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 older 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, Japan may be forced to "import" foreign labor for the survival of its economy. Thus, some foresee 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 directed toward the future Japanese society.

View full abstract

Anthropologists have long investigated beliefs in the occult, creating seductive analytics that explain these phenomena as critiques to the present, the new and the neoliberal. Although these analytics provide useful frameworks for interpretation, they do not take into sufficient consideration people's experiences and processes of construction and negotiation of occult beliefs. Drawing on ethnographic data I collected through fieldwork in haunted places in Kyoto, in this article I propose an approach that considers beliefs and practices in relationship to their "causal milieu" (GELL 1998). I propose an analysis based on the nexus theory (GELL 1998), arguing that haunted places can be interpreted as indexes created by rumors that emerge from complex chains of translations (CALLON 1986) among actors. I focus on relationships between human and non-human actors, arguing that the latter, especially the morphology of the place, play a major role in processes of creation of haunting.

View full abstract

In Japan, the study of Shugendo has long been undertaken from the perspective of religious studies, folklore studies, and history. However, certain arguments formulated from a conventional viewpoint have tended to dominate the subject. In particular, in research on Shugendo and women, the problem of the exclusion of women from sacred mountains has been widely examined in terms of its relationship with the issue of the "kegare (impurity)" of women as based on reproductive function. The real circumstances and experiences of female shugenja cannot be found in these studies. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to analyze female shugenja in a comprehensive way from the perspective of gender studies, and it utilizes fieldwork undertaken by the author as a participant in Shugendo ascetic practices. As a result, a view of the female shugenja's religion is revealed as is her absence, and her lack of voice on debates regarding the issue.

View full abstract

One of the unprecedented features of our contemporary world is the global scale of US military bases. In what aspects, and to what extent, have US bases abroad affected adjacent communities? How have these communities responded to the presence of the US bases? In addressing these questions, this paper explores the development and significance of the 1997 municipal master plan of Yomitan Village in Okinawa. The municipal master plan of Yomitan is unique in all of Japan in that it uses funshi (feng shui) as one of its aesthetic principles. This paper is concerned with how Yomitan's officials relied on the notion of funshi to forge their cultural identity despite the looming presence of US bases. By examining the history of the and-base movement and of community development in Yomitan, this paper demonstrates how a reliance on funshi was used to counter and resist the presence and influence of these military bases.

View full abstract

This paper describes historical changes in cormorant fishing, in which fishers use domesticated cormorants to fish in rivers and lakes, at Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China. It considers adaptations within the context of social changes in China and analyzes local adaptations of cormorant fishers. This study clarifies that cormorant fishing has been a continuous activity even as fishing methods and rules have changed. On the basis of these results, the author described the local adaptations of cormorant fishers, which depended on changes in fishing methods and rules. The author also notes that cormorant fishers changed fishing methods and rules in ways that differed from those in which other types of fishers adapted.

View full abstract