Dismantling the East-West Dichotomy: Essays in Honour of Jan van Bremen (Japan Anthropology Workshop Series)

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Dismantling the East–West Dichotomy

There has been a tendency to dichotomise the world into ‘East’ and ‘West’, as though the world were in fact so divided. This book demonstrates that such a division has become a redundant exercise that is inappropriate and even dangerous in the contemporary world. Adopting theoretical, ethnographic, personal, regional and historical perspectives, and drawing inspiration from the work of the late Jan van Bremen, it systematically dismantles such divisions. At the same time, it proposes new ways forward for the field of anthropology, offering a wealth of regional and global perspectives as exhibited by contemporary scholarship. This timely and important book, fit for the true scholar it sets out to commemorate, provides a valuable examination of the current state of the academic study of Japan anthropology, demonstrating how progress achieved in anthropological work on Japan can provide a model for good practice elsewhere. Joy Hendry is Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and a Senior Member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. She has worked for many years in Japan, but recently seeks to put Japanese material in a global context. Her publications include Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies, The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display and Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self Representation. Heung Wah Wong is Associate Professor at the Department of Japanese Studies, the University of Hong Kong. His research interest lies in the study of Japanese companies. He is the author of Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: Power and Control in a Hong Kong Megastore.

Japan Anthropology Workshop Series Series editor: Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University Editorial Board: Pamela J. Asquith, University of Alberta Eyal Ben-Ari, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Hirochika Nakamaki, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka Kirsten Refsing, University of Hong Kong Wendy Smith, Monash University Founder Member of the Editorial Board: Jan van Bremen, University of Leiden

A Japanese View of Nature The World of Living Things by Kinji Imanishi, translated by Pamela J. Asquith, Heita Kawakatsu, Shusuke Yagi and Hiroyuki Takasaki Edited and introduced by Pamela J. Asquith Japan’s Changing Generations Are Young People Creating a New Society? Edited by Gordon Mathews and Bruce White The Care of the Elderly in Japan Yongmei Wu Community Volunteers in Japan Everyday Stories of Social Change Lynne Y. Nakano Nature, Ritual and Society in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands Arne Røkkum Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan Chikako Ozawa-de Silva Dismantling the East–West Dichotomy Essays in Honour of Jan van Bremen Edited by Joy Hendry and Heung Wah Wong

Dismantling the East–West Dichotomy Essays in honour of Jan van Bremen

Edited by Joy Hendry and Heung Wah Wong

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business # 2006 Editorial selection and matter, Joy Hendry and Heung Wah Wong; individual chapters, the contributors

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0-415–39738–3 ISBN10: 0-203–96869–7

ISBN13: 978-0-415–39738–4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203–96869–7 (ebk)

Contents

List of tables List of contributors Biography

ix x xvii

PART 1

Introduction 1

Anthropology in Japan: A Model for Good Practice in a Global Arena?

1

JOY HENDRY

PART 2

Theoretical Perspectives 2

Against ‘Hybridity’: Culture as Historical Processes

11

EMIKO OHNUKI-TIERNEY

3

West/Japan Dichotomy in the Context of Multiple Dichotomies

17

AKITOSHI SHIMIZU

4

Thoughts on the Relationship between Anthropological Theory, Methods and the Study of Japanese Society

22

ROGER GOODMAN

5

When Soto becomes Uchi: Some thoughts on the Anthropology of Japan

31

D. P. MARTINEZ

6

Postmodern Bodies, Material Difference, and Subjectivity MARGARET LOCK

38

vi

Contents

PART 3:

Fieldwork and Ethnographic Illustrations 7

Anthropological Fieldwork Reconsidered: With Japanese Folkloristics as a Mirror

49

TAKAMI KUWAYAMA

8

Joint Research Projects as a Tradition in Japanese Anthropology: A Focus on the ‘Civilization Studies’ of the Taniguchi Symposia

56

HIROCHIKA NAKAMAKI

9

The Discipline of Context: On Ethnography among the Japanese

64

MITCHELL W. SEDGWICK

10 Japanese Inns (Ryokan) and an Asian Atmosphere: Always East of Somewhere

69

SYLVIE GUICHARD-ANGUIS

11 Japanese Management and Japanese Miracles: the Global Sweep of Japanese Economic and Religious Organisations

75

WENDY SMITH

12. ‘De-Orientalising’ Rice? The Role of Chinese Intermediaries in Globalising Japanese Rice Cookers

82

YOSHIKO NAKANO

PART 4:

Personal Place 13. Wandering where? Between Worlds or in No Man’s Land?

91

PETER KNECHT

14. ‘The West in the Head’: Identity Issues of Latin Americans living in Japan

97

´ ZQUEZ GENARO CASTRO-VA

15. Two Wests Meet Japan: How a Three-Way Comparison of Japan with Canada and the United States shifts Culture Paradigms

103

MILLIE CREIGHTON

16. Eastern and Western Anthropologists Unite in Culture: A Personal Note HEUNG WAH WONG

110

Contents

vii

PART 5:

Regional Perspectives 17. Neither ‘Us’ nor ‘Them’: Koreans doing Anthropology in Japan

119

OKPYO MOON

18. Re-orient-ing the Occident: How Young Japanese Travellers are Using the East–West Dichotomy to Dismantle Regional Nationalisms

125

BRUCE WHITE

19. Fear and Loathing of Americans Doing Japan Anthropology

133

WILLIAM W. KELLY

20. When the East–West Dichotomy is Destructive: Japanese Housewives in the UK

141

RUTH MARTIN

PART 6:

Historical Issues 21. When West met East and made it West: Occidentalising the Ainu

149

KIRSTEN REFSING

22. Japanese Collections in European Museums and their Role within the Field of Japanese Studies 156 JOSEF KREINER

23. Dismantling the East–West dichotomy: But What Happens with Religion?

160

PETER ACKERMANN

24. Legacies of East–West Fusions in Social Ecology Theory in Dismantling ‘Views of the Japanese Nation’

168

PAMELA J. ASQUITH

PART 7:

Towards a New Anthropology 25. Somewhere in Between: Towards an Interactive Anthropology in a World Anthropologies Project 177 SHINJI YAMASHITA

viii

Contents

26. If Anthropology is a Science, then the East–West Dichotomy is Irrelevant: Moving Towards a Global Anthropology

183

GORDON MATHEWS

27. Writing for Common Ground: Rethinking Audience and Purpose in Japan Anthropology

189

LYNNE Y. NAKANO

28. Towards an Open Anthropology

196

RON CARLE

29. Japanese Anthropological Scholarship: An Alternative Model?

203

EYAL BEN-ARI

PART 8:

Concluding Remarks 30. What Enlightenment can Japan Anthropology Offer to Anthropology?

211

HEUNG WAH WONG

Bibliography Index

218 237

Tables

16.1

The personal details of these four directors, 1992

112

22.1

Japanese Collections in European museums according to a survey conducted in 2003/4

158

Contributors

Peter Ackermann is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nu¨rnberg, Germany. His research is concerned with transcultural learning and intercultural communication, especially forms of transmission of language, knowledge and values through time and in interpersonal and intergenerational exchange. His publications have appeared in Linhart and Fru¨hstu¨ck (eds): The Culture of Japan as Seen through its Leisure; Petra Bendel und Thomas Fischer (eds.) Menschenund Bu¨rgerrechte: Perspektiven der Regionen; and Asiatische Studien, Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft. Pamela J. Asquith is Adjunct Professor to the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta and to the School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, B.C. Her research interests are in the anthropology of science; ideas of nature in modern Japanese society; the historical archive of Imanishi Kinji; and interpretations of marginalisation of scholarship outside Euro-American centres. Her publications include The Kinji Imanishi Digital Archive (2004); A Japanese View of Nature (2002); and The World of Living Things by Kinji Imanishi (trans. with H. Kawakatsu, H. Takasaki and S. Yagi, 2000). Eyal Ben-Ari is Professor of Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has carried out research on Japanese white-collar suburbs, Japanese early childhood education and the Japanese community in Singapore. He has also carried out field work on the Israeli military, peacekeeping units, and the contemporary Japanese Self-Defence Forces. His recent books include Body Projects in Japanese Childcare: Culture, Organization and Emotions in a Preschool (1997), Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit (1998) and an edited volume with Jan van Bremen and Farid Al-Atas, Anthropologies of Asia: Anthropologies in Asia (2005). Ron Carle is a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. He took his PhD

List of contributors

xi

in Social Anthropology from Edinburgh University. His current research is an examination of the interrelations of heritage preservation and tourism development as a rural revitalisation strategy. Genaro Castro-Va´zquez is a Postdoctoral fellow and lecturer, Keio University, Tokyo. He was a research resident at the Japanese Foundation for AIDS Prevention, Tokyo, and an Abstract reviewer at the 7th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, Kobe 2005. Millie Creighton is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She has done extensive work on popular culture, consumerism, minorities, ethnicity, work and leisure, gender, place, nostalgia and identity in Japan with comparative work involving Korea. Some of her publications have appeared in D. Edgington (ed.) Joining Past and Future: Japan at the Millennium (2003); Japanese Studies 21 (2001); and in J. Singleton (ed.) Learning in Likely Places: Varieties of Apprenticeship in Japan (1998). Roger Goodman is Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, and Professorial Fellow at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Japan’s International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren (1990) and Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan (2000). He is co-editor or editor of several books, most recently Global Japan: The Experience of Japan’s New Immigrant and Overseas Communities (2003). His main research interests lie in the education and social welfare systems of modern Japan. Sylvie Guichard-Anguis is a researcher at the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) and a member of the research group ‘Space, Nature and Culture’ in the Department of Geography, Paris-Sorbonne Paris 4. She is also an administrator of the Centre of Research on Asia, Paris-Sorbonne Paris 4. Her research interests include cultural heritage, tea culture and children’s illustrated books in Japan. She co-edited Globalizing Japan (Routledge, 2001), Crossed Gazes at International Cultural Heritage (in French and English) with the collaboration of the UNESCO (PUPS, 2003) and co-wrote Grand Hotels in Asia, Modernity, Urban Dynamic and Sociability (in French, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003). Joy Hendry is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Europe Japan Research Centre at Oxford Brookes University. Her recent research has been on cultural display, and self-representation by indigenous people, and her most recent books include The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display (Berg), Reclaiming Culture:

xii

List of contributors Indigenous People and Self-Representation (Palgrave), and Japan at Play (ed. with Massimo Raveri).

William W. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies at Yale U. Most recently, he is the editor of Fanning the Flames (SUNY Press, 2004) and author of a forthcoming book on Japanese professional baseball. Peter Knecht is former Professor at the Nanzan Anthropological Institute, Nanzan University, and editor of Asian Folklore Studies. He has done fieldwork in a village in northern Japan for about thirty years and since 2000 also with shamans in Inner Mongolia. His publications have appeared in Cosmos 18 (2002); Klaus Antoni (ed.) Rituale und ihre Urheber: Invented Traditions in der japanischen Religionsgeschichte (1997); and Miyazawa Chihiro (ed.) Culture and Society in Asian Markets: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Distribution and Exchange of Goods (2006). Josef Kreiner is Professor of Japanese studies and Director, Institute of Japanese Studies, Bonn University. He has done field research in religion and social structure on village-level, especially in western Japan, and studies the European image of Japan and museum-collections of Japanese art and ethnography in Europe as well as the history of Japanese studies. He is currently editing ‘Japanese Collections in European Museums. Report of the Toyota Symposium at Ko¨nigswinter 2003’ (JapanArchiv, vol. 5). Takami Kuwayama is Professor at the Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. His recent publications include Native Anthropology: The Japanese Challenge to Western Academic Hegemony (2004). Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor in Social Studies in Medicine, and is affiliated with the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Her monographs include East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan (1980), Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America (1993) and Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (2002). Her current research is concerned with post-genomic biology and its impact in the clinic, among families, and society at large, with particular emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease. Ruth Martin is a Research Associate of the Europe Japan Research Centre at Oxford Brookes University, with interests in gender and migration.

List of contributors

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She recently gained her PhD with a thesis on expatriate Japanese wives in the UK and continues with fieldwork that will enable her to follow up her informants and their children long term. D.P. Martinez is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology with Reference to Japan at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is the author of Identity and Ritual in a Japanese Diving Village, as well as the editor of the The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture and co-editor (with Jan van Bremen) of Ceremony and Ritual in Japan. Her publications include work on film, television, tourism, maritime anthropology, gender and religion. Gordon Mathews is Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has written What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds (1996) and Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket (2000), and edited, with Bruce White, Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society? (2004). He is now working on two books, one on ‘how Hong Kong people are learning to love their country’ and another on ‘how anthropological theory can explain everyday life’. Okpyo Moon is Professor of Anthropology at the Academy of Korean Studies, Korea, currently working on inter-generational shifts in Japanese and Korean urban family life. Her recent publications include edited volumes of East Asian Cultural Traditions and Korean Society (2001); New Women: Images of Modern Women in Japan and Korea (2003); and Yangban: The Life-world of Korean Scholar Gentry (2004). Hirochika Nakamaki is Professor of the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, engaged in the anthropological studies of religion and management in Japan, USA and Brazil. His publications include Japanese Religions at Home and Abroad: Anthropological Perspectives (Routledge Curzon, 2003) and The Culture of Association and Associations in Contemporary Japanese Society (co-ed. National Museum of Ethnology, 2002). Lynne Y. Nakano is Associate Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Community Volunteers in Japan: Everyday Stories of Social Change (Routledge/Curzon JAWS series). Her current research interests include unmarried men’s lives in Hong Kong and Japan and Japanese fashion influences in Asia. Yoshiko Nakano is Assistant Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She has co-edited a volume

xiv List of contributors Reporting Hong Kong (1999 Curzon/St. Martin’s) and her most recent publication is Onajikama no Meshi (Turning Japanese Rice Cookers into Chinese), co-authored with Dixon Wong Heung Wah (in Japanese, 2005 Heibon-sha). Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, native of Japan, is William F. Vilas Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her career started with a study of the Ainu and since the 1980s she has worked on Japanese culture from the perspective of historical and symbolic anthropology. Her single authored books include: Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (University of Chicago Press), Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time (Princeton University Press) and The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Kirsten Refsing is Professor of Japanese Studies, The University of Hong Kong. Her major research fields are in Ainu language, the history of Ainu research and the Anglican Mission in Hokkaido. She is responsible for The Ainu Library, vols 1–25 (London: Curzon Press and RoutledgeCurzon, 1996–2002). Mitchell W. Sedgwick is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, and Associate Director of the Europe Japan Research Centre, at Oxford Brookes University. He has conducted ethnographic research in Japan among the aged, the Korean minority, on employment in the Japan Alps and, since the early 1990s, on issues concerned with Japanese globalisation based on studies of cross-cultural dynamics within overseas subsidiaries of Japanese multinational corporations. Akitoshi Shimizu is Professor Emeritus of the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, who is currently doing research on ideological mobilisations of anthropological knowledge during the wartime 1930s and 1940s in Japan. Together with Dr Jan van Bremen, he co-edited two books: Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania (Curzon, 1999), and Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific (National Museum of Ethnology, 2003). Wendy Smith is the Director of the Centre for Malaysian Studies, Monash Asia Institute, and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management, Monash University. Her current research interests include Japanese management transfer, managing ethnic and religious diversity, social protection in Malaysia and the globalisation of new religious organizations. She has recently published in Marika Vicziany (ed.), Cultures and Technologies in Asia: The Paradigm Shifts (2004); and ‘The corporate culture of a globalized Japanese New Religion’, Senri Ethnological Studies, 62 (2002).

List of contributors

xv

Bruce White is Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. He is also an honorary research fellow of the Europe Japan Research Centre (EJRC), Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is co-editor of Japan’s Changing Generations: Are Japanese Young People Creating a New Society? (2004). Heung Wah Wong is Associate Professor at The Department of Japanese Studies, The University of Hong Kong. His current research interest lies in the study of Japanese companies overseas and the expansion of Japanese popular culture in East Asia. He is the author of Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: Power and Control in a Hong Kong Megastore (1999) and Onajikama no Meshi (Turning Japanese Rice Cookers into Chinese) with Yoshiko Nakano (2005). Shinji Yamashita is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on the dynamics of culture in the process of globalization, especially with reference to international tourism and transnational migration. His regional concern is Japan and Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia. His recent books include Globalization in Southeast Asia: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives (co-ed. with J.S. Eades, Berghahn Books, 2003), Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism (translated by J.S. Eades, Berghahn Books, 2003) and The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia (co-ed. with Joseph Bosco and J.S. Eades, Berghahn Books, 2004).

Biography

Jan Gerhard van Bremen Born Almelo, the Netherlands, 9 June 1946, died Amsterdam, 1 June 2005 Married: 17 September 1968, to Keiko Ito¯, who died 2 December, 2005 Two sons, Maerlant and Jiro¯

Education and Academic Positions Doctorandus (cum laude) in Cultural Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, 1971 M.A. and PhD Cultural Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 1972 and 1984 Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies: 1973–4 To¯kyo¯ University and Nagoya University: Research on Neo-Confucianism in contemporary Japan, 1974–5 Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, 1975–86 Lecturer, Center for Japanese and Korean Studies, University of Leiden, January 1987

Visiting Appointments Keio¯ University, To¯kyo¯, January–March 1986 The National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, August–Oct. 1986, April 1992–January 1983 ´ cole des Hautes E´tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, May–June 1990, June 1997 E Friedrich-Alexander-Universita¨t Erlangen-Nu¨rnberg, December 1996 Leiden University Huis ten Bosch Branch, Nagasaki, Japan, January–March 1999 Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, February–July 2002

Offices and contributions to professional societies European Association for Japanese Studies: Secretary 1988–94, Interim director 1994. Japan Anthropology Workshop: co-founder, 1984, EAJS liaison officer 1991–4, Secretary-General and Newsletter Editor, 1999–2005; RoutledgeCurzon Series, founder and member, Editorial Board

xviii

Biography

Netherlands Association for Japanese Studies: Vice-president 1987–91 Leiden Group for Japanese Studies, established under the Erasmus Programme of the European Community, founding-director 1987–91 Commission on Theoretical Anthropology (COTA) established in 1993 by the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). Founding member and member of the steering committee 1993–present. Japanese Society of Ethnology (Nihon Minzoku Gakkai) Folklore Society of Japan (Nihon Minzoku Gakkai) European Association of Social Anthropologists East Asian Network of the American Association of Anthropology International Institute of Asian Studies: Member Academic Committee 2001–5 Anthropology of Japan in Japan: Member Advisory Council 2004–5

Part I

Introduction

1

Anthropology in Japan: A Model for Good Practice in a Global Arena? Joy Hendry

Introduction: How this book came about At a meeting of the Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS), held in Hong Kong in early 2005, a plenary session was held on the theme East meets West in Japanese Anthropology. It followed a style which had been initiated by Jan van Bremen, then Secretary General of JAWS, and Bill Kelly, local organiser of the 2002 JAWS meeting at Yale, where a few speakers gave short position essays on a specific subject to an audience which was then invited to respond. As before, plenty of time was set aside for discussion, and a fruitful debate ensued. The theme was addressed, but a recurring comment, also echoing some of the presentations, was that this East-West dichotomy had reached a point of declining usefulness. The scholars present had travelled from several different countries, they originated from many more, and their training was also quite varied. Although they were focusing their presentations on Japan, they were often addressing a much more diverse audience than they would in their usual place of work, and the big plenary workshop offered a special chance to turn over ideas that reflected the heady mix that the conference comprised. Lola Martinez (Spanish-American-Japan-UK) pointed out that the line of demarcation anyway shifts historically – from the UK, the East was for long a lot nearer than Japan, Mexican participant Genaro Castro-Vazquez complained that he finds no place in such a division of the world, and session chair, Dixon Wong (Hong Kong-UK-Japan), suggested that complaining from the East of the hegemony of Western systems of thought merely perpetuates that hegemony. Most of those offering position pieces – Harumi Befu, Takami Kuwayama, Okpyo Moon and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney – were anyway scholars who crossed the division in one way or another, being born in one part of a conceivable East-West divide, but trained and/or teaching in another. I was the last remaining member of the panel, and although my division of birth and ancestry was no greater than that between different countries of the UK, I also work in Japan, and I felt able to contribute to the debate. Following an unpublished article by Shinji Yamashita, I had

2

Joy Hendry

suggested that anthropologists, who almost by definition find themselves in an in-between situation, are in a good position to build a new, co-operative way of thinking that could be much more value free. At the time, I had no idea that this would turn out to be a theme so prevalent amongst my colleagues, but I now see it as the major contribution of this book. Some fruitful ideas were germinated in this session, and as Jan van Bremen had devised the theme but was unable to attend due to declining health, we decided to think about making a volume to commemorate his years as JAWS Secretary General. Dixon arranged for a video recording of the session to be made, we collected a long list of potential contributors, and on my way home I travelled to Jan’s home in Amsterdam with the proposals. We watched the video, discussed the themes, and together devised a new title that would better reflect the outcome. We also considered a few other people who might make useful contributions, and I sat down at once and dispatched e-mail messages to everyone to invite them to write position pieces on the topic, kept short in order to include as many ideas as possible. The response was fast, and truly remarkable, for our list of contributors not only includes many well known names in the field, but their topics neatly link in with ideas of new anthropologies already cutting away at the edge of thinking way beyond the tired old East-West divide. Moreover, and in quite an unplanned though hardly surprising way, the material presented builds on Jan’s recent work and carries it forward. A list of his publications forms part of the Bibliography, and it demonstrates clearly how far his thinking and his scholarly activities had already proceeded down the road being advocated in this book. Sadly, he did not live to see the volume published, but he did see the Contents and the abstracts, and I suspect that he realised better than we did at the time how well this book would reflect the work he had been doing. He certainly approved! The volume has thus turned out to be a fine tribute to the man it was designed to honour, as well as bringing together some of the work he was involved in. It offers an innovative approach to Jan’s field of anthropology from the place he did most of his work, and this innovation is reflected in its position piece style. This format was discussed at the business meeting of the conference as a good way to promote discussion among students of some of the basic tenets and terms of the subject. As an accessible medium to the next generation, it will also pay homage to a man who helped so many people to proceed with their own careers that he sometimes damaged his own. This book allows us to acknowledge that generosity, and to mark out an appreciation of the true value of such genuine scholarship.

The Content of the Book The essays are presented in six main sections, with a round-up analysis by my co-editor Dixon Wong. The book has been laid out so that it may be dipped into at any point, the sections serving to order in a reasonably sensible

Anthropology in Japan

3

way a set of essays that are full of cross-references as they approach and address the theme from a variety of perspectives. All the essays address the theme more or less directly, and most demonstrate in some way or another how the wider anthropological world can benefit from the study of Japan, or study in Japan. Critical essays may be found throughout the book, several offer ways out of the bind within which this dichotomy places us, and some demonstrate that we have been engaging in practices that override the dichotomy for years already. Readers may select a particular essay, or a section, depending on their own interests, and those who want to rush straight for the new directions study in Japan can bring to anthropology may be best satisfied by starting at the end. That said, let me lay out the rationale for our ordering of the essays and a taste of some of the gems to follow. The first section contains some of the most theoretical essays, selected to demonstrate the fundamental need for this dismantling theme. OhnukiTierney was the keynote speaker at our conference, and we offer her the opening words in deference to this position, but her argument strikes at the heart of the matter. Using Japanese history to justify her case, she sets out to ‘do away altogether’ with the concept of ‘hybridity’, on the grounds that it presupposes a prior notion of ‘pure’ culture that has never existed. Instead, she argues, Japanese (and indeed any) culture is constituted by a process of continuous dialectic between internal and external factors. Shimizu’s essay takes this theoretical stance to an more abstract level, examining the whole notion of dichotomising, and arguing that multiple dichotomies must be set up to represent the internal and external angles that have been used to place Japan within the wider world. The next two essays introduce the anthropologist to the scene, and although both use Japanese materials to illustrate their arguments, the points they make are again more general. Goodman’s theme is the relationship between individual researchers and the societies in which they work, and he argues that their underlying theoretical models have a far greater impact on their research than the variables such as nationality and ethnicity that have dominated the reflexive literature. Martinez, on the other hand, examines the changing relationship between Japanese and non-Japanese anthropologists working in Japan and suggests an important contribution that these developments make to the wider field in which we all work. Lock’s essay, the last in this section, puts the anthropological approach itself under scrutiny in an examination of the popularisation of biomedical knowledge in a ‘postgenomic’ era, and she argues for a judicious consideration of both biological and cultural factors in understanding diversity that ‘is not amenable to dichotomisation’. The second section of the book turns immediately to the more concrete. First, Kuwayama examines the contemporary nature of anthropological fieldwork, held up against the more co-operative research of Japanese folklorists. Nakamaki reviews examples of co-operation between Japanese and

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non-Japanese scholars that are so long-standing he describes them as a tradition in Japanese anthropology. Sedgwick, who has been part of one of these projects, plays down the diversity in method, wherever anthropology is carried out, emphasising instead the importance of those personal contacts in a field situation. The last two essays in this section illustrate the results of such fieldwork, both concerned with Japan looking out, transforming itself, as much as fieldworkers coming in. Yoshiko Nakano’s essay examines the fate of Japanese rice-cookers in the hands of skilful Hong Kong intermediaries, and Guichard-Anguis looks at the Asianisation of ‘traditional’ Japanese accommodation. A personal perspective becomes the theme of the third section of the book, starting with an amusing essay by European-born Peter Knecht who examines his position in various states of ambiguity as a long-term resident and employee of Japan. Castro-Va´zquez, on the other hand, focuses on the rather more serious implications of the system of (non-)classification for Latin Americans living there. Creighton raises an issue familiar to many non-Americans who get classified as undifferentiated Westerners by examining her own situation as a US citizen, born and raised, but working in a city in Canada with quite a large Japanese population. She touches on the extent to which expectations in one society may elicit a reading of another that is inappropriate from the perspective of the third, an issue also taken up by Heung Wah (Dixon) Wong from a different locale. He critiques his own work, as a Chinese anthropologist trying to understand Japanese company employees in Hong Kong, a position he argues gave him no special advantage, since he found himself using a model rather alien to both traditions. The following section perseveres with this regional approach, at first turning the focus to other parts of Asia, and then moving further afield. Korean anthropologist Okpyo Moon, who also presented in the plenary session, makes the important point that interpretations of Japan that might appeal in an international context are not necessarily those that go down well in Korea. She criticises Japanese anthropologists for leaning too far towards the Western hegemony, and proposes that a breakthrough can and should be made by incorporating other Asian perspectives into the scene and trying to create a common platform for exchanging ideas and sharing interests. The following essay, by Bruce White, suggests that at least young people in Japan may be taking steps in this direction already, and both look towards an essay in the last section, by Lynne Nakano, which advocates seeking common ground in a wider audience for anthropological scholarship. William W. Kelly’s essay looks at first as though it might seek to defend the apparent dominance of the US in what they there call Japan Anthropology, but actually it turns out to offer an interesting inside perspective on the subject. Those in the field are large in number, and he offers explanations for this, but apparently they don’t feel as powerful as outsiders might imagine, and he argues that the subject has always been more cosmopolitan than the figures would suggest. Martin’s essay on expatriate Japanese

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housewives in the UK would seem to confirm a cosmopolitanism for the ‘global citizens’ some of our Japanese informants have become, and she argues that these ones also have a powerful role to play in breaking down that old East–West division. Historical aspects of the problem form the focus of the next section, and the first essay looks at some citizens claimed by Japan who have for long confounded the East–West dichotomy. Since the sixteenth century, when the first European encounter with the Ainu took place, Refsing records that they were classified as ‘white’, a perception that has persisted until recent times, though the actual evidence is thin. An odd situation arose in the nineteenth century, then, when Japan used a European model to ‘colonise’ the Ainu, who if ‘white’ should of course have been ‘superior’ and more ‘civilised’ than their ‘yellow’ neighbours were. Asquith’s essay addresses another aspect of nineteenth-century thinking when she looks at the social ecology theory of Kinji Imanishi who had been portrayed as a nationalistic anti-Darwinian in suggesting a co-operative rather than competitive explanation of natural partitioning. Asquith’s work reveals a lot more ‘Western’ influence in this ‘Eastern’ idea than had previously been recognised. Kreiner makes a similar point about some of the huge volume of Japanese art works lodged in European museums. Dating back to the sixteenth century, these collections must have influenced European perceptions of the Japanese, he argues, but of course many of them were specifically made for European consumption so they may also exhibit Japanese understandings of Europe. A nice illustration of Ohnuki-Tierney’s process of continuous dialectic between internal and external factors. Ackermann’s essay in this section – based on a recent experience with young Germans and Japanese – takes a rather different stand. He argues that the powerful influence of history in forming basic categories relating to ‘religious family rituals’ requires a very pragmatic approach when individuals from differing backgrounds come together to exchange views.

Towards a New Anthropology By the last section of the book, the East-West divide has been thoroughly dismantled, and although the essays here continue with the theme, they also bring together some rather powerful suggestions about how anthropology at large may learn from the Japanese case. The proposals here, with little formal consultation, actually dovetail very nicely with the thrust of my own initial presentation which argued that the anthropological work we have all been carrying out in Japan can provide a model for good practice beyond our own regional specialisation. The idea is based partly on the good relations that exist between inside and outside anthropologists of Japan, and partly because the mutual representations of Japan by anthropologists of outside countries, and those countries by Japanese anthropologists, are relatively equal and undifferentiated in hierarchical terms (Hendry 1997).

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My own recent research (Hendry 2005) has actually been away from Japan, in post-colonial situations that have been the more traditional fields of anthropological fieldwork, and the experience has made me acutely aware of the advantages I have had working in Japan. Many of the people I have been working with were expected to die out by my predecessors in the field, and their material culture was appropriated by our museum colleagues, working for the nations that have been built around them. They did not die out, of course, as Sahlins (1999b) has noted so eloquently, and I have been examining ways in which they are reclaiming their own representations in Culture Centres, and redefining themselves by ‘indigenizing modernity’ (ibid.). But there is considerable residual hard feeling for anthropologists. Japan has much experience of ‘indigenizing modernity’, of course, and of redefining itself vis- a`-vis the outside world. From the late nineteenth century, it worked hard to join the peoples it saw as powerful, ‘attempting an empire’, as Mathews (2004) put it, imposing assimilation policies on the Ainu (and the ‘Ryukyuans’), and sending anthropologists out to work on ‘others’ who fell within their expanding frontiers. After its defeat in World War II, Japan suffered occupation and being demeaned by the rest of the world. As it recovered, and surprised the world with its success, it also became the object of study by others, and in the heyday of Nihonjinron, reached a pinnacle of pronouncements that ‘only we Japanese can understand ourselves’. I am reminded of this as I watch people around the world setting up courses in Indigenous Studies, Native Studies, Aboriginal Studies, and so forth, while they reject the anthropologists who have written about them over the years. This is not what happened in Japan, of course, and we outside anthropologists are made welcome, though we are expected to register at a Japanese university, and consult our colleagues who are working on their home territory. We are also invited to take part in local projects, as Nakamaki’s essay in this book makes clear, and several volumes in the bibliography demonstrate. Indeed, it is by working co-operatively like this that we make best progress, as Teigo Yoshida (1987) pointed out many years ago at the JAWS meeting in Jerusalem. I would like to argue that such activity makes an excellent model for a new kind of anthropology that might eventually even draw in those people who are still smarting from the disadvantage at which they feel their that ‘native’ position leaves them. In this way of thinking, Japan itself is ‘somewhere in-between’, just as Yamashita argues for Japanese anthropology in the first essay of the last section of this book. His proposal to move towards an ‘interactive anthropology’, and create an ‘open forum in which the various anthropologies in the world can meet together on an equal footing’, is very appropriate. Although anthropological traditions in the world may vary between countries, he points out that anthropology is also transnational, and those of us who practice it should not represent nations, but remain ‘somewhere inbetween’. The next essay, by Mathews, formalises this proposal by arguing

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that as anthropology becomes a truly global discipline, it will also at last become a scientific one, free from the hierarchy of power implied by earlier erroneous systems of classification. Such a discipline would involve a range of societies studying a range of societies, regardless of former imbalance. Lynne Nakano’s essay, already mentioned above, opens up this new vision of equality for anthropology to those who read our work, and suggests explaining experiences of life (in Japan) by referencing widely shared commonalities of human experience that will resonate with our readers in various parts of the world. Carle’s essay turns again to the relationship between observers and the observed, addressing the issue of ‘native anthropology’, as raised by Kuwayama and discussed by van Bremen and others. He advocates an ‘open anthropology [that] would allow for greater inclusion, greater dialogue, and greater precision in the construction of anthropological knowledge’. The final essay of this section, offered by Ben-Ari, but as work he had been in the process of completing with van Bremen, demonstrates that many of the ideas raised in earlier essays had already been in their scrutiny. It makes a tidy comparison between Japanese anthropology and the ‘EuroAmerican model’, initially as a possible alternative, but ultimately concluding, as several others have, that together these multiple anthropological discourses may enrich our discipline and the practices through which we produce and reproduce it.

Part II

Theoretical Perspectives

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Against ‘Hybridity’: Culture as Historical Processes Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

Introduction I attempt my task of debunking the idea of ‘East Meets West’ by using the two important axes in anthropology today. First is the historicisation of anthropology, by which I mean that we understand culture as historical processes and to historicise the notion of ‘culture’ itself. Second is its corollary – globalisation in historical perspective – in which I argue against the currently fashionable notion of hybridity. The East–West dichotomy is just as useless and false as the Great Divide which plagued anthropology from the start. The Great Divide dichotomised the globe into the West, with historical/hot societies, and the ‘non-literate primitives’ without history. In this model, East Asian ‘civilisations’ in India, China, Korea, Japan and elsewhere were left out as territories for other disciplines. It is banal to point out at present that none of these geographical dichotomies made sense, in plain reality or conceptually. I begin with concrete examples to illustrate my points.

‘East’ Meets ‘East’: the Japanese Conceptions of the Self Wet-rice agriculture, introduced from somewhere in Asia to Japan around 400 BCE, gradually supplanted the previous hunting-gathering subsistence economy that began with the first occupation of the archipelago around 200,000 BCE. Wet-rice agriculture provided the economic and symbolic foundation for the Yamato state and the imperial system (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993). The agrarian cosmology developed during the ancient period built a lasting cosmological tradition, with residual effects even today when the rice economy is no longer important and the imperial system is reduced to its ‘symbolic’ presence. Japan’s ‘history’ starts with its appropriation of the imported rice and rice agriculture as its own. The eighth-century mythhistories, the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, the first ‘chronicles’, were commissioned by the Tenmu Emperor, who sought to establish a Japanese identity distinct from that of Tang China, whose influence was engulfing Japan.

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These myth-histories are replete with references to rice as Japanese deities. In one version in the Kojiki, Amaterasu is the mother of a grain soul whose name bears reference to rice stalks. The legendary Jinmu Emperor, the socalled ‘first’ emperor, is the son of the grain soul, or the grandson of the Sun Goddess, who sends him to rule the earth. At the time of his descent, the Sun Goddess gives her grandson the original rice grains that she has grown in heaven (Takamagahara) from various seeds of grains given to her by the Deity of Food. The grandson’s mission was to transform a wilderness into a land of succulent ears of rice (mizuho) nurtured by Amaterasu’s rays. Instead of the creation of a universe, as in many other peoples’ origin myths, this version of the myth is about the transformation of a wilderness into a land of abundant rice at the command of Amaterasu, whose descendants, the emperors, rule the country by officiating at rice harvest rituals. Appropriating rice of foreign origin as Japanese rice, grown by Japanese deities, the myth establishes a symbolic equation between ‘Japanese’ rice and deities, and between rice paddies and Japanese space. Throughout most Japanese history, rice was served primarily as food for the upper classes, but symbolically it has always been the most important food for most Japanese. Through rice consumption, the Japanese internalised the divine power embodied in each grain. Rice and rice products are the single most important foods for commensality between humans and deities, on the one hand, and among humans, on the other. During agricultural rituals for farmers and during the nationwide New Year’s celebration today, rice wine and rice cakes are offered to the deities and then shared among humans. Also, in the daily lives of the Japanese, rice plays a crucial role in commensal activities, as offerings in the family ancestral alcove and as the only food that is shared at meals, while other dishes are placed in individual containers. Rice stands for ‘we’, i.e. whatever social group one belongs to, as in the common expression ‘to eat from the same rice-cooking pan’, which connotes a strong sense of fellowship arising from sharing meals. By contrast, expressions such as ‘to eat cold rice’ (rice is usually served hot) and ‘to eat someone else’s rice’ refer to the rough world of outsiders. During the Edo period (1603–1868), seignorial power was expressed through the image of golden ears of rice stretching across the lord’s domain. In rural Japan even today, rice paddies are ‘our ancestral land’, a spatial metaphor for the family. Although the valorisation of rice paddies as countryside cum ‘nature’ by intellectuals and artists began earlier, we see its systematic development during the late Edo period, when Edo (Tokyo) became the urban centre. Rice fields against the background of Mt Fuji became a common motif in visual art, representing ‘agrarian Japan’, i.e. ‘the Japan’. Rice paddies became the Japanese land and history, that is, the primordial Japanese identity, uncontaminated by modernity and foreign influences as represented by the city. In other words, a foreign food came to represent the primordiality of the Japanese without foreign contamination.

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This development was indeed a totalisation process which wrote off all non-agrarian people, some of whom became marginalised minorities, including ‘outcaste (hisabetsu burakumin)’ and the Ainu (Ohnuki-Tierney 1998). During the late nineteenth century, the Japanese were literally overwhelmed by the development of science and technology. On the one hand, Japan entered a period of intense mimesis of the West, both its high cultures and its quotidian lifestyle. On the other hand, the Japanese, like Schiller’s ‘bent twig’, lashed back, refusing to settle for an inferior status (Berlin 1959: 246). ‘Rice as self’ came to the service of this discourse. The distinction between Japanese and Westerners took the form of rice vs. meat (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993). On the other hand, by this time the geopolitics was far more complex. The Japanese effort to distinguish themselves from the Westerners thus involved extricating themselves from other Asians, because the Westerners lumped the Japanese with other Asians who had by then become marginalised external Others for the Japanese. Having ‘digested’ rice, culturally, the Japanese used ‘their’ rice to define themselves against the Chinese, whose rice became ‘foreign’ rice of inferior quality –a metaphor for the marginalized external Other (Ohnuki-Tierney 1998). Throughout the modernising period, the construction of the Japanese national identity by the military government involved the use of foodstuffs, especially rice. The purity of white rice (hakumai) or ‘pure-rice’ (junmai) became a powerful metaphor for the purity of the Japanese self. During World War II, white rice had to be saved for the soldiers, who would bring Japan’s victory with plenty of domestic white rice, instead of foreign rice, a symbol of war time suffering. The rice importation issue in 1993 reaffirmed the symbolic power of rice for self-identity even at a time when Japan produced an oversupply of rice and the government paid rice farmers to fallow their fields (Ohnuki-Tierney 1995). The public discourse in mass media at the time involved the recurrent spatial metaphor of rice paddies as our land; the paddies also purify our air and serve as dams. The equation of self-sufficiency with exclusive reliance on domestic rice was frequently used as a discursive trope. In sum, the first wave of the global/external force in the form of objects and technology transformed virtually all that which is usually considered to lie at the core of any culture: the political economy, with its imperial system based on wet rice economy; agrarian cosmology, which later turned into ideology and prevailed throughout history; and social stratification, creating both internal and external Others. Above all, this originally foreign item became a dominant symbol representing the primordial self of all the Japanese, and continues to be so when rice is of little quantitative value.

‘East’ meets ‘West’: Japanese Kingship and Constitutions Like rice and its cultivation, the protocol of Japan’s imperial system was introduced from China. The emperor evolved from a shaman whose political power was predicated upon his presumed religious power to guarantee a

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good crop of rice, to a powerful political leader of the Yamato state of ancient Japan. After reaching its zenith of power during the ancient period, the emperor system lost its power at the end of the twelfth century, never to regain it. De facto political and economic power had been held by a series of military leaders (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993; 2002: 61–102). With the Meiji ‘restoration,’ the emperor system was ‘restored’ in the Constitution of Imperial Japan which represented a whole scale adoption of the Prussian constitution and the Japanese emperor system was modelled after the European monarchy, closely following the blueprint laid out by the European legal advisers. The new identity of the emperor was as a sovereign, a divine king not to be violated, and the Commander of the Army and Navy. In addition, following Lorenz von Stein’s advice, the Japanese government, not having a ‘Great Religion’, attempted to transform folk Shintoism into a state religion, and created a large number of rituals to foster respect and worship of the emperor (Inoue 1967: 70; see also Inada 1962: 567–68). This was quite a feat from the emperor as shaman qua deity in a pantheon that had been in the shadow of military leaders for several centuries. The oligarchs, however, were not mere puppets of Western scholars. Against the opposition of all foreign advisers, their constitution began by proclaiming the emperor to belong to a singular genealogical line for eternity (Emura 1996: 248). In other words, the conceptual backbone of the ‘emperor ideology (tenno¯sei)’ – the Divine Japanese Emperor in charge of the military, for whom soldiers must happily sacrifice themselves – was born of the discourse between Japanese political leaders and Western scholars, just as the Japanese concept of the self became articulated through the Japanese discourse with the Chinese. The global/local interaction at the time of Meiji gave birth to a most horrifying ‘hybrid monster’ that resulted in phantasmagorical atrocities upon both Japanese and non-Japanese. At the end of World War II, once again the Other, this time, the American Occupational Forces, drafted Japan’s constitution in which the Japanese emperor system was again fundamentally remade to become a symbolic token. In sum, the emperor system of Japan was born as a result of the Japanese contacts with the Chinese and was fundamentally remade in the Meiji period because of the global vertigo, only to be thoroughly transformed again by an external force at the end of World War II. Although the Japanese have been active social agents all along, these changes were to a great degree due to the interaction of the local with the external/global.

Discussion Some claim that the present is a new Global Era, with a Global Culture, discontinuous from the past. Although there is no space to discuss this issue satisfactorily, we must address the question of how we compare the above historical experiences, chosen as examples. Are they far less significant than

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the spread of the golden arches and other aspects of American youth culture, fast food, democratisation, the human rights movement, feminism, minority rights, environmental movements, and cyberspace communication (Ohnuki-Tierney 1999)? How do we determine the significance of each of these developments that has spread across the globe? Prior to this contemporary globalism, many other global forces have engulfed large parts of the world during the modern period: the spread of a mercantile economy, capitalism and colonialism, as well as print culture and map-making. Braudel’s (1972–3 [1949]) Mediterranean world during the second half of the sixteenth century stretched as far east as China. Fevre and Martin’s (1976) work on the spread of print culture between 1450 and 1800 (see also Anderson 1991) is followed by Harvey’s (1990) finding that the Ptolemaic map in Florence in 1400 became the watershed for the world to become a global unity; with its temporal parallel being the spread of the Gregorian calendar, leading to his well-known concept of ‘time-space compression’. Unlike Wallerstein, for whom the ceaseless accumulation of capital was the logic of his world system, Marx foresaw the importance of consumption when he declared that the ‘cheap prices of its commodities’ were the ‘heavy artillery’ with which to ‘batter down all Chinese walls’ (Marx 1852 [1989]: 12), envisioning a borderless world in which workers from around the globe would unite for their own defence: ‘The working men have no country’ (Marx and Engels 1848 [1989]: 26). Both Wallerstein and Marx predicted, falsely in some people’s view, the likeness that would develop across national boundaries. Wolf (1982), in his Europe and the People Without History, persuasively argued that capitalism had engulfed the people with history but that local conditions prevented the development of global capitalism. Mintz (1985) told us how the entire tropical New World was colonised because of Europeans’ ‘acquired taste’ for sugar. Mintz’s new and old worlds were crisscrossed by the transnational/global flows of sugar and associated activities in various directions, giving rise to the birth of the term creole. The African and other slave trades resulted in arguably the most massive transnational diasporas in history. In all these historical experiences over the globe, the local was never a solid structure/culture selectively absorbing foreign elements through reinterpretation, only to reproduce itself. Rather, the global/local interaction is a mutually constituent process in which the local, through the actions of historical agents, acts upon the outside forces, which become transformed, while the local, in turn, undergoes changes because of the global. In this process of interpenetration, there is no privileged domain in culture. If Japan adopted its agrarian economy, kingship and constitutions from its Others, so did many others, including the Romans, who took over the tutelary gods of cities which they conquered and claimed that they were local manifestations of their own gods (Harrison 1992: 228–9), just as the

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Japanese adopted Buddhism and claimed it to be the manifestation of the native shintoism (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993:60). ‘East meets West’ is a paradigm rising out of the nineteenth-century Eurocentric view of the world, on the one hand, and of the ‘structure and event’ paradigm in history and anthropology, on the other. A corollary to the mutually constituent nature of the global and the local in culture is that neither temporal nor ontological priority should be given to one of these false dyads, the ‘global/local’ and ‘structure/event’. Processes of interaction between the local and the external form culture. As we saw above, the ‘global event’– the introduction of rice economy – became a catalyst for articulating the then inchoate notion of the Japanese self. At the time of Meiji, the global event – the onslaught of Western political forces – again led to dramatic changes, including the creation of the new imperial system. Every culture is a product of a series of, and continuous interpenetration between the external/global and the local. Each conjuncture requires a reinterpretation of the foreign elements, which in turn transforms the local, which had already undergone similar processes before. ‘The global and local interpenetration’ is the sine quanon of all cultures, and is the locus where history is made at the hands of cosmopolitan historical agents.

‘Hybridity’ as Sine Qua Non of Culture If the continuous interpenetration of the global and the local is what makes culture, is it appropriate to foreground the notion and the term ‘hybrid’? I think not. The metaphor of hybrid is objectionable on two grounds. First, if all cultures are historical products of interpenetration between the global and the local, then, it is a logical contradiction to propose that a culture is a ‘hybrid’. Culture is a product of interaction between cultures, each of which is ‘hybrid’. Such terms as ‘hybrids’ and ‘creoles’ are predicated upon the notion of a ‘pure’ culture – a phantasm, not unlike the Cold War – a welldemarcated, essentialised, and bounded entity. Second, the notion of ‘hybrid’ renders a culture a static entity, pointing only to the synchronic time slice when the ‘global/external’ meets the local.

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West/Japan Dichotomy in the Context of Multiple Dichotomies Akitoshi Shimizu

I will begin this essay with a consideration of some muddles in the ways the dichotomies of West/Japan and the like are used in anthropological discussions. I will try to find an appropriate way to dismantle dichotomies, not only specifically the dichotomy of West/Japan, by paying attention to epistemological conditions for such dichotomous concepts to be meaningful. My forecast is that paradoxically the way dichotomies are questioned will also suggest how useful and fertile a dichotomy can be as a heuristic tool, if it is used under deliberate, analytical control.

Epistemological conditions of dichotomy A dichotomy, when taken alone, cannot constitute a self-consistent system, since any dichotomy is located in the larger context of which it is a part. The dichotomy is not so much a matter of ontology as a matter of epistemology; when two items within a field of perception are found contrasted with each other, the two – more precisely the contrasted features of the two – are highlighted and conceived as constituting a dichotomous pair. To the extent that the pair is highlighted, the two items are separated from other related items, which, located in the same space of perception, are to be conceived as constituting the unmarked background context of the dichotomy. The significance – in the sense of the meanings indicated by a signifier/ sign – of a dichotomy is entirely dependent on the epistemological framework in which it is located. It is inappropriate, if not entirely erroneous, to interpret a dichotomy in ontological terms; what appears meaningful in a dichotomy tells more about the contrast between the two opposed parties than about the substantial quality of each party. Moreover, a dichotomy is not something simply given to conception; a dichotomy is selectively recognised as such, being extracted out of a wider field of perception. The significance of a dichotomy is necessarily dependent on the conceptual selection of the two items of the dichotomous pair. Suppose a particular item is selected that is found in a conceptual dichotomy with another item. If a third item is selected out of the same context, or from an expanded field of perception, and opposed to the initial item, then

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it will present other features than it did in the initial dichotomy. The features conceived of an item are dependent on the contrast it presents to other items in dichotomous terms. If the dichotomy is always conceptually constructed within the context of an unmarked circumstantial background, it is naturally expected that both parties of the dichotomy are located in a network of relations that connects not only each of the dichotomous parties to items in the background; the network of relations also connects items in the background with one another. The field of perception, in which some dichotomies happen to be highlighted, should be interpreted as a network of relations, in which multiple dichotomies can be discerned. Then, any item found in a context of multiple dichotomies conveys multiple meanings, some of which may even contradict each other. Seen in this perspective of multiple dichotomies, any item located in a network of relations is a sign of transient and fluid significances. This epistemological feature of multiple dichotomies is a source of analytical muddles of dichotomy, but at the same time it is the very source of the heuristic fertility of dichotomy.

Japan between the West and Asia Japan in the dichotomy of the West vs. Japan may represent the non-West, and the East in particular; Japan could be the most outstanding Other opposed to the West. Japanese intellectuals have maintained a keen interest in the contemporary states of Japan and the Japanese people since the years of the Meiji era. One can easily trace among them a dominant trend of selfrecognition that emphasised, and often praised, a unique Japan and the idiosyncratic character of Japanese culture (or nationality or society). This marked trend of Japanism, so to speak, can be traced up to the so-called Nihonjin-ron and Nihon-bunka-ron of the late twentieth century. According to Nagao Nishikawa, however, this trend of Japanism was not alone; it was always in a dichotomous opposition to another trend of self-representation, although the latter diminished its appearance in the course of time. The selfreflection of the states of Japan began in early Meiji years with an endeavour to measure the position of Japan in the contemporary international world. Yukichi Fukuzawa’s Datsua-ron represented the earliest phase of this trend. Nishikawa recognised the two rival trends in the self-recognition of Japan by Japanese intellectuals through a contrast of the key words adopted by them, which were respectively: culture (with an inward- and backwardlooking orientation towards the past and rich historical traditions of the nation) and civilisation (with an outward-looking orientation towards the future development of modern, human universals) (Nishikawa 1995). Fukuzawa characteristically considered Japan in a context consisting of at least three parties: civilised West, half-civilised Asia, and Japan between the two. He thought that Japan had a choice of two alternatives for the near future, a choice that can pertinently be recapitulated in terms of multiple – double in this case – dichotomies; either Japan should join Asia in a

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dichotomy of the West vis-a`-vis Japan plus Asia, or Japan should choose to leave Asia in another dichotomy of the West plus Japan vis-a`-vis the rest of Asia (China and Korea in particular). And, of course, he chose the latter, with an emphatic intention of imperialist expansion, then current among major Western countries (Fukuzawa 1885). This shift of Japan’s self-positioning should have appeared to East Asian intellectuals to consist of a double shift; in their perspective Japan tried to get out of an inferior status of barbarity in the world-view of the Central Flower (or Chinese) civilisation and to claim a superior status in the Western civilisation. The outward- and forward- looking trend, in its later development, did not always maintain its oppositional distance from the rival trend, but rather it intensified a tendency of incorporating critical elements of the latter into itself; this tendency eventually culminated in the ultra-nationalist chauvinism and the militarist project of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in the wartime 1930s and 1940s. Even in hybrid forms, the ideologies in this trend more or less inherited the conceptual framework of the multiple dichotomies in which Fukuzawa tried to position Japan. To summarise, Japan’s policies of colonial government in Taiwan and Korea, and the policies of military government in occupied areas of China and ‘the South’ (Nanpo¯, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific), were ambivalent and ambiguous, a feature which can be interpreted as reflecting Japan’s changing (or double) choices between the two dichotomies: the West plus Japan vis-a`vis Asia-Pacific, and the West vis-a`-vis Japan plus Asia-Pacific. The Japanisation policies of the colonial governments in Taiwan and Korea, for instance, were not aimed at a simple assimilation of one party (Taiwan or Korea) into the other (Japan) in the binary opposition of Taiwan vs. Japan, or Korea vs. Japan. The Japanisation policies, which were not unitary but always changing, were modelled after the modernised Japan, which was also always changing. Hence, post-colonial intellectuals of Taiwan and Korea are forced into a task of distinguishing the supposedly ‘Western’ and/or ‘modern’ elements from the supposedly ‘Japanese’ influences received during the colonial years (Zhan 2002). Even Japanese, a foreign language imposed upon the colonised people as the standard language for public life, was a medium for opening their minds to the global, modernised world; they had access to world literature through Japanese translations, and they thought about aspects of modernity through standard Japanese, itself a modernised dialect of Japanese. In certain respects, Japan represented Western modernity in opposition to ‘traditional’ Taiwan and Korea (Horie 2005, Ueno 2005; here I ignore the internal diversity of Korea and Taiwan for the sake of simplifying my argument). The subsequent project of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was also based on a double policy: Japan as the representative of ‘Greater East Asia’ should liberate it from Western domination, but at the same time Japan should take the place of the West to dominate Asia and the Pacific. In reality, Japan ended up being another coloniser not much different from

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the Western colonisers. In the actual sites of occupation in ‘the South’, both the Army and the Navy hastily set up military governments, each with its own area of administration. The policies of those governments were, in the main, based on a classification of the people under their authority into two categories: the ‘local’ people (genchijin) and the ‘indigenous’ people (genju-min). The ‘local’ people in most areas had multiple ethnicities and religions and, as was especially the case with overseas Chinese, many of them had extended their networks of commercial and political activities beyond the boundaries of the military government’s authority. These two categories of people, and various sub-categories of either of the two, were often found to be antagonistic to one another. Each military government had to control its policy of domination distinctively in terms of the category to which it was addressed. The military governments were confronted with a situation of multiple dichotomies involving four, five or even more parties. In the grand framework of ambivalent Japan – the redeemer of Asia from the West and at the same time the coloniser in place of the West – most military governments presented multiple facades to different sub-categories within the ‘local’ and ‘indigenous’ people. In this respect, the military governments that formulated finely differentiated policies in the actual area of occupation were far more sophisticated in anthropological sensibility than the anthropologists and social scientists stationed at home were. In their imagination of the battlefields and the occupied areas, anthropologists mostly remained within the stereotypical role of anthropologists – which, of course, they learned from contemporary Western anthropology – as the experts on primitive people and culture.

The ‘West’: Concluding remarks From the above discussion, it should be clear that a dichotomy itself is neither meaningful nor meaningless; a conceptual dichotomy will remain as a useful, heuristic tool if the circumstantial conditions of the two opposed parties are fully recognised and the positions of the two parties are clarified in the wider context in which the two parties are located. A conceptual dichotomy will enhance its utility as a heuristic tool, when the dichotomy is analysed in the wider context of multiple dichotomies. Acute attention to the context of multiple dichotomies has an empirical basis in reality; analysts of dichotomies simply trace how actual agents, who work for either party of a dichotomy, conceive their circumstances as consisting of multiple dichotomies and control their conduct according to their conception of those multiple dichotomies. In this respect, it will be misleading if what is conceived of as a dichotomy is interpreted in ontological terms. The significance of a dichotomy of two opposed parties does not necessarily indicate the holistic character of either party as a substantial entity. The significance of a dichotomy is, in theory, based on contrasts found between the two opposed items. A dichotomy only tells

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us about those contrasted features of both parties. It is logically inappropriate to interpret those contrasted features as representing a substantial character of either party as a whole. The various features of Japan illustrated in the above discussion, for instance, may appear to be aspects of Japan as a substantial entity. But were the two Japans – one referred to by Fukuzawa and another that carried the military project of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere – one and the same Japan? This is exactly a matter for the collective imagination to be constructed by Japanese for their nation-state. The substantial basis of the ‘West’ – as it appears in the dichotomies of the West vs. Japan, the West vs. the non-West, and the like – is more dubious. It has already been shown that in certain situations Japan represented the West. The same is truer in the post-modern age of accelerated globalisation. In those areas which are classified as ‘developing’ according to the modern ‘Western’ idea of industrial evolution, the penetrating ‘Western’ modernity is represented by a variety of tiny industrial goods, mostly produced in Asia, many of which were invented in Japan: transistor radios, cassette recorders, walkmans, video cassettes and cameras, keyboard synthesisers and the like. If this typically post-modern feature of the contemporary world is interpreted in ontological terms, as indicating a particular quality of a substantial ‘West’, then the supposed ‘West’ functions as a conceptual tool of appropriation. If Japan could be an enduring national entity, the West is not a real entity at all. The idea of the West, as represented by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, is an artificial composite of discrete ideas, such as idealised ancient Greece and Rome, a western branch of Christianity (a religion of Middle Eastern origin) and its later ramifications, plus Christianised medieval Europe, which were joined by North America, Australia and New Zealand in the modern age, to the exclusion of Christian East Europe (Sahlins 1996). The ‘West’ in a conceptual dichotomy like that of the West vs. Japan must be understood just as it represents itself in that binary opposition.

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Thoughts on the Relationship between Anthropological Theory, Methods and the Study of Japanese Society Roger Goodman

Reflexivity in Anthropology and Japanese studies Doing fieldwork has become an increasingly problematic exercise as attention has become focused as much on the researcher as on the object of their research in anthropology. Of course an element of reflexivity has entered all of the sciences, natural as well as social, during the past three decades, but it has perhaps been particularly pertinent in a discipline like anthropology where the anthropologist is the main, sometimes the only, research tool. The anthropologist David Pocock (1971: 84) has pointed out how: ‘The observation of the sociologist (by which he meant the qualitative sociologist), no less than the myths of the primitives he studies, are determined by his own society, by his own class, by his own intellectual environment.’ Nationality, class and educational background are only three of the variables which anthropologists have looked at in the way they study Japan. Nationality is probably the most studied of these. The contributors to Befu and Kreiner (1992) have examined in depth the effect of national background on the way we look at Japanese society. The series of intense debates between Kuwayama, van Bremen, Asquith and others (see van Bremen, 2000c) also relate to the effect of being a native or non-native, an anthropologist from the East or from the West, on not only how one studies Japan but also how one is able to present and disseminate that research. In my own retrospective work (Goodman 2000: 163), I realise how being British made me focus on the issue of class in my study of Japanese returnees. Other variables that have been looked at are ethnicity (Guvenc 1981; Kondo 1990; Hamabata 1990), age and life course (Smith 2005), gender (Roberts 2005), and sexuality (Treat 1999). In the discipline as a whole, the reflexive turn has led some anthropologists to appear to despair of ever being able to do real fieldwork in an objective fashion. Among those whom Ortner (1984: 143) puts in this camp are Rabinow (1977), Riesman (1977) and Crapanzano (1980). Okely and Callaway (1992), conversely, appear to think that we can make our accounts ‘objective’ only by including sufficient subjective material, i.e. on how we

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affected the field of study, to allow readers to draw their own judgement on what they should make of our ‘findings’. In this essay, I am going to argue that while reflexivity is important in social science research, the concentration on the individual traits of the researcher has deflected attention away from what is actually the most important variable in any research project. Moreover this variable is essentially independent of any of the other variables that have been examined previously; it has no relation to gender, ethnicity, sexuality or educational background and, since the collapse of Communism in 1989, there is no reason why it should have a connection with nationality, age or class. The variable derives from the fact that social science research is actually nothing more than the relationship of the individual to society. How any individual researcher conceives of this relationship has a major effect on both the theoretical and the methodological assumptions that she brings to her research.

The relationship between individuals and society Students new to the social sciences often ask what the difference is between social anthropology and sociology. The explanation that the former studies pre-technological and the latter industrial societies is, of course, no longer tenable, especially for anthropologists of Japan. Similarly, the methodological differences between the disciplines are no longer as marked as they once were: anthropologists use surveys and questionnaires; sociologists increasingly do participant observation. A look at the theory teaching in each discipline, on first glance, appears to offer rather radically different approaches. At least when I was a second-year student in a joint undergraduate degree in anthropology and sociology, the compulsory anthropology courses were on kinship, rituals and symbolic systems, while the sociology ones were on Marx, Weber and Durkheim. A closer analysis of all these courses, however, suggests that at base they deal with exactly the same issue: how have different groups at different points in time conceived of the relationship between individuals and a larger collectivity, which both disciplines have come to call ‘society’? While this point is implicit in anthropological discourse, it is much more explicit in the sociological one. Sociologists essentially divide their discipline into two theoretical streams: structuralist theories which concentrate on how the collectivity affects, controls and otherwise limits individual action, and interpretative theories which look at how individuals construct and interact with the collectivity. Structuralist theories themselves are based on two different models of society: in one, society is based on consensus, in the other, it is based on assumptions of conflict. The former is generally referred to in anthropology as functionalism but in sociology as Durkheimian, after Emile Durkheim (1858–1917); the latter in both disciplines as Marxist, after Karl Marx (1818–83). The underlying assumption of interpretative theories is also that

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Figure 4.1 Heuristic Model of Relationship between Theories and Methods in Anthropology and Sociology

society is based on conflict between either groups or individuals in their competition to have their constructions of society accepted as the ‘normal’ or the ‘correct’ version of social behaviour. In anthropology this approach is often, in modern times, associated with the work of Clifford Geertz, and his emphasis on meaning, and goes under a number of titles, including social action theory; in sociology it is described as Weberian, after Max Weber (1864–1920). Marx, Weber and Durkheim are today in politically correct circles derided as ‘dead white men’ but in fact it can still be argued that most of current social science theory is either derived from, or developed in opposition to, their seminal work. My purpose in setting out in such simplified form the background to social theory is to try and show how it affects both the methods researchers use and the type of conclusions they are likely to come to. Put very simply, there is a heuristic model of the relationship between theories and methods in the social sciences that can be represented as in Figure 4.1

Examples of theoretical assumptions and research on Japan The realisation of the link between theory and methods and how an underlying theoretical assumption led to certain conclusions is something that I first became aware of while undertaking research for my book (Goodman 1990) on returnee school children (kikokushijo). Kikokushijo are Japanese children who have spent all or some of their childhood years overseas before returning to full-time education in mainstream Japanese schools. They became a major topic of research in the 1970s and early 1980. As the Japanese economy expanded, more Japanese men went to work overseas with their families and the number of Japanese children being educated overseas and returning to the Japanese education system rose exponentially during the same period. According to Gunei Sato¯ (2001), one of the leading researchers of kikokushijo in Japan, public perception of kikokushijo went through three main shifts over about two decades. Initially there was public sympathy for such students, who were forced to have a

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foreign education because their parents were transferred abroad; there were demands that such children be ‘rescued’ and, as a result, some schools and universities in Japan started making special quotas (tokubetsu waku) for them. It was argued that those children who had lived in a foreign country should upon their return try to become fully Japanese again. Later, there developed a belief among some commentators that kikokushijo were a ‘privileged class’ protected by special educational advantages that kept them apart from the wider society. Finally there emerged the idea that kikokushijo should be encouraged to develop their own ways of thinking and allowed to change Japanese society as much as Japanese society should be encouraged to change them. Researchers tended to mirror these public perceptions in their projects, in both their theoretical and methodological approaches to the topic. Almost all of the early research projects took it for granted that any Japanese child who left Japan would automatically find it difficult to reassimilate into the society because of its homogeneous culture and unique language. The expression deru kugi wa utareru (the nail that sticks up gets hammered down) was often cited in this context. Many indeed suggested a zero-sum formula where the length of time spent outside the country reduced by the same amount a child’s claim to Japaneseness. Researchers therefore simply set out to ‘measure’ the problems of children in surveys and questionnaires and to come to statistical conclusions about the extent of these problems and thereupon to proffer suggestions about how they might be alleviated. The classic example of this kind of work could be found in the research by Hiroshi Inamura (1982) and his research group at Tsukuba University who undertook a large, government-sponsored project on the psychological and physical problems suffered by kikokushijo on their return to Japan. They collated huge amounts of material which they statistically analysed and presented in a large number of tables of correlations and from which they drew the conclusion that children should not spend more than two years abroad and should not spend an extensive period of time overseas in more than two countries before they return to Japan, unless they were prepared to run the risk of serious personal problems. To draw on our Figure 4.1 above, these projects were based on a very functional view of Japanese society and as such were led to use quantitative research methods to measure the effect of cultural dissonance for those who upset the functionalist or essentialized values of the society into which they were entering. The kikokushijo in this literature began to be described as a new ‘minority’ (Minority Rights Group 1983) or, even more seriously, as children who could not return to Japan (White 1988). By the mid-1980s, when I began my own work on the topic, it was becoming increasingly clear that the image of the kikokushijo as a group in need of rejapanisation in order to survive in Japanese society was no longer tenable. Not only compared to other minority groups in Japan – burakumin, Ainu, Okinawans, Japanese-Koreans – were they doing very well socially

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and economically, but by a whole series of measurements, kikokushijo were clearly doing as well, if not better, than their non-kikokushijo peers almost as soon as they returned to Japan. The proportion of kikokushijo who were gaining entry to the schools attached to the national universities (fuzoku gakko¯), amongst the most prestigious schools in Japan, were up to thirtyfive times the national average (Hasebe 1985). At university entrance, the tokubetsu waku system made entry for kikokushijo much easier than for children who had never been overseas. About 90 per cent of kikokushijo made use of this system (Monbusho¯ 1988) and at some top universities, such as Waseda University, for example, kikokushijo who applied through the system were three times as likely to be successful in gaining entry as students who applied through the normal entrance system. Overall, 48 per cent of kikokushijo who applied to four-year universities were successful whereas in the rest of the population only 37 per cent continued to higher education, including those who went to the much lower status two-year junior colleges (Nakanishi 1986). Moreover, a large number of companies had begun to set up special systems to recruit kikokushijo. In my accounts (Goodman 1990, 1992) of the kikokushijo based on research undertaken in the mid-1980s, I described them as a new ‘elite’ in Japanese society who would lead the country into the twenty-first century. I suggested that the kikokushijo were reproducing themselves through their class position as their parents were clearly from very upper-middle class positions (diplomats, businessmen, journalists, etc.) and had managed to use their class position to gain social advantages for their children (under the guise of ‘special needs’). This ‘neo-Marxist’ or Bourdieuian approach meant measuring the extent to which kikokushijo had a differential experience of society from other children in Japan; it also therefore relied to a large extent on a quantitative research method. In the 1990s there emerged a new paradigm for examining kikokushijo which suggested that they were actually symbols in a much wider debate about the nature of Japanese society and that it was this which explained why there was so much interest in them. The 1980s saw a change in national rhetoric during the decade away from talk about ‘modernisation’ (kindaika) to the language of ‘internationalisation’ (kokusaika). If the language of kindaika had been one of conformity, homogeneity and loyalty – in the context of which kikokushijo were perceived as potentially socially disruptive – the language of the era of kokusaika was much more about heterogeneity, creativity and individuality – in the context of which kikokushijo could be held up as exemplars. Indeed, the very fact that the exact meaning of such popular terms as kokusaika (internationalisation), kokusaijin (international person), kokusaisei (internationalness), kokusai jidai (international era) remained very unclear meant that the supporters and parents of the kikokushijo were able to manipulate such terms in favour of their own children, suggesting that kikokushijo should be seen, for example, as chiisana kokusaijin (mini-internationalists) and bunka taishi (cultural

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ambassadors). The important point to stress, of course, is that the kikokushijo and their actual skills and personalities were largely peripheral to debates and discussions about them; to a large degree they were merely symbols in internal cultural debates about what it meant to be Japanese. Pang (2000: 287) suggests that kikokushijo self-identity had gone in less than twenty years through the process of being non-han-shin Nihonjin (first not-, then half-, and finally new-Japanese), reflecting the way they were perceived as a group by the wider society rather than any changes in either their experiences or behaviour. This paradigm sees kikokushijo themselves as having some effect on the way Japanese perceive their own society. They may impact on what is accepted as ‘Japanese’ behaviour. Rather than passive objects to be rejapanised or else the pawns their families need socially to reproduce, they help to construct the society around them. In order to understand this process, however, researchers need to draw on a gamut of qualitative research methods – unstructured interviews, life-stories and participant observation (see, for example, Goodman 1990; Pang 2000).

The effect of theoretical assumptions and the conclusions drawn from research The question of how two or more anthropologists can study the same phenomenon or community and come to very different conclusions has been endlessly debated, in particular since the Redfield (1930)/Lewis (1955) research on a Mexican village. A very contemporary example, however, can be seen in the work of two scholars looking at the treatment of Nikkeijin (Latin Americans of Japanese descent) on coming to Japan to work from the late 1980s. The detailed ethnographies of Joshua Roth and Takeyuki Tsuda agree on almost all points. In particular they agree on the fact that the Nikkeijin, who had been so proud of their Japanese ancestry when in Latin America, were disappointed on the reception they received in Japan and therefore rediscovered their Latin Americaness. Where they differ – and differ dramatically – is in what their ethnography tells them about the position, and the future, of Nikkeijin in Japan. This can be seen most clearly by quoting from the last sentences of their books: With or without consensus in support of it, Japanese society is becoming increasingly multicultural... . A more positive multicultural future depends at least in part on government policy that reforms such institutions [as the employment system]. (Roth, 2002: 144–5) In ethnically restrictive Japan, [the Japanese Brazilians] will eventually disappear into the majority populace through cultural assimilation

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In short, while Roth believes Japan will be able to contain within it minority groups, like the Nikkeijin, as ideas of Japaneseness become more broadly defined, Tsuda believes the Nikkeijin will disappear inside the boundaries of an increasingly tightly defined Japanese society. Both authors seem to feel that their conclusions are positive ones and both that they are derived from their ethnographic data. How therefore do they manage to differ so diametrically? The answer lies not so much in their views of the Nikkeijin society (on which, as we have seen, their fieldwork reassuringly seems to agree in most significant features) but in their views of Japanese society and in particular their underlying assumptions of the relationship between the individual and society. Tsuda sees Japan in very functional terms. Rather like Merry While’s account of the treatment of kikokushijo (returnee schoolchildren) in the 1980s mentioned above, he believes that Japanese society sees anything coming from outside as potentially contaminating and hence in need of either rejection or purification before it can be accepted into the society. The Nikkeijin are the latest example of a group to threaten the boundaries of Japaneseness, and Japanese society has responded, according to Tsuda, by putting up barriers to them, though over time, when their children have been through the Japanese education system and lost their Brazilianness (as he suggests, in an epilogue, is already beginning to happen), then they will be assimilated into the society. Such an approach in anthropological terms is generally labelled functionalist, in that it sees society functioning like a self-contained, biological organism with clearly defined boundaries and mechanisms for dealing with anything polluting from outside. In citing Mary Douglas and Victor Turner in his description of Japanese society, Tsuda invokes an intellectual tradition that goes back to Emile Durkheim, generally seen as the founder of functionalist thought in social anthropology. Roth, on the other hand, emphasizes that Brazilian Japanese ethnic identity comes from interaction with the Japanese political and economic structures within which the Nikkeijin are forced to operate. It is not Japanese society or culture as such that is responsible for the rejection of the Nikkeijin, but interest groups within Japan – such as employers, politicians, journalists, and, particularly, labour brokers (hence the word ‘brokered’ in the title of his book). These groups, he says, use the language of culture and history to legitimize the marginalisation of the Nikkeijin group for their own economic (cheap labour) and political (reinforcement of Japanese ethnic identity) ends. It is in opposition to this marginalization that the Nikkeijin have been constructing their own cultural forms (drawing on ideas of Brazilianness) and, in time, Roth believes, these new cultural forms will become

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part of the definition of what it means to be Japanese. As I have argued elsewhere (Goodman 1990), this is just what happened with the kikokushijo in the 1980s, who became symbolic exemplars of what it meant to be an international Japanese. For the kikokushijo (coming from upper middleclass Japanese backgrounds), this process was relatively easy – and indeed the appearance of the Nikkeijin in Japan in the late 1980s made kikokushijo appear more mainstream Japanese than ever before. But, if the same argument is followed, as their class position strengthens in Japanese society, so the Brazilian Nikkeijin will be able to exert economic and political pressure that will lead to their cultural lifestyles being accepted as part of the definition of Japaneseness. Compared to Tsuda, Roth’s view of society is much more flexible in terms of the power (what sociologists these days often call ‘‘agency’’) that it gives to the different actors, even though he recognizes that these same actors are themselves constrained by the political and economic realities of the contexts in which they move. Culture is only something that different interest groups draw on to legitimize their position. As Roth (2002: 62) neatly puts it: we should see culture as a toolbox of resilient symbolic resources that can be deployed for rhetorical or political purposes at appropriate moments rather than as a fixed structure of thought or behaviour that can be discerned in all members of a culture in all contexts. It is his (what might be termed Weberian) assumptions about the way societies operate that explains the very different conclusions these two authors reach.

Implications for anthropology It is conspicuous that neither Roth nor Tsuda discusses his theoretical assumptions, even though they both go through the process of reflexively examining the effect that they had on their fieldwork and that their fieldwork had on them. Tsuda indeed spends a full fifty pages on this process, discussing the problems he found in not being accepted in Japan and the ‘‘identity prostitution’’ he had to work at in order to get his data, before he even begins on the story of the Nikkeijin, the supposed object of this study. I refer to the length of this introduction by Tsuda not as a means of criticism – it is actually a very good book and the above few paragraphs come from a very positive review I wrote about it for the Journal of Japanese Studies (Goodman 2004) – but as a suggestion that reflexivity has become an increasingly ritualistic process in the construction of anthropological monographs in the Anglo-Saxon anthropological community. It is interesting that this ‘post-modern turn’ towards reflexivity does not seem to have been nearly so powerful in anthropological accounts in Japan. The ‘post-modern turn’ in the US and the UK in the 1980s may well have been

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related to the ‘cult of the individual’ which underlay the Reaganite and Thatcherite economic policies of the decade; it certainly became the refuge of Marxist scholars post 1989 as they sought solace in its relativisation of social scientific discourse, arguing that while they may have been wrong about the certainties of the Marxist world-view, then all social science discourse is essentially a subjective reflection of those who undertake projects. While there was some reassessment of ideas of ‘individualism’ in 1980s Japan, in particular around the emergence of ideas of shimin shakai (civil society) (see Schwartz and Pharr 2002), Marxist scholarship in Japan has continued pretty much unaffected by events in East Europe. Different underlying perceptions of the individual and of the role of Marxist scholarship in Japan and the Anglo-Saxon world have doubtless percolated into the underlying assumptions that scholars from, as well as within, these two different communities bring to their work, either of Japan or of other societies. We are all social products and that production must affect the way we see the world. I would suggest though that rather than demanding evermore complex and ever-more ego-focused studies of their own personal biographies and life stories, we can deal with the way these different worldviews influence the conclusions that scholars draw from their work much more readily – and in a manner which allows us to make much easier comparisons between the work of different scholars – if we break them down into their underlying assumptions about the relationship between the individual and society.

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When Soto becomes Uchi: Some thoughts on the Anthropology of Japan D.P. Martinez

Introduction: on emic terms in anthropology It was through the work of Harris in the 1960s that most anthropologists were introduced to the concepts ‘emic’ and ‘etic’, terms borrowed from linguistics where they refer respectively to distinctions which are recognized within a given natural language (the phonemic) and distinctions which are recognized by the science of linguistics (the phonetic) (Pike 1954). The concepts have come to be used rather differently within anthropology (Headman 1990). In the late 1980s a debate related to ‘native’ anthropology found a new usage for the concepts. Davies (1988) argued for an Islamic anthropology that only relied on native (emic) rather than western sociological (etic) terms. That is, she was arguing against an anthropology that relied mostly on European analytical tools in order to understand social phenomena, and for an anthropology which used terms from outside the West as a way of combating intellectual hegemony. Tapper (1995) published a rejoinder to Davies,1 arguing that by the time native terms were defined so that anthropologists could understand them, you might as well use the translated terms, otherwise you ran the danger of creating a closed hermeneutic system. Both scholars, however, missed an interesting point: anthropology does use, as part of its etic structures, several emic terms and concepts introduced from other societies – kula, potlatch, shaman, and taboo, for example. Even the more marginal anthropology of Japan relies on a sort of shorthand in English that non-Japanese speaking students find confusing: amae, furusato, nihonjinron, ie, to name a few. This brief essay is not an attempt to re-argue the question of whether it is better to use emic or etic terms, but to pick up the issue of what the incorporation of native terms might offer more general anthropological analyses. In this case, I want to use the relationship between the concepts of uchi (inside) and soto (outside) as the starting point for an analysis of the changes that have occurred in anthropology within Anglo-American academia, as well as to look at the space occupied by the anthropology of Japan. Are we, non-native anthropologists of Japan, part of a hegemonic intellectual imperialism? Well, it all depends on where you stand.

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Defining uchi and soto Hendry (1995) argues that learning how uchi and soto structure space and the social is one way in which to understand Japanese society. A focus on this distinction illuminates the processes by which in-groups and out-groups are formed based on perceptions of belonging (‘our’ household/neighbourhood/town/country, etc.) and, also, how these perceptions can shift depending on the situation and actor’s position. School classes may compete against each other within the school, but will see themselves as a united group when competing against other schools. The formulation is a reworking of ‘key’ terms for understanding Japan – an idea that was central to Benedict’s (1946) work on Japanese society. Benedict used the terms for indebtedness and duty (giri, on and gimu), in order to explain why Japanese behaviour appeared to be so ‘alien’. Nakane (1971), clearly influenced by structuralism, offered anthropologists the term ‘ba’ (frame). The concepts of uchi and soto were essential to this concept: depending on the frame in which an actor found himself, his behaviour shifted accordingly. A senior executive in the office might well behave like a junior when in the karate do¯jo¯ – it all depended on how far along the insider/outsider continuum a person might find themselves. Implicit in all of these discussions was an attempt to address the Orientalist (Said 1978) view of the Japanese as ‘shifty’ (Johnson 1988), while, politely, never using the derogatory term at all.2 One of the most interesting attempts to grapple with the relational aspects of uchi and soto has been offered by Bachnik and Quinn (1994), but it has been in the rarely read work of Bernier (1975) that I have found a powerful suggestion: while uchi and soto are relational, they also constitute each other and Japanese religious practices depend on the fact that key ceremonial moments are those in which the soto must be carefully allowed into the uchi. The existence of the inside – its sense of community, solidarity, identity – depends on regular encounters with the outside and the outside, at the time of such encounters, must be seen as all that is not uchi. In the case of religion, that which is soto can also be kami (best translated as ‘deity’). Powerful, dangerous, yet generative and potentially beneficial, kami can be found inside the uchi (‘wrapped’ inside Shinto shrines, e.g. Hendry 1993), but they must also be let out on ritual occasions where, nevertheless, they remain contained inside the mikoshi (portable altar) (Kalland 1995). This conceptualisation of kami as being both soto to the social, but essential to its creation and existence, is neatly worked out in Yoshida’s (1981) analysis of wandering kami (marebito) using Simmel’s (1950) concept of the Stranger. As Yoshida reminds us, Simmel argued that the Stranger was both like us and yet not us; it is this paradoxical situation that creates both a sense of self and a sense of others. For Yoshida the Japanese conceptualisation of the marebito as someone who brought blessings when invited in, but who had to leave after three days lest disasters occur, extended to a conceptualisation of all strangers in Japan, thus explaining the

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nation’s shifts from being closed and hostile to being open and welcoming. What is important to note is that the Stranger is both dangerous and necessary, admired and resented, accepted and rejected; and also benefited from being worshipped appropriately. Thus, when strangers are invited in, they should be carefully controlled by certain experts, mediators, the priests who pray and make offerings to the kami. To push the analogy a bit, I want to ask: who mediates for those professional strangers, those pesky outsiders known as anthropologists, when they come a-calling in Japan?

Strangers in the field: Applying uchi and soto to anthropologists Many a semi-drunken discussion, post-fieldwork, amongst any group of anthropologists, has centred on the apparently universal fact that the people who were most helpful to us in the field were often seen as ‘outsiders’ within their own society. Perhaps, in this context, the very fact of being open to an outsider stamps a household as unusual. Moreover, scratch the seemingly culturally coherent surface of an anthropologist and you find that the role ‘professional stranger’ often goes deeper than that of job description. Many anthropologists, past and present, have been outsiders in their ‘own’ societies. In the UK, as is famously known, the discipline was established by a Polish immigrant, Malinowski; in the US, it was a German Jewish immigrant, Boas. And the history of each discipline is full of such examples: women studied the subject (Mead, Benedict, Mair, Nakane), which seemed more open to them than older disciplines; while in the UK a famous anthropologist was known to have complained – very politically incorrectly – that the discipline was dominated by ‘foreign Jews’ and, they could have added, Catholics (Evans-Pritchard, Turner, Lienhardt), who were until recently in British history an oppressed minority. In the US, with its large immigrant, melting-pot history, what were anthropologists if not strangers in their own land? It can’t be denied that much of our theory does come to us from European Jews (Freud, Marx, Durkheim, Mauss, Le´vi-Strauss to name a few), or to those returning from the colonies (Gluckman, Bourdieu, Firth, Radcliffe-Brown), or the sexually marginal (Benedict, Foucault). Recently, in the US anthropology of Japan we’ve had Japanese-Americans (Kondo, Hamabata) or people raised in Japan (Robertson) as some of the more recent theoretical movers and shakers. Moreover the very concept, anthropology, comes from the ancient Greeks, a society considered ‘Oriental’ until its incorporation into European intellectual tradition in the nineteenth century. Our core concepts, we might argue, were created by outsiders trying to understand mainstream European society – as Befu has asked, are these concepts at all useful in understanding non-European societies? To try and answer this, let us return to the ideas of the Stranger and uchi/ soto. While it would be foolish to pretend that anyone ever thought an anthropologist was god-like,3 it is a fair point to make that the discipline’s

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development and incorporation as a subject into universities’ curricula paralleled that of two important processes: colonialism and the development of the nation-state. As Stocking (1991), among others, has noted, anthropology often went hand-in-hand with having some colonies to go to in order to study our fellow but not yet ‘civilised’ human beings. In Europe or the US, where this was not necessarily the case, a sense of national identity required ethnological research as salvage anthropology: the disappearing customs of the countryside or Native American reservations had to be preserved in the face of a unifying, modernising state. Interestingly, Japan did both sorts of anthropology: Kunio Yanagita and his teams famously worked inside Japan (Kawada 1993; Ivy 1995), while other anthropologists worked in the Japanese colonies of the early twentieth century (van Bremen and Shimizu 1999). In short, it cannot be denied that although anthropologists may have been marginal as individuals, they often appeared to be or actually were working in the service of larger, more mainstream and hegemonic forces. While their analytical eye depended on retaining a sense of being soto to the places in which they worked, often their careers and employment depended on their being incorporated into the uchi of the modern academic system. So while Cohn (1990) humorously argues that the youth, energy and informality of anthropology makes it unlike more established disciplines; the truth is that from the position of most of the peoples being studied, anthropology seems well entrenched within a system of power. In this era of post-colonialism and globalisation, the discussion of anthropology as part of a larger sort of western imperialism continues precisely because the global education market could be described as hierarchical – good jobs depend on a good education at good universities, followed by publications in good journals and international presses. A good education could be glossed as knowledge of Western philosophical and sociological theories. For many,4 it is not only the theories, but AngloAmerican journals, presses and universities that are seen to be at the top of this hierarchy. English is the dominant language and, no matter how soto the anthropologists employed within this system feel, they certainly look like they’re well inside to the rest of the world. What happens, then, when soto becomes uchi? It is – as are the kami in Japanese festivals – tamed, contained, used for the benefit of the community, and ends by being incorporated into the inside (the shrine at the heart of the village or neighbourhood) where it begins to lose its potency until recharged by another infusion from the soto. Thus, anthropology, the outsider’s discipline, can only have academic kudos if it produces students who fit into an acceptable version of national identity: students who might go on to be not only anthropologists, but also businessmen, civil servants, missionaries, or aid workers (to name a few jobs our students go into). Moreover, the discipline’s concern with the similarities between human beings is subjugated to comparisons based on the obvious differences between societies as a means of teaching the skill of being ‘culturally sensitive’ to others.

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Despite its disdain for essentialising, anthropology is often used to support essentialist ideas about identity. In short, anthropology ends by being incorporated into mainstream discourses. Do these assertions mean that a general anthropological knowledge is impossible? Is everything reduced to the outsider’s etic view? To make such an argument would be to deny the possibility and reality of the challenges created by the increase in anthropologists who come from the societies that have been the objects of our study – the outsiders who manage to ‘recharge’ the discipline. We could put in this category anthropologists such as Nakane (among the first), as well as Tambiah, Obeyesekere, Das, and Srinivas to name a few.5 If, however, the future of anthropology lies in the hands of theorising by those who count as ‘native’ anthropologists, how are they to be incorporated within a discipline dominated by European languages, particularly, English? Gates (1994) argues that to expect others to learn a dominant language is yet another form of subjugation. However, if anthropology were to be multi-lingual we would have to expect all our students to learn Japanese, Swahili, Arabic and Apache, for example, just to be able to access the works of others. The reality is that it can be hard enough for students to learn the language of the region they are planning to study! This becomes the place for the collaborative: for Anglo-Americans to work, as Kuwayama urges, with other anthropologists, but also to introduce emic terms into mainstream anthropology. The question is, whenever did we not? To give a few examples from the case of the anthropology of Japan: Embree (1946) worked with a Japanese fieldwork assistant, but also with a wife who had grown up in Kobe; Benedict introduced the Japanese terms for various types of duties and obligations; Beardsley (1959) worked with a team in Niiike; Nakane translated herself into English; etc. For a whole new generation of UK anthropologists working on Japan, literacy as well as spoken fluency in the language has been a must since the 1970s and most of us have worked under the auspices of the Japanese university system, supervised by native anthropologists. Japan certainly has many mediators who intercede and work with the anthropologist as stranger. So why the concern? It still depends on where you are standing, for the ‘centre’ of the intellectual world seems occupied by insiders rather than by any outsiders and seems to be protected by the barrier of language. Yet any member of a UK anthropology department (and of a US one too, I would hazard) could well detail how anthropology departments, while servicing the academic needs of many students, are often on the margins of the academic world – as for the anthropology of Japan, we are on the margin of the margins. And modern anthropologists too, once you scratch the surface, are rarely real insiders; we remain women, Catholics, Jews, foreigners, or ethnic minorities of all sorts (often in combination, I fill four of these categories within the UK). We don’t feel uchi within our ivory towers, if that is what universities are these days, we still think of ourselves as professional strangers, soto in most respects.

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Concluding thoughts What use is it, then, to argue for regional ethnographies that rely on native anthropologists, emic terms and local languages? At home it can be useful to have these sorts of self-explanations and the UK is no exception, witness the current success of Fox’s Watching the English (2005). However, if anthropology is to succeed as the general study of humankind, then it needs to work on a broader canvas: deconstruction as a key tool of post-modern anthropology seems to have lost sight of this goal. We need etic structures that can or cannot (and it should not be forgotten that when explanations or rules don’t work we learn something as well) be used to understand the world-views/structures/organisations of others. And etic theorising is not a closed system created by centrally situated theorists; in fact, many of the founding ‘fathers’ of anthropology would quail at the idea that their theories have become sets of analytical rules rather than analytical tools. Etic structures need the infusion of both emic concepts and those who feel other to the mainstream in order to advance and keep growing. Take this essay’s reliance on uchi/soto to analyse the position of anthropology’s place in Anglo-American academia – it could be argued, pace Tapper, that there was no need to use the Japanese terms, since I also have used emic and etic, insider/outsider or centre/periphery as needed. But I think that unpacking and using the Japanese terms adds an important dimension, for, despite all the formulations and reformulations of the English concepts, they remain somewhat static categories that are generally seen as complementary oppositions rather than as relational, mutually constitutive, necessary and embedded within concepts of power, making and identity. That is not to say that these terms do not encompass these meanings – but, having sprung from the era of structuralism, they tend to be used without acknowledging the processes that make them meaningful (cf. Appadurai 1996; Derrida 1976). I don’t think that Anglo-American anthropologists have explored what happens when one pole of the dichotomy encounters and is incorporated into the other, becoming part of it – for example, despite all our attempts to understand globalisation in all its guises, we have no etic structures to guide our analyses.6 In contrast, the anthropology of Japan, as practised by foreigners and natives alike, has long looked at what happens in this encounter and we should learn from this work: uchi needs soto and vice versa. Each pole enables and empowers the other through a relationship that must be constantly renewed in order to benefit both parties, although things can also go disastrously wrong. Adding the concepts of uchi/soto to our anthropological toolkit would be useful; they remind us that in the end it is the relationship that is important and needs to be explored – we should not lose sight of that.

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Notes 1 Tapper also included the books by Ba-Yunus and Ahmad (1985) and Ahmed (1986), but the bulk of his comments are directed at Davies’ polemic. 2 The issue of individuals shifting their performative behaviour depending on the situation has continued to run in the anthropology of Japan, where it has been used to challenge the concept of an individualistic self (Kondo 1990) in favour of a multiple sense of self. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problematic conceptualisation and a misunderstanding of the Maussian framework in which role, person and self form a three-tier model for understanding the social category of the person (Martinez 2004). In short, if we use the concepts of role and/or identity to understand Japanese social behaviour, we get not a multiple sense of self, but a more general sense of appropriateness, or what Nakane would call perhaps, a sense of frame: that different situations call for different, appropriate behaviour and this is not a uniquely Japanese trait. Again, it all depends on where you are standing. 3 See the native anthropologist Obeyesekere (1992) on how irritating this assumption is about first contact situations, then try to imagine asserting it for anthropologists. 4 I would argue for interesting exceptions here: do the French or Germans really accept this hierarchy? 5 Although some of these ‘natives’ have questioned whether they count as natives at all (Narayan 1993), arguing, in a manner similar to the point about households that take anthropologists in: what person, comfortable within their own society, chooses to become an anthropologist? See also Abu-Lugoud (1986) on ‘halfies’. 6 Marxist theorists might beg to disagree with me on this, but, given the ‘end of history,’ we seem to be in need of new paradigms.

6

Postmodern Bodies, Material Difference, and Subjectivity Margaret Lock

Writing about humanist approaches to the body, the philosopher Russell Keat argued that a good deal of time has been spent over the latter part of the twentieth century discussing the ‘distinctiveness of human beings, at the same time holding an assumption about the nondistinctiveness of the human body’ (1986: 24). The body interior – the soma – has been willingly ceded to the biological sciences as a terrain of little interest to either humanists or social scientists. Commencing in the 1990s the work of several feminist theorists and social scientists began to challenge this complacency. Haraway, as is well known, asserts that ‘bodies as objects of knowledge are material-semiotic-generative nodes’. Body boundaries materialize in social interactions so that bodies and body parts become constituted as objects; as sites for manipulation (1991: 200). In a similar vein, Bruno Latour rejects an understanding of ‘nature’ as either entirely socially constructed or semiotically imagined. In seeking to create a symmetrical account of the co-production of nature/culture he calls for recognition of a hybrid ‘object-discourse-nature-society’ assembly, whose networks of entanglement demand analysis (1993: 78). The ethnographic research of Franklin (1997; 2001), Lock (1993; 2002; 2005) and Strathern (1992a; 1992b), among others, has also sought to transcend an entrenched material/ meaning dualism. Emerging knowledge in the world of postgenomic biology adds reinforcement to approaches that transcend reductionism and nature/nurture dichotomies. When mapping the human genome, molecular differences had to be set to one side, and the immense commonalities found in all human DNA was emphasised. But, once efforts were made to situate this newly mapped body into dynamic context – to transform findings from structural genomics into functional genomics – scientists found themselves confronted with a complexity that few had anticipated. In order to understand molecular function, the effects of gene products must be traced in cells, tissues, individual bodies, and even collectivities (as in population genetics); at each of these sites, difference, among individuals and collectives, becomes clearly visible. The era of postgenomics has forced everyone’s hand, we must now confront the return of the repressed; frank discussion about biological difference

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can no longer be avoided, above all because such a discussion is so easily stripped of nuance and converted into one of essentialised, exoticised difference grounded in unexamined assumptions that apparently linger from the days of Herbert Spencer and discourse about social evolution. In this short essay I want to elaborate on the importance of acknowledging biological difference. I will argue that our task is to transcend not only the distinctly outmoded dichotomy of East meets West but, further, to come to terms with the inherent contradiction that molecular biology has exposed, namely that human kind share in common more than 99 per cent of their DNA but, because of the quantity of DNA involved, significant genetic diversity nevertheless exists between any two people (apart from identical twins), as well as among biological populations. This diversity does not, of course, correspond neatly with ethnic groupings or national identities. It is also abundantly evident that environment, and not genetic diversity, accounts for a considerable amount of biological variation among human populations (Marks 2002). I do not wish to assert for one moment that claims about biology should underpin arguments made in the social sciences but, rather, that recognition of biological difference should be integrated into discussion about the human body and its co-produced nature/culture constitution. Moreover, such recognition may bring about a reflexivity that serves to destabilize the hegemonic normalized body of global biomedicine, thus contributing to a breakdown of dichotomous partitioning of East and West, North and South, developed and developing worlds, exoticised and normal bodies.

Narratives about Stiff Shoulders Shigehisa Kuriyama, historian of comparative medicine, comments: ‘For most of my life I took katakori (usually glossed poorly in English as ‘‘shoulder stiffness’’) for granted. In Japan, it is the most common, the most everyday, the most banal of complaints.’ He goes on: ‘How can a bodily affliction be so taken-for-granted, so utterly ordinary in one culture, and appear alien and exotic to others?’ Kuriyama points out that his Japanese friends find this situation very odd because there is something so real and painful about katakori. He also notes that in other cultures people might know about something like katakori but perhaps, subjectively, they experience it differently; their distress is perhaps organized in another way – the phenomenology of katakori may not be consistent, and hence the taxonomic and linguistic labelling of symptoms may also differ so that, in effect, the ‘end product’ becomes a different complaint (see Good 1994 for a fully developed argument along these lines). Kuriyama adds that in contemporary Japan people associate katakori with stress, but also with ageing, menopause, long hours spent on tatami mats or hard chairs, heredity, diet, and poor circulation. It is just simply ‘part of who they are’, he writes, but goes on to point out that the word

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katakori was unknown prior to Meiji times, although in the Edo period a term kenpeki existed, the symptoms of which closely resemble katakori, and woodblock prints attest to the pounding of knotted muscles, needles, and moxa that were used to treat it. It is of interest that kenpeki is a Japanese reading of a Chinese disease name, but that the term in Chinese is a technical one, limited to medical usage. Its physical manifestations, largely in the abdomen, do not correspond at all well to the everyday experience of katakori. Apparently a gap existed between popular and ‘correct’ usage of the term, and Kuriyama notes that seventeenth-century kanpo-i (herbal doctors) highlighted the ‘error’ in more than one medical text. Kuriyama writes that histories of Japanese medicine tend to assume a decisive rupture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between what is assumed to be traditional as opposed to that which is modern. A case can obviously be made for a major transformation in professionalised knowledge at this time, and the formation of the institutional organisations and practices associated with biomedicine begin to be established during the closing years of the Meiji period (Lock1980). Nevertheless, Kuriyama insists, the history of the experience of illness is more complex than mere institutional changes. The truth about the body as represented in medical texts has indeed changed throughout the twentieth century, as it has in terms of subjective experience too, but, Kuriyama argues, we must also pay attention to the astonishing continuities over the centuries. Katakori persists, it is endemic, one might say, to Japan, even though it does not appear in the international compendium of known diseases – the ICD10. Kuriyama suggests that in the modern ‘West’, with its plethora of psychologised symptoms, a chasm has opened up between the knots of katakori, their materiality undeniable to virtually all Japanese (and to some of us who have lived and worked in Japan for long periods of time), and the elusiveness of conditions with some similarity to katakori that are now widely experienced in North America and elsewhere such as fibromyalgia. Kuriyama ends his commentary by posing two difficult questions: ‘To what extent do we embody the past? And, conversely, what is the extent of the past that we embody?’ Despite the global hegemony of biomedicine, the form and prevalence of most diseases, ranging from HIV/AIDS, various types of cancer, heart disease, psychiatric illness, and numerous forms of distress such as katakori remain distinctly local. Many people in Japan persist in their claim that katakori is one manifestation of Japanese uniqueness; it is clearly incorporated into a shared subjectivity, and is literally embodied in people a good deal of the time. I will develop this theme, what I will term the politics of bodily subjectivity, by turning to the experience of menopause, and to a story that in some remarkable ways mirrors that of katakori. In this instance we have changes associated with female ageing that in Europe and North America has been extensively medicalised over the last half century. In Japan, by contrast, any discomfort associated with female aging (ko¯nenki)

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was, until twenty years ago, rarely recognised as anything other than complaints made by a few rather weak-willed women. Such complaints, among them katakori, should be ‘ridden over’.

Enduring Discourse about Ko¯nenki The end of menstruation has been recognized for many hundreds of years in Sino/Japanese medicine as an occurrence that can leave ‘stale blood’ (oketsu), or knots in the body, the cause in some women of numerous nonspecific symptoms that often last a few years, including dizziness, palpitations, headaches, chilliness, stiff shoulders, a dry mouth, and so on (Nishimura 1981). It was recognized that many other events also produce stale blood and associated non-specific symptoms, and no specific term was created to gloss discomfort associated with the end of menstruation. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese medicine, under the influence of German doctors, created the term ko¯nenki to convey the European concept of the climacterium. Nishimura (1981) has suggested that ko¯nenki could, until the latter half of the twentieth century, be used to refer to all of the life cycle transitions, both male and female, regardless of age. This interpretation is very close to the meaning given to the term climacterium as it was used until the middle of the nineteenth century in Europe. Contemporary Japanese has no term that expresses in everyday language the singular event of the end of menstruation although, of course, a technical term (heikei) exists, much as menopause was a technical term in English, and little used in daily parlance until as recently as fifty years ago. Similarly, those Japanese women who experience hot flushes (in US English, called hot flashes) have to convey this experience by stating simply that they ‘suddenly become hot’ (kaa to suru); or that they have nobose–conveying the idea of a sudden rush of blood to the head and feelings of light-headedness. Nobose can also be used to express an infatuation with someone. Alternatively, hoteri can be used to refer to hot flushes, but its usual meaning is with reference to the flushed faces that many East Asians experience when they imbibe alcohol, or to feeling flushed after taking a hot bath. In other words, there is no specific term that uniquely designates a hot flush, despite the use of highly nuanced discriminators for body states in the Japanese language in general (Lock 1993; Zeserson 2001). Typical responses given by one hundred women when asked in the 1980s about the symptoms of ko¯nenki are as follows: ‘I started to have trouble sleeping when I was about 50; that was ko¯nenki I think. Some people have dizziness, headaches, stiff shoulders and aching joints.’ ‘In my case, my eyesight became weak. Some people get sensitive and have headaches.’

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Margaret Lock ‘The most common disorders that I’ve heard about are headaches, shoulder stiffness, and aching joints. Some women get irritable too.’

A small number of women, twelve among one hundred interviewed, made statements such as the following: ‘The most noticeable thing was that I would suddenly feel hot (kyu- ni kaa ni natta); this happened every day, three times or so. I didn’t go to the doctor or take any medication. I wasn’t embarrassed and I didn’t feel strange. I just thought that it was my age.’ Overall symptom reporting in response to a questionnaire administered to more than 1,300 Japanese women in the 1980s was low, and significantly different from comparable Manitoban and Massachusetts samples (Avis et al. 1993; Lock 1993). The most commonly reported symptoms in Japan included katakori, headaches, lumbago, chilliness, aches and pains in the joints, and feelings of numbness. Katakori was reported nearly twice as often as any other symptom, and five times as often as the ‘typical’ symptom of menopause noted in gynaecological textbooks published in the West, namely hot flushes (Lock 1993). Only 10 per cent of the sample, as opposed to 31 per cent and 35 per cent in Manitoba and Massachusetts respectively, reported experiencing a hot flush in the two weeks prior to answering the questionnaire (Lock 1993). Over 40 per cent of the Japanese women interviewed agreed with the statement made by a Kyoto factory worker: ‘Ko¯nenki starts at different ages depending on the person. Some start in their late thirties and some never have any symptoms; they don’t have ko¯nenki at all.’ The term sho¯gai (‘ill effects’) has to be added to ko¯nenki (‘change of life’) before most women start to think in terms of symptoms that could be thought of as distressing. It is evident to most Japanese gynaecologists that ko¯nenki is not the same, either conceptually or experientially, as menopause. The thirty-four physicians whom I interviewed in the 1980s were all of the opinion that Japanese women infrequently experience hot flushes, and in any case are caused little distress by them. One or two of these gynaecologists demanded to know why ‘Western’ women are so disturbed by hot flushes. It seems that the questions posed by Kuriyama about katakori must also be asked about menopause. To what extent is historical knowledge about physical changes associated with female aging actually embodied today? Could it be that different popular conceptualisations and language usage in connection with this life course transition produce subjective experiences that vary in different locations? Or, is the felt experience literally materially different, and if so, why? Alternatively, are both these points relevant, as I believe they are? Japanese accounts about the end of menstruation sound bizarre to many Westerners because so much emphasis is given to stiff shoulders, dizziness, and other non-specific symptoms. It is tempting for health care professionals,

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including some Japanese physicians, to orientalise this discourse and dismiss it as anomalous. The danger is, of course, that the white Euro-American body remains as the gold standard and the medical model of a universal menopause survives intact. Research conducted in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia all reveal low reporting of hot flushes and associated night sweats (summarised in Lock and Kaufert 2001). Not all of this research is strong methodologically, but the relative consistency of the results is nevertheless striking. Beyene, in a comprehensive study in the Yucatan (1989; Beyene and Martin 2001), found no reporting of these symptoms. Some studies from other parts of the world have found higher symptom reporting than in Euro/America (Obemeyer 2000). These findings strongly suggest that it is not appropriate to conceptualize the end of menstruation as a universal biological transformation modified by culture alone. The response of some medical researchers has been to suggest that the women in these studies in effect bias the research findings and, moreover, because individual responses to menopause are culturally dependent, inattention to hot flushes is essentially learned behaviour. For example, Boulet and colleagues, on the basis of research in seven SouthEast Asian countries showed, similar to Japan, that headaches, dizziness, anxiety, irritability, and other non-specific symptoms were commonly associated with the menopausal transition by the women recruited into their project. Boulet and her associates (1994) argued that such symptomreporting should be understood as ‘a form of communication’ on the part of women, and speculated that ‘vasomotor distress’ (hot flushes) may be ‘translated’ by women into culturally meaningful non-specific symptoms of distress. The assumption in making such an interpretation is that when subjective reporting does not coincide with anticipated findings then women are, in effect, being duped by their language and culture. But, perhaps we should consider that women who reside in the West may equally be duped by their culture? Furthermore, researchers should, I believe, be able to recognise that diverse cultural histories, eco- and social environments, together produce diversity in the material body itself, and that this may well contribute in part to these findings. In a similar vein, it is undeniable that globally post-menopausal women are not equally at increased risk for heart disease, osteoporosis, and other late onset chronic diseases, although protection against these diseases is the main reason why physicians, strongly backed by drug companies, are eager to medicalise menopause worldwide.

Medicalisation of Ko¯nenki The Japanese Menopause Society was founded in the early 1980s and during the two decades that followed, for the first time, menopause was given a great deal of media coverage. As with articles and television programmes in North American media that had been circulating for some years, it was

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stressed that ko¯nenki could be a difficult time and have long-lasting effects on ones health making medicalisation of ko¯nenki and the latter part of the entire female life cycle necessary. The dominant understanding until that time, of ko¯nenki as a ‘natural’ happening and simply part of normal ageing, is now roundly challenged by many members of the Japanese medical profession. But Japanese doctors have an uphill battle ahead of them for several reasons: first, as is well known, the contraceptive pill was not freely available in Japan until recently. This prohibition means that Japanese women have never been habituated to going routinely to gynaecologists from a young age and, further, that a widespread resistance persists about imbibing what are regarded as powerful Western drugs on a daily basis. Neither the Pill, nor HRT, appeal to the majority of Japanese women, many of whom prefer to take herbal medications when confronted with ko¯nenki symptoms. Research carried out recently by Melby (2005), Noji (2000; 2001), Zeserson (2001) and myself (unpublished data) shows unequivocally that most women resist going to see the doctor at ko¯nenki, not because they are concerned, as they formerly may well have been, about being faulted for not ‘riding over’ this transition, but because the majority do not experience troubling symptoms, despite media coverage suggesting that the contrary is usually the case. For example, based on inquiries among 140 Japanese women about symptom experiences during the two weeks prior to being interviewed, Melby, a biological anthropologist, finds that hot flush prevalence is 22.1 per cent. This is higher than the findings twenty years earlier – no surprise given extensive medicalisation – but even so, the rate of symptom reporting continues to be statistically significantly lower than reporting in North America and, furthermore, katakori remains by a long way the symptom that is reported more than any other.

Conclusions Everywhere biomedical knowledge has diffused into popular knowledge to reside alongside other forms of knowing, and profoundly influences bodily discourse. What is peculiar about biomedical knowledge, of course, is that it is presumed by so many to be the only truthful way to understand the body, but increased recognition of the ubiquity of biological diversity suggests that it is inappropriate to essentialise the material body – something already well known to most clinicians, but often glossed over by them. Language and cultural sensitivity account in part for the persistence over centuries of katakori as a concept, but it is also quite probable that this distressing sensation is actually more prevalent in Japan (although no doubt it occurs virtually everywhere in the world). This does not mean, of course, that truth resides in the material body alone; katakori is much more than this, given that it is integral to Japanese subjectivity and deeply embedded in everyday life, so much so that it can be drawn on to contribute to a polemic about the uniqueness of national identity.

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The end of menstruation differs from katakori in that it is a universal process associated with female ageing, but the concepts of menopause and ko¯nenki were created and consolidated as a result of medical interests (the concept of menopause was invented by a gynaecologist in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century and, as noted above, ko¯nenki came into being under the tutelage of German doctors early in the twentieth century). Without medical interest in female ageing and its hypothesized consequences for pathologies of old age, most probably such concepts would not exist. But the ‘change of life’ would nevertheless take place and some people would have hot flushes – no doubt called ‘hot blooms’ in England as they were originally known. Biological determinism must, of course, be rejected outright, but it is equally necessary to abandon deterministic arguments about the social and cultural construction of the body in which the material body is left blackboxed. To do so is to facilitate a hegemony associated with biomedicine, in which all bodies are normalised according to standards that have emerged from research conducted primarily on ‘Western’ bodies during the course of the twentieth century, thus encouraging misplaced, persistent beliefs about non-conforming anomalous, exoticised bodies. We are all biologically and culturally diverse; such diversity is not amenable to dichotomisation.

Part III

Fieldwork and Ethnographic Illustrations

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Anthropological Fieldwork Reconsidered: With Japanese Folkloristics as a Mirror Takami Kuwayama

This essay critically examines the current practice of anthropological fieldwork from the viewpoint of Japanese folklore studies or folkloristics. The discussion revolves around four major concepts central to anthropology: first, intensive, long-term fieldwork; second, the lone ethnographer; third, rapport with local intellectuals; and lastly, social responsibility for the people studied. The arguments to be presented are based on fieldwork I conducted with Japanese folklorists in about ten places, including Korea, from 1995 to 2003. Readers unfamiliar with Japanese folkloristics should remember that, historically speaking, it developed as a twin discipline of ethnology, and that its scope of research is much broader than that of British or American folkloristics. Studying village social structure, for example, is an important part of folklore research in Japan. Thus, Japanese folklorists study folkways, rather than folklore.

Intensive, long-term fieldwork In Japanese folkloristics, fieldwork may be classified into two major types: ‘migrant/pilgrim’ and ‘settler/repeat’ (Komatsu 1998). In the first type, researchers travel throughout the country to study the diffusion, as well as the regional variation, of a particular custom or object. Like the Japanese pilgrims who visit the eighty-eight sacred temples in Shikoku, they visit many places, but stay in one place only briefly, usually for no more than a few days. In the second type, researchers stay in one community for an extended time in order to investigate thoroughly the manners and customs of that community. Generally speaking, the researchers’ stay does not exceed a few months, but they visit the same community repeatedly over a long period, often for a few decades or more. Whether ‘migrant/pilgrim’ or ‘settler/repeat’, these types of fieldwork are short-term. In this regard, they contrast with the intensive, long-term fieldwork that has characterised anthropology since the days of Bronislaw Malinowski. We must remember, however, that both ‘long-term’ and ‘short-term’ are relative concepts. Following Malinowski, who, in the 1910s, spent two years on the Trobriand Islands, most anthropologists conduct fieldwork in a

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single place for at least one year, often for two or more years. This extended stay entails many hardships, both physical and mental, which explains why the first fieldwork, usually doctoral research, is considered a ‘rite of passage’ for novice anthropologists. I dare ask, however, if one or two years are really long enough to know a foreign culture well. In the age of globalisation, there are many non-native members, in almost every place studied by anthropologists, who have lived there as permanent residents or naturalised citizens. Some of these people are locally married, and their knowledge of local life often surpasses that of the anthropologists. Certainly, living is different from doing research, but there is no denying that they have spent a much longer time than the anthropologists have. If Japanese folklorists, or, for that matter, scholars in any other field, are discounted as cultural specialists by the mere length of time spent in the research community, then anthropologists too should be discounted for the same reason. In fact, in colonial times, civil servants dispatched from suzerain states frequently questioned the anthropologists’ ability to understand the colonized subjects because their stay was ‘too short’. On what basis, then, should anthropologists claim to be culturally competent? There is no simple answer, but it is important to continue asking this question, instead of categorically asserting that long-term fieldwork is the hallmark of anthropology. In the process of canonising Malinowski, his Trobriand fieldwork has become a norm, rather than a model, and anthropologists often forget that there are other legitimate forms of fieldwork, such as those practised by Japanese folklorists. In this context, it is worth remembering that Franz Boas, known as ‘the father of American anthropology’, repeated short-term fieldwork among Native Americans, engaging in ‘settler/repeat’ research. This is, of course, not to deny the value of Malinowski’s contributions. It does suggest, however, that the kind of fieldwork he carried out in the Trobriand Islands is no more than one possible form of anthropological fieldwork and that it is useful only under particular conditions at a particular time. When the times have changed, and if the research objective is different, other methods of investigation should be adopted or devised. It is, for example, unreasonable to demand that someone interested in the cyberspace community should participate in and observe it as Malinowski had done among the Trobriand islanders at the beginning of the twentieth century.1 A glance at methodology textbooks reveals, however, that long-term fieldwork centred on participant observation, with the implication that it is conducted in one or a few communities, is almost always described as the distinctive feature of anthropology. This characterisation is reinforced in the classroom by professors who customarily emphasise the same, even though they know that the reality is quite different. In the methodology class I teach at Hokkaido University, students are often bewildered to find that the method developed almost a century ago still prevails today, when the situation, both social and academic, has completely changed. This partially explains, I think, why anthropology has lost them to new disciplines, such as cultural studies.

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The lone ethnographer Seen from the viewpoint of Japanese folkloristics, another question about anthropological fieldwork concerns the notion of ‘lone ethnographer’. Traditionally, Japanese folklorists have carried out fieldwork as a team, although it has become increasingly common to work independently. In team research, different roles are played by different members, but they usually share the entire journey and exchange information frequently. Furthermore, they correct each other when misunderstandings (e.g., failures to understand correctly the informants’ words) or oversights (e.g., failures to notice objects with symbolic meanings) have occurred while doing fieldwork. By contrast, anthropologists tend to be ‘lone wolves’. This is symbolically expressed in the photograph on the front cover page of Writing Culture, edited by James Clifford and George Marcus, which shows an anthropologist, Stephen Tyler, absorbed in writing fieldnotes: he is writing alone. The photograph is intended to demonstrate the importance of writing, a topic that used to be neglected in the profession, but, unwittingly, it has also revealed the solitude of anthropological fieldwork. Fieldwork is ordinarily regarded as a means of data collection. In my view, it is more than that. Anthropological fieldwork is distinguished from that in other fields by the process through which researchers gradually learn what it feels like to be a member of the culture they are studying. Because feelings spring from inside the body, this process may only be completed by exposing the entire self to the field of investigation, thus accumulating fullbodied experiences there. It is, therefore, embodied knowledge of other cultures, from which is derived cultural appreciation, rather than cognitive and analytical understanding thereof, that forms the crux of anthropological fieldwork.2 Working alone is probably the best way to obtain this form of knowledge because, when working in a group, we somehow tend to feel secure and fail to develop cultural sensitivities. As Malinowski’s diary shows, solitude is painful, but it helps make people thoughtful and insightful. Team research, however, has its own merits. Among the most important is, as mentioned earlier, the opportunity to have misunderstandings or oversights corrected either on the spot during fieldwork or after returning to a lodging house, where they cross-check research results of the day. Equally important is the chance to hear one’s colleagues’ opinions. These practices have enormous implications for the question of subjectivity, which has been emphasized by Clifford (1986). He should be credited for having drawn attention to an important problem that had seldom been discussed, but too much emphasis on subjectivity will bring about results similar to those of ‘the five blind men and the elephant’. What looks like a long stick to a blind person who has touched the trunk is obviously different from what looks like a huge wall to another blind person who has touched the abdomen. Each picture is subjective and partial, and it is valuable in its own right, but none can be generalized into a whole truth. ‘Partial truths’, as Clifford

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called them, take on meaning only when they are recognized as such, that is, when each part is understood in relation to the whole. To justify every picture presented of a culture in the name of subjectivity/partiality would be tantamount to distorting that culture. Instead of idealising the lone ethnographer’s efforts, we should aim at creating an inter-subjectivity that both transcends each person’s subjectivity and works as the greatest common denominator. For this purpose, team research is useful.

Rapport with local intellectuals Still another difference between anthropology and folkloristics concerns the status of local intellectuals. In the 1930s, Kunio Yanagita (1875–1962), who is widely regarded as the founder of Japanese folkloristics, established a nationwide network of amateur researchers to study village customs throughout the country. In this network, the researchers, many of whom were local schoolteachers, collected data in their own village by consulting a handbook prepared by Yanagita and his associates who lived in central Tokyo. After the research was completed in each region, all the data were sent to Yanagita, who, by generalising from them, presented coherent pictures of Japan. Division of labour was involved in this system, and it inevitably created an academic hierarchy, in which the local researchers were placed below the central ones. It did, however, acknowledge them as integral parts of the research team. In fact, local intellectuals were expected to work as subjects (active agents) of research, which eventually created a tradition of local research by local people. Today, throughout Japan, we find a huge collection of ethnographic reports produced locally, and one of the first things professional folklorists do after arriving in the research site is to visit the authors of such reports to show respect. By contrast, anthropologists, particularly those from the former colonising countries of the West, are eager to establish rapport with local people as informants, but not as knowledge producers. Although the term ‘informant’ is beginning to be replaced with ‘collaborator’, they are ordinarily considered sources of information, which, however useful during fieldwork, cannot be turned into subjects of research. They are, at best, treated as knowledgeable assistants, whose names seldom appear on the front cover page. The fact that few methodology books, whether for students or professionals, explain how to contact local scholars as equal partners clearly attests to this point. Furthermore, little has been said about how to use local libraries systematically in order to find relevant literature written in the local language. We may well suspect that, despite the disappearance of the so-called ‘primitive world’, anthropology has still remained the study of illiterate, primitive people. There are, of course, individual differences in the extent to which local resources are utilised, but, generally speaking, anthropologists do not seriously study in the field, let alone get an academic degree there, although they study it intensively.

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Social responsibility for the people studied Yanagita was concerned, throughout his career, with the poverty of farmers. This concern originated in his experience of a famine that occurred in his village when he was a child. Having retired in his mid-forties as a government bureaucrat, he gave many public lectures and proposed practical strategies to help improve the farmers’ life. Such activities are said to have defined the basic orientation of his scholarship which centres on the ideal of keisei saimin (relieving human sufferings through virtuous rule). This ideal has been inherited by many of his students. Even today, when the Japanese people are enjoying a prosperous life, Yanagita’s spirit continues to be felt among Japanese folklorists, who are committed, in one way or another, to the welfare of the people they study.3 By contrast, anthropologists have often had difficult relationships with local people. One of the best known examples is found in the conflict between Margaret Mead and the Samoans, which, even before the Mead-Freeman controversy, was evident (Yamamoto 1994). Despite Mead’s good intentions many Samoans took offence at what she had said about their sexuality. As I discussed in my earlier work (Kuwayama 2004a), such problems arise not so much from the factual mistakes or misunderstandings that are often found in ethnography as from the anthropologists’ unwillingness to take the natives seriously as ‘dialogic partners’. During fieldwork, the natives are eagerly approached as data-providers, but once it is over and the research results are written up, they are effectively excluded from the circle of dialogue. From the anthropologists’ point of view, this is almost inevitable because it is their professional colleagues back home, not the people they have studied out there, who will evaluate their work. From the viewpoint of the people studied, however, this is a flagrant breach of the principle of reciprocity. For lack of space, I cannot elaborate on this point in detail, but the rule of reciprocity is frequently broken, although seldom intentionally, because it is not posited from the outset, at least on a long-term basis. As already discussed, anthropologists stay in the research community for only a limited time. Even though many of them occasionally return, it remains that there is a critical distance, both spatial and psychological, that separates the two parties. Certainly, this separation can occur even within the same country, as is shown in the conflict over natural resources between the native populations in Amazon and the Brazilian government. But no one can feign complete ignorance when a problem is happening right in front of their eyes. Unfortunately, anthropologists have generally taken advantage of the distance between the researcher and the researched, thus putting priority on the quality of research over the welfare of the people studied.

Concluding remarks In this short essay, I have examined some of the basic concepts and problems involved in anthropological fieldwork. To avoid misunderstandings, I

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must say in conclusion that I have neither idealised Japanese folkloristics nor criticised Western scholarship dogmatically. On the contrary, as an American-trained anthropologist, I have a great deal of sympathy with Anglophone anthropology, and I know it much better than Japanese folkloristics. I am, after all, an outsider to the latter, which I started studying seriously after returning to Japan from a long sojourn in the United States. Furthermore, for complex reasons, folkloristics occupies only a minor place in Japanese academia, and many Japanese anthropologists hold it in low esteem. I always find this situation unfortunate. I am convinced that that we have many things to learn from Japanese folklorists. It is with this conviction that I have travelled around the country with them. Hopefully, the arguments presented above will inspire a similar journey, whether from the East or the West.

Notes 1 Anthropologists have yet to devise a methodology suitable for the Internet age. Much of the data that used to be obtained only by ‘being there’ is now obtainable through the Internet. In Japan, as elsewhere, many local governments have opened a homepage, in which they display, for example, videos of local rituals and festivals to attract tourists. Also, more than a few companies have posted interview articles with executives. One such article I saw recently explained the basic concepts and marketing strategies involved in the production of Hello Kitty, made by Sanrio. When such information is readily available, visiting the web site is as important as physically going out there. It is, at least, an important part of data collection. Furthermore, the Internet has changed the ways researchers find informants. Until quite recently, anthropologists have been introduced to people willing to work as their informants through a small number of ‘key informants.’ The basic principle has remained unchanged, but it is possible today to find such people by using Internet billboards, particularly when these are used by a small circle of people interested in a specialized theme. Because we must read and write to navigate in cyberspace, a good command of the written, local language has become essential. Language training for anthropologists should change accordingly, from the past emphasis on oral skills, which reflects the origin of anthropology as the study of illiterate ‘primitives,’ to a more inclusive training that emphasises both oral and written skills. 2 I submit that anthropological fieldwork has two opposite aspects: ‘intellectual’ and ‘emotional.’ The intellectual side is associated with anthropology’s scientific tradition, in which fieldworkers gather empirical data on the topic they are studying. In this undertaking, anthropology is not much different from other social sciences, including those branches of sociology that use ethnographic methods. If anything, anthropological fieldwork is rather ‘sloppy’ in that it does not strictly observe the rigorous scientific standards, such as those applied by sociologists, in conducting sampling, questionnaires, statistical computation, and so forth. The emotional side of anthropology, on the other hand, is associated with its humanistic tradition, in which fieldworkers totally immerse themselves in the culture they are studying in order to get a ‘feel’ of what it is like to live there. This undertaking promotes cultural appreciation based on empathy, rather than cognitive understanding for analysis. Anthropologists have emphasized long-term research because it takes time to learn to appreciate foreign cultures and gain

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embodied knowledge thereof. In terms of Western philosophy, the intellectual and the emotional sides of anthropological fieldwork are associated, in broad outline, with the Enlightenment and Romanticism, respectively. Having emerged at the turn of the 19th century, anthropology has contained, since its inception, these two competing, if not contradictory, traditions of thought. It is the peculiar mixture of these traditions, with a bent for the latter, which characterises anthropological fieldwork. 3 For example, my senior colleague, Akira Takeda (b. 1924), has long been involved in political activities that aim to improve the standards of living on isolated islands. Michiya Iwamoto (b. 1956), who teaches at the University of Tokyo, has energetically spoken with local people about the Japanese government’s cultural policy, which has had some negative impacts on local life.

8

Joint Research Projects as a Tradition in Japanese Anthropology: A Focus on the ‘Civilization Studies’ of the Taniguchi Symposia Hirochika Nakamaki

Looking back at the development of anthropology done by Japanese people, we find that joint research projects (hereafter JRP), such as joint fieldwork, joint study groups and symposia, have played a decisive role, above and beyond individual research efforts. While the Japanese Society of Ethnology (renamed as the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology in 2004) has offered various types of academic communication at a superficial level at its meetings, JRPs have promoted actual and practical advances under specific themes. This is not at all unique to Japanese anthropology, but rather it is a common practice developed in the advanced countries of anthropology. It was, however, a driving force in the course of re-establishment after World War II in Japan, and since then has flourished tremendously, in quantity as well as in quality. Therefore, it would be no exaggeration to say that JRP is a ‘tradition’ in Japanese anthropology. In this chapter I would like to focus on the ‘Civilization Studies’ of the Taniguchi Symposia which were held seventeen times between 1983 and 1998. The symposia had an umbrella theme, namely ‘Japanese Civilization in the Modern World’ and a specific topic was pursued once a year for the duration of one week. The principle organiser was Tadao Umesao, then Director-General of the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku), located in the Expo Park, Osaka. He was assisted by two core members, namely Josef Kreiner (University of Bonn) and Harumi Befu (Stanford University), who represented Europe and North America respectively. These three persons basically attended all the symposia and took up various initiatives. The average number of participants was around twelve. I participated in the first symposium and later acted as organiser for the sixth symposium on ‘Religion’. In the latter, five participants were invited from abroad besides Kreiner and Befu, including Jan van Bremen, and so this is one motive for writing this essay. Another is the thought that ‘Civilization Studies’ employed Japanese as its common language, a unique case where the West and the East encountered each other.

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Japanese Anthropology and Joint Research Projects – Overseas Research and Joint Study Groups Japanese anthropologists began to undertake field research in the latter half of 1950s, at the time that the post-war recovery changed into one of rapid economic growth. Domestic joint research was initiated by the Federation of Nine Academic Associations (Kyu- Gakkai Rengo¯), which sent their representative members to the Amami Islands between 1955 and 1957. Later the Federation moved its project to Okinawa. The team from the Japanese Society of Ethnology was, in the initial stages, mainly composed of those affiliated with Tokyo Metropolitan University (Sato¯ 1986: 307). The number of the associations within the Federation diminished for a time, but later returned to the original number, and continued to maintain field research until the 1980s, selecting locations such as Noto Peninsula, Sado Island and Tone River, and choosing topics such as Climate and Coastal regions. I participated in this joint research as a member of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To my regret, however, the quantity of data accumulated by each association has never been matched in quality, despite interdisciplinary efforts. This is mainly because barriers between the associations were so high that the participants hesitated to trespass on each other’s territories. Nonetheless, in spite of the weaknesses of this interdisciplinary approach, the Federation achieved remarkable results, sharing scarce financial resources in the postwar period. As regards overseas joint research, the Japanese Society of Ethnology organised three expeditions on the ‘Ethnic Cultures of Rice Agriculture in Southeast Asia’ from 1957 on. In 1963, the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University was established and began comprehensive research. The year 1958 marked two scientific expeditions, namely Tokyo University’s Scientific Research of the Andean Region, led by Seiichi Izumi, and the Scientific Research of Africa, headed by Kinji Imanishi of Kyoto University. The former focused on archaeology, along with ethnology and ethno-history, and later excavated Kotosh, Peru. The latter focused on both primatology and the study of human societies, using a long-term joint observation system, and endeavoured to organise the Kyoto University African Scientific Expedition (KUASE) in 1963. In 1964, the Research Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa was established at the Tokyo University for Foreign Languages as an inter-university research institute of the national universities. It launched various overseas research projects and initiated joint study groups, recruiting scholars nationwide. When it comes to joint study groups in the human sciences, one is reminded of the model cases of the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University. Some successful groups were organised by Takeo Kuwabara, who demanded that members contribute and share data, freely discuss

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all matters, and transcend their disciplines. He aimed to establish a group out of ‘spiritual need’, whose members would help each other without restraint (Kuwabara 1980: 381–408). Other institutions related to anthropology and area studies were established by leading national universities, such as the Institute of Oriental Cultures, Tokyo University, with which Seiichi Izumi and Chie Nakane, among others, were affiliated. The largest centre of Japanese anthropology, however, is the National Museum of Ethnology, inaugurated in 1974 as an inter-university research institute. It is located in the Expo Park, Osaka, and Umesao was appointed as the first Director-General. When it was opened to the public in November 1977, the academic staff numbered 48. Joint research projects (kyo¯do¯ kenkyu-), had started in 1976. Though there were only 13 groups with 54 members in the first year, the number increased to 27 projects with 287 members in 1984 (Sasaki 1986: 327). It is in this context that the so-called Taniguchi Symposia were born, first the ‘Ethnology Section’ in 1977, and later the ‘Civilization Studies Section’ in 1983. They lasted till 1998, one year before the Taniguchi Foundation was closed, due to its policy to spend all its resources on foundation business. The Taniguchi Symposia and the ‘Civilization Studies Section’ The Taniguchi Foundation is an abbreviation of the ‘Taniguchi Industries’ 45th Anniversary Foundation to Encourage Scientific Research’, which supported numerous symposia commonly referred to as ‘The Taniguchi Symposia’. The Taniguchi Foundation was created by Mr Toyosaburo¯ Taniguchi in 1929, with its main objective to promote the sciences in the Kansai Area. During the post-war period of financial difficulties, it only gave aid to mathematics and physics, which were less costly. It was reformed by the enormous donations presented by Mr. Taniguchi in 1976, expanding its support to a maximum of eighteen fields and disciplines. In accordance with his wishes, the Taniguchi Foundation defined its mission as the support of promising young scholars who participate in small-scale international symposia of the relatively less favoured areas of science (Hayaishi 1999: 1). What motivated Mr. Taniguchi to broaden his support, especially to young scholars, was based on his difficult experiences negotiating with the USA as President of the Japanese Federation of Fibre and Textile Industry at the start of the 1970s. He was deeply troubled by the tough negotiations, and had no intimate American partners or friends. He related his intentions as follows: From now on, I decided that I would like to enhance the degree of mutual understanding and deepen academic studies and human communication at an international level, by extending our support to other sciences besides mathematics, and particularly to capable young scholars in each discipline, by holding international symposia and encouraging participation at international conferences.

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The first ‘Ethnology’ Symposium was held at Minpaku on 7–14 September 1977, just before the opening of the museum. The organiser was Katsuyoshi Fukui, then associate professor, and the theme was ‘Tribal Relations among East African Herders: War and Peace’. There were thirteen participants, seven from Japan and six from abroad. The common language was English and simultaneous translation was employed. Sessions of the first four days were held in Minpaku and after a day off in Kyoto they moved to a seminar house of To¯yo¯bo¯ Co. Ltd., on the coast of Lake Biwa, to have sessions for two more days. Participants stayed in the same hotel and spent many hours together, often discussing issues until midnight. I was recruited to serve as a member of the executive committee, though not an Africanist, and learned a great deal about how to organise an international symposium. As a matter of fact, it was an intensive symposium, lasting an entire week, with presentations and discussions going on day and night, with an energetic organiser. One participant commented, ‘There was intense intellectual work going on with a tremendously heavy schedule’, and an English participant was amazed to find that African studies in Japan were much more advanced than he expected (Gekkan Minpaku 1977: 21). Another participant from England marvelled at the efficiency of a ‘country never imagined to exist on this earth’ and a French scholar expressed his astonishment when he encountered maiko: ‘I feel like I am on another planet’ (Umesao 1989: 72). When a symposium is over, the next task is publication. Fukui invited David Turton (University of Manchester) through the Japan Foundation and edited a volume of Senri Ethnological Studies (SES). Warfare among East African Herders (SES, no. 3, National Museum of Ethnology, 1979) received favourable book reviews from eleven journals including Science, American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Man, and L’Homme (Umesao 1989: 74). The total of ‘Ethnology’ Symposia numbered twentytwo by 1988, and the results were published as a SES series in English and Spanish. The ‘Civilization Studies’ Symposium operated in a similar manner, though there were some peculiar characteristics. One was the strong initiative and leadership of Umesao, who had proposed civilisation studies since the 1950s (Umesao 1981, 2003). He delivered a keynote speech at each symposium and participated in all sessions, with the exception of a year during which he was in hospital, and accordingly, this symposium was called ‘The Director-General’s Symposium’. Another feature was the continuous participation and assistance of Professors Kreiner and Befu, making the symposium and its publications truly international, as already mentioned. Those who had experience as organisers also joined in the Organising Committee, which facilitated the maintenance of the unique viewpoint of ‘Civilization Studies’. The main objective of ‘Civilization Studies’ is, citing Umesao’s words, to testify how perspectives on world history change when one puts a ‘Japanese

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Civilization’ card into the deck (Umesao 1999: 98). It was an effort to situate ‘Japanese Civilization in the Modern World’ by selecting concrete themes, and from a standpoint that Karl Marx and Max Weber had not analysed Japanese civilisation at all. In other words, it was an attempt at ‘A Comparative Study of Civilisations with a Focus on Japan’ or ‘Japanology or Japanese Studies from the Standpoint of a Comparative Study of Civilisations’ (Umesao 2000: 72). It can be argued that these ‘Civilization Studies’ Symposia have achieved their objectives. Kenji Yoshida, who organised the last symposium, summarised it as follows: A coherent frame of reference of Umesao is to refer always to Japanese civilisation when comparing civilisations. It was a strategy to escape from Western centred world-views, but at the same time it was also a strategy appropriate to the actual situation of modern civilisations. Above all, he clarified many parallel phenomena between Western civilisation and Japanese civilisation since the eighteenth century, and we have to say that it was a great result of the symposia that they added fundamental modifications to the traditional view that modern Japan was a copy of the modern West. (Yoshida 1999: 132) ‘Civilization Studies’ was closer to a JRP than ‘Ethnology’, because there was an umbrella theme, core members, and a sharing of information through publications. Moreover, it lasted for seventeen years, though the initial expectation was for ten years. The first symposium was held from 28 February to 7 March 1983, with the theme ‘Japanese Civilization in the Modern World: Society and Life’. The organiser was Naomichi Ishige and there were nine participants, five from Japan and four from abroad: Takeshi Moriya, Toshio Yokoyama, Sepp Linhart, and Robert J. Smith, besides Umesao, Befu, Kreiner, Ishige and myself (see Figure 8.1, page 63). The common language was Japanese. It was an enjoyable week, spending life under the same roof day and night, though there was a voice raised that some participants became mere shells of men for a few days after the symposium (Ishige 1984: 337). There are both English and Japanese publications from this symposium, the latter including discussions. Here is a list of the English publications as of April 2005: SES SES SES SES SES SES SES

no. 16 I: Japanese Civilization in the Modern World: Life and Society, 1984 no. 19 II: Cities and Urbanization, 1986 no. 25 III: Administrative Organizations, 1989 no. 26 IV: Economic Institutions, 1989 no. 28 V: Culturedness, 1990 no. 29 VI: Religion, 1990 no. 34 VII: Language, Literacy, and Writing, 1992

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no. 38 VIII: Tourism, 1995 no. 40 XI: Amusement, 1995 no. 46 X: Technology, 1998 no. 51 XVI: Nation-State and Empire, 2000 no. 52 XIV: Comparative Studies of Information and Communication, 2000 no. 54 XVII: Collection and Representation, 2001 no. 64 XV: Alcoholic Beverages, 2003

There are 14 volumes of the SES and 8 books in Japanese. The total number of participants is 211 (12.4 per symposium), 112 (53%) from Japan and 99 (47%) from abroad. It was almost equally divided between those who came from Eurasia (except Asia) and from North America. There were only a handful of participants from Asia and Australia and none from Latin America and Africa. This range may illustrate a distribution map of Japan specialists, including Japan anthropologists. But, to our surprise, we found that domestic and foreign participants played a combination of different roles in the symposium when Japanese was used as common language. Whereas foreign participants presented papers on Japanese civilisation, it was left for some Japanese participants to talk about nonJapanese civilisations. For instance, in the ‘Religion’ symposium for which I acted as organiser, Abito Ito¯ talked about Korean religions/civilisation and Kimihiko Sato¯ did the same with Chinese religions/civilisation. Even though nothing like an ‘academic school’ emerged from Taniguchi symposia, a long-term joint project such as this had a certain amount of influence and left a legacy. Let us take some examples from the ‘Religion’ symposium. Concerning the theories of Max Weber on Protestantism and capitalism, new perspectives were presented. For instance, Winston Davis offered an idea of ‘passive enablement’. He argued that religions such as non-Anglican Protestantism in Britain or Buddhism in modern Japan acted as a ‘passive enablement’ of development, for they were silent about the great costs of industrialisation (Davis 1990: 13). Tetsuo Yamaori criticised the Weberian theory of salvation and modernisation, arguing that he centred his framework on the axis of the ethos of the ‘successful in life (those blessed by God)’ while the problem of life’s dropouts hardly entered his field of vision (Yamaori 1990: 73). At that time there was a theory that emphasised the role of Confucianism in the economic development of Asian NICS/NIES. This was criticised by Ito¯ on the ground that while Confucianism contributed to the maintenance of the social order, it despised the Practical Learning School and neglected technology and science, resulting in a greatly delayed modernisation (Ito¯ 1990: 94). On the other hand, van Bremen emphasised the Neo-Confucian influences on bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, the military, and novelists in modern Japan, and described its function as a buffer and conductor mediating between constraints: domestic and foreign; antiquated and modern;

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familiar and unknown (van Bremen 1990: 78). What is important is the fact, pointed out by Umesao in discussion, that Confucianism and Christianity were accepted in Japan as thought or learning, rather than as religions which accompany rituals, and this is a distinctive feature in comparison with the Chinese and Korean civilisations. It was supposed that Confucianism and Christianity functioned in a similar way for the modernisation of Japanese society, in spite of their religious differences. This is the sort of perspective that emerged from the ‘Civilization Studies’ Symposia. The ‘Civilization Studies’ Symposia brought about an unexpected outcome of exchange between Japan anthropologists. In the anthropological studies of Japanese civilisation there used to be little communication between European and American scholars. Through this symposium they became intimate with each other. There had been JAWS (Japan Anthropology Workshop) in Europe, but the number of American scholars was limited. A JAWS Meeting was held at Minpaku in March 1999, as a fruit of the mutual communication raised by these symposia. This may be a great heritage which the ‘Civilization Studies’ of the Taniguchi Symposia left us. (Umesao 1999: 99) This is indeed an appropriate judgement for the long run, or ‘civilisationally’ speaking, but it needs some clarification. The JAWS Meeting at Minpaku was managed by Roger Goodman and myself, as conference convener, and although Goodman was not a participant of the Taniguchi Symposia, there were some JAWS members who took part in the ‘Civilization Studies’ Symposia, e.g. Ann Alison, Michael Ashkenazi, Harumi Befu, Eyal BenAri, Jan van Bremen, Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, Joy Hendry, William Kelly, Josef Kreiner, Sepp Linhart, Nakamaki, Robert Smith, and Toshinao Yoneyama. It was Jan van Bremen who invited me for the JAWS Meeting at the University of Leiden in 1990, which was my first personal encounter with JAWS. Ultimately, the ‘Civilization Studies’ Symposia paved the way for the realisation of the JAWS Meeting at Minpaku, which was the first time a JAWS meeting was held in Japan.

Merits and Demerits of Joint Research Projects It is possible to summarise some points – the merits and demerits – from the above description of JRP. First, big JRP are suitable in a context of scarce financial resources. Such was the case with the Kyu- Gakkai Rengo¯ and overseas expeditions in early post-war Japan. Individual interests, however, may be restricted in these projects. Second, long-term JRP may lead to the formation of a sort of ‘school’ or ‘faction’, which has positive and negative aspects; e.g. by creating an in-group and an out-group. Andean researches and African studies have been associated with Tokyo

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University and Kyoto University, respectively, for a long time. Leading national universities had to choose their specialties in the establishment of new research institutes under the strong control of the Ministry of Education; e.g. scrap and build, or divide and rule. The success of any JRP basically depends on its leadership, the ties among its core membership, a willingness to serve others in transcending individual disciplines, and friendship based on respect. Intensive symposium under the same roof may help to achieve this goal, as was the case of the Taniguchi Symposia. Those who close their minds towards interdisciplinary communication may benefit less from JRP. In the age of globalisation, or in the ongoing process of integration among civilisations, the dichotomy of the West and the East will increasingly lose its relevance, while anthropologists are still engaged in characterising individual cultures or civilisations. ‘Civilization Studies’ and JRP may help to pave the way for a better understanding of the future of mankind.

Figure 8.1 Back: Naomichi Ishige, Toshio Yokoyama, Hirochika Nakamaki, Takeshi Moriya. Front: Sepp Linhart, Josef Kreiner, Tadao Umesao, Robert J. Smith, Harumi Befu (at Lake Biwa, 1983) Used by permission of The Senri Foundation.

9

The Discipline of Context: On Ethnography among the Japanese Mitchell W. Sedgwick

Perhaps our training to worry over Orientalist and colonial foundations, and the ethics of the anthropological gaze upon non-Western societies, if not the rationalist gaze of Western thought itself and the possible neocolonial formations allowing for contemporary anthropology, stimulated the planning of the plenary Japan Anthropology Workshop panel on the ‘East–West divide in Japan anthropology’. There were indications of trouble with our central ‘problem’ before our session – in Hong Kong, in 2005 – even began. All celebrated anthropologists of Japan, four of our five speakers were ethnically Asian, three of them established at major universities in their (Asian) country of birth. Another – ethnically Japanese – had in recent years retired from a long and illustrious career at a major American university and has moved into a series of posts at Japanese universities, while our one official Westerner is based in the UK, makes frequent visits to Japan for international conferences, new research and renewing friendships established over thirty years. Structurally, then, in the mathematical data of power, the session was dominated by the ‘natives’. In practice, to my knowledge, the predominantly Western and white audience, thoroughly familiar with the personages on the podium, did not bat an eyelash. We were at home with one another. Based on this rarefied population, it would be an overstretch to claim that the East–West dichotomy is no longer a category mobilised on occasion, even if it no longer seems of much importance to anthropologists of Japan. We are fully aware of means of conveniencing various categories – ‘inventing traditions’, ‘imagining communities’, etc. – for various purposes – statebuilding, etc. Indeed, East and West may continue to do some work – besides being available as motifs for restaurateurs – such as in nationalistic receptions of international relations, e.g., the continued official scrutiny of ‘Western imperialism’ in China, or perhaps in considering North Korea’s evasive nuclear development programme as a phenomenon of the ‘inscrutable East’. At the very least, one was reminded implicitly, and at times explicitly through comments, that each member of our panel, and, indeed, its many interlocutors, marked as primary their practical commitments to institutions within various nation-states, in spite of their occasional visitations

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with, and apparent comfort within, a global community of Japan anthropologists. Their contemporary affiliations seemed in turn to mark as primary the various intellectual and methodological practices and histories so codified institutionally (and these are not necessarily the same concerns as those of Western anthropologists, though most of the participants were trained in Western academia). Rightly so. After all, these national settings are the contexts in which we ‘make our living’. Indeed obsessions over Orientalism and neo-colonialism were treated largely as quaint – something exercising North American academia in particular – about which they apparently might feel obliged to pay some lip service when they travelled east across the Pacific. My comments here, however, do not seek to rehearse the power of the constructions we produce and toil within, or sometimes reject, e.g. East and West. Rather I seek to point out the risk – to a sound anthropology of Japan – of over-stimulating the idea of diversity. (We naturally celebrate diversity, but we may not want to use it as a foil for presuming that in claiming ‘diversity’ we might have freed ourselves of various restraints in which we work, such as those ‘national’ restraints mentioned above). This essay is concerned with diversity of methodological practice in anthropology and, specifically, ethnographic fieldwork, which I take as the only practical difference between socio-cultural anthropology and any other of the social sciences. Whether or not as individual social scientists we pay explicit regard to them, it seems to me that all of our data and analysis is handmaiden to larger philosophical questions regarding the human condition. And, in spite of hermeneutic anxieties, at a minimum, but importantly, anthropology has (always has had) something special to offer up to both this ‘high level’ exercise, and others: that is, extraordinarily rich empirical information based on close observation, and often participation, in the day-to-day practices of our subjects. Of course we fieldworkers all acknowledge that interpretation is necessarily produced through the experience and presentational skills of the anthropologist, not always, but often working as an individual. It is, therefore, by definition personalised, and so diverse. And that is to say nothing of the necessary diversity of consumers of, and so further interpreters of, ethnographic work. Thus, to be sure, there are many and diverse means to knowledge. But there are probably not so many different, or for our purposes here, ‘diverse’ means of doing good ‘ethnographic fieldwork’ beyond engaging with the extraordinary, if unbelievably challenging, condition of grappling with (and convincing yourself, and those you are studying, of) your fundamental and humble personal commitment to being with them; that is, being fully ‘in (their) context’. Perhaps this is why occasions like the Japan Anthropology Workshop are so comfortable. We need only undo a button and a group of fairies – our colleagues – descend lightly upon us to help us disrobe, but just a little further – they talk to us about what we’re thinking before we’ve thought it – and thus not

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requiring our full exposure. Allow me, however, to expand on what Japan does for anthropology and social science before returning to a discussion of what Japan anthropology may be doing.

Convergence, divergence and anthropological Japan: always global As we know, as the only non-Western society at a comparable level of economic development to Western societies, Japanese society provides an important comparative corrective to analyses of complex industrial society and modernity that have traditionally been based upon observations of Western societies alone. Extraordinary analytic opportunities thus present themselves in the treatment of the ‘case of Japan’, and they are a continuous source of interest for those engaged in its study. Japan of course always passed the traditional anthropological test as an appropriate subject of study: it was non-Western and, thereby, exotic. As such, it is not surprising that early anthropological studies of Japan matched foci of most early anthropology: village life, agriculture, kinship, and religious practice. Later, Japan’s modern condition presented certain opportunities to Japan anthropology, and what followed was work in urban anthropology as well as pathbreaking analyses of Japan’s formal, large organisations, which spawned an industry of study – in anthropology as well as in industrial sociology – of Japanese firms of all sizes. In more recent years, with a by now exceptionally rich ethnographic base, the subject of Japan in the world, broadly conceived – or, more precisely, the personal and organisational qualities of Japanese persons’ experiences of the world – is adding long-awaited grist to the everchurning mill of abstract discussion of globalism and global culture. Finally, it seems to me that handled properly there are positive prospects for Japan anthropology in the mainstream of general discussion in anthropology.

Anthropology in Japan and, eventually, of Japan At least from the mid-nineteenth century Japan took its educational system seriously; for the most part modelling it on Western structures (if not necessarily mimicking the pedagogic content present in Western academia). It is unsurprising, then, that a large number of future Japanese anthropologists received at least their postgraduate education in the West. Furthermore, given anthropology’s Western traditions it is also unsurprising that very few anthropology departments in Japan, until perhaps most recently, have created positions in the anthropology of Japan. To put it succinctly, it was not the job of Japanese anthropologists working in Japanese universities to study Japan. Like their Western counterparts their core task was to study relatively ‘exotic’ cultures from their own. (It should be noted that anthropology in Japan did not carry this matter to its logical conclusion: study of the ‘exotic West’. Rather, it followed Western practice by making poorer, more ‘primitive’, societies its subjects.) Even these days,

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broadly speaking, and with occasional exceptions, while ‘anthropology at home’ is an important intellectual problem, it remains uninstitutionalised in anthropology at Western universities. For anthropology in Japanese universities anthropology of Japan has until recently been, similarly, marginal, with positions for the most part occupied by non-Japanese academics trained outside of Japan and working substantively through the Westerngenerated anthropological literature on Japan. Things are in motion, however. I began this essay by outlining the intellectual contours of the general ‘critique of anthropology’, among which must be included the suppression of ‘native’ voices. The counter-critique, of Western anthropology of Japan by Japan-based anthropologists, has been valuable (for instance, Kuwayama 2001) and has been carried into the mainstream of our teaching. Such efforts have perhaps made possible, along with such temporary data as panel membership at our recent conference, the suggestion that an East–West divide in Japan anthropology is no longer relevant. In any case while some had been doing so for some time in a relatively quiet manner (or, at least, not in translation), it is clear that by now an ever increasing number of Japanese anthropologists are looking at their own society. They are naturally interested in ‘native’ claims on anthropological, or anthropology-like, knowledge, perhaps to act as a counterweight to the preponderance of Western sources. (I have explicitly not mentioned Doi and Nakane in fulfilling such a role. They were, respectively, a psychiatrist and sociologist, each was trained in the West, and both are mainstream in the Western anthropological literature on Japan.) Native sources have been found, for example, in what might be called traditional ethnological formats: work by Japanese folklorists, collectors of native tales, often in oral form, and definers of regional traditions; work which has been undertaken over a very long time period in Japan. While one might be concerned with occasional historical misuses of Japanese folklore for domestic propaganda during nihonjinron-inspired periods of political mobilisation, the bulk of native folklore work is compelling. Meanwhile, various contemporary cross-disciplinary coalitions – kenkyu-kai – of scholars studying similar subject matter, for instance, Japanese forms of organisational administration, have been built up. Such cross-disciplinary approaches to specific subjects are necessarily stimulating for all involved. I have personally been honoured to have been an occasional participant in such exercises, which bring a great deal of information to the table and, perhaps most importantly, an often-required (attempt at) surfacing implicit meanings of words used in particular disciplines. My concerns lay not with expanding the breadth of sources of information, and who could possibly argue against an interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation of ideas? It is furthermore so welcome that scholars from other disciplines would seem, finally, to want to share time with anthropologists. Rather, in this celebration of diverse sources, diverse means of gathering data, and diverse collaborations, I wonder if I am not also hearing hints of

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a watering down of methodological rigour in Japan anthropology. By all means, I want both to witness events of and to historicise oral traditions of storytelling in rural Japan. For anthropological purposes, I may also want to know, however, about the storyteller’s day job, family and community, and the conditions leading to the storyteller’s personal choices to spend time acquiring, perpetuating and communicating knowledge of ‘traditional things’ in the present. In, for instance, studying a particular organisation, a visit of a day or two by a multidisciplinary research team will generate a body of fascinating, and well-triangulated, information, which could furthermore be compared with public perceptions of that firm. But if we care to know about it – and an anthropology of organisations should care to know about it – this style of research will tell us little about social dynamics and conflict within the firm, the experience of career paths, discourses of male and female interaction, or which nomiya (drinking establishment) features in real decision-making, and why. We anthropologists should, of course, be collaborating with scholars in other fields while remaining inclined and finding the time, difficult as that is, to seek out those rich webs of day-to-day experience that in-depth, extended ethnographic fieldwork produces. We occasionally bear criticism from other social scientists that we do not produce enough, usually quantifiable, empirical data. For certain sorts of data – which for instance would generate statistical generalisability – this is likely to be the case. However, I would suggest, that, to the contrary, when properly in the field we wrap ourselves so thoroughly in the fabric of empirical knowledge – of the persons and things and relations in our fieldwork contexts – that our ‘problem’ rightly becomes the unwrapping of ourselves, and the deciphering of the weave, elsewhere in other contexts: the re-presentation of our knowledge and experience in ethnographic writing, in film, in the classroom, back ‘at home’. And what an interesting problem that is. I would not know if such processes were more art than ‘natural’ science. I would know, however, that if Japan anthropology were to become too easy, our clothes would be threadbare.

10 Japanese Inns (Ryokan) and an Asian Atmosphere: Always East of somewhere Sylvie Guichard-Anguis

Starting to write this essay I must admit that at first I was puzzled by the title of the JAWS Conference taking place in Hong Kong. What had the organizers in mind when they decided on the general topic ‘East Meets West’ for a conference located in China (West ?) and dedicated to Japanese studies (East?)? Different interpretations could be found, but for my own topic I chose to concentrate on Japanese relations with neighbouring countries in Asia through the examination of a particular phenomenon. After all, this choice offers a kind of Asian version, in other words a more local one, of the East–West confrontation! Going quickly through it will help to raise several questions concerning the East–West dichotomy. The Japanese White Book on tourism (kanko¯ hakusho 2004) establishes several categories of accommodation inside Japan: hotels, ryokan (Japanese inns), minshuku (which offer family-like service) and penshion (the same, but oriented to young people), with the first two dominating. The first numbered 8,518 and the second 61,583 in 2002. If the number of hotels shows a yearly increase, that for ryokan shows an opposite evolution with 67,891 in 1998. The same White Book does not give any precise definition of those two categories, but underlines their difference of size by giving the average number of rooms per category: 76.2 in the case of hotels and 14.9 for ryokan, both figures showing a tendency to increase. The relatively small size of ryokan in comparison to hotels gives an inkling of this type of lodging, one that can only be found in Japan. Having the rare privilege in the world of an indigenous tradition of accommodation with a different historical origin from that of hotels, Japanese often oppose the two (Guichard-Anguis 2003). But confusion between the types remains easy as the contemporaneous architectural look of either, or even the naming, does not indicate any clear difference in a lot of cases. To give a definition of this type of inn seems nearly impossible, as the category covers an endless variety of lodgings, which cannot even be characterised by the fact of being entirely of Japanese style (wafu). The large number of shelves in Japanese bookstores dedicated to publications on ryokan reveals how much this type of lodging is still favoured by Japanese people. Among all the kinds of ryokan introduced in this literature, this

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essay will focus on the deluxe ones, those still seeking new opportunities for development and chances of continuing to be present in this new century, and, it goes without saying, of setting new trends. The ryokan Ho¯shi in Awazu (Ishikawa prefecture) boasts that it dates back to 718 according to an historical document of the Edo period (1603– 1868). The present manager represents the forty-sixth generation, which makes Ho¯shi one of the oldest enterprises in the world and allows it to be included in the Guinness Book of Records. The history of ryokan has been largely associated with hot springs in relation to the to¯jiba yado (literally, an inn where one may take healing baths, in fact plain accommodation where one could stay and cook one’s own meals), but it is generally assumed nowadays that several kinds of accommodation slowly merged to produce the present ryokan. The unique character of ryokan among lodgings in the world allows them to insist on their Japaneseness, the characteristic on which its attraction among visitors is largely based. One aspect of the latest trend among successful ryokan lies in offering a so-called Asian atmosphere. On the other hand, a recent national tourist campaign aimed at attracting visitors from neighbouring countries could suggest that this new trend seeks to accommodate those new types of visitors. This essay will analyse how these two possibilities are related through three different perspectives, before entering into a discussion on several points raised by the topic on the East–West dichotomy.

Perception of Ryokan as places of Japanese identity To give a detailed example I will describe the cover of the review Tabi (Travel), no. 900, published by the Japan Travel Bureau in January 2002. The lead title of this anniversary number reads Nihon no yado (Japanese inns). The photograph depicts a kind of balcony offering a view of mountains, covered by a forest tinted with the beginning of autumn (although the number was published in winter!). In the foreground, two round cushions made of plant fibres are laid on a straw mat. Inside the magazine, the reader can find a second picture of the same view, but including more: two cups of tea (chawan) and a tray with plates full of Japanese sweets. Already those two photos give a lot of information. First, we have to notice the association between the ryokan (which only appears as the frame of the landscape) and nature, in particular mountains, and the choice of Japanese seating style suggested by the two cushions. To Japanese nature corresponds Japanese culture through food and handcrafts. This issue introduces ryokan as a place to discover Japanese nature and culture. Second, we have to notice the importance of modernity among the pages of this issue. Generally speaking ryokan offer a Japanese style of lodging following a tradition which has always shown signs of adaptation through the centuries. Modernity shows itself through the Westernization of the

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room setting. Western beds, Western tables and chairs, and even Western food can be found in the selection of illustrations. To amateurs most of the appeal of ryokan lies in the association of comfort and modernity with a tradition of lodging that has roots that go back centuries. On the one hand, facing the competition of hotels since their introduction in the second part of the nineteenth century, yado had to incorporate new amenities. On the other, the selection of products from Japanese material culture to adorn the inside of the ryokan reminds visitors of the historical environment in which they are located. The unique character of the three main activities taking place inside ryokan – bathing, sleeping and eating – is emphasized by the vocabulary that runs through all the publications related to ryokan. For a short period the ryokan plays the part of a retreat (as shown in the expression kakureie or hidden house), where the visitor can communicate with a part of his or her own culture, which does not belong anymore to everyday life. These contacts take many different forms through different expressions of Japanese culture in architecture, handicrafts, cooking, ikebana, calligraphy, chanoyu (tea ceremony), the wearing of the kimono, etc. The encounter is stressed by the often-used expression Nihon no kokoro (heart of Japan) found in a lot of publications. In other words, through very short stays (one night is the average), the visitor is looking for an other self inside his or her own culture. Other publications, like the deluxe women’s magazine ‘Kateigaho¯’, go even further in upholding that some of the most deluxe ryokan are looking for excellence in every aspect of the services entailed. They even boast of being the repositories of ‘Japanese Beauty’, as one of the main places in today’s Japan where the representation of this Japanese Beauty takes place. The 500th issue of this magazine, in October 1999, focused on this topic, stressing that respect for the past or living traditions nurtures the present and prepares for the future. In the conservation of these different types of knowledge lie the materials for the invention of modernity. This know-how guarantees humanity and Japanese identity, they argue.

Ryokan and modernity: the introduction of an Asian Atmosphere This invention of modernity associated with being Japanese can go even further, taking unexpected forms, as illustrated by the paradox of borrowing from foreign cultures. We have already noticed that Westernisation has been a strong trend in the modernisation of ryokan, through the incorporation of amenities since the Meiji period. Nowadays, some of the most famous ryokan, the trend-setting ones, are finding inspiration in architecture, design and even cooking from different parts of Asia. For the last few years, an ‘Asian atmosphere’ is clearly becoming a component in the construction of this so-called Japanese Beauty. Cultural artifacts from Korea, Bali or other countries in South-East Asia are entering these shelters of Japanese identity.

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The ryokan Tawaraya, which seeks to be the epitome of Japanese hospitality, is a very good example of this latest trend. Set in the heart of Kyoto, this ryokan offers eighteen kinds of isolated rooms (hanare) to which leads a labyrinth of corridors and staircases. Opening onto pocket gardens, these rooms are carefully decorated, with furniture which, surprisingly, comes not from Japan but mainly from Korea. In a ryokan emphasising the know-how of local craftsmen, one might wonder why old Japanese pieces of furniture are not allowed to participate in this creation of Japanese Beauty. One of the reasons might be that old Japanese furniture does not benefit from any recognition in Japan (as testified by Kazuko Koizumi,1 curator of the Showa no kurashi hakubutsukan (Museum of Showa Life) in Tokyo, and one of the few specialists of this field in Japan). We might also suggest that Korean pieces of furniture offer contact with an elsewhere, which is part of the creation of this ryokan. Tawaraya offers the paradox of being a shelter away from the large city inside which it is located, but where Japanese culture is emphasised in every aspect. A book entitled Strangeness of Tawaraya (Muramatsu 1999) came out of the series of papers published during 1998 in Kateigaho¯. Although the book emphasises the importance of Japaneseborn craftsmen, as shown in the publicity strip ‘If craftsmen disappear, Tawayara will be no more (Shokunin inaku natara, Tawayara nakunarimasu)’, a portion of the book is dedicated to Bali with the title ‘Dream of Bali. Dream of Tawaraya’ (Bari no yume Tawaraya no yume). On the one hand, the culture of Kyoto is stressed through the introduction of all those who work directly for the benefit of the ryokan, making it the most Japanese among all the Japanese-style inns. The lighting, the paper walls, the tatami, the bedding, the flowers and even the ingredients of the food served in Tawaraya are clearly the works of carefully selected and dedicated craftsmen from Kyoto. On the other hand, this shelter of Japanese beauty and excellence seems closely related to the Amandary Hotel in Ubud (Bali Island). Fostering local culture and its most representative craftsmen helps to create a unique atmosphere based on the well-being of its clients. Modernity characterises the work of those craftsmen who adapt their knowledge in both cases to the requirements of today’s comfort. In the case of Bali the invention of a tradition is particularly significant in architecture (Espace et Socie´te´ 2003). Both lodgings are trying to create the same atmosphere of an elsewhere rooted in local living traditions associated with internationalisation. Tawaraya boasts of getting half of its clients from among foreigners and of having been selected by the magazine Fortune in 1979 as one of the eight best hotels in the world. In his book entitled The Japanese Inns of the Highest Rank– Now Where Should We Stay?, Kashiwai lists the keywords characterising the most popular ryokan, the ones he calls ‘Japanesuku modan ryokan’. The name, the resort, and a dramatic space are listed first and then follows the fourth keyword: ‘Ajia no funiki’ (an Asian atmosphere). Located in Amagusa archipelago (Kumamoto prefecture), the ryokan Ishiyama Rikyu Goashi no

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Kutsu proposes two kinds of villas. Villa B offers ‘Asia no naka no Amagasuka no tema’ (the theme of Amagasuka inside Asia). Those rooms of the hanare type are built like some small resort villas one is supposed to find in the Southern seas. With two floors and an individual furo (bath) and rotenburo (open air bath), their conception emphasises their closeness with nature and the sea. The visitor will find there an elsewhere associated with some kind of furusato characterised by a close contact with nature. It goes without saying that this new tendency belongs to the phenomenon of globalisation in which the most prestigious ryokan are definitely taking part. Borrowing from foreign cultures and especially countries neighbouring on one’s own has a very long history in Japan and has long been part of the building of modernity. The tea ceremony makes extensive use of ceramics, baskets, etc. coming from South-East Asia and China. They have helped to create a living tradition set at the core of Japanese identity.

Ryokan and globalisation In 2002 Japan ranked eighth for receiving foreign visitors among Asian countries, with 5.2 million, far behind China with 36.8 million. According to the White Book on tourism, in 2003, visitors from other countries of Asia were as follows: Koreans, first, with 1.4 million, followed by Taiwan with 790,000. All figures except those for Korea are showing a decrease, but this does not prevent Asia from sending the largest share of foreign visitors to Japan with 67.4 per cent, followed by North-America with 15.3 per cent. Roughly half of the visitors from Asia favour individual travel, against 40 per cent in favour of group travel, of whom a third take part in package tours. A national campaign to attract visitors from abroad was launched in 2003 by the Ministry of Land and Transport, but it faces a lot of problems (which I cannot develop here) such as visas for Chinese citizens, lack of information, etc. Ryokan, especially the ones built to entertain large groups, are facing very difficult times nowadays, going bankrupt one after another. The pattern of stay in ryokan has greatly changed recently, and a lot of them cannot adapt to this new demand for individual visits. This tendency explains why the number of ryokan is on the decrease. In order to attract new customers, some ryokan like Kagaya in the Noto peninsula are looking to attract visitors from Taiwan. This ryokan is even opening a Taiwan Kagaya in 2006, through franchise, in order to attract customers from Taiwan who want to know the real Kagaya. This essay originated from the idea of examining the relationship between two different phenomena characterising tourist evolution inside Japan in association with other countries of Asia. We have noticed that negotiating modernity by borrowing from foreign cultures, especially geographically close ones, has always been a strong trend in Japan. This new phenomenon, part of globalisation, is just a step in the evolution of deluxe ryokan to

adapt to the modern world. Their target customers remain mainly Japanese tourists, looking for places to remind them of their own identity. On the other hand, ryokan created to entertain large groups are trying to find new visitors travelling from different countries of Asia. Recently I came upon a set of postcards in the archives belonging to a famous French Japonologist, Charles Haguenauer, who travelled extensively in Japan and neighbouring countries in the 1930s. It was dedicated to the ryokan Chitoseya in Manchuria. What attracted my attention was this presence of ryokan in a region outside the Japanese archipelago. We may even wonder if one day the concept of ryokan may not be a Japanese product taking a direct part in the contribution to globalisation issuing from Japan and being exported to the rest of the world.

Everywhere as East and West? In this essay I looked at Japan as the East and other countries of Asia as the West. Throughout this study focusing on Japanese cultural relations with neighbouring countries I have argued that shifting the geographical position, or centre, allows us to speak of any possible kinds of East and West. If we consider Japan as one of the main centres of globalisation, its relations with other countries lie in another geographical perspective. From the second part of the twentieth century, becoming a centre from which modernity spreads, its location adds more confusion to the old historical East–West distinction, as this phenomenon was previously only associated with the so-called West. Japan itself adopted a European/Northern America perception of the world, as Tayara noticed in his historical analysis of the Japanese view of Arab countries, which later allowed Japan to figure among colonial powers, a situation which makes mutual perception more confusing. Discussion would be easier if the East–West dichotomy were abandoned and the distinctions amongst countries were set in a geographical perspective, using the names of the geographical regions such as Asia, Europe, etc., and leaving aside the direction of the sun. One more important question is raised by this study: although conceived by a European, based on Japanese sources written in Japanese2 and nurtured by extensive field work inside Japan, may I ask which side this work belongs to?

Notes 1 Kazuko Koizumi complained, when I met her in April 2002, about the general lack of interest in Japan, compared to Europe, for old Japanese pieces of furniture, which are most of the time thrown away. 2 Due to the length and type of this essay most of the references have been eliminated.

11 Japanese Management and Japanese Miracles: The Global Sweep of Japanese Economic and Religious Organisations Wendy Smith Introduction Many Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) and Japanese new religious movements (NRMs) are truly global entities, which are found in all the continents and most major capital cities around the world. Not only their physical presence but also their key ideas and practices, be they management practices, or daily life practices relating to the sacred, have been accepted and internalised by members of these organisations, many of whom are from cultural backgrounds which have no intrinsic resonance with Japanese culture. Using the context of Japanese Studies to understand how the East–West dichotomy is being dismantled, I ask the question ‘Why have Japanese values and practices been accepted so readily in other cultural contexts, often not even as ‘‘Japanese’’, but as universal principles embraced with eagerness because of their effectiveness and without reference to the historical, economic and political relationships between the host society members and Japan?’ This chapter will compare the global sweep of Japanese MNCs and Japanese NRMs in an attempt to explain this singular phenomenon and demonstrate that forces stronger than cultural identity are operating here, hence contributing to dismantling a simplistic East/West dichotomy largely based on stereotypical national cultural identities.

Japanese MNCs Global interest in the nature of Japanese society, which accelerated after the Japanese anthropologist Chie Nakane’s book Tateshakai no Ningen Kankei was published in English as Japanese Society in 1970, occurred in the context of Japan’s spectacular economic success. Among the many explanations of the ‘Japanese miracle’ a dominant theme was the uniqueness of the Japanese management system, which gave rise to loyalty and dedication by employees, harmonious labour relations, high levels of productivity, zero defect production and low levels of absenteeism and employee turnover. This new focus on Japanese management supplanted the hitherto Orientalist preoccupation with Japanese cultural forms such as ikebana, tea ceremony,

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Zen Buddhism and martial arts in the West. It was reinforced by Nakane’s heavy use of case material from the Japanese corporate world to illustrate and explain the nature of Japanese society through the dominance of a vertical principle in Japanese social relationships (Hata and Smith 1984). Nakane’s status as an anthropologist strengthened the validity of the Nihonjinron stereotype that her book Japanese Society largely created. Thereafter the focus of research and discussion on Japanese society was more and more from the reference point of employees of large Japanese corporations and their families as the locus of a normative set of Japanese social relationships against which all could be contrasted. This was despite the fact that these sarariman male employees of large corporations made up only 25 per cent of the labour market in the 1970s and 1980s when the Japanese management paradigm flourished. Moreover, the heavy emphasis on culture unchanged from the traditional past as a dominant influence in the earliest foreign view of Japanese management by Abegglen (1958) helped establish a culturalist trend in Japanese management studies. The idea of the uniqueness of the Japanese management model, especially as it was attributed to this supposed carry-over of unchanging cultural factors, was challenged and refuted by Japanese labour economists from the 1960s onwards. These included Koike in Japan and, from the 1970s, Western scholars such as Levine and Kawada, Crawcour, Sugimoto and Mouer, also responding to the wider Nihonjinron paradigm, of which the management focus was only one, albeit vital, facet. However, the stereotype continued unchallenged in the popular press into the 1980s and 1990s, presented in terms of its three pillars of lifetime employment, seniority system in wages and promotions, and enterprise unionism. It was reinforced by the increasing Japanese presence overseas through high levels of Japanese direct foreign investment and a dominant place in global consumer consciousness through the proliferation of well-designed, cheap and reliable Japanese electrical appliances and automobiles. Once these high levels of Japanese investment were in place – manufacturing automobiles in the United States and Europe and every type of electrical appliance in the newly industrialising economies of Southeast Asia – it was asked whether the system of Japanese management was transferred to these overseas ventures and production systems. Often the only plausible answer was ‘yes’ as the hitherto conflict-based systems of unionism in the West were replaced by enterprise bargaining in these ventures, and inexpensive, defect-free appliances were competently manufactured by comparatively less educated workers in developing economies. To many, the key to this manufacturing miracle could only be that the essence of Japanese management ideas and processes was introduced into the foreign venture. Moreover, the large number of Japanese managers who were transferred to staff the rapidly growing number of overseas ventures had no time to be trained in cross-cultural management. They brought to their first posting

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only the knowledge of how things were managed in Japan as the way to organise production and interact with local managers and workers in a foreign context (Smith 1994). Japanese management therefore became transferred through an ad hoc process to the many Japanese MNCs globally. It was also eagerly embraced by nation-states such as Singapore and Malaysia in ‘Learn from Japan’ and ‘Look East’ policies, and even by employers without Japanese partners in other nations such as Australia, the UK and the USA. They were seeking to break the detrimental impact on productivity of militant union cultures by implementing enterprise bargaining and multi-skilling regimes. Quality control circles, just-in-time inventory systems, and conceptual approaches to production were actively adopted by Western firms, giving a ‘management guru’ status to those who popularised these ideas in the West. On an academic level, these phenomena sparked debates along a convergence–divergence continuum and even led to hypotheses of a reverse convergence of Western management systems towards the Japanese model (Dore 1973) which this chapter supports. It is important to note that major contributions to the study of Japanese management systems have been made by anthropologists. Nakane derived her insights into Japanese society from her studies of Indian social structure while studying British social anthropology at the LSE, where Dore also studied. A younger generation, Matthew Allen, Anne Allison, Dorinne Kondo, Louella Matsunaga, Brian Moeran, James Roberson, Thomas Rohlen, Mitch Sedgwick and Wendy Smith, to name a few, all studied Japanese corporate life from the viewpoint of anthropology, often using a participant observer approach. They were thus able to decipher the complex reality of the strategic mobilisation of values from the wider Japanese cultural matrix for the satisfaction of corporate goals within modern economic organisational structures. Publications on the Japanese management model achieved best-seller status on a global level while the boom in Japan lasted. However, as the Japanese economy went into recession in the 1990s, and the dynamic interplay of the three pillars’ constituents proved to be ineffective in the face of global forces, the model was discredited and the practices themselves, especially lifetime employment, were dismantled. The pervasiveness of Japanese management values and practices transcending those of other national cultures only worked while Japan had economic power. Workers in the highly individualist US culture, according to Hofstede’s (2001) classification, wore company uniforms, attended morning meetings and worked in teams in a very alien, collectivist Japanese style. Thus, the cultural trappings of Japanese production systems were adopted in the pursuit of profit, proving that economic power and the profit motive were more powerful than maintaining an East–West distinction in non-Japanese employees’ indigenous culture-based identities within the firm. In Japan itself, the interwoven logic of lifetime employment, seniority system and enterprise unionism collapsed when the Japanese economy collapsed.

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Loyal middle managers in mid-career were retrenched, and many, having nowhere to go in terms of getting a new position in their middle age, committed suicide. Major companies in the Japanese economy merged with non-Japanese partners and even appointed CEOs who were not Japanese. Those elements of the Japanese system which continue to prove efficacious for the profit motive remain in global management systems with their own labels: enterprise bargaining, multi-skilling, continuous improvement, total quality, just-in-time production systems. Through their widespread adoption independent of the circumstances of Japanese DFI, we see a strong example of the dismantling of the East–West dichotomy.

Japanese NRMs In studies of globalisation, research has focused on trade, production and consumption, with the major global institutions, apart from bodies like the UN, World Bank, ILO, IMF, being the MNCs. But it is important to realise that many institutions such as the UN, NGOs, social movements such as environmentalism and NRMs are conceived from the outset in a globalised organizational form. However, these have been little studied from an organisational theory perspective, despite the fact that the rapidly expanding NRMs are very significant global entities in terms of their global reach, size and power. Moreover, in historical terms, religion is a major context of globalisation, one as old as early maritime trade and exploration. Religious organisations were at the forefront of the global movement of people and ideas from earliest times. Indeed established religions such as Christianity and Islam, themselves NRMs in their day, were the earliest global organisations and their organisation structures and administrative procedures operated successfully for centuries, with the key global institution being pilgrimage. The global sweep of the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, is so well entrenched that we rarely think about it unless a major event, like a Pope’s funeral, occurs. Even today, religion is a key element in the development and intensification of globalisation. Just as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam were highly controversial in their early days, and the ideas and practices propounded by their founders constituted elements of social revolution against established social structures, in the last 150 years the more contemporary NRMs have functioned as contexts for revolution against the status quo. Many originating from Asia, they can be seen as all-embracing ‘cultures’ for their converts, in the sense that they influence language usage, diet, relationships, birth, marriage and death rituals, patterns and styles of residence, consumption and recreation patterns, and so on. The striking thing about many of these NRMs is that they constitute themselves as global entities from the outset and unify their followers globally, transcending their cultures of origin by replacing day-to-day cultural practices with those practised within the movement. When followers meet each other at the pilgrimage place, a

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truly global culture is experienced, in which race, ethnicity and native language become less important than the common fact of membership in the organisation. Soka Gakkai, Mahikari, and those NRMs popularly known as Hari Krishnas and the Moonies are good examples, and their internationally organised administrative structures and budgets can easily be compared to those of large multinational enterprises in scale and scope. It is important theoretically, and in terms of the growing interest in the phenomenon of globalisation, to examine NRMs as key players among the forces promoting globalisation and affecting world politics, and as administrative structures that are performing successfully in cross-cultural and supra-national contexts. Japanese MNCs and NRMs are likewise comparable in size and global reach; both tend to use global geographic structures, with subunits categorised according to regions and countries, and both frequently move key personnel across national boundaries. Tenrikyo, for instance, founded in 1839, adopted a global approach from the outset. It established a foreign languages library which contains holy texts from around the world, a university to teach the foreign languages which would need to be understood by proselytisers of the faith, and an ethnographic museum to show artefacts typical of the cultures where the faith would be propagated. All these are located in Tenri City, near the main shrine and resting place of the founder. The organisation has branches around the world and distributes its literature in sixteen languages. Daily ceremonies incorporate ancient Japanese instruments and recitations in the Japanese language, recited in concert with music, rhythmic hand movements and dance. Non-Japanese members recite the service in Japanese with the help of large notice boards displaying the text romanised for visitors or members who have not been able to memorise it. The organisation is considering translating the service into indigenous languages, but a major problem would be to capture a rhythm in the translation that would match the music. Tenrikyo membership in nonJapanese cultures involves considerable cultural accommodation to Japanese ways: the removal of shoes in the church, bowing and reverence to altars and offerings, ritual cleaning of sacred buildings, reverence to ancestors, pilgrimage to Tenri City and training courses in large Japanese-style residential dormitories. Similarly, Sukyo Mahikari, founded in 1959, built its Main World Shrine in Takayama. The name itself is significant and its architecture incorporates the symbols of major world religions and civilisations (Smith 2002). Those who choose to become members of Mahikari must take a three-day training course, after which they receive a divine amulet and gain the ability to transfer Divine Light to others. This transfer of power is to alleviate illness or other misfortune through purifying spirits that surround them and causing them to leave the person alone and unafflicted. Members are found in all continents and from all socio-economic groups and occupations. Becoming a member of Mahikari involves changing one’s daily life patterns

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radically. Members must try to give Light to others daily. It could be within the family, but better still is to attend the local centre daily and give and receive Light there. When giving Light, members recite a long salutation they have memorised, the Amatsu Norigoto, in archaic Japanese, in a loud voice in the middle of the centre. This must be done with confidence and fluency and all members are able to do it, despite the fact that most of them speak no Japanese. Here too members must follow a ritual when visiting the centre. It first involves removing shoes, washing hands, entering the dojo, registering the time of arrival and making an offering in the box provided in front of the Goshintai altar, which houses the sacred scroll on which the name of Mahikari Omikami-sama is written. Members bow here from a Japanese-style kneeling position, clapping and reciting prayers before retreating to the back of the hall where they bow and greet everyone present, then give and receive Light or attend study sessions. Taking leave again involves bowing in front of the altar and greeting everyone with a statement of thanks. This highly structured routine for visiting a Mahikari centre incorporates very distinct Japanese cultural elements of purification, goaisatsu (ritual greetings), respectful body postures and group behaviour, which would not be followed by the non-Japanese members in their own cultural contexts. At home, too, committed members will inaugurate a household altar to the ancestors in the male line, and make offerings of food to them at least once per day, in tiny vessels for this purpose. Even more committed members apply to have a Goshintai (sacred scroll in its own special altar) in their homes. This requires attending advanced training courses, the third level in Japan only, and then daily cleaning and care of the shrine, a monthly Goshintai appreciation ceremony, and a lifestyle which never leaves the home and the Goshintai unattended for long. For members from non-Japanese or non-Confucian cultural backgrounds, such awareness of ancestors is not usually part of their culture. Yet in the context of being Mahikari members, they adopt these ideas and practices, which constitute a very significant modification of their former lifestyles. Moreover, their practice tends to leave behind relationships with former friends and family who are not members as they begin to socialise and base their lives around the centre. I observed non-Japanese members in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines practising this lifestyle with dedication. They were motivated by the miracles they had experienced in their own personal lives, usually soon after encountering Mahikari, and then the miracles and help they were able to offer other people through the daily practice of giving Light. In these circumstances, the Japanese-ness of Mahikari was irrelevant in comparison with the effects of the practice. Also it is explained as a universal truth, a supra-religion (sukyo¯) which transcends other religions. In fact, part of the doctrine suggests that all languages and all cultures originate from Japan. Despite the extreme contrast between the member’s culture of origin

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and the Mahikari lifestyle, non-Japanese members had no hesitation in embracing it, as it gave non-culturally specific benefits: health, happiness, material prosperity and harmony in relationships, things which people from all cultures seek. Both Tenrikyo and Mahikari have global organisations, structured from the outset with a global reach. Both are very Japanese in their material cultures, rituals and values. Both incorporate beliefs and practices which significantly change the daily lives of members, especially through the occurrence of miracles, yet both insist that members should maintain mainstream family and work roles within the community. Yet non-Japanese members embrace these organisations, not for their Japanese-ness (in fact, in some countries which have had a sad history of contact with Japan, in spite of their Japanese-ness), but for the effect they have on their lives.

Conclusion We can see that the efficacious management practices of Japanese multinationals, which lead to miracles of economic development, and the efficacious ritual practices of Japanese new religions, which lead to welldocumented miracles (Tebecis 1982) in health and overcoming misfortune, have transcended cultural and national barriers. Both pursue profit, albeit in different realms. Hence the fact that the cultures of these organisations are based on Japanese culture becomes immaterial, and their continuing existence goes a long way towards dismantling the East–West distinction.

12 ‘De-Orientalising’ Rice? The Role of Chinese Intermediaries in Globalising Japanese Rice Cookers1 Yoshiko Nakano

Is the electric rice cooker Japanese? It was first invented in Japan by Toshiba in 1955, but today it cooks far more than sushi rice. The international models cook Bolivian chicken rice, Cantonese thick congee, and Iranian long-grain rice with a crust. Some 30 million electric rice cookers are sold every year, according to one estimate, and the most popular, the National/ Panasonic ‘World Series’ models, are sold in more than forty-five countries and regions.2 Unlike Sony radios or Walkmans that went directly from the East to the West, National rice cookers went global via Hong Kong. As Hong Kong is a free port without trade barriers, products from around the world flow in and out of the territory. Of the 8 million National rice cookers that were exported from Japan to Hong Kong since 1959, many were re-exported or carried – to the Philippines, India and the Middle East in the 1960s, to China after it adopted the Open-Door policy in 1979, and to Canada and Australia via the immigrants of the late 1980s. In addition to being a base for transit trade, Hong Kong was a place where National established its procedure for localising rice cookers, which was applied when the cookers were to go to other markets. ‘Mong-san taught us,’ says Yoshiaki Sano, 75-year-old former head of the Rice Cooker Division, ‘that we have to understand the market, we have to understand the people, and we have to understand how they cook rice to produce (rice cookers for export)’.3 ‘Mong-san’ is William Mong Man-wai, the 77-yearold chairman of the Shun Hing Group, National/Panasonic’s sole dealer in Hong Kong and Macau for the last five decades. The collaboration between the National Rice Cooker Division and Mong dates back to 1960. Rice is a staple for people in both Japan and Hong Kong, but the types of rice that they eat are quite different from each other: the most popular type in Hong Kong is Thai jasmine rice, which is flagrant, longer and less sticky than Japanese rice. The National team tried their technology with the Thai rice that Mong provided and made adjustments. In addition, they redesigned the shape of their rice cooker for the overseas market. Mong insisted that the aluminium lid of the rice cooker needed a glass window. Hong Kong people often cook rice with Cantonese sausage

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or dried fish on top, putting these ingredients in half-way through the cooking after the rice has absorbed the water. To get the timing right and make sure the ingredients are cooked to perfection; the Chinese want to look inside. ‘Is that how they cook in Hong Kong?’ The Japanese engineers were astounded. Having been told from childhood never to take off the lid until the rice is completely done; it was beyond their imagination to put a window in the lid so one knew when to take it off. But the National team listened to Mong’s suggestion and inserted a round glass window into the middle of the lid. By early 1961, Hong Kong appliance stores carried National rice cookers for Chinese people, and Mong and his associates launched a series of cooking demonstrations. During this period, Japanese manufacturers were keen on expanding their export in the lucrative American market, and few would listen to suggestions from Asian agents or consumers.

Dismantling the ‘Best is West’ Equation Hong Kong was the showcase of Western appliances in the Orient. Radio was the electric media of the time, and Telefunken of Germany, Phillips of the Netherlands, and RCA of the United States ruled the Hong Kong market until the mid-1950s. Japanese appliances had a hard time competing against the best of Western brands. Memories of World War II were also a major obstacle. The Japanese had occupied Hong Kong for three years and eight months, beginning at Christmas 1941. When William Mong sought retail outlets for his vacuum tube radios in 1954, he often got a barrage of abuse from the shop owners: ‘Japanese goods? Can’t you even wait until the blood is dry?!’ Hong Kong people used to jeer at the perceived poor quality of Japanese products by plays on words. ‘Japanese goods’ in Cantonese is yat pun fo; but with a slight change in pronunciation it becomes yat bun fo, meaning goods that break down in a day and a half. Even after the debut of Japanese transistor radios in 1955 – which proved popular in Hong Kong a few years later – ‘Made in Japan’ still carried a stigma, and Japanese products’ reputation for dependability was yet to come. In 1960, one thriving store of the time, Yiu Hing Electric Appliances, advertised in the top Chinese newspaper: We trade in all types of domestic electrical appliances from Britain, America, Germany, Italy, France, and Japan, including refrigerators, washing machines, irons, lamps, radios, and electric fans for the floor, table, and ceiling. (Overseas Chinese Daily, 8 April 1960) Japanese manufacturers bought Western appliances in Hong Kong and shipped them back to factories in Japan to ‘study’ them.

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Mong and his company looked for National products that would be needed and desired in Hong Kong – and thus came National rice cookers. Rice is the staple, and was cooked traditionally in a clay pot. Unlike radios and most other appliances, rice cookers were only produced by Japanese manufactures at that time, and there were no Western competitors. Unlike refrigerators or washing machines, they were compact enough for Hong Kong’s small living spaces. After the Communist government was established in 1949, many people fled China, and Hong Kong’s population doubled in 16 years, from 1.8 million in 1947 to 3.6 million in 1963. This led to compressed living spaces: flats were separated into rooms for rent, and resettlement blocks kept growing. Thus, a shared kitchen became the norm for many in Hong Kong, who had to wait patiently for their turn to put their clay pot on the stove. Therefore, a compact machine that could cook rice anywhere was a great blessing for them. It soon became a symbol of middle-class lifestyle in Hong Kong. Mr. Wong, 46, who is a civil service officer, first saw a rice cooker as a child in the living room of his landlady. The landlady’s family occupied one bedroom, while Mr. Wong’s family of four occupied another, and the two families shared a living room. He was fascinated by the landlady’s white machine that cooked rice without fire, and so he sat by it and looked through the glass window in the lid as the simmering rice filled the room with its warm aroma. Mr Wong was, in fact, looking through the glass window that Mong had insisted that National install.4 By visualising technology, the little window would assure sceptical first-time users around the world that the machine did, in fact, cook rice without fire. It was not until Mr. Wong was nine years old that his own family bought a National rice cooker. ‘The feeling was quite special,’ recalls Mr. Wong, ‘because it was the first electric appliance at home after our radio. We [finally] had the money to buy it. The feeling was ‘‘we are not that poor any more’’.’5 We might say that the rice cooker was possibly the first electric appliance from Japan that was embraced by the people of Hong Kong. Desire freely crosses psychological demarcations, and it sometimes changes them. It seems that the early consumers attached a greater significance to what a rice cooker does and what it symbolises than to where it came from. By the time Mr. Wong’s family acquired one in 1967, National boasted annual sales of over 100,000 rice cookers in Hong Kong, which had a population of only 3.8 million people. This strong demand then contributed towards revamping the image of ‘Made in Japan’ and dismantling the ‘Best is the West’ equation in the British colony.

Diverse Congee within the Orient In 1976, National introduced its first model that could cook congee, once again because of William Mong, who demanded it. Congees in Japan and Hong Kong are both soupy rice, but they differ greatly in their cultural

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significance. Japanese okayu is rather plain in taste and is mainly for the sick at home or for elegant breakfasts at inns. Therefore, it did not even occur to those at the National rice cooker factory to develop a model with a special function for cooking congee. In Hong Kong, however, Cantonese juk is a part of the daily meal. Most canteens in Hong Kong offer a choice of rice or congee. Cantonese congee is richer in flavour, as it is common to coat the rice with some peanut oil before cooking and to use chicken stock instead of water. Congee also satisfied the social need of newly arrived immigrants from China, since congee soaks up more water and requires less rice and is therefore more economical than dry rice. For those who were trying to make ends meet, congee was a way to feed more family members. The National rice cooker team needed to develop a technology for cooking slowly, employing a low heat over several hours. When engineer Yoshiaki Sano finished the first sample, he asked Mong to taste the congee – who, however, did not like it. It was more like Japanese okayu, and it did not taste like Cantonese juk as he knew it. So Sano and his team went back to work and improved the technology. When the next model was complete they asked Mong to taste again. Mong suggested that Sano come to his villa in Izu Peninsula in Japan for a congee camp. Mong brought the Thai jasmine rice that is commonly used in Hong Kong, and Sano brought four sample rice cookers. Urged on by Mong, Sano and the Mong family got up early and began cooking Cantonese congee in the four units. Over and over they followed a Cantonese recipe and cooked congee, but not until the sixth batch did the taste satisfy Mong. National named the machine the Multi Rice Cooker, and the overseas sales team created a free recipe book to go along with it. They thought that the multi cooker would not sell in volume unless the consumers knew what to cook and how to cook with it. The team consulted a native Cantonese chef whom Mong had introduced and asked him to develop recipes, because they realised that only authentic Cantonese food would appeal to the palate in Hong Kong, and not its Japanised varieties. The National team continued to improve the multi rice cooker and its congee function, and by the late 1980s it became an essential item in Hong Kong kitchens – so essential that when Hong Kong people began to emigrate to Canada and Australia many took their multi rice cookers with them.

Across the Pacific with Hong Kong Immigrants The 1984 Sino-British Agreement shook the people of Hong Kong. It was announced that the British colony would return to China in 1997. Those who had fled poverty-stricken villages in China and those whose family members had suffered from hardship during the Cultural Revolution felt uneasy about their future under the Communist regime. Thus began the

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mass exodus to Canada and Australia to obtain citizenship. Unlike the United States, Canada had a more relaxed immigration policy and accepted workers without professional skills, as well as retirees. Thus, immigration from Hong Kong to Canada grew rapidly – from 7,696 in 1984 to 19,908 in 1989, the year of the student protests in Tiananmen Square that led to the massacre; and to 43,651 in 1994 (Skeldon 1998: 69). Mr and Mrs Pan, soon after they got married in 1990, decided to move to Vancouver where Mr Pan had spent his college years. They took only four pieces of luggage, so that they could carry them on board. They packed clothing, bedding, plates, utensils – and a multi rice cooker that their relatives gave them as a farewell gift, which they decided to carry along because they would need to cook rice from the day they started their new life in Canada. This multi rice cooker was indeed a National, and a model that Mong’s company, Shun Hing Electric Trading, imported for those who were about to emigrate to North America. In Hong Kong, the electric voltage is 220, while it is 110 in North America. So if Mr and Mrs Pan had taken the model they used in Hong Kong, it would not have worked in Canada. Many Hong Kong people who were about to emigrate wanted to take rice cookers with them, however, some fearing they might not be able to buy one in Canada. Some thought it was cheaper to get one in Hong Kong; and some saw extra space in their containers and thought, ‘Why not?’ These consumer voices reached Shun Hing, and soon appliance stores in Hong Kong began to carry 110v models. Before Christmas in 1988, the most popular Chinese newspaper of the time carried an ad with the pictures of nine National multi rice cookers: Cooks Congee, Cooks Rice Every Family Praises Them (Oriental Daily, 22 December 1988) Among the nine multi rice cookers, eight models were available in both 110v and 220v. The 110v models, according to Kenneth Man, who was in charge of rice cookers at Shun Hing, amounted to approximately 10 per cent of the sales in the late 1980s, when the number of immigrants to Canada surged.6

Going beyond the ‘Oriental Market’ By the late 1960s, the National rice cooker team saw their products spread to what they call the ‘Oriental Market’ that of the Chinese Diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America. They then set, as their next goal, to reach non-Chinese communities around the world. They learned from United Nations statistics that more than 100 countries produced rice. Soon they set it as their goal to reach all of them. To do so, the National team used the procedure that they had established with Mong in Hong Kong. When they found a promising market, an engineer

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visited the country and conducted research on what type of rice the local people ate, how they cooked their rice, and what kind of pot they used for cooking the rice. They then worked with a native taste adviser to make sure the dish was authentic. Once the machine was complete, they developed a local recipe book and conducted cooking demonstrations. Persian rice, with its crust, for example, posed a challenge for the rice cooker team. In 1968, they took on a project to develop a model for Iran. Iranian long-grain rice was fluffy and had a layer of golden brown crust. Once again, this was beyond the engineers’ imagination. The rice cooker gained popularity among the Japanese and Chinese because it cooked consistently without burning the rice, but this time, the engineers needed to burn rice to the degree the Iranians liked it. For two years they asked advice from an Iranian woman who lived in Kobe and they finally achieved a fairly authentic Persian taste. Then the team redesigned the body of the rice cooker. In the late 1960s, most rice cookers had white bodies, but the team made the Iranian model shining silver, after consulting the Iranian people. The National rice cooker team continued to gather various types of rice through their overseas sales offices, agents and the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), creating models according to local specifications, and shipping out sample models to 116 countries. Some responded that the cooked rice did not fit the local taste. Some countries did not respond at all. Some countries were in political turmoil and were not ready to establish a trade relationship. But the rice cookers certainly began to spread beyond the Japanese and Chinese communities. In fact, rice cookers began to steam, stew, and heat in ways the original Japanese producers had never imagined. In the United States, some people use them to steam vegetables. In India, the recipe book shows how to cook biriyani, curry and rice pudding in a rice cooker (Matsushita 2003). In Hong Kong, Panasonic (formerly National) introduced a model that bakes a cake in 40 minutes. The ad for the rice cooker depicts a cartoon sumo wrestler with a golden brown cake on his hand, and proclaims, ‘Baking cake is so easy and simple.’ Panasonic does not sell this cake model in the Japanese domestic market because many among the older generation reacted negatively to baking in a rice cooker. A 50-year-old Japanese woman, when she learned that the cake model was popular in Hong Kong, told me in disbelief: ‘To me, rice is sacred. I don’t want to cook anything greasy in my rice cooker.’ When we examine the globalisation of rice cookers from Hong Kong, we begin to see that it was far from a one-sided push from Japan; rather it has been an interactive, multidirectional and multifaceted process involving the Chinese agent and varied consumers. The East–West dichotomy is too crude to explain the complex role of the intermediaries and the formal and informal flows of products that come in and out of the free port. In addition, the East–West dichotomy obscures the great diversity of rice within the East, which was crucial to the National team in formulating its subsequent global

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strategies. We might say that the Chinese agent helped the Japanese team to be aware of differences of rice culture and provided the basis to plan, produce and market localised models and their uses around the world. What many consumers cook in their machines tonight is thus neither Japanese, nor Chinese, nor Western rice, but what they want for dinner.

Notes 1 This article is based on Onajikama no Meshi (2005), a book in Japanese that I coauthored with Dixon H.W. Wong. I would like to thank the people at the Cooking System Division of Matsushita Electric Industrial and Shun Hing Group who kindly provided me with various interviews and documents. In writing this version, I received indispensable suggestions from Kirsten Refsing, and editorial assistance from John Thorne. 2 ‘National’ and ‘Panasonic’ are brand names of Matsushita Electric Industrial.?’National’ was introduced first in 1927, and ‘Panasonic’ was later formulated for the US market in 1961. The two brands co-existed for over four decades, but in 2004, Matsushita announced that all its products would be sold under ‘Panasonic’ outside of Japan. 3 Interview with Yoshiaki Sano on 8 January 2003 4 This example is based on Dixon H.W. Wong’ s interview in 2003 with his informant, Mr. Wong. 5 Interview with Mr. Wong on 13 December 2003 6 Interview with Kenneth W.K. Man by Dixon H.W. Wong, in January 2004

Part IV

Personal Place

13 Wandering Where? Between Worlds or in No Man’s Land? Peter Knecht

If pressed to define exactly what the term ‘West’ means in Japanese parlance, one is faced with considerable difficulty. It is a blanket term that covers everything European and American, whereby the latter more often than not is taken to be the pivotal representative of the ‘West’. ‘East’ comes up almost naturally for people in the ‘West’ as the opposite term to ‘West’, but in Japan it is, I believe, more often ‘Japan’ that functions as the opposite term to ‘West’. While ‘West’ is a fuzzy term that does not allow one to pinpoint either a definite geographical area or its population, ‘Japan’ offers at least the appearance of a term that applies to a clearly defined geographical area and population. I say ‘appearance’ because there can be moments when it becomes difficult unmistakably to define the term ‘Japan’ and as a consequence also the term ‘West’. A small episode might serve to illustrate what I am trying to say. Some years ago I was granted some relief from my teaching load at Nanzan University in Japan. Since Japan is my field of research I planned to spend some of the time resuming fieldwork in a village that was already familiar to me. It seemed, therefore, the most natural thing to me to apply for leave that allowed me to stay in Japan, and therefore to seek affiliation with another Japanese university. When I tried to file an application for a kokunai kenkyu- kyu-ka (domestic sabbatical) I was at first informed that only Japanese could apply for this kind of leave. It was taken for granted that foreigners, i.e. Westerners, would want to spend this type of leave overseas to refresh contacts with their own cultural environment. My request was therefore considered out of place. After some discussion it was nevertheless decided that an exception could be made. Practically the same scene was replayed when I made a request to the office of Tokyo University to be granted affiliation. Again I was told that, according to the instructions the office had at hand, a foreigner could not possibly be given a status that applied only to Japanese. But the person who told me this smiled and said: ‘No need to worry. We will fix this problem. After all, we know who you are.’ This effectively solved the problem of my status for the application, but it left me puzzled over what standards would serve to define who is a ‘Westerner’ and who ‘Japanese’, and about how

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flexible these standards might be. The experience also left me with the impression that the so-called dichotomy between East and West could be administratively disposed of at any time should the need for such action arise. Below, therefore, I suggest that the dichotomy can be overcome or emphasised depending on circumstances, and that anthropologists may not always be the ones most instrumental in abrogating such a dichotomy.

Who is a Foreigner or a Westerner? The anthropologist is sometimes described as an accomplished traveller, a professional ‘wanderer between worlds’, who has learned to go from one culture to another with ease. Yet what an anthropologist is said to do is different from simply ‘turning native’, rather it is something like being in a culture yet not of that culture. Even where close bonds within the other culture are formed, they are not to cloud the anthropologist’s keen eye or ear and not to interfere with his/her detached standpoint, because only such a detached standpoint could ultimately guarantee an objective observation of the other culture, and allow the anthropologist to view the other culture without imposing on it his or her own values. But does this standpoint and the related supposed ease with which the anthropologist changes from one cultural world into another really constitute him as a wanderer for whom no walls, or dichotomies for that matter, exist any more? Such a claim to a detached and privileged view for the anthropologist has come under fire as maintaining the very dichotomy it claims to overcome by emphasising the distinction between observer and observed. And yet there seem to be moments when the distinction becomes fuzzy and flexible, not only on the side of the anthropologist but also on the side of the people whose life the anthropologist endeavours to share while observing it. Although I had some brushes with anthropology in Europe, the subject was only a minor embellishment to what I was studying at that time. However, soon after my arrival in Japan I came to realise that the serious study of anthropology might be a viable means to find access to Japanese culture. One way to undertake such a study would be to find a centre abroad known for Japanese Studies, the other would be to try to study in Japan. Although I did not have much of an idea what this might involve, I opted for the latter, and was fortunate enough to pass the entrance examination and be accepted at the Graduate School of Tokyo University in the early 1970s. These were rough times. In the streets of Tokyo workers and students were demonstrating frequently against the renewal of the security treaty with America and against the visit of the American aircraft carrier Enterprise. The students were most active, not only demonstrating against the universities, but also against rivalling factions amongst themselves. In the course of this struggle Tokyo University’s Hongo Campus was closed down after the violent and dramatic ‘Yasuda Hall Incident’. When new entrance examinations were held on that campus in the early spring of 1970 we had

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to pass between rows of riot police and show our identification documents at several check points before finally reaching the examination hall. Entering the hall made one feel as though one was entering a foreign country. Some time later, on the occasion of one of my first visits to the office of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, there was a sudden commotion right outside our building. I did not want to believe what I heard, but when I looked out of the window, there could be no doubt. On the ally before our building a large group of students was dancing in zigzag fashion. The dancing students shouted ‘gaijin kaere! gaijin kaere!’ (‘foreigner, go home!’) and they waved placards with these same words inscribed on them. The sight was quite a shock for me, the gaijin. But the employees in the office just laughed and explained that the gaijin the students under our windows wanted to get out were members of rival factions who had infiltrated from other universities in town. In other words, in order to be declared a ‘foreigner’ there was no need to be a person coming from a country outside Japan, it sufficed to come from another university or hail from another political faction. Nevertheless, one might think that here the word gaijin had been given a meaning specific to the militant-student jargon of the time and that only someone like me, a ‘real foreigner’, would have interpreted it as a term for that kind of foreigner. About two years later, during my first extended period of fieldwork, I happened to visit a family where the mother complained to me about her son being bullied at school by other children who called him a gaijin. The mother had been born and raised in the village, but she had married out, and only recently had the family returned to her natal home. When her son went to the local school, the children there noticed that his language was not exactly of their own brand so that for them he appeared to be a ‘foreigner’, a gaijin. The mother may have hoped for some advice about how to deal with this situation from another ‘foreigner’, but for me her story showed that being Japanese did not prevent a person from becoming a ‘foreigner’ in the eyes of other Japanese. Her seeking advice from me seemed to suggest that my being a ‘Westerner’ counted less in this situation than my being in the same category as her son, that of a ‘foreigner’. In the process of my fieldwork I did not really learn the local dialect to the extent that I could speak it, but I came to understand it to a degree that the villagers stopped making an effort to use standard Japanese when speaking with me. This had the effect that I was even asked at times to interpret between villagers and their visitors from outside, even for example from Tokyo. It also prompted villagers to comment about their meetings with students from city universities, who had spent a few days in the village collecting tales, that these students were like gaijin because they apparently did not really understand what the old villagers tried to tell them, while the same persons told me that they did not have such a feeling when talking to me. Such comments put me into an awkward situation because my personal feeling was that I was still far from their world, although I had come to

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believe that I had gained some understanding of it. A day came, however, when I realised that the villagers had begun to see me as one of them. Of course, they could not overlook that my features, for instance, were considerably different from theirs, but such things apparently did not count any more. The revelation came to me one day when, on my return to the village from Tokyo, I met the grandmother of the family where I used to stay at the local bus stop. We boarded the bus together and chatted all the way, exchanging the latest news. In the evening of the next day, when I returned to her house after my tour of the village, she laughed and cheerfully announced to me that she had a good story. The story was that people in the neighbouring village were admiring her for being fluent in English because they had seen her talking with me on the bus. She laughed about being credited with fluency in English but commented: ‘Those people take you for a foreigner; they do not know that you are one of us.’ By this time the meaning of the term ‘foreigner’ had become utterly ambiguous to me. What does it really mean, and where is the line that would separate a ‘foreigner’ from a ‘non-foreigner’? Apparently a foreigner does not need to be a Westerner, that person can be Japanese as well. A Westerner, even if that person is not a Japanese national, may further be ‘one of us’ and so make any dichotomy of the ‘East–West type’ irrelevant for those concerned.

East and West in Academia The above is not yet the whole story, though. When I began studying at Tokyo University, no course or seminar dealing in particular with Japan was offered, with the exception of a course on Okinawan religion, held at the Institute of Oriental Culture. Nor were there any Japanese students, as far as I knew at that time, who were engaged in research related to Japan, except for one doing research on the Ainu. In contrast, in that year, two foreign students, a Thai woman and I, had been admitted, and both of us had chosen Japan as our field of research. This resulted in the seemingly odd situation that only foreign students addressed research topics about Japan. Yet it was only ‘seemingly odd’ because the rationale behind all our choices was that an anthropologist is meant to study a foreign culture. Our Japanese colleagues, therefore, considered Japan to be the field of folklorists, whose approach and methodology we all believed had not much in common with anthropology. Yet Okinawa and the Ainu were a different matter – these were areas taken to be culturally sufficiently different from mainland Japan to qualify as ‘other cultures’. I do not recall that there had ever taken place any discussion about the reasons for this situation, but I believe it was because of the tacit assumption that an anthropologist should study a culture other than his or her own. In this way, it was assumed that the anthropologist would be able to take an independent position vis-a`-vis the culture that was to be observed and studied. I admit that the idea was to

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study and reflect a culture faithfully, or as it was the trend to say at that time, to ‘read and interpret’ a culture without reading some preconceived ideas into it. Yet one has to ask whether this attitude, by focusing the researcher’s attention on his or her stance in confronting people from another culture, was not instrumental in underlining if not creating a conscious dichotomy between the observer and the observed, a dichotomy which was not questioned further. Looking back at the situation from the standpoint of present-day anthropology, it can easily be noticed that researchers have become very much aware of this problem and its implications. Yet, it is ironic that anthropology which, among other aims, endeavours to bridge the divide between different cultures was instrumental in emphasising it by its attempt to approach other cultures objectively. Ever since I left the Graduate School of Tokyo University I have had the privilege of teaching and continuing to conduct research in Japan, as well as working on research projects, or serving on the committee of the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology together with Japanese colleagues. When I began fieldwork it had been as important to me to learn as much as I could about Japanese society and culture in order to fit (more or less) smoothly into it as pursuing a succinctly defined research topic. As I mentioned above, this sometimes created odd situations. In the course of these years I have learned of other foreigners doing research in Japan, and in some cases I had a chance to meet them in person. Reflecting on these encounters I am brought back to the question of an East (Japan)–West dichotomy and the intention to dismantle it. When I began my studies in Japan, Japanese scholars who were able to mingle and feel at ease with foreign scholars were sometimes called ‘kokusaiya’ (internationals). The term had an unpleasant ring to it, as if there were some doubt whether such a person was sufficiently Japanese. Fortunately, these are tempi passati, due not least of all to the work of a new generation of younger Japanese anthropologists. Yet, when I think about the role of foreign anthropologists in Japan, I am inclined to think that we are not yet close to dismantling the East–West dichotomy. When Harumi Befu instituted the group ‘Anthropologists of Japan in Japan’ (AJJ) in 1998, his intention was to provide a forum for intellectual exchange in languages other than Japanese for specialists of Japan without making it an exclusionary grouping. In fact, every interested scholar is invited to join. In this sense I believe this group represents a possible step towards dismantling dichotomies. However, plain reality seems to be quite different because only a few, if any, of the members of this grouping can be encountered at meetings of the Japanese gakkai (academic association) and, most probably, vice versa. I can understand that language, either Japanese or English depending on which side you are on, is part of the reason why relations between the two groupings burn with a low flame. As mentioned before, there are also not many members of the Japanese gakkai doing research in Japan. However, I believe it is important if not vital for scholars working in a society

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other than one’s own to seek contact with the local community of scholars. In the case of Japan it is certainly difficult to find a partner working in a field close to one’s own (i.e. Japan), but I believe that one of the few sciences that offers wide common ground for discussions and exchange is anthropology, because even if one’s specialised field of research is restricted to a particular culture, the problems perceived can provide a platform where the restrictions of one’s own research area can be overcome. Finally, there is another problem related to dealings with foreigners, one that lies on the side of the Japanese scholars. During these past few years Japanese institutions have been encouraged to invite and cooperate with foreign scholars in order to strengthen the international visibility of Japanese scholarship. It strikes me as rare to find the name of a foreign scholar working at a Japanese institution on the list of such gatherings. If this means that these foreign scholars are so well integrated into Japanese academia as to be considered on equal terms with their Japanese colleagues, it is truly a positive phenomenon, because it would be another real step towards dismantling dichotomies. Yet, considering my own experiences, or other examples I have mentioned, I am inclined to believe that the actual situation is more complex. A foreigner is by definition somebody outside one’s own group, be it a village or a country. On the other hand, somebody who under all technical considerations is a foreigner may become integrated to a degree that makes these boundaries somewhat fuzzy, yet there might be incidents when the boundaries suddenly appear again, thus forcing decisions to be made, one way or the other. For this reason I believe that a Western anthropologist living in Japan with only sporadic contacts to his or her culture of origin – like me – is perhaps not so much a wanderer between worlds but rather a person in no man’s land. This is because the question of where to set such a person remains always open to redefinition. And redefinition is necessary because the dichotomy between East and West keeps staying with us, even though consciousness of it may be kept well below the surface and will not arise except under situations of pressure.

14 ‘The West in the head’ Identity Issues of Latin Americans living in Japan Genaro Castro-Va´zquez

Introduction In order to help ‘dismantle’ the East–West dichotomy I draw on my research with Latin Americans living in Japan. First, I describe the slant on this dichotomy that has pervaded the world since the end of Cold War. Then I show how this slant seems to erase Latin America from the planet and how Latin American ‘deterritorialisation’ (Castells 1996: 378) and ‘translocalities’ (Appadurai 1996a, 1996b) challenge these binary perceptions. The third part introduces the concept of ‘the West in the head’ to explain how Latin Americans locate themselves vis-a`-vis Japanese nationals and other foreigners. Finally, the last section highlights the implications of ‘the West in the head’ for politicians, laypeople and scholars in understanding social reality divided into pairs. Scholars taking advantage of ‘the West in the head’ produce a jejune vision of society which is difficult to support either theoretically or practically, and which leaves aside the richness and complexity of the current social state of the affairs.

One but always two Drawing on modernist and post-modernist paradigms, globalisation-related issues have oriented much social research since the 1980s, as scholars tried to grasp the dynamics of a world moving into the third millennium (Waters 1995). Against the capitalism–communism binary underpinning thinking of the Cold War, the idea of globalisation offered an illusion of ‘a unified world’, a triumph of liberal capitalism. Yet the world appeared to be divided into the industrialised North in opposition to the developing South. ‘Global citizens’ tend to concentrate in the North while ‘non-global citizens’ struggle to survive in the South. Kaldor (1999: 4) has suggested that members of the global class can speak English, use dollars or credit cards and can travel freely, while those who are excluded must cope with visas and travel expenses. ‘Global citizens’ are likely to be identified as ‘cultural exchangers’ who can afford original brand goods. In contrast, ‘non-global citizens’ are considered as ‘potential migrants’, a group that represents a financial threat

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most likely to traffic and consume fake goods. Besides, ‘non-global citizens’ have limited access to information in English, and they are the reason for humanitarian help and development programs. The events of 11 September 2001 resulted in the revival of an old East– West binary, where references to the East include the ‘most recurring images of the Other’ (Said 1979: 1). Such images evoke the works of the early twentieth-century anthropologists and ethnographers in the course of the colonial expansion of Western economic and political empires (Connell 1995: 30–4). Kaldor (2003: 148) contends that the unilateralism of the United States in relation to the war on terror, the repudiation of global treaties, and interference in the functioning of international institutions indicates the reappearance of former geopolitics and a language of realism and national interest. Moreover, economists insist on an East–West binary-grounded agenda due to the emergence of China as a global competitor (Li 2002: 401–2). The prevalence of this East–West dichotomy is also related to the appearance of ‘global Christianity’. Although the global agenda was originally thought of as ‘an econocentrism founded on a secular mind’ (Coles 1999), secularisation has decreased because globalisation is somehow interlinked with Christianity, and a growing tendency towards ‘global Christianity’ has occurred in part due to ‘radical Muslim movements’ (Li 2002: 401–2). Indeed, religious movements are profoundly inimical to a global society because of terrorism (Kaldor 2003: 148). Accentuated by telecommunications technology, signs of ‘global Christianity’ include the ‘witty’ identification of the ‘axis of evil,’ and the Manichean deployment of arguments that make any individual related to the Arab world subject to scrutiny. Unmistakably, a Westernised globalisation symbolises the promise of modernity and civilisation, in particular for those ‘non-global citizens’ in the developing world. ‘Living in the East’ means staggering under traditionalism and backwardness, while ‘moving to the West’ is synonymous with modernity. Going upwards means shifting in a ‘linear progression toward a single end point which is usually conterminous with American capitalism’ (Altman 2001: 8). East and West seem to be colliding forces when one thinks of the one super Western State engaged in patrolling and fostering democracy, and the dreadful consequences of invasions and wars stem from such a democratising endeavour. Yet, as Sen (2005: 50) has noted, the idea of the West representing democracy is pure fiction, since six centuries before the English Great Charter was issued, Japan had a constitution that obliged the Emperor to consult about all his decisions. Also, India has a long tradition of public debates, and the oldest tradition of atheism as well as the biggest body of atheist literature.

The Americas Under this ‘new geography of power’ (Sassen 1996a: 5), Latin America seems to be almost completely effaced from the world. It is partly because

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the region is neither in the East nor in the West. Furthermore, Latin America has been integrated into ‘the Americas’, a term that seems to encompass the former North, Central and Southern divisions. However, the overwhelming presence of the United States on the continent seems to imply that it is not the American Continent but the Americans’ Continent. To the superpowers, the region does not seem to pose any economic threat. With the exception of an obscenely rich minority, poverty is rife, and most Latin Americans endure the restrictions imposed on ‘non-global citizens’. Also, there is no ideological menace since officially the region affiliates to ‘global Christianity’. In geographical terms Latin America is not in the East; however, the cartography of this binary places the region closer to mythical Easterners. Since the Dutch historian Gaspar von Barlaeus wrote, ‘beneath the equator, sin does not exist’ (see Parker 1999) the region has endured a process of ‘tropicalisation’. Due to their wild, hot and passionate sex, Latin Americans are deemed ‘tropicals’. Indeed, ‘tropicalisation’ is the source of the binary ‘Tropicals’ in opposition to Westerners or Europeans. Under the Cartesian dualism that underpins the European scientific and cultural tradition (Ramazanoglu and Holland 2003: 27–8) Westerners are represented by mind, reason, culture and maleness, while ‘Tropicals’ are associated with body, passion, nature and femaleness. ‘Tropicals’ would seem most likely to be located near the tropics. However human trafficking and migration have made the dualism difficult to sustain, and ‘Tropicals’ can be found all around the globe. Sadly, the amalgam of ‘tropicalisation’, corruption, poverty and lax legislation has turned the region into one of the largest suppliers of sex workers in the world. And an increasing number of Westerners, or Americans and Europeans, patronise the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children in the region (Economist 2005a: 45; BBC 2004). Also, the wealth and ‘ambiguous’ commitment to human trafficking legislation has made Japan a destination of a large number of Latin American sex workers (Ozawa 2003; Asahi Shimbun 2004; Yomiuri Shimbun 2004; Economist 2005b; Onishi 2005; Standard 2005). Latin America has also become a source of cheap labour, including the Sudacas1 in Spain, Caribbeans in the UK, Hispanics in the US, and recently the Nikkeijin2 in Japan. Despite mobility restrictions, Latin Americans leave the region and produce spaces that are not necessarily attached to a concrete territory; they create ‘deterritorialised spaces of flows in opposition to spaces of places’ (Castells 1996: 378). They bring about social relations that are not defined in terms of a particular geographical space or ‘translocalities’ (Appadurai 1996a, 1996b). In Japan, the ‘little Brazils’ (Tsuda 2003a: 153) or ‘Brazilian towns’ (Ishi 2003: 82) illustrate the case. The Brazilian settlements in Gunma (Tsuda 2003b; Matsumoto 2005) and Aichi (Linger 2001) prefectures clearly show how deterritorialisation and translocality function, and how in strict geographical terms a simple binary East–West or

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‘Tropical’–Westerner does little to describe the features of the Latin American enclaves in Japan.

‘The West in the head’ Most of the research on Latin Americans in Japan has focused on the Nikkeijin phenomenon, and the literature refers to the identity of Nikkeijin in Japan as ‘transnational’ (Tsuda 2003; Lesser 2003; Carvalho 2003) and/or ‘hybrid’ (Hirabayashi et al. 2002). While living in Latin America, such people tend to think of themselves as Easterners. However, when they are in Japan, they realise that they do not belong to the East in the ways they interact with Japanese nationals. They are ‘strangers in their homeland’ (Tsuda 2003). Nikkeijin, in particular, and Latin Americans in general, produce different trends in the ‘new geography of identity’ (Yaeger 1996) that can hardly be expressed by this simple dichotomy. Our experience working with Latin Americans in Japan suggests that they can be located neither in the East nor in the West, but somewhere in between (see CastroVa´zquez and Tarui 2006). Yet, the pervasive influence of the dichotomy ‘Tropical’–Westerner is present in the construction of their identities. One of the sources of discrimination our informants endure is related to the attempts they have made to comply with a ‘Westernised identity project’ (Khazzoom 2003: 481). Applying a ‘sociogenetic ground rule’ (Elias 2000) Latin Americans are passing once more through the so-called civilising processes to which the region was subjected at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century, when America underwent a process of ‘whitening’. This was a relentless effort to promote European migration to the continent to fuel the idea that the New World needed miscegenation because ‘white genes were considered stronger’ (de Carvalho 2003: 48). Likewise, the European civilising effects were expected to follow. The subsequent identity projects Latin Americans produced can be referred to as ‘the West in the head’. In the opinion of our informants, despite the fact that most Latin Americans have mixed blood, those who have a Caucasian physical appearance or who can claim a European background tend to disregard those whose features fit the stereotype of an indigenous or black person. Some of our informants firmly believed in their Western origins or their direct European descent until they realised that Japanese and Europeans do not anyway consider them as Westerners. From their viewpoint, Caucasian was most likely synonymous with Westerner, but in practice Latin Americans are not considered to be Westerners, but ‘hot’. In other words, they are ‘Tropical’. In line with Ishi (2003) and Tsuda (2003b), our research shows that welleducated Latin Americans descend on the social scale when they come to Japan. Even for those informants who hold a degree and had a well-paid job in their country of origin, stagnation in the economy made them emigrate to Japan with expectations that their situation would improve.

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Although they might have been entrepreneurs running their own business, or white-collar workers, in Latin America, in Japan most of them have become blue-collar workers. They must accept this new status because their salaries as white-collar workers in their country of origin would never be as high as what they receive in Japan. Their academic achievements or prior credentials are often ignored, and only those fluent in Japanese acquire desk jobs. These discrepancies in education and employment are significant in the way that our informants tend to construct their social networks, regulate their lives, and patrol their behaviour, all based on ‘the West in the head’ master narrative. For them, the binary body–mind is represented by a dichotomy of manual and non-manual work. In their common understanding, manual work is for poorly Westernised Latin Americans. Displays of Western refinement, good manners, taste and sense make them believe that they are in the West, in spite of their actual location and/or physical appearance. And, if ‘institutionalised standards of civilised behaviour’ (Berking 2003: 261) are not enough, they can always access a whole range of paraphernalia, even bogus, to feel that they are indeed Westerners. ‘The West in the head’ is an effective device for Latin Americans looking for a ‘decent place in the world’, in particular when they have to manage cultural pluralism. However, ‘the West in the head’ is historically, socially and culturally specific and represents only a model of hegemonic modernity and civilisation. Latin Americans resist and contest the Westernising mandate based on the ways they come to terms with their colonial past and the relationship between colonised and coloniser. Like Jewish people in Israel (Khazzoom 2003), we realised that mere East–West or ‘Tropical’–European dichotomies do not fully explain the dynamic processes of identity construction, stigma management and ethnic exclusion among Latin Americans in Japan.

Too simple The ‘West in the head’ model suggests that the world has experienced rapidly accelerating processes of Westernisation. Yet, these processes are not homogeneous. On the contrary, they are exceptionally complex and difficult to grasp by using a mere binary. Such processes need to be interpreted vis-a`vis the specificities of local cultures as they are caught up within the crosscurrents of global change. The hegemonic power of ‘the West in the head’ ideology seems to imply the unifying supremacy of the West, in opposition to the backwardness of the East. That is a superficial reading of the binary that needs to be ‘dismantled’ by a more complex understanding of the vicissitudes societies and individuals experience to comply and contest ‘the West in the head’ in the contemporary world. Lastly, ‘the West in the head’ ideology must be contextualised within broader processes of history and political economy, as well as the analytical tensions between cultural relativism and universalism.

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Notes 1 Migrants from South America are disrespectfully named Sudacas in Spain. 2 To cope with the shortages of unskilled workers the Japanese government launched a campaign in 1990 to attract a foreign labour force (Oka 1994). The campaign encompassed three main strategies: one, the amendment of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act; two, the expansion and diversification of trainee programmes; and three, the granting of work visas to Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants living abroad). The measures largely benefited employers running small-scale enterprisers, the bedrock of the industrial structure, who felt the severest shortages (Yamanaka 1996: 89). The Ministry of Justice acknowledged that in 2003 a total of 274,700 Brazilians and 53,649 Peruvians legally live in the country (Ho¯musho¯ Nyu-kokukanrikyoku 2004), and Mori (1997:108) claimed that 90.2% and 6.8% of all Brazilians and Peruvians, respectively, are Nikkeijin. Also, for a detail description of the Nikkeijin phenomenon in Brazil see Tsuda (2003)

15 Two Wests Meet Japan: How a Three-Way Comparison of Japan with Canada and the United States Shifts Culture Paradigms Millie Creighton Introduction: Shifting Insider and Outsider Perspectives The East–West dichotomy is highly problematic. Like many overly simplistic dichotomies it gets used, perpetuated, and reinscribed, resulting in this constructed generalisation, seeming like a ‘natural’ division of the world. Many contributors to this book discuss how this dichotomy hides the complexity of Japan and so-called ‘Eastern’ countries. I wish to focus on how it masks the diversity within and among so-called ‘Western’ countries. The anthropology of Japan makes a major contribution not only to understandings of Japan, but to anthropology in general, through the crosscultural insights provided. My anthropological study of Japan helped provide insights into understanding the differences between two other countries, in both of which I participate as a citizen, namely Canada and the United States. Models used to help ‘Westerners’ understand Japan can be looked at anew in terms of how they might enhance an understanding of differences among so-called Western countries. Like Davis (2000:121–122) I have concerns that using such categories or reflecting on previous models can reinforce their seeming ‘naturalness’. However, I hope to show how such models constructed to understand generalised differences might be used to explore how the West has been essentialised. Ricoeur defines anthropology as the comprehension of the self via the comprehension of the other (1969). However, seldom do we have the chance to take fieldwork, knowledge gained, and theoretical paradigms constructed, full circle back to an analysis of the societies from which we began. Early in the anthropology of Japan, Ruth Benedict, schooled in Franz Boas’ tradition of anthropology, wrote The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) attempting to explain the culture and general value orientations of the Japanese. It retains a prominent place in anthropology sixty years later. The book was critiqued for its shortcomings in terms of Benedict’s lack of direct experience with Japan and interviews with Japanese American immigrants. The Japanese translation (1948) was widely read by Japanese, eager at the time to know how a Westerner, an American, saw Japan. In previous work analysing the Japanese scholarship on this book, I

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found the general assumption that Benedict was only writing about Japan problematic (Creighton 1990). This was not how Benedict’s work was perceived by Geertz, approaching it as an anthropologist, not a Japan specialist. For Geertz (1988) it was an anthropological vehicle through which Benedict was trying to get Americans to see themselves in a new way, by first presenting the Japanese as ‘different’ until their differences no longer seemed odd, so that Americans could grasp their own understandings of what was ‘natural’ as potentially odd from another perspective. Canada and the United States are both viewed as ‘Western’ and often problematically lumped together due to geographic proximity and a superficially similar way of life. Those with lengthy involvement with both recognise that ‘somehow’ they are very different. Since Canada tends to get minimised, given the dominance of the United States on the world stage, symbols of Canadian identity asserting a difference from the United States become important. However, many are problematic. Even many Canadians think the Queen is not necessarily the best symbol given Canadian multiculturalism, and some even hint that she is ‘British’ (Ferguson and Ferguson 2001). (In Canada she is ‘redefined’ as the Queen of Canada.). Canada has the maple leaf and maple syrup, but the United States also has maple trees, and its north-eastern states are also maple syrup producers. A crisis of identity was sparked when reports went out that Disney had somehow obtained the copyright on the ‘Mountie’ image. Behind this quest for proper symbols is a sense that there are very real cultural differences between the United States and Canada, but these seem difficult to explain; differences which – like those between art and pornography – seem hard to define but one just knows them when one encounters them. I started out in life as a native-born American citizen, educated through my Ph.D. and post-doctoral work on Japan in the United States, and I had also spent many years living in Japan, before taking an academic post in Canada. During my more than fifteen years of cultural integration into Canadian society, I came to understand that it was different, and I had to adapt to the differences. My journey into understanding the differences between the United States and Canada was partly informed by anthropological attempts to understand Japan. Anthropological models of Japan I studied as a graduate student in the United States were often presented as a comparison of Japan with ‘the West’. My socialisation experiences into Canadian life allowed me to see these more clearly as comparisons of Japan with the United States. I do not wish to reinforce essentialised views of any culture or society, but it is perhaps useful to attempt some general understanding of how differing cultural views of person and society shape human life and action in different cultural settings. While the organisation of life, and professed understandings of person and society, seem more similar to each other in Canada and the United States, I remember feeling that sometimes Canada seemed a bit more towards what we had been taught to see as a Japanese framing of

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understanding, or somewhere in-between expected American and Japanese predispositions.

Insights from Gift-Giving An early reflection on these matters resulted from gift-giving expectations. Perhaps this is because I spent years researching department stores in Japan, and their pivotal role in gift-giving. In Japan, customary gift-giving practices have long served as material manifestations of human embeddedness in networks of relationships. Two major gift-giving seasons of the year are known as oseibo (year-end gifts), in which gifts are given in mid to late December to help people through the transition to the New Year, and ochu-gen, (mid-year gifts), usually given in July, but in some areas from late June, to mark midsummer and help people prepare for obon (annual practices for the dead). These gifts are not based on personal affection or friendship, but given through concepts of obligation and embeddedness in defined relationships. They are often given to higher-ranking people in communities, to superiors in companies, and to teachers. In the last case, the mother of a child typically purchases the gift, and although the gift in one sense is from child to teacher, it also represents the gift of the child’s household to the teacher in gratitude for the teacher’s work on behalf of a household member (Creighton 1991, 1992). When we were first introduced to these Japanese gift-giving customs in the United States, they seemed odd, even amusing – particularly giving teachers twice-annual gifts. It sparked discussion about whether these were indirect bribes. From a social science perspective, we saw them in line with Mauss’ (1967) framework describing how the bonds of social life are woven and reinforced in many societies through the exchange of gifts which in theory are voluntary but are actually presented and received according to cultural understandings of obligation. Even Mauss’ model points out that, while these gifts are not bribes, no one wants to draw negative attention by being the only one not to give a prescribed gift. While in the first grade of elementary school in Canada, my six-year-old son came home for the winter vacation break (the secularised phrasing for what previously was and still often unofficially is called ‘Christmas vacation’) telling me he was the only child who had not given the teacher a ‘Christmas present’. I did not immediately grasp the importance of this communication. At the end of the school year in late June, I was told more emphatically that I was the only Mom who had not bought a present for him to give his teacher at the end of the school year. This time I grasped ‘my’ omission, and thereafter made the transition from being an American Mom, to a Canadian Mum, by providing my children with twice annual gifts for their teachers, for these were Canadian twice-annual gift-giving occasions (or at least customary occasions in the area where we were living). I was struck by a similarity behind the giving of these gifts, and that even

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the timing was similar to the Japanese context, mid to late December for the ‘O-Oseibo,’ ‘year-end’ gift (Japan) or the ‘O-Christmas’, ‘winter break’ gift (Canada), and late June to July for the ‘O-Chu-gen’, midsummer gift (Japan) or ‘summer vacation’ gift (Canada). In both cultural settings, I had experienced not wishing to be the only one failing to give a gift. I came to see this gift-giving less and less from the earlier American discussions of potential bribes, and more as involving attitudes about personhood and expressing a sense of indebtedness and gratitude towards others.

You Gotta Have Wa In For Harmony and Strength, anthropologist Rohlen (1974) explored different cultural ideals of person and society between Japanese and Americans. The title of the book, based on the slogan of the bank where he did ethnographic fieldwork, indicates that ‘strength’ (and success) are valued, but so are wa (harmonious relationships). The journalist Whiting (1989), writing about Japanese baseball, expressed this for more general audiences as You Gotta Have Wa. An espoused American ideal has been the ‘rugged individualist’. The espoused Japanese ideal values cooperation, consideration for the opinions and feelings of others, and being attuned to situational contexts. An ‘individualist’ can seem obnoxiously ‘inflexible’. Embree (1974:174) stated in his early anthropological study of a Japanese village, ‘the most striking type of misfit is an individualist’. Other concepts are linked to this differential importance given to the individual or to interconnected social networks. When the balance is on the latter, consensus decision-making is more important, the value of ‘principles’ is tempered with a consideration for context, and there is a greater tendency to believe no one is ever 100 per cent good or bad, 100 per cent right or wrong. The latter scenario is thought to be more common to Japan than the United States. I specifically use the United States, rather than ‘the West’. My experiences in Canada suggest it lies somewhere between the United States and Japan in the relative weights given to these. There is an emphasis on individualism, but also a strong value placed on ‘community’ upholds the importance of the context of relationships in any situation; a greater emphasis on consultation, compromise, and consensus decision-making is preferable. There is more likely to be the belief that no one is 100 per cent right or wrong, hence weighing the collective judgement seems sensible, and more emphasis is placed on defusing a conflict, rather than establishing who is right or wrong. ‘It’s Over’, expressing the feeling that the issue does not matter any more, implies a resolution whether an agreement on the principle involved is reached or not. Canadians talk about the importance of ‘principles’ and acting by them. Perhaps – and maybe this conception can also fit into our frameworks for understanding Japan – the idea of being nice to people and sensitive to their feelings is integrated as one of the ‘principles’ rather than understood as something separate and

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biased to be overcome by reliance on ‘principles’. Although the individualist model is strong in Canada, there is, perhaps more so than in the United States, the belief that if relationships are damaged nothing can be done, so a staunch reliance on principles does not help accomplish the ends they were meant to serve.

It Depends on the Ga Communication discourse in Canada is more likely to expect greater attunement to subtle or ‘delayed’ expressions of negative criticism. Fields (1983) pointed out that Americans doing market research on products introduced to Japan initially had difficulties because they did not grasp the subtle ways in which Japanese housewives expressed negative criticisms, while making positive statements. After complimenting a product profusely, the women would utter ‘ga’ (but), followed by some issue they ‘wondered’ about, or sometimes simply uttered ‘ga’, with the following thought left unstated. In listening to the exchanges, Fields realised that the Americans were listening to the opening praises, and not to the subtle expressions of negative criticism following the ‘but line’ that were the real message. While Canadian discourse is not as indirect as Japanese, it often tends to be less direct than American discourse as well. In particular, direct expressions of criticism, while acceptable, should not stand alone. If negative criticism is made, it is usually an expected element of discourse that positive statements are also made, usually before any negative commentary. This tends to be true in work settings, in scholarly critiques, in sharing opinions among acquaintances, for written reports or oral assessments. Even if lengthy positive comments flow, as in Japan, it is important to pay attention to whether there is a ‘but line’ and what comes after it. Since there is expected to be some balance of positive and negative criticism, a lengthy positive prefacing might actually not be a good sign, and might indicate an exceptionally negative response to something. It all depends on the ga – whether there is a ‘but line’ – and what follows it.

The Non-No No A Japanese student explained difficulties she encountered on a university exchange programme to Canada. In Japan she had learned that, in contrast to Japan where people ‘softened’ negative responses, ‘Westerners’ expressed themselves directly, stating ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The mother in her Canadian host family planned a special outing for her, but she was not interested in it. When the host mother asked her if she wanted to go, she said, ‘No’. Afterwards, she felt confused because she could tell immediately that this was not the correct thing to do, despite what she had been taught. This problem reflects a likely overstatement of American preferences for direct over indirect communication. Many Americans would also expect a

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negative response to be tempered by more explanation. It is also probable that what she was taught was based more on Americans as ‘Westerners’ without considering differences among Westerners. It is often said that Japanese do not like to say ‘no’ directly. This is not uniquely Japanese, and Canadian discourse often avoids a harsh ‘no’ answer. If one asks for help on something, a likely response might be, ‘I need to check my schedule book’, or ‘I think I had something planned for that day.’ After plucking up the courage to ask someone for a date, rather than a ‘no’ response, a more likely response is, ‘I think I have to be somewhere at that time – oh, yes, now I remember where . . . ’. Often the word ‘no’ is never stated, nor does the person explicitly decline the request or invitation, but offers peripheral information from which it can be inferred that they are unable to be involved. Whereas such answers may seem evasive in the United States, in Canada, somewhat similarly to Japan, they are expected polite protocol to spare feelings and allow people to save face. As in Japan, the listener is supposed to understand these communication clues, and know clearly that the answer is ‘no’.

Conclusions: Idioms of Person and Society During my cultural integration into Canada, models I learned contrasting Japan (and sometimes ‘the East’) with ‘the West’ came into focus as more clearly models of generalised difference between Japan and the United States. Seldom are three-way, or multiple comparisons made with Japan. Ishida (1993) did a three-way comparison of educational systems in Japan, the United States, and Britain. By doing so, and by adjusting the understanding of US brand-name universities to include both Ivy and Big Ten Schools, he showed that the emphasis on university rankings, thought to characterize Japan, did not actually constitute a big difference from the United States. This essay has tried to situate differing emphases in two Western countries, through the vehicle of work done on Japan. None of this is to be taken as a full explanation of culture for any of the countries involved. The United States and Canada are both very large, contain diverse ethnic groups, immigrant heritages, and pre-existing Aboriginal traditions. Despite its proclamations of homogeneity, diversity within Japanese society is increasingly recognised and written about. Cultural values and predispositions are constantly renegotiated and potentially changing. What is suggested is that different cultural systems may place different ideal emphases on particular images of person and society. Every culture and society must balance two aspects of human nature that often seem in tension: the need to be an individual, expressing an individual nature; and the need as social animals to be members of social networks. What was previously inappropriately sometimes called a ‘groupist’ orientation in Japan, scholarship in the anthropology of Japan has come to understand as

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a greater emphasis placed on the individual person in relationship to society as someone situated or embedded in interconnected networks of relationships. Rather than seeing an emphasis on ‘individualism’ as ‘Western’ and ‘collectivism’ as ‘Eastern’, perhaps we could look at further ways to refine these models and understandings. While individualism is very important in Canada, perhaps a little more weight tends to be given towards the community aspect of human life than in the individualistic model of ideal personhood as it historically developed in the United States. Would further comparisons with other so-called ‘Western’ countries, such as in areas of Europe with long histories of fairly dense populations, reveal that extreme individualism has not been given quite as high a social value as at times in the United States? While such a question remains for possible further research or reflection, what is suggested is that different societies express different ideal images of person and society in terms of the expressed balance given to individualism and to interconnected relationships in the social world. This is not a polar difference between ‘East’ and ‘West’ but a possible continuum in which there are also differences among and within ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ cultures, countries, and societies. More three-way and multiple comparisons, using insights from the anthropology of Japan, can help deconstruct and denaturalise the ‘East/West’ divide by revealing its contradictions. Additionally, they might help reveal how idealised idioms of person and society vary in emphases among different so-called ‘Western’ societies, thus enhancing our understanding of the diversity among them.

16 Eastern and Western Anthropologists Unite in Culture: A Personal Note Heung Wah Wong

This article is a personal note in response to an implicit sentiment shared among some non-Western anthropologists in the belief that native/Eastern anthropologists have an a priori advantage over Western anthropologists in understanding their own cultures. It seems to me that this sentiment is a reaction to the Western hegemony in what Kuwayama (2004a) calls ‘the world system’ of anthropology in which anthropologists from the United States, Great Britain, and France have been occupying the centre, while anthropologists from the rest of the world always remain peripheral. Western anthropologists as a collective group enjoy the authority to define ‘the politics involved in the production, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge about other people and cultures’ (Kuwayama 2004a: 9), while non-Western anthropologists have no role to play in the course of establishing the rules. Non-Western anthropologists have to follow the rules set by their colleagues in the West if they want their work to be recognised. Implied in this centre–periphery paradigm is the power inequality between Western and non-Western anthropologists. Kuwayama, however, points out that as anthropology spreads globally, more and more native/Eastern anthropologists start to challenge the work of Western anthropologists, especially the work done on the societies and cultures of native/Eastern anthropologists. Along with all these challenges, there is an implicit sentiment quietly developing and shared among some native anthropologists and that is what worries me most. Somehow they feel that native anthropologists, as insiders, have an a priori advantage over their colleagues in the West in understanding their own cultures. This sentiment is usually implicit and mostly unconscious. The recent criticisms of Gananth Obeyesekere levied on Marshall Sahlins’ assertion that Captain Cook was perceived by the Hawaiians as their god Lono when Cook appeared in Hawaii in 1778 display the highest form of such a sentiment. Essentially, Obeyesekere argues that Sahlins was wrong, one of the reasons being that, as Sahlins observes, Obeyesekere himself is a Sri Lankan and therefore he could understand Hawaiians better than Sahlins, who is an American (Sahlins 1995: 4). The logic behind such reasoning, as Sahlins further explains, is that since Sri Lankans and Hawaiians are non-Westerners, they

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are thus both ‘natives’. Since Sri Lankans and Hawaiians are ‘natives’, a Sri Lankan anthropologist, as an insider, therefore has an a priori advantage over a Western anthropologist who is an outsider, in the understanding of Hawaiian culture (Sahlins 1995: 5–6). Underlying this logic is the West-and-the-rest dichotomy and its various versions including the insider–outsider dichotomy and the West–East dichotomy, which in this context takes the form of the native anthropologists claiming a priori epistemological superiority in understanding their own culture over Western anthropologists, on the grounds of their alleged ontological difference. This personal note, however, argues that native anthropologists do not enjoy such a priori epistemological superiority over their colleagues in the West in understanding their own cultures because there is no such ontological difference between them. This note is personal not only because it is just an idiosyncratic note, but also because it proceeds with a self-critique of my own book entitled Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: Power and Control in a Hong Kong Megastore (hereafter JC), published in 1999. It is a methodological strategy to have chosen to write this personal note in the form of a self-critique because the fact that I, as a Hong Kong-born Chinese, have been researching Japanese culture in Chinese society in Hong Kong, constitutes a similar situation to that of Gananth Obeyesekere who, as a Sri Lankan, studies Hawaiian culture. We would thus expect, to follow Obeyesekere’s claim, that I, being a native anthropologist, should be in a better position to understand my own culture and Japanese culture, which has been historically and culturally close to Chinese culture. However, this is not the case. This self-critique of my book can serve as an interesting case that enables us to review critically the implicit sentiment mentioned above.

The Major Error of JC The major error of JC, among others, is the utilitarian explanation of the oyabun–kobun relationship among the Japanese expatriates and the ah ko/ah che-nui (elder brother/elder sister–daughter) relationship among local staff in Fumei Hong Kong, a Japanese supermarket in Hong Kong where I did fieldwork for two years. In order to make the discussion easier, I need to repeat the scenario described in JC in which two of the four company directors competed for power. (pp. 125–37). In Chapter 7 of JC, I pointed out that the president of Fumei Hong Kong spent most of his time working for the company’s chairman at the headquarters of the Fumei group, Fumei International, and thus gave little time to the management of Fumei Hong Kong. Therefore, very few Japanese employees would think of bringing their work-related problems to him. The president therefore gradually became more of a figurehead in the company. Consequently, this left control of Fumei Hong Kong open to competition among the four directors: Kurihara, Nishiwaki, Yamamoto, and Monguchi (Table 16.1).

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Table 16.1 The personal details of these four directors, 1992 Name

Age

Sex

Rank

Year of Arrival

Education

Corporate Position

Kurihara

45

M

E2

1984

University

Nishiwaki

45

M

E2

1987

University

Yamamoto

44

M

E3

1985

University

Director of Administrative Division Director of Non-Food Merchandising Division Director of Food Merchandising Division

Monguchi

43

M

E3

1985

University

Director of Store Operation Division

Among these four directors, Nishiwaki not only had the least influence but was also not popular in the company. In addition, Nishiwaki kept a relatively low profile among the Japanese expatriates. In contrast to Nishiwaki, Monguchi was a confident, competent director. Because of his competence, Monguchi was accorded considerable respect and ‘face’. However, as he had a strong sense of personal dignity, he clearly disliked the idea of either having a personal following or himself being a follower of other directors. Monguchi was not interested in company politics either. This left the competition for the control of Fumei Hong Kong to the other two directors: Kurihara and Yamamoto. At the beginning, Yamamoto could not compete with Kurihara for two major reasons. First, Kurihara was more senior than he was in the company’s hierarchy. (Table 16.1). Second, Kurihara controlled the Administrative Division, traditionally considered the most powerful division in Japanese companies, which made him believe that the discretionary power he enjoyed in the financial matters of the company was already adequate to enable him to control the company. However, Yamamoto, I argued in JC, developed his own faction to compete with Kurihara. Yamamoto always used after-hours to socialise, such as going to drinking parties to cultivate and reinforce personal familiarity with his followers. During such parties, Yamamoto provided informal but important advice or counsel to his followers, and his followers would express their resentment at the company’s policies and other Japanese superiors such as Nishiwaki and Kurihara. Sometimes Yamamoto also listened to his followers’ personal problems. With his faction, Yamamoto, I argued in JC, controlled the whole company. His followers occupied important positions in the Administrative Division, the Store Operation Division and Non-Food Merchandising Division, in the sense that they were the people who implemented decisions made by the division heads. They could resist or even quietly change decisions made by Yamamoto’s rivals in the process of their implementation. For example, Kurihara tried to regain control of the overall operation of the company when Yamamoto was promoted alongside him as the vice-president in 1993,

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as he sensed that Yamamoto was catching up. Soon after Yamamoto’s promotion, Kurihara unilaterally decided to invite a Japanese consultancy firm to study the company’s merchandising policy, store operations and information system. Two members of staff from the consultancy firm were sent to Hong Kong to study the company for three weeks. Although the study involved the company’s merchandising and operation systems, Yamamoto and Monguchi, the two directors directly in charge of these systems, were not invited to participate and did not even know about the project. Kurihara had wanted to use the project to show the company’s president that he was working very hard to improve the company’s operations. At the same time, he had intended to use this project as a means to criticise Yamamoto, by highlighting problems in the divisions of which Yamamoto was in charge. However, Kurihara failed to do this because the informal network established by Yamamoto successfully protected him from Kurihara’s attack. Yamamoto’s followers resisted the project and did not even mention it at all, as if it had never been carried out. Without the support and cooperation of Yamamoto’s followers, who occupied important positions within each division, Kurihara could hardly get anything done and so the project died quietly. I further argued that this was the reason why Yamamoto was keen on promoting his followers to important positions within the company, which in turn, I argued, provided a strong incentive for Japanese employees to join Yamamoto’s faction. Let me summarise my argument here: Yamamoto was in a disadvantaged position to compete with Kurihara. He then intentionally developed his faction by establishing an oyabun/kobun relationship with other Japanese expatriates as though Yamamoto’s personal aspiration to power gave rise to the oyabun/kobun relationship. For the ordinary Japanese staff, they were willing to be Yamamoto’s kobun because they believed that Yamamoto could and would help their careers. Implied in this interpretation is the utilitarian concept of culture that ‘human cultures are formulated out of practical activity and, behind that, utilitarian interest’ (Sahlins 1976: vii). I applied the same utilitarian explanation to the relationship among local staff. I pointed out in Chapter 8 of JC (pp. 178–90) that local staff, especially manufacturing-workers-turned-sales-clerks, tended to maintain a kinship-like relationship with their superiors, referring to the latter by the Cantonese kinship term ‘ah che’ (elder sister) or ‘ah ko’ (elder brother) depending on the gender of their superiors. Since these former manufacturing workers neither had any experience in sales work nor social skills for the sales floor, I further argued, they tended to impose a moral responsibility on their superiors by referring to them as ah ko or ah che, hoping that the latter would teach them basic selling and social skills like elder sisters or brothers would do. The superiors used the same tactic, referring to their subordinates as nui (daughter), hoping that the latter would give them support and loyalty as a daughter would do for her mother, especially when they

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competed with other senior staff for promotion, or when they sought to establish friendships with the Japanese expatriates. In other words, the ah ko/ah che-nui relationship, not unlike the Japanese oyabun–kobun relationship, was interpreted here as an expression of utilitarian interest.

Western and Non-Western Anthropologists Unite in Culture Such a utilitarian explanation of culture has already been well criticised by Sahlins (1976; 1999a; 2000). I do not intend to repeat his criticisms here. What is noteworthy about Sahlins’ criticisms, however, is his argument that the utilitarian explanation of culture is a self-consciousness of Western society, a bourgeois ideology in the market society. In a total market, everything can be reduced to a common denominator: monetary values, regardless of how different things may be. This total market tends to inscribe an ideology into the market society that every action and its alternatives, as Sahlins explains, must first be translated into their apparent common denominator of ‘pressures’ or ‘satisfactions,’ among which we prudently allocate our limited pecuniary means. In the translation, then, their distinctive social content is lost, with the result that from the natives’ point of view all of culture seems constituted by (and as) the businesslike economising of autonomous individuals. (Sahlins 2000: 278) Growing up in such a market society, many Western anthropologists, Sahlins further points out, tend to assume in their own studies that such an ideology is also in the consciousness of other people. That is to say, they tend to interpret the cultural arrangements of other societies in the same way that they feel about their own society. In so doing, the different logics of other cultures cease to be seen and the only thing that remains is the logic of utilitarian interests. My self-critique, however, testifies that a Hong Kong-born-Chinese anthropologist is not necessarily less vulnerable to the utilitarian explanation of culture than Western anthropologists when he studies Japanese culture, a culture historically so close to his own. In other words, there is no a priori reason to assume that simply being a native anthropologist can guarantee an epistemological privilege in understanding non-Western cultures, including his own. The anthropological authority of native anthropologists in studying their own culture or any non-Western cultures, if any, should also be subjected to the same critique as that of their colleagues in the West. The key issue here, I think, is not as much a matter of whether anthropologists are from the West or not but whether they take seriously Geertz’s insights that culture is an essential condition of human existence and that human nature lies in cultural particulars (Geertz 1973). Culture has two

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meanings here. One is a human’s unique capacity which organises experience and action according to a symbolic scheme which is not the only one possible. The other refers to ‘the unique phenomenon it [culture] names and distinguishes: the organisation of human experience and action by symbolic means’ (Sahlins, 2000: 158; italics mine). The implications of the concept of culture are twofold. First, human phenomena are culturally organised according to a symbolic scheme, which is not the only possible one. That is to say, the anthropological object is constituted differently in different cultures. Take for example the oyabun–kobun relationship. Unlike kinship in the West, which is ‘confined to the domestic corner of social life’ (Sahlins 1976: 6), the oyabun–kobun relationships refer to a total relationship. They order the activities between oyabun and kobun in the corporate context, in their emotional, personal life, and so on. An oyabun is symbolically defined as the superior of the kobun in the company, a person from whom the latter would seek advice in personal and emotional matters, a friend for whom the kobun would have affection and a person from whom the kobun would expect preferential treatment. This is the cultural reason why Yamamoto as an oyabun had the obligation to take care of his kobun, listening carefully to their grievances, giving advice for their personal lives and career development, and offering them preferential treatment. Yamamoto would also have to be evaluated by his obligations as an oyabun. This is also why the Japanese expatriates as kobun gave respect and loyalty to Yamamoto. Thus we cannot fragment the motives of Yamamoto and other Japanese expatriates in an oyabun/kobun relationship into utilitarian, emotional, and affectionate components, and reduce the oyabun–kobun relationship to a psychology of utilitarian motive, as Worsely does to Tallensi kinship (Sahlins 1976: 4–9). These three aspects, to Yamamoto and other Japanese expatriates, are in fact one and the same in the oyabun–kobun relationship.1 More importantly, rather than the self-interests of the Japanese staff of Fumei Hong Kong giving rise to the oyabun–kobun relationship, it is the latter that determined both the effect and content of the former. By carrying out the oyabun obligation to a full extent, Yamamoto was evaluated by his kobun not only as a jitsuryoku teki oyabun (a powerful superior) but also as a good oyabun. Such positive evaluation earned Yamamoto social reputation and leadership, which in turn helped Yamamoto compete with and protect himself from being attacked by Kurihara. In other words, it is the cultural logic entailed in an oyabun–kobun relationship, rather than the utilitarian interests operating in the relationship between Yamamoto and his subordinates. Moreover, even if it was self-interest that motivated the Japanese subordinates to offer their loyalty to Yamamoto, and the latter to give the former preferential treatment, it is not in the nature of self-interest that it motivated the Japanese subordinates to offer their loyalty to Yamamoto as kobun and Yamamoto to give their subordinates preferential treatment as oyabun, not to mention the fact that such self-interests can never be abstract and ahistorical but are constituted culturally.

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Underlying these cultural diversities is the human’s unique capacity that makes such cultural diversities possible. Here comes the second implication of culture: human beings, including Western and non-Western anthropologists, are united in the same symbolic capacity: culture. Anthropologists, as the knowing scientific subject, no matter if they come from West or East, share the same symbolic capacity with their informants and it is this shared capacity that enables anthropologists to ‘replicate in mind, as the meaningful logic of custom, what the latter [informants] express in practice’ (Sahlins 2000: 30). In other words, neither native nor Western anthropologists have an a priori advantage in understanding a particular culture, for instance, Japanese or Chinese culture. It is in this sense that the dichotomy between native/Eastern and Western anthropologists is unnecessary because they unite in culture. Finally, since a human’s unique capacity (human nature) lies in the cultural diversities among human societies, anthropologists whose major mission is to understand human nature should respect the cultural specificity of their object by understanding the logic of the human phenomena concerned, in terms of the cultural context which makes the human phenomena possible, rather than imposing our theoretical and moral judgements on them. As for example, with what the utilitarian explanation of culture has done – it reduces all cultural differences to a ‘universal’ logic: utility. That is to say, the anthropological problem here, if any, lies not in who the anthropologist is, but in the imposition of the anthropologists’ intellectual and moral judgements on the peoples they study. This essay too is not intended to be an imposing one because it is after all just a personal note!

Notes 1 Personal communication with Masahisa, Segawa and Satohiro, Serizawa on 11 July 2001.

Part V

Regional Perspectives

17 Neither ‘Us’ nor ‘Them’: Koreans doing Anthropology in Japan Okpyo Moon

It has been a fashion in recent discourses of anthropology to define it as a Western discipline based on a hegemonic representation of colonial others, especially in the non-West. Such a definition, however, precludes any possibility of discussing the undeniable fact that anthropology, whatever forms it may take, has existed in the non-West or has come to exist in many postcolonial societies since World War II. Indeed, while it intends to be a critique of conventional anthropological practice, by lending Western anthropology singular authority, it may end up endorsing and thereby perpetuating the existing power relations between the West and the rest. By looking closely at how anthropology is practised and how the relationship between the observer and the observed has been constructed in the case of Korean anthropology of Japan, I would like to consider the possibility of an alternative perspective, and a way of enriching the anthropology of Japan.

Postcolonial positioning of a Korean anthropologist in the Japanese field Anthropology of Japan as Koreans have practised it offers us an opportunity to reconsider the supposed hierarchy between the observer and the observed. From the beginning of the twentieth century, Korea had been one of the major objects of study by Japanese colonial anthropologists (Park 1993; Kim 2004). In the late 1920s, Japanese established in Seoul one of their ‘Imperial Universities’ and used it as the institutional basis for accumulating knowledge on Korea as a way of assisting colonial governance. However, little continuity can be noted between this pre-war tradition of Japanese anthropology at the Keijo (the Japanese rendering of Kyongsong, the former name of Seoul) Imperial University and Korean anthropology that was taking shape with the establishment of its first department at Seoul National University in 1961. This is because scholars trained in the United States who deliberately attempted to rid themselves of any colonial legacy have dominated post-war Korean anthropology from its incipient stage (Moon 1999). What may be understood as Korean anthropology of Japan started in the early 1980s by those who were trained first at Seoul National University

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and then went on to continue their advanced studies in the West. These second-generation post-war Korean anthropologists, after completing the required coursework at one of the major universities in Great Britain or in the United States, went to Japan to study it as an ‘other culture’. The encounter of a Korean anthropologist with Japanese ‘natives’ in such cases is quite different from that of a conventional anthropological encounter. To begin with, it is a reversal of the usual relationship between the observer and the observed in that a member of a former colonised society is studying the colonisers. Given the particular historical background, it is often the case that the Japanese whom Korean anthropologists encounter in their fieldwork situation have certain preconceptions of the Koreans as a people vis-a`-vis the Japanese. In my own case, the villagers whom I studied in a mountain village in central Honshu had some memory of Korean workers who were brought to the area by force and subjected to menial labour during the colonial period. Away from their family at home against their will, and under wretched working conditions, those Korean workers were apparently often hostile to the villagers and talked and behaved rather roughly. It was, therefore, pretty disconcerting to many of the villagers when I first introduced myself to them as a Korean. The encounter presented them with the difficult task of reconciling those frightening images of Korean workers with that of, comparatively speaking at least, an urbane-looking female student with a whiter face who had been to England and seemed to have many connections with important professors at the University of Tokyo, the elitist educational institution in Japan. One way of resolving this dilemma was, as an 82-yearold village lady repeatedly insisted during my stay, to claim that old Chosen (the name of Korea when it was colonised by the Japanese in 1910) and Kangoku (the name of Korea since it became an independent country in 1948) are two different countries. In that way, I could be spared being labelled as a Chosenjin, a derogatory term that Japanese use to refer to people from colonial Korea, and become accepted as one with whom they may associate, by lending a room, and allowing to become gradually a part of the community, etc. It was clear in this situation that the fact of my having been to England – which occupies a privileged position compared to Japan – functioned to some extent as a kind of leverage to counteract the ethnic hierarchy that existed in the minds of the Japanese villagers, who were the objects of study, and a researcher who is a Korean, whom the Japanese have been led to see as a people who are ‘one level below’ (ikkyu shita) them. Many Koreans on the other hand are accustomed to believe that Korea with its long recorded history as a unified nation-state and literate civilisation had never been inferior to Japan, except in the military aggression that led to its colonisation at the turn of the century (Walraven 1999: 219–20). While the ethnicity factor may appear to loom larger than any other in this particular case, there are also a number of other factors at work in the process of establishing an

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appropriate relationship between researcher and the researched: urban/ rural, female/male, academic/farmer (peasant), cosmopolitan/provincial, outsider (soto)/insider (uchi), young/old, married/unmarried (divorced, separated, etc.), and so forth. Not only the ethnicity factor mentioned but also all these other elements are gauged, interpreted, manipulated and negotiated, both by researcher and by the researched, in all the different circumstances that arise during the course of fieldwork. In short, as I experienced it as a Korean anthropologist in the Japanese field, the construction of relationships between the observer and the observed is hardly monolithic or predisposed, but a multi-faceted, ongoing and, above all, mutual process in which both the anthropologist and the research objects participate.

National Character and the Question of Audience Another factor to be considered in assessing the nature of the relationship between the observer and the observed here is the fact that many Korean anthropologists working on Japan have had academic training at one of the Western universities. That they usually go to the United States for advanced graduate level training was the case not only for those working on Japan but also for those who studied Korean society, especially in the 1960s and 1970s when there were not yet many places within Korea that offered a doctoral programme. That kind of background has a significant impact on the way they do fieldwork and write about their research results. Yoon Hyungsook, a Korean anthropologist who studied English literature for a BA degree in Korea and went to study anthropology at one of the American universities in the 1970s, writes about her experience of coming back to Korea for fieldwork as follows: Departing for the field was an experience that was quite different for me from that of my fellow students, as I decided to study Korean society. For me, it was not ‘a departure for a strange and exotic place’ as for them, but ‘a coming home to the familiar’. There was no need for me as for other anthropology students in the field to try ‘going native’. Instead, ‘being native’ myself, I had to try to distance myself from my own culture and to observe it as though I were an outsider who did not know it. (Yoon 1996: 108–9, my translation from Korean) As a Korean anthropologist trained in Great Britain, my own experience of coming to Japan for fieldwork had some resemblance to that of Yoon except that, in my case, it was not quite ‘coming home’ but ‘coming nearer home’. Being physically of a similar size and colour, I was not so conspicuous among the Japanese compared to my Western colleagues and could pass as one of them with little effort. With regard to the language problem as well, I

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could claim some advantage in that Korean and Japanese belong to the same linguistic family and have the same structure. Also, having learnt Chinese characters as part of my Korean education, it was easier for me to acquire Japanese and refer to their written sources. In this regard, it may be argued that the ethnic and racial affinity gives Korean anthropologists some advantage in their attempts at ‘going native’. On the other hand, however, being of the post-war generation that does not have any first-hand experience of the colonial period and who had to learn Japanese as a second language, Japan was no less ‘other culture’ for me than it was for a British student. Moreover, the fact that the first and foremost important audience of my research results would be the thesis committee composed mostly of British scholars, as it would be for Yoon and others whose main audience would be Americans, significantly affected both the course of fieldwork and the subsequent writing. For instance, in the case of Koreans doing Japanese anthropology in one of the Western countries, it can be noted that the fashionable mode current at their places of study affects their selection of research topic, methodology, theoretical orientation and writing style in one way or another. It is often the case that their training in the West led them to distance themselves from their Korean ethnic background and to approach the Japanese field as ‘other culture’, free of past historical connections, as though they were either American or British. It is therefore difficult to characterise their work as Korean or even ‘Eastern’ because a Western perspective mediates them in a significant way, at least up to the stage when they obtain the degree they wanted. The question of national character becomes even more perplexing owing to the recent tendency, especially since the early 1990s, for an increasing number of Korean students to go to Japan to become Japan specialists instead of going to the West, the previously recognised centre of anthropological knowledge. As an imperialist power itself, Japan has developed since pre-war times its own tradition of anthropology, which has been labelled by some as a ‘parallel universe’ (Mathews 2004: 128). As there is little communication between anthropology in the West and that in the socalled parallel universe, the research styles and subsequent works of those Korean anthropologists trained in Japan display considerable differences from those with a background of Western training. It may be said that their work has been mediated by the Japanese ways. It is of course true that, if their thesis advisers are Japanese anthropologists who have studied in the West, this influence shows and, in this regard, it may be argued that ‘Japanese ways’ are not something so easily defined. On the whole, however, it can be noted that their references are drawn almost exclusively from Japanese sources and mostly from ethnologists and folklorists since there are nowadays very few Japanese anthropologists working on Japanese society. Perhaps partly for this reason, compared to their colleagues trained in the West who seem to lean towards contemporary issues reflecting the current theoretical interests of Western anthropology, the works of those trained in

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Japan manifest a strong historical orientation in their analyses and writing styles. Unlike those trained in Western anthropological traditions, who usually stay in their research sites for relatively long term fieldwork, repeated short-term visits seem to be more common among those studying in Japan. Sometimes, their doctoral work is carried out as part of the joint research team (zemi in Japanese) of his or her supervisor, more in the fashion of apprenticeship than as an independent solitary work assuming an exclusive responsibility. In this regard, therefore, it may be said that Korean anthropologists trained in the West and those trained in Japan subscribe to different modes of knowledge production. The difference remains to some extent even after they return to Korea, as their academic communities are divided. Those trained in Japan tend to work closely with folklorists, even in Korea, and they maintain close connections with Japanese academia via participation in joint research projects, exchange-programmes, workshops and conferences. Above all, they almost never use English as their medium of communication. By comparison, those trained in the West work within the community of anthropologists and sociologists in Korea and more of their references are drawn from the works by Japanese sociologists dealing with contemporary issues rather than from folklorists or historians. They also maintain some connection with the English-speaking academic world. As time goes by, however, the initial separation gradually becomes blurred, as both groups concentrate more upon producing the kind of knowledge specifically demanded by Korean audiences and become less concerned with satisfying those in the West or in Japan. Cooperation becomes inevitable since the total population of anthropologists working on Japan is still rather small compared to the fast-growing domestic demand.

Beyond the East–West Dichotomy in the Anthropology of Japan The Western anthropological tradition emphasising the dichotomy between the West and non-West and between us and them has tended to encapsulate Japanese anthropology within the Japan/West dichotomy. It is also true that Japanese academia in its own way has contributed significantly toward this encapsulation. Perhaps being too conscious of a Western hegemony, many of them have tried hard to make sense of their own way of life and thinking in the eyes of Westerners, an enterprise that has so frequently led to uniqueness arguments. As these tendencies have considerably impeded and distorted the flow of knowledge in the field of Japan anthropology, it is perhaps time now to make a breakthrough by incorporating other Asian or non-Western perspectives into the scene and by trying to create more common platforms for exchanging ideas and sharing interests as a basis for multi-party dialogues. One useful endeavour in this connection would be expanding cross-cultural comparisons among Asian societies that may illuminate more closely the commonalties and unique features of each society,

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and it is in this particular regard that a meaningful contribution can be expected from Korean anthropology of Japan. It is true that the works produced by Korean anthropologists of Japan have hitherto been largely ignored or unrecognised in the hegemonic centres as they mostly write in Korean. It is, however, not simply the language barrier or discursive styles that separate these communities, but differences in the nature of knowledge in demand. In other words, what may interest those in the United States or Britain with regard to Japanese culture and society does not necessarily interest Koreans or Chinese and vice versa. If a function of anthropology has been to satisfy the desire for ‘otherness’, it may be said that Korean or Chinese anthropologists working on Japan have been engaged in producing and supplying a different kind of otherness from that desired in the West – the features that divide their own society and culture from the Japanese within the East Asian cultural tradition, for instance. There is no doubt, therefore, that any efforts to share the perspectives and knowledge accumulated by those working outside the framework of the Japan/West dichotomy will enrich our understanding of Japan.

18 Re-Orient-ing the Occident: How Young Japanese Travellers are using the East–West Dichotomy to Dismantle Regional Nationalisms Bruce White In attempting to frame this chapter in the larger context of the volume’s theme, I found myself pondering just how one might actually go about ‘dismantling a dichotomy’. Surely a dichotomy is already a whole in some state of dismantlement, a ‘division of a whole into two parts’?1 Are we, therefore, trying to break these parts up further in search of some ‘original’ code, a blueprint of a time when there was a ‘whole’, if ever there was one? Or are we hoping that any further dismantlement will dissolve the two parts, that by exposing the inconsistencies, we render the dichotomy useless to any subsequent attempts to pick it up? The reason I address the juxtaposition of these concepts and approaches is that the subject of this chapter is very much about understanding how dismantlement and wholeness are themselves key parts of a process of building meaningful imagined communities, be they Eastern, Western, Global or otherwise. In particular, I would like to demonstrate how people themselves can be seen to conceive of and act out inconsistent and often conflicting identities and world-views, themselves in search of both dismantlement and wholeness, of encouraging dichotomies in order to create coherent understandings and senses of belonging. The arena from which I present examples of this is the attempt to construct an imagined community of pan-Asian membership by certain members of Japan’s highly mobile youth generation. For members of this generation, the East–West dichotomy is ever present. They find themselves lodged in ‘Western’ space and time – they perceive their highly developed and rich society as firmly aligned with, even ‘in-league’ with, the West. They also fear that this is the image of Japan from abroad, in particular from their neighbours in the ‘East’. Yet alongside these concerns, their world offers many new avenues, fresh perspectives and fertile ground for the propagation of alternative diverse and culturally reworked ‘home-grown’ identities which do away with the need for the competitive narratives of East and West, and of the nation-states seen to represent them. In finding themselves lodged between these two models, of tired global dichotomies and nationalisms on the one hand, and the new opportunities to embark on culturally plural models on the other, these young people are

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setting into motion a process, which I will now attempt to describe, of ousting the West in order to find favour with the East, of redefining the relationship to the Occident in order set up the precedents for reimagining the Orient. In setting out how this dynamic has come about and makes itself salient to these youths, I would like to advance the view that any attempt that we, as observers, make to do away with the East–West dichotomy should be tempered with a complementary understanding of how the divide facilitates movement in the imaginative frontiers of this region. Many of the observations and quotations I use here come from research conducted with young Japanese travellers to Asia from Tokyo, Nagoya, and several parts of Kyushu, in 2003 and 2004. I juxtapose these results with other sources in the hope of illustrating that, for better or worse, people are using the East–West dichotomy for their own ends, assuming and essentialising its existence in order to play out strategic realignments and generate new imaginative continents.2 In so doing, however, I will conclude that this process may indeed be clearing the ground for a moment in time when the East–West dichotomy will cease to play a functional role, and the whole becomes, in line with the popular phrase, more than the sum of its parts.

Contemporary roots of the perceived ‘Western’ Stereotypes: Shinjinrui travellers in the 1980s In order to understand how the turn-of-the-century highly mobile youths are experiencing and setting into motion the process I am concerned with describing, it is first necessary to understand the previous youth experience of Asia from the generation that went before them: a generation widely known as the shinjinrui (or ‘new species’). Now in their mid to late thirties, this generation’s experiences of other Asians have seemed only to separate Japan further off from Asia. As Akio, a 36-year-old salaryman, makes clear, ‘I was travelling in Australia in 1990 and there were, of course, many people from all over South East Asia there. As soon as some of them heard that I was Japanese they would come over and try to make friends. They had heard that Japan was a super-rich country – this was still just about in the bubble period – and assumed that because I was Japanese, I must be rich too. I remember thinking how ridiculous this image was and was sure more than a few times that the person shadowing me had a larger bank balance than I did.’ Akio continues, ‘The image of Japan and the Japanese as a particular kind of people with particular attributes and great financial wealth seemed so strong and so loaded with wartime stereotypes as to impede normal conversation.

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I remember, for instance, a Korean guy saying to me before we even had a chance to ask each other’s names ‘‘you probably hate me because I’m Korean’’’. For many of the shinjinrui, interactions with other Asians of a similar generation seemed trapped in continuing a set of wartime or ranked economic perceptions of relative national power. Japan’s economic growth and success during the 1980s seems to have been perceived as part of an ongoing quest for superiority, dominance and power. Other Asians were seen to perceive Japan as wanting to oust affiliation with them in favour of affiliation with countries of the developed, and by extension, Western world. The conflict inherent in the resulting cross-cultural experiences and interactions meant that many of my informants from this age group expressed a greater interest in, and attached a greater status to, travel to Europe and America. Affiliations with ‘Western’ countries generally outweighed affiliation with neighbouring Asia. Likewise, work assignments and posts in Asian countries held little status amongst many of my informants from this generation, whereas a position in a Parisian, London or New York company would often be envied by shinjinrui peers. Of course, I found many exceptions within the shinjinrui generation – examples of strong Asian cross-cultural friendships built and fostered over a decade or more. However, this did not change the fact that for the many of this generation, the East–West dichotomy lived on, and within it, the majority identified with the West, and with the narrative of development, modernisation and progress which this imaginative community carried with it. These narratives and identities best represented this generation’s experience in the world, in their interactions with, and the images reflected back at them from their Asian neighbours.

Shifting Timeframes and Parallel Asian worlds: Critiquing Modernisation Theory and Western Affiliation Notions of relative economic development have traditionally fuelled nationalist rhetoric on the ‘superior’, or otherwise, nature of peoples in this region. Therefore, it is interesting to observe that for many contemporary members of Japan’s highly mobile youth generation, the shinjinrui successors, it is precisely this notion of relative economic development that sits at the centre of what I see as the beginnings of a reorientation of imaginative membership and solidarity – a shift from belonging to the imagined community of the West, to wanting to spur on and propagate an imagined community of the East. For Misako, a 28-year-old Kyushu teacher, an experience in a Hoi Chi Min bar confirmed the degree to which modernisation and industrialisation were key jump-off points for reimagining a common Asian experience, existence and identity.

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‘This barman involved me in a discussion of how the area around his bar had changed so drastically: he said that ‘‘10 years ago there was nothing around like there is now, and that the area has just exploded.’’ He asked me if Japan had had a similar period of such fast-paced development. We talked a lot about the similarities between the two places. How my once small town in Kyushu has grown up so quickly into a bustling city. We talked about modernisation and how it affects people. How there were many similarities between this place and Japan, and the whole of wider Asia.’ For Misako, this experience and exchange was important in engendering a sense of sharing a common thread of contemporary cultural experience – of setting Japan into the same developmental process and timeframe as other Asian countries. As many of my informants observed, this ability to sense a common place in the common development of their Asian countries – without loaded cultural wartime narratives – was a refreshing change from feeling as though one was being looked at as a representative of an ‘evil’, ‘distanced’, or ‘superior’ country. Clearly the quality of interaction with other Asians was undergoing significant change – many of my informants reported how they were able to engage in a widespread, shared popular Asian culture, and that common references to music, dramas and other media helped them engage successfully with their Asian counterparts (a shared network that did not exist for their shinjinrui predecessors).3 But, more importantly, the beginnings of a critique of the modernisation theory, and Japan’s perceived affiliation to the narratives and identities which were associated with it (the West), was clearly in motion. Clearly related to observations on the parallel modernisation and development processes of Japan in an Asian context were reflexive examinations of where Japan is to be located in the world. Indeed, for the majority of my youthful informants there was a process of negotiating and framing cultural relativism going on in the minds and expressions of them all. Typically, this process of relativism was understood and articulated through the use of America, Europe or ‘the West’ as a comparative ‘other’ to a newly discovered regional, ‘Eastern’ sense of membership and heritage. Examples include: If you go to America or Europe you feel Asian, as Japanese culture seems so different from Western culture. But in Asia, for me at least, I feel more Japanese, as the differences seem more regional and linked to economic position. (Chihoko, 22) There are things one can’t understand or enjoy in Europe if you don’t understand Christianity. Whereas in Asian countries those divides

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don’t seem to exist as much – there is a common sort of base and shared approach to life. (Megumi, 22) Alongside these typical responses ran a common perception that Japan needed to move away from a dependence on Europe and America in positioning itself in the world. It was far more important (and, in fact, there was probably nothing quite as important) than moving away from comparing itself to America, and towards grounding itself in a wider Asia. In response to an interview question designed to illicit views about Japan’s future identity, Emi said: In the future I want part of me to take the traditions and identity of Japan, whatever that comes to mean; but I would like that ‘me’ to be part of a bigger story and membership – a member of a wider Asian culture and tradition. This is happening now, I suppose, but there needs to be a more concerted effort to stop seeing America as so important for Japan’s existence. ‘How will Japan change as a whole in the future?’, repeated Hiroki in response to my question. ‘Let’s hope that it can stop looking to America for direction. There are so many fascinating countries and people in our own region that we can identify with.’ Here, the combination of challenging a Japanese identity defined vis-a`-vis the West, and experiencing a sense of parallel Asian social development – of moving into a sense of existing in the same temporal Asian time and space – worked to bring a sense of Asian place and, by extension, meaningful global location to these young Japanese. In its representation of modernity, development and progress – progress towards industrialisation and monoculture – the West becomes the antithesis to cultural richness, vitality, heritage and diversity. It is very much a swing to incorporating these latter concepts, rather than the former, which Asia is seen to embody. As these young people continue value-paralleling and imagining a simultaneous ‘Oriental’ historical timeframe, they incorporate these notions and associate them with ‘Eastern’ rather than ‘Western’ experience and ‘culture’. This results in a shift from affiliating with the ‘West’ (as their shinjinrui predecessors do), to affiliating with the ‘East’. The manoeuvre helps both to essentialise and to strengthen their newly found regional membership, and it also acts as a powerful diplomatic tool in cross-Asian interaction, demonstrating a clear renunciation of any perceived ‘superpower’ Western-affiliated superior status, and potentially opening the doors for acceptance into an ‘Eastern’ community.

Towards a True Dismantling of the Dichotomy? The Representatives and Articulators of the Movement The use of the West as an other to a preferred ‘Asian’ membership in the process I have sketched illustrates clearly that the East–West dichotomy is in

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no way under threat of dismantlement in this region. Indeed, it is being used to rather successful effect to help bridge formerly wartime nationalist divisions and rankings and to build cross-cultural ties and transnational identities. Despite this, however, there are avenues along which this othering of the West and the reorientation of the Orient may be seen to travel that could lead to an eventual undermining and full dismantlement of the East– West dichotomy. In order to demonstrate these, I would like to introduce 25-year-old Koichi, who has lived as a student in Thailand and travelled around Indonesia, the Philippines, China and Cambodia as a backpacker. Koichi can be seen to be from an elite group of youths who have had both the opportunity to spend large amount of times travelling and ‘meeting the locals’, and the social networks at home to import the resulting ideas and products. These individuals can be seen to cut through the inconsistencies in the East–West dichotomy utilised by their peers, while still encouraging a regionally relativised identity, one that celebrates diversity, rather than necessarily rejects, or ‘others’, the West. Here is Koichi: I want to say that I am Asian, but I think there are many differences internally, within the countries themselves. Maybe it is a question of the pace of development that regions go through that means it’s difficult for them to support a common way of life. But this doesn’t mean that we should rank countries and cultures; just acknowledge that each presents a wide range of lifestyles and ways of living. I have been to Spain and all around Europe, and there’s loads of real inaka (countryside) there, places that are similar to Asian locales. Asia and the rest of the world are at the same stage, really. It’s just our images of what countries are and what they contain that need to catch up. Koichi’s interpretation of the modernisation narrative is relativised in a way that transcends national boundaries and cross-cultural differences. Importantly, in understanding the relative (European and Asian) spread of modernisation, it transcends (and dismantles) the East–West dichotomy. As is the case with others who have had opportunities to experience cultures to this degree, his personal world-views, his own ‘modernity theory’, help to provide a way of relativising his own Japanese identity, as well as a wider understanding of what it was to be from the Asian region. Playing out these connections and relationships in conversations with peers captures the imagination of other Japanese from the same social set (Koichi’s social status is high), providing an alternative world-view from that commonly perceived, that Japan is dependent on America for its definition, and beyond that, that there is a culturally pluralistic world-view that does away with all cultural dichotomies, focusing on specific cultural contexts (cf. White 2004). In manipulating the very foundations that underpin the traditional historical narratives of such dependence – turning around

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the notion that modernity is more important than cultural richness and diversity – Kochi and others like him introduce a powerful anti-theory to their generation, one that is perhaps more suited to their social reality than the models and narratives of the recent past. For some of these highly mobile young people, their conception of such culturally pluralist world-views can only be realised through finding genuine acceptance and meaning in the diverse regional contexts of Asia. They are thus in a difficult position, because to find that acceptance they need to embark on projects which essentialise rather than celebrate cultural diversity (i.e. essentialising the West for the aim of building networks and connections with their neighbouring Asians). Amplifying the East–West dichotomy thus becomes a tool in setting up local conditions to promote what for some is a genuine agenda of defining an imagined community out of cultural pluralism.

Conclusion Even in this world of increasingly acknowledged and integrated cultural diversity, we still observe the Occident and Orient as playing key roles as frameworks for cultural definition and affiliation. For this region, however, if this project of jettisoning the West serves further to convince young nonJapanese Asians that their Japanese contemporaries are open to a project of building a common heritage and history, and not thinking of themselves as superior, it could potentially lead to the contexts from which the larger barriers of the West and non-West are eventually considered and deconstructed. Such a world is probably several decades away, but the social identities being propagated today could well be the forerunners of a future more carefully constructed through a broad set of complementary visions of local and global diversities. Whether this region will muster the social resources necessary to see beyond past stereotypes, and to rise to a tide of transcultural solidarity is still in question, and certainly the Chinese demonstrations against Japanese textbooks in 2005, as well as research (Mathews 2005; Nakano 2005), have cast doubt on the possibility of some of Japan’s neighbours altering their images of Japan. What is clear, however, is that from a Japanese perspective, the role of the West is central to the ability to posit a pan-Asian imaginative community, and to determine and direct its best possible course of regional acceptance. The question then becomes whether the changing configuration of the West is a powerful enough ‘other’ for an Asian solidarity to emerge above and beyond the internal otherness it has suffered throughout the twentieth century. To return to some initial points I voiced in the introduction, it seems that as observers of such processes and movements we can attempt to illustrate the possible fractures in the dichotomies that may eventually be their undoing. But the real dismantlement of dichotomy must come from the

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people themselves, the results of hard-won challenges to borders and boundaries in search of human connections and the formation of new imagined communities. Our contribution can be to help represent their ongoing challenges, to illuminate the struggles, to set forth intellectual packages that help people follow the course of such movements. We can empower and amplify the processes that will lead to dismantlement, but any true dismantlement of the East–West dichotomy will only occur when it ceases to facilitate solidarities and fuel new imaginative communities. To emphasise this, I would like to end with a quote from ‘Chin’, a Japanese construction worker interviewed by the BBC about his thoughts on China following the demonstrations throughout April 2005: I haven’t got a problem with the Chinese, but you watch the protests on TV and it makes you wonder. There are people who want to talk about the differences between us, but Japan and China are both Asian countries. We need to see beyond our problems and start working together. We’ve got way more in common with China than the West.

Notes 1 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 2 This is of course has become particularly obvious throughout the Middle East in response to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. ‘The West’ has begged for immediate re-definition in order to empower imagined communities of ‘Arabs’, or ‘non-Westerners’ to emerge in the light of its essentialised characteristics. It is also the case for a variety of other groups, including anti-capitalists, and indigenous groups in the light of recent events and movements. 3 See Ching, (1999) on Asia wide popular culture.

19 Fear and Loathing of Americans Doing Japan Anthropology William W. Kelly

For several decades, there has been a widespread perception that Americanbased anthropologists dominate Japan anthropology – in access to funding, in setting the research agenda, and in determining career patterns and journal access. The 2002 JAWS meetings at Yale devoted an entire plenary session to this issue, and it produced some strong opinions from the panellists and membership.1 I have continued to puzzle after that plenary about whether this perception of American dominance is accurate. My answer is ‘yes, but’. Yes, indeed, by a number of crucial indices, programmes, resources, and personnel in the anthropology of Japan have been overwhelmingly concentrated in the US for half a century since the 1950s. But, while most US-based anthropologists would acknowledge this, we pay it little attention. Perhaps this is the casual indifference of the advantaged to their position, but we regard it to be of minor importance – while many of our colleagues elsewhere feel it to have introduced distortions in the intellectual development of the field of study and inequities in access to visibility and standing. A number of conferences, volumes, and articles have already considered how anthropologists’ nationalities and/or ethnicities might determine their research agendas and analytical perspectives on Japan.2 What I am considering here is a different issue, which is the degree to which Americanbased anthropologists have occupied a privileged place in Japan anthropology and whether the effects of this have been healthy, insidious, or innocuous. Are there ‘alternative’ anthropological scholarships of Japan elsewhere that have been overshadowed by American dominance and that deserve more recognition and funding? This chapter details some of the reasons for American numerical superiority and some of its consequences. I suggest a couple of reasons why we in the US don’t feel much like the dominant centre of a world system of Japan anthropology, and I argue that, nonetheless, such an apparent concentration of resources has not determined the intellectual trajectory of Japan anthropology. This trajectory has been more shaped by intertextual influences and the changing realities of Japanese society than by the social location of anthropologistwriters.

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Of course, one might immediately challenge my premise with the case of the Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS) itself, in whose series this book falls. JAWS contains a breadth of national representation and regular channels of transnational communication that is unusual for anthropologists of a world region (Latin Americanists, Europeanists, Oceanianists, and others have caught up with JAWS but the organisation was a prescient example of transnational scholarly exchange). And the fact that it took twelve meetings and nearly twenty years for JAWS to gather for the first time in the US (at Yale in 2002) is perhaps a powerful argument against any notion of American hegemony. We Americans were an afterthought – the thirteenth afterthought, wedged between Finland in 2001 and Poland in 2003! Conversely, though, the US delay in sponsoring could be given the opposite spin, reflecting American arrogance towards participation. Perhaps it meant that we really didn’t need JAWS, and it remained an organisation of so many small David’s aligned against a single Goliath that remains imperiously detached (just as English soccer famously ignored the FIFA World Cup for its first three decades). No doubt the real relationship of JAWS and the US lies somewhere between, but it does seem to me, as a premise whose significance is worth exploring, that the overwhelming relative magnitude and strength of Japan anthropology in the US is indisputable, when compared with Japan anthropology in all other national contexts, including Japan itself. I would measure this by a number of indices, especially the following four: 1. The sheer number of persons who have trained to specialise in Japan anthropology at US universities overwhelms all other countries. From John Embree’s 1937 PhD at the University of Chicago through the most recent postings at DAI, there have been 240 PhDs awarded for Japan anthropology dissertations at North American and British universities, of which 210 have been from US universities. This total also dwarfs PhDs granted in Japan anthropology from universities in Europe, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. 2. The US also dominates in the number of its universities and colleges that employ Japan anthropologists. There are at least fourteen major research universities where Japan anthropologists are part of Departments of Anthropology and/or interdepartmental Japan programmes and as many other universities and liberal arts colleges with Japan anthropologists in regular ladder faculty positions. 3. US citizens and those studying at US universities are greatly privileged in the funding that is available for scholarly research, dissertation research, and institutional support. Many research universities themselves generously support doctoral students with fellowship assistance. Among external benefactors are the Japan Foundation (whose budget is still inordinately devoted to US-based scholars and institutions); the Fulbright

Americans Doing Japan Anthropology 135 and Fulbright-Hays Commissions; the Social Science Research Council; private foundations and companies (Ford Foundation, Luce Foundation, Freeman Foundation, etc.); and Japanese companies and foundations (including generous gifts from Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Toyota, Nomura, US–Japan Foundation, and others). 4. There is also a numerical advantage in the number of US-based presses and journals that feature works of Japan anthropology – and, as one consequence, the effective promotion of English as the dominant language of Japan anthropology. Thus, whether we measure the training of Japan anthropologists, the location of professional Japan anthropologists, the amount of funding for Japan anthropological research, or the scholarly language and outlets of Japan anthropology, the US has the overwhelming concentration of programmes, resources, and personnel. No doubt, this privileged environment for our work is a legitimate target of fear and/or loathing by those Japan anthropologists who must labour elsewhere with far less support and far fewer colleagues and students. And many, if not most, of us US-based anthropologists will acknowledge this disproportional weight of resources and researchers when it is pointed out. Nonetheless, as I asserted at the outset, we otherwise pay it little attention; indeed, we wonder why Japan anthropologists in other parts of the world have been so exercised by it. I think there are a number of reasons for our nonchalance, which bear on the structural location of Japan anthropology in the US institutional and intellectual landscapes.  First is the long-time marginal position of Japan anthropology within our discipline in the US. That is, within US anthropology, we Japan specialists have never felt particularly dominant, or even noticed, and we tend to dwell on our inferiority complex in the discipline at home rather than revel in our dominance in global Japan studies.  Furthermore, all academic specialists on Japan, especially anthropologists, often feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated by the legions of journalists and popular writers who highlight Japan (while ignoring Japan academics).  And within Japanese studies in the US, Japan anthropologists have felt that ‘their’ concept of culture and at least some of their work has been hijacked and co-opted not only by popular writings but also by other disciplines. By this I mean the frequently reductionist abuse of the culture concept by economists, political scientists, and even historians and literary studies scholars writing within Japan studies.  Finally, US-based Japan anthropologists have felt further beleaguered for a decade or so by a strong scepticism towards so-called ‘area studies’, within the academy broadly and even within American anthropology. Japan and any other local space-time are disparaged as legitimate

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subjects of inquiry, tolerated only as fodder for the higher labour of theory-building. For these and no doubt other reasons (which I suspect our colleagues in parts of the world also experience), we frankly don’t feel much like the centre of a world system of Japan anthropology! Of course whether we acknowledge it or not, we are nonetheless dominant, quantitatively. It is thus important to examine some of the reasons for this numerical superiority and its effects, and surely we must begin with the distinctive political and economic histories that have bound Japan and the US for at least three-quarters of a century (e.g. Janssens 1995, Robertson 1998, and Ryang 2004). Although most accounts of Japan anthropology in the US begin (and sometimes end) with Ruth Benedict’s notorious study (with secondary mention of other anthropologists involved in wartime cultural-analysis-at-adistance), I am more inclined to ground the last half-century of academic Japan anthropology more firmly in the political and economic conditions of the post-World War II era: from the Allied (but overwhelmingly American) Occupation of Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s through the Cold War interests that shaped American attentions to East and Southeast Asia from the mid-1950s to the US–Japan economic rivalries of the late 1970s to early 1990s. Japan obviously loomed much larger in the strategic and economic priorities of the US than European countries and even Australia, and this both demanded and enabled scholarly attention. A corollary of this Cold War complex in the US was early official support (from the 1950s) for ‘foreign area studies’, a rubric for multi-disciplinary scholarship, language training, and teaching. This was a target for generous, continuing government assistance (the Fulbright Commission, National Science Foundation, the Defense Department, the Peace Corps) and private foundations (especially the Ford Foundation), and was reflected in the growth of disciplines like anthropology. Further encouragement came from the earlier expansion of higher education in the US in the 1960s, compared to Great Britain, Japan, Europe, and Australia. There was enormous growth in student enrolments, doctoral programmes, and faculty positions. Again, anthropology and area studies more broadly benefited, gaining an early advantage over Japan anthropology elsewhere in training yet more graduate students, many of whom came of professional age from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, when Japan’s economy loomed large to American corporate and political interests, sparking a further augmentation of faculty positions and funding commitments. In reviewing what I think is generally accepted about the post-World War II context for Japan anthropology, I am decidedly not attributing and reducing the diverse motivations of individual anthropologists to the conditions that favoured certain institutional directions. For instance, it was

Americans Doing Japan Anthropology 137 within the context of the Allied Occupation that the American anthropologist Gordon Bowles helped to restart the University of Tokyo Department of Anthropology and that a cohort of young Americans undertook field research around the Inland Sea (Richard Beardsley, Robert J. Smith, John Cornell, Edward Norbeck, and later, George DeVos), and a few years later David Plath and Ezra Vogel established a Japan anthropology based in long-term fieldwork, local language competence, and ethnographic representation.3 To be sure, national concerns with Japan and the resources that came available because of that were the context for their work. However, it misjudges their quite varied studies and often heterodoxical analyses to reduce this work to some prevailing Benedictine character drama or modernisation fixation. Even if the emerging US-based Japan anthropology did not reflect official interests or even scholarly conventions, one can easily identify a number of reasons why it should have shaped the wider field of Japan anthropology. That is, there are several features of university organisation, pedagogy and career patterns that set American academic life apart from English, Japanese, Continental, and Australian styles and that might be expected to shape the research and writing conventions of a field. For instance, American universities have rather distinctive pedagogies of graduate training, often taking in students without extensive backgrounds in anthropology and relying heavily on coursework and basic seminars in the first several years of the doctoral programme. British and Continental programmes structure the doctorate more as a research degree, with students’ identifying and pursuing projects from the outset. Department organisation has also taken a peculiar form in American universities. With few exceptions, there is an absence of interdisciplinary departments like Japanese Studies, through which many Japan anthropologists have emerged in other national systems. Almost all US-trained Japan anthropologists have come out of two-, three-, and four-field anthropology departments, often with broad coursework requirements and experience in general anthropology teaching through TA-responsibilities. A third difference between American and other systems is in its career trajectories, university personnel structures, and professional associations. These include the recruitment procedures of faculty (including announcement, interview, and assessment practices), the peculiar American tenure system, higher mid-career mobility, the formal structuring and informal styles of American Anthropological Association and Association for Asian Studies national meetings, and even the organisation of university libraries. All of these give a distinctive cast to the conditions of academic production in the US, and might be expected to shape research priorities, the writing styles and representational forms, and the standards of evaluation for what counts as Japan anthropology. And yet, has any of it in fact mattered? Has the distinctiveness of the American academy and its overwhelming numbers within Japan anthropology shaped (or some might say,

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deformed) the agenda of the specialty in a clearly ‘American’ direction? Would Japan anthropology look much different today if Japan anthropologists and training and resources had been distributed through the scholarly world in a different pattern? This is a provocative counter-factual and admittedly difficult to assess, but frankly, I can see little evidence that this uneven terrain has decisively directed (or deflected) the trajectory of Japan anthropology. Numerical superiority – by the indices that I mentioned above – has not translated into intellectual dominance and the ability to shape ideas and determine an agenda. There have been very clear directions in Japan anthropology over more than a half a century, but I would propose that the peculiar ‘landscape’ (or ‘academic political economy’) of Japan anthropology has been no more determinative of these directions than has the pattern of scholars’ nationalities. The one exception may be that America’s Japan anthropology establishment has made English the dominant language of publication in the speciality. It is not clear, though, that this gives a decided edge to US-trained and US-based scholars. A number of us are not in fact native speakers of English-language education, and the presence of indigenous English in a number of other Japan-research countries and the high quality of English competence among other colleagues probably dilutes any US linguistic hegemony rather than reinforcing it. In taking this contrarian position, I am not denying the social production of knowledge, but in the case of Japan anthropology, the lineaments of the social are tangled. The persisting concentration of training and professional employment in the US, despite the distinctive features of its academy and of US–Japan relations, has been undercut (or perhaps, cross-cut) by the varieties of the students and scholars who have composed US-based Japan anthropology. The permutations of ethnicity, nationality, gender, class, and age cohort have disaggregated any agenda-setting and disrupted any efforts at boundary maintenance. We have never composed a social field, a champ in the sense that Bourdieu used it in Homo Academicus (1988). Our double marginality, within American anthropology and within public US discourse about Japan, and our own diverse personal locations, gave us no incentive and no leverage even if we had wished to protect exclusivity and exercise a collective control. Rather, our field has been shaped inter-textually. It is foolhardy to characterise briefly six decades of research, but as I reflect on the range of topics that we Japan anthropologists have taken up, they seem to have spread in ink-blot fashion from an early, limited set of concerns to sites and issues that take us across the full spectrum of Japan and beyond. In the first two decades (the 1950s and 1960s), work centred on the social organisation of and family forms in rural villages and urban neighbourhoods, moving to salaryman locations like banks and danchi housing. These interests persisted in the 1970s and 1980s, but Japan anthropology broadened to incorporate such topics as preschool and primary education sites, the OLs and housewives

Americans Doing Japan Anthropology 139 who were the other essential elements of salaryman life, medical clinics and the culture of health and healing, and early studies of marginalised groups of resident Koreans and Burakumin. Many of these sites and topics continued in the 1990s to the present, but the past fifteen years or so have added additional focus on popular culture and consumer society, mass media, sites of globalisation within and outside Japan, further work on the substantial margins of mainstream society (e.g., Okinawa, day labourers, foreign workers, Ainu, homeless), and forms of civil society within Japan. This is hardly exhaustive of the richness of Japan anthropology (see Hendry 1986, Kelly 1991, Lie 1996, and Robertson 2005 for analytical surveys), and I cannot defend but merely assert my argument in this brief essay. However, I do believe that a historical cartography of who and how and why our research has taken the ever-widening directions that it has will show that the social locations of its production have been of limited consequence. Rather, I would argue that the textual discourse of knowledge and the actual conditions of Japanese society have been more decisive in shaping the trajectory of Japan anthropology research. Rural and urban studies developed in tandem, workplace research inspired wider venues (e.g., from white-collar to blue-collar to underclass workplaces), the androcentrism of salaryman studies provoked attention to female labour force participation, workplaces led to leisure sites, conventional secondary classrooms were an entre´e into a wide spectrum of educational ethnographies, and so forth. Japan anthropology has been more an open field of critical exchanges and mutual stimulation than an uneven terrain of protective enclaves of scholarship. And what of the future? The new Directory of Japan Specialists in North America that the Japan Foundation is funding and that Patricia Steinhoff and Michael Donnelly are editing for an anticipated publication in 2006 will provide some important quantitative data about the new institutional landscape of Japan anthropology. Given the wider distribution of doctoral programmes, Japan’s more global presence, and perhaps a decline in US public concern with Japan, it will document that the field is much less concentrated in the US than even a decade ago. But Japan anthropology has always been more cosmopolitan than a simple reading of its institutional locations and materials resources would suggest, and that accounts for its longstanding vibrancy and diversity.

Notes 1 An audio transcript of that plenary session can be found at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~wwkelly/JAWS_2002/index.html 2 Examples include Befu and Kreiner 1992 (cf. Kelly 1993), Kuwayama 1997, 2004A, Ryang 1997, 2000. I am trying here to distinguish the effects of where Japan anthropology is done from the felt national identity of who is doing it. To mention but a few examples, Takie Lebra, Harumi Befu, Dorinne Kondo, Sonia Ryang, and Karen Nakamura are all among those US-based anthropologists

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whose training, citizenship, and/or ethnic identities are variously tied to Japan. John Clammer, Jerry Eades, Tom Gill, David Slater, and Jane Bachnik are among those Japan-based anthropologists whose training, citizenship, and/or ethnic identities are variously tied to GB and US. Lynne Nakano is a JapaneseAmerican, trained here at Yale, who is teaching at Chinese University of Hong Kong. And the complexities go on, refracted further by gender, generation, class, and other dimensions of identity, personal and professional. 3 To this first cohort of fieldworkers we must add the distinguished contributions of the Englishman Ronald Dore, but this only demonstrates the overwhelming American numbers even from the start.

20 When the East–West Dichotomy is Destructive: Japanese Housewives in the UK Ruth Martin

This chapter focuses on expatriate Japanese wives in the UK. It uses the perceptions of women themselves to argue that use of the East–West dichotomy is at best inappropriate and at worse destructive. It also proposes that in developing identities as global citizens, these women are in fact paving the way for a world where this is recognised. As of October 2003, a total of 50,531 Japanese citizens, the largest number in Europe, were registered with the Japanese Embassy in London as resident in the UK. Of these, 18,313 were classified as ‘private company staff’ and just under half of this number were female, mainly dependants (Embassy of Japan in London). Informants for this research are Japanese women of three age groups who are living, or have lived in the UK in the last thirty years and their stay in the UK typically ranges from three to six years.1 While two were engaged in postgraduate study, no women interviewed worked outside the home during the transfer period, meaning that all were housewives, though this was largely due to visa restrictions. It should be realised that as expatriate middle-class wives of professionals, these women represent a privileged minority in Japan. For example, in 2000, only 0.6 per cent of the population was recorded as living abroad for three months or more (Asahi Shimbun Japan Almanac 2002). According to Chambers Dictionary, ‘East’ is a noun defining the countries of Asia and the definition of ‘West’ is the countries of Europe and North America in contrast to those of Asia. However, the use of East and West in the context of Japanese housewives in the UK is problematic. First, it ignores the diversity that exists between individuals, and at worst is destructive in that it is divisive and discriminatory. This can be illustrated by my fieldwork within an Anglo-Japanese Friendship group in London, in which non-Japanese members commonly refer to Japanese members collectively as ‘Japanese’ or ‘the Japanese side’, but to themselves as ‘Western’. The term used in this way suggests that the ‘Western’ members share commonalities, but in reality their backgrounds are diverse. The current Chairman (actually a woman) is American, while other members are English, Scots, or have origins in other European countries. What they do have in common is that they have all experienced

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expatriate living in Japan (which is a prerequisite for membership) and are not Japanese. This fits in with Chambers’ definition of ‘Westerners’, but classifying them in this way ignores differences, and more importantly, segregates them to an extent from Japanese members. This seems divisive in a group that aims at Anglo-Japanese rapprochement. Furthermore, I question the argument that, since in fieldwork Japanese interviewees hold on to the notion of difference between East and West, it is acceptable to use the terms in this bipolar way, even when the researcher does not accept the difference as fundamental (Sakai 2000: 23). The responses of my informants suggest that they do not in fact hold on to such simplistic definitions. While the dictionary definition of ‘West’ is Europe and America, in terms of discussing transfer locations, my informants did not use the East/West dichotomy as a point of reference in either English or Japanese.2 Instead, they differentiate not just between ‘Europe’ and ‘America’, but also between specific locations such as London, Paris or Frankfurt in Europe, or Washington, Boston or New York in America. Their definition of ‘East’ is even less clear-cut. One informant told me that when she lived in Japan before moving to the UK, she thought that ‘the East’ only applied to Japan and was surprised to realise that it included other Asian nations. Furthermore, while living in Japan and referring to Japanese flat maps showing Japan at the centre, informants had found the term ‘Far East’ (Kyokuto¯) in reference to their homeland a mystery. It was only when they were resident in the UK that, in relation to their own current location, they had some understanding of why this term was used outside Japan. In terms of transfer location women tend to consider Europe and America as more attractive than Asian countries. This is in fact reflected by the grading system for allowances that is adopted by most Japanese companies. Countries are graded according to their hardship level depending on whether they are considered as developed or undeveloped (see Black, Gregerson, Mendenhall and Stroh 1999). Trading companies commonly pay allowances at three levels, depending on the posting. The greatest allowances are provided for postings to Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore and finally America and Europe. Employees with families are generally sent to countries not considered as hardship posts – but for longer periods of around five years compared to two to three years in hardship countries (White 1988: 149). Kyoko told me, ‘My husband’s do¯ki3 was sent to Africa at the same time we came here, so we felt very lucky.’ One informant in London told me that her friend’s husband had been posted to China. Although this meant generous allowances including life in a walled compound with servants, her friend felt isolated and became depressed. However, another said that she had always envied her sister’s expatriate life in Singapore. This further illustrates the problematic use of ‘East’ in this case, by showing how informants clearly differentiate between Asian transfer locations that by the Chambers definition are all classified as ‘East’.

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Responses show that, as suggested earlier, whether rightly or wrongly, women do perceive the dichotomy to be discriminatory. Referring to the term ‘Far East’, an informant told me, ‘I had never heard the term before we moved to UK. I actually thought it was a kind of derogatory term! I thought it meant ‘‘a culturally backward nation’’.’ The same informant continued, ‘I think some Japanese people feel that there is a kind of discrimination implied in the terms ‘‘East’’ and ‘‘West’’. It sounds like ‘‘Western countries are better than Eastern countries.’’’ Another emphasised that difficulty with this dichotomy lies in the fact that Japan longs to be associated with ‘Western’ countries rather than with ‘eastern’ ones with whom relationships remain fragile after the war. Referring to why she considered the term ‘Far East’ derogatory, Keiko told me, ‘Japanese people are little bit sad when English people say Japan is ‘‘Far’’ because we think we know all about Western culture from books, TV or movies and we want to think that, apart from in the geographic sense, Western countries are no longer so far from Japan.’ Finally, an informant lamented, ‘To say ‘‘West’’ and ‘‘East’’ implies that ‘‘West’’ and ‘‘East’’ are essentially different, and that while they can meet each other halfway they can never ever understand each other perfectly.’ Herein surely lies the strongest argument against the use of the terms. In the light of the discourse above, it is important to stress that my research focuses on what happens to women when they experience life in the UK. The majority of my informants welcomed or even actively sought their husband’s overseas transfer as a chance to travel overseas, and the UK as a location is particularly attractive. Sho¯ko told me, ‘I cried, ‘‘banzai!’’ when my husband told me we had been posted to England.’ The prime attraction is that it is an English-speaking country. There is also an image of the UK, with its green scenery, red pillar-boxes and doubledecker buses, Buckingham Palace and tales of Beatrix Potter, and British brand goods that remain fashionable in Japan and which add to the desire for life in the UK. It also reflects the symbolic kudos in the business world in the late 1980s and early 1990s that was attached to having offices in London (Sakai 2000). Women also commonly point out the similarities between Japan and the UK, such as the importance of tradition and ritual, of politeness and formality, and the fact that both drive on the left side of the road and both are island nations with royal and imperial families (Conte-Helm 1996: 70). Increased opportunity to travel is a factor mentioned by all interviewees as a benefit of overseas transfer. Women not only take the opportunity to

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visit European countries while living in the UK, but they also cross boundaries between Japan and the UK with increasing ease and frequency. This is especially evident among older wives of more elite managers, many of whom have experienced more than one overseas posting. For the wives of less senior managers, the number of flights paid for by the company depends on the amount of time spent abroad. They are normally paid for once every two years for a posting of up to six years and once a year after that. However, wives of more senior managers now travel with ease and frequency, in many cases more than once a year whether it be accompanying their husbands on business trips or visiting family in Japan at their own expense. This reflects a change that has occurred in the last thirty years which has led to an increasingly cosmopolitan group of women who gain a sense of being global rather than merely Japanese citizens as a result of their experience. Stepping outside one’s own culture to understand another culture is, of course, not new in anthropology. Living in the UK offers my informants the chance to perceive Japan from the outside, in some cases for the first time. Many develop dual, or in the case of those who have had different overseas postings, even multiple identities. This is manifested by their sense of being Japanese and ‘something else’. They frequently speak of having two homes (futasu no furosato)4 – London and Tokyo or Telford and Nagoya. After living in London for example, Tamako told me that she felt ‘half Japanese and half English’. When she returned to Tokyo, Keiko still kept an eye on the London weather forecast. They come to appreciate the positive and negative aspects of both the home and the host nation and to reappraise their own culture and identity as a result. The notion of ki otsukau, for example, is one that they begin to question, as is the strain of paying attention to ningenkankei.5 The fear of being different is also questioned, for example in the new-found freedom of wearing what they want to when they want to, along with the view women said is widely held in Japan, that making mistakes is not acceptable. For example, clothes should be changed according to the season in Japan, and 1 June marks the first day of summer. As Tamako told me, ‘Anyone who does not change their clothes – for example if they go to work in long sleeves after 1 June – will be thought of as very strange.’ Women modify their behaviour while living in the UK, but they maintain certain important traditions of the home country, for example through their housewifely roles, particularly in creating a home environment that becomes an important point of reference to Japan. Shoes are removed at the entrance, and providing Japanese meals is important. In many of their groups and organisations they retain methods such as paying their subscriptions in envelopes, using hanko (seal) to register attendance, and participating in outings. However, while women modify their behaviour in the UK, when they are in a largely Japanese setting, such as a business function with their husbands, they adapt easily back into a Japanese social setting to observe Japanese social etiquette and protocol strictly.

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It is important to stress that while these women develop dual identities in this way, they come to value aspects of their home nation and they tend to hold onto their ‘Japanese’ identity. This differentiates expatriate wives from the growing band of female Japanese migrants who have been the focus of other studies, such as Kelsky (2001), who suggests that women leave Japan and seek the foreign to circumvent what they dislike in their own culture. One informant told me, ‘I want to know more and better and deeper about Japan and things Japanese.’ Another said, ‘It took living in the UK for me to realise important aspects of Japanese culture.’ A third informant said, ‘I have rediscovered Japan’s good points.’ In fact, many women subsequently play an important role in acting as ‘ambassadors’ for Japan when living in the UK, and on their return they promote British interests.6 They are active in a wide range of activities that introduce Japan to the British public, including to schoolchildren. As volunteers in the Japan in Your Classroom scheme,7 for example, they visit primary schools to provide first-hand experience of Japanese culture, and a similar programme, Club Taishikan (The Embassy Club), allows schools to visit the Japanese Embassy for hands-on activity with such volunteers. ‘Homestay UK’, an initiative of the Japan Festival held in 1991, gave students between the ages of nine and nineteen the chance to stay in the home of a Japanese family in the UK. As such, expatriate Japanese women are an important force in promoting Anglo-Japanese relations. Even women who are not involved in high-profile events play an important role. At the local level, women are keen to promote Japanese culture by organising Japan-related events and selling sushi at school feˆtes. They make Christmas cards using origami and write greetings in English and Japanese. While Japanese husbands are rarely seen in certain neighbourhoods when they are at work during the day, their wives represent Japan favourably to the neighbourhood, and in many instances, they contribute more to the good image of Japan than their working husbands do. Furthermore, while there are barriers to making non-Japanese friends and integration into UK life, many Japanese women are successful, especially mothers with children attending non-Japanese schools. In fact, they may have more contact with non-Japanese than Japanese fathers working in the business world, who are in daily contact with the head office in Tokyo and who are working in a Japanese environment. This chapter has illustrated the problematic use of ‘East and West’ through the experience of expatriate Japanese wives in the UK. It has examined their own perceptions of the dichotomy, and of the UK as a transfer location. Both in playing an ambassadorial role for the promotion of Anglo-Japanese relations and in making non-Japanese friends, Japanese women may in fact be more successful than their working Japanese husbands. Expatriate wives, especially those of more elite managers, are developing a global consciousness that is increased by the chance to travel overseas with increasing ease.

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Moreover, an increasing number of children are remaining in the UK for study, work or marriage even when their mothers have repatriated, adding to an attachment between the two countries. These children are commonly bilingual, with the same, or increased, global outlook as their mothers. Through their own lived experience therefore, as well as through their children, Japanese expatriate wives are paving the way for a world as global citizens where the East–West dichotomy is recognised as at best irrelevant, but at worst, destructive.

Notes 1 The research is based on PhD fieldwork (Martin 2004). Life stage is significant. The experience of the wife of a middle manager with children is clearly different from that of the wife of a senior manager with non-dependent children in the UK. 2 They did not use Japanese words that may be translated as ‘West’ in this context (such as seiyo¯, seio¯) except in referring to ‘western clothes’ (yo¯fuku) or to ‘western food’ (yo¯shoku). 3 Do¯ki here means her husband’s contemporary or colleague who was recruited to the company at the same time. 4 Furosato is used to indicate one’s hometown or place of birth and therefore has special nostalgic significance. 5 The notion of ki otsukau reflects the idea that self interest should be put second to that of others and the wider group and that the needs of others should be anticipated before being verbally expressed. Ningen kankei refers to the system whereby individuals are required to pay attention to the complex network of human relations. 6 By ambassador, I mean an individual who represents her country favourably, and I draw also on the definition of diplomacy as the skill or tact in dealing with people and in conducting relations with other nations in a peaceful manner (Collins English Dictionary 1986). 7 This was set up as part of The Japan Festival Education Trust (JFET) in 1992 following the Japan Festival held in the UK in 1991. JFET has now merged with the Japan Festival Fund under a new name: ‘Japan 21’.

Part VI

Historical Issues

21 When West met East and made it West: Occidentalising the Ainu Kirsten Refsing

Until the late nineteenth century, the indigenous Ainu in northern Japan were clearly and obviously not Japanese. They did not look like the Japanese, they spoke a language that was not Japanese, and their culture and way of living were completely non-Japanese. So, if they were not Japanese, what were they? One of the first Europeans ever to see an Ainu with his own eyes was the Jesuit monk, Hieronymus de Angelis. He went to Hokkaido in 1618 and concluded that the Ainu were ‘white’. The historian R. Kowner has suggested (2004: 752) that the Jesuits used ‘white’ as a term for the educated and civilised people they met – those that were ‘like us’ – but considering that the illiterate Ainu fell into the ‘white’ category, there is reason to believe that the Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth century may simply have classified populations into either ‘white’ or ‘black’. Over the following centuries the Japanese and the Chinese came to be classified by people from the West as ‘yellow’, but the Ainu were not included in this reclassification. The idea that they were ‘white’ persisted in Europe well into the twentieth century and was never quite abandoned. Rather, increasing awareness of the suspect nature of racial classification or racial hierarchies seems to have obviated the urge to classify the Ainu according to racial affiliations and origins. Early European travellers who managed to make stopovers in Hokkaido despite the Japanese seclusion policy – or who visited Sakhalin – ascribed to the Ainu qualities that were highly respected in European society, such as civilised manners, intelligence, inherent goodness, and nobility.1 Because of this, the Ainu garnered a great deal of interest and curiosity from European scholars. In 1854, Japan was forced to open up treaty ports for American and European seafaring nations, and one of the first ports to be opened was Hakodate in Hokkaido. Thus people from the West could avail themselves of the opportunity to observe and study the Ainu. The extended access to personal observations of the Ainu, however, did not deal a death blow to the concept of their ‘whiteness’, but rather reinforced it by explaining it in terms of ‘European’ or ‘Caucasian’2 ancestry for the Ainu. Although some saw them as ‘brown’ or ‘copper-coloured’, others

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claimed that the white colour was just obscured by sunburn or dirt.3 Thus, for instance in 1881, the Austrian geographer Gustav Kreitner narrated the following experience: When we attempted to climb the volcano, Yubaridake, my Ainu guide, had an accident, and as a consequence he lost consciousness. When I tried to rub the broad brown back of the old man with absinthe, I saw to my great surprise my hand become browner while the skin colour of my patient became lighter and lighter. After this experience, I feel that one should always use soap and water before making judgments about Ainu skin colour.4 Apart from their skin colour and their perceived goodness and intelligence, the fact that the Ainu had abundant body hair was also seen as setting them apart from not only the Japanese, but Asians in general. Several Europeans remarked, however, that they were no more hairy than many Europeans,5 so their hairiness was simply taken as further proof of their Caucasian background and not an argument for seeing them as racially unique. There were also some who argued that the Ainu way of thinking was closer to the European and American mind. For instance, the archaeologist and secretary to the Austro-Hungarian delegation to Japan, Heinrich von Siebold, noted in 1881 that he did not feel as if he was among people of a different race,6 and the travel writer Archibald Gowan Campbell remarked in The Wide World Magazine in 1899: A most curious point about the people generally is that their intelligence, limited though it may be, seems to be of the same kind as our own, and not of an Asiatic order. For instance, an Ainu readily understands European signs, while a Jap invariably gets them upside down, and, other things being equal, it is far easier to make a novel request intelligible to an Ainu than to a Japanese. The latter will jump at once at your meaning, but he will always jump wrong. This, however, is partly owing to the fact that he considers himself so much cleverer than you are, that he will have made up his mind as to the purport of your babbling long before you have got to the point; and no power on earth will drive the first assumption out of his head. (author’s italics)7 The decisive linguistic argument was presented by the British missionary, John Batchelor in the 1905 edition of his Ainu Grammar (first published 1887). Here he compared Ainu to both Hebrew and Basque before proceeding to argue for a linguistic affinity between Ainu and the ‘Aryan’ languages. First he listed similarities between a large number of words, but he ended this section by saying: ‘The chief argument, however, for an Aryan

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origin of the Ainu Language will be found to lie in the Grammar rather than in vocabulary’ (Batchelor, 1905: 76). Like many other Europeans of his time, Batchelor had approached the task of describing the Ainu grammar from the viewpoint of the traditional categories of European grammar. Accordingly, he often had to twist and bend the Ainu language to fit it into these categories, so even for that reason alone, it is perhaps not surprising that he should have found the two grammatical systems similar. The similarities in vocabulary that Batchelor offers are superficial and unsystematic and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a sound comparative analysis. However, in a world where very few non-Ainu had any knowledge of the Ainu language, both scholars and the general public accepted Batchelor’s statement at face value, simply because he had established himself as an authority after having spent so many years of his life among the Ainu and translating the Bible into their language. Only the Japanese were often sceptical about the validity of Batchelor’s works, but no one raised their voice in protest until decades later. Outside Japan, it became the received wisdom that the Ainu were of IndoEuropean origin, both racially and linguistically. A great deal of credibility was given to the idea by the support for it from the well-known Swiss anthropologist, George Montandon, who stated in the 1920s and 1930s that they were a ‘white Eurasian’ people (See Refsing 1998: vols 1 and 5). The ‘European Ainu’ thus began to appear in general works on the peoples and languages of the world all over Europe. Batchelor died in 1944, and the last revised edition of his Ainu–English– Japanese dictionary was published in 1938. It was, however, the third revised edition from 1926 which fell into the hands of the Swedish-French linguist, Pierre Naert, in the 1950s. Naert was primarily a specialist in Nordic languages, but he strayed widely from this field over the years, and his fascination with Ainu came at a comparatively early stage in his career. On the basis of John Batchelor’s dictionary, he began to compare Ainu words with Indo-European roots and used internal reconstruction of Ainu to tease out older forms. The Indo-European language family comprises almost all the languages of Europe and a number of languages going all the way across to and including India. The connection between all these different languages has been established on the basis of systematic structural and lexical similarities. This means, for instance, that one sound in one language must systematically correspond to the same or another sound in another language in words that are identical or close in meaning. When a large number of systematic correspondences among languages have been established, it becomes possible to reconstruct a proto-language from which all these different languages have supposedly developed. Such a proto-language, however, is a theoretical construct. In spite of numerous and elaborate attempts by both historical linguists and archaeologists to pinpoint the original home

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(Urheim) of ‘the Indo-Europeans’, there is no tangible evidence of protoIndo-European ever having been spoken, nor are there at present any certain ways to establish where or by whom it might have been spoken. How it has split into different languages can only be established with any certainty within historical times when we have knowledge about contacts, invasions, migrations and other events that could have caused people (and with them, their languages) to divide and subsequently change along different lines. After the basic stock of the Indo-European family had been firmly established, the search for new and more remote family members began. The two dead languages Hittite and Tocharian were added, and what Naert attempted with his 1958 book (reprinted in Refsing 1998: vol. 2) was to add the living language of Ainu to the same family. A fierce discussion followed its publication, and although Naert was warmly supported by famous linguists like Louis Hjelmslev, others did their best to destroy his career. Between 1958 and 1965, the discussion went back and forth in a variety of forums, but by 1965 it seemed to have lost steam and was spoken of no more. Naert moved to Finland and concentrated his research on Tocharian until his untimely death a few years later. An interesting characteristic of the seven-year-long discussion was the tendency to speak about language affinity by using ‘family’ as a metaphor. Naert himself spoke about parente´ (parentage) and called Ainu la fille (the daughter) of the Indo-European family; his opponent, Olof Gjerdman called Ainu ‘a member of the sisterhood [of Indo-European languages]’; and the French philologist and religion scholar, Georges Dume´zil, who reviewed Naert’s work, used terminology reminiscent of a paternity suit in court. Naert’s loyal defender, Ivan Lindquist, used the expression ‘we Indo-Europeans’, suggesting a slightly chauvinistic satisfaction at the inclusion of the Ainu language into ‘our family’ as further proof of a special European vitality, spread much wider abroad than had so far been assumed. Since the Indo-European languages were so widespread, it seemed likely that over time they had displaced or replaced other, non-Indo-European languages, and many assumed that this could be taken to indicate that the bearers of these languages possessed a natural superiority and that their diffusion was a result of the survival of the fittest. Nevertheless, the idea of the special vitality of the European race faced an explanation problem when it came to the Ainu, who had been colonised and suppressed by a supposedly inferior race. Observing how arrogantly the Japanese treated the Ainu, European sympathies generally lay with the Ainu, perhaps more because of the supposedly common past than because of any humanitarian considerations. However, Europeans were supposed to be natural winners, so several people expressed their consternation that a ‘European race’ like the Ainu should have sunk so low as to be dominated by the Mongoloid Japanese. For instance, the German traveller and collector Wilhelm Joest wrote:

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Incidentally it is striking that precisely this autochthonous Asiatic people, a people of such a low mental order that their faculties are hardly as developed as those of a Japanese child, a people full of dirt and vermin, who at festivals drink blood and eat raw meat, that precisely these, who must actually represent the ‘missing link’ between the highly civilised East Asians and their simian ancestors, should be those who are most like the Europeans. (Joest 1882: 181. Reproduced in Refsing 2002: vol. 3) Similarly, the American anthropologist Frederick Starr, who came to Hokkaido in 1904, just after the declaration of the Russo-Japanese War, to solicit John Batchelor’s help in finding a group of Ainu to put on display in the 1904 Saint Louis World Exposition, observed that They are surely a white people, not a yellow. They are more our brothers, though they live so far away, than brothers of the Japanese, to whom, in place, they are so near. That is not to say that all men are not brothers; our meaning we think clear. We, white men, are fond of assuming an air of great superiority, when we speak of other peoples. We take it for granted that all white men are better than any red ones, or black ones, or yellow ones. Yet here we find a white race that has struggled and lost! It has proved inferior in life’s battle to the more active, energetic, progressive, yellow people, with which it has come into contact. (Starr 1904: 110; author’s italics) Why did the idea of Ainu as Europeans remain so strong for so long? I propose two separate reasons. The first reason might be found in the romantic inclinations in the European self-image. It fitted well into this image that it might be possible to discover long-lost brothers and sisters in the remote recesses of the world, people who had survived despite their isolation from their origins. For linguists, in particular, this also constituted a dream of extending the Indo-European language family over most of the world. In the obituary for Pierre Naert, his friend Bertil Malmberg, the professor of Phonetics at Lund University, wrote: The academically and politically radical iconoclast, he was at the same time something of a traditionalist and romantic. He was a firm believer in the reality of an Indo-European ancestor language and wanted to find in it more than a model which we cling to until we find another which can better explain the regular correspondences among the large number of languages in the old world. . . . His interest in the geographically remote Ainu people and in their ancient contacts with the ancestors of the Europeans was a manifestation of the romantic

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features of Pierre Naert’s outlook. It spoke to his imagination to see in the white-skinned, bearded Ainu men descendants of the same tribe as our own. (Refsing 1998: vol. 1, pp. 44–5) The second reason should probably be sought in the nature of the early relationship between Japan and the Western powers. In the first decades after Japan’s reluctant opening of treaty ports in 1854, people from Europe and America felt a certain hostility towards the Japanese government and the Japanese people they had to deal with in the course of their daily life in Japan. Some felt that the Japanese were treacherous and dishonest, lacked respect for the foreigners, and even presented a danger to innocent foreigners, since there were several incidents of foreigners having been murdered by discontented samurai. The Ainu came to stand as a contrast to the untrustworthy Japanese by being generally deferential, welcoming and nonthreatening. Their rumoured European descent also gave foreigners a good reason to approach the Ainu with kindness and trust, and no doubt the Ainu reaction reflected this back onto the foreigners. Later, when the Japanese became more interested in certain elements of Western culture and technology, and as a consequence thereof more friendly and popular among Westerners, the sympathy for the Ainu changed into pity and a somewhat sentimental lament for the demise of a vanishing people. The travel writer Henry Savage Landor expressed this view most eloquently in 1893: Not one of these strange people – soft, good, and gentle, but savage, brave, and disreputable – will live to see their country civilised; and in the life which they have led of filth and vice they will die in front of that greater scourge, civilisation, leaving behind no traces of themselves, of their past, of their history, nor of their present – nothing but a faint recollection, a tradition, that in Yezo and the Kuriles died the last remains of those curious people, the Hairy Ainu. (Savage Landor 1893: 297) Landor’s prediction turned out to be too pessimistic. The Ainu did not die – they changed. In 1895, the Church Missionary Society began to persuade Batchelor that he should give up the Ainu Church as a separate entity, since the Ainu ‘wish the education of their children, and the services generally, to be conducted in Japanese rather than in Ainu, since the large majority of the Ainu now understand Japanese as well as Ainu’.8 In other words, there was no longer any need to keep the Ainu and the Japanese separate and hold Christian services in two languages. During the twentieth century the Ainu language gradually disappeared from daily use, the old ways of living were abandoned, beliefs and rituals were forgotten, and the Ainu adapted to life as Japanese. More recently, a drive to rediscover and reaffirm an Ainu identity has led to a shaky revival

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of the language, together with a somewhat more robust revival of traditional handicrafts and cooking, and there are promising signs of an emerging Ainu minority consciousness, which finds cultural, artistic and political expression and makes itself seen and heard in Japanese society. However, the Ainu whom Savage Landor met, and the way of life he witnessed, are certainly gone forever – together with any claim to a positioning of the Ainu on either side of the East–West divide. Finally, the Ainu are allowed to be neither Caucasian, nor Japanese, but simply Ainu.

Notes 1 See Refsing 2000, Vol. 1: ‘Introduction’ for details and quotations. 2 Samuel Beal, Wylly Habersham, Herman Ritter, Heinrich von Siebold, etc. (see Refsing 2000). 3 Rudolph Lindau, C. S. Forbes, see Refsing 2000. 4 Kreitner’s text is reproduced in Refsing 2000, vol. 2. 5 Langsdorff, von Brandt, Campbell, etc., see Refsing 2000, vol. 1, 2, and 4. 6 Siebold’s text is reproduced in Refsing, 2000, vol. 2 7 Campbell’s text is reproduced in Refsing 2000, vol. 4 8 Letter from Bishop Henry Evington in Japan to the Church Missionary Society in London, 12 August 1895, Birmingham University Library Archives. Evington’s emphasis.

22 Japanese Collections in European Museums and their Role within the Field of Japanese studies Josef Kreiner

Since its early beginnings, in the mid-nineteenth century, written sources and literature have formed the basis of Japanese Studies. This subject then existed in a narrow sense of a philologically orientated Japanology, covering the fields of Japanese language, literature and history. During the second half of the twentieth century, oral traditions, folklore and field studies, as well as statistical material pertaining to Japanese society, gradually became the focus for anthropologically orientated Japanese Studies, led by the fieldwork conducted by John Embree. Time and again, there was a clear demand for a fundamental distinction between these two approaches. It developed into a subject of heated discussions concerning the essence of Japanese Studies. Jan van Bremen has made many valuable contributions to this dispute, especially by emphasising the need for extended co-operation between Western and Japanese researchers, setting a remarkable example himself. But here is one further, third source for European – or, for that matter – international Japanese Studies, that has hitherto tended to be more or less completely ignored, or at least neglected, and that is the immense wealth of Japanese collections kept by museums of every type and proportion all over Europe. This extends from well-known national museums with a vast number of well-researched and exhibited objects, through small regional collections, to virtually unknown, private collections in individual institutions or castles, with small numbers of art objects acquired by mere accident or by what is called ‘collecting by chance’. These collections, some of them dating back to the sixteenth century, have shaped European images of Japan in a decisive manner. By doing so, they most certainly also influenced the development of Japanese Studies. The collection process itself, the presentation to the public, or to academia, and finally the exhibition of these objects contributed also to Japanese self-understanding, in a manner that should not be disregarded as insignificant. Needless to say, these collections and their presentations teach us perhaps much more about our own – European – history of self-conceit as about Japan, considering the vast amount of material. Recent estimations by the author reach the number of approximately 500,000 objects in more than 400

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museums in Europe, excluding Russia and the CIS countries, yet including Turkey and Israel. Thorough and ongoing investigations into the history and the present state of those collections, as well as the individual objects they contain, are urgently needed. Currently many museums suffer large cuts not only in budgets, but also in personnel compared to the last few decades, and their given resources are almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing international exhibition business. This situation makes their efforts towards a reconstruction of collection history, and a scientific classification of their collections, even more laudable. Nevertheless, the situation allows genuine chances for improvement, for example through better co-operation between museum-staff and university-based researchers, which is so far underdeveloped. Furthermore the urgent need for support by Japanese specialists has to be realised, but this requires a co-ordinated effort involving both parties. The symposium on ‘Japanese Collections in European Museums’, held in Ko¨nigswinter near Bonn in September 2003, developed into an annual event which gathered for the second time in Prague in autumn 2004. It resulted in the formation of a European Network of Japanese Art Collections ENJAC, which might provide the basis for this sort of co-operation. Here, I would like to confine myself to pointing out just a few examples of research areas that require such urgent changes: Pilot studies in collections of Ainu (and Ryu-kyu-/Okinawa) materials, conducted by the Institute of Japanese Studies (University of Bonn) during the 1980s and 1990s, have shown deep-rooted connections between collecting and exhibiting on the one hand, and the developing of anthropological theories on the other. In Western Europe, especially in the German-speaking countries of Middle Europe, the Ainu were (and are) viewed as representative of a very ancient culture pattern, i.e. hunters and gatherers. As a result, their Ainu collections neither include lacquerware (bought by the Ainu from the Japanese) nor agricultural utensils, both of which are abundant in Russian collections. The question must also be raised why well-assorted collections of Ryu-kyu-an ethnography can be found in Europe (for instance at Leiden by C. Ouwehand, Oslo by A. Røkkum and Vienna by J. Kreiner), and not in the United States, despite its intensive contacts with the island chain after World War II. Another question is whether we can really speak of Japanese arts and crafts, especially in the genres of lacquerware, ceramics and kimono (the last one not thoroughly researched yet), coming to Europe between the midseventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century? Were all these export wares not ordered to be made for Europeans and according to their European taste, and therefore not truly ‘Japanese’ in nature? The low esteem in which woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) had been and still are held in Japan, should be considered here, which is quite contrary to the great influence they exerted on the history of European art. If this is so, why do so-called ‘home-coming

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exhibitions’ (satogaeri-ten) during the last decades nearly always deal with this part of the European collections? Could this be an expression of the reinforced Japanese conviction of the Western incapability correctly to understand Japanese art and culture? How significant, if at all, was the appearance of Western collectors for the Japanese economy during the first decades of the Meiji period, when traditional (aristocratic or merchant) sponsoring had waned in the course of modernisation? Much more has to be known about manufacturing and exporting companies like the Kiryu- (or: Kiritsu)-Ko¯sho¯-Kaisha, Yamanaka-sho¯kai or Table 22.1 Japanese Collections in European museums according to a survey conducted in 2003/4 Country

Number of museums

Number of items in the collections

Lithuania Slovakia Croatia Liechtenstein Slovenia Serbia Latvia Estonia Turkey Vatican Portugal Finland Ireland Norway Denmark Romania Spain Greece Israel Hungary Sweden Poland Belgium France Switzerland Czech Republic Austria Netherlands Italy UK Germany

3 4 3 1 3 3 3 6 1 1 17 5 1 7 16 3 44 1 1 6 16 6 6 7 13 90 3 4 8 5 (160) 35

200 256 285 350 371 417 570 752 1,000 1,200 1,405 1,665 1,775 1,800 3,406 4,530 5,000 5,100 7,000 9,389 12,000 12,133 13,274 16,418 18,840 28,876 37,700 41,350 46,000 63,087 (ca. 150,000) 86,595

Totals

322 (477) x) museums

x)

x)

x)

422,205 number of items in all collections (509,118) x)

The numbers in brackets include the number of institutions in the UK given by Gregory Irvine (oral communication).

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Kobayashi Bunkichi and important personalities such as Hayashi Tadamasa, Siegfried Bing, Otto Ku¨mmel, Ernst Grosse, and others. The popularity of this topic in recent special exhibitions such as ‘Arts of East and West from World Expositions 1855 – 1900: Paris, Vienna and Chicago’ at the Tokyo National Museum in 2004, or the ‘La Maison Bing’ travelling through Amsterdam, Munich, Paris and Barcelona in 2004/5, point in the right direction. Yet the most basic question to remain must be why Japanese art in the West is almost exclusively collected and cared for in special museums of Oriental art, or arts and crafts (applied art), and not treated as part of art history. The Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, or Kunsthalle in Bremen (although interestingly enough containing only ukiyo-e) are the few exceptions. This is comparable to the establishment of the subject ‘Oriental-’ or ‘East Asian art history’ at universities as part of Asian Departments and not as an integral part of the departments of art history, as should be expected. Here, too, the problem has to be understood as that of the ethnographical collections: what is art, and what is seen as part of every day life, seems to depend on the manner of exhibiting only, and is decided by subjectively ascribed value in almost every case. This only very cursory list of problems, which the author could not avoid noticing while editing ‘Japanese Collections in European Museums: Reports from the Toyota-Foundation-Symposium Ko¨nigswinter 2003’ (JapanArchiv, vol. 5, 2004, Bonn: Bier’sche Verlagsanstalt), clearly shows that the anthropological approach within Japanese Studies has much to gain when taking into account the sources embodied by the vast number of collections here in Europe, in the West, as well as in Japan proper. The remaining tasks for generations of researchers to come are by no means insignificant.

23 Dismantling the East–West Dichotomy But what happens with Religion? Peter Ackermann

Shared experiences and lifestyles in the East and the West, on the one hand, and careful observation of the details of how people in both East and West cope with life, on the other, will certainly lead us to discover and even emphasize that East and West have much in common that has gone unrecorded for far too long. Here, however, I wish to focus on the question of differences, possibly raising doubts about whether I had altogether understood the title of this book. My point is that the perspective with which we approach a culture largely decides whether we are going to create a dichotomy or not. I have chosen the topic of religion as one which (as I will discuss) both on the face-to-face level as well as in its historical dimension and the narratives this has brought forth cannot fail to generate baffling discoveries of difference. To dismantle the East–West dichotomy by assuming that these differences could be easily bridged would actually lead to its eventual reinforcement through stubborn ignorance and projections of ‘we-are-all-good-friends’ romanticism. However, if what we seek is not difference but the carefully traced evidence of how and why notions and values develop, and pursue our question within a framework of communicative competence and minimum power differential, then, I maintain, the abstract perspective of dichotomy between East and West is broken down into an understanding of life histories as shaped in a reciprocal way on the one hand by social and cultural values (with their respective contextual and cultural histories), and, on the other, by the struggle for individual stances.

Discovering narratives through encounter We surely all have experienced closeness, held common interests, and shared views when interacting with persons socialised in Japan. At the same time we have certainly also discovered ourselves forming our thoughts in relation to a narrative about the organisation of material, social and spiritual life that appears to puzzle our partner, and we have probably noticed that on both sides we are drawing from a different ‘reservoir’ of explanations, justifications and legitimisations for our viewpoints.

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Anyone sensitive to the fact that ‘culture’ contains elements that can, but others that must not and/or cannot easily be negotiated, will not expect concrete interaction to dissolve differences. If kept up, however, interaction will as a rule also not cement or even establish dichotomies. Rather, interaction will provide the frame for seeking and discovering a shared awareness of differences. With the aim in mind of creating just such a frame I have been involved with bringing together persons from Japan and Germany in a subsection of a Swiss research project, ‘Rituals and ritualisation in families. Religious dimensions and intergenerational references’, organised by the Department of Theology at the University of Berne.1 For the Swiss side, the concept ‘religious dimensions’ required clarification, but as I will show, this step was not nearly as complicated as trying to get the group of Japanese (aged 20–45) to participate in the project. The literal translation into Japanese of ‘religious dimensions’ was not difficult, but it was another matter getting across what we were altogether interested in, and why we thought the question worthwhile. The interest of the Swiss side in ‘religious dimensions’ proved to be inseparable from their interest in the change – or loss – of the role of the institution ‘church’, and in learning more about the ongoing processes in which the younger generation demands autonomy to structure, interpret, reinterpret and also reject overt ‘religious dimensions’, especially once a couple has to decide on how to raise and educate their children. What, however, were ‘institutional’ or ‘private’ religious dimensions for the Japanese participants, and what did they associate with the very idea of religion? For the Japanese participants, the narrative about autonomy from an institution called ‘church’ was impossible to understand. This was even true for the one Christian member of the group. Therefore, so as not to get the discussion locked in the explanation of institutions whose function and authority could not be compared at this point, we avoided mention of ‘Christianity’, ‘Buddhism’ or ‘Shinto’. Instead, we looked for reactions to the question: ‘Where and when do you recall having sought, or having been taught to seek, some kind of communication with an invisible being, power or force?’ The fastest and most distinct reactions came from those who reckoned the relationship with the ancestors (go-senzo-sama) to be important to them, or at least, as they had observed, to their parents, grandparents, or members of (generally rural) communities. The type and time of ‘communication’ with the ancestors varied somewhat in form from answer to answer. Frequently, reference was made to visits to the family grave, particularly at o-bon (the summer Buddhist festival of the dead) or o-higan (the equinoctial week in spring and autumn). Other answers revolved around the concept of o-sonae or sonaemono (offerings at the home altar, butsudan). The home altar was strongly associated with the offering of water, rice or other objects (mainly food), as well

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as with the kindling of incense and lighting of candles. Mostly, no deeper thoughts were given as to what these activities were for and how they might affect personal well-being, but the recollections were intense enough to enable precise description. Two persons, however, answered gravely: ‘Food is offered because the ancestors are hungry.’ The home altar, at which photographs of the ancestors were recalled, could be a place to turn to in times of distress. Here, in particular, you could inform (ho¯koku) the ancestors about your daily life, and could turn to them to expose your feelings and utter wishes. Some persons also made reference to little shrines (kamidana) for deities at one or several places in the house, and the need to keep these tidy. However, although the deities could be revered by joining one’s hands before the kamidana, they evidently did not require the same degree of attention and ‘communication’ as the house altar. If the ancestors played such a central role as transcendent ‘communication partners’, then how did the Japanese understand the deities, Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, which were revered in temples and shrines and served by special ‘priests’, and which the Swiss/German participants perceived to be the true Japanese representations of religion? The answers suggested that these ‘religious’ institutions were understood to provide services and favours in exchange for a ‘prayer’ (intensively wishing something) or maybe a sum of money. However, they were described as places one went to ‘quite privately’ for ‘personal problems’, and they did not appear to have the integrative force that developed when people gathered before a family altar, where a sense of commitment arose to adhere to principles and obey rules. So far I have touched upon the most clear-cut positions put forward. To the Swiss/German participants the Japanese stances were unexpected and brought out dimensions of ‘religion’ that had been largely outside all expectations. However, if we now take the idea of dismantling simple East– West dichotomies seriously, it is essential to pay closer attention to the concrete individuals involved in the exchange of information. Observing the helpless looks on both sides it had become clear how limited the arsenal of conceptual cornerstones was for persons in one specific geographical, historical and cultural context to construct their narrative about the means and possibilities for coping with life. On the other hand, it was also becoming clear that no individual could be fully equated with his or her cultural context, but merely that he or she was relating to, and in a sense also struggling with, a cultural frame. On the Japanese side, most had some knowledge about the house altar and ‘communication’ with the ancestors, but no two persons followed the same pattern of presenting this knowledge. Some could not even picture the idea of having an altar for the ancestors in their home. Unexpectedly for the Swiss/ German side, however, this stance appeared far removed from dogmatic deliberations, and after some thinking two participants saw nothing unusual

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about perhaps setting one up later in life. ‘Where was consistency with belief and conviction?’, the Swiss/German side asked. One member of the Japanese group argued that as she followed the teachings of Nichiren (1222–82),2 it was not easy for her to understand the symbols and perform the rituals expected of members of other schools of Buddhism, with which she was not acquainted. She therefore felt stronger social and emotional ties with the people of her own ‘community’. In direct personal encounters persons who clearly do not fit a ‘pattern’ in a cultural context must never just be classed as ‘less important’. Therefore, instead of using fictitious ‘mainstream’ representatives to create dichotomies it is certainly more fruitful to take a particularly close look at each individual’s ‘small’ narrative – especially when it seems to contradict any ‘pattern’ – and become aware of the mechanisms by which these relate to the ‘larger’ or ‘relatively more mainstream’ narratives around them. Returning to the discussion of what the Japanese side recalled as ‘communication’ with the invisible, the second most important key word after ‘ancestors’ was ‘showing gratitude’. Possibly, the strong link between ‘religion’ and ‘gratitude’ can be explained by the fact that do¯toku (morals, stressing as they do the importance of being grateful) is a school subject and as such a kind of equivalent to ‘religion’.3 ‘Gratitude’ was described not only as a required basic attitude in everyday life, but was also considered a key term for structuring a person’s relationship with the transcendental sphere. This, however, was explicitly declared not to be the realm of a creator-god, but of many known and unknown contemporary and historical others, whose efforts are the source of our life. Gratitude could be shown to a deity that had responded to a request, but, basically, the feeling of gratitude was addressed to parents, ancestors, and one’s own or one’s ancestors’ social networks, mostly regional or national in character. As one Japanese participant exclaimed emotionally in discussion with the Swiss/German group, ‘The idea of feeling gratitude towards a God never crossed my mind; ‘‘Creation’’ is a question of sex, and enjoying life is always thanks to one’s parents and those who work for us.’ When, in the course of the seminar, the Japanese participants visited Swiss regional churches and met with the local clergymen they were surprised by the presence and the authority of the church both as edifice and as institution. At the same time, they were quick to note that in spite of a mostly critical, even hostile, stance taken against ‘religion’ the village clergyman was respected as a kind of social welfare worker, visiting the old and the sick, discussing questions of marriage with the young, or encouraging parents who had problems with their children. As one Japanese participant exclaimed, ‘I thought a clergyman just recited complicated texts from the Bible’, possibly reflecting his image of a Buddhist priest. Difficult to understand for the Japanese participants was the emphasis on belief, even though the term (shinko¯) is common in Japanese. What, for instance, was the city clergyman trying to tell us when he spoke of how God

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revealed himself to the Israelites because they believed, but did not do so to the Babylonians, who did not believe? It was understood that to believe brought peace of mind, but belief in whom or what? After some time of thinking, the question was inevitable: ‘Why believe in fairy tales?’ Although Japan is full of stories about miracles,4 somehow the idea of believing did not fit the Japanese image of the ‘West’. Their dichotomy was beginning to break down. Why believe? We had reached the theodicy problem: Why, if God has created us and loves us, is the world full of misery? Yet at this point even our East German participants, brought up in a strictly atheist context, recalled that belief in a godly plan was somehow a traditional element of the ‘West’ to give people hope and hold. Turning to Japanese materials that dealt with ‘religion’,5 they were not structured around the concept of ‘belief’. Rather, they gave advice for situations like marriage or funerals, or discussed the education of children, referring to ‘religions’ as frames containing differing options of how to act ‘properly’. By contrast, and to the Japanese participants’ astonishment, Knaur’s Family Encyclopedia – strictly secular in nature – contains a distinct chapter on ‘religion’, giving no instructions, however, for doing anything ‘properly’. Instead, it speaks of the option of introducing ‘religion’ to one’s children to give them ‘more to life’, i.e. something that ‘cannot be discussed in the context of technical rules and instructions.’ This ‘more to life’ is described as the awareness that ‘God loves us, and therefore has sent us his son Jesus to suffer with us and give us hope.’ Judging by the somewhat bewildered Japanese reactions, there is as much a narrative behind the idea of ‘religion’ found in Knaur’s Family Encyclopedia as there probably is behind the structure of body-language we were shown on videos of parents interacting with their children before putting them to sleep. We could see intensive face-to-face, eye-to-eye and touching interaction, almost as if – as one Swiss member put it – the parents were acting in place of, or imitating the role of, the personified God. This prompted the Japanese to remark: ‘I have never seen such interaction. I can only think of a mother reading a book or singing a song until the child falls asleep.’ How far is religion ‘tradition’, and how far is it a dimension drawing on traditional concepts but subjective in nature in the sense that it needs to be ‘activated’ within each individual through personal faith? This question lay at the root of the narrative of the Swiss research group that obviously wanted to find out whether and in what form religion was still ‘alive’. It was clear that ‘alive’ here meant the opposite of ‘tradition’, that is, something existing only because the individual subject has developed a conscious, individually shaped relationship to it. In the course of our seminar, the Japanese participants had been exposed to numerous scenes and objects that related directly or indirectly to the teaching of the Christian church. In a detailed report one participant

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interpreted this teaching as ‘tradition’, and therefore assumed that the reason these scenes took place, and the objects existed, was that they were naturally being passed on for the sole reason that they belonged to tradition. Accordingly, no ‘problem’ was expected to underlie religion, as no conscious, individually shaped relationship to it was expected. The Japanese stance was perhaps epitomised in the answer given to our final question posed at the end of the seminar, ‘When once you have children, is there anything spiritual you would tell or teach them differently from the way your parents did?’ The reaction was a somewhat puzzled, unanimous ‘No!’. The Swiss/German participants of the research project ‘Rituals and ritualisation in families. Religious dimensions and intergenerational references’, trying to understand the dynamics of Japan’s young generation’s interpretation of ‘religion’, were left with the uncomfortable feeling that they had not got anything of the urgency of their interests across to the Japanese.

Discovering narratives through history Investing in time, money, organisation and language competence to enable the encounter of two cultural ‘worlds’ and set in motion the unstoppable process of reciprocal learning is, I maintain, more rewarding than the fixing of dichotomies. At the same time, we should always note that behind what we see and hear in an encounter there is always a hidden narrative, a historical dimension: a personal history, a contextual history (the history of the context in which an individual has been socialised), and – on regional, national, language, confessional, etc. levels – a cultural history, through which these socialisation processes have been funnelled. We are calling for a deeper understanding of both the Christian and the Japanese world’s narratives, and not creating a dichotomy, if we state that Japan’s cultural fabric has not grown out of the problems and questions struggled over in the Christian world, even though it has been decisively formed by the integration of certain end-products of these struggles as they stood at the end of the nineteenth century. It is essential to understand the process we call ‘modernisation’ as one that did not take place in Japan, because Japan’s intellectual struggles occurred outside the framework of a society struggling, among other things, with the tension between God-centred versus man-centred organisation of life.6 Therefore, Japan’s struggles also occurred outside the tensions and dynamics of ‘secular’ versus ‘sacred’, or of the search for the role and responsibility of the individual specifically as the creation of a creator-God. Individuality in its Christian world context developed not as the notion of an individual path to salvation and integration, but was shaped to an important degree by ideas about a last judgement or a godly plan.7 Following from this, the concept of the right, and even the duty, to make use of an individual stance or will, be it in the search for new and intellectually devised forms of overcoming extreme ‘individuality’, or in notions of love as

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the emotional attachment of two individuals ‘made for each other’, could not develop out of the Japanese narratives about life. When will we at last understand that this is not a list of Japanese defects, but a call for those involved in intercultural communication to become aware of the impact of, and establish a stimulating exchange between, two different narratives meeting? When Japan began to understand itself as a ‘nation’ that needed ‘national’ institutions, it adopted cornerstones of the frameworks for these as it found them in the Christian world. Thus it began its own struggle for interpretation of the Christian world’s central concepts like ‘religion’. The official stance, however, taken in 1872, did not follow from a narrative dealing with tensions between the idea of a secular society on one hand, and the will to maintain a Christian view of man on the other. Rather, it proclaimed that ‘teachings’, whatever they may be, should not disrupt the social order. This concept was soon to manifest itself in terms like seikyo¯ (the teachings of the correct order of the world), standing hierarchically above ‘religion’. ‘Religion’ (shu-kyo¯), as seen by its supporters, was a term claimed by Buddhists and (Japanese) Christians alike. The latter frequently associated it with a person’s ‘inner principle’, thus sparking ideas about ‘inner freedom’ as a precondition for bunmei (‘enlightened civilisation’). This line of thinking could not have arisen in the same way in the Christian world, where Christianity was not being ‘introduced’, and ‘great deeds of great men’ would not have been perceived to follow from an adoption of Christianity as provider of inner freedom. What separates the ‘West’ from ‘Japan’8 is rooted in a different reference system for the struggles of ideas, and consequently a different narrative that marks an individual’s life strategies. In addition to taking seriously the narratives of individuals as they unfold in situations of encounter I therefore think it essential that we also place these narratives into the historical perspective of their personal, contextual and cultural frameworks. Japan on the one hand, and the Christian world on the other, are certainly two distinct frames of reference in which ideas have developed in distinct ways. However, rather than dwell on East–West dichotomies we had better invest our time, money, organisation and language competence to understand how these frames have shaped the individuals and societies they have included, and to structure new fields of interaction in which shared knowledge of differences can form the starting point for the development of future interlocking life histories.

Notes 1 The involvement with the research project encompassed mainly preparatory discussions with mixed Japanese-German student groups April-June 2004, a joint 4day seminar in Switzerland in June 2004, as well as numerous follow-up discus-

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2 3 4 5 6

7 8

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sions with the participants and with other mostly younger persons in Germany and Japan. The minutes of the meetings, reference materials produced by the Swiss organizers and individual summaries by the participants have been consulted for this paper. ‘Nichiren’ may or may not stand for congregations with distinct ‘in-group’ ties, but I will not go into speculations because the person concerned preferred to stay vague. Except in Christian schools, where ‘religion’ itself is part of the curriculum. Engi stories, recounting the history of a temple and the reasons why a visit to it is worthwhile. Mainly Kankonso¯sai books, freely translatable as ‘Instructions for formal occasions’. If we pick up the idea of struggles on the Japanese side we could point to the Edo period schism between a more dynamic narrative about values focusing on local, indigenous deities (key word: National learning/Kokugaku), and a more static narrative focusing on the maintenance of the principle of social order as a reflection of the order of the universe (key word: Neo-Confucianism/Shushigaku). Having said this, we should nevertheless be very careful not to overlook differences in teachings and emphasis between Christian churches and confessions. To what extent Japan is in line with broader East Asian narratives cannot be discussed here. Edo period popular instruction books leave no doubt that conceptually Japan saw itself as rooted in the East Asian sankyo¯ (Three Teachings), Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism (or, in place of the latter, the Way of the local deities).

24 Legacies of East–West Fusions in Social Ecology Theory in Dismantling ‘Views of the Japanese Nation’ Pamela J. Asquith

Introduction Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was introduced to Japan in 1877 (Morse 1936/1877) during Japan’s push to gain military modernity through the study of western sciences and technologies and the culture from which they had arisen. In the ensuing decades the theory of evolution was applied as a kind of social scientific tool, i.e., social Spencerism (or social Darwinism) and eugenics (Sakura 1998: 341; Unoura 1999). Sakura (1998) suggests that the theory of evolution did not have much biological application in Japan. Instead, Japanese applied the idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’ (which was a misreading of Darwin’s natural selection theory) to society and to individuals in the struggle for existence in Japan’s new international circumstances (Gluck 1985: 13, 265). Kinji Imanishi (1902–92) was an ecologist, anthropologist, and founder of primatology in Japan. His basic view emphasised cooperation rather than competition in the natural world. This view held that ‘lifestyle partitioning’ (sumiwake) among coexisting species explained the origin, or differentiation, of species. His concept of ‘species society’ (specia) likewise focused on members of a species as a whole and their interactions with one another that maintain an equilibrium, rather than on the morphological differences and reproductive fitness of individual members of the species. The species, therefore, is as much a social as a biological phenomenon. This view, sometimes called ‘Imanishi evolution’, has in its turn, like social Darwinism, been marshalled as evidence for Japanese views of the nation in science and beyond. However, Imanishi’s views were derived from a wide reading of Western sources in particularly ecology in the 1920s and 1930s, followed by decades of careful field observation of nature and of human culture. New sources that allow us to follow Imanishi’s intellectual journey reveal that far from a socio-political or cultural underpinning to his ideas, there was instead an almost seamless fusion of Western and Japanese science and outlook in Imanishi’s work. It is so seamless that the sources have been forgotten.

East-West fusions in Social Ecology 169

The Resources Important new resources for the development of Imanishi’s thought and the extent of cross-fertilisation of ideas between West and East have come to light quite recently. In 2001 the personal notes and papers of Imanishi were found in the family home in Kyoto by his eldest son, Bunataro¯ Imanishi (b. 1930). The collection dates from 1919–80 and includes 8,000 pages of letters, field diaries and field notes from several decades, volumes of undergraduate study books, volumes of notes on Western authors in several disciplines, drafts of papers, travel and field budgets, maps, hotel and book receipts, among others. These have been digitally photographed, catalogued, and made available on the worldwide web as the Kinji Imanishi Digital Archive (Asquith 2004). The originals remain in the Imanishi home. A second resource that has rarely been utilised is Imanishi’s own library of books and papers that he donated to Gifu University when he retired as President of the University. The collection is comprised of some 2,900 items, of which approximately 500 are English-language volumes. These latter are books on anthropology, ecology, evolutionary theory, psychology, sexology, and mountaineering, among others. Imanishi wrote copious notes in the margins of many of these volumes. These, together with the digital archive resources, are the basis for a new view of Imanishi’s legacy and, particularly for present purposes, for evidence of the considerable influence of Western resources for views that have hitherto been ascribed to Imanishi’s political and cultural viewpoints.

Kinji Imanishi and Anthropology Imanishi received a Bachelor’s degree in 1928 from Kyoto University, specialising in entomology. He then turned to the relatively new discipline of ecology for graduate research, excited by the prospect of studying living organisms interacting with their natural environment. He received a Doctor of Science degree in 1940 from Kyoto University. In the next year he published his first and perhaps best-known book, Seibutsu no Sekai (The World of Living Things). This was a philosophical statement of his views on the origins and interactions of organisms with their environment and development of the biosphere. It was a pivotal book that related the views that had supported his biological work thus far, and out of which he developed most of his future ideas and projects. A great many of these views were drawn from his wide reading of Western debates in social ecology of the 1920s and 1930s, bolstered by his own careful field observations. The book enjoyed several reprintings and was widely read by laypersons as well as scholars in Japan. As an undergraduate and graduate student he witnessed the considerable debate among Western ecologists about the efficacy of natural selection theory to explain evolutionary processes. He was to remain a lifelong ‘antiselectionist’, or critic of Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution, though

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not of evolution itself. His personal study notes and papers reveal a probing, restless scholar with a huge capacity for synthesis and for fieldwork in several subfields. Part of what impelled Imanishi’s remarkably broad range of scientific interests was an accident of history. At every turn his research was cut off by world events, as he relates midway through his career (Imanishi 1966). He had planned a scientific expedition to Borneo to study orang-utans during World War II, but conditions made that impossible. Instead, he went to Mongolia where he began field studies of the Mongol, a pastoral tribe. For this, he included study of the types of vegetation and its productivity on the Mongolian steppe as it formed the basis of the livelihood of the Mongol. In 1944 he became the first Director of the Seihoku Kenkyu-sho (Northwest Research Institute) there doing research in ecological anthropology. Imanishi left Mongolia in 1946 when the Institute was closed in the aftermath of the war. Shortly after his return to Japan he initiated various studies of naturalistic animal behaviour, which soon became focused on Japanese macaques and later on other primate species. Much of his reading of primate behaviour was with a view to understanding family (whether that was the originator of human sociality). He did copious readings on American sexology research of the 1950s and 1960s with a view to understanding the same question. In 1950, aged 48, he became a lecturer in the Institute for Humanistic Studies at Kyoto University. In 1959 he became Professor of Social Anthropology at Kyoto University. He also established the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology and in 1962 was appointed Professor there too. After mandatory retirement from the Imperial University, he became Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Okayama University in 1965, and president of Gifu University in 1967, continuing actively to research and publish. In many ways, Imanishi was a ‘complete anthropologist’, at home in both biological and social spheres of anthropology. Ultimately and aptly, as it underpins the discipline of anthropology, his interests were with grand theories in evolution. Although Imanishi published comparatively few papers in English, the papers appear to mark turning points in the development of his ideas and application to his researches. Very often he had published from one to several volumes in Japanese on major concepts that appeared in his English publications. Among these were papers on nomadism, the development of the family, the evolution of personality, social behaviour of primates, human and animal ecology, and, at the age of 82, a paper on his proposal for shizengaku (nature study) as a culmination of his efforts to dissolve disciplinary boundaries and mechanistic approaches to nature that he saw in the ever-increasing specialisations in science. Imanishi also found inspiration and a way to express his views in the writings of philosopher Kitaro¯ Nishida ([1870–1945] 1921). Nishida’s view that everything came from a single source and fitted within a coherent whole was echoed in Imanishi’s

East-West fusions in Social Ecology 171 view of evolution and the current complexity of life. It is only up to us to find how the parts of the whole fit together. Imanishi’s opening paragraphs in Seibutsu no Sekai also appear to echo passages in General Smuts (1926) Holism and Evolution, as can be seen in both the Digital Archive and Gifu library collections. Imanishi’s influence extended far in the Japanese academy, even if it is sometimes only remembered by the most senior generations of scholars now. Those who accompanied him on his field researches and whom he sent on projects became professors, directors of institutes and researchers in a great array of disciplines including anthropology, folklore studies, primatology, philosophy, ecology and psychology.

From social ecology theory to Anthropology: A host of fusions Imanishi referred to his human and animal studies as comparative sociological studies, and to his idea of the ‘species society’ (shushakai) as a sociological concept. Critics of his anti-Darwinian views have suggested that his views were a reflection of Imanishi’s cultural and political viewpoint. However, his personal notes and papers reveal instead that he was in step with the debates surrounding natural selection theory – debates that only subsided after the modern evolutionary synthesis (bringing genetic bases to Darwin’s theory) was formulated in the late 1930s. Imanishi was aware of all the advancements in genetic theory through the ensuing decades, but remained unconvinced by the priority of a single theory of evolution. In the development of his ideas, a few examples may suffice to show both the range of Imanishi’s reading and the popularity of the challenges to natural selection theory across a wide range of western sources. In each of the following examples, Imanishi’s notes in the margins are copious and usually in the language of the original. He read these sources (which can be seen at the Gifu University library) so carefully that he actually made corrections to, or improved upon, the English in some passages. He usually obtained new publications within a year or two of their publication, even during the war and immediate post-war years. One such source is Charles Elton’s (1930) Animal Ecology and Evolution. Elton was professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Oxford. His book contains his personal reflections on the future of animal ecology, and is similar in style to Imanishi’s Seibutsu no Sekai. Imanishi made notations on nearly every page of Elton’s book. Elton, along with many ecologists in Europe and America at the time, debated the merits of Darwin’s natural selection theory. All were convinced that evolution had occurred, but many looked to factors in addition to natural selection. The idea of animals as active in selecting their own environments, rather than as passive organisms acted upon by chance, stemmed in part from migration studies among British ecologists. Elton’s summary of factors likely to be

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important in evolution included, besides natural selection, sexual selection, ‘tradition’ (or the transmission of learned behaviours between generations), and the selection of the environment by individuals. Further, Elton discussed adaptation as being produced by the selection of whole populations, not of individuals. He also suggested that when a population expands into an empty habitat, the struggle for existence tends to stop. In the Kinji Imanishi Digital Archive one can read several dozen western ecologist sources that Imanishi drew upon, particularly in the two volumes of Abstracts from Ecological Literatures, 1935–9 and 1940–5. The idea that sociality, not just biology, was important in determining evolutionary outcomes was also important to debates in social ecology in the 1920s and 1930s. Social ecology was, in fact, considered to be a school within American sociology (Alihan 1938). The University of Chicago’s W.C. Allee’s (1931) well-known Animal Aggregations was subtitled A Study in General Sociology. Greg Mitman (1992: 1, 83) has shown in the Chicago school of ecology how closely linked ideas of cooperation in nature were with evolution as well as the idea that the ecological study of plant and animal societies could help to bring biological understanding to human society. These, then, rather than claims for a Japanese cultural view of group importance over the individual, or of a utopian cooperative society (Halstead 1985), seem a more likely source for Imanishi’s ideas.

Dismantling ‘views of the Japanese nation’ Dale (1986) is as good a place as any to source the claim for nihonjinron (theories of Japaneseness) affecting science. In his Myth of Japanese Uniqueness Dale devotes a chapter, ‘Monkey Business’, to Imanishi and primatology in Japan. He suggests that Imanishi drew on Hajime Tanabe’s ultranationalistic philosophy of the ‘logic of the species’ where the ‘species’ is the mediating ground of the nation between humankind and the individual, which coerces or negates the individual. Similarly, the idea of natural spacing of organisms in an environment (lifestyle partitioning or sumiwake) is, Dale suggests, a biological parallel with the idea of a ‘Greater Co-prosperity Sphere’ that ideologically bolstered plans to extend Japan’s control in Asia. Nihonjinron debates are far behind us, but a good number of misapprehensions carry on. The biologist Sakura (1998: 348) refers to the Imanishi School and Imanishi Evolution Theory as being held up as a ‘made in Japan’ theory and supported by the ‘chauvinists in Japan’ during the late 1970s. Imanishi theory, he said, was supported because of its Japanese nativeness, not because of its scientific value. He feels that the cultural or sociological ‘niche’ of Imanishiism was similar to that of social Spencerism in the Meiji Era. Morris-Suzuki in Re-inventing Japan (1998) also notes the ‘native’ influences (Tokugawa thought in this instance) on three modern Japanese writers

East-West fusions in Social Ecology 173 on the place of Japanese civilisation: economic historian Heita Kawakatsu (1991), philosopher Synpei Ueyama (1990), and philosopher of science Shintaro Ito¯ (1990). Morris-Suzuki does not mention Imanishi’s influence on them, but Kawakatsu and Ueyama have themselves mentioned it on several occasions. Kawakatsu was one of the translators into English of Imanishi’s first book, Seibutsu no Sekai (Asquith et al. 2002). Ueyama arranged for a German translation of the same book (Wuthenow and Kurahara 2002). Japanese writers, such as Eiichi Kasuya, Masakado Kawata and Yuuji Kishi, frequently suggested in newspaper articles in the 1980s and 1990s that Imanishi had an ostensibly socio-political agenda in his biological writings. However, the ideas taken from social ecology and developed by Imanishi and his considerable school of students and young co-workers were very much in the air in Europe and America for decades until genetics research changed the course of evolution studies. Interestingly, in the last fifteen years, despite the precedence of genetics research, animal behaviour researchers, cognitive psychologists, anthropologists and theoretical biologists are re-examining the broader explanations for behaviour and evolution, including studies of tradition and cooperation. Recent examples are the Fragaszy and Perry (2003), Hammerstein (2003), and Jablonka and Lamb (2005) collections.

Conclusion: Dichotomies as a function of time and emphasis When we have the opportunity to return to historical sources and authors’ comments on their sources we can see the dynamics of the sharing and spread of knowledge, as well as its curtailment. Kinji Imanishi’s intellectual journey reveals that he could plumb Western research in a timely manner despite the challenges of extreme political unrest, nationalism and poverty of his formative years following the Sino-Japanese and Second World wars, and despite considerable language barriers. We can conceive of, in this instance, East–West dichotomies as a function of timing and emphasis. While academics cite other authors in discussion of their point, they usually do not concern themselves with the history of the ideas they utilise. Peripheral or independent (or we may say ‘local’) citation groups (Nakayama 1995: 91–2) only remain so if their ideas do not catch on. While it may be tempting to perceive Asian-language publications as representing an independent or local citation group, the same could be said regarding European-language publications from an Asian perspective. The history of science provides plenty of examples of how, in addition to the soundness of an idea, intellectual fashions, politics, or plain luck have affected what topics or approaches become dominant. History also reveals how ideas are constantly refashioned in the global market of the academy, that there is a healthy diversity of ideas and that, before one or other approach takes precedence, most voices are heard in one way or another.

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Particular observations may become subsumed within larger theories so that originators and nationalities are forgotten – but ultimately it is of most importance that the conduits of information and the access to the different ideas remain open. Therein language remains an important part of the problem and the solution in breaking actual dichotomies.

Part VII

Towards a New Anthropology

25 Somewhere in between: Towards an Interactive Anthropology in a World Anthropologies Project Shinji Yamashita

From the viewpoint of the sociology of knowledge production, anthropology can be seen as a socio-cultural product which is defined and practised within a particular socio-cultural framework at a particular historical time. Therefore, ‘anthropologies’ (in the plural form) throughout the world have different practices with different historical backgrounds. Under the name of anthropology, we may be doing different things. As Eduardo Restrepo and Arturo Escobar (2005) put it: ‘Other anthropologies and anthropology otherwise.’ In this essay, first, I review several historical moments in which Japanese anthropology was seen as being a socio-cultural product at the intersection of Japan with the West, Asia and the South (the Pacific). Second, on the basis of this review, I locate my own anthropological position as being ‘somewhere in between’ on the map of ‘world anthropologies’,1 and propose moving towards an ‘interactive anthropology’. In so doing, I would like to contribute to a world anthropologies project which will make possible the coexistence of anthropologies and enlarge the anthropological horizon beyond the traditional East–West dichotomy.2

Meeting the West in Japanese Anthropology In 1884, in Tokyo, a group of young scholars formed a workshop called Jinruigaku no Tomo or ‘Friends of Anthropology’. After two years, the workshop evolved into a society called Tokyo Jinruigakkai, the Anthropological Society of Tokyo, later known as Nihon Jinruigakkai, the Anthropological Society of Nippon (Japan). The central figure of the group was Sho¯goro¯ Tsuboi who advocated that the origins of Japanese culture should be investigated by the Japanese themselves. Early Japanese anthropologists then devoted themselves to the study of the Stone Age in Japan and the investigation of the racial origins of the peoples of the Japanese islands. Tsuboi led the debate on the origins of the Japanese people in the early years of the twentieth century. This gave Japanese anthropology the character of a nationalist project to clarify the nature of the Japanese rather than the whole of mankind.

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This is one account of the birth of Japanese anthropology. What is noteworthy in this story is that Tsuboi only founded anthropology in Japan as a reaction to a theory of an American researcher, Edward Morse, then a professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo, who had suggested, based on his excavation of a shell mound in Tokyo, that cannibalism had been practised in ancient Japan. Tsuboi then studied anthropology in England before becoming the first professor of anthropology at the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1892. In other words, without the Western mirror, he might not have founded anthropology in Japan. So the story of the birth of nationalist anthropology in Japan is also that of an encounter with the West. The second story of an encounter with the West comes from the establishment of the Japanese Society of Ethnology (currently, Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology) in 1934. Its establishment was stimulated by the first International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences held in London that same year. The Japanese anthropologists at that time felt they had not yet reached an international standard of research. Ethnological studies in Japan had previously been concerned with native culture and ancient cultural survivals in Japan, but these scholars felt that the discipline should develop through comparisons with other cultures, following the development of the discipline in the West. Through participation in the International Congress at London, they realised that they should promote comparative ethnological research in Japan. The fact that the Japanese Society of Ethnology was formed under the stimulus of an international congress means that the Society was itself a product of the international development of anthropology during the 1930s. The third story of an encounter with the West is from the establishment of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo in 1954. The founder, Eiichiro¯ Ishida, introduced American style ‘general anthropology’ into this newly established department. This was the result of his 1952–3 survey of the research and educational systems in anthropology at major American universities such as Harvard, Yale, Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley. At an early stage of the history of the Department, anthropologists from the United States such as Gordon Bowles, John Pelzel, Edward Norbeck, Gordon Hughes and others were invited to teach, rather like the oyatoi gaikokujin kyo¯shi (hired foreign professors) in the early Meiji period (Kawada 1998: 41–2). For fifty years since its establishment, the Department has remained one of the most important centres of anthropological research and education in Japan.

Meeting Asia in Japanese Anthropology In 1913, Tsuboi died. In the same year, his successor, Ryu-zo¯ Torii, published an article which argued that ‘ethnology’ (jinshugaku or minzokugaku) should be separate from ‘anthropology’ (jinruigaku) (Torii 1975: 480–3). Because of his extensive field research abroad, Torii was much more concerned with

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cultures outside Japan’s national boundaries than Tsuboi. Torii carried out his first fieldwork outside Japan in north-eastern China in 1894, followed by research in Taiwan, the Chishima Islands (off Hokkaido), China, Korea, Eastern Siberia, Manchuria and Mongolia. His fieldwork reflected the colonial expansion of the Japanese Empire into other parts of Asia. Torii’s 1913 paper proposed the establishment of a discipline to be called to¯yo¯ jinshugaku (literally ‘the study of the Oriental race’) or to¯yo¯ minzokugaku (‘Oriental ethnology’). Torii advocated the study of the ethnology of the Orient by Oriental scholars because they were assumed to be in a better position than Western scholars to study these regions (Torii 1975: 482–3). The article marked a new historical stage in Japanese anthropology, in which Japan began to observe Eastern Others in the Japanese colonies through the lens of what I describe as ‘Japanese orientalism’ (Yamashita 2004). In the development of ‘Oriental ethnology’/‘colonial anthropology’, the Department of Sociology at the Imperial University of Seoul in Korea was established in 1926. Two years later, in 1928, the Department of Anthropology/Ethnology at the Imperial University of Taipei in Taiwan was established. These departments also played important roles in colonial ethnographic research. Further, in 1941, To¯yo¯ Bunka Kenkyu-sho (Institute of Oriental Culture) was established at the Imperial University of Tokyo to promote the understanding of the cultures of Asia and the Orient. The rationale for its foundation stressed that the study of Oriental culture should be in the hands of Oriental scholars (Tokyo Daigaku To¯yo¯ Bunka Kenkyu-sho 1991: 3). But if one remembers that ‘Oriental’ scholars here are meant to be Japanese, this may be considered another form of ‘Japanese orientalism.’ Finally, in 1943, Minzoku Kenkyu-sho (Institute of Ethnic Research) was established under the Ministry of Education and Culture for promoting ethnic policy in the colonies of the Japanese Empire. A number of anthropologists were mobilised in this Institute. However, it was closed in 1945, soon after the War ended.

Meeting the South in Japanese Anthropology ‘Japanese orientalism’ may be observed most clearly in the region once called the Nan’yo¯ or Nan’po¯ which covers today’s Micronesia and Southeast Asia. From the Meiji Era, the Japanese image of the South was that it was ‘backward’ and ‘primitive.’ However, this ‘Japanese orientalism’ was slightly different from Western orientalism: the Japanese stance toward the Nan’yo¯ was actually ambiguous in terms of cultural distance: it was assumed to be ‘far’, a remote primitive place, but also ‘near’, in that it was presumed by some to be the cradle of the Japanese people and their culture. This kind of ambiguous consciousness in relation to the South can be illustrated particularly in the works of two amateur ethnographers, Shizuo Matsuoka and

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Hisakatsu Hijikata, who were concerned with the Nan’yo¯ (for a fuller discussion see Yamashita 2004). Professional ethnologists and anthropologists were also involved in the colonial government. They included Kenichi Sugiura and Kotondo Hasebe. Sugiura worked as a contract researcher for the Nan’yo¯-cho¯ (Nan’yo¯ administration) on a research project on ‘the Islanders’ customs’ with a focus on land tenure systems, social organisation, religion, and material culture. Hasebe, a biological anthropologist, carried out research, concluding that the Islanders had a biological affinity with the Japanese. In 1941 Japan occupied Southeast Asia. However, little is known about what Japanese anthropologists did in Southeast Asia during the wartime period. After the War a research project was carried out by the Japanese Society of Ethnology on Southeast Asia. Led by Nobuhiro Matsumoto, the team carried out fieldwork in the Mekong River basin, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand in 1957–58, focusing on rice cultivation. Their main purpose was an inquiry into the Southeast Asian origins of Japanese culture. After the research, they published a book which stressed the cultural similarities between Southeast Asia and Japan. The South was thus appropriated as the homeland of Japanese culture.

Somewhere in between: A Triangular Frame of Reference in Japanese Anthropology Sketching the history of Japanese anthropology in this way, I am making an argument that Japanese anthropology was produced by Japan’s encounters with the West, Asia and the South (the Pacific). It is a hybrid product of Japan, the West, and the Asia-Pacific. In other words, in order to do anthropology in Japan, we need at least three points of reference: Japan as home, the West as the mirror, and the Asia-Pacific (and beyond since the 1960s) as the field of study. Japanese anthropology thus emerged from a triangular frame of reference, not a dichotomous one as in Western anthropology with its distinction between the West and the non-West. As Akitoshi Shimizu (1998) has pointed out, because Japanese anthropology is based on a triangular frame (or multiple frames) of reference, it has a greater potential for universality than Western anthropology with its West/ non-West dichotomy.3 The triangular framework of reference is found in the work of individual anthropologists as well. That is the case with Junzo¯ Kawada when he proposed his bunka no sankakusokuryo¯ (‘triangular cultural survey’). He went to West Africa in the 1960s to carry out fieldwork among the Mossi people in present-day Burkina Faso. During the same period, he also went to Paris, France, where he got his doctoral degree, to study Africa. After that, he lived his life in three places, Japan, Africa, and France for thirty years from the early 1960s to the 1990s. He writes: ‘when I think of Japan, I take France and Africa (the Mossi) as points of reference; when I focus on

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France, I compare it with Japan and Africa, and when I study Africa, I think of Japan and France’ (Kawada 1992: 8–9). As for myself, I became interested in anthropology by reading Le´viStrauss’s Tristes Tropiques when I was an undergraduate student. Then, as a graduate student, I did my first fieldwork among the Toraja people of Sulawesi, Indonesia, in 1976–8. After finishing the fieldwork I went to the United States in 1981–3 as a visiting scholar at Cornell University. I also visited Cambridge University in Britain and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, in Leiden. These visits were also forms of fieldwork. After I finished my doctoral dissertation on the Toraja in 1987, I worked on Bali, Indonesia, from 1989 to 1996, and on Sabah, Malaysia, from 1999 to 2004. In 1998–9, I spent my sabbatical year at University of California at Berkeley. I was located, therefore, ‘somewhere in between’ in this triangular frame of reference: Japan, the West and Southeast Asia. What is important for me is then not where I am from, but where I am between. As Kirin Narayan suggests in his argument against a fixed distinction between ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ anthropologists, we can have multiple, rather than single identities. He points out that ‘we are all incipiently bi-(or multi-) cultural in that we belong to worlds both personal and professional, whether in the field or at home’ (Narayan 1993: 681). From this perspective, it may be unproductive to stick to the dichotomy between Japanese and Western anthropology. What is important is to create a common space in which different anthropologies in the world can meet.

Towards an Interactive Anthropology In the concluding part of the article by Eduardo Restrepo and Arturo Escobar (2005), on a world anthropologies project, they claim that the project is an attempt to make possible ‘other anthropologies and anthropology otherwise’. The article ends with the proposal that the world anthropologies project is not a case of the periphery striking back, but rather an enlargement of the anthropological horizon. I agree with this proposition. My proposal for an ‘interactive anthropology’ is also in this direction (Yamashita, forthcoming). In the following, I will give as a recent example my own attempts to practise interactive anthropology in Asia. As Gerholm and Hannerz (1982) pointed out, in the map of world anthropologies, the residents of the ‘peripheral islands’ always look towards the ‘central mainland’ rather than to each other. Japanese anthropologists, for example, know American anthropology well, but do not know what our neighbours, the Korean anthropologists, are doing. I was not aware of the existence of Korean anthropology until I was invited to talk at the annual meeting of Korean anthropologists in 1998. Then in 2003–4, Professor Chung Kyong-soo from Seoul National University spent his sabbatical year at the University of Tokyo, to teach, interestingly, the history of Japanese

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anthropology. At the end of his stay, he proposed the establishment of an exchange between Seoul and Tokyo. We held the first meeting in Seoul in March 2005, and the second meeting in November 2005 in Tokyo so that we could get to know each other. One can practise interactive anthropology at one’s home university as well. At the University of Tokyo, approximately 40 per cent of the graduate students are from abroad, mostly from East Asian countries such as China, Korea and Taiwan. We also have visiting scholars and professors from various parts of the world, and the job market in Japan is also opening up to foreigners. It is within these transnational situations that we have to develop an interactive anthropology in everyday contexts. As for publications resulting from this interaction in Asia, I will mention just two in which I am involved: one is a journal entitled Asian Anthropology, which was established in 2002, published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The other is a monographs series which Jerry Eades and I have started with Berghahn Publishers, entitled ‘Asian Anthropologies’. We want to have the voices of anthropologists based in Asia heard within the wider anthropological community so as to promote interaction between these different anthropological traditions.

Conclusion The focal point of an interactive anthropology is to create and develop the sort of open forum in which the various anthropologies in the world can meet together on an equal footing. Although anthropological traditions in the world may vary between countries, we have to stress that anthropology is also transnational. We have lots in common as well as differences. The establishment of the WCAA (World Council of Anthropological Associations) in Recife, Brazil, in June 2004 was an important step forward. However, I would also like to emphasise that an open forum for a world anthropologies project should not consist of representatives of national associations, but rather of individual transnational anthropologists who are located ‘somewhere in between’.

Notes 1 As for the term ‘world anthropologies’, see Ribeiro and Escobar (eds. 2006), and Restrepo and Escobar (2005). 2 The discussion in this paper draws on arguments from previous papers, e.g. Yamashita, Bosco and Eades (2004), and Yamashita (2004, 2006, forthcoming). 3 This is not the case only with Japan. Even within Western anthropology, Swedish anthropology, for example, may be located in a position similar to Japanese anthropology in relation to British or French anthropology. Located at the European periphery, Swedish anthropologists have to look at the field in their own country, and the Western metropolitan centers to practice their anthropology (cf. Gerholm and Hannerz 1982).

26 If Anthropology is a Science, then the East–West Dichotomy is Irrelevant: Moving Towards a Global Anthropology Gordon Mathews

The chapters that comprise this volume originated with the 2005 meeting of the Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS), an organisation made up of anthropologists from countries across the globe who do research on Japanese society. A key question that often arises in this context is: To what extent do anthropologists of different societies approach Japan in a common way? And to what extent do their analyses of Japan reflect the different societies from which these analyses emerge? Is there a universal anthropological approach to Japan, or do approaches fundamentally differ in different societies? Befu and Kreiner edited an important volume on this topic (1992), arguing that national differences do significantly matter. In retrospect, Befu and Kreiner seem right in a weak sense: different national audiences seek to understand Japan in different ways. To take an obvious example, an anthropologist in China, where Japan is an admired source of cultural goods, but also is deeply resented for its behaviour in World War II, will probably depict Japan for Chinese readers in a much different light than would an anthropologist in the United States or Great Britain, where Japan today is generally seen as a more or less benign source of ‘alternative modernity’. But Befu and Kreiner are wrong in a strong sense, in my view: anthropologists from different societies do not seem to have fundamentally different ways of doing the anthropology of Japan, based on their national cultural differences. However, this question of national difference is complex and cannot be laid aside; as Befu and Kreiner were well aware, it is intertwined with issues of national power. In this essay, I first consider the anthropology of Japan, and the reasons for the relative absence of Japanese themselves in such anthropology. I then consider anthropology at large, to consider whether national difference makes any difference; I argue, after Kuwayama (2004a), that it does indeed make a difference, in terms of global structures of wealth and power. Then I argue that this is an essential question for understanding what anthropology is, as art or science. If, in Kipling’s colonial words, ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet’, then anthropology as a science cannot exist; but if the East/West dichotomy can be transcended, then possibly it can come to exist.

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The Anthropology of Japan and the Absence of Japanese Anthropologists At most JAWS meetings, as well as in articles published in Minzokugaku kenkyu-, the leading Japanese journal of anthropology, there are to be found comparatively few Japanese anthropologists analysing Japan.1 Roland Barthes once wrote of the emperor’s palace as the ‘empty centre’ of Tokyo (1982: 30–2); in a similar way, Japanese anthropology seems, with only slight exaggeration, to represent the ‘empty centre’ of the anthropology of Japan. Three or four decades ago, anthropologists such as Chie Nakane and Eiichiro¯ Ishida served as leading anthropological interpreters of Japan to the world; but today, while many Japanese anthropologists study Indonesia or Madagascar or Bolivia or Thailand, few focus primarily on Japan. Foreign anthropologists from Western Europe or the United States, as well as from societies such as Israel and Hong Kong, study Japan; but Japanese anthropologists mostly study other societies. In a pragmatic sense, this is unremarkable. Japanese sociologists tend to study Japan, and many foreign anthropologists make use of their work; Japanese sociologists study their own society and anthropologists foreign societies, just as do anthropologists in other societies (the United States, Great Britain, and France, although not China, Taiwan, Korea, and Malaysia: see Yamashita, Bosco, and Eades 2004). But in a historical sense, this is indeed remarkable; the recent history of Japanese anthropology is directly linked to the history of Japan as a first-world society. To recap what I have written elsewhere (Mathews 2004: 115), in the prewar years Japanese anthropologists did research in its colonies, following the practice of anthropologists in Western colonial societies. In the aftermath of World War II, Japan itself became, as a vanquished nation, an object of anthropological interest for Western societies, abetted by Japanese anthropological interpreters of their own society. As Japan became wealthy, this Japanese role as object of anthropological attention progressively gave way to Japan’s new role as subject examining other societies as objects of anthropological attention. To state my argument at its baldest: Japan went from being anthropological coloniser (pre-war) to anthropologically colonised (1945–1960s) to, again, anthropological coloniser (1970s–), in accordance with the rise and fall and rise of its material wealth and its intellectual self-assurance. As I will now argue, this situation is hardly unique to Japan, but is a microcosm of anthropology in the world as a whole.

Anthropology as the Prerogative of the Wealthy Figures such as Talal Asad (1973) have long noted that anthropology has been the coloniser’s discipline, with the colonisers studying the colonised; van Bremen and Shimizu (1999) have recently analysed this as it pertains to

Moving Towards a Global Anthropology 185 Asia and Oceania. The arguments presented in these volumes are subtle; but to put the matter in its crudest form, anthropology has long consisted of people from rich countries studying everyone else. Consider a prototypical list that might be made of the world’s fifty or hundred most influential anthropologists over the discipline’s history: from Boas to Benedict to Evans-Pritchard to Le´vi-Strauss to Geertz, the list would be overwhelmingly American, British, and French: there would probably be no Japanese, Chinese, Indian, South American or African anthropologists on the list. That today such a list might include such luminaries as Arjun Appadurai testifies less to the globalisation of anthropology than to the global pull of the United States, bringing in talented students from elsewhere and, in effect, rendering them American, doing anthropology from within an American frame of reference. Individually, this makes perfect sense – why would an anthropologist not want to journey from the periphery to the core, where he or she can experience both broader intellectual recognition and greater financial reward?2 But in a larger sense, this reflects the ongoing colonial legacy of anthropology, as a discipline of the world’s ‘civilised’ studying the world’s ‘uncivilised’: the world’s affluent studying the world’s poor. As long as this legacy continues to exist, then any claim of anthropology to be a universal discipline – a science – remains suspect. Fields such as medicine or physics also are dominated by the world’s wealthier societies, as lists of Nobel Prizes reveal; but anybody anywhere can potentially contribute – the laws of physics are the same everywhere, as are, for the most part, the laws that govern the human body. Anthropology, however, because it has been largely defined from its outset as ‘the study of simple, non-Western societies’ – ‘primitive peoples’ – has long embodied a division between subject and object, those who study and those who are studied. Sociocultural anthropology today has in some respects long outgrown this divide, not least in the reformulation of its endeavour as the study of culture wherever in the world it is to be found; but the divide in large part remains. There has been from anthropology’s outset the effort to make the discipline a science: from Morgan and Tylor’s efforts to plot societal evolution scientifically, to Radcliffe-Brown’s attempt to create a science of comparative social structures, to Culture-and-Personality anthropologists’ efforts to create a science of anthropology on the basis of psychoanalysis, to LeviStrauss’s analysis of sociocultural forms on the model of structural linguistics, to Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, to the latest efforts of some anthropologists to shape a science of anthropology on the basis of advances in biology (Cronk 1999). But all these endeavours to reformulate anthropology as science (as well as recent turns away from science, from Turner and Geertz’s interpretive anthropology, to postmodernism’s disavowal of objective truth, to most recently, critical advocacy) have in common served to perpetuate the ‘first-world third-world’ divide: the divide between those who study and those who are studied. That some well-known anthropologists, following their fieldwork in other, ‘more properly anthropological’

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societies, brought back their analytic foci to research their own societies (Warner 1953, Nakane 1970, Harris 1987), and that increasingly today anthropologists do study their own societies (some from a principled decision to ‘bring anthropology home’, and others from a lack of funding to go elsewhere) does not subtract from the fundamental reality of this divide: look at the societies and topics that most anthropologists today investigate. This is why the East/West dichotomy remains so prominent in anthropology today. It is not a matter of different ways of thinking between ‘East’ and ‘West’, creating different modes of analysis, as scholars from Hamaguchi (1985) to Hsu (1985) maintained; this always was exaggerated, a matter of ideology more than of genuine cultural difference. Rather, it is a matter of the anthropological object of study. American and European anthropologists study Japan3 and everywhere else in the world, including minorities in their own societies, but probably not groups too close to their own middle-class selves. Japanese anthropologists, with just a few exceptions (for example, Notoji 1990, examining American Disneyland) study not the United States or Europe, or even Japan, but focus on the developing world, in a sort of ‘parallel universe’ to American and Western European anthropology (Mathews 2004: 128).4 American, European and Japanese anthropologists study China, while Chinese anthropologists have tended to study ‘minority nationalities’, those ethnic groups in China that are not Han Chinese, or more recently, social problems within China; the same pattern largely holds true in India and Bangladesh – again, ‘studying down’ in the colonial hierarchy. The East/West divide is in this sense a divide based on who studies whom. However, if anthropology is ever to emerge as a science, then it must become world-inclusive, with no hierarchy of who studies whom, as we will now discuss.

Towards a Science of Anthropology The debate over whether or not anthropology is a science rages on (see the many discussions in Anthropology Newsletter 1995–6; see also Carrithers 1990, and Cronk 1999: 39–56). This debate is primarily over whether the methods and data of anthropology can attain the state of testability and falsifiability that are the hallmarks of science. Some anthropologists say that cultural anthropology can never be a science, because all anthropological research involves seeing the world through enculturated lenses, which can never be fully removed; these make falsifiability impossible, since there is no external ‘Archimedian point’ from which such judgements could be made (Clifford 1986: 22). Others argue that anthropology can indeed be a science, not a theoretical science but a historical science akin to geology and astronomy (Cronk 1999: 44), but that it has yet to transcend its pre-paradigmatic state, to arrive at a shared basis for the advancement of a coherent body of research and the accrual of scientific knowledge. This debate will no doubt continue to rage.

Moving Towards a Global Anthropology 187 But one element that has been conspicuously absent from virtually all the discussions I have seen is that of the relation of anthropology as science to the object of anthropological research: who is to be studied? If there is ever to be a science of anthropology, I argue, then it must have a global basis, with anthropologists studying culture and society wherever they are to be found. The anthropological hierarchy I describe in the preceding section thus needs to be dismantled: let us have not just Americans and Western Europeans studying Japan, China, India, and Africa, but the reverse as well. A science of anthropology, free of this hierarchy of power, would involve a range of societies studying a range of societies, regardless of where they may lie in Morgan and Tylor’s infamous evolutionary hierarchy: everyone studying everyone else. Only in this way could we obtain a broad range of ethnographies sufficient to overcome the bias of inevitable cultural lenses discussed above. When we have a range of portrayals of the United States, or Japan, or China, not just from anthropologists in five societies, but from fifty or a hundred, from the range of the world’s socioeconomic spectrum, only then can we begin to see beyond the cultural lenses which make each of our visions partial.5 Of course at present this is a chimera: the very fact that societies were low in Morgan and Tylor’s 130-year-old hierarchy usually means they are poor today as well, and thus that anthropology may be for them an unaffordable luxury. This is, however, no longer so true of the East–West divide, and will become less true in the future. As Japan rebounds from its fifteen-year economic lull, as China and India surge economically, as Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore continue to grow in wealth and assurance, the East/ West anthropological divide will evaporate. East Asia will at some point this century supersede the United States and Europe as the economic centre of the world; and decades thereafter, the anthropological centre of the world will shift as well – this will be a slow process, but it will probably happen.6 However, although the East/West dichotomy is already crumbling, this itself will be insufficient to make anthropology a science. It is the North/South divide that is the most profound obstacle to the emergence of a science of anthropology. Only when all the world’s vast inequalities of national wealth and power are transcended can anthropology become a global science; and for that, unfortunately, it seems that we will have a very long time to wait.

Notes 1 The recent JAWS meeting in Hong Kong was a significant exception to this trend, drawing some thirty Japanese participants, but the great majority of these seem not to be affiliated with departments of anthropology in Japan. The membership list of Nihon minzoku gakkai (2002), Japan’s leading anthropological society, does show that many claim Japan as an area of speciality along with Southeast Asia, Africa, Oceania, and other areas; but the articles published in its journal, and the publication of its members as a whole, near as I can tell, do not reflect this, focusing on societies beyond Japan.

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2 China’s passage from a developing to a developed society is attested by the fact that a small but increasing number of Chinese anthropologists have been forsaking potential overseas careers as anthropologists to return to China to develop its anthropology. 3 Mirroring the fact that Japan has decisively outgrown its earlier status of being ‘anthropological object’ to become ‘anthropological subject,’ many of us who did our initial fieldwork in Japan over the past two decades have been shocked to find ourselves studying a society more affluent than the society from which we had come: a remarkably unusual situation in contemporary anthropology. 4 This ‘parallel universe’ is a matter of language, since most non-Japanese anthropologists of Indonesia, Thailand, Bolivia, etc. can’t read the Japanese in which Japanese ethnographies on these societies are written. But it is also a matter of history, as I have argued, with Japan, after its postwar interlude as anthropological colony, coming to occupy a role as anthropological coloniser parallel to that of the United States and Great Britain 5 This is, however, dauntingly complex. I edit with my colleague Chee Beng Tan the journal Asian Anthropology. We seek contributions particularly from anthropologically underrepresented Asian societies, and often receive pieces that we feel we cannot print. But we are filled with doubt: are these pieces simply of poor quality, or, harkening back to Befu and Kreiner’s argument discussed earlier, do they come from different national anthropological traditions that, in our American-trained ethnocentricity, we are failing properly to recognise? Kuwayama (2004a: 15–63) has written of the world power structures of anthropology, with the United States and Great Britain at the centre, and other anthropologists having to conform to these centres if they seek to be published there. Are my coeditor and I merely enforcing the canons of the anthropological centre? I hope we are not, but in all honesty I’m not sure. 6 The language barrier will remain; but to the extent that computer translation advances, this barrier–until now, of enormous significance–can perhaps be minimised.

27 Writing for Common Ground: Rethinking Audience and Purpose in Japan Anthropology Lynne Y. Nakano

In his 1993 article entitled ‘Clash of Civilizations?’ published in Foreign Affairs and subsequently lengthened into a book with a similar title (1996), Samuel Huntington argued that at the end of the Cold War, the ‘great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural’ rather than ideological or economic (1993: 22). He maintained that a new era of world politics would involve Islamic and Confucian civilisations becoming a threat to Western values, and Islamic and Western civilisations in particular would clash. This idea subsequently shaped US government anti-Islamic rhetoric and policy in the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks, thus inflaming passions and encouraging the conflict of which it foretold. Huntington also wrote briefly about Japan and the United States as follows: The basic values, attitudes, behavioural patterns of the two societies could hardly be more different. The economic issues between the United States and Europe are no less serious than those between the United States and Japan, but they do not have the same political salience and emotional intensity because the differences between American culture and European culture are so much less than those between American civilization and Japanese civilization. (1993: 34) Huntington’s characterisation of Japan as a society that ‘could hardly be more different’ from the United States is a familiar one to Japan observers. The idea that Japan and the West exist on opposite sides of an East–West spectrum of cultural difference has appeared regularly in popular and academic literature in Japan, Europe and North America for over a century. The idea that distinct East and West civilisations exist as definable, contained, and internally consistent entities which fundamentally oppose each other shapes the way in which people subsequently take action. Dismantling this dichotomy is thus not merely an intellectual exercise, but a project that shapes human lives. Japan anthropologists generally do not make bold statements reaffirming the idea of Japanese culture as a consistent whole

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which differs greatly from that of Western cultures, but neither do we actively offer counter-interpretations.1 This essay suggests some ways forward.

Making Comparisons Explicit How might Japan anthropologists begin to dismantle the East–West dichotomy? I suggest that one place to start is for Japan anthropologists to consider that their readers are globally dispersed and may not belong to their ‘Western culture’.2 Much of the anthropological writing about Japan assumes an audience located in North America and Europe. While our main audiences may still be located in these places, we have a growing readership in other parts of the world. Recognising that our readers may be in Singapore, Hong Kong, Fukuoka, Sao Paulo, or Manila may help us to resist the temptation to write as if the world consists primarily of our subject matter in the East and our fellow readers in the West. This kind of framework unwittingly reproduces the ‘we–they’ discursive framework and the East–West dichotomy. Writing for a global, educated audience poses problems. It is difficult enough to presume to know the audiences in our own societies. How can we know our growing global audiences enough to address them in our work? It may not be possible to know these audiences or to write in a way that fully addresses their diversity. However, I think one way forward is to write more comparatively. If our audience is globally dispersed, we might provide comparative examples from other societies. By comparative, I do not mean that we should engage in broad generalisations about Japanese, Chinese or Western culture in the style of US political scientists Huntington or Lucian Pye. Rather, we could make specific comparisons using ethnographic, statistical or discursive materials from other places. As anthropologists we are well equipped for this task. The lack of comparative discussion in much anthropology of Japan has the perhaps unintended effect of reproducing the idea that Japan is really unique. In this respect, some comparative sociologists have been doing a better job than anthropologists in emphasising that what occurs in Japan lies in the spectrum of common human experience. By making comparisons and pointing out commonalities between specific situations across societies, we can show much more clearly what kinds of ideals and social formations are specific to Japan and what social forms routinely appear in similar institutional settings across cultures. Kirsten Hastrup, among others, has written that anthropology is comparative by nature. She argues that cultures ‘juxtapose themselves to one another through an exaggeration of difference: anthropology cements this exaggeration’ (1995: 7). Hastrup further states that the process of studying others inevitably involves creating an Other and therefore anthropologists should begin to study their own societies (1997). I agree with Hastrup about the comparative nature of anthropology. I am not suggesting, however, that we give up studying other cultures. I am suggesting that we should make

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explicit our assumptions about our own cultures rather than assume that our readers share ‘our Western’ cultural background and experiences. This involves relinquishing the idea that what occurs in our culture is the norm compared to what is different elsewhere. This writing strategy would make our arguments stronger and communication clearer for those who are not familiar with either the society of the writer or the society being described. Studies that have made an effort to be comparative have succeeded, I think, in reducing or eliminating the Orientalist suggestion that Japan’s culture is a containable whole, unique and incomparable. Mathews does this in his book on what makes life worth living for Japanese and Americans (1996), at once making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Moeran (1997) has also used comparisons extensively in his work on a Japanese advertising firm to demystify Japanese advertising practices. Most comparative work to date has looked at Japan in contrast to the United States or Great Britain. Comparisons with other societies would help invigorate our work and stimulate our readers.

Beyond Holism The East–West dichotomy is based on the assumption that cultures and civilisations are self-contained, internally consistent entities. I suggest, therefore, that we write more firmly against the idea of Japanese culture as a unified whole. My sense is that a prescription against holism, while accepted to some degree in anthropology, is resisted in Japan studies. This may be because Japanese studies are historically strongly rooted in holistic approaches. Ruth Benedict, as we are well aware, wrote in this genre, but her study, in turn, was arguably influenced by an entrenched local discourse of cultural holism derived from a long history of studies about Japan by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike (Moeran 1990). Further, as anthropologists, I think many of us have experienced being drawn into discussions on ‘Japanese culture’ with our friends and informants in Japan. For anthropologists new to the field, the discourse comparing cultures of America and Japan, for example, may be one of the few things that we have in common with our informants, at least in the beginning. In this sense, discussions of essentialised cultural differences may ironically emerge as a source of comforting, common ground between a fresh anthropologist and the people with whom she needs to communicate in the field. Given the deep-rootedness of holism in Japan studies, we might gain from questioning the idea that we are specialists of ‘Japanese culture’. AbuLughod has urged that we ‘write against culture’ (1991) because culture forms the basis of the distinction between self and other. She writes: Culture is the essential tool for making other. As a professional discourse that elaborates on the meaning of culture in order to account for, explain and understand cultural difference, anthropology also

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helps construct, produce and maintain it. Anthropological discourse gives cultural difference (and the separation between groups of people it implies) the air of the self-evident. (143) I do not believe that writing against culture as a self-contained whole results in the breakdown of all truths, making all perspectives relative and nothing truer than anything else. Rather, anthropologists can study the validity of multiple truths and explain how and why people engage in varied and sometimes competing ways of interpreting their society. Certainly many works have helped to deconstruct the idea of Japan as a homogeneous culture by exploring the contested and diverse nature of Japanese society. Recent studies have also successfully explored the perspectives of the powerless and minorities in Japan and the links between Japan and other societies. Anthropologists who focus on minorities and on cross-border movements that confound borders, however, sometimes risk being marginalised in the profession. They may be labelled as not truly studying Japanese culture. Deciding to study the margins of society may require some courage, particularly in regard to the Ph.D. dissertation and the scholar’s first publications. After proving themselves by writing about a suitably mainstream Japanese topic, scholars may then be freer to explore more ‘marginal’ topics. I think this situation is unfortunate, however, because all perspectives, including those of a powerful political elite, upwardly mobile housewives, homeless, minority group members or recent immigrants and migrants are located in a particular position in relation to the ideological and power structures of society. All these perspectives, therefore, can contribute to a better understanding of life in Japan and Japan’s place in the world. The idea that there is a single, authentic Japanese culture about which we are experts ultimately creates problems for us as anthropologists, and particularly for those who are not ‘natives’ because an authentic culture requires an authentic mouthpiece. A student of mine once wrote in a course evaluation that the course ‘would have been better if the teacher were a real Japanese’. The student was referring to my background as a ‘JapaneseAmerican’, which is how I described myself at the beginning of the course. I have heard colleagues of non-Japanese descent also express discomfort at accusations of being or feelings that they are somehow inauthentic or unable genuinely to represent Japan because they are not Japanese. Appadurai (1988) has argued persuasively that the term ‘native’ emerged as an anthropological construction referring to distant and different non-Western people. He further argues that natives are associated with an ideology of authenticity, as ‘[p]roper natives are somehow assumed to represent their selves and their history, without distortion or residue’ (1988: 37). Moreover, if there is an authentic Japanese culture, then we do not need anthropologists at all, native or otherwise. One would simply have to ask any ‘Japanese person’ and to find the answers about their culture.

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Anthropologists engaged in a battle over authenticity in portraying ‘Japanese culture’ thus cannot win. Moreover, the idea that there is an authentic culture represented by authentic mouthpieces of culture is highly dangerous. Just as nationalism judges according to the loyalty of the speaker to the nation rather than the critical content of the ideas, the claim to authenticity also judges according to the degree of authenticity of the speaker rather than the content of his descriptions or ideas. This is a future leading to demagoguery and is the logical outcome of insisting that there is a single ‘Japanese culture’ which we represent. Because we are valued as experts on ‘Japanese culture’, it may be difficult to relinquish the title. While having conversations with fellow Japan specialists who are political scientists and sociologists, for example, I have been asked, ‘How does Japanese culture explain this?’ I usually respond that there is not a single way to understand the issue and suggest views based on different perspectives. The more basic problem with such questions, however, is the assumption that Japanese culture is an explanatory variable. We need a new vocabulary to talk about our speciality besides culture, not only because it narrows what we do as anthropologists, but because it creates the mistaken view that Japanese people are motivated by their ‘culture’, and that this is what sets Japanese apart from others. I don’t think that we would accept such a deterministic view of our own behaviour and therefore we should not accept such determinism for the people we know and write about in Japan.

Writing for Common Ground Although anthropologists may construct ‘we–they’ distinctions innocently enough, in times of conflict, the humanity of the ‘we’ group is privileged over those defined as ‘they’ (Rorty 1989). I suggest in this last section that we write more carefully in ways that show that the people we write about are as fully human as ourselves. This is a difficult topic because how we portray other people and cultures in our writing is often a matter of style and emphasis. To give an example, when I have assigned Rohlen’s chapter on ‘Five High Schools’, in his book, Japan’s High Schools (1983), my students have tended to identify with the high school scenes he describes. This may be because, as students who have grown up and been educated in Hong Kong, their educational experience is institutionally and pedagogically similar to that of Japan. However, I believe it is also Rohlen’s effort to describe the diversity of the Kobe school system in great detail that makes the description human and recognisable to my students. They empathise with the students in Rohlen’s book and the reading inspires discussion of their own experiences in school. Some works, however, even those that are otherwise rich and evocative, tend to do this less well and create a sense that Japanese culture and people are different, alien and strange. I worry when my students somehow fail to

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see the full humanity of people described in the texts. At these moments, I am often tempted to assign literature rather than anthropology. I am not prepared to prescribe a remedy for this as it involves many complex issues. Why and how does one text evoke empathy and another alienation? It depends on the views of the writer, the reader’s background and assumptions, and the style and skill of the writer. I am also not suggesting that we write propaganda in praise of Japan. On the contrary, I think anthropology has promise as a form of balanced, rigorous social critique. Social criticism should include, however, a commitment to communicating the humanity of the people we describe, even or especially in cases of cruelty and injustice. Anthropology, I think, is at its greatest when it addresses the causes and contexts of human cruelty and human suffering. My main point here is that we consider the effect of our writing on our readers. As writers, we do not just produce neutral knowledge, but what we write changes the world in some way; it has an effect on people and has consequences.3 We may help create understanding and empathy but we may also contribute to creating divisions, barriers and Otherness. Given that solidarity and division are both possible consequences of our writing, I agree with Rorty (1989) who suggests that we write in ways that help create solidarity. Rorty writes: This process of coming to see other human beings as ‘one of us’ rather than them is a matter of detailed descriptions of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as ethnography, the journalist’s report, the comic book, the docudrama, and, especially, the novel. (Rorty 1989: xvi) Unlike Rorty, I do not think that anthropology is a second choice, along with journalism and the comic book, behind the novel. Anthropology has much to offer in looking rigorously and critically at the social situations and political contexts which make human behaviour meaningful in ways that fiction does not. Also, I do not think that writing for common ground contradicts anthropology’s strengths of critically describing a variety of human worlds and experiences. Drawing upon Said (2001), I too hope that we may create models of understanding that will avoid ‘‘‘East’’ versus ‘‘West’’’, ‘good versus evil’, ‘peaceful civilizations versus aggressive civilizations’, not least because these unhelpful discourses take hold when passions are aroused and become the material to create divisions and justify hatred. The East–West, Us–Them rhetoric is difficult to escape, much less dismantle. It continues to be the dominant discourse in our world. But in my ideal of Japan anthropology, we will contribute to creating common ground.

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Notes 1 Edward Said criticized Huntington for presuming to speak for whole civilizations, for flattening differences within civilizations and for ignoring internal dynamics and plurality of civilizations (2001). 2 Writing for a globally dispersed audience may conflict with our publishers’ demands that we write for a particular market. At the same time, we do not want to lose our global readers. Often my students in Hong Kong complain about anthropological works which they judge to be written only for Westerners. I think many of these works are in fact useful for my students but could have been made far more appealing if the writers had considered that their audience included people outside of their own society. 3 It is true that once published, we have little or no say in what happens to our work or how it is interpreted, but I believe that the spirit of our texts generally comes through and is understood.

28 Towards an Open anthropology Ron Carle

We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it from whatever source it comes, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself, it never cheapens or debases him who reaches for it but ennobles and honours him. (Yaquib ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, quoted in Armstrong 1993) This essay examines the idea of a native anthropology. It argues that, although the concept enjoys a high degree of political and moral validity as a legitimate and laudable response to the discursive dominance of the socalled Western Anthropologies, the current arguments remain hampered by theoretical faults and mistaken methodological assumptions. As a specific example of a Japanese response, Takami Kuwayama’s Native Anthropology: The Japanese Challenge to Western Academic Hegemony is examined (Kuwayama 2004). This is a new and vital work that provides us with an articulate and constructive critique of the production of anthropological knowledge about Japan, and specific problems in its representation. It also suggests a series of viable and progressive proposals for further co-operation and dialogue between researchers and their subjects. It recognises that a native anthropology can be empowering, but also recognises the danger of the Balkanisation of research spheres, and of anthropological knowledge itself. The second part of this essay attempts to move beyond the binary oppositions contained in such programmes to suggest how an open anthropology might address the relevant issues in a more complex and productive manner. Using Kuwayama’s ideas as a template, a proposal will be made for the construction of an anthropological dialogue that is able to accommodate the idea of a native critique of received anthropological knowledge, and also provides a more open forum of discussion, debate, and dialogue between the interested parties, whether they be working ethnographers, the research subjects themselves, or fellow professionals studying the coherence of anthropological representations.

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What is a Native Anthropologist? As exemplified in Kuwayama’s book, the very idea of a native anthropology presents an important challenge to dominance and orthodoxy. By making problematic the relationship between the researcher and the subject, and the validity and authority of a representation of knowledge not fully understood by its builder, this illustrates the inherently imperfect, fragmentary and partial nature of any human science. Kuwayama himself provides a forthright account of the development of his current thesis, so for reasons of economy, I will limit the discussion here to the most relevant points (see Kuwayama 2004: xi–xii). The initial thesis was presented as a journal article in the Journal of the Japanese Society of Ethnology (Kuwayama 1997a). This articulate and passionate native (and occasionally nativist) response touched off a debate within the Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS) community, and was summarised in English in the form of a debate between Kuwayama and Jan van Bremen in the JAWS Newsletter (Kuwayama 1997a, 1997b; van Bremen 1997). This debate shows how a complex and provocative, but as yet theoretically flawed idea, can be enriched by the very kind of dialogue that Kuwayama is proposing as a way of deepening cooperation between native and non-native anthropologists. The ironic point here is that the most telling critique of the work was itself provided by the purported object of the criticism, a non-native anthropologist of Japan. Irony can and often does descend into cynicism, which is of little value, but it can also provide an enlightening perspective. Kuwayama’s own response to that debate shows how an intersubjective spiral of intellectual dialogue can produce a richer, more complex, and more satisfactory anthropology, whatever the perspective of the critic and the criticised. The issue of what constitutes a Native Anthropologist, and to what extent any anthropologist is ever a native, however, is one that remains unresolved. Hastrup has decisively if somewhat unsympathetically criticised the native/non-native dichotomy in anthropological research as simplistic, and methodologically irrelevant (1996). Kuwayama has enriched his theoretical formulation on the issue since the initial article was published. One key development is his employment of Edward Evans-Pritchard’s theory of differential segmentary opposition. This is the argument that, in brief, the relevant construction of identity is situational and interrelational, within a hierarchical progression, from locality to nation (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 147). Despite this elaboration, there remains a problem with the theoretical formulation that forms the basis of his analysis, and so deserves comment here. Kuwayama’s theory of identity and perspective, particularly as regards that of the working anthropologist, remains residually essentialist: it is unable to accommodate issues of multivalence, contest, situation, and the idea that all social constructs occur in a complex social field that is dynamic, and constantly in flux (Knight 1997; Kondo 1990). What is required

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here is a more fluid and flexible formulation that allows for overlapping, indexical fields of reference, and a centre based on situation, rather than in essential categories. In this sense, a concept borrowed from Kizaemon Ariga and Edmund Leach is useful here. This is the idea of systemic fluidity, or reversibility, to use Ariga’s own term, namely the idea that systemic constructions and processes are always specific, and not determined in any unilinear fashion. What holds in one situation may change, and even reverse, in others (Ariga 1981; 1966; Leach 1954). As a brief example, I offer an illustration from my own research in Shirakawa, where the constantly shifting index of identity was always relational. Working in a world-famous heritage site that is frequently elevated to national representative status, tourists and visiting researchers were generally inclined to out me, and to position themselves closer to the locals by virtue of shared nationality. Locals, on the other hand, were inclined to treat me as a de facto, if temporary and peculiar, variety of resident (though never a native). In strictly local interactions, I was a resident outsider and a foreigner. In interactions involving locals and visitors, I was grouped by the former with the former, as illustrated in the seating arrangements at preservation-related meetings. In meetings including persons outside the membership of the Shirakawa Heritage Preservation Society, I was seated down the table and to the sides, befitting my relatively low age-grade status, but also denoting a form of local status. At regular Preservation Society meetings, this position was reversed, and this illustrates my status as an outsider in such situations. With that criticism in mind, the point of this essay is to argue that the Kuwayama–van Bremen debate can serve as a model for a form of dialogue that is not limited to a frame of binary opposition, native vs. non-native, but rather one that transcends the relative situation of the discussants, and relies on strength of analysis and evidence. In this sense, open dialogue between interested parties is best imagined and practised as a continuous and open spiral, one which, as with all discourse, is ‘cooptive, contested and complicit’, but is also fluid, and indexical (Kondo 1990: 128; Knight 1997). While it is argued here that the We have much to contribute to a discussion of the Them, the problem to date has been the privilege and dominance enjoyed by the former in the production of the final product, as Kuwayama’s analysis shows. The way out of this intellectual culde sac, however, is not simply to reverse the positions of the participants, which is antithetical but insufficiently progressive, but rather to relativise the positions and authority of all participants; equality for all, with privilege for none.

From Kondo to Yanagita Kuwayama has shown in detail how such privilege can result in a representation that does not do justice to the complexity of the reality lived. His analysis of Dorinne Kondo’s work, Crafting Selves, is an incisive piece that

Towards an Open Anthropology 199 shows exactly how such a theoretically rich, manifestly and professedly sympathetic work (see Kondo’s moving dedication for an example) can nonetheless result in the construction of a series of radical oppositions between Us and Them that effectively amounts to a sympathetic orientalism (Kuwayama 2004; Kondo 1990). Within the structure of such a comparative trope, the radicality of Otherness is not only not effaced, but actually reinforced within the anthropological narrative. This, of course, is a most undesirable result for any good ethnography, which at the very least should impress upon the reader the mundane nature for the Them of that which the Us considers exotic. The unintended results of such work show that what is needed is a greater balance, greater openness, and greater reciprocity: a sort of intellectual yui (a supra-financial labour exchange). Kuwayama’s own review of the work of Kunio Yanagita gives us insight into this point. It is a much more constructive and insightful critique than the short, hagiographic piece by Chie Nakane, and shares a number of common points with an unpublished work by Hiroshi Yamazaki (Kuwayama 2004; Nakane 1967; Yamazaki 1996). Kuwayama gives deserved praise to the industry and vision of the father of Japanese folklore studies, but also a fair and balanced account of the shortcomings within his work. In particular, the overt and often extreme cultural nationalism of his epistemology and methodology is decisively rejected as intellectually untenable, and morally unacceptable. Kuwayama points out that Yanagita contradicted himself on this central issue, by disparaging the value and role of research performed by local residents, itself a structurally similar relationship to that between foreign and native anthropologists, and shows that the key to getting good data is more about doing good fieldwork than about being a particular variety of person. This is the promise of an open anthropology, and my only major epistemological opposition to the idea of a native anthropology. It is not enough to be from There. This is because anthropological knowledge is not the same as knowledge of a lived reality; its association to the knowledge in question is always once removed. Rather than the knowledge of a reality lived, it is knowledge that explains a lived reality. To make it anthropological knowledge, one also has to think in a way that makes the There commensurable from the Here. In most instances, the latter is found amongst a relatively urbanised, highly educated audience. The key advance needed, it seems, is a greater development of the general anthropological toolkit, rather than a series of closed shops. Another issue of major political and thus moral importance is that of general and generalising cultural representations. Kuwayama’s discussion of the representation of the Japanese in cultural anthropology textbooks illustrates this point well. Despite the fact that any decent textbook worth its university bookshop price will represent Japan as a highly industrialised, modern state in the text, pictorial representations display a marked tendency to that hackneyed but resilient trope, which prefigures and then

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locates the coexistence of the Modern and the Traditional. The focus on traditional clothing (especially in the representation of women), traditional implements, and the general tendency to represent Japan and the Japanese as sort of highly industrialised primitives is a telling critique of an insidious status quo that still pervades the construction and dissemination of anthropological knowledge. Furthermore, this is seen as an implicit paradox, rather than the normal state of modernity it more accurately represents, illustrated in the continuance of traditions and the limits of modernisation in Britain (e.g. Cohen 1987). The ideal and practice of inclusion is certainly one that is fraught with difficulties both political and practical. Those represented should certainly have a wider and more visible forum in which to discuss, evaluate, dispute, and preferably amend representations of what it is like to be Them. It is important to note, however, that issues of representation are best examined as a complex, rather than as a unitary problem, for such trajectories of representation are not only external, or more correctly, foreign. In my own work in Shirakawa village, there are notable tendencies in media and academia to represent the World Heritage Site Gassho hamlet of Ogimachi as a place of profound difference, a domestic Other, where the Old Ways live on in unchanging perpetuity. This despite the fact that this village of 600 receives 1.5 million visitors annually, where most households have 2 or 3 cars, not to mention all the other accoutrements of the modern Japanese lifestyle. Furthermore, there was a notable tendency in the media representations of my own work: it almost invariably revolved around my participation in heritage preservation activities, participant conservation, if you will, rather than my work on the very modern problems of rapid tourism development. In pictorial representation, I was usually shown in traditional costume, such as when helping at the rice-planting festival, itself a modern tourist-oriented event. The representation of locals followed similar patterns, including a series of very well produced documentaries that recorded older, extinct practices using a distinctly current progressive idiom in narration. The point of this is to argue how the extension of a radical Otherness is not necessarily a function of the native or non-native axis, but occurs on multiple axes within and between centres and peripheries, a point that Kuwayama also makes. On the other hand, there are limits to the extent to which anthropological analysis can ever be an open dialogue between working professionals and other interested parties. A major reason for this is that anthropology, as with any institutionalised discourse, assumes and requires a certain degree of professionalism. Many of the specific points of analysis and representation contained within any given ethnography are only capable of full and fair evaluation by other professionals with the requisite knowledge and experience. This is not to say that the professional viewpoint should always be prioritised or privileged, but that it will tend to remain separate, and this itself is a valid and important forum for the development of the discipline.

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Proposals for an open anthropology Building on the above discussion, this last section represents a specifically postmodern notion of multiplicity in voice and experience, and suggests that what is required is a greater extension of the idea of relativity, as engaged understanding, rather than distanced acceptance, to analyse better the complex, shifting and interconnected frames of analysis that currently comprise the anthropology of Japan. Rather than a native anthropology, what is suggested is an open anthropology, a dialogic spiral between centres and peripheries that that can produce not just better anthropology, but also help to satisfy legitimate demands for greater inclusion in the construction of anthropological representations. The development of such a mode of research would help to dismantle not just a series of tired stereotypes such as East and West, or the distance between the researcher and the researched, but would help to reform the very power relations upon which so much anthropological research has been based, and which have contributed to a sense of marginalisation among the researched, and among researchers outside the dominant centres of anthropological production. This is not a contrary criticism of the past, but takes to heart Santayana’s famous dictum, and in order to avoid the pitfalls of Marx’s equally incisive one, it is argued that an open and reflective recognition of the faults of the past is crucial to an open and reflective construction of the future.1 As it is in politics, so it is with the construction of knowledge. If we wish to dismantle the walls that have often separated us, then it behoves us to try and imagine how we can replace barriers that hinder communication with channels that facilitate it.2 This last section will outline some specific proposals that will allow the construction of anthropological knowledge to operate in a more transparent manner, accommodating and incorporating the criticisms of other professionals, and the research subjects themselves, thus strengthening the authority and insight of ethnographic research. 1 The dialogic spiral: this form of open discussion can operate in several media. It would seem that the use and development of existing internet sites would be one of the most cost-effective and efficient means of allowing researchers to post examples of research findings that can then be criticised by readers. The forms of discussion could range from the dyadic, to open forum discussions. Admittedly, there are a number of problems faced in such forums, notably the issue of authorial rights. 2 The open text: this is a proposal to place ethnographic texts on an open electronic forum, where they can be freely evaluated and criticised, and even rewritten by forum participants. Naturally, issues similar to those above would need to be addressed, but as a new form of the construction of anthropological texts, it could provide a means through which current issues of representation and inclusion could be addressed.

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In conclusion, the idea of a native anthropology enjoys a high degree of moral and political validity, and this essay has been an attempt to address the weaknesses of such an idea, while trying to build on its legitimate strengths. Rather than an antithetical reaction against the excesses of the current anthropological knowledge and representation, an open anthropology would allow for greater inclusion, greater dialogue, and greater precision in the construction of anthropological knowledge. As with the dismantling of older binary oppositions such as East and West, the problem is to construct new channels by which such oppositions can be overcome, rather than simply replaced by newer models. East may be East, and West may be West, but the important question would seem to be, where the twain shall meet?

Notes 1 Santayana famously wrote: ‘He who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it.’ As a response, I remind the reader of Marx’s wry elaboration of Hegel: ‘History everywhere repeats itself, Hegel says somewhere. He forgot to add, first as tragedy, next as farce’. 2 By the use of the term postmodern I mean, in a specifically anthropological sense, an anti-objectivist, partial and fragmentary approach to a given problem that recognizes the multiplicity of voice and perspective, but also the situational authority of the trained social observer. Inasmuch as any strategically comprehensive account is always impossible, whether recognized as such or no, this seems the most satisfactory solution. It also contributes to the broader project of intersubjectivity, as elaborated by Jurgen Habermas (1991). Intersubjectivity holds the promise of allowing for the construction of a body of authoritative knowledge untainted by the potential intellectual imperialism inherent in the worship of a false idol such as objectivity, or its operational agent, objectivism.

29 Japanese Anthropological Scholarship: An Alternative Model? Eyal Ben-Ari

In this essay, I argue that Japanese anthropological scholarship may provide some interesting alternatives to the Euro-American model that has been the dominant one within the ‘international community’ (Stocking 1982) or the ‘world system’ of anthropology (Kuwayama 2004a). In a previous essay written with Jan van Bremen (Ben-Ari and van Bremen 2005), we examined the social dynamics by which anthropological knowledge about and within Asia is produced. Here, building on my work with Jan, I focus my analysis on the specifics of the Japanese case. While most previous works on the issue of alternative models of anthropological scholarship have focused on power inequalities and the historical development of disparities, here I present a more ‘constructive’ set of suggestions about possible options posed by this case. The reasons for examining Japan have to do with the historical and contemporary developments of its anthropological traditions. Whether formulated as folklore, ethnology or social anthropology, a substantial part of the Japanese theories and methodological tools has developed independently or in interaction with Western centres. It is these developments, in turn, that may prod some of us – as members of the Euro-American centres – to rethink some of our professional images and assumptions.

A Model Euro-American Profession Elsewhere, I have posited that the past hundred years have seen the development of a rather specific ‘professional folk model’ of anthropology in the Euro-American context (Ben-Ari 1998). Let me briefly recapitulate the main elements of this model so that the alternatives posed by Japan are understood in context. Anthropological professionalism involves three clusters of activities: fieldwork, writing texts, and careering in institutions. The image is of a lone anthropologist (usually white-middle-class, now less frequently male) from a university in a ‘Western’ (American, British or French) centre who crosses political borders and cultural boundaries to do an extended piece of fieldwork among another group; he returns to his university to ‘write-up’ research in a textual form called an ethnography and it is this text and accompanying articles that are used as a means to advance a university

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career. It is a ‘folk’ model because it encompasses the unquestioned knowledge that ‘all’ anthropologists know. It is a ‘professional’ model because it provides the basic points of reference for ‘what we are’ and ‘what we are trying to do’ as anthropologists. Thus, anthropologists use this model to prescribe proper behaviour in the field, to mark entrance via fieldwork into our community, and to give advice and support to new members trying to further their careers. Fieldwork Hosts of commentators have noted that fieldwork is both the ‘definer’ of our discipline and the prime rite-of-passage into the profession (Gerholm and Hannerz 1982: 28; Srinivas 1996: 209). Based on the ideal of Malinowski’s research in the Trobriands (Stocking 1983), fieldwork in our professional folk model entails a prolonged phase in a society other than one’s own, hardships encountered upon entering the field, collecting information on the basis of participation and observation, and examining data in the light of current theoretical formulations. This formulation provides criteria for appraising such things as how much prestige should be awarded to a particular stint of fieldwork (one mark being the amount of time spent in the field) or the ‘authenticity’ of research (the distance between the culture studied and the anthropologist’s ‘home’ culture). It is on the basis of these criteria, for instance, that fieldwork projects are arrayed on a continuum ranging from the more distant (and therefore more prestigious) to anthropology at home, sometimes labelled as fieldwork by default. Ethnographies If fieldwork has been intensively discussed since Malinowski’s time, anthropological texts have been at the forefront of debates since the 1980s. Our folk model dictates that on the basis of fieldwork, an ethnography – a booklength monograph – should be published as a first major step on the way to a professional career. Notwithstanding the current move towards more ‘experimental’ ethnographies, the basic criteria for appraising scholars’ ‘productivity’ have not changed much. Anthropologists still build their careers based on singular, ‘whole’ texts: such ethnographies are treated as ‘whole’ social facts (Handelman 1994: 362). New ethnographies and experimental texts are still appraised and examined in the same way that older, ‘modernist’ ethnographies have been scrutinised. In other words, much contemporary ethnography is still written in the framework of universities, supervised and guided by mentors with resources, graded by internal and external readers, and funded by different research councils and fellowship bodies. Moreover, these texts often figure in professional evaluations that are central to academic practices as employment, promotion, conferring research funds, and assuring participation at professional forums.

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University Affiliation For all of the stress on reflection among anthropologists during the past few decades, the least-discussed aspect of careering has been the micro-politics of academic institutions (Nobauer 2002). Pels and Salemink (1995) suggest that the central criterion for the allocation of prestige in anthropology is place of work: within the academy, in applied jobs within various institutions, and (at the periphery) the ‘no-longer’ anthropologists. Despite critiques of this situation focusing on the strictures of academic budgets or the ‘industrial discipline’ to be found in university departments (Fox 1991: 9; Gudeman 1998), this ideal ranking is still very much alive: for the vast majority of anthropologists an academic post is still preferable to employment as an applied researcher. I argue that this model is the hegemonic one. The term hegemonic encompasses (at one and the same time) ideas about a socially legitimated and maintained hierarchy between alternative arrangements, and the centrality of the centres of anthropology in controlling not only material resources, but also dominating the very conceptual categories through which we anthropologists think about the professional reality within which we pursue our careers. Thus, anthropologists usually adopt the professional model of careering as a ‘natural’ taken for granted array of choices and options without attending to the internal professional and external political and economic structures that underlie it (Gupta and Ferguson 1997).

Japan and New Professional Models Within the world system of anthropology, Japan has been an independent core of anthropological research for many years (Ben-Ari and van Bremen 2005). In the first place, as an outcome of indigenous legacies of scholarship and its economic and territorial expansion, Japan offers an instance of a non-Western link between anthropology and colonialism (van Bremen and Shimizu 1998). Before World War II, Japan’s colonies and protectorates in Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, the Ryukyus, Micronesia and Oceania provided Japanese anthropologists with subjects and objects of study. In this way, the creation of study associations, university departments and funding agencies within the country were complemented by the establishment of outposts at its periphery such as a department of anthropology in Taipei in 1928 (Eades 2005). As van Bremen (1996) stresses, the Japanese heritage of scholarship on internally colonised peoples within Asian states, is an indicator of how colonial anthropology is not entirely a thing of the past and not a wholly a thing of the West. More recently, Japan continues to provide what is perhaps the most impressive example of an emergent world centre. The economic development and increasing political clout of Japan are obvious factors that have led to the establishment and growing importance of the National Museum

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of Ethnology in Osaka (van Bremen 1997: 62), or to the fact that Japan has a national ethnological association of over 1,600 members (Yamashita et al. 2004: 2). Indeed, it is not surprising to learn that in the past few decades, in addition to the large number of Chinese anthropologists sent to the United States for training, many have been dispatched to Japan as well (Pieke 2005). Similarly, a number of Thai, Taiwanese and Hong Kong anthropologists have also chosen to take their PhD degrees in Japan. Thus, contemporary Japan has a very dense concentration of anthropologists who consistently produce and consume professional knowledge. More recently, Japan has been the site of a growing cleavage between scholars focusing on the origins of Japanese society and others who are interested in the kind of comparative anthropology that developed in the West. This cleavage is expressed in the decision of the Japanese Society of Ethnology to change its name to the Japanese Society for Cultural Anthropology (Yamashita et al. 2004: 4–5). Yet despite this development, the Japanese case seems to offer a number of alternative ways of ‘doing anthropology’ that bear implications for the Euro-American model. Let us explore three such issues. Field(s)work(s) The complex set of processes termed fieldwork takes a different guise in the Japanese cases through such practices as team research or carrying out multiple visits of short duration. In this respect, Japanese anthropology is similar to the ethnological and folklore studies of Eastern Europe where the ‘field’ is always nearby and easy to visit; researchers spend a few weeks in rural areas collecting data and then come back to analyse them. Institutions are neither set up to grant research leaves of one year or more, nor are there funding agencies to support such ‘fieldwork.’ Furthermore, there is no assumption that after researchers return from ‘the field,’ their contacts with subjects will cease. (Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 28) The adoption of such practices by anthropologists in America or Western Europe may help further to confound the classic distinction between home and field, and disrupt the hierarchy of fields based on notions of distance from an archetypal anthropological ‘home’ (Gupta and Ferguson 1997: 13). Furthermore, the Japanese mode of anthropological research may suggest an alternative to the much vaunted ‘multi-sited’ methodology now propagated by some scholars in Western centres. While research groups are something the Japanese (as well as Russians and East Europeans) have long been extremely good at organising and funding (Tomiya et al. 1988), American scholars, such as Messerschmidt (1981: 7), have suggested that research in uni- or multi-disciplinary groups may be especially suited to

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handle research in complex societies. At the base of this idea, however, is not only pooling the resources of a number of professionals. The specific historical situatedness of different anthropologists prompts us to consider along with Campbell (1988) and Kuwayama (2004a), not only team research but also collaborative investigations which would include members of different national and other cultures. Thus the idea here is to go beyond the multi-sited methods utilised by a lone anthropologist and integrate multiple perspectives carried by members of a research group into a specific project. Careering Japanese anthropology offers a number of criteria for appraising professional advancement that differ from those found in Western centres. For example, in this case there is a great deal of prestige attached to the collection of data rather than to theory (van Bremen 1997: 60; Eades 2005). Two implications follow from this point. First, such instances signal an alternative to the strong stress on theory building as a basis for careering found in the Western centres. However, as Evans (2005) and Pieke (2005) propose, the ultimate test for the influence of Asia on the centres will be when Asian anthropologists (including Japanese) will study these very centres. This shift will entail changes in political economy and in professional definitions of what is interesting. For example, for a long time, American anthropologists studied the Japanese middle class and themes that in their home countries would be studied by ‘sociologists’. Yet only lately have we found works that explicitly juxtapose the two societies (Mathews 1996, 2004). Second, and on a practical level, the Japanese practice of in-house publications (rather than the extended peer review) implies a relatively short lead-time in publication and empirical material about social change does not get dated before publication (Yamashita et al. 2004: 7). While this aspect of scholarship has improved somewhat with the beginning of some electronic forums, the major journals in the Western centres still take an inordinate amount of time to get published. Theories A favourite metaphor used by (mainly) American academics is that of being at the ‘cutting edge’ of theory or of a disciplinary field. This metaphor seems concurrently to capture the linear, aggressive and intrusive tenor of many social scientific practices in this society. It is perhaps ironical that committed as they have been to holistic methods and perspectives anthropologists nevertheless use this imagery as well. Perhaps such metaphors are rooted in the prerequisites of ‘publish or perish’ realities or in a general Western stress on linearity. Yet anthropologists from and working about Asia have suggested somewhat softer approaches that are lest ‘surgical’ and more holistic. For example, Evans (2005) suggests that new views and new

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assumptions based on Buddhist concepts of human nature may force us to reconceptualise many of our core theoretical notions. Wider publics Mathews (2004: 128) suggests that Japanese anthropology seems more significant for Japanese society at large than American anthropology is for the United States. He goes on to remark that according to his impressions when visiting bookstores there are many more anthropological books aimed at the general public to be found in Japan. Moreover, he cites a major newspaper company that has featured senior anthropologists explaining anthropology for non-professional readerships. Similarly, some anthropologists such as Tamotsu Aoki have achieved public recognition and regularly appear in the media. While American anthropologists did appear as national figures during the 1930s and 1940s (Gonzalez 2004), today they play a much more muted role. In this sense, the engagement with wider publics is something that some of us in the Western centres may learn and emulate.

Conclusions While Japan anthropological scholarship offers a number of fascinating alternative practices, for a number of reasons I am not optimistic about their adoption outside the country. First, as a number of scholars have noted (Yamashita et al. 2004: 7), there is the problem of language: while Japanese scholars regularly read other languages, most anthropological scholarship within Japan takes place in Japanese and is thus inaccessible save for a few foreign scholars. Second, Japan still largely remains a periphery or ‘semi-periphery’ (Kuwayama 2004b: 39) to Western theory. Indeed, as Mathews (2004) laments, at times local Japanese anthropologists are reduced to collecting data to confirm Western theory (Mathews 2004). Similarly, some of the questions that Japanese anthropologists still deal with – such as the origins of the society and culture – are considered peripheral or parochial from the perspective of the centres in the West. Finally, these trends are reinforced by the fact that publishing in Western centres requires mastery of a complex and constantly changing theoretical vocabulary that is difficult for non-native speakers to acquire (Yamashita et al. 2004: 7). Mathews (2004: 126) observes that contemporary Western centres of anthropological scholarship are much less homogeneous than the image depicted in the scholarly literature. One major impetus to the growing diversity of such scholarship has been the end of the Cold War and the reintegration of previously isolated anthropological traditions into the world system (Eriksen and Nielsen 2001: ch. 9). To end my essay about Japanese alternatives on a more positive note, perhaps I could suggest that these alternatives are part of the multiple anthropological discourses in today’s world and as such may enrich our discipline and the practices through which we produce and reproduce it.

Part VIII

Concluding Remarks

30 What Enlightenment can Japan Anthropology Offer to Anthropology? Heung Wah Wong

It took me a long time to finish writing this round-up, partly because of the emotional disturbance caused by the recent loss of a beloved family member, but mostly due to the fact that I can hardly do more than summarise what the contributors of this volume have already done to dismantle the East–West dichotomy. However, there are two things that seem to render my round-up not too banal. The first is the diversity of this volume. Scrolling down the list of contributors of this volume, you will find that they come from different countries, and their nationalities are even more diverse; going through the articles of the volume, you will detect different understandings of the dichotomy at issue, and the dismantling strategies are even more varied. Such diversity makes my attempt to put these different understandings of the dichotomy and their corresponding dismantling strategies into perspectives according to their internal logics seem worthwhile, at least for some casual readers. They may find such a summary helpful. The second thing that makes my effort perhaps seem worthwhile is that this volume is not just an anthropological self-critique or what Kapferer (2000) calls anthropological self-denial, as we can see many positive suggestions here and there throughout the volume that aim to highlight the possible contributions of Japan anthropology to anthropology as a discipline, rather than sentence the discipline to a death penalty, as the postmodern, postcolonial, and poststructural critiques have recently done to anthropology. Therefore, it is important to reiterate the positive suggestions in a more systematic way at the end of this volume to remind the reader that it is not the end of the day!

Anthropological Objects: Culture, Cultural Diversity in the East/ West, and Informants The first problem with the East–West dichotomy as an analytical tool, at least in the anthropology of Japan, is that the dichotomy itself not only cannot do any good to help anthropologists in analysing the major anthropological object, i.e., culture; but also masks the diversity of the East and

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the West. Culture is the result of the dialectical articulation between the global and the local, and by extension we can say that the East, if it does exist, is made by such a dialectical articulation with the West, and vice versa. That is to say, both the East and the West are hybrid and thus there is no pure ‘East’ or ‘West’. From this, it follows that the East–West dichotomy is a ‘logical contradiction’ and thus an incorrect analytical construction (Ohnuki-Tierney, Chapter 2). More importantly, the analytical construction of the East–West dichotomy has its ideological dimension which functions not only to highlight the differences between the East and the West but also to obscure the diversity in both the East and the West, as pointed out by Yoshiko Nakano (Chapter 12) and Creighton (Chapter 15) in this volume. More fundamentally, not only cultures but also human bodies are diverse in the West or in the East, as shown in the comparative study of post-menopausal women in the West and in Japan: ‘[w]e are all biologically and culturally diverse; such diversity is not amenable to dichotomisation’ (Lock, Chapter 6, this volume). The second problem of the East–West dichotomy as an analytical tool lies in the fact that anthropologists’ informants have been and are using the dichotomy differently in different periods, which indicates that to our informants, the cultural referent of the East–West dichotomy, contrary to what the static East–West dichotomy pretends, is always changing according to contexts. For example, Ainu people were classified as ‘European’ and thus ‘Western’ by European scholars, missionaries, and travellers from the very beginning of their contact, and for a long time thereafter. The romanticism of Europeans, the academic agenda of Western linguists, and the difficult relations between foreigners and the Japanese government at that time were responsible for such a ‘misperception’ (Refsing, Chapter 21, this volume). However, such a ‘misperception’ was in fact a conception for the European at that time. Ethnographies have shown that human perception is a function of humans’ own conception. Recent young Japanese travellers tend to conceive of themselves as Asian and associate Japan with neighbouring Asian countries, while their senpai, the so-called shinjinrui travellers in the 1980s, identified themselves as part of the West. This radical shift of identity among these young Japanese travellers is the result of recent modernisation and industrialisation in Asia, which has put other Asian people in the same material condition as Japanese and helps to create a sense of ‘coevalness’ among these Japanese travellers. With a similar economic situation and the sense of ‘coevalness’, these young Japanese travellers tend to identify themselves with Asia (White, Chapter 18, this volume). Japan, to these young Japanese travellers, shifts from the West to the East according to the changing economic situation in Asia. White’s case study also indicates that recent modernisation in Asia further challenges the East–West dichotomy which, according to GuichardAnguis’s essay in this volume, assumes that the West is the source of modernisation for the East. The fact that Japanese ryokan (inns) have recently

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turned to Southeast Asian countries for their cultural artefacts as they modernise themselves to adapt to the new tourist market makes Japan the East and the Southeast Asian countries the West, if anthropologists accept the connotation of the East–West dichotomy in analysing the modernisation project of Japanese ryokan (Guichard-Anguis, Chapter 10, this volume). More importantly, if an anthropologist’s mission is to understand the ‘native point of view’, she should then go even one step further to abandon the East–West dichotomy. Japanese expatriate wives in the United Kingdom, for instance, never used the East–West dichotomy in their discourses. Instead, they used London, Paris, Frankfurt, Washington, Boston or New York in Europe and the United States; and Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and so on in Asia to refer to their transfer locations. We can also see how a global consciousness has gradually emerged among these Japanese expatriate wives, which further makes the East–West dichotomy not a native divide (Martin, Chapter 20, this volume). All of these case studies suggest that by sticking to the static East–West dichotomy, anthropologists not only cannot understand the dynamics of the game of changing musical chairs among our informants; but also replace the anthropological etic with their own emic.

From Anthropological Objects to Anthropological Subjects: Anthropologists as Researchers The third problem is concerned with anthropological subjects rather than objects, i.e., the anthropologist as a researcher. Following the ‘Writing Culture’ debate, some anthropologists have begun to challenge the ethnographic authority of anthropologists by asking whether anthropological subjectivity is also underlined by anthropologists’ nationality. If it is, we can then speak of Eastern and Western anthropologists or anthropology? That is to say, the East–West dichotomy can be used to classify the discipline and its practitioners according to where they originate. However, Yamashita points out that we can hardly speak of Japanese anthropology/anthropologists because both the discipline and its practitioners in Japan are not ‘pure’ but ‘a hybrid product of Japan, the West, and the Asia-Pacific’ (Yamashita, Chapter 25, in this volume). The hybrid nature of Japanese anthropology/anthropologists, Yamashita suggests, has more potential for a universal anthropology than Western anthropology. Using the metaphor of the relationship between the concept of ‘uchi’ (inside) and ‘soto’ (outside), Martinez argues that anthropology, no matter if it is in Japan or outside Japan, can benefit a lot from the continuous interpenetration between anthropology in Japan and outside Japan. Therefore, we should focus on their relationship rather than the divide between Eastern and Western anthropology/anthropologists (Martinez, Chapter 5 in this volume). Some contributors to this volume further argue that the individual traits of anthropologists, including their nationality, should not be considered as

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important factors in influencing the ways anthropologists study Japan. Goodman, for example, argues that it is the underlying assumption of individual anthropologists about the relationship between the individual and society that shapes the way anthropologists draw conclusions from their ethnographic data (Goodman, Chapter 4, this volume). Kelly adds that the social location where anthropological knowledge is produced has little relevance to the research agenda of anthropologists of Japan. Instead, the theoretical fashion and the socio-economic condition of Japan have dictated what anthropologists of Japan should research since World War II (Kelly, Chapter 19, this volume). Mathews argues that it is the national wealth of the countries rather than the anthropologists’ nationality that is crucial in determining who studies whom. As the East Asian economies have begun to catch up with those of Europe and the United States, the East–West dichotomy has become less relevant to the question of who studies whom (Mathews, Chapter 26, this volume). Drawing heavily from the experience of the Korean anthropology of Japan, Moon argues that an anthropologist’s nationality has nothing to do with the ways Korean anthropologists study Japan. Those Korean anthropologists who are trained in the West display a different mode of research in studying Japan, including the selection of research topic, fieldwork style, theoretical orientations, and writing style, from their fellow Korean anthropologists who received their postgraduate training in Japan, a Korean version of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. That is to say, the mode of anthropological knowledge production is decisive in shaping the practices of Korean anthropologists of Japan (Moon, Chapter 17, this volume).

From Anthropological Subjects to Anthropology as a Profession The mode of anthropological knowledge production is a part of a larger anthropological profession model. In order to understand how the mode of anthropological knowledge production shapes anthropological practices, we need to examine how the larger professional model sanctions the mode of knowledge production. An anthropological professional model, according to Ben-Ari, is a hegemonic one, prescribing how anthropologists conduct their research (fieldwork); how anthropologists should write (ethnography); how anthropological knowledge should be disseminated (academic journals, books, and conferences); and how anthropologists should be rewarded (university-based employment, promotion, allocation of research funds). The Euro-American anthropological model is also a hegemonic one. It sees itself or is seen as representing a ‘universal’ standard for anthropological practices in the world’s anthropological circle. Any different model which does not conform to this ‘universal’ standard has unavoidably been considered as not being ‘up to the standard’, rather than as representing an alternative standard. The Japanese professional model, however, given the large population of anthropologists in Japan and Japan’s ever-increasing

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political and economic influences, is gradually recognised as an alternative. Recognising the Japanese professional model as an alternative is not just motivated by the high moral ground but also by recognising the contributions of Japanese anthropological scholarship to anthropology, such as the practices of in-house publications, the willingness of Japanese anthropologists to address a wider public, and the prestige attached to data-collection, as Ben-Ari points out in this volume (Chapter 29). Kuwayama reinforces the Japanese professional model as an alternative by pointing to the fact that Malinowskian fieldwork is, after all, one alternative among others and ‘is useful only under particular conditions at a particular time’ (Kuwayama, Chapter 7, this volume). Therefore, we should not treat Malinowskian fieldwork as a universal standard for all possible forms of fieldwork. Having realised the particularity of Malinowskian fieldwork, we can open ourselves to other alternatives, such as the style exemplified in Japanese folklorists’ research practices, which have many advantages that can benefit anthropologists. Nakamaki (Chapter 8, this volume) further shows us the positive values of joint research projects, a tradition in Japanese anthropology, by introducing us to the case of the Taniguchi Symposia. Japanese joint research projects are done not only in interdisciplinary but also international contexts, as we can see in the case of these Taniguchi Symposia. Nakamaki reminds us that they in fact provided a valuable opportunity for the West to meet the East: the late Jan Van Bremen met Nakamaki in the Taniguchi Symposia, through which Nakamaki then met other anthropologists of Japan in the JAWS meeting at the University of Leiden in 1990. In this sense, Japanese joint research projects were a Japanese way of breaking the East–West dichotomy. Sedgwick, however, warns us that the anthropology of Japan should not follow the ‘Writing Culture’ type of reflections on fieldwork that has trivialised the notion of anthropological fieldwork into technical, something like the ‘how to do it’ type. Certainly, anthropologists should be flexible in the technical aspects of their fieldwork and choose their techniques according to the situation of the field they work in, the problems they deal with, and the theoretical questions they address. However, no matter which technique we use, we should not compromise it with the epistemological and methodological values of fieldwork. No matter if the fieldwork is a short stay of multilocations or a long stay of a single unit; no matter if the fieldwork is done in our own culture or other cultures; and no matter if the fieldwork is conducted in a team or by a single anthropologist, the fieldwork we conduct, for instance, in a particular organisation, as Sedgwick (Chapter 9, this volume) asserts, should be able to tell us ‘about social dynamics and conflict within the firm, the experience of career paths, discourses of male and female interaction, or which sakaya features in real decision-making and why’. That is to say, Eastern and Western anthropologists, or as Carle (this volume) puts it, native and non-native anthropologists of Japan, are evaluated in the same methodological rigour of anthropological fieldwork. In

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this sense, Eastern and Western anthropologists, and native and non-native anthropologists of Japan are united in the spirit of the late leader of the Communist China Deng Xiao Ping’s famous saying: ‘it doesn’t matter if it is a white cat or black; the one that could catch a mouse is a good cat’. And I would want to add to this metaphor: a black cat does not have an a priori advantage over a white cat in catching a mouse in China! (Wong, Chapter 16, this volume)

What Contributions can Japan Anthropology Make? As I mentioned in the Introduction of this round-up, the contributors to this volume do not write only to bury the East–West dichotomy. They have some suggestions to offer. One, among others, is the classic anthropological observation: every dichotomy is intrinsically a contrast selectively (arbitrarily) picked out from other contrasts and valued as a significant criterion whereby the objects of reference are classified. Any dichotomy is therefore unavoidably more particular than the things it divides. It follows that any dichotomy is by nature masking the internal differences of either part of the dichotomy because we only use one single contrast to classify the things that present more contrasts. That is to say, any dichotomy intrinsically (and unfortunately) has a homogenising effect and is thus essentialised. The point I want to make here is that every dichotomy of human perception, especially as communicated in discourse, essentially involves essentialisation. Therefore, unless we decide to give up communication in discourse, we should not do away with the dichotomy altogether, but realise that every dichotomy should neither be interpreted ontologically nor used in an essential and deterministic sense. We should also, as Shimizu suggests in Chapter 3 in this volume, pay attention to the ‘epistemological conditions for such dichotomous concepts to be meaningful’. I would like to suggest that in responding to the recent postmodern, poststructural, and postcolonial accusations of the anthropological concept of culture as an instrument of oppression, anthropologists should adopt the same attitude, that is, investigate in what political contexts the use of culture would turn out to be oppressive, rather than discard the concept of culture. Otherwise, we will end up being bound by what Kapferer calls ‘the agony of self-denial’ (Kapferer 2000: 183). The other suggestion is about ‘writing culture’. We should write more comparatively with an understanding that our readers are no longer confined to Westerners only. More importantly, the comparison should be done in a more specific way. We should also call for a more diversified international comparative perspective, as Lynn Nakano proposes in this volume. Along the lines of Nakano’s suggestions, I add that it will be methodologically strategic to compare Japan with other East Asian countries, such as the Chinese societies in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan. On the one hand, these societies, influenced by the same Confucian traditions, are

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more similar to Japanese society than are European and American societies. The similarities help criticise the idea of the ‘uniquely unique’ features of Japanese culture by showing that similar features often exist in Chinese societies. For example, my own research on a Japanese supermarket in Hong Kong (Wong 1999) has shown how local superiors at the supermarket used the Cantonese kinship term nui (daughter) as a social technique for soliciting loyalty and support from their subordinates, and how the latter reciprocated by adopting kinship terms such as ah che (elder sisters) and ah ko (elder brothers) to impose moral responsibilities on the former. This social technique represents an interesting similarity with the Japanese oyabun/kobun relationship in the workplace and thus constitutes a counterargument to the notion that such an oyabun/kobun relationship is a ‘uniquely unique’ feature of Japanese culture. On the other hand, Japanese and Chinese societies are not identical. The differences between Japanese and Chinese societies may lead anthropologists of Japan to a new set of problems, focuses, and even new understandings of Japanese society. For example, Chen (1986a) attributed the differences between Japanese and Chinese family businesses to the differences of the family structure in these two societies. The Japanese emphasised the economic aspect of the family system whereas traditional Chinese placed more value on the genealogical aspects. Therefore, Japanese people sometimes even alter the blood relationships within the genealogical context in order to maintain the existence of the economic entity of the household. Hence, in Japan there are many cases in which the head of the household transfers this headship to an adopted sonin-law (mukoyo¯shi) even if he has a son. This emphasis on the extension of the household rather than on the continuation of genealogical relationships can be found in the context of corporation. Owners of Japanese family businesses may bypass their own sons if they are not competent enough, and rely on an adopted son-in-law (mukoyo¯shi) or adopted son (yo¯shi). In contrast, Chinese people believe that the most important task is to maintain the existence of the genealogical family (jia). The corporation might be sacrificed for the benefit of the family. Owners of Chinese companies seldom give their business to persons other than their sons even if they are incompetent or spendthrifts (Chen 1986a: 10–28). In short, a diversified international comparative perspective will make our understanding of Japan more comprehensive.

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Index

Abegglen, J.C. 76 Abu-lughod, L. 191–2 Ackermann, Peter 5 Africa 57, 62–3, 180–1 ah kolah che-nui relationship 111, 113–14 Ainu 5, 94, 149–55, 156, 212 Ainu Grammar (Batchelor) 150–1 Allee, W.C. 172 allowances for expatriates 142 alternative models 203–8, 214–15 Amami Islands 57 American-Euro professional model 203–5 American theories 33–4 Americans doing Japan anthropology 133–9 the Americas 98–100 ancestors, relationship with 161–2 Andean region 57, 62–3 Anglo-Japanese Friendship group 141–6 Animal Aggregations (Allee) 172 Animal Ecology and Evolution (Elton) 171–2 Anthropological Society of Nippon 177 ‘Anthropologists of Japan in Japan’ (AJJ) 95 anthropology: convergence/divergence 66; East and West unite 114–16; future 29–30, 139; in/of Japan 66–8; intellectual/emotional 55n.2; objectivity 92; objects 211–13; overview 1–7; range of 138–9; as science 182–7; from social ecology 171–2; subjects 213–14 Appadurai, A. 192 area studies 136 Ariga, Kizaemon 198 Army governments 20

arts and crafts 12, 156–9 Asad, Talal 184 Asia in Japanese anthropology 178–9 Asia, Japan between West and 18–20 Asia, young travellers to 123–32 Asian Anthropology 182, 188n.5 Asian atmosphere, introduction of 71–3 Asquith, Pamela J. 5, 22 assumptions 24–7 audience and purpose 189–94, 208 audience, question of 121–3 Bachnik, J. 32 Bali 72 Barlaeus, Gaspar von 99 Barthes, Roland 184 Batchelor, John 150–1, 153, 154 Beardsley, 35 Befu, Harumi: ‘Anthropologists of Japan in Japan’ 95; insider/outsider 33; nationality 22, 183; overview 1; Taniguchi Symposia 56, 59 belief 164 Ben-Ari, Eyal 7, 214 Benedict, Ruth 32, 35, 103, 191 Berne University 161 Bernier, B. 32 ‘Best is West’ 83–4 Beyene, Y. 43 biological difference 38–45 biomedical knowledge 3 birth control 44 Boas, Franz 50 bodies 38 Bonn University 156 Boulet, M.J. 43 Bowles, Gordon 137 Braudel, F. 15 Brazilian towns 99–100

238

Index

Buddhism 16, 163 businesses 217 Callaway, H. 22–3 Campbell, D. 207 Campbell, Gowan 150 Canada 86, 104, 105–7 cannibalism 178 capitalism 14–15 careering 207 Carle, Ron 7, 215 Castro-Va´zquez, Genaro 1, 4 Chen, C.N. 217 China: anthropology 206, 188n.2; differences/similarities 217; influence of 11–12; Japan between West and 18–20; protests 132; tourism 73 Chinese intermediaries 82–8 Chosenjin 120 Christianity 62, 98 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Benedict) 103–4 civilisation 18 ‘Civilization Studies’ 59–63 ‘Clash of Civilizations?’ (Huntington) 189 clergymen 163–4 Clifford, James 51–2 Club Taishikan 145 Cohn, B.S. 34 Cold War 136 collaboration 52, 56–63, 67–8, 96, 206– 7, 215 collectivism 109 colonial anthropology 179, 184, 205 colonialisation, Japanisation and 19– 20 common ground, writing for 193–4 communications 107–8 community 106 comparative anthropology 190–1 comparative writing 216–17 conceptual dichotomy 20–1 Confucianism 61–2 congee 84–5 Constitution of Imperial Japan 14 constitutions 13–14 context, discipline of 64–8 convergence/divergence 66, 77 Cook, Captain 110 cooperation/competition 168 Crafting Selves (Kondo) 198–9 craftsmen 72 Crapanzano, V. 22

Creighton, M. 4 criticisms 107 culture: diversity 211–12; East and West unite 114–16; food and 70; history and 18; hybridity as sine qua non of 16; management and 75–6; political contexts 216; ryokan 71–2; writing against 191–2 Culture Centres 6 Dale, P.N. 172 Darwin, Charles 168 Datsua-ron (Fukuzawa) 18 Davies, 1988 31 Davis, J.H. 103 Davis, Winston 61 destructiveness of East–West dichotomy 141–6 dichotomies, nature of 216 differential segmentary opposition 197 Directory of Japan Specialists 139 Divine Japanese Emperor 14 DNA 38 Donnelly, Michael 139 Douglas, Mary 28 Durkheim, Emile 23, 28 duty 32 Eades, Jerry 182 ‘East’ 142 ‘East Meets West’ 11, 16, 69 ecology 168–74 economic miracle 75–8 Edo period 12, 167n.6, 167n.8 education 66 Elton, Charles 171–2 Embree, J. 35, 106 emic terms 31, 36 encounter, narratives through 160–5 English language 138 enlightenment 211–17 epistemological conditions 17–18, 216 Escobar, Eduardo 177, 181 essentialisation ethnicity 120–1 ethnography: authority 213; Japanese 64–8; lone ethnographer 51–2; professionalism 204; proposals for strengthening 201 ethnological sciences 178 ethnology 178–80 Ethnology Symposia 59 etic terms 31 eugenics 168

Index Euro-American professional model 203–5, 214 Europe and the People Without History (Wolf) 15 European Network of Japanese Art Collections (ENJAC) 156, 159 European theories 33 Evans, G. 207–8 Evans-Pritchard, Edward 197 evolution 168, 169–74 expatriate housewives 141–6, 213 families 217 ‘Far East’ 142, 143 Federation of Nine Academic Associations 57 female aging 40–5 feminism 38 Fevre, L. 15 fieldwork: East and West in academia 94–6; Japanese 57–62, 206–7; joint projects 56–63; local intellectuals, rapport with 52; location 134–5; lone ethnographer 51–2; long-term 49–50; objects/subjects 213–16; overview 3– 4; professionalism 204; social responsibility 53 folkloristics 3, 49–54 food, culture and 70 For Harmony and Strength (Rohlen) 106 ‘foreign area studies’ 136 foreigners, defining 92–4 foundations 134–5, 136 Fox, K. 36 Fragaszy, D. 173 Franklin, S. 38 ‘Friends of Anthropology’ 177 Fukuzawa, Yukichi 18 Fulbright Commission 134–5 Fumei Hong Kong 111–14 functionalism 23–4 funding 134–5, 136 furniture 72, 74n.1 ga 107 gaijin 93 Gates, 35 Geertz, Clifford 24, 104, 114 genealogy 217 generalisations 199–200 genetics 173 Gerholm, T. 181 gift-giving 105–6 global anthropology 186–7

239

Global Era 14–15 globalisation: global citizens 97–8; Japanese organisations 75–81; ryokan and 73–4 Goodman, Roger 3, 62, 214 grading system of countries 142 gratitude 163 Great Divide 11 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 19–20, 172 groupist orientation 108 Guichard-Anguis, Sylvie 4 Haguenauer, Charles 74 Hammerstein, P. 173 Hannerz, U. 181 Haraway, D. 38 Hari Krishnas 79 harmonious relationships 106–7 Harris, M. 31 Harvey, D. 15 Hasebe, Kotondo 180 Hastrup, Kirsten 190, 197 Hawaiian culture 110–11 hegemony 110, 133–9, 206, 214 Hendry, Joy 6, 32 heuristic model 24 Hieronymus de Angelis 149 Hijikata, Hisakatsu 180 Hiroshi, Inamura 25 historicisation 11 history 5 history, narratives through 165–6 Hofstede, G. 77 holism 191–3, 207–8 Holism and Evolution (Smuts) 171 home altars 161–2 ‘Homestay UK’ 145 Hong Kong: anthropologists 206; ‘Best is West’ 83–4; emigration 85–6; kinship 217; rice cookers 82–3 hot flushes 41–3 hotels 69 housewives in UK 141–6 HRT 44 human genome 38 humanism 38 Huntington, Samuel 189, 195n.1 hybridity 3, 11–16, 213 Hyungsook, Yoon 121 identity: future 129; Japanese conceptions of self 11–13; Japanism 18–19; multiple identities 144–5;

240

Index

ryokan 70–1; situational 197–8; ‘West in the head’ 100–1 idioms 108–9 illness 39–41 Imanishi, Kinji 5, 57, 168–71 imperial system 13–14, 98 inclusion 200 indebtedness 32 indigenizing modernity 6 individualists 106–7 individuals, society and 23–4, 29–30, 109, 37n.2 Indo-Europeans 151–2 informants 52, 212 Inland Sea 137 inns 69–74, 212–13 insider/outsider 31–6, 103–5, 110–11, 213 intellectuals, rapport with local 52 interactive anthropology 181–2 internationalisation 26–7 internet 54n.1 interpretative theories 23–4 intersubjectivity 202n.2 Ishi, A. 100 Ishida, Eiichiro¯ 178, 184 Ishida, H. 108 Islamic anthropology 31 Ito¯, Abito 61 Ito¯, Shintaro 173 Iwamoto, Michiya 55n.3 Izumi, Seiichi 57, 58 Jablonka, E. 173 Japan anthropology: Asia, meeting 178–9; beyond the dichotomy 123–4; contributions of 211–17; history of 177–81; of Japan 66–8; Japanese anthropologists 184; overview 2–5; the South, meeting 179–80; triangular frame of reference 180–1; the West, meeting 177–8 Japan Anthropology Workshop (JAWS) 1–2, 62, 64–5, 69, 133–9, 187n.1 Japan External Trade Organisation 86 Japan Festival 145, 146n.7 Japan Foundation 134, 139 Japan in Your Classroom 145 Japan Travel Bureau 70 Japanese Beauty 71–2 Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers (Wong) 111–14 ‘Japanese Collections in European Museums’ 156

Japanese Inns of the Highest Rank (Kashiwai) 72 Japanese language 19, 208 Japanese Menopause Society 43–4 Japanese nation 172–3 Japanese orientalism 178–80 Japanese professional model 205–8, 214–15 Japanese Society for Cultural Anthropology 206 Japanese Society (Nakane) 75–6 Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology 56 Japanese Society of Ethnology 56, 57, 178 Japanese Studies 137 Japanism 18 Japan’s High Schools (Rohlen) 193 Jesuits 149 Jews 33 Jinmu Emperor 12 Joest, Wilhelm 152–3 joint research projects 52, 56–63, 67–8, 96, 206–7, 215 journals 207 Kaldor, M. 97, 98 kami (deity) 32–3 katakori 39–41 Kawada, Junzo¯ 180–1 Kawakatsu, Heita 173 Keat, Russell 38 Kelly, William W. 1, 4, 214 Kelsky, K. 145 ki otsukau 144, 146n.5 kikokushijo (returnee school children) 24–7 kingship 13–14 Kinji Imanishi Digital Archive 169, 172 kinship 115, 217 Knecht, Peter 4 ko¯nenki 41–5 Kojiki 11–12 Kondo, Dorinne 198–9 Korea 19–20, 73 Korean anthropology 181–2 Korean artifacts 71–2 Koreans in Japan 119–24, 214 Kowner, K. 149 Kreiner, Josef 5, 22, 56, 59, 183 Kreitner, Gustav 150 Kuiryama, Shigehisa 39–40 Kunio, Yanagita 34 Kuwabara, Takeo 57–8

Index Kuwayama, Takami: alternative models 215; collaboration 207; emic terms 35; hegemony 110; at JAWS 1; nationality 22; native anthropology 196–9 Kyoto University African Scientific Expedition (KUASE) 57, 62–3 Kyu- – Gakkai Rengo¯ 62 labour shortages 99, 102n.2 Lamb, M.J. 173 languages: Ainu 150–3; insider/outsider 35, 36; ‘parallel universe’ 188n.4; problems of 208, 188n.6; protolanguages 151–2; terminology 31 Latin Americans in Japan 4, 27–9, 98– 101 Latour, Bruno 38 Leach, Edmund 198 ‘Learn from Japan’ 77 Levi-Strauss, C. 185 linguistics 31 Lock, Margaret 3, 38 lone ethnographer 51–2 long-term fieldwork 49–50 ‘Look East’ 77 Mahikari 79–81 Malaysia 77 Malinowski, Bronislaw 49–50, 215 management 75–81, 111–14 map-making 15 marebito 32 Martin, Ruth 4–5, 15 Martinez, Lola 1, 3, 213 Marx, Karl 15, 23, 60, 202n.1 Marxism 23–4, 30 material/meaning 38 Mathews, Gordon 6–7, 191, 208, 214 Matsuoka, Shizuo 179–80 Mauss, M. 105 Mead, Margaret 53 medicine 39–41 Meiji period 14, 18–19 Melby, M. 44 menopause 41–5 menstruation 41 Messerschmidt, D.A. 206 Micronesia 179–80 migrant/pilgrim fieldwork 49 military leaders 14 Mintz, S.W. 15 Minzoku Kenkyu--sho 179 MNCs (multinational companies) 75–8

241

modernisation theory 26, 127–9, 165, 212–13 modernity, globalisation and 98 modernity, ryokan and 71–3 Moeran, B. 191 Mong Man-wai, William 82, 84–5 Mongolia 170 Montandon, George 151 Moon, Okpyo 1, 4, 214 Moonies 79 Morgan, 187 Morris-Suzuki, T. 172–3 Morse, Edward 178 multiple dichotomies 3, 17–21 museum collections 155–9 myth-histories 11–12 Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (Dale) 172 Naert, Pierre 151–2, 153–4 Nakamaki, Hirochika 3–4, 6, 215 Nakane, Chie 32, 35, 58, 75–6, 77, 184 Nakano, Lynne 4, 7, 216 Nakano, Yoshiko 4 Narayan, Kirin 181 narratives 160–6 national character 121–3 National Museum of Ethnology 58, 205–6 National/Panasonic 82–8, 88n.2 nationality, study of 22 ‘native’ 192 native anthropology: discipline of context 66–8; evaluation 215–16; explanation of 197–8, 37n.5; insider/ outsider 31–6, 103–5, 110–11, 213; towards an open anthropology 196– 202 Native Anthropology (Kuwayama) 196 Navy governments 20 new anthropology 5–7 Nichiren 163, 167n.2 Nihon-bunka-ron 18 Nihon minzoku gakkai 187n.1 Nihon no kokoro 71 Nihonjinron 6, 18, 67, 76, 172 Nihonshoki 11 Nikkeijin 4, 27–9, 100–1, 102n.2 Nishida, Kitaro¯ 170 Nishikawa, Nagao 18 Nishimura, H. 41 ‘no’ 107–8 Noji, A. 44 NRMs (new religious movements) 75, 78–81

242

Index

Obeyesekere, Gananth 110, 111 objectivity 202n.2 occupied Japan 6, 14, 136–7 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 1, 3, 5 Okely, J. 22–3 Okinawa 57, 94 ontology 20–1 open anthropology, towards 196–202 organisations 68, 75–81, 217 Oriental ethnology 179 ‘Oriental Market’ 86–8 Orientalism 32, 64–5, 178–80 Ortner, S. 22 overseas research 57–62 oyabun–kobun relationship 111–14, 115 Pang, C.L. 27 Pels, P. 205 Perry, S. 173 personal perspectives 4 Peru 57 PHDs 134, 137 Pieke, F. 207 Plath, David 137 Pocock, David 22 postcolonial positioning 119–21 postmodern bodies 38–45 postmodernism 29–30 primatology 168 print culture 15 ‘professional stranger’ 33 professionalism 203–6, 214–16 proto-languages 151–2 publications 207 publics, wider 208 Quinn, C. 32 Rainbow, P. 22 Re-inventing Japan (Morris-Suzuki) 172–3 reciprocity 53 reflexivity 22–3, 29–30 regional approaches 4–5 relational identity 197–8 religion: global Christianity 98; narratives through encounter 160–5; narratives through history 165–6; NRMs 75, 78–81; state religion 14; symposia 61–2; uchi and soto 32 representatives and articulators 129–31 Restrepo, Eduardo 177, 181 returnee school children 24–7 rice 11–13

rice cookers 4, 82–8 Ricoeur, P. 103 Riesman, P. 22 ‘Rituals and ritualisation in families’ 161 Rohlen, T. 106, 193 Rorty, R. 194 Roth, Joshua 27–30 ryokan 69–74, 156 Sagiura, Kenichi 180 Sahlins, Marshall 6, 21, 110, 114 Said, Edward 194, 195n.1 Sakura, O. 172 Salamink, O. 205 Samoa 53 Santayana,XX 201, 202n.1 Sato¯bar, Gunei 24 Savage Landor, Henry 154, 155 school children 24–7 science, Anthropology as 186–7 science, history of 173–4 secularisation 98 Sedgwick, Mitchell W. 4, 215 self, Japanese conceptions of 11–13 Sen, A. 98 Senri Ethnological Studies (SES) 59, 60–1 Seoul 119 Seoul University 179 September 11 2001 98, 189 settler/repeat fieldwork 49 Shikoku 49 Shimizu, Akitoshi 3, 180, 184–5 shinjinrui travellers 126–7, 212 Shintoism 14, 16, 32 Shirakawa 198, 200 shrines 162 Simmel, G. 32 Singapore 77 Sino-British Agreement (1984) 85 situational identity 197–8 slave trade 15 Smuts, General 171 social action theory 24 social dynamics 68 social ecology theory 168–74 social responsibility 53 Social Science Research Council 135 social Spencerism 168, 172 society, individuals and 23–4 sociology 23–4, 184 Soka Gakkai 79 South in Japanese anthropology 179–80 Southeast Asia 179–80

Index

243

Starr, Frederick 153 Stein, Lorenz von 14 Steinhoff, Patricia 139 stereotypes 126–7 stiff shoulders 39–41 Stocking, G.W. 34 Strangeness of Tawaraya (Muramatsu) 72 strangers 32–6 Strathern, M. 38 Sukyo Mahikari 79–81 superior-inferior relationship 111–14, 115

UK, expatriate housewives in 141–6 Umesao, Tadao 56, 59, 62 universities 25–6, 108, 119, 134, 137, 205 us-them 193–4 USA 104, 134

Tabi 70 Taipei University 179 Taiwan 19–20, 73, 206 Takeda, Akira 55n.3 Tamotsu, Aoki 208 Tanabe, Hajime 172–3 Tang China 11–12 Taniguchi Foundation 58 Taniguchi Symposia 58–63, 215 Tapper, R. 31, 37n.1 Tenrikyo 79, 81 Thai rice 82 Thailand 206 theoretical models 3–4, 23–9, 207–8 three-way comparisons 108 time and emphasis, dichotomies as 173–4 time-space compression 15 Tocharian 152 Tokyo demonstrations 92–3 Tokyo Metropolitan University 57, 58, 62–3 Tokyo University 178, 179, 182 Torii, Ryu-zo¯ 178–9 tourism 69–70, 73 tradition 200 training 134–5, 137 travellers 123–32, 212 treaty ports 149, 154 triangular frame of reference 180–1 Trobriand 50 tropicalisation 99 truth 196 Tsuboi, Sho¯goro¯ 177, 178 Tsuda, Takeyuki 27–30, 100 Turner, Victor 28 Tylor, Stephen 51, 187

wa 106–7 war on terror 98 Watching the English (Fox) 36 wealth, anthropology and 184–6 Weber, Max 24, 60, 61 websites 54n.1 ‘West’ 91, 141–2 West in Japanese anthropology 177–8 ‘West in the head’ 100–1 Westerners, defining 92–4 wet-rice agriculture 11–13 ‘white’ 149 White Book 69, 73 White, Bruce 4 White, Merry 28 Whiting, Robert 106 The Wide World Magazine 150 Wolf, E.R. 15 Wong, Dixon 1, 4 world anthropologies project 177, 181– 2 World Council 182 The World of Living Things (Imanishi) 169 world system 110 World War II 13 writing culture 191–2, 215, 216–17 Writing Culture (Clifford) 51, 213

uchi and soto: see insider/outsider Ueyama, Synpei 173

Zeserson, J. 44

Van Bremen, Jan: collaboration 155; colonial anthropology 184–5, 205; Confucianism 61–2; nationality 22; native anthropology 197; as Secretary General 1, 2 Vogel, Ezra 137

Yamaori, Tetsuo 61 Yamashita, Shinji 1, 6, 213 Yamato state 11–13, 14 Yanagita, Kunio 52, 53, 199 ‘yellow’ 149 Yoshida, Kenji 60 Yoshida, T. 6, 32

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