Interview with Professor Gerald L. Curtis

Chen: Hello, Dr. Curtis, this is Liu Chen here. If you can just start by saying your name, the date and the year you were born.

Curtis: Gerald Curtis, and I was born on September 18, 1940. Okay. And today's date is October 31, 2019.

Chen: So I'd like to start by just asking you a little bit about your early life. You know, where you grew up, what your family was like, anything there you want to share.

Curtis: So I was born in Brooklyn, New York. And I lived there until I was I think 10 and then we moved out to Far Rockaway, Queens. So I left Brooklyn in elementary school. I must have been in second or third––I think maybe third grade. And then went and I lived in Far Rockaway, went to Far Rockaway High School, and then I went off to college. So my young years were in New York City––well actually in New York City but I almost never came to Manhattan. Manhattan was like a far-away place, very different from Brooklyn or from where we were on out in Far Rockaway.

And then I went to SUNY, University of New York Fredonia to study music, thinking that I'd be a professional jazz musician. And I did that for two years, but decided that––it turned out SUNY Fredonia, most of the students there––was the Otsen music campus of the State University of New York at the time. Now there are several music, especially jazz, programs around the system. But anyway, at that time, that was it. But it was mostly for people who wanted to become teachers; music teachers in high school. I didn't want to be a music teacher. And I found a clue that I wasn't going to be a great musician. So I left, but not knowing what to do, what I wanted to do. A friend of a friend had come to visit my friend in Fredonia and had come from Albuquerque New Mexico. And he said––I was a member of––in those days the musician’s union was very powerful in New York City. And I was a member of what was called local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians in New York. So this fella said, "Well, if you go to Albuquerque, with your local 802 card, you can get work no problem." And so on a lark I left Fredonia, I went out to Albuquerque, I got a job playing in a cocktail lounge almost as soon as I arrived.

And then I started to go to the University of New Mexico. So I spent two years in New Mexico in Albuquerque, and graduated from the University of New Mexico. So I'm a Brooklyn-born native New Yorker who went to the University of Mexico. It's kind of weird. And then having, you know, given up music, but I was still making my living by playing, paying my expenses and so on. But then I got, for the first time, really interested in academics, in international relations and social science. So that’s what I majored in, you know, concentrated in. They had an interdisciplinary social science major at UNM, and then I got a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, and came to Columbia to do what I thought was a one year master's degree.

And that gets close. That kind of segues into my relationship with the Institute. So, I came to Columbia in 1962. Immediately upon graduating from University of New Mexico, and entered the political science department here, they had a one year master's degree program at the time. And one of the requirements was that you took a seminar in American foreign policy. And they had several different sections. So I chose the section that was at the most convenient time of day and turned out the professor was James Morley, who was a Japan specialist, who had been––like almost all my professors who taught about Japan, whether in political science or sociology or history, almost all of them had gone, had been in the war, and were sent either to the army or the Navy Japanese language school.

 

So this is the first postwar generation of American specialists on Japan who were trained in the military language schools. And they came out of the military, and like Morley, or Donald Keene, who taught here, and Ed Seidensticker, Herbert Passin, I think they were all native––I'm not sure––navy and army. And so these people had this passion that they never want to see the US and Japan go to war again. And so they decided to devote their lives actually, to spreading knowledge about Japan.

So Morley came to Columbia. I think he got his degree here. I'm not 100% certain––we'd have to check––and he went to Harvard. And then he came to Columbia. So he was the professor of this section of American foreign policy. And there was another very wonderful person who taught it with him, a woman named Dorothy Borg, who should come up in this history of the East Asian Institute.

So Dorothy was a specialist on American foreign policy, especially in Asia, but especially with China, and she was with the Institute of Pacific relations during the war, in Beijing. In Beijing or Shanghai, but I think [it] was in Beijing. And after the war she was caught up like a number of other people in the McCarthy––Joseph McCarthy, you know, who sold out China. Dorothy was a woman of the Borg family––they make the toilet bowls. So she was independently wealthy, she didn’t really have to work, but she was a very serious scholar. She was up at Harvard for quite a while, and then she came down to Columbia. And she had an office right here in the East Asian Institute, the corner room. And to those of us, all young assistant professors and so on, she was like the house therapist. I mean, we'd all traipse into Dorothy's office. And she always had the door open and gave good advice, and was always ready to help people with advice and so on. So I think there was a very warm community feel to the East Asian Institute in those days, Jim, Molly, and Dorothy, and several others people.

 

And so she sat in on this course and helped teach it with Jim Morley. But it was a seminar. So it was the students who had to do all the talking. So I didn't have any idea, I walked into this room and it's a seminar on American foreign policy about Japan and China. And I had not had any particular interest in that part of the world. And so I was flummoxed, I didn't know what to do. So I said to Morley, "I'm happy to be in this class, but I really don't know what to write a paper about." We had to decide on a paper topic right at the beginning of the semester. So he gave me a topic. He said there was, you know, the last ambassador to Japan before the Second World War, Joseph Gru, he was Ambassador I think, from 1932 right up until 1941 until Pearl Harbor.

He’s an interesting person, and Gru had had opposed the US imposing sanctions on Japan, believing that that would only strengthen the Japanese military, and we needed to encourage the civilian leadership. But in 1940 or, I think early in '41, sometime in 1941, he sent what became known as the green light message to Washington; changed, saying, we have no choice. We have to boycott the export of oil and take a very tough line and sanction Japan to try to control the military. And so I was given this assignment: "Why don't you write a paper about Joseph Gru and the green light message." So, you know, talking about it, as you can tell––this is many many years, it was more than 50 years ago––but it's like yesterday for me because it was a turning point in my life.

I wrote this paper. And I was actually I was quite shy and I was timid. Some of the people in the class knew a lot about Asia. Some of them had been in, you know, in Korean War, had visited the region for one reason or another. I don't know. I was very quiet and try to sink low in my chair, so I didn't participate very much. But then we had to give this oral report. So I gave the oral report. And I see Jim Morley and Dorothy Borg writing like crazy on their pad, I'm thinking to myself, “Oh, my goodness, they're writing down all these points about what a fool I am, what a stupid paper I wrote.” So that they would be able to criticize it when I was done. So but I, you know, I struggled through it and gave the report and then they were very excited about the paper. So sometimes there's an advantage about doing research on something you know absolutely nothing about. I didn't have a hypothesis because I didn't even know what it was I was looking for. But that resulted in my having a very fresh view, kind of unique view, which it turned out, they appreciated. So, so towards the end of the semester, I was going to graduate and trying to figure out what I wanted to, do to I want to try to go into the Foreign Service, or become a journalist, or make my mother happy and go to law school.

And Jim Morley called me into his office and said, "You know, I don't know you well, but it seems to me you did a really great job on the paper and you have a talent for this kind of research. And you don't seem to know what you want to do. You don't have any definite plans about the future. Why don't you enter the PhD program? Study Japanese. And see if you like it. And if you don't, you know, you can always leave after a year, and I can help you get a fellowship." So I figured, Yeah, why not? I, you know, it'd be another year I could postpone having to make a decision about what to do with my life. So I applied and I got a fellowship; at the time it was the Eisenhower administration, passed the what was called the National Defense Education Act, NDEA. This was in the immediate aftermath of Sputnik,  the Russian satellite that was the first satellite to go up, I think [in] 1958. The US got very concerned about the Russians being out being ahead of us. And so they created the National Defense Education Act. Which was to encourage young people to study exotic languages: Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Arabic and so on. I got one of these NDEA fellowships and started studying Japanese that summer. So I came in 1962 to Columbia. I finished the master's degree and in like May of 1963, and that summer, I started taking Japanese. And in those days, you could do an intensive first year intensive program in the summer months, the intensive second year program in the fall semester, and intensive third year in the spring semester. I tell you, it was pretty intense. I was eating, sleeping, drinking, dreaming Japanese, but I was also in a PhD program. So I had to take my coursework. But the language fascinated me, and Japan seemed to be a really interesting country. In 1963, Japan is the fastest growing country, economically, in the world. It was people becoming aware of the so-called Japanese miracle; a lot like China today is, you know––it's suddenly burst onto the world scene as a major power. And so Japan was interesting. So I entered the PhD program and I also became a member of the East Asian Institute. In those days, unlike now, the certificate of the East Asian Institute was a prestigious thing to get so you had to take––I can tell you in some in some detail when we get to it about the philosophy that was behind the East Asian Institute––and it involved taking courses not only in Japanese politics, but in Japanese history and literature and culture and something about somewhere else in Asia––about China or Korea.

So I became a student at the East Asian Institute in 1963 when I did the PhD program, and I think I got the certificate the following year, and then I got my PhD in 1969. So in summary, I was born in Brooklyn, and grew up in Queens, ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, came back to New York City to do a one year master's program figuring I'd do something, as I said, in journalism or Foreign Service. The only thing I never thought of doing was to become an academic, or to become a Japan specialist. So it's a good example of how life sometimes leads you into unexpected pathways. Because I became an academic I taught here for 47 years, until I retired in December of 2015. And I became a Japan specialist. And that's what I am now.

 

Chen: This is not that relevant to the actual interview, but I'm curious of what instrument you played.

 

Curtis: So I was and I still do play the piano. So I'm a serious amateur.  play gigs, especially in Japan.

 

Chen: Oh my god, that sounds kind of fun.

 

Curtis: I played in clubs quite a bit. And I studied with a great musician here in the city. And yeah, since I stopped teaching I've actually been playing and working a lot more on my music. So I had dropped it, you know, after I entered graduate school, and I was so busy with graduate work, and then teaching and so on. I played the piano, but I didn't really work at it. So I got kind of bored with my own playing, because I hear the same thing all the time in my playing, but so about 10 or more years ago, I decided for myself: I want to see how good I can be as a musician. So I've been working, so I worked very hard at it.

 

Chen: Yeah. You said you were playing in Japan. Were you playing when you're doing your fieldwork?

 

Curtis: No, in the last 10 years or so I've been playing a lot. I'm 79 years old. When I was 70––there’s a very famous musician and famous jazz musician, famous in the United States as well as in Japan, but a Japanese saxophone player named Sadao Watanabe; and Watanabe’s wife was his manager. And one day, she said to me––I had played with him at a sort of parties, party or two, and his wife knew my music. So she said, you’re going to be 70 years old. It's time for you to have your debut as a professional jazz musician in Japan. So she arranged for me to play at a club. There's a club called Pit Inn in Shinjuku which is the Japanese version––it's kind of for Japan what the Village Vanguard is in the United States. It is the Mecca, it is the place. And it's so cool because she arranged for me to have you know, an evening at the at the Pit Inn with my trio bass and drum. And then Sadao Watanabe––NabeSada is the way he's referred to often––Nabesada was my guest performer. So we had a blast. And I remember because at the end of the evening, we went back to the dressing room. And the manager came in with our pay, because we got paid based on how big the audience was this on. And we split it equally among the four of us. And it amounted to 30,000 yen, which was $300. So that $300 to me was like $30,000 you know, to get paid for playing the piano in a great place in Tokyo that made my not only made my day it really was a big deal for me. So, and after that Watanabe and I played together. We did some charity concerts for Tohoku, for the Greater East Japan earthquake and tsunami. And then I have some other friends in music there. So I play around so I can… you don't want to go here because I can keep on talking about music.

 

Chen: Okay. Well, we'll get back on track but that that's super fun. I don't play a lot right now, but I grew up playing music. I started playing guitar at four and played clarinet for a long time as well. Yeah, okay, but we'll get there.

Okay, so there are a lot of really interesting things already that I'd love to ask you about. So, you've already talked a little bit about how the geopolitics was impacting sort of some of the, like, it's behind the scenes, right. It's how you got this grant. And it's, you can see that influence on your professors. Do you think it impacted the Institute? Or? Or maybe, maybe why don't you talk a little bit more about what being part of the Institute meant? Because you hinted a little bit about sort of the philosophy of the Institute, and we can go to the geopolitics.

 

Curtis: So the Institute was founded when? 1947, 48?

 

Chen: I think 1949.

 

Curtis: So after the war, a number of foundations, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, in particular, took the initiative to help try to create a cadre of well informed people about East Asia and about Japan, China. Because we didn't know very much on the eve of the Second World War. I think there were no more than a dozen Americans teaching in American universities about Japan who had language ability. So, at several universities, these foundations supported the creation of institutes devoted to regional studies and policy-oriented contemporary study of contemporary societies in East Asia. So the East Asian Institute, founded in 1949, was at the time concerned with Japan, China, and Korea. It's now wider; we have a broader––we cover more than that. And Korea was very small but Japan and China were the key countries for the Institute.

 

And the first, the first director of these stations, was a British scholar, famous scholar, named George Sansom: S-A-N-S-O-M. George Sansom wrote what at the time was the only kind of history of modern Japan up to that time, but he only stayed for a year or two. He'd come in and he'd read his notes and walk out and didn't have much interaction and wasn't much of a much of a director. But he was replaced––and this is an important story––by a man named Hugh Borton. And Hugh Borton was a Quaker who, before the war, went to Japan and then ended up at the University of Tokyo to work on a PhD. And from Japan went to Leiden, Holland, which was the center of Japanese studies at the time, because Holland had this long history of relations with Japan before the Meiji Restoration and Tokugawa period. So he got his PhD at Leiden and then came back to the States. And he was a rare specimen as someone who knew Japan and got a PhD in Japanese and Japanese history. And so this––he was hired by the State Department at the beginning of Second World War––and he was in charge of a division that was responsible for planning for the post-surrender occupation of Japan. So Hugh Borton was a key player in preparing the occupation policies, which the Americans started to plan right as soon as the war began. And one of the interesting things is that Borton and another man, Edwin Reischauer, who was professor at Harvard––who became professor at Harvard and Ambassador to Japan; was also in the State Department––they and Joseph Gru, who I mentioned earlier––the ambassador––they all believed that the Japanese Emperor should be kept on the throne. Not tried as a war criminal. Not forced to abdicate. But should be used to sort of put the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on the occupation’s reform policies. And that's what happened.

 

So it's kind of it's very interesting that there was so much hatred of Japan you know, as a result of Pearl Harbor and the war, and the Emperor was the Emperor. So he was the one on his white horse who sent the soldiers off to the, you know, to kill people in China and so on. But their understanding of Japan was that if you remove the Emperor, it's like pulling the thread that holds a garment together out and it would be only chaos as a result. So then, anyway, so Hugh Borton played a very important role in planning for the for the surrender and the occupation of Japan and then he came to Columbia as George Sansom’s successor as director of the East Asian Institute. So when I got to Columbia, and to the Institute––I got to Columbia in 1962 and the Institute in 1963––Hugh Borton was still here. And I'm not sure when he passed away, he had a very long life. But we became quite close. I had great admiration for him, he was a pacifist––a Quaker and a pacifist. Very gentle soul and a great historian of Japan. So, as I said, Hugh Borton was kind of a prewar Japan specialist. Jim Morley, Herbert Passin in sociology, Donald Keene in literature and several others. These were the first postwar generation. And they were the leaders of the East Asian Institute.

 

So the philosophy that drove the Institute, was that we need people who know about these countries, about China and about Japan and about Korea. And knowing about the countries means more than knowing about the politics or more than knowing about literature. It means knowing something more embracing, more encompassing.

 

So the Institute program required that you took courses outside of your major discipline like political science, you had to take other classes. It required that you took, you know, a sequence of courses in history and modern Japanese history and that you took courses about the other, the other country, which in my case would be China in the region, right.

There were some wonderful China specialists here at the time. One was a man named [C.] Martin Wilbur, who became director. I think maybe after Borton, early on, and he was a specialist on modern Chinese history. And, the one I knew best and admired was this fellow named A. Doak Barnett. A. Doak Barnett was very, very famous. He was a journalist in Beijing in China during the war, I think for you know, until the revolution and then he came to Columbia, so he brought a real sense of what it's like on the ground in China. So I really enjoyed his course and I got to know him quite well.

 

And in those days, there was what was called the East Asian Institute seminar. So all these people I mentioned were in this seminar. There were as many professors as there were students, say maybe half a dozen or so of us students and half a dozen professors: Hugh Borton and Jim Morley and A. Doak Barnett, Martin Wilbur, Dorothy Borg, Herb Passin. So it was a small student group, but we were all I think very energized, very much feeling that we were doing something new and different and important; and in those days, disciplinary concerns of theory and methodology and so on––they were of kind of secondary importance. We were all curious about: What are these countries about? Japan had become a democracy. What does that mean? How does it operate? Is it just a carbon copy of the US? Not likely, although a lot of Americans thought that's what it would be as a result of the occupation. So I think what drove us––me and my colleagues, Mike, my student, the other students here––was this curiosity. And so we all went out and did research that was kind of empirical, that tried to find out: How does this system operate?

 

I was a maybe a little bit ahead of the others, but there were several of us, who went on and then had careers in academia. T.J. Pempel, professor at Berkeley; John Campbell, who is now retired but a professor at University of Michigan; Mike Donnelly at Toronto. Jim Morley trained more of the next generation of Japan political science specialists than all the other professors and other universities combined. He was quite an amazing individual.

 

So that's what the Institute was about. And as I said, for many of us, in those days, the Institute was our intellectual home much more than the department. More than political science or sociology, or whatever. This is where we all congregated. This is where all the action was. And so that was the Institute.

 

I think one more personal note. So after that first year, I did the first year of graduate work. Then the second year was in the PhD program. Then I got a fellowship to go to Tokyo in 1964. To study Japanese language at the NT University Center for Japanese studies, which is Stanford-run. There are about 15 universities that support this center. And so I went to the IUC, the University Center from 1964 to '65 for a year to do intensive Japanese. I did the first three years of Japanese intensive here in one year. Then I went for a second year of intensive Japanese in Japan. And then I came back––actually only for a year––and finished all the PhD pre-dissertation requirements. And I went back to Japan and went to Kyushu in, you know, the southern island, to work on my dissertation, which was a case study of how you get elected to the Japanese Diet. I moved in with a politician, his family, and ended this study about––thank God he got elected; if he hadn't gotten elected, I don't think I'd get a PhD. You can write a book about "he did this, that and the other thing and then he failed." So everything comes together because he did this, that and that, and he––

 

Chen: That would be an interesting book––he did all these things and still failed.

 

Curtis: But then you have to read another book about why he failed. So anyway, so I wrote that book. And that dissertation, and that got published in English, but it was published in Japanese and became a best seller in Japan, because it was the first book by anybody Japanese or foreign to actually do and to study: How do you do it? And so it became a textbook for politicians. One reason I have built extensive relationships with Japanese politicians over the past half a century is that they've all read my book. And a lot of them used it, as, you know, either as an inspiration for going into politics, or as kind of a manual for how you actually organize a campaign. So that was just a very fortuitous––just luck that I hit on a topic like that, which was brand new. I didn't know that no one had––I didn't know what I was getting into there any more than I had when I wrote about Joseph Gru, but it turned out to be great. So anyway, that's me. So that was the Institute, when it was when it was founded.

As I said Hugh Bolton was director, then Marty Wilbur on the China side was director. Then Jim Morley, I became director and then then I became assistant professor here. I got my degree in '69. But when I came back from my dissertation research, I had an office in the East Asian Institute to write and was going to spend the year writing my dissertation. And one day Jim Morley said to me, a job has opened up at the University of Illinois, beginning in two months in the spring semester of 1968. So I'd come back from Japan from the East Asian research in September of '67, and spent that fall semester and then I was planning to spend the spring semester and finish my dissertation. But he said this, "You know, Illinois is a great school. These jobs don't come along that often. Stick your draft in a suitcase and go to Illinois and write it while you're teaching." So I went to the University of Illinois in the spring of '68.

And then––so I taught there that semester, but then I got a call from Columbia inviting me back. I'm back. I mean, I had left as a student, but now inviting me to be in political science department. So I only spent one semester at Illinois. The rest of my career has been as a professor here at Columbia. So I said 47 years I taught here. So I forget when I started teaching, but in '69, I started, I started teaching in '68 as an instructor, and then once I got my degree, in '69, then I became an assistant professor. And then I think in 1974, I became an associate professor. Actually I had an offer from another university and that had the fortune of consequence [in that] Columbia offered me early tenure. And I wanted to stay anyway, so I was very happy to. So I stayed at Columbia and then I was actually in London on sabbatical in Europe and in Japan for the year. And I got a phone call from Marty Wilbur saying that Morley was resigning as director. And, you know, it was early for me to do this, but would I please consider becoming director of the Institute? So I became director in 1974. And I took a couple of years off in the wild to go on sabbatical, whatever. But I've served a total of 12 years, so I'm the longest serving director of the East Asian Institute. From, I think, from 1974, between 1974 and 1990. I was director for 12 years. And I'm jumping around and maybe talking more than you want. But one of the things, you know, I mentioned earlier that there was a lot of funding from especially, the Ford Foundation for the East Asian Institute. They funded the chairs they gave us they gave a research grant so that faculty members could spend the summer months doing research and go to Japan. They set up some grants. But then, like happens often with foundations, they got tired of doing the same thing. And they thought, now Japan is rich. You know, we've got all this rapid growth of the 1960s. So they basically got out of the business of funding the Institute, so the Institute was in dire financial shape when I became director. One of the things I spent a lot of time at was trying to raise money for the Institute and raise it mostly in Japan. The Japanese suddenly were a very large economy. It was trying to strengthen its relations with the United States. And it was responsive to these to the idea that they could help by helping fund the intellectual infrastructure and American universities.

So, Harvard and Yale, Columbia, all went out to try to raise money. The Japanese government in the early 1970s, the prime minister was Mr. Tanaka. So they gave $10 million to 10 universities––a million dollars to each university. About that, I think now about about $5 million today to fund chairs. So Carol Gluck was a professor here. She sits in the chair that was funded by this million dollar grant from the Japanese government, I think in 1971. So I went out and met a lot of Japanese businessmen with hat in hand trying to raise money for the Institute. And we did, and then so I did that. Since then the Institute is––has become fairly well endowed. Times change, so, the Institute today is not like it was so many years ago, but that's the background.

 

Chen: Okay, great. So I do want to hear more about how you think it's changed. But first, I'm curious, you know, as you mentioned, it started just Japan, China and Korea. Why do you think it didn't start out with a more diverse geography in terms of studying Southeast Asia, for example?

 

Curtis: What is East Asia? That, what East Asia is, changes over time. In those days, and even today to some extent, East Asia is Northeast Asia. We talked about East Asia, the Indo-Pacific. East Asia––the region kind of now runs from Australia, New Zealand, all the way to India. But in those days, there was "East Asia," which was essentially Northeast Asia, China, Japan, Korea. Southeast Asia was a backwater. It was poor, was not a significant player on the international stage. The American interest in the region and knowledge of the region was very low. That’s how we ended up in Vietnam War; misunderstanding what Vietnam was all about. And we had been at war with Japan. And we screwed up China as Americans thought at the time when China when communist. That was our ally in the Second World War, with Chiang Kai-shek who flees to Taiwan, and China becomes communist. Then 1950 a war breaks out in the Korean Peninsula. So, this was very much of central concern. This is the region that was a major concern to the United States, Japan. You don't want to have war again with Japan. You had to figure out how to deal with Communist China. What to do about a divided Korea. These were the issues that drove what the Institute was about. Only later on did Southeast Asia grow and trade increased and so on. Then Southeast Asia is drawn in. Now we extend our sights to Mongolia, Nepal, Tibet, and so on. So that's the history of it.

 

Chen: Yeah. Do you think the Vietnam War played a role in expanding sights there in terms of Southeast Asia?

 

Curtis: Yeah, marginally. But we had a lot––

 

Even now, Southeast Asian Studies is not well developed. There is more of it, and there's interest in it, but it's still not on a par with Northeast Asia in terms of American interest and American financial support from corporations or from from foundations and so on. And when I was director, I tried very hard to expand coverage of Southeast Asia and we did some conferences and introduced some courses, but it's been––it's been a rough road to get more Southeast Asia––but it's happening.

 

Chen: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So why don't we talk about some of the ways that you think that the Institute has changed. You talked, sounds like it was, you know, we've already talked a little bit about how it's changed, how it changed between when you first entered and then kind of the foundation’s losing interest in that impacting things but maybe if you want to talk further about since the '70s to now.

 

Curtis: So the biggest change is in the students. Because when I studied here, the people that like I mentioned before other students at the time, I think none of us had had Japanese language training before coming to graduate school. Now, most of the students who come into the graduate program and are in the East Asian Institute, working on Japan and China, they've studied language as an undergraduate. And we're having more and more students who having studied Japanese or Chinese or Korean as an undergraduate or having spent a year abroad in high school, in Japan, or in South Korea. They're studying a second Asian language. So, you know, we had our hands full, just trying to get our arms around one language. Now the students know a lot more, they come into graduate school, knowing a lot more about the region, at least about one of the countries in the region, and almost always having had experience living in that country. That's a huge, huge change. And so it obviously had to change the way we taught about the region with, you know, the kind of basic ABC of, you know, Japan and China, in a way a lot of students have already had that. So I think the level has been much higher, the interest in the region as a whole, not just in in one particular country in the region that has gotten much stronger, and the pressures from the disciplines from the departments to be more disciplinary oriented have created a different environment. So it's a problem in the sense that when we were young, when I was young, studying here, I could concentrate on Japan. And in the political science department, a lot of the professors had been journalists or historians, had been in the war, gone to language school, had experience in China or Japan, Korea. So we were very much country and region focused. There was a strong country, region focus. Now, students are under great pressure to do mainstream sociology and mainstream political science and mainstream anthropology, very theoretical and so on, and then do the regional stuff on top of that.

 

So I think the challenge is in some ways much more severe for students today, because you've got to do all of that. We had to do it too, but it wasn't as intense as I think it is now––all the tension was not as great as it is now between the demands of the discipline and the demands of the Japan specialty. If you want to be a Japan specialist you got to know about Japan, you can't do power-sitting in your room and reading a book about political theory, and then applying that theory to Japan. No, you got to go to Japan and then figure out what theory works, you know, then "how can that inform comparative theory, anyway?" So that's a big change. And, you know, that's among the students and among the professors, there's been a big change in the sense that well, first of all––[what is] in Japanese referred to as your "problem consciousness." What's the point, you know? Why are you doing this? Well, it's clear for people like Jim Morley and Marty Wilbur and others of that generation: they did it because we had a horrific experience in the Second World War, people died in all these countries, and so this "never let it happen again" attitude was so strong among people who came into this field–– who came into academia to teaching about Asia. Never let it happen again with Japan. How could we have so misunderstood China? But our generation had a different mindset. We weren’t in the war. I was was born in 1940. So I was only four or five years old when the war ended, but we so we grew up seeing this country on the other side of the Pacific growing––booming, and changing, and becoming economically advanced, becoming a democracy. And so we want to know what's going on there. It's a very different kind of problem consciousness, as I suggested earlier. In the history of American Studies in Japan, we often talk about the three generations of American students to Japan. First generation was prewar, mostly missionaries, and missionary children. So Edwin Reischauer, I mentioned earlier–– professor at Harvard and Ambassador to Japan during the Kennedy years––he was born in Tokyo, son of missionaries, first came to the United States to go to Oberlin College when he was 16 years old. So there's a small group of these prewar people like Hugh Borton––he wasn't a missionary family, but the prewar people. But it was small. Then this huge, large group of the second generation, the second generation being the wartime Army/Navy language school generation. And they're the ones who populated the field of Japan and Asia, East Asian Studies after the war. Then there's the third generation, and I'm one of the third generation.

Many, many years ago, the Japanese newspaper called the Asahi Shimbun did a yearlong series on US-Japan relations. And the first article in the series was about me, because they had gone to the university center to find out what it was [that] Americans were doing––and the director of the center. So if you want to talk to somebody who's interested in US-Japan relations, this fellow graduated a few years ago, and he'd be someone to talk to. So the writer of that article became a close friend of mine––and still is––and wrote about the three generations, that's where the expression comes from. It was from this particular city desk writer at the Asahi Shimbun, this very intelligent, insightful view that there was that first generation, and then the language school, and then the third generation, so it's a little bit about me and the kind of work I was doing, writing about factional politics and the ruling party and sort of contemporary stuff. And that was the new generation and the new generation weren't part of the wartime history of US-Japan. So they the Japanese saw it is as a new kind of "neutral group" of people, and there was something to it. So there are a number of us like that. Well, there's been many generations since my generation of Japan specialists, that analysis kind of stops with the third generation. I don't know how you would characterize the later generations, although I think the later generations of people, it gets back to the point made earlier about the tension between discipline and reason. So the students who have come after us, my generation, they are much more mainstream, I mean, that they're trained, I think they're trained better in their discipline. They do different kinds of research than we do. Than we did. And that's all to be expected because [of] the kind of work I did and my colleagues did. And that went on for like 20 years. A lot of things that people didn't know, we sort of dealt with. So I think the research has gotten more narrow, much more specialized. In some ways more technical. But it's still–– there's still a lot of it. So that's a big change.

 

Chen: I guess there's two different things. One is "What is the research people are putting out?" and two is "the impact on the Institute." Right? And it sounds like you're saying maybe the impact on the Institute is somewhat negative, that things have gotten more specialized. Is there a little bit, like you talked about––like the cohesion and the family feeling at the Institute––do you think that's still here?

 

Curtis: I think it is. I'm not sure, it's a different kind of community now. But I think the Institute still has that sense of being a community. And both among students and faculty here. This is kind of home base for a lot of students. The Institute certificate is no longer very important. I'm not sure that we actually still give the certificate or that many students have tried to get it. It's not as before when, years ago, you had the East Asian Institute certificate it kind of certified that you knew something about the region. We don’t have to do that in a way anymore because people know about the region why they take––they take courses because they already know about the region and they want to know more. So it's different. So the certificate has been devalued.

 

But the Institute still plays a very important role. Because first of all, it brings together faculty from different disciplines. It's very easy to get stovepiped in academia: political scientists talk with political scientists, and the disciplines sort of the disciplinary work, but don't have a lot of interaction. But here, because we're all interested in the region, there's a lot of interaction. You know, our director is a China historian. Myron Cohen [is] an anthropologist, China anthropologist, I do Japanese political science, Carol Gluck, is you know modern Japanese history. We all interact. And Madeline Zelin, who was also a director here, she's modern Chinese history. So I think the Institute is still very important in bringing this interdisciplinary focus on the region. And yeah, so I don't think the consequences are negative as much as they have just changed the kind of the center of gravity or the focus of the Institute.

 

Chen: Yeah. I certainly think that from my own experiences being in an interdisciplinary fields, there are times when––when people are more specialized––that actually really adds to the Institute. And so that was going to be my next question; if you said, "Oh, yeah, there's been all these negative impacts." It's like, "Well, what about some positive impacts?" And I wonder––maybe that's more a question I would have to ask some of the students or the younger faculty?

 

Curtis: You know, I think you need to get a good sense of that. I mean, I have my observations, but the younger faculty members or students,  they have––they just have a different, different experience than I do. No, I don't think it's negative. I won't say any of it is negative, but it sure is different. Yeah. And for me, there are the good old days when we were a very tight knit community of faculty and students, all engaged in this enterprise of trying to understand these countries better. And you know also like Japan was a very dynamic, rapidly changing society in the 1960s when I got involved. Now it's kind of stable, growing older. It's different. China's different from what––you know, in those days, China was an enigma. It was this communist-run communist country. Now China's this booming economy and new sort of superpower on the world stage. So yeah, there's a lot of changes, I think the Institute has changed in step with the changes in the region and one of those changes––one of the Institute’s changes––was to widen its scope. So we do more on Southeast Asia, we do more on sort of moving out beyond East Asia. But I think the emphasis on interdisciplinary knowledge, that you can't know about China or Japan just by knowing how the Chinese Communist Party is organized––you have to understand something about their culture, about the history about the economy and so forth and so on. So we try to get our students to take that kind of broader view. And that doesn't change.

 

Chen: Yeah, yeah. And because you're a Japanese specialist, maybe you wouldn't have a strong opinion on this but I'm wondering if something like you know, the trade war which is obviously not as significant as WWII, but it's like this ferment, right. I'm Chinese, Taiwanese, and so at least in my lifetime, it's the most significant time that I've––China is constantly in the news. And I'm wondering if, if that'll, I don't know, make people take the approach that that used to be in terms of like trying to figure things out again, or if there's a––in some ways dismissive––“Oh, we don't care," attitude.

 

Curtis: I don't think you're gonna find a dismissive attitude about China. But the question is whether we try to understand and figure out and try to think through how to engage, or whether we just treat China as an enemy. But, you know, there's a precedent, of course, because in 1980s, we had a very similar set of issues with Japan; there was a trade war between the US and Japan. And, just as you see now, a lot of commentators who [were] not particularly well informed on Japan in those days, or on China today, they were saying––when the Cold War ended in 1989, 1990, it was very popular to say, "The Cold War has ended and Japan has won. Soviet Union is gone. Now we have to contain Japan." That's not that long ago. And so some of the same language you hear about how we have to contain China today, that's what we said about Japan. There's some key differences. Japan was an ally [to] the United States, China is not. Japan was a democracy. China is not. Yeah, there's a lot of differences. But these trade tensions, they did affect this, the academic study of Japan––[there] emerged, these so-called revisionists, people who were very critical in Japan, and [who] accused those of us who had been involved with Japan studies as being too soft on Japan: members of what they called the "Chrysanthemum Club." And they were the revisionists. And we were the Chrysanthemum Club. But you know, things calm down and changed you know, people who study who study about Japan, in the social sciences––in some ways, it's more technical, more narrow, it's happening. But that's happening across the board in social sciences, and not just in Asia, related things, but in everything, unfortunately, in my view. But that's, you know––it is what it is. Now, tensions with China, trade war, intellectual property rights issues and so on. And the idea that China is a challenger to American hegemony. Well, this is the world that you're going to have that––your generation has to figure out how to manage in the coming decades. This is the big issue, at least for the next several decades; how to manage US-China relations. So that's very different from the old days. When I was a youngster...

 

Chen: Yeah, yeah. My dad who is Taiwanese, he'll say that he thinks that the US attitude towards Japan and China flip flops every, like 50 or so years, you know, for a while to be like, "Oh, these Chinese people they're coming in and stealing our jobs" right in the beginning of Chinese migration and then it's like, "Oh, well now we hate Japanese people. We're going to throw them into camps." And then like you just said like, then it was like, "Oh, now China is a communist one and Japan is the democracy." Do you have any thoughts on that about kind of how the US sees China versus how it sees Japan and––

 

Curtis: Well, yeah––with Japan, it's not a homogeneous field, but I think the American public, young people, particularly, see Japan as a cool country. Because [of] Japanese soft power: anime and food and manga and so on. That's part of world culture now. So it's interesting that here at Columbia, more students are taking classes dealing with Japanese politics and economy––modern history––than they were ever before. But the reason is that undergraduates who in high school, got interested in Japanese, you know, soft power issues––they come to Columbia, and––Japan's an interesting country––[they think,] "Well, let me find out something about its politics or the economy" [and they] take this class [but are] not planning to become Japan specialist[s]. When I was young, when I was a student here, most of us who studied about Japan did so in graduate school. And there were few undergraduates in any of these courses. We did it as graduate students––thinking about having professional careers dealing with the country. Now, the young people take courses on Japan, but they're gonna have professional careers that are not necessarily going to deal with Asia, but Japan or China or Korea, whatever. So it's a very different mindset. And some of that's very healthy. In other words, Japan is becoming a normal country. We don't have many Americans who want to specialize in French politics, or in the British economy, right? So why would they specialize on Japanese politics, the Japanese economy? You want to know something––you can't be in a cultured, educated human being if you don't know something about Japan, any more than if you didn't know anything about Europe. That's the change. So I think that's healthy. The problem is that it we're not generating enough students who are doing, you know, PhD level work on Japan, I'm talking not just about Japan, but on East Asia generally, so that we're going to run out of the people to teach about the region unless we train these graduates. And so that's kind of a challenge. The China situation in one respect it's a bit like the study of Japan was 30, 40 years ago. Japan was very dynamic. It was exciting, lots of changes going on. It's going to be the new power. Now, that's China. And, you know, and then there are additional complication with China. It's not a democracy. And it's a big challenge. And America is not as powerful, not as strong as it was when Japan was growing. 

 

Chen: Yeah, yeah. And have you ever thought about sort of the regional studies of East Asia compared to regional studies of other areas?

 

Curtis: Well, in this university with the strongest, by far, as an Institute––we are the strongest Institute. Russian Institute is more or less in the same bag. Traditionally, here, East Asia and Russia have been the major regional centers. But once the Russians lost the Soviet Union, it became a different kind of Institute. Anyway, at Columbia the East Asian Institute is, I think, is the largest, has the most faculty, has more of a sense of community than almost all the other Institutes. And in the bigger picture of American regional––East Asian Studies––I think, you know, this university is probably at the top. So, because of the East Asian Institute––it's been, it'll be 70, 75 years anniversary coming up. And, you know, things have changed. The Institute has changed, as I’ve described a little bit. But it's still plays a very important role of drawing together intellectual resources from all these different disciplines to try to better understand what's going on in that part of the world. And now how that can impact thinking, you know, theory about international relations or comparative politics or whatever, society. Economic organization and so forth and so on. I think that role [is] still a very important role at the instant place.

 

Chen: Yeah. Yeah. And so much of that is in the history, right, because we haven't been for better or worse, we haven't been studying Sub Saharan Africa or Northern Africa or South America for all those years, because they weren't geopolitical threats. Right. So any sort of institute that would potentially deal with one of those regions doesn't have the benefit of these 70 years of history.

 

Curtis: Yeah, that's true. But Columbia has Institutes for every region in the world. And the African Institute, obviously it's smaller––but they do. We have the African Institute, Middle East Institute, Latin American Institute, Russia, which covers Eastern Europe, the West European and East Asian Institute. So we cover the world. And that's one of the strengths of Columbia. But as I was saying earlier, in the old days, so-called "area studies" was much more accepted as a legitimate approach to intellectual investigation than it is now. So, regional studies has–– it's always been viewed critically by sort of mainstream disciplinary types, but that's gotten worse.

 

So I'm not negative about the Institute but I am negative about the way disciplines undervalue knowledge of geography––knowledge of geographical places of countries of regions. When I was a student here, to get a PhD in political science, you had to pass exam in two foreign languages. Now you can get a PhD in comparative politics without having any foreign language ability at all. Because you can take game theory and some quantitative course instead of language. It's a course that's considered to be a language, right? That's crazy in my view, but that's where we're at. So you have, as I say, the devaluation of regional knowledge, of language ability. And we see it play out in the real world of the lack of people in government, and in industry, and in journalism. Who can do an interview, who can go and interview someone in Chinese? In China, or no? So the idea that you don't need to know a foreign language––it's like if a Japanese getting a PhD at a Japanese University in American politics, cannot speak, cannot read English, but he reads translations of books that are in Japanese. And he can get a PhD in American politics, or American history. He'd be laughed out of the room. But that is what's happening in this country. And it's just, that's really unfortunate, but it is what it is. So, you know, I think people in the Institute are very aware of this problem. And we try to do what we can to encourage this regional knowledge and language ability, which is the key. It's difficult, because there is not a lot of sympathy for people to spend a lot of time learning language, which is a difficult thing to do. It takes time doing the regional studies. You don't want to be in school all your life, you want to get your PhD and get to work. But to do all of that, and to satisfy the disciplines. It's tough.

 

Chen: Yeah, yeah. And do you think that again, comes down to now being further away from World War Two and the Cold War? Do you think those are the main reasons why our society as a whole undervalues…

 

Curtis: It's very, it's kind of a real puzzle. We know we need to know more about countries now than ever before. I mean, look at the mess in the Middle East. Look at Africa you gotta know, be able to know these countries, China, whatever. But the American academia, social sciences have become increasingly theory focused and quantitative in approach rather than qualitative analysis, right? It’s not because we've moved so far away from the Second World War. I don't think so. I know, it's an intellectual trend, which I've been waiting to see reversed. Right. And I don't see but I don't see it happening yet.

 

Chen: Yeah, well, or even. You know, you touched a little bit on the relationship between greater American society and the academy when you were talking about funding. And so I think that that has to be an element of it as well. Right? If people I mean, I guess the students and what they're interested in definitely plays a role. But if a foundation isn't willing to give as much funding to an institute, or any institutes that do area studies, that impacts your ability to do everything.

 

Curtis: That's right. So I think that's right. But they're still––they support like Southeast Asia studies. Japan, very little now. Because Japan is wealthy; Japan is a democracy. In some ways, it's not as interesting, because it's not a problem. USA-Japan relationship is very, it's very good. Japan's not a really a big problem. There's a lot of foundation support for China studies. So it's there. But you know, when I started Japan, it was only 1963. So this is less than 20 years after the end of the Second World War. The people who were teaching had all been in the war. And, to get back to the idea of problem consciousness, they were really so determined to do what they could to make sure that the world would be different, and American foreign policy after the Second World War––we've gone from isolationism, now to become a global power, which saw, I think, where people believe that we had kind of a special role to play in making the world safe after the war. Try to avoid that kind of thing from happening again. Well, it's been a long time now and things have changed.

 

Chen: What do you think has been the biggest impact of [the Institute on] your life?

 

Curtis: Well, I mean, for me, the Institute changed my life by pure coincidence, having taken this class on American foreign policy, taught by someone who was the director of the Institute at the time, Jim Morley. And then coming into the Institute. I was very comfortable here. It was a warm atmosphere, great people, all engaged in projects to try to improve understanding about Japan or the region. A welcoming environment and a really interesting group of characters that taught here. So I was caught up in that, by that feeling of comradeship or whatever in the Institute, and I found Japan to be all new to me, but I thought it was fascinating, especially language. I was entranced by the language. I had studied Russian and French. That's what I did my PhD qualifying language exams for––Russian and French, not Japanese. But I thought it was, you know––language was fascinating. Jim Morley, just a wonderful human being, very warm. So were the other people––Dorothy Borg, and so on. That got me to decide to do the PhD. I didn't think of becoming a professor, an academic, until I became an academic. I wasn't quite sure why I was doing it except it was interesting. And I figured out later what to do. And then I got offered a position, first at Illinois, and then right here, at Columbia. So the Institute changed my life. And the Institute has always been my intellectual home. When I think where is my home at Columbia, I've always had my office at the Institute, and not in the department. And that's true for several of us here. The only thing I've mentioned about me that you might find interesting, when I got the call to come to Columbia when I was in Illinois––it's in Champaign Urbana, which is in the middle of the cornfields of the Midwest. And I had this feeling: "Here I am isolated on an island in the midst of this sea of corn. And I gotta get out of here." So if I hadn't gotten the offer from Columbia, I don't think I'd be an academic today. I think I would have left academia and done something else. Illinois was a great school. But it wasn't for me. I'm a New Yorker. And being out there in the Midwest, we had nobody to talk to except other academics. No, that's not my idea of what I wanted to do with my life. So I got the phone call. A phone call was not from Jim Morley. The phone call was from Herbert Passin who was professor of sociology. And Herb was a consultant to the Ford Foundation. And the Ford Foundation funded a conference in Japan at a place called Shimoda––which is south of Tokyo––called the Shimoda conference, bringing together American and Japanese intellectuals and government leaders. And they had been nothing really like it since the end of the war. And one of the people at the conference was the [US] Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield. And Mansfield, at the Shimoda conference, proposed that that there be established a nongovernmental, US-Japan parliamentary exchange program; exchange between American congressman and Japanese parliamentarians diet members and so forth. Herb was there, to consult with Ford’s consultant, and Herb brought this proposal from Mansfield to the Ford Foundation, and the Ford Foundation decided to fund a parliamentary exchange program and to place it at the East Asian Institute at Columbia.

So I had written this dissertation about how you get elected to the Diet, so I knew a lot about Japanese politics and politics. I knew a lot of the politicians. So Herb called me in Illinois and said, would you come back? Would you come to Columbia? Jim Morley has managed to get you a position as an instructor in the political science department on a kind of half-time basis. And the Ford Foundation grant will fund the other half for you to be my associate as director of the parliamentary exchange program. So that's how I came back to Columbia. And then the following year, and after I got my degree that the political science department decided to make me a full time assistant professor, but I continued the parliamentary exchange program work so for 10 years, 10 years,

 

I ran this program of exchange between Congress and the Japanese parliament, the Diet. So I was busy going back and forth between the US and Japan. I take these American congressmen to Tokyo and it was exciting, another aspect of my career that not only was I doing the academic work and teaching, but I was very much involved dealing with these Japanese and American politicians. So, so they were some young American Congressmen, at the time–– this is late '60s, early '70s––who just were really interested in trying to learn more about Japan. So you may know the names of Donald Rumsfeld, who became Secretary of Defense under Reagan; Tom Foley, who was speaker of the house and later ambassador to Japan; Howard Baker, who was a senator from Tennessee, and this cadre of young congressmen that were interested in Japan. So I went out to Japan with them and a lot of us became friends. They developed these close friendships with Japanese political leaders. Which has played a relatively important role in both for the US and subsequent US-Japan relations. So the Institute had that sort of nonacademic part of our activities. And so it was. I did it for 10 years, and then the program moved to the Japan Society and other organizations. But we got it started. And it was a very important program. It was very important in my career, because through that program I got to meet many more politicians. And it made it possible to do the kind of research I've done, which is about contemporary Japanese politics. Because I could interview them and I got insights into how the Japanese political society operated. So both the academic and this parliamentary exchange program work sort of came together to inform my research. And it's all because of the Institute. So you say what it seems to mean to me––it means everything to me.

 

Chen: Yeah. Yeah. That's––what a great soundbite. I'm sure. We're gonna love that for, you know, the more final projects. Yeah, I mean, I've been struck––I was struck even when you, you were talking about your music, you know, and then throughout your interview, just the, the degree to which you're really immersed in Japan and Japanese culture in a way that's more than just your research. And I think speaking to everything that you're saying about regional studies, and the importance of it and the importance of knowing more than just the theory and a little bit about the culture and I'm sure that that has elevated your kind of technical professional output to be immersed in the culture and all these different parts of your life.

 

Curtis: Yeah, exactly. So when I decided to retire from teaching actually, I went to see the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Abe, the current Prime Minister. And I told him "I'm going to retire, but when I retire there's no guarantee that Columbia is going to replace me." But the Japan specialist––because I had a regular political science department appointment, it didn't have any chair in Japan field. So [as a] consequence of that conversation, the Japanese Government donated $5 million to Columbia to hire my successor. Unfortunately we haven't succeeded yet in finding the appropriate person––and we will. And then and then the Japanese government did not have anything to this, but then the university decided to name this professor in my name. So there is the "Gerald Curtis Professor of Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy," if we ever get the chair filled. Otherwise it'll be this this non-existent professor. But we'll get it, it'll be filled. Anyway. So all of that is a consequence my having been involved with the East Asian Institute from the time I was a student. And, yeah, so as you can see, I think for me, for Myron Cohen, Carol Gluck, Andrew Nathan (Chinese politics)––all of us are where we're at because of the East Asian Institute.

 

Chen: Yeah, great. Thank you for that answer. Are there any other things you want to add? Before we wrap up? Any questions you wish I had asked?

 

Curtis: No, I actually talked a lot.

 

Chen: That's good. That's what we want.

 

Curtis: I think covered a lot of the bases, you know, if you have, as this project goes on, if you have, you know, some questions, other questions, kinds of questions you want to ask me, okay, that would be fine. Yeah, I think you have something of an idea now of what it's been like.

 

Chen: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, thank you, Dr. Curtis for those for this interview.