Publication date:
17 August 2012Length of book:
308 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442216471
Exploring the fundamental question of how a new discipline comes into being, this groundbreaking book tells the story of the emergence of native ethnology in Imperial Japan, a “one nation” social science devoted to the study of the Japanese people. Roughly corresponding to folklore studies or ethnography in the West, this social science was developed outside the academy over the first half of the twentieth century by a diverse group of intellectuals, local dignitaries, and hobbyists. Alan Christy traces the paths of the distinctive individuals who founded minzokugaku, how theory and practice developed, and how many previously unknown figures contributed to the growth of the discipline. Despite its humble beginnings, native ethnology today is a fixture in Japanese intellectual life, offering arguments and evidence about the popular, as opposed to elite, foundations of Japanese culture. Speaking directly to fundamental questions in anthropology, this authoritative and engaging book will become a standard not only for the field of native ethnology but also as a major work in broader modern Japanese cultural and intellectual history.
This book is a major contribution on a number of levels. For starters, it presents for the first time in English the big-picture view of the early years of minzokugaku as well as accounts of a number of relatively unheralded scholars who were present at its creation. ... The book also provides brief biographies of a number of 'middle-tier native ethnologists' such as Hayakawa Kotaro and Hashiura Yasuo. . . . Christy's valuable introduction of other scholars expands our understanding of minzokugaku but also highlights the fact that, ultimately, all roads lead back to Yanagita. ... The discussions are intricately intertwined, thoughtful, and insightful. ... A Discipline on Food is a significant achievement. By introducing a number of important (and interesting) thinkers, it will. . . inspire future research on scholars other than Yanagita. . . It helps bring earl minzokugaku into a global discourse on questions of representation, epistemology, and discipline creation. It should become standard reading in graduate courses on modern Japanese history, folkloristics, anthropology, and hopefully, ethnographic theory.