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The Inspirational Chuck Johnson

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It’s always been an uphill battle. That’s the way it’s supposed to be though. If it’s easy, it means you aren’t challenging yourself enough.

Chuck Johnson is an international action film actor based in Tokyo, Japan. A native of Michigan, when he began training in Olympic Taekwondo at the age of 15 he would never have imagined where he was going to end up! In just 2 ½ years Chuck earned his black belt; 6 days later he was named Michigan State Junior Olympic Taekwondo champion in both sparring and forms. He went on to study the sport in its native Korea, while he attended Yonsei University, under the tutelage of a former Korean national champion. During this time, he also competed overseas in Tokyo and Hong Kong. In 2001, while completing a course at the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong, he became the Inter-collegiate Taekwondo champion of Hong Kong even though he had originally come to the tournament just to watch.

During trips back to the U.S., Chuck also won the KTAA National Championship for sparring and forms and was a gold medalist at the State Games of America.

Inspired by a friend from Korea, moving to Japan was originally intended to be temporary—a gap year between college and the ‘real world’. After Chuck moved to Tokyo he worked an assortment of interesting jobs, including the standard work often taken on by expat Americans: teaching English. More unusual jobs followed: thanks to his physique, skill, and facility with English and Korean he was soon working as a bodyguard for visiting international celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Orlando Bloom, Jackie Chan, and Kim Sun Hee. However, the craziest job he says he had was work as a stripper.

I was doing fight choreography training during the day, so I needed a job that I could do at night; so that led me to that. Part of my work involved drinking with clients and customers though, so it was pretty tough. When I went to training, half or more of the time I was going hungover.

One of Japan’s first foreign stuntmen and today a film industry veteran of 15 years, Chuck started out on his action career in 2004 when his martial arts skill led him to be cast in Godzilla: Final Wars. The moment he walked onto the set, he knew that was what he wanted to do. It wasn’t easy though! At the time, he couldn’t speak a word of Japanese. Still, while he was on set he was able to meet the Japanese action director Yuji Shimomura (Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid V) and soon after began his study of East Asian-style fighting choreography. The first African American to make an international name for himself in the Far East’s action film industry, he is also the first American to have been trained extensively in the art of Katana Tate (Japanese theatrical swordplay).

It has been an uphill battle with an assortment of highs and lows, but Chuck Johnson is the sort of man who knows how to face those challenges with humor and firm determination. Good-natured and quick to laugh, this father says his biggest advice for people is to remember:

Life is really, really going to test you. Know that. Own it. Push through it.

Chuck has over 25 years of martial arts experience. In addition to holding the rank of master in Olympic Taekwondo, Chuck is ranked in Capoeira, Karate, Kobudo, and Judo. Additionally, he has studied Wing Chun Kung Fu, Hapkido, Hanmudo, Krav Maga, boxing, Kickboxing, and Tai Chi. He is also the chief developer of Phat English, a system which uses hip-hop music to teach the subtle nuances of English pronunciation, a prize-winning writer, and founder of the Tokyo-based company Quiet Flame Productions. He also runs the Quiet Flame Stunt Team, Asia’s first all-English speaking multi-ethnic stunt team.

Chuck has appeared in over 50 dramas, films, commercials, and video games in Asia and the United States. In 2012, he even became the face of Village Vanguard’s Gachi Muchi brand curry. In addition to his native English, Chuck speaks, reads, and writes Chinese and Korean, languages in which he’s self-taught.

 

 

 

 

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The Boys’ Club: An Antiquated, Entitled System of Oppression

Op-Ed

No matter where you look it seems like there’s a new headline emerging about admissions fraud or gender discrimination, as elites manipulate the situation to their advantage. As if it weren’t bad enough that the less fortunate, myself included, have to compete with affluent students whose parents can pay for private school, tutors, test preparation courses, coaches, campus visits, and more to sharpen their academic skills and burnish their résumés. Innate ability can only take a student so far without the opportunity to actually take advantage of it. Money is a large enough hurdle without our sex also being held against us.

Now proof has emerged that parents have taken the extra step of bribing officials to get their kids into college, paying for test results to be manipulated, and having experts write their children’s entrance essays?! Not that any of us is surprised to hear this, but I feel outrage nevertheless. Scandals such as these are, unfortunately, true of most countries. However, having lived in Japan for over a year, I was surprised to discover this country was no exception to the scandalous trend.

You think it’s hard getting into medical school here in the U.S.? It could be worse. Getting into medical school in Japan is a hugely challenging process for two reasons. First, the difficulty level of the entrance exam is extremely high. The necessary knowledge for the exam is not covered in high school, which means just preparing for the test already requires that you attend an additional prep school every day after regular classes for as long as four years—and these classes themselves aren’t cheap either. Second, even if you do pass the exam and the interview, private medical school can cost from $180,000 to $270,000. This is 5 to 7 times the regular cost of a college education in Japan. Furthermore, they don’t have financial aid there like we do, so this is money your family is expected to pay out of pocket. It’s not uncommon for students to have to take the entrance exam multiple times, and each medical school has a separate exam that students have to pay to take. Thus, just taking the exam already involves a significant financial, physical, and psychological cost. Imagine all the hours of sacrifice and study, only to be cheated out of a place as less-qualified applicants circumvent the system.

Last year, an investigation into the medical school acceptance of an education ministry bureaucrat’s son in exchange for backdoor promises of research funds revealed more than expected. It brought to light widespread score manipulation based on donations and connections—and on gender. Women’s scores were being purposely decreased across the board at multiple top medical schools in order to keep their acceptance rate around 30%, so men would remain the majority. Investigation revealed this had been going on for more than a decade, and more than two decades for some of the schools. The guilty have claimed a variety of justifications, the main one being that women cannot be “real doctors” and will just leave their profession if they have a child or get married. Considering that women are traditionally expected to quit their jobs if they marry or have a child, is it any wonder? Given Japan’s current birthrate plight (its population is shrinking: of the 32 countries with a population of 40+ million, Japan ranks at the bottom with just 12.3% of the overall population being children), you would think they would be taking this more seriously. How hard would it really be to expand the child care options and support these women so they can do their job? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was recently re-elected, promised to fix the daycare shortage and put women in positions of power. Like the head-bent apologies of those responsible for the med school admissions scandal, Abe’s promises seem likely to be nothing more than empty words.

In the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report, the World Economic Forum ranked Japan 114th out of 144 countries in terms of economic participation and opportunity and 123rd in terms of political empowerment. Approximately 50% of Japanese women are college-educated, one of the world’s highest levels, yet rampant sexism and discrimination against women make it difficult for them to find high-level or full-time positions. Only 4% of managerial positions in Japan are held by women, and on average women earn just 70% of what a man with the same job and experience would receive. This boys’ club should have long since faded into the annals of history. That this antiquated, entitled system of oppression is still such a systemic problem is  absolutely unforgivable no matter where you live.

Here in the U.S., women are similarly shortchanged on pay and advancement because our reproductive capacity makes us a “liability” in the workforce. Plenty of memes pop up on the internet everyday about how hot it is to find a man who offers to wash the dishes or pick the kids up from school. That’s because it is not expected of them. Women are expected to marry, have children, and take care of the home. Sure, we’re “allowed” to work, but we are still expected to do everything else.

America or Japan, getting into school or making it in the workplace—discrimination and unfair practices seem to be everywhere you look. Officials bow their heads to apologize or are replaced, but it’s all window dressing. Nothing really changes. We need to start taking this seriously and level the playing field.

Women Without Men – An Allegory Falls Flat

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

Shirin Neshat, primarily known for her video installations and photography exploring gender issues in the Islamic world, forays outside familiar territory with Women Without Men (2009), her first feature-length film. Though born in Iran, she currently resides in New York, having been banned from entering Iran since 1996 due to her politically controversial photographs and experimental videos. Overly ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful, Women Without Men was originally envisioned by Neshat as a video installation. The film was loosely adapted from feminist writer Shahrnush Parsipur’s 1989 novel of the same name. This audacious debut feature looks back at the pivotal moment in 1953 when the progressive Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown. The Shah was then re-installed as dictator in a coup d’état engineered by the American and British governments. This film, which won Neshat the Silver Lion award for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival, revolves around the lives of four women from different classes and backgrounds during this turbulent period in Iran’s history.

Representative of the expectations their society places on women, the four characters are largely cliché and their behavior often predictable. Munis (Shabnam Toloui), a serious woman obsessed with listening to the radio for reports on the Mossadegh situation and eager to participate in the street protests, refuses to limit herself to the circumscribed roles approved by her society and mandated by her tyrannical brother Amir Khan (Essa Zahir). In love with this brother who makes Munis’s life a misery, her conservative friend Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni) is a timider woman. Emaciated prostitute Zarin (Orsolya Tóth) impulsively flees the brothel where she worked after the men’s faces start to blend together into a surreal blank. Lastly, Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad) is a stylish older woman unhappily married to the powerful General Sahri (Tahmoures Tehrani). After an old flame rolls into town she leaves her husband to live in a lovely country orchard where she encounters the other three women, who also arrive seeking refuge before the military coup intrudes on their peaceful idyll. Through these characters, the film celebrates women’s resilience and courage in the face of an oppressive, unyielding patriarchy that is present on personal, political and cultural levels.

While each of these women represents an aspect of what their country expects women to be, they simultaneously buck these roles, which gives them a presence greater than that of simple flesh-and-blood. Munis is desperate to take an active role in the politics of her nation, to affect change, but is forbidden by her fundamentalist brother to set foot outside the house or act other than the demure woman he expects her to be. Zarin is abused daily by men in the brothel as her only way to survive and get by, eventually leading her to flee to a women’s public bath where she scrubs herself bloody in an attempt to feel clean of their touch. Fakhri is reviled by her husband because she is menopausal and no longer sexually desirable to him; when her former lover returns she runs away with him to the orchard. These women come together in the almost magical orchard after their travails to form a family, cementing the importance of freedom and working together to attain it.

The director’s instincts as a photographer are evident in every frame of Women Without Men. The treatment of light to contrast with shadow and the expert use of color to paint each scene with rich, shifting hues creates a realistic view of the world that is still, at some level, magical.  The precise compositions of each shot present alternately troubled and serene landscapes, which contribute to the almost fantastical atmosphere of the movie. In contrast to the lush color palette of the orchard scenes, the scenes taking place in Tehran (re-created in Morocco) are muted and monochromatic-more like a newsreel. Each frame in the film appears carefully composed and it gives Women Without Men the ambience of an exhibition whose figures have come to life, like Pygmalion’s Galatea, to act out this tragic feminist allegory.

It’s more than just the composition and palette of each frame that lends the film its fantastical quality—it’s the surrealistic elements as well. This is especially evident when Zarin looks up at a client’s face and sees that it is completely featureless; this initiates the breakdown that ultimately leads her to leave the brothel. The orchard is another of these surreal elements. Purchased by Fakhri it is clearly located in the real world, but its representation gives it more the feel of a dream space set apart from reality–sometimes menacing, sometimes divine.

Both the original writer and the director have been persecuted by the country of their birth because of their beliefs. Women Without Men allows viewers to feel their emotions—and through them those of the women still held down by the men in their lives—and desire to be free and true to themselves in these characters. These performances are successful largely due to the skill of their actresses in achieving the right level of emotional intensity in each scene: Shahrzad’s portrayal of her character’s dissatisfaction and desperate desire to maintain sexual and social confidence, Tóth’s display of fierce intensity, Tolouei’s depiction of pride and deep-seated melancholy.

The actresses’ portrayals are especially important given Neshat’s lack of experience with extended narrative. While her compositions are arresting, the narrative sometimes fails to pack much punch. The film feels awkward and overloaded and, despite decent performances by the actors, the viewer never gets to know their characters. Ultimately this results in the emotional impact of their respective fates falling flat and somewhat predictable. Neshat bit off more than she could chew in this ambitious debut with its heavy socio-political and cultural commentary. Nevertheless, her film is worth watching for its message, striking imagery, and distinct blend of realism and imagination in the service of an affecting feminist message.

Reconciling a Foreign Author, a US Book, and Authorial Responsibility

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor,

I am writing to take issue with your article, An Author Canceled Her Own YA Novel Over Accusations of Racism. But Is It Really Anti-Black? (slate.com, Jan. 31, 2019) by Aja Hoggart. The article discusses the controversy surrounding the publication—or non-publication—of Amelie Wen Zhao’s debut young adult (YA) novel, Blood Heir. In late January, a fellow YA author took to Twitter to point out what she considered anti-black racism in Zhao’s forthcoming novel—the book includes a young woman who dies at a slave auction. Though her race is never explicitly stated, some readers interpreted the character as black. Following an explosion of criticism on “YA Twitter,” Zhao decided to indefinitely postpone the publication of her novel, the first part of a six-figure deal for a trilogy.

This article downplays the seriousness of the situation, and the ultimate merit of the accusations. The intense outrage on Twitter may have been overblown, but it shouldn’t be dismissed. However, the situation isn’t clear-cut; Zhao immigrated to the United States at the age of eighteen, and her experiences growing up in China informed her book. She states that the slavery and indentured servitude described in the novel are based on the indentured servitude and human trafficking that she witnessed firsthand in her native China and surrounding countries growing up. Zhao’s cultural background may well have limited her awareness of the cultural connotations surrounding slavery in the U.S. For this reason, and because she has clearly learned from the situation, she should be given a second chance at publication.

Still, it is vitally important to remember that while Zhao may not be from the United States, and while her story takes place in an Asian-inspired fantasy world, the book was set to be published in the United States. The slave auction scenes it contains are troubling and, in our cultural context, morally fraught. Hoggart’s article overlooks this fact, as well as the fact that regardless of Zhao’s intentions or the technicalities of whether or not the book is anti-black, it can be perceived that way. This could have a harmful effect on the American teens who read it—a real concern, and one that Hoggart utterly fails to consider.