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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.

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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.

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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

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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.