This paper deals with the mechanism of a festival in Kakunodate Town in Akita Prefecture, Japan. In particular, it shows how the yama (float) procession is performed energetically every year. Further, it considers the dynamism of the festival as a process in which the excitement of the participants is generated and controlled simultaneously. While extreme excitement is created, a mechanism is also employed to control that excitement so as to prevent chaos and unnecessary disturbance beyond the framework of the festival. In the floats procession, 18 floats from parishes with Shinto shrines parade around town for three days, fulfilling various purposes. An important characteristic of the event is that the floats do not form a line and march together ; but instead march separately in keeping with their individual strategy. They follow a set of complex rules when moving around town, conducting negotiations (kosho) with each other to move forward. Following that, several floats start to exhibit signs of rivalry. That process, accompanied by complicated rules and tactics, has been compared to a type of game. However, this paper regards the festival as a movement that cannot simply be reduced to simple competitiveness or a game. Further, it examines how the logic of the festival unites various participants and keeps them tied to the event. We will first analyze the organization of participants in the floats event. Different types of young people (wakamono) pull the various floats. Although the core members of each group are residents of a particular area, the other members come from elsewhere. Specifically, in the central district of Kakunodate, owing to a recent decrease in population, a participant's position tends to be reinforced by personal connections such as having been school classmates. The participants thus come together for reasons beyond the limits of regional organization. In that case, the floats event has a deeply urban nature. Meanwhile, the association of senior people of the chonai (literally "inside the area") to which the floats belong comprises primarily of locals. Moreover, the young people who are involved in the core of the event usually maintain a close relationship with each other, even in their daily lives, and their local logic strongly influences the progress of the event. Yamabuttsuke, the crashing of two floats, functions as a point of contact between the open urban part of the event and the comparatively closed local part. While it is regarded as the climax of the event, with a strong impact on all the young people, the crashing of floats is performed through a rivalry and tactics based on the local logic. Second, the paper looks at the actual process of the parade (known as hikimawashi) in observing that local logic. Namely, the parade of floats around town is not a simple process whose purpose is to enable the crashing of the floats, but rather a complicated process where several different logics conflict with each other. This paper specifically examines a case involving the rivalry between two floats. A series of violations of the rules by both the floats contributes to their rivalry, giving rise to a relationship, termed "fatality, " that both are passionately committed to. Then, the logic, aiming to achieve the crashing of floats to settle the rivalry, adds further to their conflict, resulting in a gross deviation from the festival procedure. However, they also believe that it is important to perform the event steadily, and not to destroy the framework shared by most participants on a given level. That logic controls a different logic of rivalry. In the parade of floats, the young people are deeply involved in the process with a high level of excitement, which is simultaneously and appropriately controlled. The crashing of floats is possible when those two factors are well balanced. In the festival, the aforementioned

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The purpose of this study is to examine how yadui in Okinawa developed in modern times and to describe their development as a micro-social process in a historical and social context. A yadui is a local community, built largely by people of the gentry class or their descendants in Okinawa, from the late Ryukyu Kingdom era (18th and 19th centuries) to Okinawa of the early modern period (20th century). In the 18th century and later, quite a few gentry could not get posts in the Shuri kingdom administration, and such people had to search for new places to live. The yadui were usually created in the rural areas of Okinawa Island by poor gentry from the central city, Shuri and Naha. Compared to peasant villages, called shima or mura, which have a longer history, yadui have rarely attracted academic attention, probably because they were newly built communities. That is especially true for anthropologists and folklorists with an interest in "traditional society." However, there are so many yadui all over Okinawa Island that any study of local societies that neglected them would be one-sided. The object of my study is Yadui "K, " located in southern Okinawa Island. One salient feature of Yadui "K" is the fact that its socioeconomic development was accomplished by the combined efforts of brothers, in the context of the modern market system. Therefore, the relationships and actions among brothers are the focus of this study. My perspective on Okinawan brothers or siblings is different from the studies of Radcliffe-Brown and Fortes, who used a descent paradigm in their African studies and influenced Okinawan studies (Radcliffe-Brown 1950, Fortes 1969). Mabuchi and Ito, who studied Okinawan siblings, also share that perspective, analyzing siblings from the viewpoint of descent. For them, siblingship was merely a subordinate phenomenon derived from the principle of descent. On the other hand, studies of siblingship in Oceania and Southeast Asia demonstrate another perspective that, I think, is more informative (Kelly 1977, Marshall ed. 1981, Smith 1983, Peletz 1988). There, siblingship is perceived as a kind of cultural construct rather than a universal category, as evaluated by Schneider (Schneider 1984 : 392). They deal with siblingship per se, not from the descent perspective. Peletz, who reviewed kinship studies since 1970s, suggested that it is not necessary to analyze the relationship among living siblings from the medium of the dead or ancestor. Rather, it is necessary to analyze it in the given context. In the case of Yadui "K, " similarly to many other Okinawan yadui and villages (shima or mura), the relationship among siblings is asymmetrical. Brothers have authority over sisters, and the eldest brother has authority over younger brothers. Some anthropologists interpret that asymmetry from a descent perspective. For example, Tanaka advocates the definition of the Okinawan family and kinship structure as "a patrilineal stem system" (Tanaka 1983). In that view, the dominant position of the eldest brother is the consequence of that kinship structure. However, in the case of Yadui "K, " the domination of the eldest brother did not lead to a "patrilineal stem family" directly. Instead, a temporally-extended household--including married brothers, their wives, and their children--was often formed under the domination of the eldest brother. Furthermore, even after the younger brothers left a certain house to form their own households, the cooperation among the brothers continued, with local agricultural task groups often organized. The asymmetrical relationship between brothers did not disturb their cooperation inside or outside their households. In fact, the actions of the brothers often functioned to substantialize economic development, not just for the eldest brother but for the younger brothers as well. The

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This paper examines the anthropological style of applied practice in fieldwork by focusing on the relationship between development workers, such as nongovernmental organization (NGO) staff members, and anthropologists, from the viewpoint of dialogue, discussion, and collaboration." For that purpose, I look at the case of a Japanese NGO whose activity is promoting organic farming development in the province of Malaita in the Solomon Islands. Development assistance after the 1980s has come to lay stress on social development, which aims to empower the socially vulnerable, such as women and deprived people. Especially, the idea of participation and a typical research method, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), have been popularized in the context of social development. Participatory development, as a matter of course, considers the cultural aspects of the people who should be supported. As mentioned above, there has been a massive shift in the trend of development assistance since the 1980s. However, anthropologists generally have not established an effective rapport with development workers under the changing conditions. If applied anthropology for development assistance aims to contribute to the clients' demands through academic knowledge, there has not yet been any interrelationship in practical terms. In the postmodernism of anthropology after the 1980s, coevality and intersubjectivity in daily relations with local people, so as to avoid their unilateral representation with the authority of anthropologist, were both regarded as important factors for fieldwork and ethnography. If anthropological fieldwork is defined as an activity that establishes a dialogic relationship with local people through participation in their daily life and an understanding of social reality and local knowledge, then collaborative action can certainly take place between the people and anthropologists to deal with current affairs. Collaboration or application does not indicate a subfield of anthropology, but rather a certain situation of academic or theoretical research activity. In the Solomon Islands, where I have researched since 1987, a series of internal disputes and the collapse of social order, termed "ethnic tension, " occurred from 1998 to 2003. Although the legacy of British colonial rule was a remote cause of the tension, it was caused more directly by the failure of the central government, after independence in 1978, to develop industry and the educational system. Nor did it seriously deal with public demands in rural areas. Therefore, local development is one of the most important tasks currently facing the Solomon Islands. In 2001, local people and the government in Malaita province started introducing organic farming, supported by a Japanese NGO, Imidas, for cash income and food self-support. Imidas established a training center that aims to promote non-shifting cultivation with organic techniques and small-scale businesses in a village in the province. Local people generally recognize shifting cultivation as their traditional method, but are simultaneously interested in other farming methods with higher productivity. Imidas' activities in the training center may improve the local lifestyle. I took notice of their activity as they dealt squarely with the problem of underdevelopment in rural areas, which caused ethnic tension. I, for one, am certain that the present local conditions must be changed or improved in light of the gravity of the situation in education and economy. That conclusion resulted from numerous dialogues and discussions with the local people of Solomon Islands and observations during my fieldwork. I consider my perception of the present state of affairs in the rural society as proper, and because of such a perception, I began to work with Imidas in the field. My style of participation or intervention in Imidas' activities

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Cultural anthropology is situated in a very severe environment. In this field, the critics of anthropology and fieldwork are sophisticated. They have played a very important role in making us aware of the colonial prejudice inherent in old ethnographies. An analysis of the characteristics of the career system of professional anthropologists shows that its system is sustained by the "patent system" of their writings. Ethnographies are not written anonymously, but are accompanied by the signature of their authors, who are responsible for their contents and have the authority to prohibit their use unless reference is made to the the author's name, the title of his/her work, and the pages cited. That academic patent system can create various problems. For example, using the excavation of the ruin of Kuntur Wasi in Peru as an example, it is possible to demonstrate that the excavations yield benefits to the village where the ruin is situated through the hiring of villagers as assistants to the excavations, the construction of the museum, and the education of the villagers to serve as guides to the visitors, and so forth. Nonetheless, we must attribute any academic result of the excavations to the professional archaeologist, making direct benefit to the villagers impossible because of the academic patent and career system. A professional outcome is not possible or necessary for the amateur villagers. Regarding the academic patent system and the future of ethnography, we must be aware of what is going on around the intangible heritage of humanity. An analysis of the characteristics of that heritage shows that the Proclamation of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity aims to safeguard the autonomous cultural traditions that are close to disappearing. Therefore, that proclamation reveals similar characteristics to development assistance for the society in danger of social decomposition. In this paper, I look at the specific example of the Kallawaya in Bolivia. I conclude that the villages of the Kallawaya are not isolated, as their culture is famous for its knowledge of botanical pharmacopoeia, with abundant academic studies existing. The culture of the Kallawaya has been proclaimed as an Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity because of the fame of the itinerant herbalists and their acceptance of foreign visitors. They may proclaim the right to reject further investigations because they can consider their culture as property. They face a threat of having their botanical knowledge stolen by large foreign companies, so they must be aware of patents. Finally, citing the words of James Clifford and Yoshinobu Ota, I seek the potential of ethnographies. Ota points out that through the transcription of written ethnographies, anthropological knowledge and the cultural traditions recorded by anthropologists can yield benefits to the people who were formerly just objects of study. Using the anthropological writings of the people studied, perhaps old-fashioned or ingenuous ethnographies are more apt, showing more possibilities because of the freeness of their writing. But Ota's arguments are confined to the academic career system. I propose the possibility of creating a new type of anthropologists, namely, volunteers writing ethnographies, who can remain anonymous and do not make their living therefrom.

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The term "field study" is not used as much as the term fieldwork, about which many manuals and books have been published in recent years in Japan. In this paper, I define field study as one characteristic of educational programs such as the study tours implemented by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as part of their international aid. Field study may have many characteristics, some of which are the same as those of fieldwork, while others are different. Since the NGO tours are commercialized, they may be described as popularized fieldwork. In this paper, I analyze five study tours organized in Mongolia by a Japanese NGO called "Ecology School, " spanning from 2002 to 2005. I have access to the materials described by these tours' participants, because the official reports of the tours are available on the Web, and because I belong to the team that started up the NGO. From the reports and records of the study tours, I identify several of their characteristics. First, the participants paid much attention to the physical aspects of the local people under study. Second, they also paid much attention to the material culture, trying to get information by asking all the questions they could think of. Third, they found it much easier to communicate with children than with adults, so they paid much attention to the former, and/or loved to write about them. Fourth, since the local people also wrote their own reports and records, the participants tried to get to know the feelings of the people observed. Fifth, some people participated in the study tours repeatedly so as to better understand social change. Generally speaking, while participants in the field study are able to carry out some kind of observation, they tend to make nonparticipant observations as they cannot communicate adequately, owing to the language barrier. Also, the participants occasionally observe things that a professional fieldworker may overlook. They easily feel a sense of emotional success, impressed as they are by the landscape, kind people and intimate children. That is anticipated by the "pre-established harmony" set out in the educational program of the field study. Indeed, the participants are aware that the emotional success is pre-established, so they hope to study more to seek real success. In the near future, the educational programs of study tours may become more popularized and commercialized. While some of our professional fieldworkers will help to improve such programs, others will criticize or ignore them. Whatever attitude one takes, professional fieldworkers will have something new and practical to learn from the field study performed in study tours.

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