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11 U-Turns, Deaf Shock, and the Hard of Hearing: Japanese Deaf Identities at the Borderlands Karen Nakamura A growing body of anthropological and sociolinguistic research (Lane 1976, 1984; Kegl 1994; Senghas and Kegl 1994; Parasnis 1996) has confirmed what Deaf people in the United States have known all along—that schools for the deaf are the birthplace of Deaf communities, Deaf identities, and signed languages. Japan is no different in this respect, although two factors add a particular variation to deaf identities there. The first factor is the relatively late introduction (for an industrialized nation) of widespread educational opportunities for deaf people. Although the first school for the deaf opened in the late 19th century, compulsory education for deaf students was introduced only after the end of World War II. The second factor is the combination of a drastically falling birth rate, improved medical care, and a trend toward mainstreaming during the past three decades that has led to a decimation of ranks within schools for the deaf. The two pivotal historical moments in this ethnography of Japanese deaf communities are 1948 and 1970: 1948 being the date of the introduction of compulsory education for the deaf after World War II and 1970 signifying the beginning of a rapid increase in the practice of mainstreaming deaf children into hearing schools. These events segment deaf identities in Japan into age-demarcated categories because a deaf person’s date of birth will profoundly influence the types of educational opportunities he or she may have had, his or her peer group, the type of signed language he or she used, and his or her general political and cultural outlook . This chapter analyzes how the histories of Japanese deaf communities affect the proliferation of deaf identities in contemporary Japan. A metaphor in current use within the anthropology of identities is that of nations and nation building, mainly inspired by Benedict Anderson’s (1983) key text, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Within this frame, this chapter discusses the emergence of deaf identities in Japan 211 212 Karen Nakamura from a process-oriented, anthropological standpoint; that is, the same historical and cultural processes that we typically attribute to nation building can also be used to understand how identities and institutions come together and disperse. Whether one identifies as “Japanese” or “Deaf” or “American,” a person relies on processes of “imagined” similarities with others in the same category and differences with those categorized as other. The processes that make us identify as Japanese, Deaf, or American also blur history, so we tend to imagine that these identities have always existed—which is the nature of identities. In reality, processes of identifications are never quite so simple and have become more fragmented in recent times. There are no natural identities, whether being culturally Deaf or ethnically Japanese; rather, identifications in themselves all result from processes of historical and political machinations on the macro scale and from active psychological construction within individuals.1 The reader may have noticed that I have not used the “big-D” Deaf term when referring to deaf people in Japan—a common practice in American Deaf studies when referring to cultural Deafness, a position that situates itself in opposition to hearing culture or “audism” (Wilcox 1989; Lane 1992). In many ways, the goal of this chapter is to challenge and denaturalize (a) the notion of a singular Deaf culture, whether in other cultures or in Japan, and (b) artificial, rigid boundaries between hearing and deaf cultures. METHODOLOGY This chapter is based on 16 months of participant-observation research among deaf groups in Japan. Most of the research time was centered in the Tokyo-Kanto area, although I also attended numerous deaf events and functions across Japan from the northern island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Kyushu. The mainstay of my research was a period of eight months as a research intern within the Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD), the oldest and largest of the deaf groups in Japan. My primary job responsibility was to translate JFD public relations material and correspondence with and between the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and WFD member organizations. I also attended many JFD meetings at all levels as an observer and, occasionally, as a staff helper. Supplementing this ethnographic research was archival work conducted at the JFD and the National Library in Tokyo and interviews with leadership, activists, and members of...

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