Doing Fieldwork in Japan

Book Description
Doing Fieldwork in Japan taps the expertise of North American and European specialists on the practicalities of conducting long-term research in the social sciences and cultural studies. In lively first-person accounts, they discuss their successes and failures doing fieldwork across rural and urban Japan in a wide range of settings: among religious pilgrims and adolescent consumers; on factory assembly lines and in high schools and wholesale seafood markets; with bureaucrats in charge of defense, foreign aid, and social welfare policy; inside radical political movements; among adherents of "New Religions"; inside a prosecutor's office and the JET Program for foreign English teachers; with journalists in the NHK newsroom; while researching race, ethnicity, and migration; and amidst fans and consumers of contemporary popular culture. Doing Fieldwork in Japan brings together decades of research experience supported by such major institutions as the Abe program, the Fulbright program, the Japan Foundation, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, the Ministry of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. This is an invaluable resource for anyone--novice or expert, first-time visitor or specialist--planning research in Japan.

About the Author
Theodore C. Bestor is professor of anthropology and Japanese studies at Harvard University. Patricia G. Steinhoff is professor of sociology at the University of Hawai'i. Victoria Lyon Bestor is executive director of the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources. Contributors: David M. Arase, Theodore C. Bestor, Victoria Lyon Bestor, Mary C. Brinton, John Creighton Campbell, Samuel Coleman, Suzanne Culter, Andrew Gordon, Helen Hardacre, Joy Hendry, David T. Johnson, Ellis S. Krauss, David L. McConnell, Ian Reader, Glenda S. Roberts, Joshua Hotaka Roth, Robert J. Smith, Sheila A. Smith, Patricia G. Steinhoff, Merry Isaacs White, Christine R. Yano.


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Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of contributors from North America and Europe, this volume presents 20 papers that provide advice on both research methodologies and Japanese society, often with reference to the authors' own research experiences, for prospective researchers in the social sciences. Major themes include the navigation of bureaucratic mazes in business and government, the penetration of "closed" networks, and the conduct of interviews and surveys. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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