Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

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JAPAN AFTER THE STORM COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY eral times, Hayes says, not reporting elevated radiation in certain areas and in the food supply. “They released information late — there was a lot of fumbling around,” she says. “There was an aura of calm, but news stories popped up that upset people.” She cites the example of the announcement that school lunches contained potentially radioactive produce from Fukushima; an ensuing argument that the country needed to support the people and farms of that region; and a rebuttal that that couldn’t involve endangering the health of the nation’s children. Unusual for Japan, anti-nuclear energy protests were held nearly every weekend in Tokyo. “Before, I didn’t even think about how electricity was produced — I assumed Japan was very environmentally conscious,” Hayes says. “Only afterward did we find out how vulnerable the country was.” Hayes’ interest in Japan stems from a two-week visit when she was in high school and stayed with a host family in Fukuoka, the sister city of her hometown of Atlanta. Entranced by the country’s history and its pop culture exports, she knew she wanted to learn Japanese and live there after college. She was drawn to Columbia by its stellar East Asian studies program and the legacy of scholars such as Ivan Morris and Edward Seidensticker ’47 GSAS. She started taking Japanese language classes her first year and became active in the Japan Club (now the Columbia Japan Society), of which she became v.p. in her senior year. “It was awesome to be in a city with Japanese speakers and Japanese cultural events I could attend regularly,” Hayes says. She adds that there also were plenty of Japan-related events on campus, such as the annual spring Matsuri festival on Low Plaza, with its noodle-eating contest, mock wrestling in inflatable sumo suits and thunderous taiko drum performances. For her junior year abroad, Hayes studied in a yearlong program run by the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies and lived with a local host family. Following graduation, she joined the Japanese Exchange and Teaching (JET) program, which places recent college graduates from around the world in schools or government offices. Hayes was posted as coordinator of international relations at Nagano City Hall. In that job, she acted as an interpreter for local foreign residents who didn’t speak Japanese, helped plan cross-cultural events and arranged visits for Americans from Nagano’s sister city of Clearwater, Fla. She wrote an essay on the importance of international exchange that won her a local contest to run with the Olympic torch when it passed through Nagano in 2008 on its way to the summer games in Beijing. (Many people asked her, “Are you training?” “You walk briskly and wave,” she says. “It wasn’t a marathon or anything.”) “She’s about as smart as they come. When we met, I was pretty blown away by her Japanese ability,” says Grant Peterson, a fellow American working in Nagano. “Then after seeing her belt out a beautiful song at a mutual friend’s wedding, and seeing her perform a dance routine at an international event, I was amazed to keep finding all of these hidden talents Ashley possessed.” Hayes was a karaoke singer, “then when I went to Japan, all of a sudden people started asking me to sing for real!” she says. “I’ve actually sung at three weddings now courtesy of my karaoke performances — and I’ve also danced in public when asked to. I guess I don’t like to let people down. If someone asks me to do something, I try to rise to the occasion.” In Nagano, Hayes lived in a traditional apartment with tatami rooms and sliding doors — and no central heating, which the Southerner never did get used to. Although she initially questioned whether Nagano, a city of 381,000 in a largely agrarian region, was exciting enough for someone who grew up in East Atlanta and went to college in New York, Hayes came to love apple-picking, riding her bicycle around town and appreciating locally grown food. “Almost everyone had a rice paddy or a vegetable garden,” she says. “It wasn’t just Old MacDonald on the farm, it was your coworkers.” The Japanese reverence for nature, she says, gave her a new perspective on rural living. Entranced by the country’s history and its pop culture exports, Hayes knew she wanted to learn Japanese and live there after college. WINTER 2011–12 36 After four years working in Nagano in the JET program (which allows renewals up to five years), Hayes decided to move to Tokyo, which she’d always wanted to experience. She started work at the translation agency in summer 2010. While she had thought she craved urban living again, she says the 9–5 grind left her feeling more like a beleaguered worker bee: “You get on a very cramped train and work all day and take the train home. People on the train during rush hour disregard all concepts of personal space. People think of the Japanese as very polite and noble, but they also push you and jab you and step on you.” Following the chaos and uncertainty of the earthquake and its aftermath, Hayes eventually decided to return to the United States. She arrived in Atlanta in August, and is moving to San Antonio, Texas, to teach high school ESL as part of Teach for America. To further her own language abilities, she is studying Chinese and Spanish. “I loved living in Japan and still love Japan and would consider living there again,” she says. She reads Japanese newspapers and blogs every day, and plans to get a rice cooker to try to make rice the same as it is in Japan. Her boyfriend, who won’t finish undergraduate studies until 2014, might come to graduate school here. Hayes adds: “I’d like to be one of these Americans like Donald Keene [’42, ’49 GSAS; see feature in this issue] who’s a bridge between Japan and America.” Shira Boss ’93, ’97J, ’98 SIPA is a contributing writer to CCT. Her most recent feature was a profile of environmental lawyer Michael Gerrard ’72, in the May/June 2011 issue.
POWER PLAYER COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Abbe Lowell ’74, ’77L is Washington’s go-to lawyer Abbe Lowell ’74, ’77L has a modest office by Washington standards. That’s surprising con sidering that he is one of the most high-profile lawyers in a city that is saturated with high-profile lawyers: the head of the White Collar Defense, Regulatory Investigations, and Litigation Group at the prestigious firm of Chadbourne & Parke. The office walls are adorned with the standard Beltway accoutrements: pencil drawings of the advocate arguing before the Supreme Court, political cartoons in which he appears, tokens from appreciative colleagues after his service with the United Nations, framed family photos. There’s a special name in the nation’s capital for such collections of personal and professional memorabilia: the power wall. To the left of Lowell’s desk is a small bookcase holding a few dozen binders, his notes from cases involving the likes of President William Jefferson Clinton, actor Steven Sea- gal, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Sen. John Edwards. “Those are what I would grab if this place caught fire and I had to escape,” Lowell says with a grin. “There are copies of the family photos at home, but not those notes.” Those binders are the tabulation of a professional life spent defending the powerful, either from the consequences of their own actions or from others in power who are out to get them. And wildly successful work it has been. Lowell is best known for his service as Chief Minority Counsel during impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, but he’s represented dozens of other high-profile clients as well in cases dealing with spying, public corruption and racketeering. In 2011, he was named one of the country’s top five white-collar B y a l e x KIngsBury ’04J One journalist describes Abbe Lowell ’74, ’77L as “high-octane and incredibly loyal to his clients.” WINTER 2011–12 37 defense lawyers on the National Law Journal’s Most Influential Lawyers list and referred to as the “go-to lawyer when it comes to constitutional issues stemming from leak investigations and prosecutions.” Lowell is practiced at keeping numerous balls airborne. One day in October, he was simultaneously arguing that the criminal case against former presidential candidate Edwards should be dismissed in a North Carolina courtroom (he lost that motion); filing a lawsuit in Boston on behalf of the spouses of gay military servicemen denied health and other benefits because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act; and arranging logistics for the return from Egypt of his law student client, American Ilan Grapel, who had been held there for five months on charges of spying for Israel. It’s hard to find a high-profile spy case in Washington that hasn’t somehow involved Lowell. In 2009, after four years in court, prosecutors dropped charges against two Lowell clients, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, lobbyists for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who’d been accused of passing classified information to journalists and the Israeli government. Ever the advocate, Lowell had harsh words for the American Jewish community for not backing his clients more forcefully. “Everybody was worried that this is [convicted Israeli spy] Jonathan Pollard again,” Lowell said in a radio interview in 2008. “Everybody was worried that we would stick our neck out and get it chopped off like the kosher duck. Well, we know better now, and the public knows better.” It was a case that was closely followed by both government officials and journalists because it was the first time that the Justice Department had launched a prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917, which criminalized the receipt of classified information. Were that act enforced, many journalists and politicians inside the Beltway could face prosecution.
Page 1 and 2: Columbia College TODAY Winter 2011-
Page 3 and 4: 20 Tohoku Diary A firsthand account
Page 5 and 6: Dear Columbians, In my first three
Page 7 and 8: Piero Weiss ’50, ’70 GSAS have
Page 9 and 10: “I’m looking forward to helping
Page 11 and 12: COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY AROUND THE Q
Page 24 and 25: JAPAN AFTER THE STORM COLUMBIA COLL
Page 31 and 32: Sensei and Sensibility After 73 yea
Page 33 and 34: COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY JAPAN AFTER
Page 35 and 36: COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY JAPAN AFTER
Page 40 and 41: ABBE LOWELL ’74, ’77L COLUMBIA
Page 42 and 43: [ COLUMBIA FORUM] WINTER 2011-12 40
Page 44 and 45: THE BAUHAUS GROUP: SIX MASTERS OF M
Page 50 and 51: C C A A B O A R D O F D I R E C T O
Page 52 and 53: OBITUARIES COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY F
Page 54 and 55: Bookshelf Jacques Barzun [’27]: P
Page 56 and 57: Class Notes 25 40 Columbia College
Page 58 and 59: CLASS NOTES COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
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CLASS NOTES COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
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In the mid-1960s, the captain of th
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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Columbia Uni
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Japan Storm - Columbia College - Columbia University

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