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A Tribute to Professor Akira Komai
[The following tribute to former ATJ President Akira Komai was delivered at the ATJ's annual membership meeting in Washington, D.C., on April 6, by Thomas H. Rohlich (Smith College).]
Professor Akira Komai, Komai Sensei as we called him, was born November 3, 1931, and died July 18, 2001, several months short of his 70th birthday. During his long and very successful career as a teacher, scholar, and leader in the field of Japanese language education, Komai Sensei's engaging wit and personality touched many students and colleagues in the field, and he will be missed by all.
As with so many Japanese born in the early 1930s, Komai Sensei's childhood was marked by the traumatic experiences of the Pacific War, which, if we take as its beginning the Manchurian Incident of September 1931, corresponds almost exactly with his childhood and youth. As a young boy he witnessed Japan's rapid rise to military hegemony followed closely by its total devastation in the closing years of the war. That he witnessed these terrible events in itself is not remarkable, but it is noteworthy that from these inauspicious beginnings he carved out a distinguished career devoted to communication between two countries that were once mortal enemies. All of us in Japanese studies, and particularly those of us in the ATJ, are indebted to the brave and selfless work of Komai Sensei and many colleagues of his generation.
After the war Komai Sensei matriculated at Kyoto Gakugei Daigaku, the predecessor of Kyoto Kyoiku Daigaku, Kyoto University of Education, from which he graduated in 1955 in the Department of English. For two years he taught English in a Kyoto high school before receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study at the University of Michigan in 1957. At Michigan Komai Sensei earned a Masters Degree in English in one year, two years later a Master's in Linguistics (1960), and a short three years later, in 1963, his Ph.D. This was a time when the Michigan Department of Linguistics was one of the premier programs in the country and its graduates played key roles in the development of Japanese language teaching in the U.S. just as Japanese Studies, and area studies in general, were at the take-off stage. The development of a cadre of highly motivated teachers, expertly trained in theoretical and applied linguistics and enthusiastic to put their skills to work in a country that they had known as the enemy in their youth, was crucial in the formative years of our profession. Komai Sensei was a prominent member of this group.
Komai Sensei enjoyed reminiscing about his days as a graduate student at the University of Michigan. In particular he enjoyed stories about trips to New York, which revealed another side of his personality many people came to know quite well: his love of good food and good company. In the grand tradition of students everywhere, it seems that the graduate students at Michigan did not find that the Japanese restaurants of Ann Arbor at the time met their expectations, so when the uncontrollable urge to eat really good Japanese food hit them, they would pile into someone's old jalopy and drive straight through to New York City, where they would eat their fill of Japanese food and buy supplies to cook for themselves, what they could afford on the very meager scholarships, back in the days when the exchange rate was ¥360 to the dollar. Those of you who had the good fortune of dining with Komai Sensei know that he was a connoisseur of all foods and a very accomplished cook in most, as is his wife Kikuko-san.
Komai Sensei used to enjoy telling another story of his Michigan days, one that reflects as much on the changes in academe as anything else. Back in those days of yore there were still swimming pools segregated by gender. And because they were at times open only to men, the swimmers dispensed with the need for swimming suits and swam in the nude. I remember Komai Sensei saying that he realized how very different academic life in the U.S. would be when he was introduced for the first time to one of the star professors of the Michigan Linguistics Department, both of them standing stark naked at the side of the pool.
Before completing his dissertation Komai Sensei took a job at Princeton University as a lecturer first and then as an Assistant Professor upon completing his dissertation in 1963. It was at Princeton where he established his reputation as an outstanding teacher of Japanese language. I think he rather enjoyed, and was occasionally amused by, the formality that marked much of life for the faculty at Princeton University in those days. He enjoyed remembering the time he was at one of those student faculty parties when he, who was not particularly tall, met a very tall young man and struck up a conversation with the innocuous line, "My you are so tall. You should play basketball!" Komai Sensei said the young man modestly replied, "Well sir, yes, I do play basketball." Turns out the young man, who must have stood a foot taller than Komai Sensei, was the young Bill Bradley, one of the greatest collegiate basketball players of all time and a future Senator and presidential candidate. Here I might note that Komai Sensei's humor was frequently anecdotal; he was a great story-teller, and almost always self-deprecating. In addition to learning a bit about basketball from Bill Bradley that evening, Komai Sensei later became a fan of American football, particularly the Green Bay Packers, undoubtedly because of his admiration for Vince Lombardi, whose style of coaching was not unlike his own style of teaching.
Because of the requirement that Fulbright Scholars return to their home country, he went back to Japan in 1965, where he taught as a visiting lecturer in English at Kyoto University for two years. He then was recruited back to the United States to take a position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became the key person in building a program in Japanese at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He was at the University of Wisconsin for eight years, from 1967 to 1975. I count myself as one of a number of students fortunate enough to have had Professor Komai as a teacher of Japanese at several levels, beginning from my very first day of first-year Japanese over thirty years ago. I can still vividly recall the bounce in Komai Sensei's step as he entered a room, the energy and clarity of his presentation, and the magical way he had of drawing you into the project, creating in his students a burning desire to learn, whatever it took. These were truly the marks of a gifted language teacher. He demanded a great deal of students, and he managed to get it. He could be severe in the classroom, but he could also change his style to meet the needs of the students. While he was tough in the classroom, he also found time to socialize with students and encourage them outside of class. At the University of Wisconsin, back in the days of 18-year-old beer laws, he was famous for the Friday afternoon beer, popcorn, and speaking-Japanese sessions held at the Student Union. Komai Sensei and students would gather from about 5 o'clock, and the conversation, our student inhibitions loosened and lubricated by pitchers of cold Wisconsin beer, would give way to awkward attempts to use our Japanese in "real life" situations. Komai Sensei was very patient with students struggling to express themselves with their limited vocabularies and structures, and it was clear he genuinely enjoyed their company.
During his years at Wisconsin and for several years thereafter when he moved to the University of Chicago, Komai Sensei would teach advanced Japanese during the summer at the Columbia University. There he also had a great impact on a number of students who were to go on to graduate study in various fields of Japanese and Chinese studies. It takes a great deal of energy to teach regularly in the top notch summer programs, and these years were among his most productive. I'm sure the opportunity to teach dedicated students in the intensive atmosphere of a summer session was motivation enough for Komai Sensei to do this year after year, but once again the lure of New York's restaurants and night life provided an exciting added incentive. Back in the days before sushi restaurants were not to be found in every town around, it was a treat to visit the great Japanese restaurants of New York, not to mention the steak houses and French restaurants that Komai Sensei and Kikuko-san enjoyed so much.
From the University of Wisconsin Komai Sensei went to the University of Chicago, where he served as Director of the Japanese Language Program and again had a great impact on a number of students in its flourishing graduate program. While he was at the University of Chicago, Komai Sensei served as President of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, twenty-five years ago, from 1975-77, the first Japanese national to do so. He also served several terms as a member of the Board of Directors of the ATJ.
Komai Sensei returned to Japan in 1983 to take a position at Nanzan University, where he taught until a year before his death. At Nanzan, during his years as Director of the Center for Japanese Studies, he was instrumental in making the CJS one of the best programs for foreign students studying in Japan, not for just students from the U.S. but from Asia and Europe as well. He founded both the graduate and undergraduate programs in Japanese language, and certainly he was a key member of the team that developed it into one of the best programs in Japan, whose students are very active in our sister organization, Nihongo Kyoiku Gakkai. Nanzan is also recognized world-wide for the three international conferences on Japanese language and pedagogy he organized, truly international conferences drawing participants from around the globe.
Early in his career Komai Sensei wrote several articles and pieces on Japanese theoretical linguistics, and somewhat later he wrote on Japanese language education, particularly in Japanese. However, he is best known, particularly by members of this organization, for his two texts An Introduction to Classical Japanese and An Introduction to Kanbun. It is not for me to comment on these texts, but I think it is worth noting that both of them depend entirely on having a skilled instructor present in order to be used effectively. He was a minimalist when it came to textbooks, which he recognized as tools, only as useful as the quality of the teacher who uses them. What really counts is what goes on between the teacher and student.
As we gather to pay tribute to Komai Sensei it is only appropriate that this take place at an ATJ/AAS conference. Komai Sensei was a great teacher, and he was also a delightful companion. During conferences his hotel room was always the place to go in evenings for lively discussion after all the panels were finished. He insisted that the atmosphere in his room be casual, and he delighted in introducing young graduate students to senior professors and seeing that their drinks were always full. He was a master at breaking the ice, both literally and figuratively. He was generous in his support of students, sometime making his room available during conferences for those who couldn't afford the high cost of a hotel room, always willing to help out when someone was in a pinch. Sensei and his wife Kikuko-san were superb hosts, and many of you may remember his famous Golden Week barbecues in Kyoto, which always brought together a very eclectic group of guests.
Komai Sensei held himself to very high standards, and I don't know if he fully realized how greatly his teaching and mentoring affected his students and colleagues. For those of us fortunate to have known him personally, his legacy will remain with us as we try to achieved a modicum of the success he had. He was one of the pioneers of Japanese language education in the U.S. and Japan, and he will be greatly missed.
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