Reflections on a trip to Japan– 1985 “Travel is Broadening”

The trip was planned by Rusty Schumacher and Marcy Westerman, for students to finally reciprocate all of the student trips from one of Ann Arbor’s sister cities –Hikone Japan. They came to my office to encourage me, as the new Superintendent of Schools, to travel with Rusty and 10 Middle School Students (my least favorite grade levels). I had not previously met either woman, but their husbands were well known to me from my graduate school days 20 years earlier, and I much admired both of them – Scott Westerman as the ‘complete’ School Superintendent, and Hazen Schumacher as a faculty member with an attachment to The Center for Research on Learning & Teaching. I did not want to disappoint either woman, and agreed to make the trip, and pay my own way.

Traveling with eighth graders was painful, as expected, and extremely rewarding, quite unexpected. My daughter had recently been an eighth grader and I did not look forward to 18 days of adolescent moodiness and narcissism. What one cannot often see as a parent are the incredible heights of generosity, insight and general high-mindedness of even one’s own children. The students turned out to be my teachers, and I was overdue.

If I had written these reflections right after the trip there would not be what I now see as the ‘wide-angle’ and the ‘time-lapse’perspective so invaluable to my current understanding.

Immediate Reflections:

The biggest, and most enduring, insight and memories of the trip are as contradictory as possible. When a student left an expensive camera on a bench at the ‘A-Bomb’Memorial, our innkeeper was calmly certain it would still be there when we went back, at 11 pm, many hours after leaving it. How could that be, in a city of over a million people? His comment – ‘Why would anyone take something that was not theirs?’

I admired that part of the culture to the point of jealousy, and never forgot the feeling and the vision, of a country with such a certain and positive culture. The ingrained sense of honor and mutual trust was beyond my imagination up to that point, and has guided much of my subsequent work on character education in the U.S., and in Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Conversely, when Mrs. Schumacher’s remarks at the opening ceremony, with the Mayor, were not translated, as mine had been moments earlier, I could not have been more ‘put-off’ by what proved in the days to follow, an accurate perception of the lack of respect for women. What a wonderful / awful country / culture!

On the personal level I was hosted and gifted in thoughtful ways that I came to see that were far superior to anything I was capable of reciprocating. In many ways this was a more highly developed civilization than I grew up in, and then it became clear that they knew that also, and explains much of what became clear during WW II, they simply did not respect or see much strength of character in Americans. Our sense of honor did not include planned‘Kamakazi’ missions, not did it include every soldier fighting to the death with no thought of surrendering alive. Honor too has its excesses, as I eventually learned in my attempts to understand the ‘prickliness’ of the South. I recommend the book "A Culture of Honor" for more on this point.

There were many important details of the trip – learning how much older the country was than our 200 year-old America, directly participating in Japanese art-making, traveling on an early ‘bullet train’,visiting a Toyota plant largely staffed by advanced robots, learning to learn where there were ‘Western’ toilets, trying to practice the extreme cleanliness needed before even entering the Japanese bath, visiting religious sites, visiting Hiroshima (and feeling irritated at the attention to detail and the lack of any sense of responsibility), visiting Toyko learning about small hotel rooms, and their importance, seeing Mt Fiji at night from the airplane window, being extraordinarily proud of the independent thought and action of our students in relation to the Japanese students.....

The trip to Japan was like that, endlessly complicated and contradictory, but always insightful. I am completely grateful for the opportunities for learning that traveling with Rusty, a constant exemplary teacher, and the kids afforded me.

The wider-angle lens, and the time-lapse reflections:

Now looking back 25 years, most of the immediate impressions still hold, but I can see how the trip has positively influenced my life. Mostly it prepared me for even deeper and more extended learning about history, thought, art, religion, and education in Asia. But it also led to re-connecting and building treasured friendships that have lasted a lifetime.

Marcy Westerman surfaced again, as a community leader and (s)hero during our efforts to desegregate schools in Ann Arbor, and our work to plan and support the trip to Japan provided a valuable connection. She played invaluable ‘behind-the-scenes’ support roles, for the Japan trip, and well beyond. She was and remains in my memory as an incredible School Board and community leader. Marcy ran with a slate of two other people to counter a slate of three who wanted to defeat overdue school desegregation and school-closings. She was rare in a constant awareness of what was right and fair, and desire to always do what was morally right, and full of courage to face all that came with it. She had no interest in the political posturing and self-serving agendas of most school board members and was willing to step out of her element and interact with people who had mean-spirited agendas and a willingness to say things that they knew were not true, and knew it. Marcy inspired many ‘fence-sitters’ to do the right thing, just by teaching who she was, in spite of being un-appreciated and criticized publically for it.

Scott Westerman, strong and inspirational in his own right, set the bar high for supporting and appreciating one’s spouse. In his time, he had previously and bravely faced the most difficult consequences of a school system which did not address or meet the obligation to provide good schooling to minorities, along with many, many other defining school issues. He held high-level and difficult positions of great responsibility, and still seems to exemplify the ideal set by Will Rogers when he said he ‘never met a man he didn’t like.’ That person is Scott Westerman, even after serving in positions which make it much more difficult to see the good in every person than most of us.

Hazen Schumacher, re-appears after many years as the narrator of a moving and instructive CD about the music of World War Two, and remains a friend of now some years - since 1965.

Rusty Schumacher, remains a treasured friend, and continues to model excellent teacher behaviors, especially for her most appreciative student – me. She models the joy of a life-long learner and the satisfactions of one who knows and believes in high-quality human relationships – with family, with friends, and with colleagues.

At this point I wonder about ‘honor’ and its power and complexity. In Japan I saw the power of being able to trust that others, perhaps because of their personal sense of honor would not think of taking what was not theirs, while participating fully in a culture that dis-respected women and could not entertain any thought of surrendering alive, certainly a factor in the decision by the U.S. to employ the Atomic Bomb. Could there be a way to get the benefits of a ‘Culture’ of Honor without paying such a price for the downside? And, more broadly, how can every country and culture celebrate its positive aspects while remaining mindful and working on the inevitable downside of considerable strengths?

So, the trip to Japan, valuable in itself, mostly prepared me for some of the most meaningful opportunities of my life, in Hong Kong and China, initiated some of the most important, and most disturbing lines of thought, and led into to some of the most important and lasting friendships of my life.

Travel is broadening…..Indeed!