Paper short abstract

Japan is an astonishingly safe society. What is conspicuous, however, is how the proportion of arrestees aged over-65 has grown fourfold since the year 2000. I offer an account of the factors behind this Japanese elderly crime boom.

Paper long abstract

Japan is in the grip of an elderly crime surge. It is not the case that Japanese crime in general is on the rise. On the

contrary, Japan remains, as it has historically been, a remarkably law-abiding society, with a steady decline even being

observable, unlike in most other developed nations, of overall criminality. What stands to be noted against this

background trend, however, is how a rapidly growing percentage of crimes is carried out by over-65s. So pronounced

has this elderly crime wave become that in 2020, when the proportion of senior arrestees reached a record high of

one in every five, a series of articles appeared in domestic and foreign media suggesting that the Japanese elderly,

finding themselves poor, lonely and isolated, purposefully commit crimes so that they can enter the prison estate and

become beneficiaries of care and community there. With a view to aiding Japanese policy-makers in formulating

policies that would alleviate the burden now undeniably mounting on prisons from this ever-growing population of

people needing extra care, I offer to fill the gap in the academic literature on this issue and empirically and

comprehensively investigate the factors behind the elderly crime boom.

Paper short abstract

An ethnography based on ten years of fieldwork in a Tokyo pink film company, this paper explores how pink films are produced, circulated, and consumed, revealing how marginal media economies in Japan negotiate precarity, creativity, and intimacy in contemporary cinema.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers an ethnographic account of Japan’s pink film industry—the softcore cinematic genre that has persisted on the fringes of Japan’s media and cultural economy for over half a century. Based on ten years of fieldwork inside a Tokyo-based pink film production company, the paper traces the everyday practices, negotiations, and material infrastructures that sustain the making and circulation of these films in the twenty-first century.

Through long-term participant observation and interviews with directors, actors, producers, and distributors, the study explores how pink films are produced and circulated within a tightly interconnected network of low-budget studios, theatre owners, and niche audiences. Far from being a mere relic of the postwar erotic cinema boom, the pink industry today operates as a microcosm of Japan’s broader media ecology—where economic precarity, affective labour, and creative aspiration intersect.

The paper follows the life cycle of a pink film—from script development and shooting to theatrical exhibition and audience reception—to reveal how workers navigate shifting moral regulations, digital transitions, and diminishing exhibition spaces. It examines how this marginal industry adapts to new platforms and changing publics while maintaining an ethos of artisanal, face-to-face production that resists full incorporation into mainstream cinema or digital pornography.

By attending to the intimate economies and aesthetic negotiations that define pink film production, this paper contributes to media anthropology, film studies, and media studies in general. It highlights how zones of marginal media practice can illuminate broader transformations in Japan’s media infrastructures and the affective economies that sustain them.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how local reggae songs about danjiri festivals in Senshu, Osaka, express affective ties of kinship and romance that draw youth into risky participation and reinforce Kishiwada’s central place in the wider danjiri cultural sphere.

Paper long abstract

In contemporary Japan, many local festivals face depopulation and a shortage of successors, yet the danjiri float festivals of the Senshu region in southern Osaka continue to mobilize large numbers of young participants and retain remarkable intensity. Urban festival studies within Japanese cultural anthropology have clarified the institutional and organizational dimensions of such events. Notably, Wazaki’s work on Kyoto’s Hidari-Daimonji fire festival has examined festival organization, spatial configuration, and tourism as key to the anthropology of the city, while Yoneyama’s studies of the Gion festival treat it as a privileged lens on urban social life and civic order. Building on this anthropological tradition, this paper shifts the focus from institutional structure to the affective sensibilities that make risky, time-consuming participation in danjiri festivals experientially desirable for young people.

Specifically, this study analyzes two locally celebrated Japanese reggae tracks that explicitly reference danjiri festivals: BEAR MAN’s “Asekusai oretachi no machi” (“Our Sweaty Town,” 2013) and REKID’s “Matsuri no owari” (“The End of the Festival,” 2023). Treating these songs as narrative condensations of participants’ embodied experience, the paper combines a close reading of lyrics with attention to their circulation through YouTube videos, music videos, and danjiri-related events.

The analysis shows, first, that BEAR MAN’s song articulates a vertically oriented sensibility of kinship and intergenerational transmission, in which “sweaty,” physically exerted male bodies and the cherished danjiri float are embedded in a quasi-extended family spanning fathers and children. Second, REKID’s track foregrounds horizontally oriented affects of romance and intimate partnership, linking the “sportized” danjiri body (tanned skin, happi coats, styled hair) to heterosexual attraction and future family formation. Taken together, these songs reveal a shared “affective commons” that ties vertical (kinship/lineage) and horizontal (romance/peer) relations to the continued reproduction of the danjiri “cultural sphere,” while reinforcing the symbolic centrality of Kishiwada within that sphere. By foregrounding popular music as an ethnographic window onto festival participation, this paper expands anthropological debates on urban festivals, youth culture, and the sensory grounds of communal persistence.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Muslim migrant women in provincial Japan negotiate aspirations for love, livelihood, and religious life, and how these shape their views of mobility and metropolitan futures within Japan.

Paper long abstract

Muslim migrant women in Japan frequently navigate multiple aspirations related to family formation, economic stability, and a sense of belonging. In regional cities such as Sendai, many women describe daily life as safe, affordable, and socially supportive, yet these conditions do not always align with longer term hopes for partnership, career development, or religious community. Metropolitan areas such as Tokyo and other major urban centers often appear as offering broader possibilities, even as they also carry risks and uncertainties.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in depth interviews, this paper explores how Muslim migrant women living in provincial cities make sense of mobility within Japan. It examines how decisions about whether to stay, move, or remain open to future relocation take shape through everyday considerations of love, livelihood, and religious life. Employment opportunities, marriage prospects, access to halal food and religious spaces all shape how women evaluate provincial and metropolitan settings. In weighing these factors, women often articulate a contrast between the familiarity of provincial life and the promise they associate with metropolitan settings.

By attending to how women talk about staying, moving, and imagining elsewhere, the analysis highlights how aspirations and constraints unfold and shift over time. Rather than treating mobility as a single act of relocation, the paper approaches it as an ongoing process rooted in everyday reasoning and negotiation. It contributes to scholarship on migration, gender, and religion in Japan by shifting attention away from metropolitan centers as default sites of analysis and toward the experiences of Muslim migrant women living in regional contexts. In doing so, it shows how imagined futures shape present decisions, attachments, and senses of belonging within contemporary Japan.

Paper short abstract

The Ainu collection in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin This collaborative project focuses on analyzing the Ainu collection, comprising around 1,000 objects, in terms of origin, age, materiality, and functionality, as well as presenting the research findings in exhibitions in Japan and Berlin.

Paper long abstract

Research and exhibition project: The Ainu collection in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin

This collaborative project focuses on analyzing the entire Ainu collection, comprising around 1,000 objects from the Department of East and North Asia, in terms of origin, age, materiality, and functionality, as well as presenting the research findings in exhibitions in both Japan and Berlin.

The Ainu collection at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin is not only one of the largest of its kind, but also unique in its composition, as its diversity of objects provides a good overview of Ainu culture in Hokkaido and Sakhalin in the second half of the 19th century.

In 2024 a team of researchers from the National Ainu Museum came to Berlin to visit the Ethnological Museum and its collections. The primary task was to prepare the loan of the Berlin objects for the co-operative exhibition planned as part of the Japan World Expo 2025. The focus was on those objects that were exhibited at the 1873 World's Fair in Vienna in 1873, returning to Hokkaido for the first time in 150 years. The objects were displayed as the centerpiece of the exhibition “Ainu Collection at the Vienna World Exhibition 1873” in Hokkaido in 2025.

Research on other Ainu objects from the EM collection will continue in collaboration over the next few years. The initial focus will be on analyzing the materials and techniques used in the production of Ainu textiles and garments. The aim is to identify clues related to production dates, periods of use, and manufacturing locations. Research outcomes will be disseminated through academic publications. The report will include measurements, material types, patterns, and detailed images of each item. It will also feature garment illustrations and diagrams to enable contemporary reproduction, thereby supporting the continuation of traditional techniques.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how everyday cleaning practices in Japan have absorbed spatial, symbolic, and political functions once associated with kegare. Based on ethnographic research in Kyoto households, it argues that hyper-sanification now operates as a new moral hierarchy.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how contemporary Japanese cleaning practices have come to absorb and reinterpret aspects of purity once associated with kegare, with particular attention to the domestic sphere. While kegare historically provided a framework for navigating impurity through cyclical temporality and communal rituals, its social and symbolic functions have increasingly faded from everyday life. What remains, however, are spatial and moral sensibilities that continue to shape how households understand order, propriety, and the management of the body within the home.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among households in Kyoto—including semi-structured interviews and a small survey—this study examines how families negotiate ideas of cleanliness in the organisation of domestic space. Rather than making a disciplinary claim, the ethnographic approach is used here to situate broader cultural questions within lived, material environments. The findings suggest that contemporary expectations of “proper” cleanliness often focus on eliminating sensory traces such as smells and sounds, producing an environment that aspires to visual and olfactory neutrality. Practices such as excessive washing, the avoidance of materials perceived as “unclean,” and the idealisation of minimalist interiors illustrate how domestic space becomes a stage upon which moral expectations are enacted.

These tendencies also reveal tensions between the imagined cleanliness of modern living environments and the practical realities of domestic life. Concerns such as “raccoon-washing” behaviour among children, or the reliance on synthetic building materials that are believed to be more hygienic despite potential health risks, highlight how the aesthetics of purity can conflict with everyday experience. At the same time, households express anxiety about visible or invisible “dirt,” contributing to new forms of social distinction based on perceived domestic orderliness.

By tracing how spatial arrangements, material choices, and daily routines convey moral meanings attached to cleanliness, this paper argues that the home plays a central role in sustaining a contemporary hierarchy of purity. Rather than replacing kegare outright, these emerging practices reorganise its sensibilities within the intimate environment of the household. The analysis contributes to broader discussions on domesticity, embodiment, and moral regulation in contemporary Japan.

Keywords: domestic space; cleanliness; material culture; everyday practices; purity

Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes the transnational political engagement of Japanese migrants who actively support a Japanese political party, focusing on their motivations for long-distance political participation and the meanings and broader implications of such engagement.

Paper long abstract

Contemporary migrants actively engage with their homelands in various ways, including following homeland news, visiting their countries of origin, sending remittances, and consuming popular culture. Such migrants are often described as transmigrants, as they maintain social, cultural, and political ties across national borders. One important dimension of transmigrant practices is homeland political engagement, which includes expressing political opinions, campaigning for homeland political parties, and participating in elections through external voting. This paper examines the transnational political engagement of Japanese migrants. While existing scholarship on migrants’ homeland political participation has largely focused on migrants from the Global South, relatively little attention has been paid to Japanese migrants. Although research on Japanese migration has expanded in recent decades—addressing migration motivations, settlement experiences, and the diversity of migrant categories such as expatriates, marriage migrants, and cultural migrants—their engagement with homeland politics remains underexplored. To address this gap, this study draws on interviews with Japanese migrants in Europe who are active overseas supporters of a Japanese political party. Although these individuals have no intention of returning to Japan, they remain highly engaged in Japanese politics and participate in various activities to express their concerns and political views from abroad. This paper traces their migration trajectories, examines their reasons for leaving Japan, and analyzes their motivations for political engagement across distance. It further explores the meanings they attach to such engagement and discusses its broader implications for understanding transnational political participation among Japanese migrants.

Paper short abstract

An exploration of how companion animals are cared for in Okinawa, Japan, based on multi-species ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation as a language interpreter at a cosmopolitan veterinary clinic, which provide data on social rituals and more-than-human clinical entanglements.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores ways that companion animals, namely cats and dogs, are cared for in Okinawa, Japan. Research is based on multi-species ethnographic fieldwork with animal welfare centres, veterinary clinics, rescue organisations, pet shops, pet owners, pet funeral homes, pet breeders, and foster care facilities in Okinawa and other locations, with a focus on participant observation conducted as a language interpreter at a cosmopolitan veterinary clinic that serves Okinawan, mainland Japanese, and expat clients, including members and affiliates of the United States military stationed in Japan. Enquiries are led by data on social rituals amongst staff members in the veterinary community, and on clinical accounts that feature converging perspectives of stakeholders in the moral business of caring for pets, as well as more-than-human entanglements and agencies.

Key words: multi-species ethnography, human-animal relations, more-than-human entanglements, nonhuman agency, similarities and alterities in approaches to pet care, veterinary anthropology, medical anthropology, animal welfare, euthanasia, Okinawa

Paper short abstract

This ethnographic research examines Indian migrant workers in Japan under the TITP and SSW visa schemes. Linking India’s young workforce to Japan’s ageing economy, it shows how efficiency-driven labour programs shape work, time, and wellbeing, often obscuring migrants’ physical and emotional costs.

Paper long abstract

The labour economy is reshaped by demographic asymmetries, as workforce-scarce ageing societies increasingly turn to labour-abundant countries to address shortages. Japan and India exemplify this dynamic: Japan faces acute labour shortages driven by its ageing population, while India’s young workforce confronts limited domestic opportunities despite economic growth. This mismatch has opened new pathways for Indian workers migrating to Japan through the Technical Intern Training Program and the Specified Skilled Worker visa, particularly in manufacturing, construction, agriculture, food processing, and nursing care.

Based on ethnographic research with Indian migrant workers in Japan, this paper highlights migrants’ narratives to examine how work, time, and wellbeing are negotiated within Japan’s demanding labour regime. One worker noted, “I was only given five days of holiday to go back to India—two days go in travel,” illustrating how institutional schedules compress family life and transnational belonging. Others described opting for night shifts because “it pays us more,” while simultaneously expressing anxiety about long-term health impacts. Such accounts reveal how economic calculation, physical endurance, and moral responsibility toward family are tightly interwoven in everyday decision-making.

While scholarship on migration to Japan has focused on Southeast Asian workers, the presence of Indian migrants under these visa categories remains underexamined. This paper explores the gendered allocation of work across sectors, the role of intermediary agencies, and cultural norms shaping workplace integration. The paper argues that while transnational labour programs are designed for efficiency, they often hide the everyday physical and emotional costs faced by migrant workers.

Paper short abstract

The paper proposes an exploration of hito kara (hitori karaoke), a relatively recent manifestation of karaoke-singing in Japan involving individual singing within the context of venues for one. Hito kara is situated with reference to changing leisure practices over karaoke’s fifty year history.

Paper long abstract

It has been fifty years since karaoke-singing first emerged and became popularised in urban and suburban entertainment districts of Western Japan. Although initially confined to the realm of “after hours” (Plath 1964) eating, drinking and socialising, strongly associated with (mostly) male company employees and the sarariman (salaryman) culture of the post-war decades preceding the collapse of the economic bubble, with the development of private, rented by-the-hour karaoke spaces (so-called karaoke boxes or karaoke rooms) in the mid-1980s, karaoke became established more widely across Japanese society, catering to families, women, the elderly and, perhaps most notably, the young (albeit with some initial trepidation about teenage school children gathering together in privately rented, unchaperoned karaoke venues). More recently, the emergence of hito kara (hitori karaoke), wherein individuals sing alone in karaoke venues specially adapted for one (sometimes simultaneously communicating about the experience with friends and associates via social media), seemingly represents a novel articulation of sociality within the context of karaoke singing, potentially reflecting a longer term trajectory away from more richly socially contextualized forms of leisure tinged with feelings of social obligation, towards uses of leisure time which is individually negotiated and relatively more reflective of personal preferences. This paper proposes an initial exploration of this most recent incarnation of karaoke singing, reflecting also on methodological tools and strategies available for undertaking Anthropological/qualitative research in post-covid Japan.

Paper short abstract

Using the sociological perspective of “stranger theory,” this presentation answers the question, “Why do ‘strangers’ contribute to the Aomori Nebuta Festival’s management?” In answering this question, the presentation considers the possibility of “strangers” continuing the traditional festival.

Paper long abstract

Japanese society is widely recognized as facing population decline and rapid aging. Despite these demographic challenges, large-scale traditional festivals continue to thrive. One reason is that participation is not limited to members of official festival management organizations but also includes “strangers,” namely individuals who are anonymous to the management organization and participate primarily for enjoyment.

The Aomori Nebuta Festival, a traditional event held in Aomori City, Aomori Prefecture, attracts a particularly large number of such “strangers.” Anyone may participate as a haneto dancer. Consequently, around the year 2000, chaos arose due to “karasu-haneto,” participants dressed in black like crows, who behaved violently and disrupted the parade. Previous studies have argued that the Aomori Nebuta Festival is inherently difficult to control because it attracts “strangers” motivated by enjoyment rather than organizational affiliation.

So, are the “strangers” who participate in the current Aomori Nebuta Festival impossible for its management organization to control? In the case of Organization A’s Nebuta parade, which serves as an example in this presentation, “strangers” known as “haneto-riders”—a traveling group with many motorcycle enthusiasts who continue to participate in the Nebuta Festival—contribute to the management of Organization A’s Nebuta parade by controlling karasu-haneto, who are also “strangers.” This phenomenon cannot be adequately explained by previous research.

Thus, using the sociological perspective of “stranger theory,” this presentation answers the question, “Why do ‘strangers’ contribute to the Aomori Nebuta Festival’s management?” In answering this question, the presentation considers the possibility of “strangers” continuing the traditional festival. Having conducted fieldwork with haneto-riders for eight years, the presenter explains that haneto-riders who wish to have a long-term relationship with Organization A demonstrate their usefulness to festival management by eliminating karasu-haneto. Contrary to earlier findings, the Aomori Nebuta Festival is shown to sustain a paradoxical structure in which enjoyment-oriented “strangers” voluntarily contribute to festival management and continuity.

Paper short abstract

I examine the possibility of a non‑nationalistic form of conservatism in modern Japan via the approaches of Mannheim, Ogino, and my own research. , I argue that Japan’s intellectual history contains alternative conservative orientations , particularly what I refer to as “life‑attuned conservatism.”

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the possibility of a non‑nationalistic form of conservatism in modern Japan by integrating three strands of scholarship: Karl Mannheim’s theory of conservatism as grounded in the ”Erlebnis” (pre‑reflexive lived experience), my own typology of postwar Japanese conservative thought, and Masahiro Ogino’s conceptualization of “ambivalent others” based on his reading of Yanagita Kunio. Although conservatism is frequently conflated with nationalism or reactionary attitudes, this study argues that Japan’s intellectual history contains alternative conservative orientations rooted in lived practices, sensory attunement, and flexible communal relations. I address this concept as “life‑attuned conservatism.”

My doctoral dissertation classified postwar Japanese conservatism into four types: (1) ethnonationalist conservatism, exemplified by Yasuda Yojūrō and Hayashi Fusao; (2) cultivation‑oriented conservatism, represented by the ”Kokoro group,” which emphasized the cultivation of cultural refinement among the populace; (3) life‑attuned conservatism, articulated by Fukuda Tsuneari, who emphasized the practical knowledge embedded in artisans’ and ordinary people’s lived practices; and (4) folk‑cultural conservatism, associated with Yanagita Kunio’s investigations of local lifeworlds. I use “life‑attuned conservatism” as a collective term for (3) and (4), and this paper focuses particularly on the fourth type.

While my dissertation placed Yanagita in this fourth category, my subsequent research suggests that his analyses of how ancestral‑spirit‑based communities accepted “ambivalent others” contain an underexplored dimension. I propose that the acceptance of such boundary figures depended not only on ritual or formal criteria but also on subtle, affective responses that arise in encounters with difference. Ambivalent others, by occupying liminal positions, relativize dominant norms and state‑centered ideologies, generating a productive unsettlement that opens possibilities for reorienting social life in new and generative directions.

By situating these insights within the sociology of knowledge, the paper argues that life‑attuned conservatism constitutes a distinct mode of social belonging—one that embraces heterogeneity, foregrounds everyday relationality, and offers conceptual tools for reimagining conservatism beyond exclusionary identity politics.

Keywords: life‑attuned conservatism, ambivalent others, sensory attunement,Yanagita Kunio, Japanese conservatism

Paper short abstract

Ethnographic action research in Nagoya (2012-2024) rethinks youth outreach from supported youths' perspectives. With youth, the Centre questions outreach's purpose and shifts from crime-prevention referrals to "co-presence," where youth open and run a hub, self-governing beyond merit-based control.

Paper long abstract

Existing research on youth support has documented the techniques and outcomes of professional outreach. Yet in contemporary Japan, many children and young people remain in downtown public spaces while refusing institutionalisation and formal professional intervention, even as welfare services and risk-management frameworks expand. Research rarely centres youth-led practices in which young people assemble support themselves, and rarely treats outreach not only as a technique but as a question of governance, power, and participation.

This paper addresses this gap through a fourteen-year ethnographic action research study (2012–2024) of the National Child Welfare Centre, a community-based organisation in Nagoya founded and led by the author, a social worker and child welfare practitioner. The Centre engages annually with more than 2,000 young people, including runaway youth (e.g., Tōyoko Kids), youth with delinquency histories, survivors of sexual violence, and other marginalised participants. Rather than prioritising management, behavioural correction, or risk control, it welcomes participants not as “clients” or “patients” but as collaborators in making the place together, and decisions arise from shared lived experience rather than professional authority. Weekly outreach is anchored in the Nagoya Station West Plaza, where colourful costumes signal safety, invite contact, and soften stigma in public space. Participants value sustaining and running this community for themselves—a practice of community autonomy.

Drawing on long-term participant observation, field records, and reflexive analysis, the study shows that outreach becomes effective by going to where young people gather, listening to concerns and aspirations, and co-creating activities through which those aspirations take form. Participation is not made to “work” through compliance; trust grows through encounters and continued involvement, and shared self-governance gradually takes shape. Everyday interaction continually revises boundaries between supporter and supported, expertise and lived experience, and how responsibility is held.

The findings suggest that youth support is most sustainable when helper/helped distinctions are unsettled, participants are freed from the patient role imposed by institutional logics, and governance is replaced by shared responsibility, mutual presence, and collective care. Situated within Japanese social welfare and youth policy, this model offers a critical rethinking of youth outreach and social support beyond Japan.

Paper short abstract

This study examines migrants’ experiences of Japan’s post-2023 immigration and refugee policies through the lenses of differential inclusion and layered precarity, by combining policy analysis with qualitative research, including interviews with immigrants from Türkiye and field observations.

Paper long abstract

Revisions to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act(ICRRA) were passed in 2023, aiming to address controversial issues in Japan, such as low refugee recognition rates, challenges in the detention system, repeated asylum applications, and overstays. Together with accompanying measures introduced in subsequent years, including special residency grants for families with children born in Japan, revisions in ICRRA reshaped the legal conditions of immigrants and asylum seekers, yet their everyday consequences are unexplored.

Addressing this gap, this study examines real-life implications of post-2023 policies for immigrants from Türkiye, a group increasingly visible in public debates as non-recognized asylum seekers, focusing on social inclusion, access to services, and strategies for achieving legal stability using the frameworks of differential inclusion and layered precarity.

The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining critical policy analysis of legislative documents and governmental notifications with qualitative research. Qualitative data includes semi-structured interviews with Turkish immigrants in Saitama Prefecture, complemented by participant observation through community engagement and work as an immigrant consultant and interpreter.

Post-2023 policies produce differential inclusion through fragmented access to rights and services, resulting in layered precarity. While some migrants on provisional release obtained residency status through special grants, improving access to services, others experienced no change, status loss, or shifts to supervisory measures without meaningful improvements in daily life. Many remain excluded from health insurance and lawful employment, continuing to face deportation. Introduction of additional restrictive measures, such as the inability to renew driving licenses, further exacerbates social exclusion and access barriers. Legal outcomes are often fragmented within families, with partial family recognition intensifying insecurity and constraining decision-making, while bureaucratic nontransparency heightens uncertainties. Furthermore, the overvisibility of Turkish immigrants in public debates and social media, combined with policy changes, heightens their precariousness as they face growing hate speech and anti-immigrant sentiment. Some migrants pursue alternative pathways to legal stability, such as employment-based visas, but these remain limited due to restricted networks and complex procedures.

By foregrounding migrants’ experiences, this paper contributes to migration and refugee studies on Japan by demonstrating the everyday consequences of Japan’s post-2023 policies for immigrants from Türkiye, which remains understudied.

Paper short abstract

This study examines how furusato (“hometown”) was formed in 1960s–70s Japan through a live national TV show showcasing regional culture and mobilizing residents. It reveals furusato as a social practice created through media, migration, locality, and shared emotion.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how rural Japan came to be articulated as furusato (“hometown”) in the 1960s and 1970s, and analyzes the social relations and community processes through which this representation was collectively produced. While furusato is often understood as a nostalgic cultural trope internal to Japan, this study shifts attention to the institutional and social mechanisms through which it was made visible and emotionally resonant. As a primary source, it focuses on NHK’s live entertainment program Furusato no Uta Matsuri (Hometown Song Festival), broadcast from 1966 to 1974. Each week, well-known announcer Teru Miyata introduced festivals, folk performing arts, and elements of daily cultural life alongside guest singers, drawing nationwide viewership ratings of 30–40 percent. Large groups of residents participated, presenting their communities on a national stage.

The program communicated the vitality of the furusato to audiences who had migrated to cities during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth. At the same time, it staged regional pride before a dispersed national public, giving local actors a rare opportunity for visibility. A defining feature was the sense of unity cultivated among Miyata, performers, singers, and audiences on site—a form of mediated co-presence that complicates assumptions about passive television spectatorship.

With NHK’s cooperation, we analyzed the 35 surviving episodes. We also conducted interviews with Miyata’s secretary and former directors. Furthermore, with the cooperation of Miyata’s family, we examined production materials preserved by his partner, including scripts, interview notes, schedules, venue layouts, municipal publicity documents, local newspaper reports, and correspondence among NHK regional stations, municipalities, preservation societies, residents, migrants, and viewers.

Rather than approaching television as a representational surface, the study adopts a sociological perspective that understands media as a field in which social relations, local identities, and feelings of furusato are produced. By tracing how municipalities, Chambers of Commerce and Industry, preservation groups, and residents sought to shape how their communities would be seen, the paper argues that furusato was not only emotionally imagined, but actively organized and negotiated through media, migration, locality, and collective emotion.

Paper short abstract

This research examines well-being and happiness among junior high school students in Tokyo through ethnographic fieldwork, highlighting how these socio-culturally embedded experiences are shaped (or not) by proximity to dominant norms, where new dimensions of happiness and well-being may emerge.

Paper long abstract

This research focuses on investigating the educational settings of the Japanese context, and how well-being and happiness as an implicit or stated educational goal is practiced within public, private, and national schools. In the broader context of Japanese education, issues such as school nonattendance (futōkō), bullying (ijime), mental health challenges, and stress from entrance examinations are prominent (Sugimoto, 2021). The neoliberal emphasis on academic achievement manifested through the expansion of the cram school (juku) industry, the use of deviation scores (hensachi), and intensified competition and stratification (Cave, 2016; Slater, 2014; Sugimoto, 2021) contributes to creating norms of well-being as being to succeed within these objectives. Specifically, it explores how junior high school students in Tokyo experience (or not) happiness through social interactions within and outside classroom settings. This is analyzed through Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Bourdieu, 1986), Foucault’s notion of discursive practices (Hall, 2001), and Ingold’s framework of doing and undergoing (Ingold, 2017). It shows that these norms not only define the conditions for well-being and happiness but also implicitly determine who is deemed eligible to attain them within dominant educational and social discourses. In particular, this research highlights how junior high school students experience the adolescent period with many significant transitions (Letendre & Fukuzawa, 2013), and how they navigate these tensions between personal and social level. The value of happiness has been assessed through positivist-oriented publications such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Better Life Index and the World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al., 2012, as cited in Manzenreiter & Holthus, 2017). These data remain useful for policy-making, yet essentialist claims that happiness is a universal, uniform experience easily captured by quantitative measures risk being overly reductive. Therefore, this research adopts a qualitative approach, using ethnographic fieldwork to explore how the concept of well-being and happiness varies across cultural contexts, is shaped by diverse social and moral frameworks, and how it is expressed in everyday life of Japanese junior high school students. It provides insights into how new forms of well-being and happiness may emerge in the educational context through the narratives of students and teachers.

Paper short abstract

This paper analyses how Japanese male dancers pursue aspirations across borders and asks what kinds of ‘diversity’ are accepted in global ballet markets. It examines the extent to which these markets prioritise individual talent regardless of non-Western body types, aesthetics and ethnicity.

Paper long abstract

Men remain a small minority among ballet learners in Japan, yet more male dancers are studying abroad and entering prestigious overseas schools and companies. In 2021, there were approximately 7,900 male learners (around 3%) out of roughly 256,000 learners nationwide (Showa University of Music, Ballet Research Institute 2021). This paper examines how boys and men navigate stigma and prestige across amateur and professional pathways, focusing on masculinity, the body and racialised aesthetics.

It is sometimes argued that stigma surrounding boys and men in ballet is lower in Japan than in some other countries, partly because alternative masculinities have gained visibility since the 1990s, contributing to broader acceptance of male dancers (Monden 2019). Japanese male professionals, however, often encounter different constraints outside Japan. As ballet increasingly circulates as a global cultural product, rather than solely a Western form of ‘high art’, international mobility is shaped by organisational diversity agendas that claim to value skill regardless of nationality and promote representation (e.g. Paris Opera Ballet 2021). Declining participation in some Western classical arts may also encourage more international recruitment (Yoshihara 2021), potentially widening opportunities for Japanese dancers.

Despite these shifts, Japanese dancers may face prejudice linked to body size, proportions and gender expression. Although ballet is now a global cultural form, institutional standards of the ‘ideal’ body and aesthetic remain grounded in European norms. Accounts from male dancers who entered elite schools and companies highlight the difficulty of meeting physical demands framed through Western expectations. Even those who graduate near the top of their cohort may struggle to secure contracts or advance due to height or physique. Some report pressure to alter their bodies, while others describe injuries associated with attempts to compensate for perceived physical differences. Many ultimately return to Japan to continue performing or to establish companies and schools that support the next generation.

This paper analyses how Japanese male dancers pursue aspirations across borders and asks what kinds of ‘diversity’ are accepted in global ballet markets. It examines the extent to which these markets prioritise individual talent regardless of non-Western body types, aesthetics and ethnicity.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines networks among Vietnamese Buddhist temples in Europe, Australia, and Japan. It conceptualizes these temples as nodes embedded in societies through everyday practices. Focusing on Japan’s position, the study highlights connectivity beyond national frameworks.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines transnational networks among overseas Vietnamese Buddhist temples, focusing on how religious practices, knowledge, and organizational resources circulate beyond the territorial framework of the Vietnamese nation-state. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in Europe, Australia, and Japan, it highlights how these temples are simultaneously embedded in local societies while remaining connected through transnational religious networks that extend across regions. Rather than treating overseas temples as peripheral extensions of Vietnamese Buddhism or as isolated migrant institutions, the paper conceptualizes them as interconnected nodes within a global religious network shaped by migration, mobility, and contextual adaptation.

The analysis pays particular attention to Japan’s positioning within these networks. Instead of framing Japan as a central authority or a marginal recipient of religious influence, the paper approaches Japan as a significant relational space where regional linkages intersect and transnational connections are negotiated. Through patterns of communication, coordination, and practical collaboration, overseas Vietnamese Buddhist temples maintain shared orientations while adapting to diverse legal, social, and cultural environments. These processes reveal how regional configurations shape the ways transnational religious ties are sustained and reconfigured over time. These connections are sustained not primarily through formal institutional hierarchies, but through everyday practices, informal exchanges, and repeated interactions among temples across national boundaries.

By foregrounding relational dynamics rather than individual actors or centralized institutions, the paper demonstrates how transnational religious networks are reproduced through routine practices such as ritual coordination, mutual support, and the circulation of experiential knowledge. Such an approach underscores the importance of relational spaces in understanding how religious networks operate across multiple regional contexts. This perspective allows for an understanding of overseas Vietnamese Buddhism as a dynamic and regionally diversified religious formation rather than a unified or centrally governed tradition. Situating Japan within broader global Vietnamese Buddhist networks, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions on transnational religion, migration, and the globalization of Buddhism, while offering a regional perspective that highlights the significance of East Asia within wider transnational religious configurations.

Paper short abstract

The paper examines how far Japanese right-wing “peripheral parties” have resorted to conspiracy and anti-science claims in their operations from 2020 onwards. It contributes to scholarship on the symbiosis between right-leaning orientation and use of such narratives from a sociological perspective.

Paper long abstract

Post-COVID-19 Japan faces a critical juncture brought forward by a deteriorating regional presence, a weakened economy and questions about domestic order linked to the inflow of foreign workers and tourists into the country, all of which have contributed to producing a climate of societal anxiety and distrust. A visible consequence of this state of affairs has been the rise of conspiracy theories (CTs), misinformation and disinformation, and challenges to epistemic authority in Japan.

The recent emergence of and rapidly growing support for a fringe populist far-right political party, Sanseitō, not only surprised the leading Liberal Democratic Party, which had dominated Japan’s national politics for most of the period since the end of the Asia-Pacific War in 1945, but it also symbolised the risk of crumbling stability and democratic values in contemporary Japan. A skilful utilisation of conspiratorial and anti-science claims was crucial to Sanseitō’s success. Yet, Sanseitō is far from the only actor mobilising such narratives in its political operations.

Based on online ethnographic, documentary and interview materials, this paper examines how far Japanese right-wing “peripheral parties” (Kefford 2017) have resorted to conspiracy theories and anti-science narratives in their operations from 2020 to the present day, drawing on cases of selected actors, such as Saisei no Michi (The Path to Rebirth), Kōfukujitsugentō (Happiness Realisation Party), Shimingatsukuru seiji no kai (Mintsuku), Tsubasa no tō, and Nihon seishinkai (Japan Spirit Society). As evidenced by a large-scale anti-vaccination campaign in July 2024 that invoked the “protecting people from the World Health Organization” rhetoric, the idea is widely supported, appropriated, and reproduced among the population that may consume narratives from like-minded political organisations and peripheral parties.

Hence, this paper examines the growing social impact of the production and consumption of conspiratorial claims among the Japanese population, drawing on the circulation of such claims in communication of peripheral political actors who are often active in local political life and in greater proximity to citizens. Furthermore, the paper contributes to recent scholarship on the symbiosis between right-leaning political orientation and the use of conspiracy theories and anti-science narratives from a sociological perspective.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines Japanese jimu—mundane administrative work—as a cultural practice shaping trust and correctness. Focusing on future-dated bank transfers and insider observation, it uses Europe as a comparative device to contrast ex ante control with ex post explainability.

Paper long abstract

Administrative practices are often understood as neutral technical instruments designed to ensure efficiency and accuracy. In this paper, however, the term “administration” does not refer to public administration or state bureaucracy. Rather, it is used to translate the Japanese concept of jimu, which denotes mundane, repetitive, and often undervalued organizational work through which payments, records, and responsibilities are routinely processed in both public and private institutions.

Importantly, jimu has no direct equivalent in English. While it is commonly translated as “administration,” this translation obscures the fact that jimu refers not to governance or managerial decision-making, but to everyday practices that quietly sustain institutional order. This paper treats this difficulty of translation as an analytical entry point for examining how different societies conceptualize and value administrative work.

Challenging conventional assumptions, this study examines administration as a cultural practice through which societies actively design and sustain trust, correctness, and ethical order. Rather than asking which administrative system is more efficient, it asks what societies expect administration to do for them.

The analysis focuses on payment administration as an everyday yet highly institutionalized practice, with particular emphasis on future-dated bank transfers in Japan. By separating the acceptance of a transfer instruction from its execution in time, this practice makes visible layered checks, formal authorization, responsibility attribution, and risk management when funds cannot ultimately be recovered. Drawing on long-term participant observation and direct involvement in designing and operating payment workflows, the Japanese case is treated as an analytically concentrated site where the logic of administration appears in intensified form.

To theorize this case, the paper employs Europe as a comparative device. Drawing on institutional arrangements and documented administrative norms—particularly in Germany and France—it shows that administrative correctness in many European settings is defined less by advance confirmation than by ex post explainability, documentation, and justification.

By foregrounding mundane administrative work, this paper offers a new perspective within Japanese studies and contributes to anthropological and sociological debates on administration, trust, and institutional life.

Paper short abstract

This presentation explores artistic practices that “become the dead” to carry forward memories of the Great East Japan Earthquake, including an audio drama of animals abandoned after the nuclear accident, a documentary tracing the dead’s gaze, and a workshop turning tsunami-lost mementos into art.

Paper long abstract

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 was a compound disaster involving an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. While video cameras and mobile phones enabled extensive documentation, some experiences remain beyond visual recording—such as those of individuals swept away by the tsunami and animals that starved or were culled in nuclear evacuation zones. This presentation examines artistic practices of “becoming the dead” as a way to carry forward the memory of 3.11 across time and space.

Three cases are analyzed. The first is an audio drama produced in 2014 by high school students in Fukushima, who voiced animals left behind in the exclusion zone. Wearing radiation-measuring devices made them feel like experimental animals, and they created this work by seeing their own situation reflected in the predicament of cattle that died in barns without understanding why, in towns abandoned after the nuclear accident.

The second case is the 2019 documentary film If These Letters Reach Your Eyes, directed by Sonomi Sato, who lost her younger sister in the tsunami at Ishinomaki Municipal Okawa Elementary School. This work interweaves letters addressed to the dead with imagined footage from the perspective of the deceased. Viewers perceive the presence of “living dead” alongside the living, while sensing the difficulty posed by the growing separation of their respective life-times.

The third case is an experimental workshop by artist Fumie Chiba, who invites others to transform her grandmother’s belongings lost in the tsunami into artworks by passing them on. Chiba calls this practice “creative care,” through which time-frozen disaster objects undergo “regeneration.”

Reenactment—performing historical events or reconstructing ethnographic scenes—has gained attention in history and anthropology. Originating in contemporary art, this method is exemplified in Japan by Hikaru Fujii’s works, which include workshops reenacting imperialist education during World War II and reconstructing discriminatory structures surrounding the Fukushima nuclear accident. Expanding Fujii’s discussion of reenactment, this presentation explores how such practices share [partage] the memory of “invisible beings” as lived actuality and open possibilities for transmitting disaster experiences to future generations.

Paper short abstract

Analyzing 700 Japanese Gen Z, this study identifies a structural bifurcation in values across clothing, food, and housing. The dichotomy between "Rational Survivors" and "Sensory Explorers" reveals a heterogeneous logic of strategic resource optimization rather than simple low-desire patterns.

Paper long abstract

Understanding the consumption patterns of Japanese Gen Z, specifically young adults aged 18 to 29, is a critical priority for contemporary sociological and economic analysis. While existing research has primarily highlighted cost-efficiency as a defining characteristic of this demographic, this study seeks to further elucidate the complexity of their internal value structures. This study moves beyond such singular frameworks by analyzing the interconnected value systems of this age group across the three essential pillars of life: clothing, food, and housing. The methodology utilizes K-means clustering applied to normalized selection ratios across 18 distinct criteria variables. This ratio-based approach controls for individual response volume, allowing for a precise evaluation of relative value priorities rather than simple frequency. By examining survey data from approximately 700 respondents, the research identifies a structural bifurcation in consumption logic, demonstrating that these choices are manifestations of a systematic value orientation that governs broader socio-economic behavior.

Empirical results identify two statistically significant "tribes" defined by distinct resource allocation models. The Rational Survivors represent a segment that prioritizes a utility-based framework; quantitative analysis reveals their decision-making is heavily weighted toward economy, functionality, and safety, with a significantly higher mean share for cost-related factors compared to the other group. Conversely, the Sensory Explorers demonstrate a decisive shift toward aesthetics and emotional fulfillment, where the relative weight of design and brand worldview exceeds that of functional utility. This data-driven divide suggests that the "lost decades" of the Japanese economy have not produced a uniform "low-desire" generation, but rather a heterogeneous one where functional optimization and symbolic self-expression exist in a sharpening dichotomy. The study concludes that resource allocation is a strategic choice: the Rational group seeks security through pragmatism, while the Sensory group seeks meaning through curated experiences. Recognizing this structural divergence is indispensable for theorizing the complex socio-economic reality and the fragmented value systems of Japan’s younger generation.

Paper short abstract

Nishinari/Kamagasaki is re-theorized as a “service hub” enabling survival at the margins. The paper theorizes “gap institutions”: patching formal welfare, building networked supports, and formalizing them through deliberative forums - producing inclusion, but also sorting and temporal discipline.

Paper long abstract

Nishinari/Kamagasaki has recently been re-theorized locally not as a “problematic district” to be corrected, but as a “Nishinari-type service hub” – a concentration of practices and institutions that make survival administratively possible for people living at the edge of work, kinship, and documentation. This paper develops an anthropological account of that hub-making through a vernacular governance concept articulated as “gap institutions” (隙間の制度).

“Gap institutions” name a three-part craft of welfare infrastructure. First, local actors modify access to formal programs – “putting geta on” existing system/institution (制度) so that people can “step into” them despite eligibility frictions. Second, they build district-specific supports (ささえあいのしくみ) that are inseparable from dense local networks – e.g., supportive housing paired with multi-actor support coordination. Third, they refuse to leave these supports in the informal “valley”, instead pushing them toward recognition and resourcing as proper system/institution.

Methodologically, the paper reads “service hub” capacity not as an abstract policy label but as a politics of repeated agreement-making: governance forums and deliberative bodies designed to “ferment consent” over time, including a forum method operating since 1999 and other meeting architectures that coordinate residents’ associations, worker-support groups, and facility planning.

In conversation with scholarship on the institutional remaking of urban marginality in Japan, the paper argues that Nishinari’s hub is best understood as an infrastructure of inclusion-by-patching – a continuous labor of stitching together eligibility, housing, care, and everyday addressability, while also producing new forms of sorting and temporal discipline.

Paper short abstract

The presentation explores the social dynamics of un-silencing myths surrounding meat consumption and climate change, revealing how a plant-based diet is not about individual food choice but about Japanese capitalist patriarchy that is either reproduced or transformed through choice in consumption.

Paper long abstract

A predominant notion prevails about climate change in Japan as something to be fixed by green technology while consumerist Japanese culture can continue unaltered to grow its GDP. New technology may be welcomed but without transforming the myths inbuilt into mainstream consumer conduct, research shows it effectively becomes greenwashing. To question everyday Japanese consumption, however, particularly food consumption, is to question national identity; it presents giving voice to deeply embodied, long-silenced taboos that underpin Japanese group ‘harmony’ and gender performativity. Most conspicuous is the hegemonic objectification of the cruelty inflicted upon billions of farmed animals to make meat consumption an aesthetics of strength, health and gratitude. Industrialised farmed animals present one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time and is central to climate change. This paper explores how promoting a plant-based diet is not simply about food choice but contain major moral, social and political issues, which can either reproduce or transform through choice in consumption the social order. Challenging the so-called Meat Paradox – how we say we abhor cruelty to dogs but then eat factory-farmed pigs – is about challenging deeper cultural identities in high income countries like Japan where the climate crises is funded through everyday individual choices. Japan as a world heavily invested in maintaining a gender binary, meat also presents identification with what defines things as male and female, and the way things associated with men are more valued. When young people in Japan then go plant-based they also challenge basic assumptions about masculinity and femininity, and Japanese capitalist patriarchy. This presentation highlights results from questionnaires distributed to several hundred university student participants in lectures on the issues of meat consumption and climate change, and from around 50 ethnographic interviews that explore the culture of carnivorism in Japan as part of a bigger three year research project about Japanese youth responses to the climate crises.

Paper short abstract

This presentation explores the experiences of three Japanese early-career English teachers who are grappling with the demands and pressures of their roles. The findings reveal the physical and mental toll of teaching. Suggestions are made for improving the teacher induction and support structure.

Paper long abstract

Teacher burnout has become an increasingly urgent issue in Japan, with severe implications for both educators’ well-being and the quality of education. Despite calls for reform from the Japan Teachers’ Union (TUJ), which highlights the need for comprehensive changes to address the growing teacher shortage, the situation remains critical. This presentation explores the experiences of three Japanese early-career English teachers who are grappling with the demands and pressures of their roles. Through online questionnaires and in-depth interviews data were collected and used to analyse the challenges faced by novice teachers. Thematic analysis was employed to identify recurring issues, revealing the harsh reality these educators encounter on a daily basis. The findings reveal the physical, emotional, and mental toll of teaching, including long working hours, high expectations, and an inadequate support system. Not only do teachers face the stress of managing classrooms and lesson plans, but they also experience significant isolation and feelings of burnout. In response, this presentation offers suggestions for improving teacher induction and support mechanisms, proposing strategies to better equip early-career educators for the challenges they face. By addressing these issues, the hope is to reduce burnout and turnover rates, ensuring that teachers are given the resources and backing they need to thrive in their roles.

Paper short abstract

This presentation examines the propaganda strategy at nuclear power plant visitor centers in Japan, based on the 14-year fieldwork project. The author's surveys reveal how their model reactors function as propaganda machines while, simultaneously, the propaganda is negated, unintentionally.

Paper long abstract

This presentation will report and examine the propaganda strategy at nuclear power plant visitor centers (NPP-VCs) in Japan, based on the author's fourteen-year-long fieldwork.

In Japan, the government has long promoted nuclear power generation as a national policy since the mid-twentieth century. Still, it keeps it despite the devastating nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. One of the propaganda apparatuses used to promote nuclear national policy is an NPP-VC attached to each power plant, operated by the electric power industry. Since 2012, the author has visited and researched NPP-VCs not only in Japan but also in Taiwan, Europe, and the U.S., and some of the results have been reported at the EAJS in 2021 and 2023.

Every NPP-VC has a huge and luxurious building. Admission is free, and the venue is open almost every day of the year. The target visitor is the general public, meaning people undecided between pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear views.

Their propaganda strategy is clear and simple. The keys are: 1) nuclear power plants are necessary, 2) nuclear power generation is a great technology, and 3) you never need to worry about risks and accidents. The exhibit of NPP-VCs usually features model reactors, explanatory panels, and attractions for children within a "fun" atmosphere reminiscent of a theme park like Tokyo Disneyland.

The model reactor is the highlight of the exhibit. While the scale varies, nearly all NPP-VCs have a model reactor installed. The model reactors are likely to overwhelm visitors with their gigantic size, thereby fostering acceptance of nuclear promotion. However, this propaganda strategy may not be functioning as intended by the electric power industry. In this presentation, we will examine the true nature of model reactors in detail to reveal how this propaganda strategy paradoxically backfires.

Paper short abstract

This study examines older Japanese Brazilians in Japan and their experiences of aging as well as their perceptions on social well-being. Based on qualitative survey data, this study also aims to investigate the broader socio-cultural issues that Japan is facing through the lens of aging.

Paper long abstract

Japan is said to be a “super aging society,” and it is estimated that by 2030, more than 30% of Japan’s population will be aged 65 or older. Along with an aging populace is the aging of the “Other,” or the ethnic minorities—both oldcomers and newcomers—that have made Japan their home. Discussions on Japan’s aging society have left out the aging realities faced by these non-Japanese minorities, as focus has been skewed towards the need for foreign workers to address labour shortage and mitigate Japan’s inadequate pension system. Meanwhile, discussions on multicultural co-existence or tabunka kyousei seldom take into consideration the needs of older migrant and minority groups.

This study examines the experiences of older Japanese Brazilian migrants in Japan as they reach their older years. Most of these Japanese Brazilians entered Japan upon the amendment of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 1990, which made it possible for people of Japanese descent to live and work in Japan indefinitely. Based on qualitative survey data gathered in 2025, this (ongoing) study investigates these migrants’ perceptions of aging outside their countries of birth, as it relates to their own perceptions on social well-being–particularly its social and cultural aspects—as long-term migrants in Japan. Using this particular case, this study also aims to address the following questions: 1) How do older ethnic minorities and migrants experience aging in Japan? 2) What can aging tell us about broader socio-cultural issues that Japan is facing?

This study argues that the aging experience of migration is gendered and intertwined with one’s own cultural and social capital. In addition, language and communication, one’s status of residence, spirituality and religion, and the presence or absence of family are also deemed significant. This study aims to shed light on the challenges that older migrants in Japan are facing as they navigate the aging process with their lived realities as migrants. It also suggests that aging-in-place as a shared reality between migrants/minorities and the Japanese challenges the concept of tabunka kyousei.

Keywords: Japan, Japanese Brazilians, aging, migrants and minorities, social well-being

Paper short abstract

This study examines the migration of visual kei musicians into men’s underground idol scenes. Based on participant observation and comparison, it shows how performance, fan relations, and monetization are reconfigured, highlighting labor mobility and emotional labor in Japanese music subcultures.

Paper long abstract

The visual kei music industry, once a central pillar of Japanese youth subculture, has experienced long-term contraction amid changes in media environments and live performance economies. In contrast, men’s underground idol scenes have grown by leveraging highly personalized fan engagement and intimacy-centered monetization strategies. Against this backdrop, visual kei musicians have increasingly migrated into men’s underground idol activities. This study investigates why this transition occurs and how forms of performance, intimacy, and labor are reconfigured through it.

Methodologically, the study is based on participant observation conducted within men’s underground idol venues, supplemented by comparative analysis of visual kei live performances and fan practices. Rather than treating the two scenes as discrete genres, the study approaches them as adjacent subcultural industries connected through shared audiences, aesthetics, and affective economies.

The analysis focuses on three dimensions: (1) performative practices and bodily presentation, (2) modes of fan interaction, and (3) monetization structures. While visual kei emphasizes visual spectacle, narrative distance, and musical authorship, men’s underground idol culture foregrounds proximity, repetition, and emotional availability. Musicians transitioning between these spaces transfer skills in character construction and visual performance, yet must adopt new forms of emotional labor that render intimacy itself a primary economic asset.

This comparison reveals a broader transformation in Japanese music subcultures, where loyalty, care, and affective engagement increasingly function as forms of investment. By conceptualizing this shift as labor mobility across subcultural music industries, the study contributes to anthropology, sociology, and media studies by highlighting how intimacy-based business models reshape gendered performance and creative labor. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that contemporary subcultures are not isolated domains but dynamic fields linked by circulating practices of monetization, media strategy, and affective work.

Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic research with Kyoto-based youth activists, this paper examines how Japanese youth engage with the pro-Palestine movement through digital platforms and localized protest practices, revealing new forms of political participation across online and offline spaces.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, Japanese youth have become increasingly visible in transnational solidarity movements, particularly in response to the Israel–Palestine conflict. While earlier waves of student activism in Japan—such as the 1960s ANPO protests or the 2015 SEALDs movement—were largely oriented toward domestic political issues, contemporary mobilization is increasingly shaped by global media flows and platform-mediated forms of engagement. This paper examines how Japanese youth activists in Kyoto participate in the pro-Palestine movement, and what this engagement reveals about the changing nature of youth political participation in Japan.

Drawing on qualitative ethnographic research conducted between 2024 and 2025, the study combines participant observation, semi-structured interviews with youth aged 15–34, and digital ethnography of Instagram and X (Twitter). The empirical focus is on Kyoto-based youth initiatives and networks, including Kyoto University Volunteers Association in Solidarity with the Palestinian People (KUVASP), Ritsumeikan University Students for Palestine (RS Palestine), Kyoto Youth Movement for Change (KYMC), and the Kyoto Youth Peace Program. These groups operate through flexible coalitions rather than formal student unions, reflecting broader transformations in the organizational ecology of youth activism in Japan.

The paper explores how global political grievances are translated into locally meaningful narratives, practices, and affective registers within the Kyoto context. Particular attention is paid to how digital platforms shape protest visibility, narrative framing, and transnational connectivity, while simultaneously constraining activism through algorithmic mediation, platform norms, and audience management. Online engagement—especially via Instagram—functions as a key site for political learning, moral alignment, and mobilization, complementing offline practices such as demonstrations, teach-ins, and public marches.

The analysis argues that contemporary Japanese youth activism is best understood as a form of networked solidarity operating across online and offline spaces, rather than as a revival of traditional student movements. Engagement with Palestine serves not only as an expression of international concern but also as a means through which young people negotiate political identity, ethical responsibility, and belonging in a context of limited domestic political opportunity.

Paper short abstract

I argue that communities in regional Japan are "factionalized" rather than "fragmented." Tatsuno's case study reveals resilient, intra-communal factionalism. This re-politicizes the local by highlighting the power dynamics and structural conflicts that define social organization.

Paper long abstract

Much research on Japan since the 1980s has focused on dismantling the perceived homogeneity of Japanese society. This trend continues in current scholarship on regional Japan, which has pivoted toward a postmodern focus on "fragmentation." While this shift highlights the heterogeneity of local communities in the "post-growth" countryside, it relies heavily on individual psychology and experiences. In doing so, it depoliticizes the local sphere, treating the breakdown of community as a passive byproduct of decline rather than a manifestation of active social organization.

To better account for these politics, I propose viewing "fragmentation" as factionalism. I illustrate this through a paradox in the Tatsuno district in Tatsuno City, Hyogo Prefecture. In 2019, the district was named an "Important Preservation District of Historic Buildings." Following this, the municipal authorities introduced a community development, or machizukuri, policy that aimed to bring together the district’s many separate machizukuri groups under one organization, Tatsuno Mirai-sha. Instead of encouraging cooperation, this push for "unification" led to strong factionalism among local stakeholders.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that what is perceived as postmodern fragmentation is, in fact, a continuation of intra-communal social divisions and their politics. Contemporary machizukuri initiatives, often led by urban-rural migrants, do not encounter a "fragmented" public. Instead, they are absorbed into, or even actively create, competitive political relationships. I contend that heterogeneity is not necessarily a casualty of contemporary demographic changes, but a long-standing characteristic of the Japanese rural community, rooted in its factional dynamics. By reframing "fragmentation" as "factionalism," this paper shifts the anthropological focus away from the social fragmentation and the "lonely individual" of postmodernity and back toward the power dynamics and structural conflicts that constitute social life in regional Japan. In doing so, it provides an alternative framework for understanding the political nature of social organizations that shape communities in regional Japan.

Paper short abstract

This study is an ethnography conducted in a public school ''Kokugo'' classroom. The presenter, a Japan-born teacher with a foreign background, uses this perspective to examine children’s theatrical creative worlds and explore how ''Kokugo'' can be opened to genuine diversity.

Paper long abstract

This study investigates how children actively open and shape their learning in ''Kokugo'' (national language education) classes through theater practices, highlighting child-centered learning, creativity, and cultural creation. The field is a public school ''Kokugo'' classroom in Yokohama, where contemporary national language education often emphasizes finding “correct answers” and mastering prescribed skills. Although child-centered learning is officially encouraged, subtle pressures toward conformity have been noted. As a public school teacher, I have aimed to design lessons where children themselves actively open and shape their learning, fostering imaginative and critical engagement.

Born and raised in Japan, yet as a teacher with a foreign background, I utilize both insider and outsider perspectives to anthropologically examine classroom dynamics. Using ethnographic methods, I document children collaboratively writing, rehearsing, and performing scripts, capturing dialogues, conflicts, and creative processes. In these activities, children fuse European and other linguistic folktales, Japanese folktales, and contemporary pop culture to produce original plays. Their creative processes reveal critical perspectives on society and unique imaginative worlds, and also led me to a rediscovery of Shoyo Tsubouchi’s philosophy of children’s theater, which sought the development of Japanese culture and children’s psychological growth. My own reflections, moments of struggle, and moments of resonance are recorded alongside their cultural creation.

In this classroom, children reinterpret the world and construct narratives with their own hands. Walking alongside them, I reflect on the future of diversity, the role of national language education in fostering open-minded learning, and the human capacity to inhabit and engage with fictional worlds. Ultimately, through the stories of the children and myself, this study demonstrates a challenge to open ''Kokugo'' to genuine diversity, emphasizing the transformative potential of imagination, creativity, child-centered learning, cultural creation, and theater practice.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Japan’s growing cultural diversity affects education, focusing on bicultural children and their families. Based on a study of the French international school in Kyoto, it explores parental choices, tensions, and strategies in navigating national and international schooling.

Paper long abstract

Over the past few decades, successive Japanese governments have implemented policies aimed at opening Japanese society to long-term immigration, including the introduction of various types of skilled professional visa, increasing the number of international students who can access the labour market and transition to long-term residence, and creating opportunities for naturalisation. These policies have contributed to a steady increase in the number of foreign residents in Japan as well as in international marriages. As a result, a sizeable group of Japanese citizens with one foreign parent has emerged. Often informally referred to as hafu, these children are born and raised in Japan, consider it their native country, and speak Japanese as their first—and sometimes only—language. Nevertheless, they are frequently treated as foreigners or outsiders within their own society.

This situation is particularly problematic in the context of schooling, as the Japanese education system continues to struggle to adapt to increasing cultural diversification and to provide an inclusive environment for all children. In response, some families turn to alternative educational pathways, notably international schools. These institutions function as spaces of intensive cultural contact and as sites where tensions within bicultural families become visible—tensions related to children’s identity formation, the values conveyed through education, the challenges and limitations of alternative schooling compared to the Japanese model, and the potential impact of these choices on children’s future trajectories.

Drawing on a case study of a small international school in Kyoto that caters primarily to children from Franco-Japanese families, this paper examines the implications of Japan’s cultural diversification in the field of education. Focusing on parents’ perspectives, it analyses their views on international education, the choices they face, the tensions these choices create within families, and the strategies they develop to support their children’s ability to navigate and succeed within two cultures.

Key words: Japan, migration, international school, secondary education, biculturalism

Paper short abstract

This paper logs the self-expressed identities of educators who undertook an International Baccalaureate Educator Certificate (IBEC) program in Japanese higher education. I illustrate a profound divide between their grounded stories for taking IBEC, versus those of a top-down economic nationalism.

Paper long abstract

As part of the Japanese Government’s push to cultivate so-called gurōbaru

jinzai (‘global human resource’ or ‘global jinzai’), a promotional consortium was

established in 2013 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and

Technology (MEXT), and the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO).

International Baccalaureate (IB) schools have risen from 16 that year, to 137 as of

November 2025, while IB Educator Certificate (IBEC) programs at soon-to-be nine local

universities have surfaced during this same juncture. Select educational elites inside this

IBEC community have since promoted a new trope believed necessary to help cultivate

such ‘global jinzai’: gurōbaru kyōiku jinzai (‘global educator resource’ or ‘global

educator jinzai’). I draw on a year of participatory fieldwork inside an IBEC program to

highlight an inherent disconnect between this economically nationalist discourse, and the

self-expressed identities of the people undertaking the initiative. Informed by 34 semi-structured interviews, supplemented by field notes and relevant survey data, I

urge societal elites to abandon a culture of top-down governance that semantically

perplexing, humanly unfaithful slogans like ‘global (educator) jinzai’ are symptomatic of.

I instead call for such leadership to have its privileged agendas kept in check by

prioritizing bottom-up approaches to policy and strategy making. In this instance, having

its narratives and language informed by those navigating education in the

names of the ‘international’ and ‘global’ on the ground.

Paper short abstract

Based on long-term fieldwork at a major Shinto shrine, I show that logics of purity are alive in contemporary Japan and serve to achieve specific social effects. Namely, by means of various restrictions, they are used to manipulate relations and to (re)produce social boundaries and hierarchies.

Paper long abstract

Cosmological categories such as purity and pollution may be experienced as ontologically given, yet they are inhabited rather than merely received: people live within them, manipulate them, and use them for diverse ends. This paper examines a contemporary Shinto puzzle: within one of Japan’s biggest Shinto shrines, one matsuri (religious festival) has recently accommodated the ritual participation of a priestess, while another continues to prohibit women’s participation altogether. I argue that this contrast cannot be explained by reference to traditional beliefs alone, but that it must be understood in relation to the social consequences and effects of specific rituals and ritual restrictions.

Although notions of pollution are disappearing from mainstream Japanese culture, logics of purity remain central to Shinto thought and practice. While the number of female priests is increasing and explicit mention of ‘kegare’ (pollution) is avoided for its sexist connotations, purity continues to be enacted through restrictions on access, labour, and ritual participation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in western Japan, I begin by outlining how purity and impurity are conceived, achieved, and avoided in contemporary Shinto. I then analyse two matsuri at one of Japan’s biggest shrines, as contrasting case studies, to show how Shinto idioms of purity are enacted as spatiotemporal and gendered forms of social ordering.

Tracing how ritual restrictions are justified, enforced, and contested, I show that matsuri have a “duplex existence” (Tambiah 1981): they function not only as communal techniques for averting misfortune and securing wellbeing, but also as mechanisms for (re)producing social separations and hierarchies. A close analysis of the second case study (Onisube Ritual) reveals that the exclusion of women enables local men to (1) claim an essential role in the preservation of the boundaries of society; (2) create gender separation and hierarchy; (3) lay claim to a special role in the “functional” (Nakane 1967; Lebra 1983) dimension of the home (ie 家)––traditionally, the domain of women, the basic unit of Japanese society, and a central symbol in Onisube. Ultimately, rather than mere relics of ‘tradition,’ contemporary Shinto practices of purity emerge as powerful social tools in modern Japan.

Paper short abstract

This presentation focuses on Japan’s position in the emerging landscape of children’s rights by examining the national reception of the transnational children’s rights movement, particularly with regard to the 1924 Geneva Declaration.

Paper long abstract

The first part of this presentation will cover the Meiji period and the emergence of the issue of child abuse through the beginning of awareness of the problem, through calls for action and the taking of responsibility by an individual who conducted a survey of prisoners in a prison, linking delinquency and abuse in childhood. The issue of child abuse was brought to public attention through the prism of prevention, with the aim of protecting society as a whole from delinquency and crime, rather than with the aim of taking children's rights into account, as is the case today.

The second part will focus on the Taishō period and the emergence of the problem of child abuse in the public eye and the urgency of the situation, which was highlighted at the time. In addition to a change in the categories of child abuse, which now included sexual violence, research conducted by Japanese members, comparing Japan and England in terms of the handling of child abuse, was decisive in the establishment of child protection measures that followed shortly afterwards. These years marked a change, initiated by attempts at regulation by various actors, and the preconditions for the implementation of policies that emerged a few years later.

Finally, the last part will focus on the beginning of the Shōwa period and the creation of child protection, as well as the establishment of a legal framework, which was not without difficulties. In these three parts, we will see how civil society and various actors influenced the landscape of the fight against child abuse, enabling the development of not only a legal framework, but also social services tailored to a vulnerable and needy population, namely children. We will thus see more broadly how the subject of sexual violence against children itself has been understood and how the framework for combating child abuse has been formed through the creation of child protection.

Paper short abstract

Japan’s debate on migration stresses language and integration, yet even highly skilled migrants face cultural barriers. This paper examines foreign creatives in Japanese game studios, asking how shared passion for creative work can bridge cultural gaps and support migrant integration.

Paper long abstract

Unlike its Western counterparts, Japan has only recently started to publicly debate the increasing numbers of migrants. Despite a less than 5% population, concerns are rising over their presence in Japanese society. The consensus is that migrants need to integrate and learn the language to achieve “multicultural co-existence”. Although the target of political critique are usually blue-collar worker migrants from South-Asian countries (so-called low-skilled migrants), those categorized as either white-collar workers, “global talents”, “highly skilled workers” or “expatriates” are not much better integrated, despite enjoying a modicum of political respect granted by their jobs. Many studies regarding highly skilled migrant integration have shown that there are still systemic as well as cultural barriers that must be addressed before integration can be achieved. Most studies show that some of the biggest reasons that impede integration are cultural differences, especially unspoken customs and rules that are rarely expressed verbally. (Yorozu 2022, Oishi 2021, Hof and Tseng 2020, Chiavacci 2012).

This presentation explores what possibilities arise when migrants are driven by more than financial incentives, namely a drive for self-realization through “creative work”. Choosing video game studios as case study allows us to explore how a meaningful relationship with work can act as a bridge between migrants and Japanese locals. Previous studies, based on North American and Western European contexts, show that migration and international collaboration are core parts of the production pipeline, but this generally happens within a share cultural heritage (Houška 2025, Vanderhoef 2021). Migration to Japan, especially in the creative industries, is a rather new phenomenon, that can help us explore how shared passion can supplement the lack of shared culture. Who are the people who choose a career in Japanese games rather than its Western competitors? What mechanisms allow this kind of migration towards an industry that is politically significant (Cool Japan and national branding)? Lastly, to what extent does a shared passion for childhood games and animation help the integration of migrants?

Paper short abstract

The current study focuses on the hitherto overlooked Israeli diaspora in Japan, and analyses their ambivalent view of Japan as an alternative home, against Japan’s growing ethnic and national diversity and the ongoing instability in their homeland.

Paper long abstract

Once perceived as a mono-ethnic society (単一民族), contemporary Japan is increasingly recognized as a country of immigration (Liu-Farrer, 2020, 2022, 2024; Nurcan, 2025), characterized by growing ethnic diversity. Recent scholarship has examined a broad spectrum of groups—ranging from Brazilian return-migrants to Korean, Turkish, and Filipino enclaves (Ishikawa 2021); from care workers to highly skilled professionals (Hof 2024), and from Syrian refugees to Russian-speakers (Golovina 2023, 2025) and “white Europeans” (Debnár 2023). These studies illuminate the internal dynamics of these communities, their interactions with Japanese society, and their intergroup relations. Building on this discourse, the current paper explores the hitherto overlooked Israeli diaspora in Japan. Although relatively small—comprising approximately 800 individuals as of June 2024—this community is highly diverse, with a history spanning over a century. While these Hebrew-speaking Israelis differ in their circumstances of arrival and experience in Japan, as well as their socioeconomic backgrounds, motivations, and levels of Japanese proficiency, they share a common experience as non-Asian foreigners. They share a common language and national background, and a complex, often ambivalent, affinity for their homeland. This connection has been further strained by recent domestic turmoil in Israel: the constitutional crisis led by the Netanyahu government and the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7, 2023, both of which have triggered an unprecedented outflow of people. The current study focuses on long-term Israeli residents in Japan – economically motivated migrants, expatriates, and those married to Japanese partners. Drawing on in-depth interviews and longitudinal recurrent field study, I analyse their aspirations and efforts to live and thrive in Japan while navigating a dual sense of belonging to the home country and the host country alike. Utilizing theories of home and homeliness (Mallett 2004, Dovey 1985, 2005), I analyse their ambivalent view of Japan as an alternative home vis-à-vis Japanese society on the one hand and occasional or even imagined encounters with Palestinians in the Japanese public sphere.

The paper identifies three strategies that enable Israelis to maintain Japan as an alternative home in times of growing instability in their homeland

Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Japanese students and young professionals educated in Central Europe decide to stay, re-migrate, or return to Japan. Focusing on the social construction of skills and mobility capital, it examines how internationally acquired competencies are valued across labour markets.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates how Japanese students and young professionals educated in Central Europe navigate decisions to return to Japan, re-migrate within Europe, or remain at the local labour market, focusing on the interplay between their emergent career aspirations and the social meanings attached to skills. Given the increasingly diverse mobility trajectories of young middle-class Japanese, the study argues that understanding contemporary mobility requires attention not only to structural opportunities but also to how skills are differently valorized across contexts.

Empirically, the paper combines two qualitative datasets. The first draws on previous research with young Japanese middle-class professionals with overseas education and work experience. The second introduces new interview data with Japanese students in the Czech Republic—primarily in medicine, arts, and music—as well as young adults entering Europe through temporary schemes such as the Work & Travel visa. These cases illustrate the growing diversity in mobility channels through which Japanese nationals engage with European educational and labour markets.

Analytically, the study uses mobility capital (Murphy-Lejeune 2002) and Kaufmann et al.’s (2004) concept of motility. The discussion around the strategic deployment of the accumulated credentials is supported by Liu-Farrer’s scholarship on the social construction of migrant skills, which illustrates how skills are shaped by actors and institutions within local, national, and transnational contexts, and are interpreted differently depending on labour market norms and cultural expectations.

This perspective allows the paper to explore how participants’ internationally acquired skills are interpreted, recognised, or discounted in diverse professional fields, and how the social evaluations shape aspirations to stay, re-migrate, or return to Japan. By foregrounding skill as a socially mediated construct, the paper contributes to Japanese studies by revealing how mobility decisions are embedded in cultural understandings of competence, professional worth, and belonging.

References:

Kaufmann, Vincent, Manfred Max Bergman and Dominique Auderset Joye. 2004. “Motility: Mobility as capital.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28: 745-756.

Liu-Farrer, Gracia. 2024. “The Social Construction of Skill in International Migration: Perspectives from Asia.” Annual Review of Sociology 51: 423-440

Murphy-Lejeune, Elizabeth 2002. Student Mobility and Narrative in Europe. The New Strangers. London: Routledge

Paper short abstract

AI applications have been introduced in various municipalities in Japan with the promise to give advice on child protection, elderly care, disability support or healthcare. This leads to the question to what extend does AI technology improve and secure the access to welfare services on local level.

Paper long abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an emerging technology evokes manifold hopes, expectations, and concerns across various disciplines. The practical application of AI technologies increasingly intersects with various social contexts in Japan, among them is the field of welfare services. AI applications have been introduced in various municipalities in Japan with the promise to provide orientation and advice on topics like child protection, elderly care, disability support or healthcare. Among local communities and other facilities these AI applications are presented as tools for receiving advice, raising efficiency, or improving decision-making for persons in charge. This leads to the question in which ways and to what extend does AI technology improve and secure the access to welfare services on local level. A quantitative newspaper analysis among articles of the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun between Jul 2023 till Jun 2025 shows that the topic of AI in reference to health, care and disability support topics receive continuous attention. In contrast, the attention for AI technology in reference to childcare and child protection related topics have surged particularly since Jan 2025. This paper choses analytical approaches from the field of STS and welfare studies to shed light on critical aspects of AI and intersections of welfare service provision in modern society. It intends to deepen the quantitative insights of the newspaper analysis by furthering the study with a qualitative case study on AI welfare service applications in Shinagawa ward in Tokyo and other municipalities.

Paper short abstract

This ethnographic paper introduces a case study of Ikebukuro and Otome Road as an urban space re-imagined and co-produced by Japanese female fans, examined through the lens of the recent oshi-katsu phenomenon and its effects on lived, embodied and material fan practices.

Paper long abstract

Although previous scholarship on Japanese fan geographies often centres on Akihabara as the representative urban neighbourhood and commercial epicentre of the otaku culture, its male-oriented consumption practices are often implicitly stated and rarely analysed, while urban spaces significant to female fandoms remain understudied. This paper will introduce a case study of Ikebukuro, Tokyo, as an urban space re-imagined and co-produced by Japanese female fans as a ‘sacred site’ (seichi) relevant to multiple Japanese popular culture-related female fandoms. Widely regarded as a major commercial space for the BL (Boys’ Love) manga and anime and fan derivative dōjinshi cultures (Sugiura 2006, Steinberg and Alban 2018), Ikebukuro recently underwent a major redevelopment project as part of the district’s ‘International Art and Culture City’ initiative, which included reopening of the flagship Animate shop and building the Hareza complex. The transformation affected the spatial dynamics of the area by not only revitalising the consumption practices centred around the iconic Otome Road but also extending beyond it, diversifying and expanding into whole new generations of female fans participating across seemingly unrelated genres.

Informed by participant observation and ethnographic research conducted in the area between September 2024 and November 2025, this paper examines the spatial politics behind the redevelopment of the Ikebukuro neighbourhood. By contextualising the rapid shifts in gendered expressions of fandoms through the lens of the recent proliferation of the oshi-katsu phenomenon, or the broad range of the often consumption-based fan practices aiming to support one’s ‘oshi’ (a favoured artist, fictional character or object), I argue that the redeveloped Ikebukuro space functions as the urban seichi for female fans and their embodied experiences of routinised fan consumption practices centred around second-hand retail shops and themed cafés. Demonstrating that urban fan spaces remain central to the female fans’ consumption practices despite ongoing market shifts and increasing digitalisation of fan experiences, this paper contributes to the broader discussions of the spatial aspects of fan cultures, affective economies and politics of belonging in contemporary Japanese popular culture.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how translation is socially organized and spatially situated between Japan and Korea through an ethnographic study of CUON and its book café Chekccori in Jimbochō. It shows how translation works as cultural infrastructure linking places, communities, and affect across borders.

Paper long abstract

Keywords: translation, place, publishing, Japan–Korea relations, poetry

How are practices of translation located and understood, both socially and in terms of physical place, in the space between Japan and Korea? Through participant observation and interviews, this anthropological research analyzes the spaces created by CUON, a publishing house specializing in translations of Korean literature, and its book cafe Chekccori located in Jimbocho, Tokyo. Describing the role of CUON, Zainichi Korean author Kim Sok-Pom remarked to me, "It's like a terminal. Well, not yet at the level of a terminal... but shall we say international? It's not that it is perched in a small shop in Kanda (Jimbocho), it is that it's spreading its wings from there." These metaphors of movement in place—a terminal and a bird poised to fly—point to a dynamic, multidirectional interconnection between Japan and Korea created through books. I sketch an ethnographic portrait of CUON, Chekccori, and the community of translators and authors who gather here.

Focusing on the production of a book of renshi (connected poems) written in conversation between Tanikawa Shuntaro and Shin Kyeong-Nim, mediated by translator Yoshikawa Nagi and CUON CEO Kim Sungbok, I aim to show that translation creates a multi-modal infrastructure for affective transnational connections. By tracing the evolution of the book, which grew from a taidan (conversation) event held in Jimbocho, events held in Paju, South Korea (included in the book as transcripts), and composed via correspondence, I show a social world where textual creation and translation unfold through connectivity crossing borders.

Translation studies has often approached linguistic communities as bounded entities, whereas this research foregrounds their overlap, entanglement, and mutual constitution. Drawing on Susan Gal's understanding of translation as a tool that can create "material persistence and social connection over time and space" (Gal 2015, 236), I reexamine how texts and translations restructure relationships between Korea and Japan. I frame Jimbocho and Paju as sites of translation in and the book itself as a textual and social space. Through this analysis, I shed light on intersections of place, community, and practices of translation in the relational space between Japan and Korea.

Paper short abstract

Through the narratives of the Filipino women care workers, I have argued in this study that transnational end-of-life care work organizes intimacy through kin-like relations, creating moral spaces within which Filipino care workers exercise moral agency and negotiate moral experiences.

Paper long abstract

It is not new for Filipinos to engage in migrant work as the culture of emigration is prevalent (Parrenas, 2015). Many literatures focusing on Filipino women in transnational care and their families has been published. However, studies on the role of Filipino women in transnational end-of-life care in Japan remain unexplored. This study aims to explore how end-of-life care encounters between caregivers and their care recipients transform notions of end-of-life situated in care institutions in Japan through the lens of Filipino women care workers. Moreover, under what circumstances does it allow Filipino female care workers to reframe migration as meaningful moral purposes rather than merely for economic stability and survival? Through the narratives of the Filipino women care workers, I have argued in this study that transnational end-of-life care work organizes intimacy through kin-like relations, creating moral spaces within which Filipino care workers exercise moral agency and negotiate moral experiences despite the structural constraints of intimate labor. The narratives of Filipino women care workers in Japan provide an insight into what caregiving looks like as experienced by both the caregiver and the care receiver. With this, transnational care for the elderly is assumed to be a byproduct of capitalism, where intimacy and emotional labor are commodified. However, humanistic care created in moral spaces through kin-like relations, moral agency, and moral experience is something that capitalism can never touch - one that has no market value and can not be commodified.

Keywords: transnational care, Filipino women care workers, end-of-life care, moral agency, moral experiences

Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnography in Minamata, Japan, this paper examines how caring for a shrine’s Muku tree enables coexistence amid pollution, labor conflict, and social division. Through one man’s experience across rival unions, it shows how care practices mend relations without reconciliation.

Paper long abstract

This paper argues that practices of care oriented toward mending relations with a shared, more-than-human presence can enable coexistence in communities marked by enduring social and environmental division. Focusing on the care of a Muku tree(Aphananthe aspera) at a local shrine in Minamata, Japan, it examines how people remain in relation without resolving historical conflict, consensus, or inequality. Minamata is widely known for Minamata disease, caused by industrial pollution. Less visible, however, are the social divisions produced by prolonged labor disputes at the chemical company responsible for the disease, which dominated local employment and the regional economy. Labor conflict led to the formation of two rival unions—one aligned with the company and the other opposed to it. These divisions extended beyond the workplace into neighborhood associations responsible for festivals and shrine rites, leading to the suspension of local rituals in the 1960s. At the center of this ethnography is Mr. F, a man from Minamata who experienced employment discrimination due to his affiliation with the oppositional union and spent nearly a decade working outside the city. Like many from Minamata, he avoided speaking the name of his hometown, constrained by stigma and the widespread belief that Minamata disease was contagious. After returning, he became involved in restoring shrine practices in his local neighborhood, taking responsibility for the care of a large Muku tree growing within the shrine grounds. Through conversations with an elderly neighbor formerly affiliated with the company-backed union, Mr. F learned how the shrine and the tree had long served as a site of prayer, wartime departure, survival through air raids, and collective gathering during periods of labor conflict. Acts such as pruning the tree and cleaning the shrine grounds became shared practices through which conflicting memories and relationships could coexist. This paper contributes to anthropological discussions of coexistence by demonstrating that, although these practices did not fully resolve past antagonisms, they gradually narrowed the distance between the two sides and eventually helped to create the conditions for being together in the same place.

Paper short abstract

Despite the "dekasegi" trend observed in other regions, this paper explores the transnational mobility of Japanese men in London to re-evaluate their professional identities and career trajectories. My findings suggest that destination choice is deeply intertwined with the specific form of capital.

Paper long abstract

Recent media discourse in Japan highlights a rise in "Dekasegi wa-hori (labor migration Working Holiday makers)”, driven by domestic economic stagnation and subsequent diversification of lifestyles. This trend suggests that young Japanese are increasingly moving abroad to secure economic capital. However, this study reveals a counter-narrative among Japanese men in London. Drawing on qualitative interviews, this research examines how these men—at a life stage where conventional Japanese masculinity expects institutional career stability—negotiate their identities through transnational mobility.

Contrary to the "dekasegi" trend observed in regions like Australia, my informants in London primarily pursue cultural capital in creative fields such as fashion and photography. For these men, London functions not as a site for high-wage labor, but rather as a space that allows them to temporarily detach from the rigid expectations of the Japanese labor market while seeking global validation for their professional identities.

This paper argues that the transnational mobility of Japanese men is increasingly bifurcated. While some pursue economic survival, those in London utilize the Working Holiday scheme to negotiate their masculinity by accumulating cultural prestige rather than immediate financial gain. This choice represents a strategic negotiation: they risk the delay of attainment of conventional adulthood to pursue self-realization that transcends domestic corporate norms. These findings suggest that destination choice is deeply intertwined with the specific form of capital—economic or cultural—that individuals seek to convert into their future social status.

Paper short abstract

As Japan’s population ages, dementia has become an issue of growing importance. This presentation analyses public discourse on dementia in Japanese media, tracing major shifts and examining the factors behind them, since perceptions of dementia shape how the illness is understood and experienced.

Paper long abstract

In Japan, dementia became a widely discussed public issue following the publication of Ariyoshi Sawako’s bestselling novel Kōkotsu no hito (The Twilight Years) in 1972, which was followed by a film adaptation the next year and several television series. At that time, Japan’s ageing population accounted for only 7.1 percent of the total population (1970).

Since then, not only has the ageing rate risen to nearly 30 percent today, with more than 4.5 million people estimated to be living with dementia, but the ways in which dementia is discussed and understood have changed considerably. The introduction of the Long-Term Care Insurance system in 2000 gradually contributed to the growing acceptance of institutional care as a legitimate option. Dementia, once hidden within families and cared for primarily by daughters and daughters-in-law, has increasingly become a topic openly discussed in public—by families as well as by people in the early stages of dementia themselves. This shift has been accompanied by the expansion of care infrastructures, including nursing homes, daycare services, care managers, and home helpers.

At the same time, public discourse has moved away from viewing dementia solely as an inevitable fate of old age toward an emphasis on prevention and delay. More recently, this discourse has further evolved to promote the social inclusion of people with mild dementia, with some employers redesigning jobs to accommodate employees with dementia—particularly those affected at a younger age—or creating suitable employment opportunities for older individuals living with the condition.

As Emma Putnam observes, “how we represent dementia both reflects and helps to shape how we experience the syndrome, individually and collectively” (Navigating Dementia and Discourse, 2025). Perceptions of dementia are therefore of crucial importance. In this presentation, I trace changes in public discourse on dementia in selected Japanese media in order to identify major shifts and the factors behind them, including developments in medical knowledge, demographic and economic pressures, and cultural influences such as literature and film, all of which have played significant roles in shaping these discursive transformations.

Paper short abstract

Set in a Japanese care facility, the "100-Hour Tour" uses a "tourist gaze" to strip guests' "social armor." We argue that this radical "irresponsibility" allows guests to inhabit "Crip Time," demonstrating that true coexistence is forged by accepting the raw, unmanaged reality of diversity.

Paper long abstract

In contemporary Japan, true social inclusion is often hindered by the rigid "social armor" (roles and personas) that individuals wear. In the context of disability, this armor manifests as the ethical pressure to be a "supporter," enforcing a taboo against objectifying people with disabilities. Consequently, "diversity" remains a sanitized concept where chaotic realities are hidden behind professional distance.

This paper examines a radical methodology that overturns this norm: the "Time Travel 100-Hour Tour" by Creative Support Let's in Hamamatsu. Operating at the intersection of critical disability studies and Socially Engaged Art (SEA), the tour invites guests to live with residents with severe disabilities for 100 hours. Crucially, the project explicitly encourages the "tourist gaze." Rather than asking guests to "understand" or "care for" the residents, it invites them to view the chaotic behaviors and "Crip Time" (a temporality of repetition and unpredictability) as cultural resources.

Methodologically, this study relies on participant observation and semi-structured interviews to analyze the guests' subjective experiences. The analysis reveals that legitimizing the "tourist gaze" functions as a powerful device to strip off the "social armor." By being permitted to be mere "tourists"—observers without the responsibility to care—guests are liberated from the moral obligation to be "productive supporters."

While interview data indicates that this "non-intervention" policy initially provokes anxiety or confusion due to the lack of societal scripts, the study argues that this friction is essential. This position of "irresponsibility" forces guests to confront the raw reality of diversity. The study concludes that this project successfully demonstrates a model of "Radical Diversity." By allowing guests to simply "be" in the realm of Crip Time, Let's proves that genuine coexistence is forged not through managed harmony, but by accepting the chaotic co-presence of naked existences.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines J.League mega-events as cultural products that function as ritual spaces in which social structures are performed and well-being is negotiated. Drawing on ethnographic data, it explores the relationship between growth, social development, and contemporary ritual life.

Paper long abstract

The notions of development and well-being are embedded in a discourse often dominated by economic logics centred on the idea of growth. Whether economic, financial, or urban, development is frequently considered legitimate only insofar as figures and indicators continue to rise. A similar logic can be observed when development is applied to the realm of sport, where ongoing financialisation has given rise to numerous projects aimed at “developing” peripheral and/or economically disadvantaged regions through sport-related initiatives. Over recent decades, anthropological theory has sought to disentangle development from its economy-centred semantics, proposing alternative understandings of growth that encompass sustainability, social development, and well-being (Brownell 2023; Escobar 1995). This shift has paved the way for new lines of inquiry that examine the extent to which economic development overlaps with (or diverges from) social development.

This paper analyses the entanglement between the J.League, established in Japan in 1993 marking the beginning of professional football in the country, and processes of socio-economic development in rural/peripheral areas. The J.League project emerged both as an attempt to transform Japan’s sports culture through investment in a globally popular sport and as a strategy to revitalise both urban and peripheral regions. Three decades after its foundation, the project can be considered relatively successful from both cultural and economic perspectives: it has improved and expanded football infrastructure and contributed to the widespread diffusion of football culture across the archipelago. However, while existing literature has addressed some of the socio-economic implications of the J.League (Horne 2002; 2004), the anthropological impact of its mega-events on supporters’ ritual practices, well-being, and forms of social development remains underexplored.

After outlining a theoretical framework that situates the concepts of ritual, well-being, and development within a contemporary socio-economic context, the paper draws on ethnographic case studies conducted among Japanese professional football supporters from different geographical areas, aiming to highlight variations in the ritual experience of mega-events and to examine how well-being is negotiated within a contemporary society shaped by capitalist value systems.

Paper short abstract

Examining anti-migration sentiment in Japan, this paper traces African migration, Black culture, Hāfu identities, and racism, focusing on media controversies around African migration in Japan.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines anti-migration sentiment in contemporary Japan through the lens of the Black and African communities, situating current debates within a broader historical and cultural context. While Japan is often portrayed as ethnically homogeneous, African and Black migration has played a significant role in challenging dominant narratives of national identity and belonging, especially in the context of race. By examining the history of African migration to Japan, this paper highlights how global labour flows, education, and transnational networks have shaped Black presence in Japan, both physically and symbolically.

The paper also investigates the visibility of Black and African culture in Japan, including music, fashion, and everyday cultural exchange, and how these forms of visibility intersect with experiences of racism and exclusion. Particular attention is paid to the concept of Hāfu (half-Japanese), exploring how mixed-race identities complicate rigid understandings of “Japaneseness” and expose racial hierarchies embedded within society. Through this lens, the paper examines how Black hafu individuals navigate social belonging.

A central component of the analysis is a case study of media turmoil surrounding African hometowns in Japan.

Overall, this paper argues that anti-migration sentiment in Japan cannot be fully understood without addressing race and the lived experiences of Black and African communities. By foregrounding African migration, Black cultural presence, and Hāfu identities, the study contributes to Japanese studies, migration studies, and critical race scholarship by challenging myths of homogeneity and highlighting the racialised dimensions of belonging in Japan.

Paper short abstract

Based on debates over the possible reintroduction of military service in Germany, this paper examines how young German–Japanese dual citizens and their families negotiate military obligations across national and generational contexts, shaping the meanings and practices of multiple citizenship.

Paper long abstract

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has renewed political debates on military service in Germany and questions of conscription, loyalty, and responsibility have returned to the public agenda. Previous studies have examined military service among people with migration backgrounds as an expression of moral obligation to the state or national belonging (Yohanani 2024). Other research has analysed it as a rational form of state commitment (Bontenbal et al., 2025), or has explored how citizenship can be used as a tool for wartime mobilisation (Bahovadinova & Borisova, 2025). However, less attention has been paid to how military obligations are negotiated across more than one national and generational context.

This presentation addresses this gap by examining how young people with dual German–Japanese citizenship living in Germany, together with their families, respond to ongoing political debates about the possible reintroduction of military service. Focusing on intergenerational relationships, the presentation explores how these young people face normative expectations to fulfil military obligations as citizens of their country of residence. At the same time, they are influenced by post-war Japanese pacifism rooted in the Japanese Constitution, as well as by parental generations on the Japanese side, who tend to avoid military service. The analysis shows that feelings of obligation are not simply accepted or rejected, but are adjusted through moral reasoning within families. The presentation also examines how these discussions about military service affect the meanings attached to multiple citizenship. It considers how young people maintain, reinterpret, or distance themselves from particular national affiliations.

Rather than treating military service as a fixed attribute inherent to citizenship, this presentation argues for the need to understand it as a negotiated and mutable dimension. Military obligation is shown to be shaped by transnational legal frameworks, historical experiences, and intergenerational moral thinking.

Paper short abstract

In Japan’s aging society, economic precarity and loneliness have contributed to the decline in traditional forms of intimacy. However, commercial intimacy serves its purpose in fulfilling one’s physical or emotional needs without the commitment of a full relationship.

Paper long abstract

In Japan’s aging society with declining birth rates, many people face economic precarity and social isolation, which affects how they form relationships. This paper investigates commercial intimacy, including sex work, host clubs, rental girlfriends, and concept cafés, as an important part of satisfying emotional or sexual needs. Based on ethnographic research in Tokyo and Osaka, it shows that motivations for these practices are gendered. Women often seek emotional intimacy, for example through host clubs or concept cafés where they can talk, be listened to, and enjoy fantasy-like settings. Men, on the other hand, more often pay for sexual or affective services, such as visits to girl bars, prostitution, or rental girlfriend services. While these practices are common, they are not equally normalised: in Japan’s patriarchal society, men’s use of sexual services is more socially accepted, while women who buy emotional intimacy face stigma. At the same time, traditional forms of intimacy, like marriage and long-term partnerships, are declining, often seen as economically risky or burdensome. This paper argues that commercial intimacy reorganises relationships around practical, time-limited, and emotionally safe interactions. In this way, it acts as a form of affective infrastructure, helping people manage loneliness while also reflecting existing gender inequalities.

Paper short abstract

This paper explores the growing use of gender-neutral names in contemporary Japan, focusing on the motivations and decision-making processes behind their selection. Findings show that such naming reflects broader shifts in naming conventions rather than a conscious engagement with gender issues.

Paper long abstract

Since the late 20th century and into the new millennium, Japanese given names have undergone significant changes and diversification (e.g., Kobayashi, 2009; Makino, 2012; Ogihara et al., 2015), driven by the rise of individualization, globalization, and growing attention to gender issues. Within this trend, gender-neutral names have become increasingly visible (Barešová & Nakaya, 2025). Based on a qualitative content analysis of name-selection narratives (nazuke episōdo) involving gender-neutral names submitted to a popular parenting website over a fifteen-year period (2008–2022), this paper explores the motivations and decision-making processes behind their selection.

The findings reveal that gender-neutral names are infrequently chosen with gender-related social concerns in mind. Only a minority of namegivers explicitly mentioned gender neutrality, and even fewer cited social motivations such as avoiding gender stereotypes, anticipating future gender identity, or minimizing gender-based discrimination. In many cases, such names emerged as an unintended outcome of the name-selection process and the gender-neutral character was often recognized only retrospectively or treated as an incidental advantage rather than a guiding principle.

The paper situates these findings within the evolving landscape of Japanese naming practices, arguing that gender-neutral naming often reflects broader shifts in naming conventions rather than a conscious engagement with gender issues. Even so, their increasing presence contributes to a gradual reworking of gender norms in everyday life, illustrating how naming participates in “doing gender” (Pilcher, 2017) in subtle, non-programmatic ways.

Barešová, I., & Nakaya, T. (2025). Gender-neutral names in the youngest Japanese generation: Characteristics of their phonological and graphic forms. Sociolinguistic Studies, 19(1–2), 86–106.

Kobayashi, Y. (2009). Nazuke no sesōshi. “Koseiteki na namae” o fīrudowāku. Fūkyōsha.

Makino, K. (2012). Kodomo no namae ga abunai. Besuto Serāzu.

Ogihara, Y., Fujita, H., Tominaga, H., Ishigaki, S., Kashimoto, T., Takahashi, A., Toyohara, K., & Uchida, Y. (2015). Are common names becoming less common? The rise in uniqueness and individualism in Japan. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1490.

Pilcher, J. (2017). Names and “doing gender”: How forenames and surnames contribute to gender identities, difference, and inequalities. Sex Roles, 77, 812–822.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines the retention and experiences of older foreign residents in Japan using survey data from 999 migrants. Focusing on economic and socio-cultural factors, it explores why migrants in their 40s-60s stay longer and how they navigate aging in Japan’s changing demographic landscape.

Paper long abstract

Japan’s aging society is typically examined through the lens of its citizen population, yet foreign residents are also part of this demographic transformation. While many studies focus on attracting young, skilled migrants to fill labor shortages, far less attention has been paid to those already in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who are living and working in Japan. These migrants are at the verge of aging themselves, and their presence raises important questions for understanding retention and integration in an aging society. My research is based on a survey conducted with 999 foreign residents, of whom more than 130 are in their 40s, 50s, or 60s. Preliminary observations suggest that older migrants are more likely to remain in Japan for the long term, but the reasons behind this pattern remain underexplored. This paper will explore: What makes older migrants stay longer in Japan? What economic and socio-cultural challenges do they face as they age? What future concerns do they have? The analysis will be based on two broad sets of factors. Economic factors include employment stability, income, and problems faced at work. Socio-cultural factors consist of participation in community association, relationship with locals, intention to learn Japanese, social integration, experiences of discrimination, and future concerns. By situating foreign residents within the broader debates on demographic decline and generational change, this paper highlights an overlooked aspect of Japan’s aging society: migrants are not only supplementing its labor force but also aging themselves. The aim of this research is to investigate the factors that contribute to the long-term retention of older migrants in Japan, to identify the economic and socio-cultural challenges they face as they age, and to consider how their experiences can inform more inclusive future policies.

Paper short abstract

Kawaii might be on the most successful cultural Japanese exports ever. But what are its roots in Japanese culture, what does its global acceptance mean, and how does it actually work as an aesthetic category distinct from that of the beautiful?

Paper long abstract

Kawaii might be a global phenomenon, with huge economic relevance and ramifications in marketing, design, and communication, and yet actual aesthetic or philosophical reflections on it are still scarce. In this paper, I wish to discuss it through the lens of phenomenology, then applying the gathered insight towards contemporary Japan and its cultural relevance.

Kawaii, or "cute", is a complex aesthetic stance that is not only turned towards specific kinds of objects, but which in turns allows the subject to assume a specific style of consciousness. On the object-pole (noema), the characterizing trait of kawaii is a dominance of the oral sensorium, the multimodal complex of taste-touch-smell that is dominant in the infant, and becomes secondary in an "adult" aesthetics centered on visual detachment. Kawaii things are thus "sweet", "round", "soft", "colorful" and "small", often meant to be owned, consumed and manipulated rather than simply admired from afar.

But on the subect-pole (noesis), the appeal of kawaii is the momentary, mediated return to infant-consciosuness that the attuned interaction with things kawaii can allow. As defining traits of this infant-consciosuness we can highlight "play", a state of whimsical suspension of adult responsability and of the usual distinction between real and unreal; "nostalgia", a more mediated sense of tenderness for a real or imaginary past, projected on objects or places; and "innocence", the emotional response before another subject that is not yet aware of harsher elements of existence.

As an aesthetic category connected to care and infancy, kawaii is also highly gendered, connected to forms of enforced, negotiated, and revolutionary femininity. Lastly, the interaction of the noematic and noetic elements of kawaii is evident in the "free deformation" that makes possible to "kawaiify" things that would not normally be so, such as reptiles, monsters, inanimate objects. In terms of image ecology, a study of kawaii reveals the importance of an "expressive function" in images, central to East Asian aesthetics, alongside and contrasting the "mimetic function" privileged in most European art, thus opening a whole new landscape for historical and comparative studies.

Paper short abstract

This study elucidates the "ideal image of Tozan" constructed in Japan. While influenced by Western traditions, Japanese mountaineering developed distinctly. Analyzing the magazine 'Iwa to Yuki' (1958–1993), I examine how shared ideal images were formed within the community in the post-war era.

Paper long abstract

This study focuses on Japanese tozan[登山, mountaineering] culture. Specifically, it focuses on the shared “ideal images of Tozan” within the Japanese mountaineering community. Japanese tozan culture is distinctive in that it has developed uniquely while being influenced by Western traditions, and is now widely shared throughout the Japanese tozan community. This study elucidates how these ideal images were constructed within the Japanese tozan community.

Japanese modern mountaineering dates back to the founding of the Japanese Alpine Club in 1905. Overseas climbing further flourished after World War II, highlighted by the 1956 Manaslu expedition, which served as a symbol of national recovery and ignited a widespread climbing boom. Given this background, it is possible that a unique and shared ideal of mountaineering has been constructed within the Japanese climbing community

In this study, I will use the Japanese term tozan, instead of 'mountaineering' or 'mountain climbing'. The act of 'climbing mountains' holds diverse meanings depending on the natural environment and historical and cultural background of each region. I focus particularly on the culture known in Japanese as “mountain climbing”, which developed in Japan after the Second World War.

Tozan[登山, mountaineering] means climbing mountains. The purpose of Tozan is to climb the mountain itself. Similar to tozan, I will also use the Japanese term honkakuha. Honkakuha[本格派, serious mountaineer] means a person who is strongly devoted to Tozan, and for whom mountaineering is extremely important. This includes not only professional mountaineers, but also general mountaineers.

By analysing fieldwork records, mountaineering journals, and their memoirs and essays, I shed light on the ideal image of tozan. Specifically, I analyse the discourse in all issues of the mountaineering journal ‘Iwa to Yuki’ [「岩と雪」, Rock and Snow) (from 1958 to 1993), showing that ideal image were formed during the dawn and heyday of tozan in post-World War II Japan.

This study examines the ideal image of tozan constructed within Japanese tozan community through magazine analysis.

Paper short abstract

This paper discusses exemplary senior influencers (e.g. Wakamiya Masako) who promote digital activities or are active on SNS. As digital role models, they counter stereotypes of technology-shy seniors and raise the awareness of an inclusive digital society by sharing older internet-users’ views.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, so-called „granfluencers” have gained media attention, representing older adults who have a large followership on social media or are known for their activities with digital technology. Very often, these senior influencers are single-living women, who acquired computer and internet skills upon reaching retirement age. A prominent Japanese example is Wakamiya Masako (born 1935), known as the “world’s oldest programmer” and "ICT evangelist", who has authored numerous advice books and promotes a “happy digital life” (shiawase dejitaru seikatsu). By recounting their own experiences with computers and things digital (so-called technobiographic stories) and promoting enjoyment in the usage of digital technologies and SNS, these women can be seen as role models for a digitally active life, countering the stereotype of technology-shy seniors. I will analyze exemplary senior influencers and show how they can be interpreted as “warm experts”, a term which Maria Bakardjieva (2005) has coined with her study on ordinary internet users in the 1990s. Their mediation works in both directions: translating the technological world for digitally marginalized peers but also translating the world of senior internet-users to developers and decision makers.

Paper short abstract

　This paper examines disability perception among Japanese farmers using a multi-layered model. It focuses on how interpersonal, practical, and structural layers coexist and shift over time, and how social support helps sustain positive change.

Paper long abstract

　This paper examines disability perception among Japanese farmers employing people with mental disabilities through a multi-layered analytical model. Rather than treating disability perception as a single attitude that emerges and deepens over time, the study conceptualizes it as a configuration of three perceptual layers that coexist throughout the process: interpersonal understanding, practical accommodation, and structural understanding. Transformation is defined not as the appearance of new layers, but as shifts in their relative prominence and interrelation.

　Drawing on qualitative interviews with farmers engaged in agri-welfare collaboration in rural Japan—including crop farming, dairy farming, forestry-related work, and agricultural organizations—this study adopts a narrative and process-oriented approach. Interpersonal understanding refers to how farmers emotionally and relationally interpret people with mental disabilities, including distance, anxiety, trust, and familiarity. Practical accommodation concerns everyday work practices such as task adjustment, role-sharing, and coordination developed through shared agricultural labor. Structural understanding involves recognizing disability as shaped by organizational arrangements, work environments, and community contexts rather than individual deficits.

　The analysis shows that these three layers are present both at the initial stage of employment and in later phases. In the early stage, practical and structural considerations—such as concerns about work pace, safety, and responsibility—tend to dominate, while interpersonal understanding remains limited. Through daily shared work, practical accommodation often moves to the foreground, enabling farmers to reassess assumptions about ability through concrete experience. Over time, interpersonal understanding becomes more relationally grounded, and structural understanding may be articulated more explicitly as farmers reflect on conditions needed to sustain cooperation.

　Importantly, positive transformations in the configuration of perceptual layers are not irreversible. Even when interpersonal understanding and practical accommodation become more prominent, such configurations may become unstable under changing work conditions or increased workload. This indicates that sustaining positive transformation cannot rely solely on individual ethics. Organizational and community-level structures—such as shared reflection, collective responsibility, and connections to external support—play a crucial role in stabilizing these configurations.