Abstract Tarō is one of many small fishing communities on the northeastern coast of Iwate Prefecture which was decimated by Japan’s catastrophic tsunami on 11 March 2011. Historically, in most parts of the world, including Japan, post-disaster sightseeing has often been portrayed as a form of Dark Tourism emphasizing death, loss and devastation. However, in Tarō, community-led tourism post-2011 has

Abstract Practice centers (dojos) in the Japanese new religion Mahikari are perceived to be spaces suffused with divine light. This article examines this understanding in terms of the enactment of a particular kind of atmosphere – a lightscape – which is deemed to be capable of automatically producing transformative effects. As a key ethnographic example of this idea of atmospheric effects, I consider

(2021). Seeing like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War. Asian Anthropology. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Cosmopolitan rurality, depopulation, and entrepreneurial ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan. Asian Anthropology. Ahead of Print.

Abstract This article examines the different ways Africans present themselves in Japan and considers what these differences explain about the function of ethno-racial categories and discourses in the Japanese context. Specifically, it highlights the importance of cultural factors in shaping the ways Japanese discourses conceptualize and engage categorical difference, as well as the limitations of examining

Abstract International labor migrants have been widely studied, particularly on land. However, this anthropological research aims to shed light on the working and living conditions of labor migrants at sea, in the longline fishing industry on the Pacific Ocean based out of Honolulu, Hawaii. When working on a fishing boat, labor migrants encounter two distinct working environments: at port and in international

This article critiques the concept of “being Asian” by focusing on practices and discourses of Japanese sojourners living in or moving between Canada, Australia, and Singapore. By adopting the fram...

Culinary borrowings are so common as to seem trivial, and yet they are consequential for many of the actors concerned. People’s livelihoods, professional status, and social identity may be tied to ...

This paper explores the transformation of the Sichuan hot pot from a regional Chinese food to a global cuisine. It first analyzes how Sichuan food businesses had been “gentrified” by rigorous state...

This introduction outlines the conceptual framework of the special issue. Culinary politics involves a contest over the social organization and cultural meanings of food by a variety of actors: bot...

This paper examines how Japanese grape wine production has been promoted as cultural heritage, through the collaboration of local official and private actors. In 2018, Japan’s wine making was desig...

Abstract The ritual of the teyyams, in north Kerala, has been referred to as “art form,” “folk art,” “ritual art,” and such, not only by tourist guides and leaflets, but also by academic works and, more and more, in the everyday speech of local communities.1 In this article we intend to question the adequacy of such categorizations, in light of plausible definitions of art and folklore, and investigate

Abstract In 2015, Shibuya ward became the first district in Japan to start issuing same-sex partnership certificates, signifying the first step towards public recognition of same-sex couples in Japan. Same-sex marriage in Japan has been a contentious issue, with opponents arguing that it will end up supporting the patriarchal and discriminatory family registry system. Marriage nevertheless serves as

Abstract Though dansō—female-to-male crossdressing—has been historically embedded in Japan as tradition, performance, and entertainment, in the last fifteen years it has fractured and increasingly become commercialized, adopted by young people—a phenomenon I call “contemporary dansō culture.” One example this article explores are dansō café-and-bars—establishments where employees dress as another gender—which

Abstract In the last twenty years, Japanese transgender people have acquired increased visibility in mainstream Japanese society. Notwithstanding that, female-to-male (FTM) trans people continue to be misunderstood by the Japanese public, and largely underrepresented in Anglophone academic scholarship. This paper therefore seeks to account for one aspect of FTM cultural life in present-day Japan that

(2020). Beyond romance: fieldwork in Sarawak. Asian Anthropology: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 295-296.

Abstract Conventional destinations for Asian students have been primarily English-speaking countries, including the US, England, Australia, and Canada, and accordingly, existing literature on mobility among such students has mainly focused on flows from Asia to Western countries. In the last decade, however, South Korea (henceforth, Korea) has emerged as an increasingly popular study abroad destination

Abstract This introduction aims to situate four research articles on “Queer Lives in Contemporary Japan” in the larger field of gender and sexuality studies. It argues that, historically, the concepts “queer” or “transgender” are not particularly novel. Early twentieth-century progressives in Japan observed and sought social acceptance and suggested that individuals thought of as “sexually abnormal”

Abstract In Singapore, traditional local coffee (kopi) and coffee shops (kopitiam) compete with a growing slew of third-wave cafés and their specialty brews. In this context, we show that coffee offers a window into understanding contemporary millennial youth culture in the society. This report tracks this phenomenon through ethnographic work in Singapore’s cafés and coffee shops, combined with interviews

Abstract Coalescing in the 1980s, visual kei is currently a Japanese music subculture known for flamboyant theatrics, a woman-dominated fanbase, and its performers’ non-normative, often playfully queer gender expressions, which defy heteronormative binaries and hegemonic conceptions of gender and sexuality. This article illuminates the queer facets of visual kei through an in-depth investigation focusing

(2020). Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan: Tokyo after Ten. Asian Anthropology: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 291-293.

Abstract This paper is an ethnographer’s reconstruction of his experience in Thailand with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the flux of opposing biases he was subject to as a black African on one hand and a farang development expert on the other. The paper discusses how racial thinking affected dynamics in the UN office and in the field, and how

Abstract In this paper, I demonstrate how long-term multigenerational minorities and Japanese residents engage in the current socio-political discourse of “multicultural coexistence” society (tabunkakyōsei shakai), which had not previously been integral to the vocabulary of national rhetoric in Japan until the 2000s. I argue that the lack of clear definition and goals of multicultural coexistence by

Abstract Urespa, meaning “to grow together” in the Ainu language, is a social venture founded at Sapporo University in 2010. The Urespa club brings Indigenous Ainu and Wajin (i.e. non-Ainu) students together in a curriculum-based environment to co-learn the Ainu language and Ainu cultural practices. The initiative’s aim is to restory the conventional narrative of Otherness in Japan by creating a transformative

Abstract This study is based on field research in Peace Neighborhood in Shanghai (2016–2018), where I followed a small group of “nail householders” (dingzihu 钉子户) protesting the upcoming demolition of their neighborhood, and recorded their stories. Whereas previous studies on nail householders have focused on the residents’ strategies claiming their rights, I aim to add a subjective dimension to better

Abstract This introduction provides a literature review on the anthropology of the senses and affect, highlighting the theoretical and methodological issues, and pointing at the ideas of “affective practices” or “practices of feeling with the world” as possible solutions. Subsequently, it reviews the literature related to these topics focusing on Japan, showing existing gaps in research. Lastly, it

Critique comes in different styles, each doing different things. One form, not uncommon to contemporary cultural anthropology, is characterized more narrowly by what we might call criticism: a good text staves it off; a poor one is, sometimes viciously, torn apart. It can all feel—and the feeling part is important—rather uncomfortable at times. In the field of theory, where terms necessarily get a

Abstract When asked to reflect on their own creative practice, contemporary artists in Osaka would frequently invoke images of movement. In lieu of a preformed mental image or plan, they would emphasise the processual and emergent nature of creating a work of art and the importance of moving one's body, likening the gradual and meandering nature of their understanding to a “path.” At the same time

Abstract Ethnography is a methodology that requires both intellectual and physical efforts and is carried out through the body. The body is also the site where affect is experienced, which in Massumi’s view is “an ability to affect and a susceptibility to be affected” of a body in constant transition. This article explores my ethnographic fieldwork on FtM crossdresser (dansō) escorts in Japan, taking

Abstract This article explores the discursive mediation of affect in the professional practice of interpreting in contemporary Japan. It argues that affective practices, applied to the observation of interpreters' bodily and discursive performances, show that the fabricated distinction between reason and emotion present in the professional discourse of interpreting is misaligned with the reality of

Abstract Inspired by a broader “sensory turn” in anthropology, research on Japanese traditional performing arts has recently acknowledged the intense physicality of doing fieldwork with actors and musicians. Moving from the similarly situated perspective of ethnographic apprenticeship, this article shows how shōga, the oral mnemonic system used in Japanese court music (gagaku), can function as a technique

Abstract Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Shinto shrines and kamidana (Shinto family altars) were a fixture in the lives of Japanese immigrants and their communities in the United States. However, after Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans, their communities and their religion were considered a threat to national security and as a result thousands of Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps

Abstract This paper examines how certain perceived attributes of Japanese houses affect and shape the bodies of their inhabitants – namely, Russian women in Japan. In turn, this relationship affects the women’s modes of being in the host country. Drawing on fieldwork data, I explore how the coldness and wetness of houses mediate the effects on the inhabitants’ senses, creating an affective experience

Abstract Anthropological studies of tsunami-related folk spirituality are rare. Yet historically, ghosts have often helped residents in Iwate, Japan to mitigate some unimaginable human losses resulting from each of three calamitous tsunami which have struck its coastline during the last 122 years. Among the many tsunami death-mitigating ghost tales recorded is Yanagita Kunio’s Kyūjū-Kyū-Wa: Ōtsunami

Abstract Since the 2008 Lehman shock, the number of individuals who have decided to move to rural areas in order to pursue more individualized modes of working and living has increased in Japan. This ethnographic article explores how urbanite newcomers grapple between their ambitions of engaging in self-created work and the pressures of making their dreams come true. The study draws on participant

Abstract This paper – at the intersection of island studies, youth research, and the anthropology of the future – examines the future perspectives of young Oki Islanders. When we investigate future images, we also explore present-day action. What do young people expect, what do they aspire to, what do they dream? In metropolitan post-growth Japan, the “crisis of youth” and the “lost generation” of

Abstract This report reflects on the use of endurance running as an intentional fieldwork method to engage with the farmers and landscapes of rural Japan. It provides a unique means of interacting with those landscapes while taking researchers into places and communities otherwise difficult to reach. Exploration via endurance running results in a restructured researcher-informant relationship, a greater

The book is an ethnographic study of Indonesian migrant women who work as domestic workers in Malaysia. As indicated by the book title Follow the Maid, Olivia Killias has literally followed the Ind...

Abstract This report analyzes how lay reflections of health have been integrated into context-specific traditional medical systems in Sri Lanka. Interviews, focus group discussions, and case studies with people practicing traditional medicine and patients treated with it have shown how health is a socio-cultural experience embedded in Sinhalese culture. Sinhalese medicine as a major traditional medical

Abstract For more than a century Afghanistan has been marred by (among other things) the interethnic conflict between two major groups in the country, with Pashtuns in the role of the dominant ethnicity, and Hazaras of the oppressed minority. The post-Taliban period in Afghanistan has seen a renaissance in Hazaras’ social and political participation, which has aroused fear and anxiety in Pashtuns’

Abstract Muslim pilgrimage has gained much attention in public debates and academic research. This article examines gendered shopping practices among Muslim Malay Malaysian women performing pilgrimage (umrah) connected with ziarah, which is understood here as part religious observance and part holiday and leisure, through a multi-sited ethnographic study. Only a few studies have examined Muslim pilgrimage

Abstract This article examines the obstacles preventing women from entering national-level politics in Japan and reviews research by political scientists and sociologists who use methods associated with anthropology such as participant observation and interviews to investigate the rise of women’s political activism at local levels. The article discusses “housewife” activism that has propelled significant

Abstract Statistics have shown a lack of women’s representation in politics in India at the Parliament level. In post-colonial India, the role and place of women has been consigned to the domestic sphere, as they are conferred the responsibility of upholding the virtues of Indian civilization to nurture their families. This may account for the infrequent participation among women in formal political

Abstract With the growing popularity of heritage tourism throughout the world in recent years, international agencies have guided their member states to develop different forms of tourism, including cultural tourism, sustainable tourism, and local participation in heritage conservation and tourism development. This paper first reviews the concepts of cultural tourism, heritage, sustainable development

Abstract Paying attention to the history of urban governance in postwar Japan, this article discusses how decades of governmental neglect and social exclusion gave rise to alternative practices and technologies of care in marginalized enclaves. In Kotobuki, a former day laborers’ district (yoseba) in Yokohama, the single-room occupancies known as doya have become care facilities for the impoverished

Abstract This article explores the attempted introduction of a lifting robot called “Hug” into an elderly care home in Japan. As demand for institutional elderly care in Japan escalates due to population aging and a move away from familial care, the shortage of professional care staff is also intensifying. Attributing this shortage partly to carers’ endemic back pain, the Japanese government and corporations

The way Japanese culture forms families (ie) has historically provided women with great autonomy. The formation of the ie as a perpetuating, corporate, stem family with impartible inheritance raises the successor’s wife’s status in the ie above that of the successor’s brothers, who leave the ie. The ie’s succession of generations functions most smoothly with one son, or a daughter and then a son, the

In India, as in many other Asian countries, private tutoring to supplement school education and prepare students for competitive examinations is a burgeoning industry. These “tuitions” provide opportunities for self-employment, including for many women working in or near their homes. Through an ethnographic study of tutors in a Delhi neighborhood, this article presents tuitions work as a form of moral

Based on my own experience as both a student and a teacher, this paper illuminates the “gap” between the systems of anthropology education in Japanese and American universities, and argues that the major “gap” between the Japanese and the American systems of anthropology education lies in the number of professional anthropologists in the unit of teaching and that small Japanese programs with just a

This article presents a brief historical review of anthropology in Korea. In the formative stage, two major movements are considered: anthropology that was introduced under Japanese rule (1910–1945) in the form of colonial ethnology, and modern anthropology that was imported directly from the West after the Liberation (1945). Then, recent trends are examined, with particular reference to anthropological

Placing my earlier arguments about the marginality of Japanese anthropology in the world in both historical and comparative perspectives, this article examines the influence of two important recent developments on the status of Japanese and, more broadly, East Asian scholarship – the impact of neoliberalism on, and the spread of audit culture within, higher education. Special attention is paid to the

This article explores return migration for the purpose of starting small businesses. I discuss the cases of three individuals who decided to leave their employment in urban areas to start businesses in a small town in Tōhoku. The key research question focuses on how gender influences the ability of people to start and maintain small business in rural areas and the extent to which expectations and assumptions

from their data. In doing so, the original theoretical framework with which the researcher began is necessarily expanded due to the variation found in the data. This is precisely what drives social theory forward. The little variation that is allowed into this book is brushed aside as the pathogenic force of modernity or seen as inconsequential because we are so cosmopolitan that it is impossible to

This article investigates the embodied experiences of “exceptionality” of casino resort employees in Singapore. Working in Singapore’s newly-opened mega-casino resorts, migrant and local employees claim a sense of agency over their own professionalism, mobilities, and moralities. Actively equipping themselves with expertise, knowledge, experiences, and certain moral attitudes, casino employees practice

Within the last two decades or so there has been increased scholarly focus on the emergence, consolidation and future of the middle class in developing Asia. This is also the case with the Malay Muslim middle class in Malaysia, but how this class is developing over time is not well understood even if the Malays constitute the largest and fastest growing section of the middle class in Malaysia. Based

Changing practices of capitalism have produced new forms of connections, flows and mobilities in Asia, and they intersect with the increased use of “exceptions” or “special rules” to maximize capitalist profits. Ranging from the Greater Mekong Sub-region and the ASEAN Free Trade Area to the more recently opened Shanghai Free-Trade Zone, many Asian countries have benefited from such special zones in

ecological immortality....They see their cremated remains not simply as disposed into the earth but integrated with and nourishing the earth” (p. 189). In his conclusion, Boret asks whether we are seeing a liberalization of death rites in Japan. If Aging and Loss reads like a melancholic flowing essay, Japanese Tree Burial reads more like the doctoral dissertation from which it derives, with the frequent

The gruesome murder of two British tourists in September 2014 on “paradisiac” Koh Tao, a world-renowned diving site in Thailand, attracted widespread international attention. The authorities therefore urged the police to swiftly resolve a case threatening foreign tourism arrivals and the country’s image. Using Innes’ concept of police “investigation narratives” in homicide cases, this report contrasts

This article focuses on the operational dynamic of informal small-scale trade in the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands as disclosed by local traders’ strategies of negotiation. It questions the impact of financial transaction practices – management of official fees and procedures related to payments – on the sustainability of cross-border trade. It engages with the notion of “trust” and stresses its significance

The diversity of borderland realities makes the necessity of general conceptualization particularly challenging. An interrelated conceptual triad is proposed and then applied to the experience of Quemoy Island (金门, Kinmen, Jinmen) from 1895 to the present. All borderlands are places in which contact is shaped by a standing and distinctive disparity, and the boundaries that both define and split the