From lunches 1n the garden to Carnegie 2nd

Ms. Nakahara—

by Janet Pope

Besides reading and speaking
Japanese and English, she can
read Chinese, Dutch, Malay,
Arabic and Cantonese.

She is Professor Michiko
Nakahara, a visiting scholar from
Waseda University in Tokyo. She
will teach at Grinnell for one year.

This semester she is teaching a
modern Japanese history course,
and next semester her course will
Concentrate on the Islam in
Southeast Asia. At Waseda
University, Nakahara teaches
courses in Southeast Asian and
Chinese history and the cultural
interaction between the cast and
the west.

Nakahara has her office on the
second floor of Carnegie where she
said she hopes to talk to students
often,

SHE SMILES as she talks about
coming to Grinnell after having
lived in large cities all her life.
“Grinnell is such a beautiful, quiet
place,” she said.

“Maybe American students
don’t realize it, but America is one
of the richest lives," Nakahara
said. ”College life is one of the best

/

 

compared with colleges in Asia and
even Europe."

Nakahara mentioned small
classes, the library, films and
television as advantages of
American colleges. Waseda has
these things, Nakahara said, but
most universities in Asia and the
Middle East do not.

ABOUT 35 per cent of Japanese
high school students go on to
college, Nakahara said. Both men
and women are accepted in un-
dergraduate as well as graduate
programs, she said. But, after
completing school, women find it
very difficult to get jobs, she ads
ded. Japan has some eoual em-
ployment regulations, Nakahara
said, but “the good firms don’t like
to employ women."

Just as American women have
problems with male colleagues
expecting them to fetch the coffee,
Nakahara said Japanese women
are often expected to serve “green
tea.’ ”some refuse and it causes
trouble," she said,

Nakahara said that if women
take cases of employment
discrimination to court they often
win. But iew women actually take

this step. Her iamily was very
traditional, Nakahara Said, ”We
didn’t talk,” she said. “All my life I
don’t have any memory of talking
to my lather for more than ten
minutes,”

SHE WAS sent to a very good all»
girls' high school where everyone
were identical uniforms and
hairstyles. Nakahara said. All the
teachers were women. Contact
with the opposite sex was nearly
nonexistent.

She laughed as she told about an
incident when a student from a
boys‘ college came to her school to
interview her became she was
editor of the school newspaper, A
teacher introduced her to the male
student and sat between the two of
them He Would ask the teacher a
question who would then repeat it
to Nakahara, She would give her
answer to the teacher who would
then repeat it to the young man,

“when I wentto college I was fed
up with the girls school,” she said.
“I entered Waseda University.”

Waseda was 90 per cent male and
quite a switch from Nakahara's
, high school. Rather than riding on

a bus full of male students,

 

Wall surveys his career here'

(continued from page i)

In reﬂecting on the period, Wall
feels that the uproar across the
country helped to conclude the
Vietnam War and raise awareness
of minority problems. At Grinnell,
he feels it helped resolve a number
of local issues,

“I THINK unquestionably, that it
was pressure irom students and
iacuity that helped to bring an end
to the Vietnam war and made the
academic community more cons
scious of the problems of
minorities and women. Locally, we
dramatically increased the
number of both black students and
black faculty, and, following the
closing of the college in spring,
1970, we took a serious look at our
curriculum.

“Following a summer and iall of
study, by faculty, students, ads
ministration and trustees, we
made one of the most major
changes in our curriculum since I
have been here by doing away with
specific course requirements and
introducing the freshman tutorial
program,” he said,

BESKDES HIS close involvement
with the curriculum revisions and
the other major events affecting
Grinnell that arose out of the
raised campus conciousness of the
late 60's. Wall has distinguished
himself in the academic field His
biography of Andrew Carnegie is
regarded as the deiinitive study oi
the industrial tycoon.

He first became interested in
doing a study of Carnegie when
Allan Nevins, with whom he
worked at Columbia University,
mentioned that a good biography of
the steel magnate needed to be
written and that he would support
Wall in his efforts. Wall then ap-
plied for a Fullbright grant to work
in Scotland, to do research on
Carnegie’s early life and later
years.

 

Welcome Back

BRAMMER
PHARMACY

ONE or the distinguishing

characteristics oi his study of‘

Carnegie is his use of Carnegie’s
private correspondence with his
wife and early business records,
None of this material has been
available to scholars before or
since the publication of walls
book,

He secured access to this
material only through what he
termed “sheer persistence," After
he had learned that United States
Steel had inherited these
documents from Carnegie, he
repeatedly requested that he be
allowed access to them, After
nearly four years of rejection, Wall
finally told the steel corporation
that he would have to proceed with
his book and indicate that these
primary sources had been kept
from him. Suddenly, U,S, steel
relented and allowed him to
examine the documents. Wall
speculates that perhaps U.S. steel
was, and still is, sensitive about
possible analogies between some oi
the more unsavory business
'practices of Mr. Carnegie and the
way in which US. steel operates
today.

HIS achievements as a teacher
are also impressive. Professor
Alan Jones. who had Wall as a
professor when he was a student
here, remembers the “elegance oi
his lectures” and cites the ”per-
sonal" as well as institutional
effect that Wall has had at Grin-
nell. Jones also Cited Wall's
Constitutional Law course as
having inﬂuenced many pre-law
students.

Wall sees himself as having
undergone a shift in his
historiographical approach to the
problems of American history
during his years as a professor
here, Coming to maturity in the
late years of the New Deal, Wall
was originally inﬂuenced by the
“consensus” school of American
historical Writing. This school, as
Richard Hofstaedter observed in
The Progressive Historians,
minimizes the importance of
conflict in American history and
emphasizes instead the coherence
of social, political and cultural
traditions in this county,

AS HE has become older,
however, Wall feels he has moved
into the “conflict." school of
American historiography,
Characterized by such historians
as Charles Beard and Frederick
Jackson Turner. the conflict school
tends to see conﬂict between
competing economic groups as a
major recurring theme in
American history. Wall speculated
that this shift in his thinking may
have occured because he has
moved leftward in the political
spectrum.

“I suppose I’ve simply become
iar more liberal in my pointoi view
than I was,” he said

Thus, just as he did when he was
Dean of the College, Wall has
managed to change with the times
while maintaining a high standard
of excellence. That he has been
able to do this as a teacher, a
scholar and an administrator has

 

been perhaps the most momentous
achievement of all.

WE REPAIR ANY
BIKE

Hl’

BIKE
SHOP

a! 6 COMMERCIAL sTPEEr

s riet & Blac

Nakahara said she opted for a 207
minute walk to campus. when she
went to eat at the canteen on
campus it was iull or men and she
“couldn’t go in, I brought a lunch
and ate in the garden,” she said
laughing “But I got used to it after
a semester "

AFTER undergraduate work at
Waseda, Nakahara went on for her
masters and PhD. there,

But she couldn’t get a job at

Septcm be

an open mind with a lot to say

Japan were born aiter the war,”
she said. “Almost all of them like
Americans. The others are not so
naive They had a very hard time
during the war."

Nakahara said that she was
about ten years old when her house
was burned during the fire bom-
bings oi Tokoyo. Her motherin
law was killed when American

pilots dropped an atomic bomb
over Hiroshima, “We are not so

‘ ' x_
Michiko Nakahara

Waseda. “The history department
was all male. They wouldn’t let me
stay,” she said.

Nakahara then went to Hong
Kong and taught for two years at
the Chinese University there. The
Japanese government provided
grants for Japanese scholars to
teach in Southeast Asian colleges,
she said.

WHEN Naknhara returned to
Japan she was hired at Waseda as
a professor in the International
division, Less than five per cent of
the faculty at Waseda is female,
she said. But Nakahara added that
she is treated exactly the same as
her male colleagues,

Nakahara was away from
Waseda once previously for a year,
She researched classic Malay
literature and law at the Univer
sity of London at the School of
Oriental and African Studies.

WHEN ASKED about Japanese
attitudes towards the United
States, Nakahara said that she
thinks they are generally positive.
“Fifty per cent oi the people in

naive about the U.s.—maybe
because of that experience. But the
relationship between people is
more important than the
relationship between countries,“
she said.

NAKAHARA said she often
corresponds with students aiter
they have graduated. The
relationships between Chinese
students and their teachers are
very strong. “Many American
students come back to Japan to
work and teach or for a
honeymoon," she said. ”American
students are more independent and
more active compared to Asian
students,” Nakahara said.

Grinnell is one of the 25 colleges
of the Great Lakes College
Assocmtion and the Associated
Colleges of the Midwest which
sends one professor in Waseda
University each year. Like
Nakahara this year, one professor
from Waseda comes to the U,S,
every year to teach at one oi the 25
colleges.

The Pig Pen Discotheque

in Mnrshalliown, Iowa

would like to welcome the students at Grinnell College by
offering this ad that will be good for free door admission

DAN DENTON
Manager

Try an original Bloody Mary:

Phone 5i5-751-27ZI
Hwy. 30 West

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Open 7 pm. Daily except Sunday.
No shorts or muscle shirts please, ID required for ad-V

mission.

 

