University Daily Kansan / Monday, December 10, 1990
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Professor stretches stay in U.S.
One year turns to 20 to study languages of American Indians
By Tatsuya Shimizu
Kansan staff writer
Akira Yamatoo came to the United States to study English. He originally planned to stay one year, but has extended for more than 20 years.
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.
Yamamoto, professor of anthropology and linguistics, taught English in a Japanese high school for three years before he came to the United States.
"That opened up my eyes to not just English, but more about the relationships between languages, cultures and societies." Yamamoto said.
He transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington and pursued his interest in languages and cultures. He traveled back 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 Yamamoto 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 dominant Indian languages common in Oklahoma.
"He is well-accepted among Indian people," she said. "Kickapoo Indians just loved him. They jokingly call him 'Girlfriend.' You feel like he is a part of their family."
Yamatoa 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 rights to preserve them and to protect their use." Brown said.
Yamamoto said he would stay in the United States because of his interest in American Indian language.
expanded to include Japanese culture in general.
"Itil I came to the United States, "I paid too much attention to who I was and what Japanese culture might be. "Yamamoto said. "When you leave, after a while you begin to appreciate you have, your own heritage."
Stephen Addiss, professor of art history, worked with Yamatoo to prepare exhibitions of Japanese art in 1980 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."
Yamamoto has been observing Japanese economic success from the United States. He is glad about its recent aggressiveness, he said.
"In general, Japanese people still work with concentrating energy toward one goal," he said. "I think they are too aggressive."
Yamamoto becomes uncomfortable when Japanese companies become too aggressive to do their business and criticizes Japan too much, he said.
"We don't know each other very well." he said.
Yamamoto hopes that he can foster mutual understanding between the United States and Japan by teaching them how to know 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, it is easier between professors and students in the United States, Yamamoto said.
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