A Discipline on Foot: Inventing Japanese Native Ethnography, 1910–1945 by Alan Christy (review)

Several years ago I audaciously decided to teach a seminar titled “Folk-loristics in Japan: History, Method, Context.” Most of the students were advanced graduate students studying folklore and anthropology, but very few had any background with Japan. By necessity, therefore, all of the required reading assignments were in English. We had plenty to work with: over the last two decades, there have been a number of English-language works on minzokugaku (Japanese folkloristics or native ethnology) as well as on mingei (folk art).¹ But these readings were diverse and scattered, each one touching on only a few of the major players, texts, or theoretical aspects in the development of the discipline. I found myself struggling in lectures and discussions to tie readings together in a meaningful fashion, to weave a narrative that was, if not comprehensive, at least comprehensible. I also found myself wishing for a book that would do this for me, a monograph to introduce (but not simplify) the discourses and the individuals responsible for developing minzokugaku. Alan Christy’s A Discipline on Foot is that book.

Indeed, Christy confronts this daunting task head-on. His project is to describe the way in which an entire disciplinary field, minzokugaku, came into being during the first half of the twentieth century. As he explains, “minzokugaku in its formative years was an extended experiment: in designating a wide range of new objects as epistemologically valid and valuable, in creating new methodologies for extracting new objects, and in transforming the subjectivity of knowledge producers” (p. 10). Christy weaves the narrative of this experiment over the ten chapters of his monograph; the story he tells is one of failures and successes, rival personalities, conflicting ideologies, and ultimately of a new academic discipline that reflects the changing historical concerns of the twentieth century as well as the intellectual struggles of its founders.

This book is a major contribution on a number of levels. For starters, it presents for the first time in English the big-picture view of the early years of minzokugaku as well as accounts of a number of relatively unheralded scholars who were present at its creation. Most works on minzokugaku, in English and Japanese, tend to focus on the overwhelming role played by Yanagita Kunio. Christy certainly does not ignore Yanagita’s paternity, but he complicates it from the start by intertwining Yanagita’s trajectory with those of other major players, most notably Shibusawa Keizō, Orikuchi Shinobu, Minakata Kumagusu, Kon Wajirō, and Miyamoto Tsuneichi. Particularly valuable is Christy’s focus on Shibusawa, who was a wealthy financier, renowned banker, and one-time minister of finance. Despite his moneyed blueblood background, Shibusawa’s passion was folklore; he founded the Attic Museum (now called the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture; Nihon Jōmin Bunka Kenkyūjo), a central research institution for minzokugaku and especially folk objects and tools (mingu). Christy shows us the processes by which many of Yanagita’s projects and the work of numerous other researchers were made possible through Shibusawa’s financial assistance.

The book also provides brief biographies of a number of “middle-tier native ethnologists” (p. 35), such as Hayakawa Kōtarō and Hashiura Yasuo. These sketches serve not only to demonstrate the range of interests and intellectual backgrounds of minzokugaku scholars but also to provide depth and personality to a discourse that has so often been dominated by a few big names. Having said that, perhaps inevitably, the leading role remains the charismatic, problematic, and enigmatic figure of Yanagita Kunio. The book ends up proving not only Yanagita’s intellectual leadership of the field but his octopus-like powers of reach; we see his tentacles extending into almost every aspect of the burgeoning discipline. Christy’s valuable introduction of other scholars expands our understanding of minzokugaku but also highlights the fact that, ultimately, all roads lead back...