Kyoto inside out: Who is Paul Swanson? Who is Karin Swanson?

To start with, a somewhat tentative connection between the two is evident in that they were both instructors at Oberlin College, in Tokyo, in the early 2000s.

SPRING 2002

http://www.oberlin.edu/exco/students/oldcourses/spring02.htm

Buddhist Thought and Practice 0-1 Credit
Paul Swanson EXCO-316-01

This course provides an introduction to the history, philosophy, and practice of Buddhism. This is open to people of all religious backgrounds, provided they are sincerely interested in the teachings of Buddha. The course will be taught from a practitioner’s perspective, and will meet 2 hours a week.

Water Polo 0-1 Credit
Karin Swanson EXCO-115-01

We will learn all the basics of Water Polo, focusing on treading, ball skills, and some swim conditioning. All levels are welcome. We will be practicing with the water polo club and drawing from their collective knowledge and resources. There will be at least three women’s intercollegiate tournaments this spring, and two co-ed tournaments. Practice will be two to three afternoons a week.

It appears that Jeff and Mark are their sons due to the resemblance to their presumed mother, Karin, but she is not on Facebook, and there are no affirmative sources to verify that. The time frames are not an exact match, however, assuming that they were divorced and Paul remarried and had more children with his second wife, Yuko. I can’t rule out some other degree of familial relationship between Paul and Jeff, and Mark. There is no biographical information showing that Karin grew up in Japan, however, so it doesn’t seem that Paul and Karin were siblings. At any rate, this disclaimer just clarifies that I have made an educated guess as to the degree of familial relationship between said individuals. Given the Facebook connections between Mark, Jeff and the others, however, it does appear that they are related. Moreover, there would have been no reason for Eric Haruki Swanson (https://hcommons.org/members/ehswans/), a PhD candidate at Harvard, to delete his Facebook page after my messaging Mark that I suspected he was CIA. As described below, Paul claims to have grown up in Wakayama, Japan, and Jeff claims to be from Shingu, in Wakayama, while he lives in Minnesota, where Mark attended college. Paul Swanson claims, however, to have only four children, and mentions only one wife. Is he dissimulating? Or do they belong to some extended family of missionaries, for example?

With regard to Paul Swanson, the biographical blurb for him on the page shown below states:

Paul is an MK (“missionary kid”) who was born and raised in Japan. He has four children and one wife, is a Bob Dylan freak, edits the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and has lost the battle against an expanding waistline and becoming a “senior citizen.” He did his graduate studies at Sophia University, the University of Tokyo, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dual areas of specialization are Japanese Religions (Shugendo) and Buddhist Studies (T’ien-t’ai/Tendai Buddhism).

He teaches at a Buddhism affiliated college in Aichi Prefecture.

http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/staff/pswanson/

I’ve read some of Paul Swanson’s writings (some papers available on the above-linked page), and in all fairness, have generally found them to be informative conveyances of the thought of important Japanese scholars and the like whose work was otherwise not very accessible to an English language audience. I haven’t seen any pseudo-scholarship in his work, unlike the case with the publications of a number of other suspected intelligence operatives as critiqued on this blog—with more to come. It is to his credit that he is perhaps the only individual I’ve seen thus far who is associated with Christian missionaries that has not evinced demonstrable bigotry in their writings, etc.

A comment on his Facebook page reveals that he grew up in Japan (in Wakayama, apparently).

Paul Swanson: It's part of the Kumano Kodo, near where I grew up.

Jeff Swanson: By Nachi Falls. Lori, Cori, and Lois were there a long time ago.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=102533659825732&set=ecnf.100002072951554&type=3&theater

Jeff indicates that he is from Shingu, Wakayama.

https://www.facebook.com/jeff.swanson.12764/about?lst=655779756%3A721421188%3A1489658614

With regard to Karin Swanson, she appears on the same webpage from the website of the Columbia University affiliated Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies (KCJS) as that for which a screenshot was posted earlier on this blog (http://kyoto-inside-out.blogspot.jp/2017/01/who-is-patricia-pringle-and-diego.html) in relation to Monica Bethe and Noh:

http://www.kcjs.jp/about/faculty_staff.html

The biographical blurb for her on that page states:

Karin Swanson teaches Japanese art history at the Center for International Education of Kansai Gaidai University and at Urasenke, a leading school of the tea ceremony in Kyoto. Her areas of specialization include Kyoto painters of the pre-modern period and Buddhist arts. She has specifically developed the Kansai art class at KCJS to underscore the central importance of the area within Japan’s long history of art production. In addition, the class provides a contextual framework for the many opportunities to observe art, both on class visits and independent trips taken by students while in the Kansai area.

Her presumed son, Mark, whom I believe bears a strong resemblance to her, also taught at Kansai Gaidai University for 5 five years: https://jp.linkedin.com/in/mark-swanson-091ba440

And this is Jeff, to whom his presumed younger brother, Mark, bears a close resemblance and resides in Minnesota, the same state Mark attended university in according to his LinkedIn resume:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153218616386189&set=a.10152196637751189.1073741827.721421188&type=3&theater

I’ve discovered a number of other online sources on Karin Swanson.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/1990/nov/07/students_nominated_for_fulbrights/

STUDENTS NOMINATED FOR FULBRIGHTS

November 7, 1990

Seventeen Kansas University students have been nominated for the Fulbright or Fulbright Travel award for a year of graduate study abroad, KU officials said.

The nominees now must await the decision of both national and bi-national screening committees, said Mary Debicki, director of the KU study abroad office.

The KU nominees, including their hometown, academic area of study and where they would like to study, are:

… Karin Swanson, Lawrence, art history, Japan; …..

There is an online entry for a Karin Lynn Swanson as a resident of North Carolina showing an address in Kyoto: https://northcarolinaresidentdb.com/person/CC129592152257/karin_lynn_swanson

She works as a tour guide for another intelligence front shown below, and the biographical blurb for her on that website states:

Karin Swanson has an M.A. from San Diego State University in Japanese Art History and is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Kansas, focusing on Edo-period paintings and prints, woodblock printed books, and 17th-century painting. She has lived in Kyoto since 1993 and has held lectureships at a number of universities, including the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, where she worked with Columbia University’s program. She is a member of Kyoto Asian Studies Group as well as a Kyoto Townhouse Association, which promotes this classic but unfortunately rapidly disappearing form of Kyoto architecture. When not lecturing, Karin enjoys attending art exhibitions and auctions as well as both rural and urban hiking.

https://www.contexttravel.com/cities/kyoto/tours/customized-private-tour-of-kyoto

That page features other suspected CIA et al. officers working as tour guides, one of whom was described in the lawsuit, John Benson, who lived in the same apartment building as I did for a number of years and is also associated with the Durning’s.