University Daily Kansan / Monday, December 10, 1990
9
Professor stretches stay in U.S.
One year turns to 20 to study languages of American Indians
By Tatsuya Shimizu
Kansan staff writer
Akira Yamamoto came to the United States to study English. He originally planned to stay one year, but his extended for more than 20 years.
Yamamoto, professor of anthropology and linguistics, taught English in a Japanese high school for three years before he came to the United States.
He decided to extend his stay to study more linguistics after he took an English class at the university.
Yamamoto first studied at California State University in Long Beach, Calif., in Spring 1966.
"That opened up my eyes to not just English, but more about the relationships between languages, cultures and societies." Yamatoo caid.
He transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington and pursued his interest in languages and cultures. He went on to go back to Japan to teach English.
In his third year at Indiana, he took a linguistics course taught by an American Indian language specialist. The instructor used American Indian languages as examples in his class, and Yamamot was attracted to the languages, in which he found similarities with his native Japanese language.
"It was a kind of beginning of getting into American Indian languages." Yamamoto said.
Since then, his interest in American Indian languages has kept him in the United States for more than 20 years.
For about 10 years, Yamamoto has.
Akira Yamamoto
Indian languages. she said.
Brown has been working with Yamamoto to develop teaching materials of Kickapoo, one of the native languages common in Oklahoma.
"He is well-accepted among Indian people," she said. "Kickapoo Indians just loved him. They jokingly call him 'Mohammed.' You feel like he is a part of their family."
Yamamato has been active in trying to protect American Indian languages with legislation, she said. He was one of the trustees of the language institute who drafted the resolution that supported the legislation of the Native American Languages Act, which became law Oct. 30.
"It gives us rights for the first time in the history to use our own languages, to exercise right to preserve the laws and to protect their use." Brown said.
Yamamoto said he would stay in the United States because of his interest in American Indian languages.
expanded to include Japanese culture in general.
"Until I came to the United States, I didn't pay too much attention to who I was and what Japanese culture might be." Yamamoto said. "When you leave your home country, after a year in Japan, you have to your own heirloom. You have, your own heirloom."
Stephen Addiss, professor of art history, worked with Yamoto to prepare exhibitions of Japanese art in 1880 and 1985. Next semester, he and Addiss will prepare for another Japanese art exhibition, "Humor in Japanese Arts," which they plan to display in 1993.
"He has a wide knowledge of different cultures around the world." Addiss said of Yamamoto. "He is able to combine the best parts of Japanese culture and the best parts of Western culture together."
Yamatomo has been observing Japanese economic success from the United States. He is glad about its recent aggressiveness, but its recent aggressiveness, be said
"In general, Japanese people still work with concentrating energy toward one goal," he said. "I think they are too aggressive."
Yamatoo becomes uncomfortable when Japanese companies become too aggressive to do their jobs. Japan criticizes Japan too much, he said.
"We don't know each other very well," he said.
Yamamaot hopes that he can foster mutual understanding between the United States and Japan by teaching him about knows about both countries, he said.
Another thing that keeps Yamamoto in the United States is the atmosphere at U.S. universities, he said. Compared with Japanese university students, Yamamoto said between professors and students in the United States. Yamamoto said
Mary Howe. Lawrence graduate
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FALL FINALE
Book list for days indoors
by Special Sections staff
s soon as finals are over and winter break arrives, what will students do with all of their free time? The obvious - eat, sleep and catch up on who's married, divorced and dead on their soaps. But after a semester of struggling through assigned readings, some may want to catch up on pleasure reading. The following is a listing for those who want to catch up on the latest in literature:
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike Knopf
The fourth and supposedly last novel about Harry C. "Rabbit" Angstrom. In this one, Rabbit is semi-retired, living part-time in Florida and contemplating how things come to an end.
The Witching Hour by Anne Rice Knopf
The author of the Vampire Chronicles continues her investigation of the mysterious. This one is a ghost story (no vampires) that travels from Europe to Haiti to California and ends at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
In All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley by Sally Bedell Smith Simon & Schuster
Hocus Pocus
by Kurt Vonnegut Putnom
Set in an America run by the Japanese in the year 2001, this is a darkly comic fable whose hero, Eugene Debs Hartke, a college professor and Vietnam hero, awaits trial for his part in a murderous jailbreak.
Prig Tales
This paperback by the New York Newsday cartoonist is to the 90s what the Preppy Handbook was to the 80s. The Prig is described as "a God-fearing social animal who wears state-of-the-art running shoes and demands a tasteful life and tasteless food."
Your Guide to Surviving the Self-Righteous Nineties by M.G. Lord
Avon
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and The Doors by John Densmore Delacorte Press
The drummer for The Doors gives the inside story on the band's history as he confronts his own feelings about the self-destructive Morrison's presence in his life.
The Shape of Love
The Shape of Love by Gelsey Kirkland and Greg Lawrence Doubleday
The dancer who chronicled her battle with drug addiction ( and performances in and out of bed with Mikhail Baryshnikov, among others) in Dancing on My Grave comes back with the story of her drug-free comeback to the stage in 1986 and her subsequent role as a teacher.
Also look for: The Burden of Proof by Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent; Four Past Midnight, Stephen King's 16th No. 1 best-seller; The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel, author of the Clan of the Cave Bear series; Surrender the Pink, another turn from Postcards from the Edge's Carrie Fisher; and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a novel from writer-in-hiding Salman Rushdie, of Satanic Verses fame.
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December 10, 1990 FALL FINALE