Over the past twenty years, many anthropologists have focused on studies of inter-ethnic relations including warfare in southern and southwestern Ethiopia. One of the most influential approaches is the ethno-system approach that views these relations, which situationally move between peace and war, as an autonomous system embedded in culture. This approach contributes to discovering the nature of these relationships and to answering what warfare means for human society. On the other hand, however, it is inevitable to criticize the ethno-system approach as it presumes the relationships as a closed circle separated from the outer world. In fact, no inter-ethnic relations can be isolated from the influence of the State (Ethiopia) and the global situation during the twentieth century. This perspective, which is called the "center-periphery paradigm", was introduced in the late 1980s. This article will try to connect the ethno-system approach to the center-periphery paradigm through an analysis of the usage of guns among the Banna in southern Ethiopia. While guns are, first of all, instruments of violence, they represent a material culture dressed in political attributes. By tracing the history of guns among the Banna, scholars can discover the visible linkage from the global center to the peripheries in a material phase. Most of the guns that have been used by the Banna were acquired by purchase from merchants or capture from the Ethiopian and Italian armies, so that the historical lineup of those guns reflects the then political situation of the world and Ethiopian foreign relationships. For example a series of Kalashnikov (AK) assault rifles, which used to be a central weapon of the Eastern bloc during the Cold War, have become the most popular guns among the Banna since the late 1980s because AKs were introduced in the socialist Ethiopia (1974-1991) and fell into civilian hands after the collapse of the socialist regime. Warfare in southern Ethiopia should be examined in two phases : warfare between center and periphery, and inter-ethnic warface. For the peripheral peoples like the Banna, warfare against the Amhara-centred government and colonial Italy have been experiences of defeat. Since the Amhara domination in the 1890s, the Banna has long fought against those dominant powers, firstly with spears, and then with guns, all of which were acquired from the enemy. The acquisition of guns led the Banna to be militarized ; however, militarization does not mean that the Banna military system became westernized but that they attacked the police and government officials by hit-and-run or ambush. Although the government forcibly confiscated guns quite often, it tolerated their possession by the Banna. As the wide material gap between the Banna and the government shows, the government positioned the Banna as peripheral both militarily and politically. As the peripheral people gained larger and larger quantities of guns, inter-ethnic warfare changed from spear-and-shield fighting to mass killing with guns. Different from the violence against the government, warfare with neighboring people is not murder through ambush, but rather organized into an age system that the Banna introduced from the Bume (Nyangatom), an ethnic group living on the west bank of the Omo river and recognized as an enemy by the Banna. In the warfare with the Mursi and the Bodi which occurred in 1950s and 1960s was a kind of full scale attack with gruesome results, since each side was heavily armed rifles and ammunition. Different from the fight with gmovernment, the military balance was almost equal in such inter-ethnic warfare, although the population balance was unequal. This difference of offensive style corresponds to differences in relationships. On the one hand, although the introduction of guns changed the scene on the battlefield, friend-foe relation-ships with neighboring groups have not

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The purpose of this paper is to consider the growth of a national legend in the ultra-nationalistic 1930s in Japan and the contemporary appropriation of it. National legends were stories spread nationwide which functioned as a kind of ideological apparatus to inculcate loyalty and patriotism. These national legends were told about brave soldiers in the battlefield and courageous and devoted people on the home front. Additionally some old historical episodes were rediscovered and re-shaped into the national legends of those days. The story of the "Five Braves of Miyako" which I discuss here was also such a re-shaped national legend. The legend was about five fishermen in the village of HISAMATSU, MIYAKO island who risked their lives to convey the message that the Russian fleet had been seen near the Okinawa during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. According to the legend the five fishermen rowed a small boat for a distance about 120 kilometers from Miyako island to Ishigaki island, where a telegraph system had been installed. This episode was rediscovered by a language teacher at the Normal School of Okinawa in the late 1920s. In 1929, the story was printed in a language textbook for junior high school students called "Readings in Authentic Japanese" in order to instill national pride. This textbook brought the story to national attention. It was a beginning of a national legend called "the Five Braves of Okinawa" and it led to many ceremonies being held in Okinawa prefecture. Many of these ceremonies were sponsored by the Japanese Imperial Navy and other governmental agencies. In 1879 the Meiji government absorbed the Ryukyu area into Japanese territory as "Okinawa prefecture" and then ruled Okinawa as if it was a colony of Japan. As a result it seems reasonable to say that this legend had a political function in signifying "Okinawa" and "Okinawans" as being authentically Japanese. Contemporary native historians of Okinawa in the 1930s accepted this national legend as a local legend. The "Five Braves of Miyako (or sometimes Hisamatsu)" came to represent their own pride in the context of Japanese nationalism. This legend therefore presents a case where a local identity reinforced a national identity. After 1945, this legend was concealed because of its connection to the ultra-nationalism of the past. However, in the 1980s the people of Hisamatsu once again re-shaped this national legend into a new one which represents the image of "the sea" and of" the spirits of fishermen". This new interpretation of the legend was appropriated as a symbol of the village movement against a large national project to make Yonaha Bay in front of the village into a fresh-water lake. The legend has been resurrected and reinterpreted to signify the symbolic needs of several generations of the local people.

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This paper aims at describing how soshi (book use for personal deity) are used in southern villages on Miyako Island, Okinawa. Soshi are related with the worship of personal guardian deities and making of Uruka Calendar. This study points out the perspectives presented by soshi, and considers the role and contribution of 'Anthropology at home', especially in case of contemporary Japan. Firstly, I will give a brief review of soshi studies, and pick up some anthropological approaches from them. Secondly, following them, I will make an ethnographical description of soshi's mode of application using my own field data as well as former materials. These data show that soshi is connected with the maugan (personal guardian deity) worship and subsumed into them without exception. It can be pointed out that soshi represent the multilayered and multiplex relationship between mutou (utaki, in southern villages on Miyako Island) deities and villagers. And, through the consideration of making Uruka calendar using soshi as notes for Calendar, it can be observed that soshi is to Uruka calendar what Ozassyo is to Koyomi. These operations of soshi tells how Ozassyo were accepted into Ryukyu Culture in the pre-modern age. This form can be seen before 1714, and more study on various calendars in Southern parts of Japan may clarify the details. Books or clusters of letters are accepted and interpreted uniquely apart from the original content, and play an important part in reorganization of the practice of worship. From these discussions, it can be concluded that anthropological approach and methodology occupy a unique position in literate society, and present the possibility of collaborative study with history and sociology.

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Few Japanese anthropologists study either native or overseas Japanese. Those who study Japanese culture are mostly folklorists who, in their turn, avoid to conduct overseas fieldwork. Cultural anthropology is usually denned as the study of "other cultures." I understand, however, that studying different cultures is just one of the anthropological methods for our heuristic purpose, not being a sole goal nor its ultimate raison d'etre. We study other cultures in order to understand better ourselves and at the same time the nature of Man. The "anthropology at home" is not a recent acquisition in the anthropological body. The study of other cultures in conjunction with the study of one's own culture is, I think, the best way to figure the nature of Man out. Is there any specific positive reason for the Japanese to conduct anthropological research about the overseas Japanese ? Being barred out from doing fieldwork in mainland China, Sinologist Freedman found in result better research domains among the overseas Chinese for him to develop new anthropological paradigns. Inspired by reading Tristes Tropiques by Levi-Strauss, I went to Brazil in 1961 with an idea of making anthropology among Indians. Traveling all over Brazil for about a year, my interest shifted from tribal anthropology to modern urban polyethnic Brazilian situations. After a two-years fiedwork as full-time researcher in a project investigating the acculturative processes of the ethnic Japanese in southern Brazil, I studied cultural anthropology in the Ph. D program at Cornell University. I have never been acculturation-oriented in theory. In 1971 I started a fieldwork for investigating social networks, informal groupings, and ethnic associations in an industrial middle-sized city in Sao Paulo. My main intention was to make anthropology of ordinary middle-class Brazilian people. At the start I tried not being too much involved in the local Japanese community, because I understood that I had already had much experiences of doing fieldwork about the Japanese in Brazil. But soon I realized the fact that I could participate in the local community and conduct fieldwork only as a Japanese, because the local people classified me primarily as "a Japanese," and only secondarily as "an anthropologist." It was, to my view, an intrinsic epistemological issue of doing ethnographic fieldwork in a polyethnic situation in which an ethnic Japanese group was present. I understood that my fieldwork was fundamentally conditioned by my being a Japanese and that the local ethnic situations could be seen better by my Japanese eyes through the local ethnic Japanese window. Then I changed my research strategy accordingly. I started to participate actively in the Japanese communitry affairs. I organized a drama group in the local Japanese Association, wrote a bilingual, three-act play based on the local social problems. Actors were chosen from the members of the Association as well as from non-member university Nisei students. During the long period of stage training and dress rehearsal, we discussed intensively about the local ethnic problems. Through these experiences of "active participation" of organizing a group, rather than of ordinary "participant-observation," I learned much of the real functioning of social networks, informal groupings within the ethnic and associational frameworks. This experience gave me a good insight for furthering my fieldworks among the local non-Japanese Brazilians. The ideology of Nation-State and the assimilationist policy then dominant among the Brazilians was largely responsible for structuring ethnic and national identities of the Japanese. The State was present in their individual identities. Their personhood of being ethnic Japanese in Brazil was, in my understanding, interpretable only taking their subjectivity and the presence of

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