Purity and Power: The Spirit of a Female Samurai

By Ranko Iwamoto

Freedom must be sought from within and earned every step of the way to be truly meaningful, declares Ranko Iwamoto, author of Purity and Power, the Spirit of a Female Samurai. This authors early experiences with both her own culture of Japan and the culture of America are her testimony that genuine freedom cannot be given; it must be earned.
Growing up in the chaos of post-WWII Japan, she experiments with this newly found freedom. And oh, how she experiments!
She doesnt tell her father that her ship is sailing for America until two weeks before the departure. She had decided to go to America as a student to experience what young Americans go through. Why? To get to know Americans. She has no doubt in her mind that Japan and America will have trouble communicating with each other as they try to work together. She has no doubt either, that she is destined to go to America to help build communication bridges.
As the story unfolds, we travel with her on her highway of life. We go from a station named, Japan to a station named, America, while simultaneously moving from a station called, Youth to one called, Adulthood examining and marveling at each incident and its implications along with her as she discovers and develops new survival techniques.
We quickly notice, however, that she carefully screens her newly found survival knowledge before accepting it and putting it into practice, guided by her inherited samurai codes and a heart-felt pledge she had made to Heaven before she left Japan.
We also realize that the ultimate goal of the author is to reach the state of mind that enables one to enjoy life, no matter what.
In her effort to understand Americans and American ways, and in her earnest quest for the skills that she believed necessary for communication with Americans, Ranko gave herself a cultural immersion in life with American peers by enrolling in a four-year college in the U.S.
We are richly rewarded with rare glimpses into a Japanese psyche and into that of a fragile, impressionable youth as the author encounters a wide variety of situations. We understand her innermost feelings upon meeting a living black man for the very first time. We share her intimate thoughts as she observes the striking cultural differences between American and Japanese houses, her agonies and despair over the human anatomy course, her joy in finding the secret of bringing nature into her inner life so that she can rest, and her growing sense of achievement.
The writing style of the author is inviting easy to read, humorous, entertaining, insightful and quite inspirational. We are also treated to gems of thought like this description of effective oratory:

It is a poem, in that words must be just right and placed just right; it is a song in that it is composed of pauses and notes, and each note must be hit just right; it is also a painting in that it supplies mental and emotional imagery. This oratorical painting is without effect if it lacks either poetry or music.

Toward the end of the story, we find the author gradually awakening to the fact that nothing in life works out as we plan. She does not imply, however, a sense of resignation. On the contrary, her personal growth hints that she is well on her way to reaching that state of mind that enables one to enjoy life, no matter what.
The core message of the book can be said to be: first, learn to trust your heart and let it guide you; second, recognize the defining moments life offers, knowing life is inviting you to be what you choose to be; third, accept people as they are, like the weather if you want to be accepted as you are.
With this approach, life, whatever it brings, can be an amazing adventure and we can be gradually awakened to riches beyond counting.


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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9781465330123

Ranko Iwamoto

RANKO IWAMOTO, a popular Japanese columnist and international photojournalist for over twenty years, reports from Fifth Avenue, New York, focused on America and Japan. Ranko was instrumental in many intercultural events, such as: NBC’s TODAY show’s first broadcast from Japan – a two-hour-a-day week; the Emperor’s Exhibit at Rockefeller Center to celebrate the USA Bicentennial; and NHK’s (the BBC of Japan) American Astronaut, another one-week broadcast in Japan. Ranko holds two journalism degrees: a Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, from Whitworth College and a Master of Science from Boston University. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Ranko now resides in New York City.

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Copyright © 2006 by Ranko Iwamoto.

All drawings and front cover photos by Ranko Iwamoto

Cover design by Mary Ann Carroll

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Contents

Introduction

Foreword

Preface

1     

Purpose

2     

Passage

3     

Perceptions

4     

Primal Care

5     

Perspective

6     

Priorities

7     

Plans

Postscript

Celebrate!

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Dedication

To my parents,

Torajiro and Seiko Kyogoku Iwamoto

who gave me life

and permitted me to be who I am

and

To those who helped me on the way

at each crucial moment

of

this journey

Introduction

by C.J. Simpson

Professor Emeritus, English, Whitworth College

Isense that there are many people around the world who hope that

human relationships can be improved in this one world but are barraged with convincing reports of deception, corruption, and violence on all sides. Partisan efforts urging one solution or one system tend to increase the divisiveness.

Ranko’s book is different and is particularly needed at this time. Her life demonstrates that one individual who has a deep desire for the common good and who is willing to work toward it can have a significant impact. Her conviction that greater understanding and the wise use of freedom can improve even extremely difficult situations activates her life. Many Americans need to recognize the difference between total liberty and the kind of freedom to be and to do that can come with well-focused efforts.

I found the detailed accounts of her book’s defining events – her struggle to get a passport and visa, the difficulty of a human anatomy course, the development of an award-winning oration – intensely interesting. These accounts held my interest because they drew me into the experiences and helped me to understand the mixture of humility, determination, commitment to a belief, faithfulness to a heritage, openness to another heritage, and sense of humor in a remarkable woman.

A retired professor of English, I was of course impressed with the command of a second language that was necessary to bring about such reactions, but I did not think of the language as that of a Japanese person who had learned English. The language seemed to be our language, not just hers or mine. As I read, I was absorbed in the effect and not conscious of the artistry.

Though a person of remarkable personal achievement, her concern was really for improved intercultural understanding and relationships. Her hope is not based on conquest or assimilation. She would not eliminate the differences between Japanese and American cultures but advocates clear understanding and work toward what is best for both. Her focus is on Japanese and American cultures, but her insights and principles are applicable to relationships involving others.

I believe that many people would find mature enjoyment and inspiration here. The insights that emerged from the experiences challenged me. In this time of many reports of division and corruption at every level of life, I was happily impressed with a message that there are ways to handle obstacles, that there is a common good, and that our individual committed efforts can lead us toward it.

Foreword

by John J. Schulz

Dean, College of Communication, Boston University

Former Voice of America Correspondent and Japan Bureau Chief

Ranko Iwamoto and I met only two years ago. But if timing had been

adjusted and, just as magically, such things were possible, we might instead have met somewhere in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. Ironically, I was at one point flying west to arrive in the Far East on the start of what has become a lifelong and abiding fascination with Japan and other nearby parts of East Asia.

She, on the other hand (and several years before my westward journey East), traveled in an easterly direction to arrive in the West, and more specifically, in the United States, on what has become a lifelong adventure of her own, and a much more daunting journey in every way.

What unfolded for me, as I read this story of her personal journey, as it will for you, was the ever more fascinating account of the changes that took place for a young woman in her early twenties who was deeply imbedded in a culture that binds people, through family and other ties, to expectations, roles and obligations perhaps stronger than those in any other culture. For reasons unique, this special and very one-of-a-kind individual decided to extricate herself from bonds that are so much a part of what Japanologist Frank Gibney once called the Webbed Society of Japan.

Something deep in the heart and soul of Ranko Iwamoto called, indeed compelled, her to be different, to take a different path, to live a different life, and to take up the daunting task of becoming a living, breathing bridge between two disparate cultures – in fact, two societies that had quite recently fought a bitter and ferocious war all across the Pacific. When she made this decision, in mid-1950s Japan, there were no role models for what she set out to do. As Ranko herself points out, Americans are known to the rest of the world as active people and certainly added to that list could be such adjectives as individualistic, adventurous and uninhibited – sometimes to a fault. In contrast, she comes from a society filled with mutual obligations, clearly defined roles, a striving for group, not individual, identity, and a respect for the wishes of parents that can at times be suffocating to any individual ambitions or desires. This and more, deeply tied to Confucian teachings, cultural tradition and a need to strive for wa – harmony – all militate against ever manifesting the very traits and behaviors Americans often find natural and fully acceptable.

How could anyone ever hope to bridge such cultural gaps, take upon oneself the personal mission to become a vehicle for mutual understanding? At a time when a truly gifted but young and utterly Japanese woman began to set for herself such a future task and role, it could be said that perhaps no other two societies differed so fundamentally.

What must also be said is that what she decided to do was unacceptable, or at least incomprehensible, to virtually anyone in her society. During a brief wave of liberalism in the 1920s and early 1930s, Japan eagerly sent its young men all over the world to reinvigorate the Meiji Restoration process of the 1860s-1870s that sparked the leap from a feudal to a modern society and economy at astonishing speed. This was occurring again by the mid-1950s as Ranko was examining her future. But then, as now, Japan is to a far greater extent than the other most advanced industrialized countries, a male-dominated society. It is one thing for a bright, promising recent male university graduate to be sent abroad for further study by a top corporation or government ministry; such people are specially honored and marked for greatness.

It’s another for a young woman to do so. There was some precedent for what became a relative handful of young women to become undergraduates at mostly liberal arts colleges in America, and they did so on their own in the late 1920s and early ’30s. However, outside their own generally very liberal family settings, such action was not only frowned upon, the young women’s reentry into Japanese society was usually difficult in the extreme. Seldom were they praised for doing so, and they were not held up as role models to any young women so brave or foolish as to dare to follow. Simply, these were anomalies.

Thus, what Ranko did was very difficult and very courageous. I write with a modest sense of authority and experience as I address such vast differences – I came to Japan to take up the job as Voice of America’s Correspondent and Bureau Chief a full two decades after Ranko decided to leave American-Occupied Japan. But my professional task, daily, was to report about events, decisions and important developments in Japan in ways that a worldwide audience would understand. In a very real sense, I, too, was tasked with being a bridge from a complex country to the rest of the world, daily attempting to achieve greater understanding. But my time there was relatively short; only three years. Ranko has made hers a lifetime task, and has done it brilliantly, as her riveting story will show.

Certainly, on the surface, her job or mine would seem relatively easy. After all, the United States has tall skyscrapers, and so does Japan. The people wear business suits, have been for many years comfortable with modern and advanced technologies, and indeed are centers for the creation and production of some of the most advanced technologies of every kind. Both countries have great universities, where, among other things, annual rivalries are manifest in fiercely fought contests of American football. And the national pastime that is widely, if not most, popular in both countries is baseball. In sum, how could any job be easier than mine was? – after all, Tokyo is clearly just Manhattan with a language problem. But as the brilliant and long-serving New York Times correspondent, my good friend, Richard Halloran, so aptly pointed out in his seminal book, Japan: Images and Realities, nothing could be further from the truth. My task was truly daunting, and the superficial manifestations of similarities, such as those I just listed, were seductive illusions, masking the most complex dissimilarities I have encountered in half a lifetime of travel, reporting, and efforts to understand and occasionally explain other countries and cultures.

Put simply, few can understand as well as I (perhaps – as always, so clever and subtle – that is why she asked me to write this foreword), what a huge set of challenges and nearly insurmountable barriers Ranko has faced in her lifetime.

As you now turn the pages that will begin to transport you on the first steps of Ranko Iwamoto’s lifelong journey, it may seem at first that you are sharing in the gently told step-by-step process of awakenings and movements that put her aboard that trans-Pacific ship and brought her to an alien land. It all seems so simple: she describes her undergraduate experiences at Whitworth College on the West Coast, and touches on her graduate schoolwork at Boston University, after which she had planned to go home.

Be warned: once you move through the first several pages, you will become hooked, will not be able to set this book down. It becomes riveting. Be further