This paper clarifies characteristics of ballroom dance walking by integrating participatory observation of the lessons of world champions and three-dimensional motion analysis of their ballroom dance walking.

Walking gaits have been recognized in a traditional dichotomy as "ipsilateral (nanba) type walking" and "contralateral (twist) type walking": the former, with the same rotation cycle of the upper body and legs; and the latter, with the upper body and legs alternately shifted with a 180 degree lag. This paper presents "hydride walking" by a world champion, which differs from the traditional dichotomy. It has liminal characteristics (270 degree lag) intermediate of the two types. Deviation of the rotation cycle between the legs and the upper body have infinite possibilities of variety.

In ballroom dance instruction, the sensation of matching with the partner is emphasized, rather than a pattern of movement. Dancers designate this sensation as "chemistry," which creates unique movements and new corporeal techniques through the two dancers' body-to-body communication during ballroom dancing.

This paper focuses on a man who has lived as a pachi-pro (who makes a living by playing pachinko). He explained that the most important thing in playing pachinko was to "accumulate expected value," that is, to play as much as possible the machines that have the highest expected turnover. However, he also explained that a high-level professional is the one who can also suppress this practice. The purpose of this paper is to examine why both of these practices are important for him. He explained that in "accumulating expected value," it is expected to look at the process of the practice rather than the result. In other words, the key of his thinking was to "shift" from one perspective and turn to another. This paper proposes that daring to suppress the "accumulating expected value" is also a kind of "shift" and that for him, it was appropriate for professional players.

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.

This thesis focuses on the Senju Pun-filled Music Festival, a citizen-participatory musical project organized by the local government in contemporary Japan, to highlight the interrelationship between a new form of music called "pun-filled music" and the relation with/among participants expected by the government. It aims to relativize the institutionally normative relation in contemporary Japan and a view of music based on it, and present the possibility of "post-relational" music research, which seeks a different kind of relation and musical form in the midst of such an occasion.

Just as one might say a pun, called "dajare" in Japanese, when it occurs to one's mind, pun-filled music focuses first on personal ideas, from which music and relations are created. Through ethnography, we attempt to put into practice "post-relational theory" as a strategy for reassembling the concept of relation and music for anthropologists by facing the object, by means of a "proto-relational theory" that is open to all relations but is itself less than a relation.

This paper discusses various aspects of deaf people's (non-) participation in music by examining the cases in Bengkala village in Bali, Indonesia, which is famous for its high ratio of deaf residents. Though deaf people have not generally been perceived as extensive participants in music, the anthropology of music has deconstructed the sound-centricity of musicology mainly through the ideas of the "acoustic body" and "musicking." Using these ideas, this paper shows how deaf residents in Bengkala participate in musical interactions that allow them to resonate with others. However, these approaches tend to be simultaneously affected by relational thinking, which places too much value on the sense of unity during performances. This paper also analyzes the "loneliness" that a deaf girl faces when engaging in children's dance and reveals the possibility of "self-sufficiency" and the social and linguistic divide between deaf and hearing residents as a crucial factor contributing to loneliness.

This paper explores solitary activities as one of the activities that form part of the social life of musicians. By doing so, the paper attempts to reconsider relational music research. "The individual" seems to be one of the concepts connected with solitary activities. This paper specifies and characterizes "the individual" at the level at which it is oriented and organized in everyday practice. Specifically, the paper analyzes the "hesitations" and "decisions" found in the field notes that describe the author's activity of selecting strings for a musical instrument. The paper shows that the process of orchestrating solitary activities is organized as a result of their active execution and as a removal of doubt concerning the capabilities of the individual. Drawing on this finding, the paper argues for the importance of the exploration of the everyday world as a condition for relational music research.

In resent years, a series of discussions around the so-called "post-relations" is gradually becoming popular in Euro-American anthropology. According to these discussions, anthropologists have focused too much on relationships and connections, leading to the problem that people who are not connected even if they want to connect and the behavior of daring to refuse connection are no longer visible and thematized in the field. In fact, even in anthropological research on music, there has been a tendency to regard music as something that "connects with others" and to value this connection as something positive. The purpose of this paper is to present the musical concepts of "music against others" and "music to be in solitude," daring to oppose this relational view of music. Specifically, we will observe the case of Bolivian folkloristic music and try to extract unique thoughts on music through the life histories of two musicians. Although both musicians were active at the dawn of folklore music, their success gradually declined over time, and they attempted to make a comeback. This paper will discuss their thoughts under the theme of the desire for solitude, showing how they have continued to resist Bolivian kinship, peer relationships, and the times, and how this overlaps with the view of music as power in Bolivia.

By providing a literature review, this essay aimed to propose a fruitful anthropological approach to todayʼs crises, which are no longer an exception but a new normal. In response to Anthropocene crises such as the coronavirus pandemic and the climate change, two modes of power governing human behavior in critical situations are becoming increasingly dominant. On the one hand, the politics of crisis, which mobilizes people to overcome crises, prevents the design of politics that does not presuppose progress. On the other hand, the biopolitics of resilience, which promotes mechanical adaptation to crises, reduce the value of human life to mere survivability. An alternative to these two modes lies in the corporeal experience of crises and the imagination they evoke. Anthropology should thus explore how images can mediate the inarticulate uncanny revealed during a crisis, and how they can be guides for navigating the self in an unfamiliar world.