2005 AJJ Fall Schedule & Abstracts

Workshops and Conferences

8th ANNUAL MEETING

Culture, Identity and Politics:
Ethnography in/of Japan

Hosted by:

The Institute of Comparative Culture

Sophia University

Saturday and Sunday
November 5th and 6th, 2005

 

AJJ 2005 Annual Meeting Program

 Saturday  (11/5)

8:30-10:00      Executive Committee Meeting
9:00                 Registration Opens (401)
10:15-10:30    Opening Remarks (402)
10:30-12:30    Morning Panels (2 hours)

A—Ethnographic Reflexivities and Returns (rm 402)

Chair: KUWAYAMA, Takami (Hokkaido University)

  1. DASGUPTA, Romit (University of Western Australia): “Where Are You REALLY From?” When Home Becomes Away and Away Becomes Home
  2. KITAMURA, Aya (University of Tokyo): Making Oneself Visible and Vulnerable: Reflections on Researcher’s Positionality
  3. YAMASHIRO, Jane H. (University of Hawai`i): A Different Nikkei Experience: Americans (U.S.) of Japanese descent residing in Japan
    Discussant: KUWAYAMA, Takami (Hokkaido University)

B—Intimates, Friends and Others (rm 301)

Chair: SHACKLETON, Michael (Osaka Gakuin University)

  1. ADIS, Diana (University of New South Wales): Narratives of Japanese intimacy: examining nakedness and touch in Japanese families
  2. SHACKLETON, Michael (Osaka Gakuin University): The Significance of Friendship in Contemporary Japan
  3. GILL, Tom (Meiji Gakuin University): The Kegare Category: Ritual Pollution and Social Discrimination in Contemporary Japan
    Discussant: NAKAMAKI, Hirochika (Minpaku)

12:30-1:30      Lunch Break
1:30-3:00        Key Note Speaker  (rm 402)

Chair: EADES, Jerry (Ritsumeikan, Asia Pacific University)

Professor Yamashita Shinji, University of Tokyo
Title: “Somewhere in between: Toward an Interactive Anthropology in a World Anthropologies Project”

3:00-3:15        Break
3:15-5:45        Afternoon Panels

C—Ethnographies of Social Welfare and Human Rights  (rm 402)

Chair: OCCHI, Debra (Miyazaki International College)

  1. BACKHAUS, Peter (German Institute for Japanese Studies): Impacts on Japan’s aging society on the semiotic organisation of public spaces
  2. LEE, Hyun Sun (Oxford University): ‘Woori-shiki kaihou (Our mode of care)’: A Case Study of a Zainichi Korean Organisation for Social Welfare
  3. FEDOROWICZ, Steven C. (Kansai Gaidai University): Investigating Partial Truths: Researching HIV/AIDS in the Japanese Deaf World
  4. NORTON, Laura H. (University of Washington): Neutering the Transgendered: Human Rights and Japan’s Law No. 111
    Discussant: OCCHI, Debra (Miyazaki International College)

D—Modernity, Democracy and Internationalization  (rm 301)

Chair: SLATER, David (Sophia University)

  1. RONALD, Richard (Kobe University): Home Ownership, Modernity and the State: Post War Hegemony and Housing Culture
  2. OSHIMA, Kazunori (Independent Scholar): The Democratic Status of a Self-governing Association
  3. VINKEN, Henk (Komazawa University) Changing life courses of young generations across cultures
  4. MONI, Monir Hossain (University of Dhaka): Higher Education in Japan: Toward Internationalization
    Discussant: SLATER, David  (Sophia University)

5:45-6:30        Business Meeting  (rm 402)
6:30—8:30     Reception (first floor cafeteria)

Sunday  (11/6)                     

9:00-10:00      Registration
10:00-12:30    Morning Panels (2.5 hours)

E—Memory, War, Responsibility  (rm 402)

Chair: ROBERSON, James  (Tokyo Jogakkan College)

  1. NICKUM, Jim (Tokyo Jogakkan College): Flickering Memory: Honmoku Miyabara as a Peripheral Palimpsest
  2. BEN-ARI, Eyal (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Coincident Events, Concurrent Spaces of Memory: The Annual Memorial Rites at Yasukuni Shrine
  3. THORSTEN, Marie (Doshisha University): Multitude, Interrupted: The 2004 Japanese Hostage Crisis
    Discussant: EADES, Jerry (Ritsumeikan, Asia Pacific University)

F—Identities Constructed and Imagined in Popular Culture (rm 301)

Chair: HOLDEN, Todd (Tohoku University)

  1. KEET, Philomena (School of Oriental and African Studies): Living in a Material World: Spectacular Youth Fashion in Tokyo and the Changing Fabric of Japanese Society
  2. WHITE, Bruce (Doshisha University) Japanese Reggae: Fashion Statement, Ideological container, or Anthropological Adventure?
  3. MCARVER, Susan (University of California, Santa Barbara): Laughter and Foreigners on Japanese TV: Constructing Foreign Identities
  4. AMES, Christopher (University of Michigan): Okinawa’s American Village: reversing the gaze
    Discussant: HOLDEN, Todd (Tohoku University)

12:30-1:30      Lunch Break
1:30-4:00        Afternoon Panels (2.5 hours)

G— Localities Revitalized and Resisted  (rm 402)

Chair: MOCK, John  (Akita International University):

  1. KIYAMA, Lori (Tokyo Institute of Technology): Shrine Noh and Resistance to the Iemoto System in Central Kyushu
  2. MOCK, John (Akita International University): Of Beasts, Bears and Barbarians: Depopulation of Humans and Repopulation of Bears in Central Akita
  3. DOSHITA, Megumi (Keio University): Local Revitalisation and Rural/Green Tourism: A Case Study of Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture
  4. SPRAGUE, David S. (National Inst. for Agro-Env. Sciences): This land is your land: reintroducing Japanese landscape with the Jinsoku Sokuzu

H—Culture and the Study of Organizations (rm 301)

Chair: NAKAMAKI, Hirochika (Minpaku)

  1. SUMI, Atsushi (Japan Inst. for Labour Policy and Training): Conceptual and Methodological Gaps in the Study of Organizations between Japanese and Euro-American Scholars
  2. NAKAHATA, Mitsuhiro (Meiji University): An Anthropology of Administration Study of Credit Control at the Time of a Customer Bankruptcy
  3. YAMAKI, Keiko (Graduate University for Advanced Studies): Anthropology of Business Manners in Japanese Companies: A Case Study of a “J Company”
  4. Discussant: ROBERTS, Glenda (Waseda University)
  5. Discussant: MOERAN, Brian (Copenhagen Business School)

4:10-4:30        Closing Communications  (rm 402)

AJJ 2005 Annual Meeting ABSTRACTS

 Saturday  (11/5)

Panel A—Ethnographic Reflexivities and Returns

  1. DASGUPTA, Romit (University of Western Australia): “Where Are You REALLY From?” When Home Becomes Away and Away Becomes Home

This paper draws upon the works of scholars like Kirin Narayan, Lila Abu-Lughod, Esther Newton, Evelyn Blackwood, and Dorinne Kondo, who have addressed the issue of ‘halfie’-ness in fieldwork research.  All of these writers have engaged with the problematics of the researcher having to negotiate her/his ‘identity’ in some of the slippages between the categories of home/away, insider/outsider, native/other, friend/stranger, researcher/informant, heterosexual/homosexual, etc.. In the process they have called into question many of the assumptions about the ‘voice’, autobiography, and ethnography.  This paper hopes to untangle some of the strands weaving through the interstices between autobiography and ethnography, in the context of my own ‘identity path’. Specifically, the paper re-visits my fieldwork experience in Japan, in a location where I had previously spent some of the most significant years of my life. In the meantime though, aspects of myself had changed considerably. The experience of re-visiting a familiar space in a new ‘incarnation’, and the status of ‘insider/outsider’ as I negotiated new relationships and re-negotiated old ones, forced me to confront issues, including notions of home, self and identity, as well as ethical dilemmas in negotiating the private/public dichotomy, that I had either dismissed or underestimated prior to commencing fieldwork. By reflecting on some of these issues, the paper hopes to destabilize such binaries underpinning fieldwork methodology, as outsider/insider, researcher/informant, and ‘objective’ ethnography/’subjective’ autobiography.

 

  1. KITAMURA, Aya (University of Tokyo): Making Oneself Visible and Vulnerable: Reflections on Researcher’s Positionality

This paper concerns the issue of ethnographer’s positionality.  In doing ethnographic fieldwork, we cannot always lock ourselves in the academic fortress of objectivity.  Rather, we often find ourselves involved in the social dynamics in research fields, opening up ourselves to our research subjects and interacting with them proactively.  In what ways, then, do our academic standpoints and social attributes—nationality, ethnicity, age and gender only to name a few—influence what we encounter in our fields?  How do we present ourselves and how do our research subjects react to us?  Most crucially, to what findings do such interactive processes of “crafting selves” (Dorinne Kondo) lead us?  Aiming to shed light on these issues that touch upon the politics of ethnography, I refer to my original interview research.  The data was collected from 1999 to 2004 in Tokyo and Hawaii, focusing on Japanese women with international experiences.  During each of the sixty-two interviews, I, a Japanese female interviewer, not only listened to the women’s life stories but also disclosed myself, telling my own experiences and expressing my own feelings, to encounter most vivid types of narratives.  They included elements of the women’s lives, experiences and identities, which previous studies had failed to take into consideration.  I analyze some specific cases to demonstrate the highly complex—interactive, contingent and even subversive—processes in which Japanese women construct their identities.  It is the ultimate goal of this paper to highlight the possibilities of such alternative ethnography, one that makes the ethnographer visible and vulnerable.

 

  1. YAMASHIRO, Jane H. (University of Hawai`i): A Different Nikkei Experience: Americans (U.S.) of Japanese descent residing in Japan

“Nikkeijin” in Japan generally refers to people of Japanese descent from Latin America: in particular, the Brazilians of Japanese ancestry who have “return migrated” over the past 15 years or so.  In addition to the estimated population of over 300,000 Latin American “Nikkeijin”, Americans (U.S.) of Japanese ancestry (AJAs) have also come to reside in Japan. While the Brazilian “Nikkei” have come to Japan primarily as factory workers, their American counterparts are predominantly college exchange students, Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program participants, English teachers, businesspeople and language students. Aside from being of Japanese descent, the differences between these groups are more salient than the similarities: native English v. native Portuguese and U.S. passports v. Brazilian ones are among the factors which contribute to their different experiences in Japan. This paper examines the experiences of Americans of Japanese ancestry in Japan in contrast to those of Brazilians of Japanese ancestry in Japan. Based on interviews conducted over the past year with AJAs living in Japan, I discuss how while the commonality of Japanese ancestry leads to some similarities, differences in citizenship, culture, language and history contribute to very different experiences in Japan.

 

 Panel B—Intimates, Friends and Others

  1. ADIS, Diana (University of New South Wales): Narratives of Japanese intimacy: examining nakedness and touch in Japanese families

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the broader cultural context in which intimacy is felt and communicated in Japanese familial relationships. Common discourses of Japanese relationships, such as ishin denshin (heart-to-heart communication), lead to a perceivable lack of touch in intimate relationships. However, specific discourses and practices of the body suggest a significance of touch in intimate relationships often overlooked by such discourses of heart-to-heart communication. This paper addresses such discourses and practices of the body in familial intimacy such as they emerged in my 2005 fieldwork. I refer to various participant observation settings (in particular, pre-natal and post-natal parenting classes) with an emphasis on how familial intimacy is taught and enculturated. The narratives of class participants and facilitators highlight the importance of the body in familial relationships. In particular, this paper focuses on touch (sukinshippu) and naked association (hadaka no tsukiai) as that which perpetuates and enhances Japanese familial intimacy.

 

  1. SHACKLETON, Michael (Osaka Gakuin University): The Significance of Friendship in Contemporary Japan

‘Classic’ fieldwork in Japanese villages, companies and similar bastions of the ‘group model’, frequently highlights how tomodachi relationships between individuals of the group are seen to be essentially subversive. In other words, membership and loyalty should not seem to depend on liking each other: there is a job to do together, and a common identity to maintain. Friendship/tomodachi relationships are thus established ‘on the outside’ (fan clubs/religious associations, etc.). Fast forward however to students at university nowadays, and the most common reason for ‘dropping out’ or switching universities is ‘tomodachi ga nai’. And as we look at the ‘furi-ta’ culture of university towns, it seems that ‘tomodachi’ are more and more ‘in’, and the fusty old ‘group model,’ and its hierarchy of relationships, is increasingly ‘out’. ‘Giri’ is giving ground to ‘Ninjo’. This paper examines: a) identity: role versus self (‘Who am ?’ versus ‘What am I part of?’); b) the relevance of ‘sentiment’ in new forms of association, and hence the application of psychological concepts within anthropology; c) fieldwork: placing behaviour within friendship groups (eg. youth groups) in terms of the rest of their members’ lives and the wider social context. Also, micro-analysis of discourse; d) historical and cross-cultural sources for the social significance of ‘friendship’; e) the anthropology of contemporary Japan against the backdrop of modernization and similar debates world-wide.

 

  1. GILL, Tom (Meiji Gakuin University): The Kegare Category: Ritual Pollution and Social Discrimination in Contemporary Japan

There is a school of thought, associated with folklore scholars such as Sakurai Tokutaro and Miyata Noboru, and traceable back to Yanagida Kunio himself, that identifies ‘kegare’ (ritual pollution) as a master concept in Japanese traditional rituals. It is often associated with death (black kegare), or with blood — especially the blood of menstruation and childbirth (‘red kegare’). So long as the term is confined to folklore studies (minzokugaku), it is relatively uncontroversial. But when cultural anthroplogists, such as Namihira Emiko, suggest that kegare might be a factor in present-day social discrimination — in other words, that homeless people, foreigners or Burakumin may in some way be viewed as ‘polluted’ in the Japanese onsciousness — they are roundly criticized by Japanese sociologists, for introducing unscientific notions to phenomena that they believe can be far better explained in terms of traditional Marxist/Weberian paradigms of class or staus. Who is right? This paper will document a decade spent by a foreigner trying to come to terms with the kegare category.

 

Panel C—Anthropology and Social Welfare

  1. BACKHAUS, Peter (German Institute for Japanese Studies; backhaup@hotmail.com): Impacts on Japan’s aging society on the semiotic organisation of public spaces

The Japanese population has the highest average age and the longest life expectancy of the world. According to official estimations, one third of the Japanese populace will be older than 65 by 2050. This so-called ‘demographic time bomb’ is the greatest challenge facing Japan today. This paper will take a closer look at how Japan’s demographic transition is beginning to change the semiotic organisation of public spaces. In view of an ever growing number of people of high age, various measures have been taken in order to make urban spaces – roads and pavements, the insides and outsides of public buildings, trains and buses, etc. – more easily accessible to older people. Three recent examples will be discussed: (1) the development of a standardised set of pictograms, increasingly replacing or supplementing written language on public signs; (2) the use of pre-recorded acoustic messages, e.g., in buses and trains, at elevators and escalators, as well as in public toilets; (3) the instalment of textured pavement blocks (yūdō burokku) serving as orientation markers to blind and visually disabled people, including older people with poor eyesight. These changes of the semiotic landscape in Japan reveal that an aging society organises its everyday communication different than populations of younger age. The adaptation to the communicative needs of a – thus far – social minority group further suggests that Japanese society is gradually beginning to perceive of itself in a more open and less exclusive way.

 

  1. LEE, Hyun Sun (Oxford University): Woori-shiki kaihou (Our mode of care):  A Case Study of a Zainichi Korean Organisation for Social Welfare

In a current social atmosphere of laying strong emphasis on the social welfare system in Japan, the zainichi Korean(hereafter, ‘zainichi’) community started to pay more attention to the welfare of zainichi themselves as well. Centring around those in Kansai area, some zainichi groups have established facilities providing welfare services for the zainichi aged. They insist the need of the special welfare services designed for and provided by zainichi Korean, represented by the word of ‘woori-shiki kaihou( our mode of care)’.  This is a report of case study in progress on a zainichi organisation providing welfare services for the zainichi aged, disabled and children. The object of case study is a zainichi non-profit organisation (NPO) named Eruwha located in Higashi Kujō, the biggest zainichi residential area in Kyoto. Most users of the facilities and every staff of the organisation are zainichi Korean. And almost all staffs have background of ethnic education in Chosen minzoku gakkō (Korean ethnic school). This study focuses on their understandings and ideas of ethnicity expressed through their activities. Moreover, it also sees the core elements adopted by the members of the group for their boundary process.

 

  1. FEDOROWICZ, Steven C. (Kansai Gaidai University): Investigating Partial Truths: Researching HIV/AIDS in the Japanese Deaf World

These days in Japan, HIV/AIDS seems to be a taboo subject among the general public, a topic largely ignored by the media and a serious problem that the Japanese government refuses to deal with. This paper discusses the challenges of researching the HIV/AIDS situation among the Japanese deaf community. The heuristic device of “partial truths” is employed in both the ethnographic and literal sense of the term. In many countries, including the United States and Britain, the rate of HIV/AIDS for deaf people is higher than that of hearing people. Often the deaf do not have access to information and treatment in sign language. The question of whether HIV/AIDS is a problem for the Japanese deaf as it is in other societies is explored from a number of different angles. The general HIV/AIDS situation is described as it impacts deaf people and the mainstream society at large. Attempts at HIV/AIDS education in the areas of general information and prevention in Japan are investigated, including how hearing and deaf school children learn about HIV/AIDS.  Finally, data is presented on the relationship between deaf people and HIV/AIDS.

 

  1. NORTON, Laura H. (University of Washington): Neutering the Transgendered: Human Rights and Japan’s Law No. 111

In July 2003, Japan passed a law permitting transgendered persons to change their legal gender identity in accord with evolving international concepts of gender-based human rights.  Ironically, the law impinges on the bodily integrity and reproductive freedom of transgendered people by its insistence that legal gender cannot be amended in the absence of sexual reassignment surgery (“SRS”), a procedure which sterilizes the patient.  The situation for transgendered people in Japan is exacerbated by a mandatory national registry system (“koseki”) long-implicated as a tool of discrimination in a variety of contexts.  This article reviews the failure of equal protection claims by transgendered plaintiffs in Japanese courts and critiques both sex and gender classifications in the law and their relationship to concepts of natural law.  Remedies for transgender discrimination include the abolition of gender categories in the law and, specific to Japan, tighter administrative control over legal identification documents.

 

Panel D—Studies of Modernity, Democracy and Internationalization

  1. RONALD, Richard (Kobe University): Home Ownership, Modernity and the State: Post War Hegemony and Housing Culture

We consider the development of Japan as a mass homeowner society and modern housing ‘culture’ in the post war period by addressing the modernization of Japanese society and the manipulation of the housing system by the state in order to re-establish and re-galvanize Japan as an economically dynamic society where rights and obligations are defined in terms of family home ownership. This involves a consideration of the relationship between changing identities and socio-cultural and ideological patterns in post war Japan. The role of the state and other institutions, including employers and families has been significant in increasing home ownership rates and in re-orientating or re-moralizing households and individuals as housing consumers. The paper will address issues of social stability and state authority, as well as the physical transformation of homes and the urban environment. We also reflect upon more recent changes in the housing system which involve deregulation and marketisation and which have considerable implications for households and the ‘Japanese dream’ of home-ownership.

 

  1. OSHIMA, Kazunori: The Democratic Status of a Self-governing Association

The purpose of my presentation is to report my finding about the democratic status in Japan. I have looked into the present practice of a self-governing association. The fieldwork was carried out by interviewing people in a community in Kyoto Prefecture. The neighborhood consists of 79 families of old-timers, 23%, 102 families at danchi, housing development, 30%, 67 mansion families, 19%, and 97 mansion bachelor residents, 28%. The newcomers, danchi and mansion dwellers, account for 77% of the whole living units in the community. They have not been admitted into the association, however, despite the fact that it is a territorial association which should act under the “democratic operation” as defined in Article 2 of 260 of Local Autonomy Law, 1947; and that the new residents pay the same amount of annual cooperative fees as the old-timers do. The conclusion of this investigation is that democracy in Japan as it is today is not in agreement with the legal requirement and far from Article 1 of the imperial Charter Oath, 1868, Article 2 of 260 of Local Autonomy Law, and Article 14 of the Constitution of Japan, 1946.

 

  1. VINKEN, Henk (Komazawa University) Changing life courses of young generations across cultures

In advanced societies life courses have de-standardized. The timing and order of life course transitions are changing and life course transitions are increasing in age variance. There is a societal demand but also a desire among publics of advanced societies, this article argues, to take the life course in their own hands. Especially for young generations it is furthermore noted that their life courses are subject to a process of reflexive biographization. Imagining one’s individual path through life, before anything else, becomes the central theme on which young generations focus, as actual participation in society and learning from the experience was the central focus for older generations. Change and challenge are the keywords in the focus of the young ‘Idols’ generation as is the choice for a dynamic life course model. Basic life goals are being interpreted beyond traditional linear dichotomies, such as the dichotomy of material versus immaterial growth. Not growth, but variation or change and challenge are the new yardsticks. This article concludes that it worth considering non-Western or, more precisely, Asian perspectives in the predominantly Western life course discussion. It attempts to shed some first light on this issue. In this sense this article aims to explore elements of a future agenda for investigating changing life courses in both Western and non-Western advanced societies.

 

  1. MONI, Monir Hossain (University of Dhaka): Higher Education in Japan: Toward Internationalization

During a long time, the institutions of higher learning throughout Japan have been coping with challenges arising from both domestic and international contexts. Notwithstanding, one of the most pressing and pivotal concerns for the Japanese education system is the “internationalization of higher education.”  In the 1990s, Japan experienced a new round of significant shifts in its higher education environment. The employment and industrial structures as well as other systems directly related to university education are right now going through major adaptations. Although the number of 18-year olds, the age for entering higher education programs, has been shrinking in recent years, such a transition has not been taken pessimistically. The universities rather respond to changes positively, even design and lead it. Today, the Japanese government redoubles its efforts to boost the number of overseas students in Japan, strives to improve the quality of its programs, and to better meet students’ needs. Observing social and industrial trends over the past decade, it is evident that the potential of universities to help the nation build a more intellectual society for the new century through research and personnel training is greater than ever.   The key purposes of the paper are: First, to examine the crucial challenges for internationalization of Japanese higher education, drawing a comparative perspective; Second, to explore how the recent reform initiatives undertaken by the Government of Japan help facilitate the diversification and internationalization of higher education system; and Third, to designate the future prospects for ongoing internationalization of Japanese higher education.

Sunday  (11/6)               

Panel E— War, Responsibility and Memory

  1. NICKUM, Jim (Tokyo Jogakkan College): Flickering Memory: Honmoku Miyabara as a Peripheral Palimpsest

I explore Honmoku as a suburban palimpsest, with focus on the Miyabara-Juniten area. Honmoku is administratively a part of Yokohama’s Naka Ward but in part because of its isolated geographical conditions has always been a sort of suburban periphery of the city, just off of the map.  As such it has undergone a number of dramatic erasures and reconstructions, some of them shared with the core (colonial namings [hence the title], the saturation bombing in spring 1945, shoreline reclamation, relocation of sacred sites) and others more specific to its near-peripheral status (recreational area, chabuya, US military housing, and bubble-era modernist machizukuri).  Honmoku provides both a window into Japan’s modern history and a possible base for comparison with cultural landscape studies and the politics of memory elsewhere.

 

  1. BEN-ARI, Eyal (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Coincident Events, Concurrent Spaces of Memory: The Annual Memorial Rites at Yasukuni Shrine

In this paper I analyze the social and organizational implications of the annual memorial rites held in the Yasukuni Shrine (Tokyo). Held on the 15th of August, the rites are aimed at placating the souls of all Japanese who have died in the country’s various wars. Given the contested memories of the Second World War, however, the shrine’s activities are peculiarly problematic. They have been the subject of continuous contention centered mainly around the political recognition awarded them by incumbent ministers and Prime Ministers. Through an analysis of the “grammar” of this event I explore the activities of the various publics that attend it (including politicians, veterans’ associations, prefectural support groups, representatives of the Japanese media, and the general public). I demonstrate this event is actually comprised of a host of activities that take place concurrently: formal religious rites, political visits, reunions, a forum for discussion, a media event and a tourist attraction. Throughout, I link my analysis to major issues that are being contested in contemporary Japan.

 

  1. THORSTEN, Marie (Doshisha University): Multitude, Interrupted: The 2004 Japanese Hostage Crisis

‘Multitude’ for Hardt and Negri represents an ‘anthropology of singularity and commonality,’ an alternative, mobile social formation having political potential contained in neither identity nor difference. Japan’s April 2004 hostage crisis demonstrates that the timely idea of ‘multitude’ offers little insight into the discursive battles to tame and claim ideas as ‘with us’ or ‘against us’ in conditions of war. Moreover, the ordeal of five hostages safely released from Iraq who were shamed on their homecoming was not entirely about Japan as a nation-state, having a unique culturally programmed moral compass. The incident also raised concerns about Japan’s responsibility as a loyal, unflinching ally to America.  Reading public discourse surrounding the 2004 hostage crisis, this paper will argue that the Japanese government’s cry for ‘self-responsibility’ conformed to the Bush administration’s own dictum that ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’ Both statements pit supporters of the American-led invasion and occupation against terrorists, detractors and all others; they inhibit and oppress alternative social formations such as the ‘multitude.’

 

Panel F—Identities Constructed and Imagined in Popular Culture

  1. KEET, Philomena (School of Oriental and African Studies): Living in a Material World: Spectacular Youth Fashion in Tokyo and the Changing Fabric of Japanese Society

The subjects of this research project are the youths who parade spectacular assemblages of clothes around the streets of Tokyo.  Through an ethnographic analysis of their dress, building on Butler’s ‘performance theory’ and the anthropology of consumption, I hope to learn about the interplay between the identities of these individuals and the visual discourse that they create via their clothes. To what extent does such non-conformist dress express a similarly rebellious identity of the wearer? This project will tease out the complexity of the relationship between individual and institution: ethnography of dress so far in Japan has tended to focus on its institutional aspects i.e. uniform. I will try to balance this by analysing the visual discourse of these fashions, which represent individuation, expressivity, creativity and a desire to stand out. There are however institutional influences on even these seemingly atomised individuals in the form of the media, shops and brands. Encompassing these, one aim of the research is to produce an ethnography of the lives (sartorial and social) of the subjects, using photography and film as well as more conventional  techniques, thus contributing to the anthropology of consumption in Japan.  It also addresses a wider anthropological question of to what degree the clothes we wear construct, as well as reflect, our identities.  Any implications that the youths who wear these egregious clothes have for ‘changing’ Japanese society, and the trans-national nature of these fashions, such that they both incorporate and inspire elements of the global fashion industry, will also be considered.

 

  1. WHITE, Bruce (Doshisha University) Japanese Reggae: Fashion Statement, Ideological container, or Anthropological Adventure?

This presentation focuses on ongoing research I am conducting into the world of Japanese reggae.  More of a work in progress report than a full-fledged academic paper, I am concerned with understanding how various interpretations of this world give rise to very particular identities and ideological concerns.  Unpacking the public image of reggae from the reality of its fan base, promoters and artists, I attempt to use several pieces of ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate how this community is highly organized around a central principle of free-expression and the importance of human, and particularly family, relationships.  It is also a world ranked by generation—those “closest” to understanding (and perhaps even living through) the Marley years—are deemed “founders”.  Conversely, teenagers discovering the world for the first time, and thought to be hung up on fashion and the “coolness” that reggae represents, are seen to be furthest away from the centre.  The values expounded by the “middle-ground” fan are family values—there is a high emphasis placed on raising happy children.  By contrast, the artists themselves are more akin to anthropological adventurers than bringers of ideology.  For many, it seems, a 2-year stint in Jamaica is an essential rite of passage, and entails mastering patois and integration into local community life.  I conclude by suggesting that this may be a highly diverse world, populated by a highly mobile, and yet quirkily grounded fan base, fuelled by artists who, on many levels can themselves be seen to be anthropologists brokering cross-cultural knowledge and feeding the social contexts for an attainable cultural pluralism.

 

  1. MCARVER, Susan (University of California, Santa Barbara): Laughter and Foreigners on Japanese TV: Constructing Foreign Identities

Japanese variety shows conjure up images of irreverent comedians, panels of celebrity personalities, and raucous scenarios. In addition, and central to my study, they also frequently portray foreigners, whether in person or featured as objects of study (as when panels remark on foreign customs or foods). Foreigners who appear on these variety shows (sometimes only once; others, much more rarely, make a career out of it) are known as gaijin tarento, a genre whose very existence demonstrates the demand for foreign guests on Japanese TV.  Appearances by gaijin tarento often highlight the humor that ensues as a result of cultural and other differences between Japanese and foreigners. These televised portraits of difference often jibe with popular cultural nationalisms that depict Japanese as unique—e.g., racially, linguistically, psychologically—from non-Japanese and at the same time emphasize Japan’s internationalism by featuring these foreigners in the first place. My research will examine these humorous TV representations of foreigners within an interpretive theoretical framework of media studies by considering the social, political, and economic conditions of mass-mediated circulation – from production to (especially) audience reception — and by semiotically decoding the representations of nation and race that lend popular appeal to this genre. I will be examining the commodification of foreigners and how producers, consumers, and guests on Japanese variety shows construct, challenge, appropriate, and negotiate meanings of ‘foreigner’ and ‘Japanese’ in the interrelated processes of media production and reception.

  1. AMES, Christopher (University of Michigan): Okinawa’s American Village: reversing the gaze

Behind the barbed-wire topped fences enclosing 20% of Okinawa Island, are “little Americas” that supply U.S. military personnel with American food, goods and entertainment amid sprawling lawns and parking lots.  After WWII, American need for “elbow room” forced Chatan Town residents to carve out cramped dwellings on steep hills.  Today, most of Chatan Town’s land remains base land and is off-limits to locals.  However, more and more land is being returned and town planners have supplemented returned base land with coastal landfill to create a “town resort” called American Village, conceived by the local mayor as a themepark wherein “only the good things about America” are incorporated. Off-duty U.S. military personnel flock to the area and serve as witting or unwitting extras on this Okinawan stage.  American Village may be read as a symbolic reversal of postwar power asymmetries between the U.S. military and Okinawans.  As such, it plays on America’s ambivalent image and postcolonial desire to mollify colonial contradictions.  Denied access to the little Americas on the bases, Okinawans have created their own little America, complete with American-style food, goods, entertainment and massive parking lots.

 

Panel G— Localities Revitalized and Resisted

  1. KIYAMA, Lori (Tokyo Institute of Technology): Shrine Noh and Resistance to the Iemoto System in Central Kyushu

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, Konparu lineage noh performers in central Kyushu have resisted the iemoto system.  In Kumamoto and southern Fukuoka prefectures, noh has been tied to the annual cycle of shrine worship and agricultural production.  Dances and plays are presented outdoors within shrine precincts, facing the deities.  Audiences do not pay.  In some cases, there is no space for them or the noh rituals occur in the middle of the night.  Many actors take pride in not being co-opted into the iemoto system, which they see as a corrupt money-making scheme that in no way reflects actual ability.  Although they are looked down upon as “unschooled amateurs” by those who subscribe to the iemoto system, they see themselves as untainted by its arrogant, individualistic commercialism. Instead of affiliation with the prestige of the iemoto, rural performers maintain authority by cultivating bonds with ancient shrine families and the descendants of regional daimyo who are still socially prominent.  While these strategies proved successful for decades, shrine noh troupes have been on their way to extinction due to aging, discrimination against female performers, and the flight of local musicians and waki to more urban areas. Waki and musicians now offer their services for sums on which they can live, whereas shite actors, choruses, stagehands, and backstage helpers function as unpaid volunteers.  In this paper, I will focus on Konparu Shoyukai, of
Kumamoto City and environs, with mention of different strategies taken at Homan Jinja in Omuta, Fukuoka.

 

  1. MOCK, John (Akita International University): Of Beasts, Bears and Barbarians: Depopulation of Humans and Repopulation of Bears in Central Akita

Ani-machi (now part of Kita Akita City) is a broad expanse of the central mountains of Akita.  In 1920, the date of the first national census, Ani was the 4th most populous area of Akita.  Since postwar population peak, caused by repatriation from the defunct empire, the population of Ani has steadily declined.  With the decline in population has come a concomitant increase in the average age so now almost a third of the total population is more than 65 years old.  The postwar economy changed as well, from copper mining to a mixture of forestry with beef and rice agriculture to mainly forestry with rice and vegetable agriculture to the current decline in all primary industries.  In the context of several issues related to the effects of depopulation, the aging of the remaining population, and economic changes, this paper examines the changes in land use with the changing technology of agriculture and the overall decline in primary industries, forestry and agriculture.  In the past, relatively dense, if small, hamlets utilized extensive areas beyond actual residence and fields for wood, fertilizer and food resources.  Now, the few remaining residences and limited fields have no “buffer zone” to separate humans from bears.  Further, food resources, such as persimmons, are no longer fully utilized providing a clear temptation for bears, particularly in “bad years” such as the immediate past few years.

 

  1. DOSHITA, Megumi (Keio University): Local Revitalisation and Rural/Green Tourism: A Case Study of Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture

Since the 1950s when the rapid economic development started in Japan, rural societies have faced several difficulties like depopulation and the abandonment of cultivated lands. To tackle these difficulties, the national government implemented several policies and followed by these many rural societies accomplished the modernisation of the primary industry. Then, since the middle of the 1990s, various rural societies have promoted rural/green tourism as a new approach to local revitalisation, emphasising on the environmental value of rural settings. Miyama town, Kyoto prefecture, is one of the remotest areas in Japan and now famous for having succeeded in local revitalisation and rural/green tourism.　According to the outcome of my anthropological fieldwork in Miyama, most people of non Miyama origin, varying from immigrants to tourists, appreciate the aesthetic value of this countryside considering it as well-protected natural settings. However, the people of Miyama origin have mainly given priority to protect their own society in the context of local revitalisation. In addition, the meaning of the society in their thought includes all elements of Miyama, both natural and cultural settings as well as human beings. Accordingly, there is a clear gap between the people of Miyama origin and others in the context of rural/green tourism practice. In this paper I will evaluate this Miyama’s case study in order to indicate in what way and by/for whom local revitalisation and rural /green tourism should be carried out.

 

  1. SPRAGUE, David S. (National Inst. for Agro-Env. Sciences): This land is your land: reintroducing Japanese landscape to contemporary Japan with the Jinsoku Sokuzu

Visions of past landscapes often serve as a baseline to judge whether quality of life is improving or deteriorating in the land where we live. The traditional rural landscape of Japan can be a baseline for judging the quality of Japan under modernization, but many residents of Japan have only a vague idea of what the rural landscape looked like in the places they live today. The Rapid Survey Maps, or Jinsoku Sokuzu, define a temporal baseline to study land use change after the early Meiji Era. The oldest set of Japanese topographic maps surveyed by modern methods, these maps depict land use in the Kanto Plain in the early 1880’s, just before railways, motorways, urbanization and international trade altered Edo Era land uses, especially many rural landscape features, such as the grassland commons and woodlands, as well as fields and rice paddies. Many land uses of the 1880’s were lost already by the time of subsequent maps, and lost today from the living memory of present day residents. Rural Kanto in the 1880’s supplied food and natural resources, both locally and to Tokyo. Was Kanto degraded by intensive use, or was it a bountiful and biodiverse landscape as envisioned by the proponents of the satoyama? By incorporating them in a GIS database, the maps reintroduce the land that once was to those of us who live in the very same locations today, and give us an opportunity to confront our visions of progress.

 

Panel H—Culture and the Study of Organizations

Session Abstract:
From the 1960’s through the 80’s Japan rapidly rose economically since the devastation of most of Japan’s viable industries during World War II, and this was a period when the industrialists and academics as well as the popular press in the West had attempted to understand how and why so much could have been accomplished in such a relatively short period of time.  Now, there appears to be a less urgent necessity in the West to understand the Japanese organizational activities as the Japanese economy started sliding into a long-term recession after the bubble economy during the mid 1990’s.  The real pictures of daily activities in the Japanese organizations, however, still remain unclear to many people.  At the core of this western imagination toward Japan’s economic activities lies a need to explain sources for competitiveness of the Japanese organizations – competitiveness deriving from organizational systems and practices that are seemingly quite “different” from those in the West.  In this sense, the image of Japanese companies shared among the Euro-American scholars mirrored their own organizational systems and practices in the West.   Based on case studies on Japanese organizations, the session aims at eliciting similarities and differences – particularly “differences” in the images and interpretations of the organizational systems and practices of the Japanese companies between the Japanese and western researchers.  The session will further explore possibilities for explaining these differences by examining the roles that culture plays in forming organizational systems and practices and by considering issues on the insider/outsider of a culture.

 

  1. SUMI, Atsushi (Japan Inst. for Labour Policy and Training): Conceptual and Methodological Gaps in the Study of Organizations between Japanese and Euro-American Scholars

Studies on cultures in organizations can be mainly found in the fields of labor-sociology, cultural anthropology, and the management science.  Most of these studies are also found in the English-language literature.  In the field of labor studies of Japan, however, there do not exist many studies that focus on the analysis of cultures in organizations.  One of the most salient characteristics of the Japanese labor studies is its emphasis on the positivistic presentation of the micro data on the rules and institutionalized practices in organizations.  In this methodological approach, research problems on culture(s) in organizations are not directly considered as issues with a primary importance. In the field of management science, namely, human resources management (HRM), we can also observe similar “differences” in the approaches to organizational practices. When we open textbooks on HRM, textbooks in the United States typically focus on leadership, communication, and motivation by emphasizing how effective an individual manager can be.  The Japanese textbooks, on the other hand, typically classify the contents into Job Classification and Grade System, Recruitment, Staffing, Training and Education, Performance Appraisals, Promotions, Pay Systems, Corporate Welfare System and Retirement, and Labor-Management Relations, and so on.  Where do these differences come from?   By taking examples from one international collaborative research project on the auto industries, the paper will demonstrate the gaps in the approaches toward organizations between the Euro-American and the Japanese scholars, and will examine how different conceptions of “organizations” are reflected in the wide discrepancies in the research methodological frameworks.

 

  1. NAKAHATA, Mitsuhiro (Meiji University): An Anthropology of Administration Study of Credit Control at the Time of a Customer Bankruptcy

In this presentation I will examine the process of ‘credit (trust)’ and ‘credit control’ of two companies in Japan.  The purpose of this study is to investigate how a company and its employee scrutinize the trust set up to a customer.  Despite the remarkable development of the Information Providers (Credit Agencies), ‘verbal communications’ (upon sales visit) are more emphasized most of the times in scrutinizing the trust at negotiation sites.  The study also examines behaviors and values of the people who are engaged in the processes of “losing credit,” or, on the contrary, “creating credit” between companies.  I will describe a sense of a disturbance and fret, and the process of collecting information by a creditor ―“Ｄcorporation” ― who is under crisis having an debtor ―“Ｉcorporation”― on the verge of bankruptcy.  By showing the processes whereby “I corporation” and “J corporation” (the bankruptcy of I corporation is due to the bankruptcy of J corporation) became bankrupt and thus their credits being lost, I will vividly describe the situation of D corporation at a point of crisis.  The dynamism of a company on the verge of crisis including employees’ behavioral patterns and their value system cannot be vividly drawn from a viewpoint of the management science.  The strength of participant observation in cultural anthropology lies in ethnography, where an anthropologist can meticulously describe manners in which a company on the verge of crisis gropes for the coping-measures or countermeasures to cope with the crisis situation.

 

  1. YAMAKI, Keiko (Graduate University for Advanced Studies): Anthropology of Business Manners in Japanese Companies: A Case Study of a “J Company”

In many Japanese companies, “business manners trainings” are often held during the induction-training course.  This training is a rites of passage for new employees and even an initiation to be a “shakaijin” for those people who have just finished the school education.Business manners training consist of practical exercise like roll-plays and group workshop.  This training is often considered as an occasion to learn how to talk perfect “keigo” or how to exchange name cards and so on.  However, this real aim is to reform the new employee’s consciousness and behavior.  In the manuals, you will find the explanation on “Why do people work in the companies?” 　“What is the social role of the company?” and the theories of teamwork, communication, customer-oriented mind, etc. These are absolutely main issues of the business administration. Another headwaters of Japanese business manners is the traditional “samurai manner.”  For example, using the concepts of “vertical relationship” or “inside and outside of the company” is a basic reason for the community member to behave well and speak proper “keigo”.In fact, business manners training is teaching how to be a good performer in the industrial society.  This process is sometimes explained in other words “putting on shakaisei as a shakaijin”.  The traditional Japanese communication skill and manners are adopted into a method of the companies to produce efficient and productive members and teams.  This may contribute to the Japanese companies’ activities.

 

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