An Anthropologist in Japan is a highly personal narrative which draws the reader into a fascinating cross-section of Japanese life. Joy Hendry relates her experiences during a nine-month period of fieldwork in a Japanese seaside town. She sets out on a study of politeness but a variety of unpredictable events including a volcanic eruption, a suicide and her son's involvement with the family of a powerful local gangster, begin to alter the direction of her research. This volume exemplifies the role of chance in the acquisition of anthropological knowledge and demonstrates how moments of insight can be embedded in a mass of everyday activity. The disturbing and disordered appears alongside the neat and the beautiful, and the vignettes here illuminate the education system, religious beliefs, politics, the family and the neighbourhood in modern Japan. An Anthropologist in Japan is reflexive anthropology in action. It demonstrates how ethnographic fieldwork can uniquely provide a deep understanding of linguistic and cultural difference.
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