In the changing world, anthropologists are increasingly required to be more strategic in their research. The anthropological concept of 'culture' must always be reexamined in the process of globalization, which produces broad and rapid population movements, cultural contacts and social changes. While anthropology originated certain methods, concepts and theories that are no longer localized just to the field itself, they have generally been accepted and developed by the social sciences with divergences. How can anthropologists enable people to recognize their works as evidently 'anthropological'? How can they demonstrate their methods, theories or themes as such? It is important to identify the concepts, methods and theories within the specific field, not only for the improvement of its academic level, but also for researchers to gain employment. What are the advantages for the anthropological studies of Japan in such an environment? The advantages that have surfaced through my four decades of experience also pose problems to those studies, and are challenging for the field in general. First, one can cite the long-term and vast academic achievements of history and folklore. As the research covers the whole of Japan, anthropologists invariably come across previously-researched products in any of the localities and themes that they intend to investigate, even though the products are not so helpful for their study. That is advantageous for anthropologists who want to research social and cultural changes, or to try to analyze their first-hand data in the broader context of culture. However, it is also a problem for them, because they must crystallize the theoretical grounds of the reference and examine the appropriateness of the contextualizing. Second, there is a mass of historical documents, geographical descriptions and statistical data all over Japan that was recorded and has been held for several centuries by prestigious families, feudal and modern local governments, Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and sometimes by neighborhoods. Documents- available not only at the family or community level but also at the feudal government level-supplement the understanding of the changes and continuity of the culture, as they are detailed and serve as a wide-ranging summary of people's lives. That is both advantageous and problematical for anthropological research, since anthropologists must demonstrate the 'anthropological reasons' for their referring to or disregarding the information. Third, there is a popular and deep-rooted idea of Japanese cultural homogeneity and continuity that has been maintained through the centuries. The idea is accepted by both ordinary and academic people in Japan without any doubts. The popularity of history and the enthusiasm over archeological discoveries are both a cause and result of that idea. The situation both challenges and requests anthropologists to rethink the meaning of 'cultural continuity', 'cultural unity' and 'cultural domain'. It is advantageous to discuss any data that anthropologists research at any location and time. However, it might be also an academic problem, since the unexamined idea of cultural continuity and homogeneity causes researchers to lose sensitivity to the concept of culture. Referring to my research, my study of kegare (the Japanese concept of pollution and impurity) carried out in the 1970s resolutely emphasizes the continuity and homogeneity of Japanese culture. The word kegare has been found in the oldest extant Japanese documents (from the 7^<th> century), and the word and concept are widespread in historical and folklore literature. My purpose at that time was to discuss the concept cross-culturally and demonstrate its universality, which had been generally argued in the context of social discrimination and prejudice in Japan. My intention was

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

In recent years, lively debates have been conducted in cultural anthropology on moving beyond Western dualism. Philippe Descola, for example, classified the relationship between nature and humans into four modes in terms of inner and outer continuity, and defined the mode that gains dominance in areas where people are gathered as a social ontology. Acknowledging such an ontology that differs from the West makes it possible to analyze society from different aspects. This paper draws upon those discussions and aims to examine the continuity of animals and humans in the ethnography of North American indigenous people Kaska in particular-who have maintained a closer-knit relationship with animals than most hunter-gatherers. Specifically, first of all, by classifying their knowledge and skills about animals, norm and species, the paper reveals that the Kaska perceive animals as targets with which negotiation is possible, while making use of ecological understanding. In addition, the fact that the presence or absence of rituals depends on whether the animal can be eaten or not suggests that the continuity with the animals-an aim of the rituals-is not necessarily required for all species. The Kaska lead their lives while planning and adjusting their distance from the animals depending on the situation. For example, while it is desirable to be close to the animals during hunting, an excessive degree of closeness in daily life evokes fears of assimilation. Furthermore, an analysis of items such as social relationships among animals that include the Kaska, stories and medicine animals reveals that relationships vary based on the denominations of species or kinship groups and individuals. Among those, the relationship between an individual and animals is the most basic social unit. In cultural terms also, the highest value is placed on maintaining that relationship, and attention is paid to it. Humans can be considered part of a world that is interwoven with animals, a kind of continuity that cannot be divided into modes.

View full abstract

This article aims at describing the ontological realities of the Penan society of Borneo, based on the recent anthropological attempt to transcend the Western dichotomy between nature and culture. Philippe Descola argues that anthropology has restricted the conceptualization of beings to the Western category of nature, ignoring native classificatory criteria. In his continuous effort to overcome the nature/culture dichotomy, he found-borrowing the intuition from Husserl's idea-the twin elements of "physicality" and "interiority" as innate and specific to the human species. By employing the awareness of that duality, Descola tried to explore how the subject (humans) would attribute or deny those attributes to other existing beings (non-humans). It is possible to think, however, that just the elements of physicality and interiority may not be enough for certain societies, because other elements are possibly present there. Drawing on the Penan conceptualization of human beings (kelunan) composed of the body (use/ batung/ tuboh), soul (barewun) and name (ngaran) , as demonstrated in Needham's article in 1971, this paper tries to ethnographically describe and examine how the subject will attribute or deny those particular elements to other existing beings. The Penan are some 15,000 former hunters-and-gatherers, living in the tropical rainforest, away from major rivers inhabited by cultivators in Borneo Island. The Penan population in the Malaysian state of Sarawak is reported some 7,000 and is divided into two distinct populations: the Eastern and Western Penan. The primary focus of this paper is some 500 Western Penan living along the upper reaches of the Belaga River. The first part of the paper treats the "fabrication" of human beings. When a baby is newly born in Penan society, its parents are given so-called teknonyms (i.e., "so-and-so's father" or "so-and-so's mother"), referring to their relation with their child. Infant human beings have a body and soul, but are not yet given a name. Infants only become "human" once they start to be called by their name. On the other hand, when humans die in Penan society, they lose their name, not just their body. The deceased are no longer called by their own names, but by the name of the tree used for coffin during the death ritual. In addition, the deceased's relatives are given death names (ngaran lumu). What is important to Penan life is that death names are employed in a wider range of contexts than that of bereavement. They are used mainly to express affection. Thus, humans in Penan society are occasionally called by autonyms, teknonyms and death names while they are alive. It can be seen that human beings are beings that have a complete set of body, soul and an (individual) name. The second part depicts and examines spiritual beings in Penan society. The ungap are superhuman beings transformed from dead person's souls, and are believed to cause misfortune to living humans. It is understood that ungap are indistinguishable beings, without bodies or names. On the other hand, baley is a general term for spirits or God. If someone has baley kawik, he or she is always good at hunting, while if someone has baley iket, he or she is made to cough continuously. There are several baleys in the sky, which cause meteorological disasters if they become enraged by the human mistreatment of animals. Those spiritual beings can be described as not having bodies but souls, while some have names and others do not. The third part describes and treats animals. The Penan say that all animals have souls. Animals have names of the species, in addition to their bodies and souls. After wild animals are hunted and killed, the names of the animals must be changed to another set of names (ngaran dua), so as not to cause such meteorological disasters as thunder,

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

Anthropological research has a long history looking at the relations between humans and animals. The social anthropological approach has looked at the symbolic relation between human groups and animal species, thus leading us to a deeper understanding of social classifications and structures. On the other hand, the rich relations between individual people and individual animals have been overlooked. The relation between man and animal cannot, however, be restricted solely to the symbolic, just as the relation between humans cannot be so either. Ecological anthropology, which has developed a different approach to that of social anthropology, allows us to gain ethnographic information on what it terms the "individuality of the domesticated animal" by focusing on animal characteristics. In considering the relation between humans and animals, a new possibility emerges at the end of the term. Existing research, however, has failed to offer any satisfactory explanation for the conditions that have made that prominent, since it has taken an a priori approach in assuming animal individuality to be self-evident. In this article, I will use Peirce's semiotic index sign to reposition the ecological anthropological term "individuality of the domesticated animal" by presenting an index relation between humans and animals- one that is largely missing from the social anthropological research of livestock populations- using ethnographic data of Tsetar practices in the Henan Mongolian Autonomous County (Henanmengqi) of Qinghai Province, PRC. I analyze the logic behind Tsetar practice using that semiotic index relation between nomads and domesticated animal individuals. I also consider the conditions for the continuity of the relation and relationship that surfaces between humans and animals, and consider what it means for and within the anthropological research field. Henanmengqi contains a herding society with a population of more than 30,000, who identify themselves as Soggo (Tibetan sog po, Mongols) and speak Amdo Tibetan as their native language. The Soggo, who have become "Tibetanized" linguistically, use many symbolic terms for domesticated animals that distinguish themselves from neighboring Tibetans, e.g. Sogda (sog rta, Mongolian horse) , Sogleg (sog lug, Mongolian sheep) . Those terms rather than referring to animal biological species, act as ethnic markers and symbols for the people. The crucial fact is that domesticated individual animals exist that are difficult to be seen as a group in light of standard categorization. Just as in other Buddhist pastoral regions, the people of Henanmengqi designate many domesticated animals as not for sale or slaughter, calling them Tsetar (tshe that.). The motives behind Tsetar practice are varied. However, most concern the everyday experiences of joy, anger, humour and pathos shared between the pastoralists and the domesticated animals as individuals. In principle, any individual domesticated animal of any species can become an object of Tsetar practice, and such designation is not influenced by dogma or group pressure. One might assume that this practice is one of religion, for example, aiming at virtuous deeds based on a Buddhism doctrine, but that is not necessarily the case, at least for the people in Henanmengqi. What can be seen in practice is the specific relationship between the individual person and individual domesticated animal that has been created and fostered through specific events. We cannot reduce it either to a perception that Tsetar animals could be viewed as a religious symbolic entity that connects man and gods, or to an understanding that an individual could be regarded as the extension and limit of a general system of classification. Rather, the specific relation between an individual human and an individual domesticated animal underpins the practice of Tsetar. The individual

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

This paper aims to discuss the human-animal continuity through theoretical and ethnographic perspectives on the relationship between humans and animals in Japan. Pamela Asquith and Arne Kalland proposed a nature continuum in which humans perceive and act upon nature in two opposite directions: on one hand, domesticated nature, whose beauty is cherished, and on the other, wild nature, that must be tamed by human interventions. However, the model of nature continuum proposed by Asquith and Kalland is not necessarily compatible with theories of the human-animal relationship in Japan. John Knight argued that Japanese people show enmity toward wild animals that feed on the crops they have grown, but also mentioned that interactions with pests give them an opportunity to realize a continuity between humans and animals. Kenichi Tanigawa likewise stressed the fact that the human-animal (-spirit) continuity is based on competitions among them. While Asquith and Kalland assumed the existence of two perceptions of "nature" among the Japanese, and stressed the human intervention that transforms wild nature into a domesticated one, Knight and Tanigawa's discussions called for a more sophisticated analysis on human-wildlife continuity that can even accommodate rivalry between the two. Moreover, as I try to demonstrate in the discussion to follow, the model of nature continuum proposed by Asquith and Kalland cannot explain the seemingly "cultural" characteristics that cats in Oki Islands were said to possess, leaving the impression that this model has limited applicability for studying the human-animal relationship. Based on the case study of the human-cat relationship in the Oki Islands, I argue that humans and cats share "one culture," in that both compete for fish, have a linguistic capacity, engage in dancing and singing with other fellows, formulate stable marital bonds with another individual of the same species, sometimes try to modify their environments through manipulation, and do "sumo wrestling" between the two species. It is then suggested that the human-cat relationship in the Oki Islands can be understood in terms of a human-animal continuity based not only on human-animal competition over the same food, but also on the sharing of "one culture" between the two species. I then argue that Amerindian "multinaturalism," a term proposed by Eduarudo Viveiros de Castro as a possible cosmological model of Amerindians, has an analogy with the human-cat relationship in the Oki Islands, in that humans and non-humans share "one culture" in both cases. Since Viveiros de Castro mentioned the sharing of "one culture" as "animism," it is suggested that the human-cat relationship in the Oki Islands can be characterized as "animism" in his sense. In spite of the abovementioned similarity, there exists an important contrast in those two examples: the "many natures" in Amerindian "multinaturalism," and the Japanese human-animal continuity that is revealed through human-animal competition over common staples, a point already mentioned by John Knight and Kenichi Tanigawa in their studies on human-animal relationship in Japan. Therefore, the tentative conclusion of this paper is that the human-animal relationship in Japan should be analyzed with the two interconnected dimensions of the human-animal continuity in mind, and that recent discussions on "animism" should offer valuable insights to an investigation of the topic.

View full abstract

Borrowing Descola & Palsson's critique on Nature/Society dichotomy (1996), I examine the concepts of the duality of nature conceived by Japanese experimental neuroscientists. That duality exists between the continuity and discontinuity of scientists and their animal sacrifices. In my argument process, I also discuss whether a continuity or discontinuity exists among those three components, as follows: (1) human beings, including experimental neurophysiologists, (2) the experimental animals that have both individual characteristics and vertebrate biological universalities, and (3) the recording machines that are the essential media bridging the concepts of nature and scientific fact. My fieldwork has been carried out from May 2005 to the present in a neurophysiology laboratory studying visual perceptions at a university in western Japan. I examined Michel Lynch's hypothesis (1988) on experimental animals as "ritual sacrifices," rejecting it for the following reason. While the processes of rituals and animal experiments are superficially similar, it sometimes emerges as a different recovery process in the latter case as the experiments tend to fail, while the former never does. In the next section, I give an ethnographic description of how experimental animals are treated during neurophysiological experiments. Although the experiments are not open to ordinary people, including animal rights activists, the outcome should be open as a cultural process owing to a certain justification of its scientific procedure. By that procedure, in the scientists' imagination and feeling, the experimental animals-which have an individual character in the pre-experiment phase-are transformed discontinuously to objective matters after the experiment. The experimental scientists are not precisely aware of that contradictory transformation. Also, I focus on how scientists acquire the "facts" of experimental data and interpret them as the contents of nature or scientific truth by legitimizing them according to established or authenticated protocols, by tradition. In my study, the Japanese scientists' concepts of nature or scientific truth-not represented in an ordinary conversational setting-may appear in terms of scientific fact, and sometimes focus on hybrid components in experimental animals, recording machines, and scientific data. In such a case, experimental neurophysiologists tend to accept not only the Western dichotomy between nature and culture, but also other dichotomies in subsequent levels dividing nature between the domain of the human nature of continuity with animals and that of the animals' nature of discontinuity with humans.

View full abstract

In this paper, I have focused on the case of resettlement area ("area A") for people living in a slum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and analyze the condition of the children in the area's alleys and streets from the viewpoint of their human relations. In the alleys in area A, many adult residents do side jobs under the eaves of their houses, and the children play around them. They spend most of the daytime there, and know who is present or absent, also knowing about each other's lives. At the same time, they discriminate against people from outside of the alley space. The residents' awareness of each other and their discrimination against outsiders make the relations between the children and the residents in the alley space more protective. Meanwhile, on the streets of area A, there is great movement of people and vehicles. The children on the streets-on their way to or from the elementary school or market-are not aware of where each person on the streets is from, nor do they know who each person is. They don't even try to know. On the streets, therefore, the children and the persons see and hear each other, but don't interfere with each other. So the relations between the children and the persons on the streets are anonymous, based on not knowing or interfering with each other. More, alleys and streets have each "projections" -vacancies in the former and stands in the latter-in which different relations arise, complicating the situation of the children there. Children in alley vacancies are separated from the adult residents who own those places, but protective relations are still kept. While continuous vacancies connect two different alleys, and the children from the two alley spaces, the children don't stray far. The children moving on streets, meanwhile, often stop at street stands around which the people living nearby gather. During their temporary stops at the stands, the children hear and see the talking and interactions among the residents without discrimination, but don't interfere with them. If they visit a stand continuously, they often become familiar with it and the people there, at which point they transcend the anonymous relationship and join in the interactions with the people. As for my conclusion, the children in area A move around different places each day, establishing human relations with different people. Moreover, they not only move around and experience existing places, but also create new places with new human relations, which emerge as the "projections" of those places.

View full abstract