AJJ 9th Annual Conference ABSTRACTS
Meiji Gakuin University
October 28-29, 2006
Abstracts
Panel 1: Gaining Access and Building Relationships in the Field
Saturday October 28, 1pm to 4pm
Chair: Javier Tablero Vallas, University of Granada
Lisa Kuly: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Japan: Towards a New Understanding of the World of the Foetus and Systems of Ritual Purity
In this presentation, I introduce some of the challenges I encounter investigating rituals of childbirth in Japan. First, I discuss how I “edge…into the field” (Yano 2003), drawing on my experiences as a pregnant woman attending appointments at a maternity clinic, participating in maternity yoga classes and workshops, reading manuals and magazines on pregnancy and childbirth, and cultivating strategies for acquiring that coveted seat on the train. I explain how this preliminary phase of research is a process of conceptualizing the pregnant body and an important component of my research design; this is the groundwork that will help me understand the processes occurring at my fieldwork sites,
Nakayama-dera and Obitoke-dera, temples in the Kansai region that compete for recognition in the area of rituals of safe childbirth.
Then, I present the theoretical issues emerging from my fieldwork experience, with a focus on the parturition hut, a space where important themes in Japanese religions are activated, such as formulations of the world of the foetus and ritual purity systems surrounding the blood of childbirth. My goal is to re-examine these issues using the parturition hut as lens.
Akiko Oda: Gaining access for interviewing older Japanese couples
Increased public concern over recent media investigations and issues associated with researcher ethics has led to a tightening of access to potential interview respondents on matters associated with Japanese family relationships and older people. My presentation will address difficulties I encountered as a non-Japan based research student conducting fieldwork in Hakone area of Kanagawa prefecture between Nov. 2004 and Aug. 2005. The talk will cover several key issues, which include the use of both formal and informal channels for gaining access to potential interviewees, and other topics. I will also talk on the importance of observing research etiquette and the respect for Japanese customs.
Formal and informal channels covers approaches made to city council officials, senior academics, and also a personal network of friends, acquaintances and intermediaries. My presentation will also address strategies employed to maximise the verbal response from interviewees, specifically student interviewer identification and use of the amae strategy. I will also cover the student age effect, gender and researcher characteristics, from my study of the textbook ‘Fieldwork in Japan’ edited by Bestor et al. in 2003.
Philomena Keet: Becoming Fashionable: Social Access and Sartorial Strategies
In this paper I will examine my positionality throughout my fieldwork on FRUiTS and Tune street fashion magazines, particularly in relation to the clothes I have been wearing. Being a research project concerned with fashion it was always clear that I would have to consider my own dress very carefully. The issue has inevitably turned out to be more complex than I imagined while still in England, not least due to the strong
discourse amongst my informants of only certain people to be able to carry their ‘look’ off, let alone the impossibility of being able to pin down the defining characteristics of that look. Do I have the sufficient aura, creativity and finances required? Up until recently I thought it foolhardy to even attempt to pull it off, but realise that it is impeding my access to the social network involved. I have thus embarked on an experiment in
which I attempt to become ‘fashionable’.
My fieldwork with these two street magazines has been complemented by research
with another group of spectacular dressers (who wear the brand Takuya Angel), with whom I have had relatively little problem sartorially blending in. I will explore how the differences in how I feel my own clothes are being treated may reflect the differing attitudes of the two groups towards fashion and hope to share some of the problems I have encountered in trying to strike a balance between being a researcher and one of the ‘inner-circle’.
Erick Laurent: Japanese Specificities Regarding ‘Sexual Participation’ While Doing Fieldwork in Sexual Anthropology
Since the beginning of the 1990s, an increasing corpus of articles in anthropology deals with the sexual dimension of fieldwork, centered on the anthropologists themselves. These suggest we should deal with and write about sex drives, sexual needs and relationships, not only of the informants, but also regarding the fieldworkers themselves. The dogma of the asexual anthropologist is still alive though, in the same way as the
dogma of the apolitical or politicaly correct anthropologist is. Would the sexuality of the anthropologist in the field be one of the last taboos?
The question I wish to tackle here is born from a surprise. Why did I become a sexual target while doing fieldwork in sexual anthropology (in the gay milieus) in Japan ? This had never been the case in other cultural areas where I conducted the same type of
research, nor in Japan when I studied other subjects? I conducted fieldwork in a dozen medium-sized towns through informal encounters in
gay-marked places (bars, parks, etc.), as well as formal interviews, focusing on identities, the sense of the community, and the socialization of gay men.
A typology of the answers to the solicitation for interviews has been drawn, including the researcher’s reactions, the heuristic and epistemological implications in a Japanese gay cultural context. This allows for an analysis of the several dimensions as well as the Japanese particularities of “sexual participation” in a fieldwork situation. In conclusion, “sexual participation” can be viewed as heuristically useful (giving access to otherwise inaccessible data) or even necessary (allowing to find informants) in the situation of a fieldwork research about homosexuality in Japan. The sexual components are indeed imbedded in the very center of the methodology itself, which wanders in the
sexualized territories of the search for sexual partners. A homosexual researcher, through his/her mere presence and status, wish it or not, is placed by the informants into a typology of sexual desires, very meaningful, behaviorally speaking. And (s)he is thus sexualized from the start. The relative lack of taboos and moral or religious precepts regarding sex and the body in Japan also facilitates the occurrence of “sexual
participation” in such a context.
Ekaterina Korobtseva: Becoming a Lone Mother in Japan: Immediate Family Members’ Reactions
Contemporary Japan is famous for the uncommonness of lone mothers. This as well as the recent surge in their numbers has become a subject of many studies in both Japan and the West. So far however, it has virtually escaped the researchers’ attention that while similarly to the western countries the numbers of widows fell and the numbers of divorcees grew in Japan, the ratio of households headed by lone unwed mothers has remained very low. This rarity of unwed mothers is especially striking when compared to the rapidly growing divorce rate. One would expect both divorced and unwed mothers to be under similar economic, social and cultural pressures. Indeed in most western
industrialized countries their numbers are comparable. In Japan however divorced mothers are much more numerous and their numbers continue to grow at a much higher speed.
In order to tackle this puzzle I carried out 67 interviews with lone unwed mothers and 15 interviews with women who divorced their husbands shortly after having a child from them in 2004 and 2005.
In this paper I am going to describe briefly the methods used to generate a large and diverse sample of interviewees willing to discuss sensitive and private issues with me. I will then explain the inductive hypotheses generation method used in the analysis of the interview data. I will finally illustrate this “fieldwork to theory” analysis process by discussing one proposed solution to the puzzle mentioned above namely the striking difference in the family members’ reactions to the women’s decisions to become lone divorced or lone unwed mothers.
Panel 2: Cross-Cultural Encounters
Saturday October 28, 1 to 2:45pm
Chair: Jerry Eades, Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University
Robert Moorehead: Race, Class, and Culture in Immigrant Parent Interventions into a Japanese School: Letting Them Know We’re Not Going to Take It
This case study explores relations between Japanese elementary school teachers and immigrant parents from Peru. In particular, this study analyzes parental interventions into their children’s education as moments in which parents contest their subordinate status as immigrants. Preliminary findings reveal that some Peruvian parents are concerned about discrimination, especially when problems arise with their children’s academic performance. This concern leads them to openly criticize the school when there are academic problems. In contrast, Japanese teachers tend to prefer (and expect) less direct, and more deferential and trusting parental roles. Japanese teachers tend to dismiss the
Peruvian parents’ open criticisms as signs that the parents have not acculturated to Japanese social norms, rather than as expressions of parental concern. Through participant observation and intensive interviews, this ongoing research focuses on the roles that race, class, and culture play in immigrant parent-native teacher relations. The site of this research is a public elementary school in central Japan that has more than 40 non-native students, most of whom are children of immigrants from Peru.
Jane H. Yamashiro: From Saburos and Juros to Jake Shimabukuro: The Changing Image of Hawai’i’s Japanese Americans in Japan
The Hawai‘i boom in Japan over the last decade refers to the increased popularity of hula and ukulele classes, Hawaiian-themed restaurants, and the general recognition and familiarity of Hawai‘i and Hawaiiana among people in Japanese society. This trend reflects both a shift in Japanese attitudes about lifestyle – placing greater priority on leisure time – and the increase in Japanese tourism to Hawai‘i. But 100 years ago Hawai‘i was a place where poor emigrants migrated, not middle and upper class tourists. This paper explores how Japan’s economic development and Hawai‘i’s popularity as a tourist destination have affected the image of Hawai‘i in Japan, and, subsequently, how this
shapes the ways that Japanese Americans from Hawai‘i are regarded and treated in Japan.
Chan Yan Chuen: Ethnography in a Japanese Company in Hong Kong
Identity crisis does not only arise in research studies that are conducting in Japan. I underwent a process of researching of myself in studying the communication pattern in an overseas subsidiary of one of the big five Japanese trading company. The subsidiary retains many Japanese practices. Its headquarters sent Japanese expatriates to its Hong Kong office. All of the expatriates are at managerial grade. Despite the large number of Japanese managers, local employees are still count for majority number. My research study aimed at finding out the factors that are
affecting the communication among heterogeneous groups in the company. As a result, I have to study and analyze both ethnic groups’ (the Chinese and Japanese) thought and behavior.
For a Chinese who majored in Japanese studies at university and have worked for Japanese companies for years, I must have understood the Japanese practice quite well. However, when facing my own ethnic group, I started to question why some Japanese practice were in force instead of explaining to the Chinese on the way Japanese do. Similarly, I sometimes do not understand why Chinese people have this and that thinking, the feeling is complex and I had a sense of identity crisis in the thinking process. I would like to share my experience of rediscovery self and others in a fieldwork study that was conducted years ago.
To study in a foreign country is difficult, yet studying one’s peers can be more difficult. Still, the most difficult field may be a mixture of both because one may go through an identity crisis and also encounter different level of culture shock, what’s more horrible is to struggle with the question of what is ‘objectivity.’
Panel 3: The future is here: New Technology in Social Situations
Saturday October 28, 2:50 to 4pm
Chair: Michael Shackleton, Osaka Gakuin University
Minerva Terrades: Mobile Phone Mediated Interaction. ICT’s, Gender and Affectivity
This paper presents an ethnographic investigation centred on the exploration of the processes of mobile phone interaction among Tokyoite teenagers through the anthropological analysis of an instrument and media of social crafting and transformation: the mobile phone. This
investigation analyses the roles of gender and affectivity in the mobile phone interaction and sustains that the mobile phone is a techno affective instrument that subjects Tokyoite teenagers; that is to say, makes them techno subject and constitutes them as subjects. The present paper proposes a reflection to critically rethink and deconstruct the ethnographical methodology in order to affront not only the inner complexities that implies an ethnography in the Japanese fieldwork, but also the new phenomena, such as the mobile media and the Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT’s), that make us reconsider the ethnographical research.
Hirofumi Katsuno: Robot Dreams: the Formation of Self and Identity in Japanese Techno-culture
This presentation focuses on the processes and meanings by which the robot increasingly becomes the spotlight of intense politico-economic, socio-cultural, and emotional investment in contemporary Japan. Taking the robot as a confluence of cutting-edge technology and fantasy, I will examine how Japan’s fascination with robots is embedded in an uncritical celebration of and national desire for new technology shaped within the process of modernity and post-modernity. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork from January 2006 to the present in a robot-builder’s community, I will focus specifically on the humanoid-robot competition Robo-One as a paradigm of Japanese robot culture, analyzing how this technological spectacle represents a dialectic conjunction of imaginative and material desires, dreams and commerce, and collective consciousness and political economic necessity.
I will also analyze human/robot interaction as a lived experience of male robot builders. Given the male-dominated character of the contest, I will examine how the creation of and interaction with robots constitutes a continuous re-imagining of gendered selves, identities, social relationships, and myths in this supremely high-tech nation. The successful creation of an artificial human has long been a desire of humankind, and I will explore how the modern vision of anthropomorphism is intimately associated with the symbols, practices, and institutions of masculinity, particularly in the Japanese sociocultural context. A study of robot culture in Japan illustrates how human desires and cultural imagination in this society express themselves in technological life.
Panel 4: Settings and Actors
Saturday October 28, 4:30 to 6pm
Chair: Bill Bradley, Ryukoku University
John Mock: Concrete vs. Abstract “Fields”
My current research site in mountain towns in Akita Prefecture has clear boundaries, physical (mountains, forests) and political (township and “city” boundaries). The “field”, as in “fieldwork” in this sense has a very concrete and relatively simply reality. However, another research project, on the sociology of micro-gardens in Japanese cities, has no such boundaries. This paper is an attempt to look, theoretically and methodologically, at the differences it makes in how concrete, or fluid, the “field” is in a fieldwork situation. Theoretically, does it make any difference if one is looking a specific, local “field”, a series of interconnected “points” that constitute a “field” or some other construct? Clearly
it makes a major difference in terms of methodology. Some of the implications of both these areas are explored.
Tom Hardy: At play in the Fields of the Ward: Doing Research in an Urban Garden
Gardens play a major role in the image of Japanese culture (both among Japanese and non-Japanese) and in the creation and maintenance of social space in Japan. In my neighborhood in Tokyo a brand new garden was recently constructed and opened. In this paper I examine some of the practices and implications of doing fieldwork in this garden and the construction of place as neighbors interact in a new and untested space.
What are the forms and, more importantly, what are the various sociological and cultural functions they create and enact? What are the range of participants and their actions? Why do individuals partake of the garden space? What is the possible impact of the garden on the larger urban milieu? And, crucially, how does the fieldworker participate in the process?
Kazunori Oshima: Three Viewpoints of Zaisanku
The purpose of my paper is to find the degree of gap which exists between laws and realities in a self-governing association in Kyoto Prefecture. This presentation will focus on the three viewpoints on zaisanku: those of old-timers, newcomers, and administration. Zaisanku is a corporate special local public body (which is a part of a municipality) with estate or public institutions which zaisanku can administer and dispose of.
Panel 5: Tales of the Field
Saturday October 28, 4:30 to 6pm
Chair: Mary Reisel, Rikkyo University and Temple University
A round table in which tales of fieldwork will be told by Tom Gill (Meiji Gakuin University) about life in Yokohama’s day-laboring community, Rey Ventura (freelance writer) about his encounters with fellow Filipino migrants to Japan, and by M.G. Sheftall (Shizuoka University) about unlikely friendships with WW2 kamikaze corps veterans. Brief tales from the floor are welcome.
* There are no abstracts for this panel. But those considering attending may like to read Tom Gill’s tale, The Master of the Hamako, available at the AJJ website. It will be referred to at the panel.
KEYNOTE
Keibo Oiwa, Meiji Gakuin University: Culture as Slowness: The Unbearable Sluggishness of Anthropology in a Time of Globalization
KEIBO OIWA (pen-name, Tsuji Shin’ichi 辻信一), “slow life” activist and anthropologist, author of Slow is Beautiful (2004, in Japanese), The Other Japan: Voices Beyond the Mainstream (1997) Rowing the Eternal Sea : The Story of a Minamata Fisherman (2001) http://www.yukkurido.com/oiwa.html
Oiwa sensei comments: “I will base my talk on the last chapter of my Slow Is Beautiful book. I want to stress that anthropology is anti-globalism by nature, and urge AJJ members to resist globalization and monoculturalization.
Panel 6: Losing Oneself and Finding the Other, Onstage and Backstage: Ethnographic Studies of Japanese Performance
Sunday, October 29, 10:30am to 12 noon
Chair and discussant: Jane Bachnik, International Christian University
Panel Summary
These papers explore challenging issues of conducting research in the anthropology of performance. Ethnographers who have conducted research in performance in Japan share insights in the perils and pleasures of participant-observation experiences. They also show how performance studies can provide insights to anthropological work in general. Goffman stated that all life everywhere IS performance, and a person’s first task in any culture was to learn to play a role competently. In this view, all life is performance and all anthropological research is about human or cultural performance. What, then, are the special features of performance research, which seeks to observe the normally hidden
“backstage” through eliciting player’s perspectives? How are performed individual identities further developed through public group performances? How are field notes, interviews, participant-observation, and historical records aided by theory to provide new insights?
Millie Creighton: Travels with My Garbage Can: Research in Taiko Identities In and Out of Japan
This paper focuses on diverse perspectives on a particular item of material culture–a “practice taiko drum” or “garbage can”–to discuss the author’s experiences doing research in the Anthropology of Performance and identities. Utilizing theories developed by McCoy, Lave and Wenger, and others, the author uses her garbage can to extol the value of apprenticeship-like training and embedded learning as research methods. Armed with the core anthropological concept of relativity. The author relates three stories of travels with her garbage can/drum to show how differing understandings provided insights on identities constructions. The problems and cultural contradictions involved in
the blending of “sacred” and “profane,” and the “structural dirt” involved in using a garbage can–seen as polluted–for a taiko drum–viewed as sacred–are explicated through gradual shifts as taiko players from Japan used sewer pipes in performance outside Japan that had long been used unproblematically by Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) abroad. The questioning of boundaries of sacred and polluted are discussed in reference to Burakumin (outcaste) attempts to embrace their taiko-making heritage. Finally, differing definitions of the garbage can/drum are explored in terms of how the author resists external perceptions to understand her own identity as researcher of Japan.
Jonah Salz: Pleasures and pitfalls of contemporary actor ethnography: Ethnography of the Shigeyama family of kyogen actors in Kyoto
Trying to put down on permanent paper the transient life of performance is always a slippery business. When doing ethnography in Japan, one is aided immensely by the stabilizing weight of tradition as well as historical documents of many kinds: woodblock prints, diary entries, and actor’s memoirs (geidan). But when studying contemporary acting traditions, one may find oneself caught in an impossible interpretive juggling act of filtering what you see, what you hear, and what you read. Drawing on personal experiences tracking the acting trajectories of the Shigeyama family of kyogen actors in Kyoto, I will attempt in this paper to explain how participant-observation, interviews, and critical reading of family texts must be carefully triangulated to create a threedimensional portrait of an acting family both in situ in motion.
Kyle Cleveland: Performing Blackness, ‘Keeping it Real’: Proxy Racial Identities in Japanese Youth Culture
Japanese popular culture has assimilated foreign fashion, music and aesthetics to form hybrid identities that embody indigenous subcultural elements in a uniquely Japanese style. Through their involvement in style subcultures, Japanese youth are negotiating a cultural space that is contiguous to the consumer marketplace while being socially disengaged from mainstream social and political concerns. This “Freeter generation” is disaffected with requisite roles and societal obligations, and its members are seeking alternate paths of identity. Among a diverse array of styles, Hip Hop music and fashion have become increasingly influential with Japanese youth, who find a refracted version of
themselves in the surrogate identities afforded by foreign culture and its presumed characteristics. Yet in the performance of blackness through Hip Hop, unsettling questions loom in the background. From what vantage point can participants and ethnographic researchers alike decode the interface between Japanese pop culture and the politically loaded signifiers of race associated with Hip Hop? And who decides what is
authentic, imitative and “real” in the postmodern blender of simulacra?
Panel 7: Back to the Village
Sunday, October 29, 10:30am to 12 noon
Chair: John Mock
David S. Sprague and N. Iwasaki: Land Use Change and the Usage Value of the Rural Kanto landscape
A theory of rural landscape valuation for Japan faces the paradoxical historical background that land use in Japan may have been more intense in the past than at present. The basis for such a conjecture is that Japan had obtained most natural resources domestically until quite recently. For example, much of the firewood and charcoal for Tokyo had been supplied from sources within the Kanto Plain in the late nineteenth
century. Historical maps reveal that Kanto included large wooded regions, especially of pine, not only in hilly areas but also in the relatively flat plains. While completely unnatural floristically, this landscape had at one time the ecological capacity to meet the resource needs of a large metropolis as well as local agricultural needs. Aerial photographs, satellite images, and vegetation maps show that these woodlands persisted
well into the post-war period. Furthermore, many parts of Kanto continue to supply agricultural products to Tokyo today. However, rural Kanto is disappearing now with expanding urbanization. In effect, land in Kanto is losing its rural usage value, but rarely natural or traditional enough for nature reserves or cultural preservation. Rural land may be valued only as relics or vacant lots awaiting urbanization. Ironically, the value of rural Kanto may be determined by city residents. An urban market for local food and recreation may revive some rural usage value.
John Ertl: Confronting the Decline of the Village – as Administrative Unit and as Fieldsite
As of April 1, 2005 the list of prefectures to lose its final “village” due to the current round of municipal mergers grew to thirteen. This remarkable occasion is the result of over a century of government restructuring that has reduced the 70,000 “natural villages” to fewer than 200 remaining “municipal villages”. As the birthplace of the anthropology of Japan is in the village study (with John Embree¹s seminal work and the postwar Michigan Center studies) this rapid disappearance warrants notice. This paper broadly outlines the development of village studies in the anthropology of Japan parallel to the changing structure and “modernization” of Japanese villages over the past seventy years. The village lost its preferred status as a field site for anthropologists following the series of “restudies” during the 1970s that emphasized how urbanization and industrial expansion had engulfed and destroyed the essence of the village. Despite this grim outlook, this paper attempts to reassert the privileged role of the village as a research site.
However, to study (in) a village requires more than simply finding the ideal village and observing the lifecycle of residents. The contemporary village study requires the adoption of a multi-sited approach that examines how the “natural villages” have been shaped through their long-term encounters and exchanges between neighboring villages, with their larger municipality, and by larger national and international authorities. The village should not be viewed as a microscopic example of “Japanese culture” but as a locus point in which large-scale (national or global) and long-term processes are manifested through the daily interactions and specific circumstances of individuals living their particular lives.
Lori Kiyama: Country Mouse, City Mouse
Like the rural performers of traditional Japanese arts whom I study, I have learned to negotiate an identity, or identities, loyal to the countryside yet affiliated with city professionalism. In central Kyushu, diverse kyogen, Noh, Bunraku, and Kagura performers draw a clear line between city and country, as do their fellow villagers. The distinction is far more meaningful than merely where one rents an apartment.
I am an American married to a Japanese from the hills of Aso. Having lived in Kumamoto for a number of years, I came to be identified as one of “us” who are not like those city folk. Then I moved to Tokyo. For many, this act alone was perceived as a betrayal.
In this paper, I will reflect on how rural Japanese construct a regional identity by contrasting themselves to everything urban. I will discuss how a foreign researcher is
measured according to this dichotomy, and allowed within the circle of privileged knowledge to the degree that she passes countryside identity tests. I will relate what happens when a researcher no longer inhabits the “inner” world. How can one, and should one strive to remain an insider while living outside? Finally, I will address the question of for whom we write, an issue about which rural Japanese are surprisingly
keenly aware.
Panel 8: On Being an Ethnographer: Challenges in the Field
Sunday October 29, 1pm to 5pm
Chair: Todd Holden, Tohoku University
Robert Stuart Yoder: Ethnographies Needed in Japan
The presentation is an inquiry into what is not being done in ethnographic studies of Japan. Academicians are not that different from the general public being swayed by the mass media and within their own discipline researching topics that are in vogue at any given time. In regards to Japan, mass media attention and academia has tended to look at dimensions of national culture whether it is the family, business, education or some unique cultural form of deviance. We are wanting in ethnographic studies of sub-cultures or loosely formed groups that can tell us much about the heterogeneity and diversity of lifestyles and behavior in Japan.
Actually, much of what I perceive as lacking in ethnographic studies in Japan has come to me via my students in research and social issues courses that I have taught at American and Japanese universities. These students have done ethnographic work on elevator behavior, crosswalk and traffic signal violators, narcissism (observing people who stop and pay close attention to the image of themselves that is reflected by a large window pane on a building), restaurant behavior or how people act differently (trying to get into the ethnic mood) when eating at a Chinese, Italian, French or Japanese restaurant and on and on. It appears to me that given a chance and some encouragement, college students are mainly interested in the little and often unusual things that are a part of our everyday life or sub-cultural and individual variation not national culture. We should learn from their examples.
In conclusion, the presentation turns over these issues to the audience. The main question is: What do you think is missing in ethnographic studies on Japan and why?
Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa: Ethical Guidelines for Long-term Ethnographers in Japan
Organizational oversight of ethnographic research with human subjects has been rare in Japan until recently although in the fields of medicine, biology, and clinical psychology, ethical guidelines and oversight are common In the U.S., universities and research institutes individually review nearly all faculty and student research project proposals through institutional review boards (IRBs). Straddling different national academic systems, Japan-based but non-Japanese researchers, cross-national research teams as well as Japanese researchers doing field work abroad can struggle with this gap between systems of oversight. For example, for Japan-based researchers with no IRB to confront, where does one seek guidance? Two developments suggest that the discussion of the ethics of fieldwork in Japan is a timely topic. First, recent debate over the application of IRB guidelines developed for the natural sciences to ethnographic research in U.S. anthropology raises the possibility of modifications to the U.S. system. Second, a number of academic societies as well as some universities in Japan are currently discussing the
need for more specific guidelines governing ethnographic research. The major portion of this paper examines the current status of ethical guidelines for social science research in Japanese institutions. Based on this analysis of the publications of a number of Japanese professional associations and universities, I hope to raise discussion of ethical guidelines relevant to Japan-based researchers and cross-national teams.
Roman Cybriwsky: Trying Fieldwork in Roppongi
Roppongi is well known as one of the premier nightlife districts of Tokyo, popular especially among foreigners and internationally-minded Japanese. It is also an important venue for cultural and economic exchanges between and among Japanese and foreigners from various parts of the globe, including many kinds of interactions between First World and Third World nationals. While most of the goings-on are well above board, there is also much that is illegal, corrupt and hidden. This paper is about some of the special difficulties of doing ethnographic fieldwork in such a setting as I presently experience them while working on my book about the district, likely to be titled “Roppongi Crossing,”. That is why the title of this presentation employs both of the main meanings of the word “trying.” I hope to stimulate discussion and solicit advice as I talk about such challenges as finding what is true in a place where deception is pervasive, dealing with people and situations that are repugnant, and keeping pace with a fast-paced topic.
Paul Hansen: Thinking Theory: Confessions of an Embodied Ethnographer
It has been noted that Japan is a difficult place for fledgling and senior researchers alike to carry out ethnographic fieldwork. Often cited reasons for Japan being challenging are the complexities of both the Japanese language and culture. My study of Japanese, my choice of anthropology as a discipline, and subsequently of rural Hokkaido as a field site, came after a pre-doctoral career of living under the disciplinary rubrics of English, philosophy, political science, and finally Asian religions. These disciplinary shifts were often made after extended ‘gap-years’ working around Asia. Like many Ph.D. bound ethnographers, while my Japanese is poor, I struggle along improving in stumbles and starts, and as famous as the idiosyncratic nature of Japanese culture might be; equally illustrious is the Japanese ability to forgo the trespasses of the hennagaijin. How I came to Japan, and to present here and now, raises a dense web of issues related to everything from neocolonial discourse to embodiment, but I feel it also underscores the central theme of this conference. Playing on an infamous allegory, “What came first the theory
or the field?
I suggest that many ethnographers of Japan are not new to Japan. Many, like myself, have lived here before their current research. None have entered tabla rasa. At the least, all have read, theorized, and submitted proposals about what they suspect they
will find here. In the context of my research – my pre-theorizing of the field was deeply entrenched and it remains so nearing the end of my ‘tour’. Does this theoretical drive, combined with haphazard Japanese, lead to a form of ‘shallow anthropology’? Am I merely filling in the blanks of a theoretical puzzle that I imagined? When I question interlocutors about my research and they agree with my analysis is it out of Japanese aiso or do I read my own meaning into naru hodo ne? I intend to discuss the re-entry, retheorization, and validation involved in the ethnographic research of Japan.
Melanie Perroud: The Outside Ethnographer under Scrutiny: Role-Change and Boomerang Questions in an Interview Setting
“There is a strongly implied belief that only by membership in the ascribed group can one really write about the group. Particularity becomes routine (Horowitz 1993, 17).” Irving Horowitz’ depiction of trends in American sociology in the early 1990s is the starting point of the present thoughts on the outside ethnographer. Admittedly, most scholars of the Nikkei Brazilian migration, settlement and overall experience, happen to be either Japanese, Brazilian or Nikkei. Yet I am studying Nikkei Brazilians in Japan, and occasionally in Brazil, and I have no additional affiliation with Japan or Brazil. What I mean to discuss is what befalls the complete stranger in the context of interviews. In my
experience, the differences between the interviewer and the interviewee are assessed through a process of question asking. The commonalities are then recreated through discussion. In the end, images of friendship are evoked. Because the reasons for my scholarly interest cannot be easily assumed from my looks or my roots, they are the object of many questions, some even intimate. While in everyday life some of these
questions would probably be avoided, the interview setting allows these questions to be asked in reply to other questions. For each “Tell me how you came to Japan”, there is a “How about you?”. In the course of the interview, new “us”es are imagined. In the process of reconstructing commonalities, the shared experience of Japan from an outsider’s perspective, and cultural and linguistic familiarities are stressed. The
associated effects of creating an “us”, and having learned so much about the ethnographer, induces a change of nature in the relation. It is not rare, at the end of an interview that began between total strangers, for the outsider to be invited “inside”.
Padmini Tolat Balaram: From Refusals to Acceptance and Welcome
Researching in Japan has been very enriching experience. My presentation will relate what kinds of problems I faced and how I tried to overcome them while conducting my field research on indigo dyeing and textiles of Japan. My research involved extensive field research, ranging from Okinawa to Hokkaido. I faced mainly three kinds of problems. These were differences in language, philosophies and approaches. Initially I faced a lot of refusals to meet me or show me the secret processes and techniques. However, the vary people who refused to meet me not only met me later, but also revealed their professional secrets and welcomed me once they realized the sincerity and hard work the two points which Japanese value very highly.
My paper will narrate the various philosophies and the different ways of thinking related to different cultures, which ended up creating problems. At times I succeeded in solving those problems and at times I failed miserably. Tears of joy and sorrows brought deep understanding about people, life and its values which though were the by products of my original research, valued higher than the actual research I ever conducted!
My field trips revealed the strength of Japanese culture, which made them get up and rise above to be one of the advanced countries after a heavy loss of the world war. To own up ones mistake and try to repair the damage caused by the earlier generation or the politicians, the honesty of the general public, taught me a great deal. It gave me the strength to bear losses without crying and to say doesn’t matter I would build it up again! To get up after every fall and to laugh while crying!
Panel 9: Youth on Youth: New Ethnographies and New Ethnographers
Sunday October 29, 1pm to 3pm (may continue after tea)
Chair: David H. Slater, Sophia University
Discussant: Claire Maree, Tsuda College
Panel Summary: This is an undergraduate panel of ethnographers working on youth and their particularly tenuous situations in this time of flux and transformation. While the identity of “gakusei” is much compromised, and the next step into coherent and meaningful work is not available for many, young people are looking for other ways to form networks, make friends and simply get by. These three papers address ethnographic cases where young people are struggling on the margin of mainstream society, but in ways that do not suggest the hedonistic and self-centered images that are so dominant in the popular media. Besides the rich ethnographic content that each paper presents, there should be a chance to address the dynamics, challenges and opportunities present for younger ethnographers in the field today. Other young ethnographers are particularly encouraged to attend.
Yuko Tsuboi: Pachi-Slot and Youth Futures
Pachi-slot gambling has become very popular in Japan, especially among young people in their early twenties. The interest and the complexity of pachi-slot, as well as the growing recession in Japan have attracted a group of youth who are occupationally and social insecure, and distrust hierarchical social systems. These “dropouts” are turning to pachi-slot as both an activity and social scene which demonstrates characteristics of a subculture. By close and extended contact with a small group of players over a number of years, this ethnography examines some of the complexity of the game itself, the ways in which they classify players, and what this suggests about how they see themselves within
society today and for their future. One finding is that unlike the media images of players as either time-wasters or high risk takers, living an arrogant lifestyle, these young people are very serious-minded and hardworking in their attempt to make a place for themselves in today’s urban Japan.
Melanie Lange: Beautified Manhood – New Requirements for Young Men
Male aesthetic products making up 10 % of the cosmetics market in Japan indicates that the male identity is no longer anchored only in their position in the market but rather do young men resort to beauty work in order to present themselves aesthetically. This answers to a shift in canons of taste for young heterosexual men. Therefore the examination of hair-styling and care procedures provides a locus to observe how beauty work is employed by young men in the course of their identity construction. This project aims at assessing the observation of a feminization of manhood and tries to show how young men display admired character traits in their choice of hairstyles.
Rutsuko Nakajima: Symbolic Significance and Use of “Black Skin” by Tokyo “Gals”
Is the issue of skin color relevant to the analysis of young girls in “homogenous” Japan? In the case of “Gal” girls, the answer would be yes, when we understand it as “black skin” (kuro hada). The deeply tanned skin of the “Gal” girls contribute to social and sexual ambiguity (and their own confusion), such that their “in-betweeness,” makes them threatening to the mainstream. But more than simply a mark of distinction, the layers of symbolic meaning particularly associated with “blackness” (indigenous, operational and positional) carries important patterns of significance Japanese. Through participant observation ethnography, this analysis of Gal is focused on the dynamics of tanning, the symbolic analysis of black skin color and its meanings and used by Gals in the mainstream society and within their own subculture.