Under Hiroshima

Product Description Under Hiroshima: Collected Stories, continues his exploration of American and Japanese understanding of catastrophe at personal, marital, and national levels through eight linked short stories. Review John Zeugner's collected stories, Under Hiroshima, are about much more than Japan and the human souls that populate and make their ways through that country. The stories' common denominator is the unlikelihood of successful cross-cultural translation; the problematic, if not downright impossible transplantation of one's cultural norms and language into those of another culture, even in the course of their well-intended interlocutions. Most pathetically, these cross-cultural failures--sometimes as unintentionally parodic as the unusually tall, blond Nebraskan who dresses the part and sings Enka--are often mirrored in the sorry private existences of spatting couples of a single culture, by which we get the sense of the futility of aiming so high as a cure for misinterpretation on an international scale. So these embroilments of North Americans and Europeans, both among themselves and in Japan, are powerfully parabolic in force, hitting even upon international politics in general. But they are never moralizing in the least, rather suggestive of the permanence of such difficulties. Mr. Togo's "World English" is not really a lingua franca, for it excludes native English speakers. There can be no lingua franca, sadly; nothing that can satisfactorily open cultural doors in any truly workable way, for any meaningful length of time. Whether John Zeugner's characters remain in the "utter aloneness" of the foreign professors who teach in English at Japanese Imperial universities, or instead arrive at devastating final choices ("...Beehive Hairdo"), the message is that fundamental problems of "translation", in its broadest possible meaning, on all possible levels, will persist imperfect, unresolved, and only temporarily assuaged or lightened by comical bungling. Such lack of prospective cross-cultural betterment is a tough but crucial underlying message to swallow. So we find some solace and take refuge in the intriguing characters we meet and plots through which we meander, in order to realize that we ourselves must struggle to avoid the sorry interchanges of, say, Misters Steinhut and Togo. --Lee Fontanella From the Back Cover Through these stories Zeugner chronicles the conflicting values and perceptions resulting in personal and public cross-cultural miscommunications between Japanese and Americans with results that are amusing, poignant, and sad. ---Caroline Matano Yang Former Executive Director, Japan Fulbright Program It is hardly conceivable, for reasons yet unknown, for any to outdo Zeugner in the grasp and understanding of fundamental problems with Japanese people and culture. ---Yasunari Takada Professor of Transcultural Studies, Tokyo University John Zeugner walks the jagged line between expats and locals in Japan, and it's clear he's more than been there. Nobody has a better ear for garbled dialogue that turns excruciatingly meaningful as his people stumble over each others' languages. Though never bitter, Zeugner exposes frustration, bruised feeling, and dashed hope with the care and precision of a brain surgeon. ---Chandler Thompson Translator of DEATH IN VERACRUZ by Hector Aguilar Camin, and assorted works of South American literary journalism for Virginia Quarterly Review. Cover art by Deanna Leamon About the Author John Zeugner, Emeritus Professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts has published short stories in literary journals: Ohio Review, Perspective, December, South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, Tampa Review Online. His film and concert reviews have appeared in Worcester Magazine, and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. A recipient of a NEA grant for fiction, he has periodically taught American Studies in Japan over the course of three decades at Osaka and K