Doing Fieldwork in Japan

From Scrambled Messages to an Impromptu Dip: Serendipity in Finding a Field Location

When I was in Tokyo setting about finding a suitable location for my first fieldwork, an eminent American anthropologist, who for diplomatic reasons shall remain nameless, told me that British anthropologists are far more concerned with their own egos than with the study of science. Since I had a degree in general science, which I subsequently discovered bore little relation to the subject of social anthropology, I was not too concerned with this apparent put-down. I mention the incident at the start of this chapter for three reasons. First, like a government health warning on cigarette packets, I advise that my approach may possibly interfere with the anthropological health of an American reader. Second, I wish immediately to make clear that my cultural background may have influenced the proceedings. And third, I hope that by introducing some of the more controversial aspects of my early anthropological experience, I might encourage a new student to see that there may be more than one way to solve a problem. j o y h e n d r y From Scrambled Messages to an Impromptu Dip: Serendipity in Finding a Field Location Joy Hendry writing fieldnotes in the pre-laptop era, at her desk in Kyushu. Life was in fact very different for students setting out to work in Japan in 1975, when I made my first foray into the world of anthropological fieldwork. First, there were only a very small number of anthropological ancestors. For a British student, these were almost all foreign, and they had a somewhat different idea of the subject. However, I did find that when I wrote to them, each replied in some way or other offering to help, and I am still grateful to them all. Even the one who made the above comment did it in frustration because I was unwilling to join a team revisiting the site of a big previous study. I had no training in the apparently American science of anthropology, and I set out with the possibly romantic idea that I wanted to find my own village and do a relatively bounded study there. This approach is now out-of-date, but it was at the time what many anthropology students setting out from Oxford (and other British universities ) did. Moreover, we had very little preparation before going to the field. Courses in research methods had yet to be invented in the UK, and the difficulties of life in the field were regarded as an appropriate rite de passage for future professional life. Qualified with a diploma in social anthropology, some Japanese language, and background reading on the area of my choice, I was dispatched to the field with a grant obtained by outlining a general plan for the study of marriage practices. I set off with little more than a letter of recommendation from a senior professor (a China specialist), a very basic grant, and a few names and telephone numbers. Preparation for fieldwork is now much more available, and there are several personal accounts of the experience and many more ancestors to shine a light along the path. Formal arrangements with Japanese universities also help new fieldworkers to orient themselves once they arrive. What follows may be surprising to the neophyte of the early twenty-first century, then, but I believe that the serendipitous events that occur during the endeavor are often where the best lines of inquiry emerge. I therefore hope that the details I recount here of my first taste of fieldwork may prove, if strange, as useful to the new reader now as they were to me then. One advantage I had when I set out for fieldwork was prior experience of Japan, a benefit often shared by today’s anthropology students. My first visit had been largely to study Japanese, when I was fortunate to find accommodation in a house with ten young Japanese who, though keen to practice their English over dinner, also provided excellent role models for speaking Japanese during the rest of the day. It was here also that the seeds of inquiry for 56 | j o y h e n d r y my first project were sown, for particularly the young women with whom I found myself living spent much of their time discussing the subject of marriage . Their chief concern was to compare the relative merits of love matches versus arrangements initiated with...