CONTINENTAL CROSSINGS, CONTINENTAL DIVIDES :

AMERICAN STUDIES IN JAPAN AND ENGLAND

Abstract

We teach American Studies as the study of a foreign culture, and we do so on separate continents, Asia and Europe. We treat our subject under the headings of Linguistic Issues, American-Studies Issues and World Issues, and our paper is a shared one because we see that teaching American literature and culture in Europe and in Asia raises problems that are both similar and different. We think that our two countries, England and Japan, might be considered to be at extremes of an American-Studies teaching spectrum. （It should be noted that we speak of England and not the United Kingdom, and what we say about students in England is not necessarily applicable to students in Scotland, Wales or Ireland.） For many years, American Studies has been popular among university students in both our countries, and it has projected the United States as economically, technologically and, as people sometimes believed, culturally, the most advanced country in the world. However, as the world has become more globalized, people have begun to adopt new perspectives, and these have become critical since 9/11.