Cross-cultural communication （141）
141) The Era of High Economic Growth in the United States
In the previous blog post Cross-cultural communication (132), I briefly touched on the American popular culture that captivated the world from the 1950s onward. After writing that post, I began reading Lucia Berlin's “A Manual for Cleaning Women ” in late 2022. The author, Berlin, was born in 1936 and spent her childhood and student years in mining towns around the world, following her relatively affluent father, a mining engineer. However, after reaching adulthood, she went through three divorces, struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, and was repeatedly hospitalized and imprisoned. She began writing semi-autobiographical short stories based on these experiences in 1990. She passed away in 2004, but it was after her death that she gained widespread recognition. After her death, A Manual... became a New York Times bestseller. A Japanese translation is also available.
The story is set in the 1950s to 1970s, a time when American popular culture was at its peak and American culture was celebrated worldwide, including in Japan. Her works feature everyday items popular among Americans at the time, mentioned by their brand names. Examples include Kleenex tissues and Hershey's chocolate bars. Additionally, when the TV show *The Man from U.N.C.L.E.* appeared in her work, I exclaimed, “No way!” It was a spy drama that aired from 1964 to 1968, and in Japan, it was popular under the title *0011 Napoleon Solo*, attracting high ratings. I was a big fan of it back then when I was in junior high school student. However, her actual life was quite tough, working part-time jobs like being a housekeeper in a wealthy family or at the emergency room of a hospital. While reading Lucia Berlin's book, another thought came to mind: the capabilities of the Reader's English-Japanese dictionary in my Casio electronic dictionary, which I've been using for over a decade. This Reader's dictionary is an older edition and isn't great with new words, but it's surprisingly strong with older words (including trademarks). For example, “Laundromart”: a trademark for a self-service coin-operated laundry. “Ex-Lax": a chocolate-flavored laxative manufactured by Lax Distributing Co., Inc. The author was also fluent in Spanish and had worked as a Spanish teacher. There was a description of her eating tamales at a Mexican restaurant, and the dictionary provided a detailed explanation: “Tamales: A Mexican dish made by mixing ground corn and ground meat, seasoning with chili peppers, and steaming (or baking) in corn husks.”
Actually, I spent three years in New York during the early 1980s, a time when the remnants of the U.S. post-war economic boom could still be faintly sensed, and I have been deeply interested in this period of U.S. history for a long time. The book that served as my textbook on this era was David Halberstam's “The Fifties,” which I read over a decade ago. It is a three-volume series published by Shinchosha OH! Bunko, with each volume exceeding 500 pages. It provides a detailed description and analysis of the 1950s in the United States across a wide range of fields, including domestic and international politics and economics, racial issues, and popular culture, among others. Halberstam was a renowned journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner. Unfortunately, he passed away in a car accident at the age of 73 in 2007. It was thanks to the foundational knowledge I gained from Halberstam that I was able to enjoy the works of novelist Lucia Berlin even more.
PS: David McCallum, who portrayed Ilya Kuryakin, the partner of the protagonist Solo in *The Man from U.N.C.L.E.* passed away on September 25, 2023, in NYC due to old age. The news was reported on September 26 in various publications. Rest in peace.
| BACK |
