Program and Abstracts
AJJ 2016 Spring Meeting & Special Lecture/Symposium
Co-sponsored by Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University
Venue: Faculty of Arts and Letters, No.1 Lecture Hall
文学研究科第１講義室
Dates: April 23 12:30-18:00
April 24 9:30-16:30
Fees: None
(Reception will cost \2000 for employed professionals and \1000 for students)
April 23 (Saturday)
12:30-13:00 Registration
13:00-14:20 Session One: Individual Papers, Part I
Chair (to be announced)
Giancarla Unser-Schutz (Rissho University)
Negotiating common sense: The construction of shared values in online communities
John Mock (Temple University Japan)
Smart City – Stupid Countryside: Part II: Impact of the Imbalance of the Urban/Rural Educational Imbalance in Japan
Irina Grinshtayn (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
A Study of consumer cooperation in western Tokyo
Zhu Yi (University of Tsukuba)
Anthropological study on Japanese management: Issues and perspectives
14:30-15:50 Session Two: Individual Papers, Part II
Chair (to be announced)
Mariko Yoshida (The Australian National University)
Oyster Knowledge, Practice, and Nature in the Anthropocene
Ryusuke Kumagai (Tohoku University)
Hunting weapons in the Paleolithic
Naoko Horikawa (Fukushima University)
Displacement and hope following the Fukushima nuclear disaster — from the viewpoint of evacuees
Michael Shackleton (Osaka Gakuin University)
Victor Turner, the Ndembu, and writing about Ritual Response to the 2011 Tohoku Disaster
16:00-18:00 Reception (Wine & Cheese)
Student Lounge, 1st Floor, Graduate School/Faculty of Arts and Letters.
April 24 (Sunday)
9:30-10:50 Roundtable: Center and Periphery of Anthropological Studies of Japan
Organized by the AJJ Executive Committee
Panelists:
Etsuko Kato (International Christian University)
Noriya Sumihara (Tenri University)
Michael Shackleton (Osaka Gakuin University)
John Mock (Temple University Japan)
Hirochika Nakamaki (Suita City Museum)
Ichiro Numazaki (Tohoku University)
11:00-12:00 特別講演「日本の文化人類学と東北」（日本語）*Cancelled
Special Lecture: Japanese Cultural Anthropology and Tohoku (in Japanese)
原ひろ子（城西国際大学）*Unfortunately she fell ill and did not come.
Hiroko Hara (Josai International University)
12:00-13:00 Lunch Break*
13:00-16:00 シンポジウム「東北と人類諸科学」
Symposium: Tohoku and Anthropological Sciences
Organized and Chaired by Ichiro Numazaki (Tohoku University)
阿子島香（東北大学）
Kaoru Akoshima (Tohoku University)
日本考古学は、なぜ人類学にならないか（日本語）
Why Japanese Archaeology cannot be Anthropology (in Japanese)
小林正史（北陸学院大学）
Masashi Kobayashi (Hokuriku Gakuin University)
東北地方における水田稲作の受け入れ過程（日本語）
Introduction of Wet Rice Cultivation to Tohoku (in Japanese)
池谷和信（国立民族学博物館）
東北の狩猟文化研究について（日本語）
On the Hunting Culture in Tohoku (in Japanese)
Donald Wood (Akita University)
Anthropology, Japan, Tohoku: Writing from a Periphery…for a Center? (in English)
16:00-16:30 General Meeting
*Please bring your own lunch. Café at Kawauchi Hagi Hall is open for lunch, but other canteens and shops are closed on Sunday.
Individual Papers
Negotiating common sense: The construction of shared values in online communities
Giancarla Unser-Schutz (Rissho University)
Recently, there is a deepening sense in contemporary Japan that people no longer have a shared set of values or jōshiki (common sense), causing not only conflicts between but also within generations (Yamada, 2009). Yet this does not mean that there is no longer interest in such shared values. Rather, individuals are looking at increasingly diverse places for such guidance, including online communities. By closely analyzing posts from Hatsugen Komachi, a popular anonymous advice forum, I will show how posters use it to construct and negotiate a sense of shared jōshiki. Jōshiki is a common keyword on Komachi, as is obvious from the number of posts including it (458) or its antonym, hijōshiki (771) in their title alone. Komachi offers users a relatively low-risk place to seek advice and opinions on difficult issues where values often differ, such as child-rearing and family relationships, with posts asking for confirmation about the normalcy of both posters’ own actions and the actions of people around them. One can often observe changes within users, as they chose either to accept or reject the advice given to them. Thus, posters can also use Komachi to persuade others towards their own ways of thinking, forming it into a space for negotiating a shared common sense. Interestingly, although criticisms of contemporary society have often noted people’s reluctance to involve themselves in other’s affairs, the fact that people actively involve themselves in such online discussions also demonstrates the importance they feel about regulating normalcy and common sense.
Smart City – Stupid Countryside: Part II: Impact of the Imbalance of the Urban/Rural Educational Imbalance in Japan
John Mock (Temple University Japan)
Over the past two decades there has been a distinct movement to “internationalize” Japanese higher education; at least, there has been considerable rhetoric in this direction. There have been attempts by the Ministry of Education to create some forms of international activities but these efforts have been almost exclusively devoted to the “usual suspects”, the major public and private universities, almost all of which are embedded in major metropolitan areas. This paper examines the contrast between the impact on the focused areas, the major metropolitan centers, and the rest of Japan. It argues that the resources and initiatives for internationalization have further tilted an already severely tilted system making non-metropolitan Japan even less viable than it was previously. Since education, particularly tertiary education, is seen as the major route to upward mobility, this imbalance has serious consequences for the non-metropolitan areas of Japan. This paper is an attempt to extend the argument presented in the recently published book, The Impact of Internationalization on Japanese Higher Education: Is Japanese Education Really Changing? Mock, John, Hiroaki Kawamura and Naeko Naganuma (Eds), Rotterdam;Sense Publishers 2016.
A Study of consumer cooperation in western Tokyo
Irina Grinshtayn (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Besides the 23 central wards and some bedtowns, Greater Tokyo includes a semi-rural area in the west. One 100 sq km part of this area comprises the village of Hinohara, the focus of this presentation. Hinohara is the only village in Tokyo and one of the few in Japan that has managed to keep its historical administrative boundaries without change since the Edo period. Hinohara is the periphery of Japan’s capital city, a deep “inaka”, a hilly forest within a short ride of Shinjuku. It’s population is rapidly aging and shrinking, it’s shopping options are modest and public transportation to and from the village is by bus. In these circumstances consumer cooperative organizations are serving an important role. Consumer cooperatives deliver food and other necessary items to individual households and household associations throughout all of Japan, but in districts like Hinohara their services may be critical. In this presentation I am trying to identify differences and similarities in the function and practice of consumer cooperation across the rural-urban continuum in today’s Japan. Highly urbanized and relatively rural areas within the Tokyo district provide a case for comparison. This is a document-based exploratory study and my sources of data are local and central government publications, historical accounts, archival records and online marketing and educational resources maintained by consumer cooperative organizations.
Anthropological study on Japanese management: Issues and perspectives
Zhu Yi (University of Tsukuba)
This presentation explores the implications and challenges that anthropological research into Japanese management faces, particularly in the field of cross-cultural management. During the rapid postwar economic growth in Japan, a large number of publications on Japanese companies were produced and many management scientists concluded that the “cultural uniqueness” of Japanese management is one of the secrets to that success. However, along with Japan’s declining economic performance, these scholars started to criticize traditional Japanese management as one of the major causes for its failure overseas. This radical yet conflicting shift was mainly due to most of the scholars confusing the corporate propaganda that constructed an image of “cultural uniqueness” with what was really happening. Based on long-term participant observation at a Japanese fashion retailer in Hong Kong, this presentation reveals the gap between “cultural uniqueness” and reality. The company uses its promotional system for propaganda about its unique culture; however, the employees realized the gap, which led them to manipulate their work performance to satisfy their own interests. The gap thus resulted in the creation of a picture different from the company’s expectations. This implies that an open dialogue with scholars from diverse research agendas is necessary to provide the various real pictures to enrich the field of cross-cultural management; it also gives an insight into how anthropological work could be applied to a business setting.
Oyster Knowledge, Practice, and Nature in the Anthropocene
Mariko Yoshida (The Australian National University)
In this project, I offer an ethnographic analysis of temporalities, materialities, and relationalities between humans and oysters. I tackle particularly the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas), a species endemic from Japan that presently consitutes 80% of the total world production of edible oysters. Attentive both to the knowledge-making of food production and consumption, and the materiality of human-nonhuman relations, this project attempts to grapple with the contingent practices that constitute oyster aquaculture and the multiple ways of interspecies entanglement that emerge as a result. Specifically, drawing upon the oyster farming practices in Miyagi prefecture of northeast Japan and the oyster consumption market in Tokyo, this project asks: how the Japanese ideas of the nature-culture relations have intertwined with the propagation of the mass consumption and production of oysters; how their way of linking forests with seas via rivers causes particular behaviours on the oyster farming associated with the local farmers’ rootedness in place, facing the potential risk of ocean acidification; and how the encounter between marine biological and the local knowledge-making has shaped the course of the Japanese oyster farming. In order to understand the interdependent enmeshment in human-oyster relationships, I intend to analyze the circulation of oysters as commodities and the circulation of environmental knowledge. Rather than the multifarious human actors at play in everyday practices of oyster farming being the central agents, this study considers oysters beyond the hitherto endemic peripheral positioning. In doing so, I seek to examine the world from a post-anthropocentric landscape in which oysters direct the actions of the multispecies and reshape its living space.
Hunting weapons in the Paleolithic
Ryusuke Kumagai (Tohoku University)
The purpose of this presentation is proposing a new analytical method for Paleolithic stone tools, based on archaeological data from Yamagata prefecture, Tohoku region.
Archaeologists try to get information from stone tools, in order to study life of the Paleolithic people. Most importantly, functions of stone tools are enjoying a lot of attention, as effective indicator of adaptation to the environment. Use-wear analysis is major data to identify the function of stone tools. But, there are limitations about this method. Therefore, I’ll propose a new method to complement use-wear analysis, based on the shapes of the stone tools. In this morphological analysis, the shape of a stone tool is converted into the sequence of numbers which are comparable. Based on the previous studies, stone tools fitted to the hunting weapons would be clustered around similar value. As a result of this analysis, a single classification of stone tools has different functions. After this, I will examine this method could be applicable to other types of tools. If it is effective, we could get the possibility to clarify the process of functional diversification of tools in the Paleolithic.
Displacement and hope following the Fukushima nuclear disaster — from the viewpoint of evacuees
Naoko Horikawa (Fukushima University)
Five years have passed since the accident at the Fukushima nuclear complex in March 2011. The number of evacuees from the disaster zone is currently estimated to be about 98,000 (February 2016). The displaced are found within and outside of Fukushima. Perhaps characteristically in the aftermath of a disaster of this type, there are two types of evacuation: forced and voluntary. The latter count for about 18,000. In general, the form of voluntary evacuation is said to be boshi hinan, referring to mothers with children who made the move as a precaution. Many male family members remained in Fukushima because of their jobs and to maintain and safeguard their homes. Families therefore had to adapt to a double life. This paper considers the way in which affected people made their decision to leave, and how they cope with a new social milieu. Based on qualitative data gathering, mainly through semi-structured interviews, and from participant observation in places of congregation, an insight may be obtained of the lives of voluntary evacuees. By taking an emic view I will consider what voluntary evacuation has meant to them and the impact on their families.
Victor Turner, the Ndembu, and writing about Ritual Response to the 2011 Tohoku Disaster
Michael Shackleton (Osaka Gakuin University)
I am currently trying to study the ‘Great Forest Wall’ project （森の長城）and other responses to the Tohoku Disaster that try to use ritual to meet perceived social or spiritual needs. The classic texts in the use of ritual for social coherence etc. are the works by Victor Turner, based on his fieldwork among the Ndembu in the 1960’s. These are themselves tied to what some have called, ‘the Manchester School’ and a high watermark of ‘British Anthropology’. What happens if we try to apply Victor Turner’s research methods, and theories, to the Great Forest Wall project, or perhaps the secular rituals that commemorate the Tohoku Disaster, and the victims? Some useful comparisons can be made, besides the obvious differences. My main focus however will be on the way Turner did his fieldwork, and the validity of his model for varying degrees of ‘ritual knowledge’, that prioritise the ritual expert or priest, and the common awareness of symbols. New rituals are clearly flourishing in modern Japan, but in settings that can be multi-religious or non-religious or both at the same time. The relevant ritual ‘experts’ may have a lot, or no, religious training. Turner made much of symbols and ‘meaning’. Is that how we can best understand the grammar of these Tohoku rituals? In the course of the presentation, I include important add-ons or corrections to Turner’s basic model, but aim to keep close to its essential ‘crudity’, partly because this resonates with how he tried to make sense of what was obviously very intense fieldwork. It is also the kind of approach that most closely fits past analysis of traditional Shinto rituals, and the ‘Nihon Bunka-ron’ formulations that flourished up until the watershed of the ‘Heisei era’.