AJJ 2026 Akita Program

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2026 Akita Program

AJJ 2026 Conference Poster

Venue Details Akita University

Conference Schedule

May 23rd (Saturday) and May 24th (Sunday)

Day 1 – Saturday, May 23rd

9:30–11:00 Registration

11:10–11:20 Introductory Remarks

11:30–1:00 Panel session 1 (90 min)

1 Marginalization & Standardization
Chair: Dylan O’Brien (Temple University Japan)

Maiko Kodaka (Sophia University), Living with an Imagined Ideal: Male Vulnerability and Romance in Japan
Dylan O’Brien (Temple University Japan), Towards a Phenomenology of Misperception: Jewish (In)visibility and the Optics of Otherness in Multicultural Japan
Robert Dahlberg Sears (Independent Scholar), Cultivating Civic Belonging in the Public Park: Space and Folk Memory in Shakujii-Kōen

2 Research Across Life Course
Chair: Susanne Klien (Hokkaido University)

James D. Letson (Hokkaido University), Papa, kaeritai yo! Family, fieldwork, and fatherhood “in the field.”
Susanne Klien (Hokkaido University), Different Shades of Fatigue: Weariness, Meaning and Fieldwork
Gordon Mathews (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), My Friends/Informants Over Five Decades: Love, Loss, and Qualms

3 Community and Place
Chair: John Mock (Temple University Japan)

Alyne Delaney (Tohoku University), Between Sea and Society: Embodied Research and Lived Experiences of Connections and Resilience in Coastal Japan
John Mock (Temple University Japan), This Old (Tea) House: Preservation and Identity in Peripheral Japan
Liliana Morais (Rikkyo University), Beyond “Revitalization”: Sensory Encounters through Convivial Craft in Rural Japan
Andhika Wijaya (Tohoku University), Stories from Dispossessed Pasts: Embodying Local History in Tourism Practices of the Tsugaru Region

1:00–2:00 Lunch Break
AJJ Business Meeting/AGM

2:00–3:30 Panel session 2 (90 min)

4 Taking Soil Seriously (1)
Chair: Gavin H. Whitelaw (Harvard University)

Donald Wood (Akita University), Unearthing Soil-centered Householding in 1930s Japan: Yoshida Saburō’s 1938 Nichiroku as the Record of a Family’s Lived Experience
Jinjin Zhang (Chinese University of Hong Kong / Harvard Yenching Institute), Data-Soil: Setting Foot on Our Digital Furusato
David S. Sprague (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies / Temple University Japan) Children of the Soil Come to Town, or Do They?

5 Flexibility & Precarity
Chair: Paul Hansen (Akita University)

Atsushi Takeda (Ritsumeikan University), Tourism, Mobility, and Multiculturalism in a Japanese Ski Resort
Michael K. Peters (Shizuoka University), Reflexivity Towards the Flexibility of Citizenship: Making Meaning of Naturalization Through the Journeys of Professional Athletes in the Japanese B. League
Irena Hu (Duke University) Imagining Tokyo, Sensing Precarity: Taiwanese Women in Yoshiwara and the Ethics of Ethnographic Withholding

6 Gender and Embodiment
Chair: Celia Spoden (University of Tokyo)

Qing Xin (Princeton University), Working Through Dearth, Dissatisfaction, and (Un)Desirability: Japanese Female Genital Cosmetic Surgeons in a Feminized Landscape of Harm and Healing
Maria Ortega (University of the Arts of Yucatan), Ethics at the Edge of Sensation: Corporeal Plasticity and the Saturation of Being
Sayako Ono (University of Tokyo), Japanese Male Ballet Dancers and Embodied Aesthetic Norms

3:30–3:45 Break (15 min)

3:45–5:15 Panel session 3 (90 min)

7 Taking Soil Seriously (2)
Chair: Gavin H. Whitelaw (Harvard University)

Gavin H. Whitelaw (Harvard University), Rotting Relations: Leaf Litter, Soil, and Satoyama Stewardship in Urban Japan
Caleb Carter (Kyushu University), Volcanic Landscapes of Ritual: Reimagining Late Nineteenth-Century Séances on Mount Ontake
Tom Gill (Meiji Gakuin University), Soiled Ideals: How the obsession with land destroyed rural communities after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

8 Nightlife
Chair: Maiko Kodaka (Sophia University)

Ethan Fiege (Ritsumeikan University), Dealing with Nightlife Over Tourism in Kyoto: A Study on Kyoto’s Mainstream Clubbing Scene
Stephen Tian-You Ai (Harvard University / Niigata University), Anikura’s Database Intimacy: Remix, Beats, and Tactility
Adam Dillon (Griffith University), “Which costume do I wear tonight?” – Drinking, Listening and Transitioning between Tokyo’s Trans and Metal Scenes

9 Quixotic Entanglements
Chair: Andreas Riessland

Mariia Ermilova (Hōsei University), Too Hot to Play: Sensing Summer Heat and Childhood Displacement in Tokyo
Felix Borthwick (Duke University), Right to Residence: The (Non)Politics of Public Housing Governance in Contemporary Japan
Roman Pasca (Akita University) Who Chooses Whom? The Life, Emotions, and Dilemmas of a Researcher in Akita

5:15–5:30 Break (15 min)

5:30–6:30 Keynote Speech

Nakamaki Hirochika
Professor Emeritus, National Museum of Ethnology

日本の人類学における日本の人類学的研究—AJJ の前と後
“Anthropology of Japan in Japanese Anthropology before and
after AJJ” (presentation in Japanese)

6:30-7:00 Move to Reception Venue

7:00–9:00 Event/ Reception

At the Akita City Cultural Creation Center
Bunka Sōzōkan Akita-shi Senshū Meitoku-chō 3-16
秋田市千秋明徳町 3-16 秋田市文化創造館

Day 2 – Sunday, May 24th

9:00 – 10:30 Panel session 4 (90 min)

10 Reverberations of 3/11: Tsunami (panel 1 of 2)
Chair: Satsuki Takahashi (Hōsei University)

Taichi Uchio (Shizuoka University of Art and Culture), 3.11 and Its Disaster-Affected Sphere: The Transnationality of Disaster through Tsunami, Marine Debris, and Invasive Species
Maho Yamazaki (Tōhoku Gakuin University), Narrating the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami from the Boundaries of the “Community of the DisasterAffected”
Shūhei Kimura (Tsukuba University), To Live with Waves of Disasters

11 The Learning Habitus
Chair: Gordon Mathews (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Anastasia Krutikova (Waseda University), Lived Education and Cultural Difference in French International Schools in Japan
Aline Henninger (University of Orléans), Doing Fieldwork at Primary School about Sex Education
Marco Di Francesco (Independent Scholar), Embodiment and Entanglement in the World of Rakugo Oral Storytelling

10:45 – 12:15 Panel session 5

12 Reverberations of 3/11: Meltdowns (panel 2 of 2)
Chair: Shūhei Kimura (Tsukuba University)

Yang Xue (Independent Researcher), Sensing the Frontier: A Response to Emptiness in Namie, Fukushima prefecture
Satsuki Takahashi (Hōsei University), Entrained Life: Fish That Draw Humans into Care
Sébastien P. Boret (Tōhoku University), Wellbeing in the Face of Adversity: Human Rights as a Means of Resistance and Resilience in Contemporary Asia

13 Sensing Value
Chair: Michael Shackleton (Osaka Gakuin University)

Greg de St. Maurice (Keio University), Making Sense of Okinawan Coffee and its Valuations
Susan Paige Taylor (Waseda University), The Smell of Old Books, or Lack Thereof: Embodiment and Discourses of Scent
Josh Feng (University of California, Berkeley), Learning Sweetness: Sensory Labor and the Making of the Miyazaki Mango

14 Archive/Media
Chair: Kaeko Chiba (Akita International University)

Kaeko Chiba (Akita International University), Sensory Digital Archives and Revitalization in PostGrowth Akita
Deanna Holroyd (Akita International University), Recalibrating the Field after Career Relocation to Japan: Rethinking the Digital Fieldsite in Transnational Social Media Ethnography
Fanni Herczeg (Ritsumeikan University), Narrating Nuclear Incidents: Hegemony Supplementing a Non-Securitised Approach in Japanese News Media, 1991-2010

12:15 – 12:30, Break (15 min)

12:30 – 2:00 Panel session 6

15 Marginal Fieldwork
Chair: Shimpei Miyagawa (Temple University Japan)

Shimpei Miyagawa (Temple University Japan), Enchanted Infrastructures: Bangladesh’s Quasi-Industrial Metal Work and Japan’s Quasi-Industrial Saké Work
Srijon Barua (Temple University Japan), Enchanted Infrastructures… / On the Precipice of Guerrilla Altruism (or Vice Versa)
Zev Pinter (Temple University Japan) The Mental Health Experience of Foreigners in Japan

16 Solidarity in Disruption
Chair: Andrea de Antoni (Kyoto University)

Hasnaa Haziqah Abd. Halid (Ritsumeikan University), Feeling Solidarity: Youth Political Culture, Affect, and Pro-Palestinian Activism in Kyoto
Tricia Okada (Tamagawa University), Phenomenologies of Loss and Migration: (No) Rules for Healing
Wan Yin Kimberly Fung (Hitotsubashi University), After the Aftermath: Attending to and Passing by the Ashio–Watarase River Region

17. Matsuri Encounters
Chair: Hisako Omori (Akita International University)

Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra (University of Tokyo), Practicing Socially-Engaged Ethnography in Japan: Personal and Methodological Reflections on Manazuru’s Kibune Matsuri
Abigail Meyer (University of Leeds), Negotiating Belonging through Participation in Matsuri: Reflecting on Own Experiences as an Impetus for Research
Yan Meilun (University of Tokyo) Attuning Bodies in Everyday Life: Proximity, Risk, and Living by Constraint in Japan

2:00 – 3:00 Film Showing

Mark: A Call to Action, about the life and career of Mark Bookman

(Judges retreat to discuss Befu and Bookman prizes)

3:00 Announcement of the Winners of the Harumi Befu and Mark Bookman Prizes