I think that as it was implied in the lecture today as well as in the reading by professor Leheny emotions are quite relevant to politics motions are in fact so ingrained in politics that it is hard to "divorce" them from politics as professor Leheny mentioned today. Before today’s lecture, this relationship between politics and emotion relating to identity and pinpointing the type of the meaning to this complex relationship is not something I had previously given myself to think about. Reflecting on the lecture today makes me realize just how important they are and the effects they have on politics.
I especially think that the way the narratives were presented today by professor Leheny really adds to my understanding of not only the role that emotion has to play in politics, in this case, the Japanese and United States relations but also the power that emotion has. For example, in the case of the ship accident that we learned about today in class we were able to see just how much was done because of that emotion behind losing a loved one which stems from the cultural Japanese identity that values family and friends. I also thought that it was interesting how the emotions and feelings of the Japanese families that had lost their family members in the U.S. caused the accident was the thing that was motivating action on the side of the U.S. to recover the bodies of loved ones and the desire to keep the U.S./Japan alliance intact. While I feel that this action of getting the bodies back was a good effort on the side of the United States I can’t help but feel angry that they did not have a trial for Waddle and in a sense give the families justice for the preventable deaths of their loved ones.
Without the lecture and the in-depth explanations of the details surrounding this incident, I think that the relationships between politics and emotion would have been a bit harder to understand. Here is where the narratives of Japanese identity and identities, in general, make a difference in understanding more complex relationships despite knowing they exist. I say this because I know this relationship exists and I see it in the U.S. often with the emotion that is often in response to political issues or events but without the narrative, this relationship seems out of context making it harder to grasp.
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