As mentioned previously, the point of this narrative is not to simply recount a story for its own sake. Rather, in telling the story of John Manjiro in this way, his life is framed within
particular contexts which allow for latter retellings of his life that relate to those contexts. In essence, such a telling of his life allows for the symbolic exchange of the globe between the Whitfields and descendants of John Manjiro to have meaning. Moreover, it also explains the importance of grassroots exchange and, by extension, the reason why the CIE exists. This is not to suggest that the story of John Manjiro is ahistorical. Rather, that John Manjiro’s life is
historicized in that it is an act of rewriting a particular life for a purpose and that purpose is only given intelligibility through the manipulation of temporal frames. Addressing this point, Ricœur argues that in order to make sense of any action, it must be taken into its spatiotemporal contexts (Dower, 2011). To elaborate, Ricœur states that history contains its own structures which make it intelligible, but that history is always an act of interpreting events that also masks itself as
explanation of those events. The act of narrating, as in the telling of the Manjiro story, provides this structure.
In the context of the summit, the story of Manjiro, as history, provides a plausible means for participants to understand how they came to the summit and why they are attending by grounding it in a linear sequence of events. As Ochs and Capps (1996) state, the use of chronology in narratives provides a reassuring coherence but that coherency is garnered by moving between past and present frequently within narratives. In the utilization of specific dates such as 1841 versus the 2015 summit, the CIE sets the historical figures of John Manjiro and Captain Whitfield within a chain of causality that can be pinpointed to both particular times and places that we, as contemporary people, can retrace. For example, in remarking on the story of John Manjiro, the mayor of Beppu stated it has been “117 years since John Manjiro passed away.” 117 years has no meaning in itself, but by attaching the words ‘passed away’ with ‘John Manjiro’ into the statement, the speaker marks this passage of time as significant. Again, as Ochs and Capps (1996) attest, such chronologies grant meaning to histories that are disconnected from the direct experience of the audience. It is in this act of retracing, an ordering of events that can only be understood in terms of narrative causality, that we come to understand ourselves as inheritors of their legacy. Margaret MacLeod reinforced this point when she stated, “You carry on a proud tradition of citizen diplomacy of which the Manjiro-Whitfield story is a beautiful example,” during the opening ceremony. Here, the usage of ‘you’ refers to participants as well as Japanese organizers. Thus, in attending the summit, John Manjiro and Captain Whitfield become our collective predecessors even if we have no direct relationship to these individuals. Rather, participants follow in their footsteps of mutual friendship and learning between the Japanese and Americans so to speak.
Furthermore, each re-telling of the Manjiro story in the summit binds summit participants with participants from previous summits in such a way that one summit is simply to allow for this narrative to be passed on to the next and the next so that each summit marks a continuation into the future which gains its collective identity from those that preceded it. Shutz (1970) posits that in the world of social relations there are those that exist simultaneously with us, those that succeed us, and the world of predecessors. It is this latter sense of shared community with those that preceded us which shapes the contemporary moment. That is, we do not know them but they have affected us nevertheless and provide a means for conversation with our contemporaries regarding a present state of affairs. Yet, as Shutz (1970) suggests, it is never entirely clear if the actions of our predecessors were understood in terms of posterity or even as we understand them as contemporary people. We do not know, for example, that Manjiro and Captain Whitfield understood their relationship in terms of mutual understanding or cultural exchange as the terms are used today and that they wanted Japan and the United States to follow suit. John Manjiro never left behind any direct memoirs of his accounts and later works on his life only appeared after his death in 1898, coinciding with the Meiji Restoration and the building of the Japanese nation-state (Van Sant, 2000; Fujitani, 1996, 2004).
Despite this, MacLeod stated, “The family ties that the Manjiro and Whitfield families built have been a model of how personal relationships can play a role in international
relations…” Similarly, the Mayor of Beppu also expressed “I am moved that his descendants [Manjiro’s] have followed the wishes of Manjiro, that they have promoted grassroots exchange between the United States and Japan.” This follows Ricœur who also stressed that historians posit historical developments in such a way as if those that lived them were poised or aware of the historical developments that preceded them. In essence, the purpose of historical narratives is
not to posit possible contingencies but to erase how those in the past were poised with various exigencies and reflexive understanding of their future (Dowling, 2011). History is not concerned with what could have been but in stressing that fact that certain events did not occur, and
historical narratives such as the Manjiro story reflect this trend by making the Japan-America alliance appear inevitable as when MacLeod stated, we have “returned to our shared destiny that began more than a century and a half ago.”
Given this, the opening ceremony and the individuals that give speeches reinforce the idea that Japan and the United States were destined to be friends while ignoring the actual historical contingencies and trajectories that lead to the current American and Japanese political and economic partnership. Yet, what such narratives as the Manjiro story and their respective tellers during the opening ceremony leave out is that the United States was one of many foreign powers involved in Japan after the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the modernization of the country during the Meiji Period (1868-1912). Second, the Manjiro-Whitfield relationship, as it is articulated, is very much the product of post-war Americanization whereby Japan was lauded by the United States as a model for the beneficence of American development and modernization schemes (Dower, 2000). In essence, Manjiro is a poised as a figure ahead of his time that aided in ‘correcting’ Japan’s backwards thinking, allowing American ideas of progress and civilization to take hold in Japan. However, this narrative is only intelligible given Japan’s loss in WWII and subsequent occupation and development by the United States.
Moreover, bringing in the use of the terms Japan and America as associated with
personal relationship between John Manjiro and Captain Whitfield is emblematic of what Ricœur calls actants. In this case, America and Japan are not things but are nevertheless a shorthand for describing the unknowable multitudes that contribute to the historical processes being described.
John Manjiro and Captain Whitfield are singled out as promoting a process of friendship between the two nations, but no direct correlation between these two actions exists. Taken still further, Ricœur overlaps with Anderson (2006) in suggesting that individuals view such terms as America or Japan as having agency in their own right while also collectively seeing themselves as part of those actants (Dowling, 2011). This is indicated throughout the various speeches as speakers move between such statements as “our nations,” “fellow countrymen” and references to citizens of Japan and the United States. Thus, the term America in the title Japan-America Grassroots Summit refers both to a country and to a particular group of people yet erases the individual acts between Japanese and Americans by ascribing such acts to larger political units while reifying them (Anderson, 2006). If this was not the case, then the CIE would have no need to use the phrase Japan-America but, rather, state the summit as an exchange between Beppu residents and individual American citizens, for example.