Introduction

Abstract

Taking its cue from the articles in this special issue, this introduction explores what value the debates over the "post-relation" might have for Japanese anthropology and its studies on music. It argues that in these two decades after 2000, Japanese anthropology has valued and quite frequently overvalued the social power the relation may have, influenced by the precarious social situation of Japanese society, which has experienced a drastic post-industrialization shift. Especially focused on the studies on music, which has had a significantly active role in those relation-focused debates, it demonstrates how mainstream Japanese anthropological debates have been dependent on and reproduced its relational thinking. Hence, it maintains the necessity of the revaluation of solitude or being alone as an ethnographic concept, overlooked and even ignored although sometimes found in people's actual lives. This introduction is not intended to provide any theoretical definition for "solitude." Instead, it reviews the three original strategies and techniques—the institutionalization of the relation, self-enjoyment, and in-relation analysis—that the articles of the special issue used to expose their ethnographic details.