This short presentation was created to provoke a debate at the spring meeting of the Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ) group at Seijo University in Tokyo. It argues that Japanese studies now suffer from "ethnographic involution," a process of increasing investment in smaller and smaller topics that impoverishes the field. It looks back to classic works by Ruth Benedict and Chie Nakane and suggests that an Asian regional comparative perspective offers an escape.

1. Looking Back to
Look Forward
Benedict, Nakane and Ethnographic Involution
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
AJJ Spring Meeting 2015

2. Two Extraordinary
Women
Nakane Chie Ruth Benedict

3. They Attempted the
Impossible

4. But both included something
missing from most current
research on Japan

5. An Asian Regional
Comparative Perspective

6. Benedict
• “The Japanese were the most alien enemy that the
United States had ever fought in an all-out
struggle.”
• But the Japanese are not Chinese
• An important point since the USA and China were
allies in WWII

7. Japanese vs Chinese
JAPAN CHINA
Absolute loyalty to the
Emperor
Conditional loyalty
The dynastic cycle
Extreme sensitivity to insults
to honor
Gentlemen ignore insults
Ancestor worship restricted to
those within living memory
Ancestors worshipped by many
generations, the more the
better
Mistresses kept in separate
households
Concubines added to
households

8. Nakane
• Studied with Raymond Firth, did fieldwork in
India
• Was surprised by how freely Indian women voiced
their opinions
• And how often they won quarrels with their
mothers-in-law

9. Japanese vs Indians
JAPAN INDIA
Social ties defined by frame
(household or firm)
Social ties defined by category
(caste)
Weak ties between frames Strong ties within category
Insistence on unity in thought
and feeling as well as behavior
Individuals free to think and
feel as they liked so long as
behavior was proper
No allies for women who fight
with their mothers-in-law
Relatives ready to take the
woman’s side

10. My purpose today
• Not to defend Benedict or Nakane
• Not to defend these particular arguments
• But to underline something that their arguments
share
• What I have called in a previous slide “An Asian
regional comparative perspective”

11. Our Conference Theme
• “Glocalizing Japanese Studies: Japanese Studies
Inside and Outside Japan”
• “Glocalizing” =Globalization+Localizing
• But what does it mean in practice?

12. Glocalization in
Practice
• “Applying” Western ideas to study something
presented as characteristically Japanese
• Continuing subservience to Western models
• Ethnographic involution

13. Ethnographic
Involution
• An idea adapted from Clifford Geertz’s Agricultural
Involution.
• Agricultural Involution—Growing numbers of Javanese
peasants investing more and more intensive labor in
smaller and smaller fields
• Ethnographic Involution—Growing numbers of
anthropologists investing more and more intensive labor on
smaller and smaller topics
• Both becoming poorer in the process

14. Look Back to Look
Forward
• Benedict and Nakane
• Both were deeply involved in the major events of
their times
• Both employed what they learned about other parts
of Asia to enrich their analyses of Japan
• Both wrote books that, however frequently criticized
by later anthropologists, continue to be read and
cited outside of anthropology

15. In Today’s World
• It’s no longer the 1960s or 70s, when Japan’s
economic miracle was transforming Japan into the
world’s second largest economy.
• It’s no longer the 1980s, when it looked like Japan
might dominate the global economy
• Japan is slipping out of the global limelight

16. In Today’s World
• Where China’s importance is growing
• India and Indonesia are next in line
• Samsung is a bigger brand than Sony
• Can Japanese studies afford to remain parochial?

17. What is the alternative?
• Whatever the topic, there are fresh insights to be
found by looking at what is going on outside of
Japan, in China, Korea, or other parts of Asia.
• Yes, there are language and other barriers.
• But now we have the Internet

18. In a Digital World
• A Google search will turn up all sorts of work in
other places on topics similar to our own
• Colleagues who work in those other places are just a
click or an email away
• Most are very happy when someone else, anyone at
all, takes an interest in their work
• The possibilities for collaborative, comparative
research have never been greater

19. Think About It
Thank You