âWatching the sinking of the USS America from a distant shoreâ
My recent book in Japanese âWatching the sinking of the USS America from a distant shoreâ was reviewed recently in Korean and Japanese and the translations of both reviews have been published in English. This book in Japanese marks the first time that parts of the story of what actually happened 25 years ago are narrated in a book published by a mainstream publisher. I am grateful to Japan for the openness in society, and for the tolerance shown here that forms a clear contrast with what is happening elsewhere in the world.
Korea IT Times
March 27, 2025
Park Sang-Hyun
Department of Japanese
Kyung Hee Cyber University
Readers in Korea and Japan have been awakened from their slumber by the recent release of the book Watching the Sinking of the USS America from a Distant Shore: The Castaway Journal of a Harvard PhD in Korea and Japan by the scholar and politician Emanuel Pastreich.
The author is unique as an American expert on Asia in that he is also deeply engaged in culture, education, and politics in Korea and Japan.
Pastreich started his career as a scholar of classical literature, focusing on Korea, China, and Japan. He later wrote extensively about society and government, diplomacy and security, to such a degree that many do not know he started in classical studies. His best-selling books in Korea, notably Life is About Direction, not Speed, The World's Great Minds Speak Out about the Future of Korea, Another Korea that Koreans do not know, Finding Answers for Global Management in Koreaâs Hongik Tradition, and Treasures of Korea that Koreans do not know have had a tremendous impact on the Korean intellectual community of which he is very much a part.
I knew Pastreich from his time teaching at Kyung Hee University and I was struck from the start by his approach to scholarship. He did not simply stay in the ivory tower, teaching and conducting his research. He felt a need to go out into the world, to see how ordinary citizens pass their days, how they live and breathe, and then to write not only about what Korea was in the past, but what it is today and what it could be in the future. He interacted with ordinary Koreans, giving public lectures and writing for working people.
I saw him, above all, as a doer, someone who felt that even as a foreigner, he had a responsibility to be part of Korea, to be a Korean, and even to take a Korean name, Yi Manyol. His book âA Korea that Even Koreans Do Not Knowâ became a bestseller. In that book, he suggests that Koreaâs own culture, from ancient times, offered the greatest potential for its future.
Eventually that commitment to moral action led him to return to the United States and to run for president on a constructive and honest platform unlike anything I have ever seen. He felt that speaking honestly and eloquently about the threats facing American society in an age when politics is dominated by money had real value.
His study of Asian languages and his research on Korean and Japanese literature cannot be separated from a deep commitment to establishing a United States that is engaged with the real issues of our ageâand that includes understanding Asia accurately.
The trajectory of his life took him back to Japan two years ago, where he has been equally engaged with the Japanese and is working to create an America that not simply makes demands for more weapons purchases and more investment by private equity in Korea and Japan, but that will play a constructive role. It was no surprise that he published the book âWatching the Sinking of the USS America from a Distant Shore: The Castaway Journal of a Harvard PhD in Korea and Japanâ in Japanese this March for a Japanese audience. It is a book like none other by an American. The reader can immediately sense that he has a deep love for Japanese and Korean culture, and he speaks frankly about the challenges of the current moment.
The book is divided into five chapters.
Chapter 1 describes how Pastreich took an interest in Asian culture from high school, came to believe that the future of American civilization would be impacted by Asia, and then committed himself to the serious study of Chinese literature at Yale and Taiwan National University as an undergraduate.
Chapter 2 describes his studies of Japanese literature and philosophy at the University of Tokyo in Japan, and how he was inspired by the writings of such figures as the painter and poet Tanomura Chikuden, the novelist Ueda Akinarai, and the philosopher Ogyu Sorai, as well as numerous professors and fellow students at University of Tokyo.
Chapter 3 describes his decision to return to the United States for his Ph.D. studies at Harvard University, how he was inspired by such scholars as Edwin Reischauer and Joseph Nye to consider public service in policy and diplomacy by helping Americans to understand Asia not just in terms of culture while he was a professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign., Pastreich fought against the increasing militarization of American society at the University of Illinois, eventually being compelled to find work in the Korean Embassy in Washington DC where he helped the ambassador at the time, Hong Seok-hyun, to introduce Korean culture to Americans.
Chapter 4 describes his decision to move to Korea in light of the increasingly closed environment in Washington, DC, where he started teaching at Woosong University in Daejeon while serving as advisor to the governor of Chungnam Province (and later prime minister), Lee Wangoo. Pastreich moved to Kyung Hee University in 2011, where his articles, speeches, and books attracted broad attention, leading President Park Geun-hye to praise his book as her favorite.
Chapter 5 describes his journeys in Japan, Korea, and the United States as a scholar seeking out the proper path forward for a morally dedicated intellectual in a period of tremendous instability. That led to his decision to run for president in 2020 as an independent and then in the Green Party in 2023. He made considerable progress, in spite of his lack of financial backing, becoming the first major political figure in American history who was fluent in Japanese, Korean and Chinese- perhaps a sign of hope for what might be possible in the future.
Pastreich writes eloquently in Japanese in this book about the topics that he has addressed in speeches and lectures for years: the need to build a real peace in East Asia rooted in culture, not weapons, the imperative for Korea and Japan to play the critical role in creating that new peaceful order, and the need to set the United States on a path towards true peace.
When I read this book, as a Korean who has studied Japanese literature and worked to promote meaningful cooperation between Korea and Japan over the years, I was impressed by his vision for what is possible right now, and in the future and his commitment to realizing that vision in a concrete way by working with individuals and thereby seeking out peace within the cultures of Korea and Japan. I share that vision and that commitment.
I believe that the current era of ruthless competition, inhuman consumption and exploitation, and limitless hegemonies has reached its peak, and the time has come to call out for a new direction, for a reversal of this course, and a return to an era of coexistence, symbiosis, and true peace, not merely the absence of war.
Korean original at Korea IT Times
Global Research
April 7, 2025
âEmanuel Pastreich: Testimony of an Indomitable Soul Seeking Refuge in Japanâ
Review of Emanuel Pastreich's book âWatching the sinking of the USS America from a distant shoreâ
Ichihashi Masaru
Hiroshima University
I first learned of Emanuel Pastreichâs activities in Japan last August when I came across his speech announcing his candidacy for president of the United States on YouTube. I saw an informed American delivering a carefully crafted speech that addressed the major true problems facing the United States and then fielded questions from the audience in Japanese. I asked myself, could there really be a candidate for president in the United States who actually speaks Japaneseâit seemed too incredible to believe.
I had never heard of Pastreich. The Japanese media only reports on the Democratic and Republican parties, and suggests that there is no alternative. In Pastreichâs presidential speech I discovered an articulate American with a constructive attitude who was actually trying to solve real-world problems that he had identified through careful study.
Lots of people say lots of things on YouTube, but Pastreichâs historical analysis of the United States is not something that can be easily thrown together, easily imitated.
That is to say that although his statements are political, he addresses institutional and civilizational issues with both detachment and compassion, avoiding the appeals to emotions that make up politics today.
I wrote to him by email, curious to know whether I had misunderstood something, or whether he was a bit crazy; to my surprise, I received an enthusiastic response in Japanese and when we met soon afterwards. I learned that not only does he have a Ph.D. in Japanese classical literature, but he is equally fluent in Korean and Chinese.
Not only did Pastreich understand international affairs, as well as American and Japanese politics, he also had a deep familiarity with Japanese culture.
His recent book in Japanese, âWatching the sinking of the USS America from a distant shore,â is best read as an autobiography detailing his efforts to understand Asia and Asian culture and to reimagine and reform the United States to respond to the challenges of the current day.
He explains how he made the unlikely transition from research on classical Japanese literature to the articulation of policy as a candidate for president in the United States.
The book also gives a concise history of the geopolitical earthquakes that have reshaped the United States and left one of its capable intellectuals as a âcastawayâ in Korea and Japan. I was reading the tale of an expert with unique skills tossed back and forth by hidden political currents that pushed him out far from his base in Illinois.
Apology to the Japanese People and the World on the 78th Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima
And yet, Pastreich does not give up; he keeps up his adventures, exploring each possible road forward.
Pastreich started out his career trying to convince the University of Illinois to take Asian studies seriously in light of the rising importance of that region. That led Pastreich to write about geopolitics and international security. Those efforts led him to his current campaign to promote peace in Asia from a new base in Tokyo. It was a long march to get here, starting from his handshake with former ambassador Edwin Reischauer in 1987, to his friendship with Murakami Haruki, to his close ties to his senior from high school, Harvard, and University of Tokyo, Robert Campbell.
Then came encouragement he received from Joseph Nye and Ezra Vogel at Harvard to consider working on foreign policy in Washington D.C.
Finally, there was his close work with the Korean president Park Geun-hye, and other Korean and Japanese politicians and government officials to create a lasting peace in the region.
The important theme in the book is not the famous people he encountered during his Odyssey, but rather the dead ends he hit, the walls he ran up against, and the darkness that crept over education and politics in the United States.
I have seen a similar trend in Japanese universities. Those who claim to be experts, the scientists and scholars who demand our attention and expect our respect, become oddly timid when serious contradictions in society, or malfeasance in governance, or even in university administration, appear.
Much of the story revolves around a proposal that Pastreich made back in 2000 for cooperation in teaching and research between the United States, Japan, South Korea and China that led to tremendous, if cloaked, pressures from within and outside the university that ultimately forced him out of the university and the ended of most of his interactions with his scholarly community.
Although Pastreich took a critical position concerning the policies of the George W. Bush administration, he refused to condemn government in principle and he continued to work closely with those trying to restore the rule of law. He has spent his time between the United States, Japan and South Korea since then, observing the vagaries of American politics from a distance and writing policy proposals.
I was most impressed by how Pastreich accepts personal responsibility for his own actions and their consequences, making no effort to blame third parties, or to draw people in with false promises.
That is precisely the approach to politics and policy we would like to see here in Japan. Both politics and society have spun out of control in the post-COVID era. What we need is concrete action aimed at breaking out of the current mental paralysis and coming up with substantial solutions. I could sense from this book that Pastreich is one of the rare intellectuals who is willing to take concrete action.
As a Japanese I saw much of the samurai tradition in his actions. He assumes that fearlessness is the necessary condition for real political change.
The assumption in his thinking is that even if an individualâs action is but casting a single pebble into a vast lake, the expanding ripples generated will, in one way or another, be passed on to the hearts and minds of others who will offer the potential power to transform the course of events, to remake institutions and habits.
I personally felt that the essential message offered by this book in an age of increasing discord and uncertainty is at least as profound as what has been expressed in so many bestseller books.
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