Joy Hendry's Japan Research Centre (JRC, Soas) Meiji Jingu Autumn Lecture (3 October 2012) - 'Anthropology turning History? Advantages and surprises of long-term fieldwork in Japan'

The widely-known, hugely respected and much-loved anthropologist Joy Hendry has been doing research in Japan for 40 years. In this Meiji Jingu Autum Lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London the audience was privileged to hear Hendry’s personal account of her life as an anthropologist.

Hendry modestly began by apologising in advance for what would be an indulgent and very personal talk, in which she would look at the way fieldwork becomes history. This happens as the researcher observes ‘change in the making.’ Over these 40 years, Hendry has been able to see the same people changing and perhaps espousing values or ways of life different from what they aspired to when young, test predictions and assess change, give lively personal accounts, provide a local context for national and international issues and to make some predictions herself.

Hendry’s wide experience of Japan has consisted of time spent in Tokyo, attached to Tokyo University; in a farming village in Kyushu and in a fishing community in Chiba Prefecture. During this time she has travelled all over Japan to inform her research and has also supervised and learnt from her research students whom she relies on to help her update her research in what must be a mutually nurturing and rewarding relationship.

When she first arrived in Tokyo, Hendry lived in an ‘English House’ with largely Japanese people with whom she had to converse in English a few evenings per week, but from whom she also learned a great deal of her Japanese. She has kept in touch with some of her ‘English House’ crowd over these 40 years.

Having kept in touch with friends in Japan means that Hendry has been able to compare approaches to child-rearing and expectations of children while also being able to discuss what to do with aging parents and compare their own aging and illnesses.

Whereas sociologists have been predicting the breakdown of the family for decades, there are examples to the contrary.

Dispelling the myth of the ‘parasite single’ or children who continue living with their parents well into adulthood leeching off them, Hendry showed photographs of a beaming friend with his parasite daughter – he is delighted that she still lives at home with the rest of the family in Tokyo.

Hendry then recounted an anecdote which revealed the importance of fieldwork and regular dialogue with the community in which one is immersed. During her year in Kyushu in 1975, the head of the village spoke to Hendry about ‘love’ marriages in the UK with what seemed, to her, a twinkle in his eyes. It later transpired that he actually found love marriages dangerous and would not allow a love match in the case of his daughter. Hendry realises that had she not met the village head more than once during this year his dislike of love matches would never have been made clear to her. His own daughter ingeniously had someone act as a ‘go-between’ and introduce her to a suitable partner who was in fact, someone she had already met and fallen in love with. In any case, this had the intended result as her father was impressed with the man and encouraged the wedding.

These experiences furthered Hendry’s interest in the concept of arranged weddings and yobai or night visits, when suitors would clandestinely visit their girlfriends in the early hours of the morning.

Though the wedding ceremony itself hasn’t changed very much over these 40 years, how people meet in Japan certainly has said Hendry.

Talking about other friends of hers in Kyushu, Hendry said it was perhaps that the children of one of her friends are not living at home and only return home for special occasions in contrast to the parasite single example she’d given of a friend in Tokyo.

Hendry gave an account of changing attitudes to the family which she has witnessed in Japan since 1975. In 1975 farmers she met were apologising for being feudal, in 1979 they were proud of retaining family values which were being seem as part of the reason for Japan’s economic success, in 1980s she became aware of many grandparents caring for toddlers/grandchildren, in 1995 continuing families became a model again, in 2001 it was apparent that it was becoming difficult for young people to find spouses and in 2011 she became aware of ‘tsukin nogyo’ (commuting to the farm) and ‘ikumen’ (men rearing or sharing in the looking after of children).

Hendry touched on the issue of decreasing population in Japan. Over the past 20 years, numerous primary schools have closed down in Japan due to lack of pupils. Nevertheless, Hendry predicts there will be a turning point and she has become aware of more people in Japan talking about having more children. She has had a glimpse of a thriving rural population in Kyushu. The fact that men are getting more involved in child rearing is a real factor in her prediction that the trend towards a dwindling population will be bucked.

Turning her attention to the 2011 disasters, Hendry mentioned the Miyazaki volcanic eruptions which swamped the surrounding farmland, the Christchurch earthquake of February 2011 in which 29 Japanese students were killed and the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. The world press descended on Japan after the earthquake and tsunami and wondered whether this would change Japan forever. Hendry doesn’t think it will; Japan has suffered disasters in the past and not changed radically as a result.

The overriding message of this talk was that generalisations aren’t helpful and that change cannot be simply explained as being a result of continuity or reaction. Things change, that just is how it is, and there is no one pattern.

Japan will continue to be different from the USA, Hendry asserted, challenging this age-old assumption of inevitable and increasing Americanisation.

Speaker Biography

Joy Hendry is emeritus professor of social anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, founder of the Japan Anthropology Workshop and the Europe Japan Research Centre, and a senior member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. She has been a visiting scholar at Tokyo University, at the Gengo Bunka Kenkyujo at Keio; at the universities of Melbourne, Otago, McMaster, Freiburg, Prague, Vienna, and the University of the South Pacific, as well as the CNRS in Paris. She has carried out fieldwork in various parts of Japan over some 40 years, but in most depth in the Yame-shi tea-producing area of Kyushu (Fukuoka-ken) and in the fishing community and holiday resort of Tateyama-shi in Chiba-ken. She has also travelled widely within Japan and in several other countries, where she seeks to put her Japanese research into a global context. A recent example was to examine the situation of Ainu people within the context of indigenous people worldwide, and an ongoing project is with indigenous science. Her publications include Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display, Oxford: Berg, 2000; and Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self-Representation, New York: Palgrave, 2005. She has also published three introductory anthropology texts and four editions of Understanding Japanese Society as well as editing volumes such as Interpreting Japanese Society, Japan at Play and Dismantling the East-West Dichotomy.