit to do anything um it was also I felt either you could teach English and just forever be an English teacher or you could get into sort of business of finance and I didn't have enough experience in those areas at the time which was another reason why the SOAS degree was really appealing and was your timing poor in that the Japanese economic bubble had burst the Japanese economy that may not have helped particularly but it's not like Japan fell off the face of the planet indeed indeed um Laura Hine um you have come to uh uh SOAS from as we said north western um I'm I'm interested in your impressions of the place why why did you want to come to SOAS now that you're here what do you think its strengths and weaknesses are in terms of of Japanese studies well let me start by saying how envious I am to hear how much you all liked your Japanese language training which was um I did not enjoy mine in the United States I I think in general Japanese language training is so much better than it used to be and my students enjoy learning it so that would be the first thing is that obviously you pioneered that here um and I think it has really spread um to be more typical of experience today but um you know when I did it in the 1980s I was um funded and I just treated it like my job not a very nice job and it was all the other things that I liked a whole lot more um so my university also has a very strong African studies program and so I've been aware of SOAS as a place that um truly brings information about the part of the world that most people in my world don't know very well um so I've always admired that about it and from afar and it certainly lives up to that I just find it astonishing and fascinating just to listen to the conversations going on around me because people are so engaged uh with so many important issues of the day um it's an impressive place we we would let me ask you as an historian we were talking earlier particularly with Hugh Cortenzi about the uh importance of SOAS wartime graduates in the post war a recovery of Japan and Anglo-Japanese relations now your current work is about Japan post 1945 um were people from SOAS influential in Japan and if so how well you've already been hearing about it but I think actually the things that Valerie Amos was saying are very similar to what I was thinking it's hard to go from foe to friend the kinds of passions that get worked up during the war are hard to set aside when I started studying Japan in the early 1980s the single most common question I got asked was why were the Japanese so brutal in world war two um and that was that you know I had I had to come up with an answer because I got asked it all the time this is no longer what everyone asks when you hear about Japan after that the most common question was how did the economy grow so fast and now I would say there's a huge variety of things although the single most common one has something to do with manga and anime and clearly the people who have come through SOAS have been a huge part of that for Great Britain for Europe and for the world um one of the Peter Kornitski from Cambridge very hopefully sent me a a draft history of Japanese studies in the UK that he's he's written for a book that he and Hugh Cortazia are editing jointly and the kind of overarching development in that is the the way in which Japanese studies in in the UK in institutes of higher learning has moved from language teaching essentially purely and simply into a much broader range of disciplines and there are now Japanese experts in a whole lot of different subject areas finance politics economics culture of all sorts rondor I suppose you were one of the first specialists Japanese specialists in a department other than a Japanese department you are by by professional sociologist do you welcome did you welcome when it was happening this move uh this expansion of Japanese studies to incorporate a great many more disciplines and do you think it has gone as far as it can or do you think it should go further I think it could certainly go further um I I mean you're talking about now yes yes um I think yes courses can help but in our case uh in so far as we got more than language it wasn't a matter of having courses it was because we were uh a bunch of male pubesant teenagers um and we were taught entirely by Japanese women and there was a certain as it were uh rapport uh created uh has the result of that and yeah you see the Japanese women who taught us uh although they were uh representatives of the enemy they were people who were exceeding have not only exceeding the intelligent and very good at explaining the intricacies of the language but they were also people who had been brought up in Japanese culture and were very proud of their culture and it was more by osmosis by this kind of natural uh regard natural attraction that we acquired something much more than a linguistic competence we acquired something like a respect and uh and interest in Japanese culture uh simply because of that uh of the fact that we were taught by women okay well I should perhaps say that we've mentioned one of the women who taught Ron who was Otome Daniels the other um was I think a lady called Aeco Clark with whom all the people on the um so as wartime courses seem to have fallen in love um can I can I can I can I ask you um though looking at the situation in in in recent years the last 20 or 30 years do you think that the uh approach that not just so as but other universities have taken to broadening Japanese studies has been the right one? Yes of course has been a well first of all uh there was a newly developed sense that the teaching of languages in universities had a lot to do with the uh relationships with strategic and economic relationships uh that uh underpinned the uh the language courses uh and there was a this gradual appreciation which in our case was uh more or less accidental due to the fact that we were taught by women itself but uh that uh was developed uh intensively and purposefully after the war with the with the broadening of courses uh and uh the addition of uh language not not only language tests uh but tests of cultural understanding. Hugh Quartansi, do you think we've got the mix right in our academic study of Japan? On the whole I think we've got the mix right but there is still um a number of gaps that need to be filled in relation to our understanding of modern Japan especially in in areas of economics and trade which have economics and trade after all have been the dominant factor in our relationship in the last uh half century uh I think we we have perhaps not studied these these sufficiently there are uh we are one of the most important issues for Britain has been Japanese investment which has been a major factor in the industrial revival uh and I found that very few studies have been made of those investments and we have no studies of British investments in Japan which are all very important from the point of view of to Japanese point of view and British point of view. Martin Hatfield um I suppose one possible explanation if Hugh Quartansi is right is that the the change in economic circumstances in Japan rather depressed Japanese studies uh and if you look at the Konitski history it's been a bit of a roller caster that've been periodic uh increases in teaching capacity in money available for Japanese studies courses and then there's been a gradual kind of falling back is do you think that's a problem? I think it probably is is the case uh that in a sense demand reflects the perception of Japan's role in the world and that if you uh if you are uh someone thinking of studying a foreign language and committing you know what's going to be a significant chunk of your of your academic career to studying that language then you're thinking about how you're going to use it in the future and apart from the relatively small number of people who might choose to to to make an academic specialisation people will be thinking about you know how how am I going to be able to to make use of this skill which I'm I'm fascinated to learn but is it going to have a practical application and when I certainly when I when I was doing my Japanese uh studies it was um at a period when the Japan's economy was extremely strong it was Japan as number one and uh the uh but Japan was also you know recognised as a one of the key powers in the G7 and and all the rest of it so in terms of uh the global strategic picture as well Japan's importance was unquestioned I think um the the what's happened in China over the intervening period has clearly changed this sort of equation if you're thinking about where does the balance of interest lie in terms of of your uh the the kind of academic interest in East Asia in in the UK but I think it that change in international circumstances and global circumstances actually means that it's more relevant uh the kind of diversification of Japanese studies is more relevant because it's about seeing Japan in the context of the changing global environment and the continuing importance that Japan has which I absolutely believe in continuing importance it has for the UK but it's in a different global context and I think therefore maybe we need to continue to be innovative in how we approach Japanese studies in that sense Laura Hine do you think there are blind spots in our study of Japan what are they I was listening with great interest to what Matt Foll was just saying because I really agree with that um I do think that it's uh not I think it's a mistake to say that there is an inverse relationship between study of China and study of Japan it's really Japan is the kind of society that China would like to become still and is still striving towards and um because my students are now so much more interested in culture in a broad range of things it's more in the way that they're interested in France or Italy and um I think it makes a lot more sense often to be thinking about Japan in that context as opposed to some kind of East Asia ghetto I mean there are other issues and of course the physical proximity of the two countries really matters but I think that's kind of a hangover from when studying both China and Japan was exotic and it's time to stop thinking that way um I would also agree that social sciences are still weaker on Japan than they should be um in the United States for sure okay I'm going to throw this open to the um the body of the Kirk for what's left of our time I'm going to pinpoint to people though just to get their reactions to what they've heard they're both conveniently sitting in the front row right in front of me um and we have a microphone if we could have it down here um Peter Kornytski you are a professor at Cambridge and you sent me that very helpful history um and um you um you use a term in that which I don't think I've heard before it's not a very attractive term but I understand why you use it you talk about the de eurocentrization of studies um across across the board across all the disciplines um you clearly think that's a good thing and we need more of it yes first of all I'm ex Cambridge and I'm very proud to be a professorial research associate here at SOAS I I beg your and Cambridge's and indeed so and I need to say that because my wife teaches at SOAS um yes that is a very ugly word um and it's one word that really doesn't apply to SOAS because this is one university in the UK which doesn't need to be told to stop being Eurocentric it's SOAS um but that doesn't really apply to a lot of other universities and it certainly didn't 20 or 30 years ago and what is important it seems to me is for the study of Japan or China or other parts of the world to become part of the normal study of disciplines such as society such as uh anthropology such as the economy um music art history and it's taken a long time and that process that isn't complete um there are many departments of art history in the UK for example where nothing is taught it's not on on Western Europe but Oxford now has a professor who is a specialist in Chinese art that's true um that's the first step in a very significant step but there are a lot more steps like that still to be made um I'll ask you to pass the microphone on to Andrew Gersall next to you professor of Japanese studies at SOAS have I got that right yes good um what do you think of what you've heard I mean people have had some very warm words to say about SOAS do you think there are areas in which you might do better um of course of course um I've had the experience this past year uh with Hugh Kotatsu and Peter Kunitski's volume on Japanese studies in the UK to look to do one for SOAS and one of the things that um surprised me of course was how much there was and how much there's continued is but the other thing that surprised me was how much of a struggle it has been to and continues to be to have this was Japanese studies but it's true for all of SOAS kinds of subjects it's it's dependent on government reports government reviews outside funding to a certain extent even if there are student the student numbers have tended and they're pretty good but it's not compared to the big subjects and or the research assessment exercises the smaller fields we have it's difficult for them to be reviewed in the same way and come out looking good compared to other sort of subjects so it's really a struggle we're celebrating today but one of the things that I was really surprised the last 100 years really has been a struggle and it's if anything it's likely to be even more difficult the way that universities are funded so the depending particularly on student numbers SOAS in general has a tough time but also having to teach language is a core part of that is a relatively expensive one so the plea that realistically we will need more outside funding to actually in make sure that things continue whether it be in study of Japanese politics and economics or traditional older subjects and in fact the most threatened subjects are anything before a study of night of before the 20th century if anything that's been more of a decrease Peter concludes his essay by saying the loss of earmarked funding and the end of special treatment has made departments of Japanese studies vulnerable to the calculus of student numbers and the rhetoric of value for money and the demands of the market I'm sure there are academics in many other disciplines who would make a similar observation but you think it's particularly bad for Japanese studies the two of you not particularly for Japanese studies but for the subjects that aren't quite may aren't there aren't European or American kind of studies yeah Peter I think what we need in this country what the US has had since 1958 which is a defense education defense education program which is a program which declares that there are certain subjects not necessarily languages but languages are some of them which are important for this country in order to maintain its relations diplomatic economic and so forth and that need to be preserved so that we have expertise constantly in these areas we have never had that in this country we've had a succession of four government reports from 1908 up until 1985 each one of which has produced a small measure of funding of a limited duration and has then led to a resurgence of the problems so I would like to see that act here okay anybody else want to come in in the few minutes we have remaining yes over over there please can we have a microphone over to you sir as a microphone on its way down to you thank you oh dear well good evening I hope you all hear me I was out in Japan immediately after the war I've been here at SOAS for 18 months studying Japanese both written and oral and when we got out there of course things were very very different but one of the main things I can remember the ladies in Japanese could talk quite clearly and understand what we were saying the men no going going out uh a Singapore uh there are about 300 Japanese prisoners of war come aboard and of course there were eight of us who'd been studying here for 18 months uh we thought all excellent opportunities to get in touch you know in Japanese we weren't allowed there at all they were right down you know and we weren't permitted to go and talk with them at all and uh ultimately when they got out I do not know what happened but there were very very few Japanese men about and none of them would talk to us I was with the Americans out there and we were doing all mainly translating at first reading the newspapers you know to make a note of any party that's been murdered and so on so forth and then we went out to Chicago at um Curio was um this was with the Australians and we went out uh looking for all things that were on the black market really rice and um fish anything like that and of course um anything that uh was harmful but once again wherever we went the men they would not talk or wouldn't listen to us did you did you feel frustrated by that did you feel oh no not at all we provided the women would talk you were happy no well quite often uh would go out you know in the backlands it was about a or six foot road wide with a jeep a left handed jeep by the way and uh it was right handed there but the tracks were only say six to eight feet wide and on one occasion I put it in all the notes I gave to you um the uh cart carrying the necessary materials caught with us and uh you know it's great hook um thank you um actually then things were extremely difficult for the Japanese and of course the Americans didn't like them whatsoever neither did the Australians they'd all come out through the islands but um what I got back there 15 20 years ago just for a week totally different yeah thank you thank you sorry your name sir Phillips Phillips guy Phillips Leslie Phillips Leslie Phillips I've got a load of stuff that I gave you yeah thank you very much um there was a contribution here at the end of the row yes sir Christopher Howe I'm a emeritus professor here I'd like first just to say one comment about Rondor that hasn't really been mentioned and that is his phenomenal facility in the Japanese language uh which something he certainly shares with Sir Hugh I remember sitting in a hot hotel room in Tokyo in 1972 where I was being tutored in how to read 1930s Japanese I switched on the television and Rondor is giving an interview in Japanese on the I think it was on demography absolutely mind blowing I mean the fluency of the language was just absolutely incredible and that was what it had enabled him to do things like his great study on the Japanese land reform the city in Japan these are fieldwork jobs absolutely terrific and he combines fieldwork language and theory to a degree which is completely out of the ordinary this is no typical scholar of Japan on your question of economics I'm an economist economic historian and I worked on China for 20 years I got fed up with working in China in the early 80s and I had learnt Japanese from the study of pre-war China and we started the Japanese program economics in 1980-81 I think and I was finally dropped from the teaching team last summer which is now in very good hands I must say I can tell you the struggle in economics is very difficult one reason for this is the dominance of America this is a economics is a field where the Americans are very important if you wanted to look for the best people who have worked on either the Japanese or the Chinese economy in America you wouldn't look in the economics departments you would look at the Peterson Institute in Washington international relations in Seattle or the sociology department in Stanford they're the best places not economics departments you're not employable as a regional specialist in most American economic departments and that influence percolates to us I'm in S2 of the British Academy which is the economics and economic history there are 80 people there's nobody else who is a long time trained specialist in any particular place although there are two very outstanding people who have worked on India in Indian agriculture but I can tell you that the conversations the interests it's very very hard work and this I'm afraid as has already been pointed out is strongly reinforced by the research assessment the research assessment gives the last word on all these things to the status quo to the traditionalists they have absolutely crucial if you're recruiting people to do these jobs by and large so you can only really find these subjects if they're in departments of area studies international relations you won't find them in the narrow disciplines okay and that is a terrific problem thank you very much I'll take one other contribution gentlemen here all right two gentlemen here can we have a microphone to this gentleman here and then a microphone to the lady in the or three I'll take three so could you tell us who you are please my name's lewe I come from the other side of the water having spent my time in studying China rather than Japan but I started on the right side attending one of the first courses in Japanese language delivered in this country and I'm making this point simply for historical accuracy we started in bedford attached to blexley park in February 1942 much of what I've heard about the Dalish boys has filled me with envy we had one wonderful teacher to whom I would like to take the opportunity to pay absolute tribute and talking of captain tuck of the royal navy who like all naval officers when called to do a job did it superbly without any training whatsoever the materials we had there were three or four dictionaries of Japanese by brinkley 1872 or 80 perhaps circulating in the room and when you looked up a word such as sentalki what did you find not a fighter aircraft but the hair on the particular ribbon used in the buddhist robes on festival there were also some two or three copies of a pocket dictionary of sunset of the not sunset or have to get its name they were there if you were lucky enough to get your hands on them what did we have for training material in those days and the answer was the raw margy texts of the telegrams which had been sent by the japanese news agencies ym yuri asaki and manichi they they shut up those offices and took the stack of telegrams and there we had them that is what we were trained on no grammars straight into it rizubon jor hon ni yw rebar off you went but it was a wonderful cause for six months the dalych boys i think were rather luckier than we were we were put straight into it after six months to work on japanese military naval or air force or diplomatic codes and cyphers the companions i remember on that first class you asked a question about what happened to those of the dalych boys well we didn't do too badly uh one of us became regis professor of greek with a knighthood in oxford another one became regis professor of divinity again in oxford and several others took their part in other universities thank you for letting me just point out the bletchley despite its secrecy did its part i did i did i did give bletchley a mention at the beginning but yes thank you very much i'll take two contributions one from this lady down here and then the microphone to raise back and that's it i'm afraid my name's mavis pulbyn i did a japanese degree here 1974 to 1977 and um i was lucky enough to do a contemporary literature course with keniz strong who had been in japan um immediately after the war with the quakers and um talk about various aspects of japan politics economics and so on but i would um i would mention literature as one of the best ways of getting into japan of understanding japan there's an event on at daewa tonight which we're all missing about natsume soseki um and i would like to um draw your attention to steve dod's amazing course that's so i so so go out and read a few novels that's my my advice okay can you hand the microphone back hello uh my name is valerie samond and my mother was our mother was one of the bletchley girls and the seven members of the waf came here in september 1943 and they did a six month intensive course so we've got photographs of them in their waf uniform here and we've got exam test papers things like translate there are 35 enemy bombers on the ground at position whatever and we've got some test papers that she had and um she was helped she had as the japanese ambassador mentioned she had a classics degree so maybe her latin and greek helped her so after six months um the seven of them were then sent to bletchley park where they worked on translating and coding and talking about books that we've got various japanese dictionaries and one that she co-authored characters in service japanese so that was obviously that they had to put together and mentioned so has mentioned in this book the depths of bletchley park and there's that's in that as well so i just thought i'd tell you about the bletchley park um girls as well thank thank you very much and um my apologies my apologies if i have left out bletchley park but my bible on all of this is a fascinating book called the japanese war which is a history of japanese teaching in here it's so as written in uh by 1988 i think by sadaw oba and translated in the early 90s by ancanico and it's actually rather good read um my thank you to you for your contributions from the audience my thank you to all our panelists rondor with his son julian there acting as a a human megaphone uh Hugh cotatsi martin hatful caroline bennett brownwyn darlington and laura hain i'm now going to hand over for a very very few words to richard black of so has pro director of so has for a few closing remarks so the floor is yours so i will be really brief as i realise i'm now between new and wine so i just want to also thank our panelists and also thank nick for such a doing such a wonderful job chairing this evening's event we really appreciate it nick and can i also while i'm on thanks thank jane and all of the events and alumni and development team who've helped organise this a round of applause for them please we've heard this evening about various facets of japanese studies at so has obviously about the language which is where it all started or indeed maybe it didn't but also the literature the economics management history and perhaps also some of the gaps i think we do not teach japanese food but maybe we should um we're very proud here at so has of our track record over a century now of attracting the most gifted students from around the world and enabling those students to fulfil their remarkable potential and as we look ahead in our centenary celebrations in our next 100 years we wish to continue our legacy of inspiring students to study japan japanese studies in its wider sense and to foster an ever greater understanding of japan its language culture history politics literature and so on um our goal or one of our goals in this is to establish a range of scholarships and grants at all levels dedicated specifically to the study of japan an engaged alumni is critical to achieving this goal alumni can give back to so has in so many ways and we've had some of the contributions tonight in terms of recollections and time also alumni help us with mentoring with offering internships and work experience making introductions and of course in some cases giving financial support over a thousand alumni indeed have already donated to our recent fundraising appeal as have many so has staff and i'd like to extend a great thank you to all of you who've contributed so far in relation to our centenary but whether finance or time or in terms of networks if you're interested in becoming part of the future of japanese studies at so has please do talk to me or any of my colleagues after this event um and we let's see where we can take this conversation in the future so finally thank you all of you for joining us here including our friends from dullidge college i'm not quite sure where you are in the audience but thank you for coming thank you for coming um and please do join us now for a glass of wine in the reception outside the lecture theater just one more thing i've been asked to do we think it would be a great idea if those of you who've studied japanese here at so has would like to come down to the front and we will take a picture of our japanese alums and perhaps also families if you are here before we before we depart for drinks but otherwise thank you thank you all for coming and thank you