I well remember the first time I met Mark Bookman. He had come to attend the Anthropology of Japan, in Japan (AJJ) Conference at my home campus, Meiji Gakuin University Yokohama, and it was the First of December 2019, just three years ago. His paper that day was entitled “The Art of Collaboration: How Competition, Compliance, and Coordination Affect Diverse Communities in Contemporary Japan” and it very well summed up his research interests and the reason why I hold him in such high regard as a scholar.
As a long-term wheelchair user and disabilities activist, Mark was often subjected to indignities by the public and the authorities, and must have felt both depressed and angry when, for example, he discovered that there were a quarter of a million apartments available for rent in the greater Tokyo area, but less than a thousand even claiming to be wheelchair accessible and virtually none that really were accessible for a man in a 250 kilogram motorized wheelchair. He could have become an angry activist, lambasting the government and the private sector for their ignorance and apathy regarding the rights of people with disabilities, and I would have supported him if he had taken that course.
Instead, however, he chose the road of collaboration. Not that he swallowed or muted his critique of the powers that be — he expressed his views clearly but calmly in a number of committees and forums, most famously the one that planned accessibility for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics that were finally held last year. He was a pragmatist, who recognized that he could best contribute to the disability movement by speaking truth to power in places where those in power would actually be listening.
I was also struck by his use of the word “competition” in his presentation that day. Many people not directly involved in the disability movement are prone to lump together different kinds of disability into an amorphous mass, and feel vaguely sympathetic or not as the case may be. But Mark, with his wealth of research and intense personal experience, recognized that different kinds of disability are received very differently by politicians, government officials and the general public. And like it or not, they are to a degree in competition for limited government funds.
For example, Mark observed that blind people in Japan seemed to get a better deal than deaf people. Japan invented the tactile yellow tiles we see at every railway station and which are now spreading to other countries around the world, whereas Japan was 25 years late on TV subtitling for deaf people. And both those groups did better than wheelchair users, who still lack access to about a third of all railway stations in Japan. I asked Mark how such differences could be explained. I received a lengthy and very illuminating lecture. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had stumbled on Chapter One of his doctoral dissertation, Politics and Prosthetics: 150 years of Disability in Japan. For instance, the Japanese system of braille was standardized in the late 19th century, whereas Japanese Sign Language remains rich in regional variation to this day. This standardized system of communication, Mark argues, gave an advantage to what he calls “blind elites” in campaigning for improvements in infrastructure. It also helped that their disability did not hinder access to public transportation as much as some other disabilities and was obviously not contagious. Thus, Mark argues, blind people in general achieved a special status in the period from the Meiji Restoration to World War II. To some degree, that advantage has survived to the present day.
At this point, we may start to feel uncomfortable. We may not be used to this talk of struggle between rival disability groups, or descriptions of some of their members as elites. There’s something here that jars with our vague feeling of sympathy for “the disabled.” And the two other themes in his presentation that day — compliance (with social norms and government regulations) and co-ordination (between diverse disability groups) — might strike some progressive disability scholars as a little too buttoned down, not quite confrontational enough.
But Mark called it like he saw it. He was a true scholar, devoted to seeking out the truth — even if that truth might be discomforting or sometimes even painful. That is why I view him as a major scholarly talent, who would undoubtedly have become a truly great scholar if his life had not been so tragically cut short.
Please do not misunderstand me. I’m not saying that Mark was resentful of people with other kinds of disability — of course not. As he stated, his ultimate aim was to achieve a truly inclusive society. That was the driving force behind his activism and his very important consulting work. But in his academic writing, any thought of political correctness or sacrificing facts to argument was banished. The best-known biography of my great hero, George Orwell, is entitled The Crystal Spirit (by George Woodcock). Like Orwell, Mark had a crystal spirit and he pursued the crystal truth — that was an absolute. And again like Orwell, he wrote in a clear, unadorned, jargon-free style that could communicate to expert and layman alike. His writing was 100% bullshit-free. He never wrote a single line that did not instantly communicate.
I can offer no higher praise. Like all of us, I’m going to miss this clear-eyed, warm-hearted, straight-talking seeker after truth.
Rest in Peace, Mark.
Tom Gill
December 21, 2022
for more about the Mark Bookman Prize, click HERE.