What will Japan look like in 2050? By 2050, Japan's current population of 127 million will decline to 91 million, due to its low birth rate. The number of people aged 65 or more will increase to 40.5 percent of the total population by 2055. This is an ultra-aged society never experienced before in human history. Within such a demographic framework, some argue that Japan needs to "import" foreign labor for the survival of its economy. Therefore, some presume that Japan will have 10 million foreign residents by 2050, accounting for 11 percent of the total population, as compared with 2.2 million, or 1.7 percent, as of 2008. That necessarily leads to the scenario of Japan becoming multicultural. Against the background of such a future socio-demographic change in Japanese society, this paper examines transnational migration into Japan and the Japanese way of living together in a multicultural environment. Particularly focusing on the dreams of Filipina migrants, the paper discusses the cultural politics of migration, including the issues of citizenship and human rights, and seeks the possibility of establishing a public anthropology toward the future Japanese society. There are four major transnational migrants groups in Japan. In 2008, Chinese, the largest group, numbered 655,377. Most of them are newcomers, though there are longer-established communities of Chinese in such cities as Yokohama and Kobe. Koreans, the second largest group (and the largest until 2006), numbered 589,239, including approximately 400,000 Korean-origin Zainichi Kankoku-Chosenjin, whose presence in Japan was originally a result of colonial labor migration. There are approximately 200,000 newcomers as well. The third, Japanese Brazilians (Nikkei), number some 312,582, most of whom moved to Japan thanks to a 1990 immigration law that admits them as unskilled laborers. The fourth are 210,617 Filipino residents, of whom about 80 percent are female, working largely in the entertainment sector, particularly in bars and nightclubs. Within that framework of multiethnic Japan, the emerging concept of tabunka kyosei ("multicultural coexistence"), which is often considered a Japanese version of multiculturalism, has been analyzed rather critically, especially concerning the lack of clear governmental policy toward Japan's multicultural future on the national level. On the other hand, the transnational realities in certain local communities sometimes go beyond the Japanese nation-state. As an example, this paper examines the Okubo district of Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward. As of 2010, Tokyo has 418,116 registered foreign residents. The ward in Tokyo most densely populated by foreigners is Shinjuku, which has 35,211 foreign residents, accounting for 11 percent of its total population, approximately the same percentage that Japan would have if it receives 10 million transnational migrants by 2050. The foreign population ratio of the Okubo district is even higher, at some 35 percent. In that multicultural context, the paper examines the case of Filipina migrants to Japan. As noted above, they work mainly in the entertainment sector, particularly in bars and nightclubs. As a result of their interactions with Japanese customers, there are many intermarriages between Japanese men and Filipina women as well. Such couples numbered over 100,000 by 2009. One problem affecting Japanese-Filipina marriages involves the children. Japanese-Filipino Children (JFC) now number over 200,000. The paper analyzes the dreams of such children and their parents, and discusses them in what Ghassan Hage has called "a hope-sharing society" toward the future Japanese society, where they want to live as "ordinary" Japanese people. In that relation, the paper draws special attention to a newly-emerging area of anthropology known as public anthropology. According to Robert Borofsky, "public

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Conflicts in Africa, especially on a local small-scale, are often discussed in terms of 'conflicts over scarce resources' in the context of environmental change or 'degradation.' That also applies to conflicts between herders and farmers (herder-farmer conflict), which represent the majority of cases reported in West Africa, and typically involve disputes between immigrant herders looking for better grazing land and indigenous farmers seeking extra land for the cultivation of crops. This study examines herder-farmer conflict in southwest Ethiopia by focusing on four cases: conflict in Malo (between the Me'en and the Malo), Konta (between the Me'en and the Konta), Dime (between the Me'en and the Dime), and Dizi (between the Suri and the Dizi). The first case is based on the author's field research, whereas the others derive from a literature review. In all cases, cattle-herding agropastoralists who are sparsely populated in the lowlands (the Me'en and Suri) waged raiding conflicts against mountain farmers who are densely populated in the highlands (the Malo, Konta, Dime and Dizi) in those decades. The former speak Surmic in the Nilo-Saharan tradition, whereas the latter speak Omotic in the Afro-Asiatic tradition. The Me'en began raids by occasionally rustling cattle and killing a few local farmers from neighboring Dime in the late 1960s. The raids subsequently intensified to the extent of massacre, and did not come to an end until 1971 when the imperial government forces intervened. Although the murderous violence towards the Dime ended after this period, the land and other property held by the Dime nevertheless continued to be gradually taken over by the Me'en, who now almost totally occupy the territory to the extent that the Dime appear to have become subordinate to the Me'en. The Wen raids have continued to gravitate toward both the Konta (including part of the Dawro) and Malo territories, which are located in the middle Omo Valley (Konta in the north and Malo in the south) and some distance beyond the Me'en territory to the east. In an organized group often several hundred strong, the Me'en carry out armed attacks by stealthily infiltrating into their targeted areas via the Omo riverbank when the water is at its lowest. Then they conduct a surprise attack on peripheral settlements at dawn by rustling as many cattle as possible and stealing other property, often ruthlessly killing local inhabitants, mostly mothers and their children who fail to escape; after the raid, the intruders immediately return home to avoid remaining in the settlements overnight. In that way, since the mid-1970s, both the Konta and Malo have been repeatedly attacked by the Me'en, while the Konta have been more frequently and viciously raided than the Malo. The rise in the number of such violent incidents seems to have occurred along with the decline and sometimes complete lack of state control. On the other hand, the Suri attacks against neighboring Dizi commenced relatively late in their shared history, but now seem to be on the rise because the traditional ways of reconciliation have almost vanished. The main causes of the herder-farmer disputes in these cases may be summarized as follows. The first concerns the historical impact of state governance. Following the region's incorporation into the Ethiopian empire at the end of the 19th century, an inconsistent state policy was imposed upon lowland agropastoralists and mountain farmers in southwest Ethiopia during the imperial era. Whereas nomadic lowland herders were largely left alone, sedentary mountain farmers were heavily controlled by numerous state agents known as naft'anna (pl. ngft'annoch) who settled in farming areas during the early 20th century. Although the settlers managed to prevent the farmers from owning firearms, they provided copious

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In 2004, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was introduced in Ghana, and the scheme has since become widely used. The people concerned can now select a new way of paying medical fees. This paper discusses how the new way of paying medical fees is related to face-to-face mutual aid. Previous studies suggest that insurance has undermined face-to-face mutual aid, replacing it with anonymous mutual aid and individualistic preparation. Additionally, in Sub-Saharan Africa, since structural adjustment, paying medical fees has been one of the activities that most activates face-to-face mutual aid. In that context, we can speculate that NHIS in Ghana has replaced face-to-face mutual aid in the payment of medical fees through anonymous mutual aid and individualistic preparation. However, by examining both (a) institutional features and the diffusion process of NHIS and (b) experiences taking out insurance, this paper illustrates that NHIS is not necessarily undermining face-to-face mutual aid, but is producing a new domain for face-to-face mutual aid. This study focuses on the Kwaebibirim District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (KbMHIS) and town "A" in the western part of the Eastern Region of Ghana, where I conducted fieldwork for a period of 18 months. Approximately 2,000 people over the age of 18 live in town "A," where cacao, oranges, palm, timber and bauxite are the main products. In Kwaebibirim district, about 62 percent of the population is registered with KbMHIS. Generally, whether insurance has features of anonymous mutual aid or individualistic preparation depends on the "fine print," such as regulations about premium burdens or policy coverage. NHIS has three features: (1) it presumes all the insured persons have the same risks, (2) it exempts aged people and children under 18, and (3) it is supplemented financially by the national budget. For those reasons, NHIS is an institution of anonymous mutual aid rather than individualistic preparation. However, this anonymous mutual aid is primarily at the district level, and its participants are limited to the insured. The annual premium for KbMHIS is 120,000 cedi. This amount is not exorbitantly expensive, yet not easily affordable for everyone. Many people living in town "A" can afford the premium through the saving practice known as susu. There are three types of susu in Southern Ghana: (1) Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCA), (2) susu collectors, and (3) bank susu. As ROSCA are based on social networks such as kinship and friends, those who use susu collectors and bank susu do so to avoid the associated obligations of those networks. If an uninsured person incurs a high medical bill, she can resort to face-to-face mutual aid, such as with family members or friends. However, it is rare that someone resorts to it for insurance. Also, users of susu are able to avoid contributing to another person's medical bill. Because of that, it can be said that the existence of health insurance tends to weaken face-to-face mutual aid when medical fees are paid. Yet, the importance of face-to-face mutual aid is preserved in other domains. Health insurance also has gambling-like qualities. Those insured can receive medical services and pharmaceuticals free of charge, but they cannot get a refund if they do not become sick. On the latter point, most people discuss it in terms of an extension of concrete mutual aid, instead of as addressing the risk of high medical fees. There are minute differences in attitude towards insurance between accounts that emphasize mutual aid and those that emphasize the dangers of high medical fees. Accounts that emphasize the danger of high medical fees are predicated on a sustained period of subscription, because the danger of becoming seriously ill is certainly not limited to when one is subscribing. In contrast, in the case of accounts focusing

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A panoptic approach and analysis of regional diversity are necessary to understand the milk-processing system of North Asia. The results of such analyses can provide new perspectives in a discussion of that system's transitional history in the area. The purpose of this paper is to infer the transitional history of the milk-processing system of Mongolic-language groups in North Asia, and to analyze the factors that affected its transition through a discussion of its structure and the nutritional as well as regional typology of its diversity. A unique feature of the paper is the introduction of the concept of so-called "milk processing unit" to describe the continuum of milk-processing techniques, allowing the internal structure of the milk-processing system to be described more succinctly when attempting an analysis. The North Asian milk-processing system has the following special characteristics: (1) Raw milk is always used when carrying out the milk processing units of non-heated soured creaming and heated creaming. (2) Since the milk processing units of souring, lactic-rancid fermented solidification, high-acidic sour milk adding and lactic-alcohol fermentation are used to process into raw milk and/or skim milk, they make the milk-processing system more complicated. (3) Since almost everywhere in North Asia shares the three milk-processing units of heated creaming, lactic-alcohol fermentation, and high-acidic sour milk adding, they constitute the characteristics of milk-processing system in the region. The technique of extracting lipids from full milk and/or skim milk through lactic-rancid fermented solidification/churning and lactic-alcohol fermentation is distributed widely throughout North Asia except for the central area of Mongolia. The North Asian processes of lactic-rancid fermented solidication/churing/fat purification and lactic-alcoholic fermentation/fat purification are both extremely similar milk-processing techniques to the West Asian fermented milk-processing series that consists of lactic fermentation/churning/fat purification. In the North Asian process of lactic-alcoholic fermentation, raw milk is churned thousands of times, resulting in both lactic-alcoholic milk and butter. Moreover, the North Asian milk-processing technique of lactic-alcoholic fermentation by churning and fat purification of butter-a process of lactic-alcoholic fermentation/churning/fat purification-is closely related to the West Asian fermented milk-processing series. The likelihood is quite high that the basis of both those North Asian techniques was transmitted from West Asia, with further modifications. Meanwhile, recent archaeological evidence from West Asia shows that sheep and goats were first domesticated there by 7000 B.C., and that milking had already started in the same region by the seventh millennium B.C. Those are the oldest instances of animal domestication and milking from animal anywhere in the world. The stable isotope analysis of fatty acids extracted from relics has confirmed that the first incidence of milking was in West Asia. Moreover, the first incidence of the milking of animals by humans and the technique's further development are considered to have been extremely difficult for humans, given that female animals usually only allow their own offspring to drink from their udders. Pastoralists adopted various lactogenic techniques that enabled milking from animals, having understood the physiology and behavior of the relationship between female animals and their offspring. Milking was only conducted in some parts of the Old World, such as West Asia, Central Asia, North Asia, Europe, South Asia and Africa, but never with domesticated animals native to the New World, such as in South America. The absence of milking in the New World shows that the technique was not so easily exploited in many places, and that it had not dispersed from the Old

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Black Pentecostal churches in America are known for their intensive use of music during worship services, including congregational singing and dancing. This paper deals specifically with their ritual trance dance, called shouting, and describes the micro interactions among congregations where it occurs. By doing so, I aim to discuss an important but usually overlooked aspect of the mechanism through which (possession) trance dance emerges. Anthropological inquiries have tried to understand the trance dance as a cultural representation; either by presenting how it is interpreted within each culture, or showing how it is culturally constructed, or both. Such perspectives are based on the semiotics that imparts conceptual meaning to the trance dance. While those perspectives of understanding shouting are undoubtedly important, they do not focus on its indeterminacy. Indeterminacy partly means its improvisational character: there are scenes and settings where shouting is expected, but no one can really predict when it will occur. Indeterminacy also means the ambiguous character in which a shouting is interpreted by others. Moreover, the heart of Pentecostal belief is also grounded in that indeterminacy: one must be "filled" with the Holy Spirit as a gift, and no one is supposed to be able to control it. To make that "indeterminate" process visible, this paper starts by showing that shouting is dependent upon acts of other people surrounding the shouter, and how a shout emerges through the interactions between them. A typical occurrence of shouting goes as follows: During a pastor's preaching or right after the choir finishes singing, someone who is visible to most in the congregation starts shouting, or gesturing as if he/she will shout. The musicians, by watching it, start playing "shout music," and several members of the congregation begin shouting, as if to follow the music. There, its interactive characteristic is obvious. There are even more micro interactions among the people in the congregation, and we can find them when those surrounding a shouter become "involved" in the shouter's act. In previous studies, such involvements are mentioned only as the acts of preventing shouters from hitting people or things, or keep them from hurting themselves. However, when looked at more closely, one can observe that certain types of involvement support or even encourage shouting. Moreover, there are cases when someone who does not normally shout starts to do so after being touched by others in certain ways. The interaction concerning shouting is one type of "focused gathering" (Goffman, 1985/1961), which I call "Engrossment-Involvement Relationship (E-I.R.)" (here, shouting is paraphrased as "engrossment"). I shall use the E-I.R. as an analytical unit, rather than shouting itself, for it enables an examination of the dynamism of how individuals are motivated to shout; in other words, its indeterminate character. Shifting the focus to E-I.R. allows us to notice cases where shouting does not arise smoothly but requires others' involvement during the gradual emergence of shouting. In such cases, the individual who is about to shout will gesture in ways slightly different than that of shouting itself-i.e., by exaggerating the sound of stomping, and so on. I call that gesture "demanding," because in an interactional sense it can be seen as demanding others' involvement and engrossment (shouting). The gesture occurs slightly before the shouting, and is geared more toward the public. Similarly, there are times when others' involvement comes out prior to shouting. I call that the gesture of "expecting," because it leads to the expectation that someone will start shouting. Those terms are necessary to examine cases where shouting fails to occur satisfactorily. The shouting can

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