{"id":1533,"date":"2013-05-15T20:19:56","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T03:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2013-05-15T20:19:56","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T03:19:56","slug":"notebook-on-cities-and-culture-s3e26-fifth-generation-japanese-with-leslie-helm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1533","title":{"rendered":"Notebook on Cities and Culture S3E26: Fifth-Generation &#8220;Japanese&#8221; with Leslie Helm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-1534\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" title=\"lesliehelm\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/lesliehelm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"180\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/lesliehelm.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/lesliehelm-207x300.jpg 207w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px\" \/>Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with <a href=\"http:\/\/lesliehelm.com\/\">Leslie Helm<\/a>, former\u00a0Tokyo correspondent for <em>Business Week<\/em> and the <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em>, editor of <em>Seattle Business<\/em>, and author of <em>Yokohama Yankee: My Family&#8217;s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan<\/em>. They discuss the Asia connections of Los Angeles and Seattle; Japan&#8217;s changing place in the zeitgeist since when he covered their economic bubble; how he observed the West&#8217;s acceptance of Japan from his vantage as a quarter-Japanese yet Japanese-born &#8220;outsider&#8221;; how much of his family drama turns on the issue of how Japanese each member looks; the point of foreigner&#8217;s entry Yokohama was before it became considered an extension of Tokyo; how firm identities as foreigners helped members of his family&#8217;s older generations thrive in Japan; the new coolness of part-Japaneseness in this internationalist era; his frustration with the myth of Japanese difference and purity; what actually happened to Japan the economic powerhouse; the weakness of Japan&#8217;s craft-based strengths in a software-based economy; what the low level of English in Japan reveals about the country&#8217;s educational system; the fame his family accrued in the shipping business, and the bad reputation the company ultimately developed once sold; his kids, who look Japanese but grew up Western; the upside to the Japanese burden of obligations; to what extent Japan has realized it needs outsiders to keep the country going; what it means that Japan can burn through so many Prime Ministers in such a short time with no social disruption; the Shinto religion as Boy Scouts; how this book of family history became a painstakingly designed volume for the world to read; what America has, still, to learn from Japan; and which country seems more likely to overcome its worst tendencies.<\/p>\n<p>Download the interview from\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/colinmarshall.libsyn.com\/s3e26-fifth-generation-japanese-with-leslie-helm\">Notebook on Cities and Culture<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/colinmarshall.libsyn.com\/s3e26-fifth-generation-japanese-with-leslie-helm\">\u2019s feed<\/a>\u00a0or on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/notebook-on-cities-culture\/id266539442\">iTunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Leslie Helm, former\u00a0Tokyo correspondent for Business Week and the Los Angeles Times, editor of Seattle Business, and author of Yokohama Yankee: My Family&#8217;s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan. They discuss the Asia connections of Los Angeles and Seattle; Japan&#8217;s changing place in the zeitgeist since when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-notebook-on-cities-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}