This ethnographic study elucidates several characteristics of the pastoral mode of consumption that has developed through a combination of the subsistence economy and market economy. I examine the household strategy of the Samburu, who live in north central Kenya, examining their household income and expenses, giving special attention to their cultural background. The Samburu are semi-nomadic pastoralists who occupy the Samburu District which lies in a semi-desert region in north central Kenya. Most of the Samburu raise cattle, sheep, and goats, and live mainly on milk. In 1991, the first periodic livestock market in the Samburu District was established in Suguta Marmar town, after which people began selling their livestock to buyers from urban areas. They now eat not only livestock produce but also agricultural produce bought with cash. I analyzed one year's worth of income and expense data from two sample Samburu households that live near the livestock market, covering the period from October 1995 to September 1996. Both households make a living mainly by raising livestock. Sample household A is led by a wealthy livestock trader, while sample household B is led by a poor retailer of sugar. The result of my analysis is summarized below. (1) Household A spends 83% of its income that it gets from the sale of livestock on the purchase of more livestock. Meanwhile, household B spends 73% of its income on the purchase of livestock. Both households thus spend a considerable amount of their income on the purchase of livestock. That indicates that both households regard livestock as an important subject of consumption. They follow the housekeeping strategy of spending money on preserving livestock. (2) Wealthy household A constantly spends regular amounts of money on maize flour at the market, reflecting its cultural concern for eating. By contrast, poor household B only sporadically buys maize flour; its purchase of maize flour is affected by rainfall, which determines their extent of self-sufficiency. If enough rain falls, poor households can exclusively depend on the milk that their cattle produce. However, during droughts, when milk is in short supply, poor households are compelled to depend on the market to acquire maize flour, with a view to surviving the drought. (3) The Engel coefficient of wealthy household A is 73, while that of poor household B is only 39. My analysis shows opposite results to what can be expected from Engel's law. That means that Engel's law is not necessarily applicable to Samburu households, in which people revert to their dependency on the subsistence economy as the occasion demands. (4) The housekeeping strategy of wealthy household A shows an expansive tendency, contrasting with the strategy of poor household B, which shows a sustaining tendency. The difference in strategies is reflected in the two households' different styles of bank account usage and commercial activity. Wealthy household A seldom uses its bank account, because it invests most of its savings in the livestock trade. By contrast, poor household B regards its bank account and the retail of sugar as important provisions against unforeseen situations. (5) The housekeeping strategy of the Samburu is based on a thrifty tendency. They highly esteem a steady person who holds down unnecessary expenditures and invests in livestock constantly, regarding him as a sound livestock keeper. Conversely, as rumors have it, Samburu feel scorn for the generous spendthrift who readily sells his livestock for alcohol. Following Woodburn's terminology, the system of the Samburu household economy can be expressed as an "eternally delayed return system." In an agricultural society, the fruits of one's labor can be earned at one sweep during the harvest season. However, in a pastoral society, the fruits of one's labor are not clearly delimited, because the herd

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Native anthropology, a subfield of anthropology that emerged in the trend toward postcolonial studies in the 1980s, has been developed almost exclusively by those who belong to the (former) colonies of the West: namely, those from the so-called Third World or of the First Nations. In the familiar oppositional schemes of "the colonizer" vs. "the colonized," "the industrialized" vs. "the developing," "the white/Caucasian" vs. "the colored," the Japanese seemingly do not have a clear place to fill, due to Japan's mixed status as both "the (former) colonizer (of neighboring Asian countries)" and "the colonized (by the United States)," or as "the colored" and "the industrialized." Native anthropology by Japanese persons, however, does exist, or at least is emerging recently. It is being developed especially by those Japanese who are studying/have studied abroad, including the author. This paper discusses how a Japanese person could become a self-identified native anthropologist, what roles Japanese native anthropologists should play, and what unique challenges their endeavors face with, based on the author's own experiences of publishing and presenting papers both abroad and in Japan. The roles that Japanese native anthropologists are expected to play are twofold: to write on one's own culture-society both in Western languages and in Japanese, and to critique the West-centric academic hegemony by critiquing representations of the Japanese (re-) produced in Western anthropology and other disciplines. Yet the first endeavor could lead to a lack of stability, both in the contents of the writings and the identity of the writer. Writing in two different languages, often for different kinds of readership (writing in a European language for Western academics, and writing in one's own language for academics and lay people), the contents of ethnography inevitably vary, or change, even if it is based on the same research. When written in Western academic language, the ethnography is webbed in Western academic hegemony. When written in the language that participants can read, and when those participants are the researcher's own people, the ethnography is modified to be "less offensive" to them. At the same time, the writer's identity as a "native" researcher is at risk, because despite those efforts of modification, the readers/participants at home can still criticize or reject the writings. The second endeavor of Japanese native anthropologists - to critique representations of the Japanese (re-)produced in Western academia - meets another challenge. Japan, as a field that is conveniently industrialized and exotic, tends to attract ambitious young Western researchers, especially American feminists, who wish to treat eye-catching topics of sexual behavior of the Other but also wish to avoid the blame of being colonialists. In response to that trend, Japanese native anthropologists need to argue back, by pointing out the idiosyncrasy of their academia. Yet it is difficult for a non-Westerner to make her/himself heard with the West-centric academic hegemony so huge, the language barrier so high, and the presentation or publication of papers in the West so time- and money-consuming. The author, for example, has presented papers critiquing the representations of the "erotic" Japanese (women), especially those made by American feminist anthropologists, at three English-speaking conferences in Japan, Canada and the United States. Yet the critique did not seem to reach the audience whom the author exactly targeted. Despite such challenges, the author argues that native anthropology by Japanese scholars has a significant role. It will keep reminding Western anthropologists, especially the younger generations, of the idiosyncrasy of their own

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In this article, I consider the developmental possibility of cultural anthropological studies on Japan by Japanese persons, and rethink the problems of describing Japanese folk culture to the Japanese people using the Japanese language, on the basis of the concept of the "world system of anthropology" formulated by Takami KUWAYAMA. As a concrete example, I take up the model of Japanese cultural history as proposed by Toshio KURODA (1926-1993), a famous historian of the Japanese medieval period, especially his historical model based on the concept of Kenmitsu Buddhism and the concept of Shinbutsu-shugo (mixture of Buddhism and Shintoism). I attempt to describe the folk culture of Japan according to that historical model, and also articulate problems in describing Japanese folk culture through that attempt. In creating the concept of a "world system of anthropology," KUWAYAMA clarified its structure of hegemony, while simultaneously describing the position of "native" and "native anthropologists" to that system. The position of natives and native anthropologists is marginal to the center of the world system of anthropology, in the same way that Japanese cultural anthropologists are marginal to the so-called "local system" in which Japanese cultural discourses are created. In that "local system," historical studies and Japanese folklore form the center of academic cultural discourses about Japan, and their discourses are formulated by such actors as the publishing world, the policies of the government toward cultural inheritance, and educational systems, and are consumed and reproduced as "Japanese traditional culture" by the general Japanese audience. Meanwhile, current Japanese anthropology and anthropologists lie outside that "local system," that is, they are marginal to it, because they have excluded Japanese studies from their field. Accordingly, KUWAYAMA'S attempt to relate that marginal position to the central hegemony and ideology of the world system of anthropology can be considered an effective method to deconstruct the ideology and modernity of the Japanese "local system." In my essay, I specifically look at the model of Japanese cultural history developed by Toshio KURODA, a heretical Japanese historian, as mentioned above. That is because the central ideology created by the Japanese "local system" treats history as changing while folk culture remains unchanged, while KURODA'S model of cultural history conflicts with that kind of current cultural and historical discourses. For example, he said that the orthodox religion of Japan in the medieval era was not the so-called Kamakura new Buddhism (i.e., the Jodo, Zen and Nichiren sects) as is generally thought, but rather Kenmitsu Buddhism - which started in the 8c or 9c and lasted to the 15c or 16c - which lay on the theological foundation of Honji-suijaku (the idea that Japanese deities were temporary figures in Japan of the Buddhist gods from India). Further, he also demonstrated that Japanese Shinto was merely one sect of Kenmitsu Buddhism, and did not have historical substance. He regarded Kenmitsu Buddhism as the original basis of Japanese folk culture, not the masses in themselves or Shinto. In that model, then, where exactly can one position Japanese folk culture? KURODA insisted that Kenmitsu Buddhism itself became indigenous in folk society, and he opposed the idea that folk culture reflected Japanese culture before the introduction of Buddhism to the country. That historical model contradicts that of Japanese folklore, which supposes the existence of a "pure" and "essential" model of Japanese folk culture outside the influence of Buddhism. KURODA regarded folk culture to be Kenmitsu Buddhism in medieval Japan, and current Japanese folk culture as the outcome of historical processes

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The emergence of native anthropology has resulted in a fundamental reconsideration of the past anthropological practice in which stronger people study and describe weaker people under colonial conditions. No longer are "natives" in the formerly "primitive" world objects of research who silently acquiesce to their representations by the former colonizers - "indigenes" who never talk back. They are now active agents of research - "literati," if you will - who do talk about their own culture in their own words from their own viewpoints. In the "world system of anthropology," however, in which the United States, Great Britain, and France occupy the center, the natives' discourse tends to be devalued due to their peripheral status in the system. In this article, I dare define the Japanese as "natives," despite their own colonial past, in order to examine the problems involved in the writing of their own culture in English. The first section introduces a new concept, the "ethnographic triad," which consists of the writer, the described, and the reader. The status of natives in anthropology may best be understood in terms of the shift from the described to the reader and then to the writer. Focusing on the reader, I distinguish four major categories within the ethnographic readership: (1) people who belong to the same linguistic and cultural community as the writer; (2) natives who have been studied and described; (3) native anthropologists; and (4) people who are neither describers nor the described. The first category ordinarily constitutes the assumed readership of ethnography, but when the Japanese write in English, that does not apply. Instead, their writings are intended for the non-Japanese whose cultural backgrounds are different from that of the Japanese. This fact explains why the same ethnography (e.g., a series of works by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney) is appreciated differently in Japan and elsewhere. More generally, it shows the critical importance of the writer's ability to grasp the reader's mind in ethnographic writing. That argument is illustrated in the second section by my example of Ruth Benedict's classical work on Japan, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. In writing about the Japanese, Benedict was clearly aware that her target readership, or more broadly, audience, was American - her fellow citizens. Her task was, therefore, to make the Japanese intelligible to the Americans, even though her depictions of Japan might not make much sense to the Japanese. In this regard, Benedict chose to be an "Orientalist" in Edward Said's terminology. A most notable example of Benedict's "Orientalism" is her likening of the Japanese emperor to the Stars and Stripes: both are sacred and inviolable. Such explanations are very useful in helping Americans understand Japan, but whether or not they make sense to the people described is a completely different issue. In the third section, I further discuss the importance of the assumed readership in ethnographic writing by citing three examples from my own experiences as a professor at an American university. The first example concerns the question of how to explain miso soup for Americans unfamiliar with Japanese food. After trials and errors, I found that we could best convey the cultural meanings of miso soup by likening it to apple pie, for they both symbolize mother's cooking and, as the expression "as American as apple pie" shows, the entire nation. We must remember, though, that this comparison is of little use to the Japanese, as well as people in other countries, who know very little about American food. The second example concerns the question of how to explain Japan's place in the global community. In the United States, there is a generalized Asian stereotype, which makes Japan

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