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.