Two New Books | Motohiro Tsuchiya, Vice-President / Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance
April 11, 2023
In Washington, DC, the capital of the United States, the streets running east-west are named after a single letter of the alphabet. Among them, K Street is known for its many lobbyist offices. Over 20 years ago, when I was a visiting fellow at George Washington University, I was using a research office along K Street.
Nearby, there was a Thai restaurant called Thai Kingdom that I used to frequent, but it seems to have closed in 2011, long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the street is a Szechuan restaurant. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) used to be on the same street, and the restaurant was often used for gatherings after its events. CSIS has since relocated, but the Szechuan restaurant remains.
On the evening of May 1, 2022, I was sitting around a table at this restaurant with a large group of people. Just as I was about to dig into their famous mapo tofu, I received an international call from Dean Tomoki Kamo. He told me that my colleague, Toshihiro Nakayama, had collapsed. I gave up on the mapo tofu, returned to my hotel immediately, and joined a remote meeting. The next morning, however, I received a call informing me of Nakayama's passing.
In March 2023, I returned to Washington, DC, for the Armitage Program for graduate students, held at Keio University. Originally, Nakayama was supposed to lead the program three years earlier, in March. However, as the coronavirus began to spread, Nakayama decided to cancel it due to fears that the U.S. government might close its borders, making it impossible to return to Japan. After that, Nakayama never returned to Washington, DC.
On the last day of the Armitage Program, after wondering what to do for lunch, I decided to revisit the Szechuan restaurant. I ordered the mapo tofu. It was so spicy it felt like the hair on the top of my head was standing on end. And then I remembered. Nakayama didn't like spicy food. Even if Kamo and I mistakenly ordered it, he wouldn't say anything. But when the dish arrived, he would say with a shy smile, "I'm not a big fan of spicy food." That was the kind of person he was.
To coincide with the first anniversary of Nakayama's death, two books will be published. The first is "When the Nation of Ideals Creaks: Obama, Trump, Biden, and America" by Toshihiro Nakayama (Chikura Shobo). It is a collection of Nakayama's essays on America, spanning from the Obama administration through the Trump administration to the Biden administration. It reveals that even the seemingly anomalous Trump administration is part of a larger trend that connects the Obama and Biden administrations. This is the result of the dedicated editing by Ryusuke Kamiya of Chikura Shobo.
The other book is "The Communist Party of American Intellectuals: A Self-Portrait of the Nation of Ideals" by Toshihiro Nakayama (Keiso Shobo). This is a compilation of his doctoral dissertation. It was well known among his friends and acquaintances that Nakayama had apparently written his doctoral dissertation on the American Communist Party, but very few had actually read it. However, he had intended to publish it and had entrusted the electronic file to Masanobu Uehara, an editor at Keiso Shobo. Uehara made the decision to publish it. Reading the manuscript, I realized that it is not about the American Communist Party itself, but rather an analysis of the debates that took place during the process of America's temporary acceptance and eventual rejection of communism. It offers a glimpse into the intellectual endeavor of a young Toshihiro Nakayama, who sought to contemplate America as a nation of ideals through what it had rejected.
These two books were published because Kamo's and my desire to preserve Nakayama's thoughts for posterity was supported by the two editors, Professor Takashi Oshimura, who was Nakayama's dissertation supervisor, and Professor Hirotsugu Aida and Professor Fumiaki Kubo, who collaborated with Nakayama on many research activities. I would like to express my gratitude to all of them.
I want to believe that Nakayama would be pleased. While the price of each book may not be cheap for students, they are packed with content that is well worth the cost. I truly hope you will pick them up.