A Year with the Local Newspaper by Anthony S. Rausch (University Press of America)

A Year with the Local Newspaper is an interesting concept. It has the subtitle of Understanding the Times in Aomori Japan, 1999. Anthony S. Rausch has lived in Hirosaki City for over ten years working as an English teacher. He refers to Hirosaki as his furusato or adopted hometown and by extending the boundaries, includes all of Aomori Prefecture as his home. He has studied Japanese and has read many books on Japan and has kept abreast of the national news, but he still feels like he was never “in the know” or “out of the loop” when it came to local news. 

Rausch tells his students there are many different ways of improving their English. One of his suggestions is to “read real English in real newspapers.” He explains to his students, “Pick a town and make it your adopted hometown; then go online everyday and imagine you are reading your hometown newspaper.” He tells them by doing so, they “will gain new vocabulary, strengthen your English skills and gain a pretty good “feel” of a whole new place.” 

Rausch then has an epiphany. He realizes that he has not been following his own advice that he’s been giving to his students and so he makes a New Year’s Resolution for 1999 - to read the local newspaper each and everyday for the entire year. Rausch chooses the TooNippo, one of the two local newspapers that is distributed in the Tohoku area. By taking on this project, Rausch hopes to make sense of Aomori. He says, “If I could make sense of Aomori by reading the newspaper, then could I not help others to make sense out of Aomori by reading the newspaper to them?”

Rausch doesn’t just want to write a guide book for the Tohoku area. His main goal is to describe, analyze, and interpret what “local” life in Aomori Prefecture is like. The first part of the book includes articles that describe a typical year in different ways either by weather, season, or festivals. Rausch also spends an entire chapter on winter in Aomori as the prefecture is considered snow country and 1999 saw one of the worst winters in Aomori in many years. 

The book becomes more of a college text when Rausch begins to describe the “peripherality” and “revitalization” of Aomori often comparing urban and rural living habits. As Aomori Prefecture is mostly agricultural, many of the chosen articles focus on the local industries such as rice planting, apple growing, and fisheries. 

As much as I found the initial concept interesting, being a recent transplant to Aomori Prefecture myself after spending twenty plus years in Tokyo, I found the execution rather lacking and the book itself poorly edited. The many grammatical and typographical errors became more of a distraction and it was often difficult to understand what Rausch was trying to convey. 

This book focuses on the year 1999 and as it is currently 2020, many of the articles are irrelevant today. It’s interesting as a recent historical record describing the construction of the new Aomori Shinkansen station or the controversies surrounding the expansion of the Ajigasawa Ski Area and the hosting of the Asian Winter Games in 2003 but will only appeal to a limited audience. ~Ernie Hoyt