2026
Akita University, May 23rd–24th
Joint winners: Felix BORTHWICK and JOSH FENG
Right to Residence: The (Non)Politics of Public Housing Governance in Contemporary Japan
Felix Borthwick, Duke University
In this paper, I explore the personal and political entanglements involved in the
anthropological study of growth-era public housing estates (danchi) in contemporary Japan.
Once symbols of upwardly-mobile, middle-class respectability and the technical
modernization of Japanese home life, contemporary danchi are a microcosm of Japan’s social
ills in the post-growth era: aging and shrinking residential communities living in homes that
were built to sustain the social relations of a prior historical moment. Drawing from a
combination of archival research and twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in
housing estates across Tokyo, I focus on the politics of danchi governance through the
organizational form of the jichikai or tenants’ council. I examine the historical emergence of
a mass political movement uniting jichikai across these estates – which culminated in the
1974 formation of the National Conference of Public Housing Tenants’ Councils – as well as
the local articulations of danchi governance present at a single housing estate: Kunitachi
Fujimidai Danchi, built in 1965. In relation to these examples, I discuss how my theoretical
and ethical commitments as an anthropologist led me to focus on the explicitly political
dimensions of danchi life. However, I contrast this with many of my interlocutors’ largely
ambiguous positions on the jichikai as a body for formal political action and advocacy –
which come as the mass movements based around danchi residency grapple with the
challenges of aging and shrinking membership. Through this, I reflect on both the role of
anthropologists’ political commitments in forming attachments to the field, as well as the
challenges posed when the ‘politics’ of the field take on a more indefinite form.
Learning Sweetness: Sugar, Care, and the Making of the Miyazaki Mango
Josh Feng, University of California, Berkeley
Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on a mango farm in Miyazaki, Japan, this paper begins
with the distinction between sweetness as a sensory experience and sugar as a quantifiable
metric. For premium mangoes sold under the Taiyo no Tamago brand, which can fetch over
550,000 yen, taste is abstracted through grading regimes that quantify sweetness and translate it into price. I argue that while brand standards structure mango cultivation to optimize for sugar content, the sensory labor that produces sweetness remains a form of care irreducible to the metrics used to measure it.
Central to this paper are two cultivation techniques left vague in growing manuals:
tamatsuri (stringing branches toward optimal light) and tekka (removing all but one fruit per branch). Farmers speak of this labor as teinei (careful, meticulous), a mode of cultivation in which care and extraction are inseparable. While farmers tend mangoes daily, even referring to them as grandchildren, they also prune trees they describe as screaming, shock plants into flowering through temperature manipulation, and sacrifice hundreds of fruits so that a single “elite” mango reaches the sorting line. As I learned this work alongside growers in the humid heat of vinyl greenhouses, sweetness was not just a number, but sticky sap on skin, the whirring of fans, and the smell of mud and kerosene. In tracing what gets made in the greenhouse and what gets lost on the way to the store shelf, I show how luxury mango
production depends on sensory labor and judgment that the market requires, but cannot fully standardize.
2025
Hyogo University, April 4th–6th (joint JAWS/AJJ conference)
Marta FANASCA
(University of Bologna, Hosei University, research fellow)
Ritualizing Intimacy: Gender, Female Agency, and the Commodification of Desire in Contemporary Japan’s Pink Economy
Abstract: In contemporary Japan, the market for female/female commodified emotional and/or sexual intimacy, though a niche market, is developing at the intersection of private desire and money. Several businesses focused on providing emotions, support, or more bodily-oriented and less platonic services for women are emerging, shaping a new sector of the pink economy closely tied to the urban landscape. Despite differences among these services (dates, sex, sexual massages etc), it is impossible not to notice the constant performance of certain acts or the repletion of sequences of actions—not only across repeated meetings within the same business, but also between different types of services—which imbues encounters between providers and clients with a sense of “ritual”. Using Joy Hendry’s suggestions about the relationship between reality and authenticity (2000) as a starting point, and drawing on Baudrillard’s concept of hyperrealism (1981/2001), this intervention highlights and discusses how paid encounters between providers of commodified intimacy and clients can be understood as “semi-ritual” space to explore gender, sex and emotions. Taking as case studies a) the business of Female-to-Male crossdressing (dansō) escorts offering dates to their female clients, and b) female prostitution for women, my aim is to explore how these practices navigate the intersections of gender, commodification, and female agency, highlighting how ritualized interactions serve as a medium through which clients and providers negotiate identity and intimacy within a market-driven framework.
Runner-up:
Marco Di Francesco (Oxford University), “Changing Ritual Practices in the 21st-Century Rakugo World”
2024
Tōhoku University, Aoba Campus, November 30th–December 1st
Miku Narisawa
(Tōhoku University, PhD candidate)
Navigating Uncertainty: Climate Change and the Future of Seaweed Cultivation in Japan
Abstract: This presentation explores the adaptation of seaweed aquaculture to climate change in Japan, with a specific focus on a case study from Higashimatsushima City in the Tohoku region. The study highlights the livelihoods of coastal communities, the modernization of seaweed (nori) aquaculture, and how local farmers have cultivated a reciprocal relationship with the ocean amid these challenging times, drawing on fieldwork and recent studies. Seaweed cultivation is a cornerstone of the local economy and an integral part of Japanese food culture. Over the past two years, many seaweed farmers have experienced significant impacts from climate change, including rising water temperatures and increasingly unstable nutrient balances. The uncertainty surrounding these environmental threats has had profound effects on local marine ecosystems, fishing markets, and traditional practices. Nevertheless, these challenges also underscore the complex intersection of human domestication and ecological uncertainty. Finally, the presentation introduces the “Nori Summit,” a new initiative where over 150 seaweed farmers from across Japan come together to share their experiences and innovative solutions for confronting the unknowns posed by climate change.
Runner-up:
Mariia Ermilova (Tōyō University, Adjunct Professor), Growing Knowledge Together: Plant Cultivation as a Method of Collaborative Anthropology in a Japanese Neighborhood
Highly Commended:
Evan Koike (University of Tokyo, Assistant Professor), Between Admiration and Skepticism: How Japanese Parents View the Imaginary Figure of the White Western Father
2023
Meiji Gakuin University, Shirokane Campus
Anna Wozny
(Tokyo College at the University of Tokyo, Postdoctoral Fellow)
Marriage-hunting: intimacy at the nexus of state and market forces
Abstract: This paper explores the entanglements of economic and political forces in the formation of intimate relationships by drawing on the case of Japanese “marriage-hunting” industry. Marriage-hunting (konkatsu), a term originally coined by sociologist Yamada Masahiro, encompasses myriad private and public sector services that facilitate heterosexual romantic relationships for a fee. Against the backdrop of rapid population decline and aging, marriage-hunting has additionally been defined as an arena with the potential to boost Japan’s marriage—and, by extension, childbirth—rates. Drawing on nine months of multi-site ethnographic fieldwork in Japan, including participant observation in marriage-hunting events and interviews with industry professionals as well as men and women who use these dating services, I demonstrate how the marriage-hunting market implicates individual desires in state reproduction. Specifically, I show how marriage-hunting professionals 1) mobilize population science to link individual experiences to state goals, and 2) rely on discourses of quantification and economization to portray marriage-hunting as a competitive marketplace. I then show how this conceptualisation of marriage-hunting as a market influences individual perceptions of status and desirability. Ultimately, I argue that the marriage- hunting market contributes to uneven social valuation of men and women depending on a mixture of ascribed and achieved characteristics.
Runner-up:
Maiko Kodaka (Sophia University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Adjunct Lecturer), Women’s Consumption of Sex: The Question of Sex Positivism
Highly Commended:
Koure Makita (Keio University, PhD candidate), Suffering and Conflicts of Women Priests in Jinja Shinto
Dylan O’Brien (University of California at San Diego, PhD candidate), Silences out of the Past: Fables of Rescue and the Politics of Historical Memory in Multicultural Japan
for more about the Harumi Befu Prize, click HERE.