Rising Sons and Daughters: Life Among Japan's New Young

When Wardell was in high school, he won a Japanese Diet/U.S. Senate scholarship for a Youth for Understanding summer exchange trip to Japan. Although he concedes that at the time of his visit (and the writing of this account) he hadn't read much about the country and could speak little Japanese, he nonetheless felt qualified to generalize based on his experiences living in Kyushu with the Ando family, particularly with the four Ando children, whose ages ranged from 18 to 10. Only the elder daughter and the father (whose idiosyncratic pronunciation was a continual source of amusement) were able to speak English, and Wardell's command of Japanese was so limited that he admits he understood little of the high school classes he attended. With communication so restricted, it would be unrealistic to expect any thoughtful commentary on Japan's psyche or the future of its young people, and no such insights are offered. Wardell's diary, a diligent record of his brief immersion in Japanese family life, is surprisingly reticient about the author himself, with no mention of how he became interested in Japan or even what year he went there. Many of the anecdotes in the diary revolve around those predictable old war-horses-the vagaries of Japanese pronunciation of English, the peculiar foods they consider delicacies and the difficult intricacies of Japanese etiquette. Lacking depth or dimension, Wardell's chronicle promises more than it delivers. (Sept.)