This paper examines the emphasis on embodiment in Chinese gambling practices, using gambling in Macau as a case study. By investigating Chinese gamblers’ and Heguan’s （dealers’） actions during gambling, this paper explores the significance of embodiment in responding to gambling uncertainty. In gambling studies, there is a tendency to focus on epistemology in relation to gamblers’ expectations and actions. However, Chinese gamblers’ and Heguan’s thinking in relation to pure chance games at Macau casinos reveals aspects that epistemology alone cannot explain. Chinese gamblers’ thinking involves perceiving the uncertainty of gambling through the strange idea of modifying or controlling the game through interaction with game objects. To explore the validity of this thinking, one should consider not only epistemology but also the emphasis on embodiment. Therefore, re-examining Chinese gamblers from the perspective of embodiment is an overlooked aspect of existing research.

The documents and act of documenting the process of caring for a dying person have been insufficiently studied in anthropology. Therefore, this study examines the etegami （picture letter） a woman drew while caring for her husband at a hospice in Japan, in 1998. Furthermore, it examines her narratives 16 to 24 years later, exploring the memories formed during the process of caring for an end-of-life patient with lowered consciousness and the practice and experience of the act of documenting them. Caring for her husband evoked memories of the life they built together, which her etegami and the notes on the back documented. For the woman, the etegami became the trace that followed the bodily experience of caring for her husband; they became the things trying to convey the process through which her husband lived, as a social being, who maintained his personhood until the end.

Ethnographers of contemporary Japan experience a variety of interstices. In academia, the hegemony of English controls the master narratives. This means that scholarly work written in Japanese or other languages is rarely cited in dominant English-speaking journals and books. In the field of area studies, in-depth ethnography shrinks to insignificance. Researchers should think about intersectionality and the politics of writing: Who writes Japan for whom and for what, and what voices and perspectives are neglected and silenced? This special issue focuses on the concept of hazama （interstices or gaps, margins, a chasm, or a state of being in-between, as it is variously translated by the contributors to the issue）. It addresses the linguistic, political, and methodological challenges and possibilities of doing ethnography in contemporary Japan. The five papers discuss Zainichi Korean women and intersectional forms of discrimination, domestic violence, activist and media representation, multispecies ethnography, and marginalization in the context of interdisciplinary and multilingual collaborative research projects.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion （DEI） represent pivotal facets of academic and societal progress. Anthropology finds itself at a crucial crossroads, as feminist insights expose androcentrism, while post-colonial studies scrutinize colonial influences within the discipline. This critical examination extends to Japan, where gender and racial discrimination persist despite international scrutiny by the organizations such as the United Nations. Focusing on Korean women in Japan, descendants of the Japanese colonial era （1910-1945）, I reveal their enduring plight as both racial minorities and women facing compounded discrimination. Conventional discourses often silo discussions of misogyny and racial discrimination, overlooking the intricacies of intersectionality. To bridge this gap, I advocate for an intersectional approach, utilizing the Cynefin Framework to unravel these multifaceted issues. Through the lens of feminist ethnic studies, I deconstruct entrenched myths surrounding "safety,""gender equality," and "mono-ethnicity" in Japan. The identification of these compound challenges is coupled with proposed solutions that represent a pivotal stride towards their resolution.

Following feminist discourses from English speaking circles, domestic violence （DV） studies in Japan have progressed since the 1990s. However, this inter-disciplinary field tends to center around practical studies and leaves the concept of patriarchy abstract. This situation prevents DV studies in Japan from furthering a multi-dimensional understanding of family and domestic violence.

To approach this question, this paper applies the concept of "interstices" and explores it in different dimensions of two realms: discursive and phenomenological. The first relates to discursive gaps amongst disciplines that probe into how patriarchy takes a concrete form in various relationships among family members in Japan. The second brings in micro-perspectives on traces of violence from an ethnographic encounter. I argue phenomenologically that there are latent traces of violence which can convey the reality of violence. Applying these two analyses can illuminate the possibilities of bringing in anthropological perspectives to DV studies.

This study discusses the original sin of researchers who have no choice but to exploit their research subjects and the researchers' redemption. Previous studies have argued that the researcher is a predator of research field, research participants and informants. Correspondingly, some studies aim to cooperate with the research participants and informants in the process of social movements and other social practices. However, cooperation with these research participants does not mean that the researcher's exploitation did not take place. This study examines the factors that create "chasm" between researchers and activists through the auto-ethnography of the author, who sought redemption as a mass-media commentator who conveyed information about social movements to audiences for the exploitation of informant activists. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the concept of incommensurability and the fluctuating feelings of guilt that many qualitative researchers may experience toward their research informants and participants.

Living "in-between" can be exasperating and hard to overcome, but multispecies anthropology suggests that, by becoming attuned to entanglements between humans and non-humans, we can see possibilities of more livable futures not driven by problem-solving. Inspired by multispecies ethnography, this article has two interrelated objectives. The first is to explore the difficulties and possibilities of living in between through multispecies stories I gathered from ethnographic research at two Japanese aquariums. I explore how aquarists—while muddling through anthropocentrism and Euro-American centrism—develop ways to mitigate them by designing new aquatic displays that pay closer attention to human and non-human interactions and their local specificities in the context of Japan. The second is to propose multispecies ethnography as an anthropology of in-between. Through attention to the challenges that multispecies ethnographers in Japan face in crafting their own international contributions, I also discuss the possibilities that they can create.

This paper is an autoethnography of a bilingual, liminal Japan anthropologist based in Japan. It explores what it means to be on the margins of the margins, against the backdrop of the structural peripherality of Japan anthropology. I reflect on dilemmas and possibilities that my participation in interdisciplinary collaborations has brought about, drawing parallels between these recent experiences and my past experiences growing up in-between Japanese and Anglophone cultures. I discuss how interdisciplinary collaborative research and practice may distance anthropology from its core in terms of methodology and theory. Being the only anthropologist in interdisciplinary projects may also inadvertently promote essentialization of anthropology. At the same time, collaboration helps open up anthropology and position it vis-a-vis other scholarly fields, leading to relativization of the discipline. My autoethnographic explorations highlight the roles that anthropologists on the margins can play in mediating anthropologists across borders and helping re-imagine the nature and possibilities of anthropology.

While housework has been discussed based on binary groups such as public and private, production and reproduction, and man and woman, it has also crossed these boundaries and changed form. Similarly, the dichotomous domains themselves have changed according to the perception and practice of housework. Focusing on housework as wage labor, this paper attempts to extend housework to reimagine care and social relations differently. Drawing on Annemarie Mol's conception of care, it extends housework theoretically to encompass an act of creating people and things through intervention and interaction. Moreover, it shows that through housework, social relations also emerge along with the person who does and receives housework, the domestic space, and the boundaries of "one's own." By interpreting materials from ethnographies, literary works, and field episodes, this paper portrays housework as a practice of intervention and interaction and explores the possibility of alternative relations.