Asian Ethnology Podcast

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 8 June 2017, Nagoya, Japan

Peter Knecht was the editor of Asian Folklore Studies from 1980 until 2007. The journal changed its name to Asian Ethnology in 2008.

In this extended interview, Peter discusses his experiences working as the editor of Asian Folklore Studies. He talks about when he first encountered the journal working under founding editor, Matthias Eder, and what happened when he took over the journal in 1980. 

Interviewer: Ben Dorman

In this episode, John Powers (Deakin University) discusses an interdisciplinary project involving historians, anthropologists, scientists, and folklorists concerning rivers that originate in Tibet, which play a key role in global hydrological cycles yet are in crises as a result of multiple threats.  

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 11 March 2011

In this episode, anthropologist Susanne Klien discusses her recent book Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-growth Society (SUNY Press, 2020). She touches on her motivations for doing the research, the reasons for migrants relocating to rural areas, and some of the challenges they face after relocation, amongst other issues. She also addresses some questions that were asked in a book talk given on 22 February 2021 that was part of the Asian Ethnology Series. 

Interviewer: Mark Bookman

Recorded: Wednesday Feb 17th 2021

This episode features a discussion with Steven Fedorowicz, cultural anthropologist, visual anthropologist, and associate professor at Kansai Gaidai University. Steven will be giving a talk on “Representations of Deaf People in Japan: Inspiration, Outrage and Real Life,” as part of the “Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series” via Zoom on May 14, 2021 (Details to follow). In discussing some of what he will be presenting, Steven talks about his ongoing project concerning media representations of deaf people and culture in Japan, and his introduction to his studies on and experiences with deaf communities. He also touches on his personal experiences that his understandings and approaches to deaf communities and disability studies.

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.

Copyright 2021, Asian Ethnology Podcast

Interviewer: Mark Bookman

Date recorded: 26 October 2020

This episode of Asian Ethnology Podcast features Frank Mondelli, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. Frank recently returned from research in Japan and is currently working on his doctoral dissertation on the social, technical, and political history of assistive technologies for deafness and hearing impairment in 20th century Japan. Frank discusses his recent work on the history of hearing aids in 1950s Japan, how he became interested in assistive technology, and how thinking about assistive technology can help us think about accessibility and inclusivity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This episode is part of the "Disability and Japan in the Digital Age" project run through the Anthropological Institute, Nanzan University.

Publications discussed in this episode

Mills, Mara and Jonathan Sterne. “Dismediation – Three Proposals, Six Tactics” in Disability Media Studies, ed. Elizabeth Ellcessor and Bill Kirkpatrick

Interviewer: Ben Dorman

Date recorded: 3 November 2020

In this episode, Mark Bookman discusses a new series of lectures entitled "Disability and Japan in the Digital Age," which is run through the Anthropological Institute, Nanzan University. He talks about the significance of the series at this time. Mark will also be presenting interviews with the participants in Asian Ethnology Podcast episodes. 

In this episode Yoshiko Okuyama talks about her most recent monograph, Reframing Disability in Manga (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020). Okuyama explains that her work examines representations of disabled people in manga serialized throughout the 1990s and 2000s, focusing on portrayals of deaf, blind, paraplegic, and autistic individuals, as well as those with gender dysphoria. Bookman asks Okuyama about the history behind her project and the logic that guided her decision-making regarding specific manga titles and disability identities. The two also unpack the contributions of Reframing Disability for scholars of gender, disability, and manga.

In this episode anthropologist Andreas Riessland discusses his research on Japanese biker gangs (bōsōzoku) and a project involving Shugendō Buddhist and Shinto groups that ended in failure due to various struggles between the groups. He also discusses how he came to terms with the failure, and offers advice to researchers who confront “failure” in fieldwork.

Interviewer: Thomas David DuBois

In this episode, we speak with China historians David Faure and He Xi of the Chinese University of Hong Kong about historical anthropology. Faure discusses the university's Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society AOE, and assesses what it accomplished in its eight-year run. He Xi explains how fieldwork shaped her perspective on China's boat communities and her recent book on lineages in Jiangxi.

Publications discussed in this episode

He Xi, Lineage and Community in China, 1100-1500: Genealogical Innovation in Jiangxi, London: Routledge, 2020.

The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living, Xi He & David Faure eds., London: Routledge, 2016.

Music used with kind permission of guqin performer Yan Yiqiao.

In this episode, we speak with Jin Feng, Professor of literature at Grinnell College, Iowa, and author of a new book on Chinese foodways. Jin discusses how the experience of leading a study trip to China and Russia helped shape her personal interest in food into a research program, how she expanded her circle of foodie friends into a professional network of chefs and restaurant entrepreneurs, and how themes of gender and nostalgia recur across centuries of writing about food.

Publications discussed in this episode:

Feng, Jin. Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (University of Washington Press, 2019).

Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth. The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class (Princeton University Press, 2017)

Music used with kind permission of guqin performer Yan Yiqiao.

Copyright 2020 by Asian Ethnology Podcast

This episode features Mark Bookman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting researcher at the university of Tokyo. Mark is completing his doctoral dissertation on the history of disability policy and related social movements in Japan. Mark discusses his personal challenges researching while using a wheelchair, changing research topics from Buddhism to disability in Japan, and accessibility issues related to COVID-19, including “transnational accessibility.”

Discussed in this episode:

Bookman, Mark, and Michael Gillan Peckitt. “Facing the COVID-19 crisis in Japan with a disability.” Japan Times, 30 March 2020.

Bookman, Mark. “Paralympics as Possibility.” TEDxFulbrightTokyo, March 2019.

This episode features historian Thomas David DuBois, who is currently Professor of Humanities at Beijing Normal University. Thomas discusses his original reasons for studying China, the application of historical anthropology in his work, his interest and work in Chinese food, the effect of the death of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain had on his thinking about human relations and food, and finally thoughts on living under the current circumstances of coronavirus and quarantine in Beijing. 

Publications discussed in this episode:

DuBois, Thomas David. Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia: Manchuria 1900–1945 (Cambridge, 2017).

DuBois, Thomas David, and Jan Kiely, eds. Fieldwork in Modern Chinese History: A Research Guide (Routledge, 2019).

Feng, Jin. Tasting Paradise on Earth: Jiangnan Foodways (University of Washington Press, 2019).

In this episode of Asian Ethnology Podcast, McComas Taylor, Associate Professor and Reader in Sanskrit at the Australian National University, discusses how his research lies at the intersection of contemporary critical theory and Sanskrit narrative texts. What makes these texts powerful? What makes them authoritative? What makes them worth copying out by hand century after century?

In exploring these questions, he discusses how he applied an ethnographical approach to working on The Bhagavatapurana, interviewing audiences and performers and applying performance theory (published as Seven Days of Nectar: Contemporary Oral Performance of the Bhagavatapurana, Oxford University Press, 2016). He also talks about teaching Sanskrit as a living tradition, and teaching the language online.

Publication discussed in this episode

Taylor, McComas. Seven Days of Nectar: Contemporary Oral Performance of the Bhagavatapurana. Oxford University Press, 2016.  

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.

Copyright 2020 by Asian Ethnology Podcast

This Asian Ethnology Podcast episode features Roald Maliangkay of the Korea Institute at the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific. In this episode, Roald talks about  his interest in anti-Japanese folksongs in Korea during the colonial period as well as K-Pop and the contemporary scene. He discusses about his monograph, Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea's Central Folksong Traditions (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), and how Japanese colonial rule affected cultural policy, the system of preservation, and the way in which music is conceived and performed. He also talks about how he  applies the concept of “cultural cringe” in the context of Korean society.  

This episode’s guest is Tom Bauerle, the author of Kanashibari: True Encounters with the Paranormal in Japan. Although this is not an academic work, the author discusses the folkloric elements of ghost stories, in addition to presenting some of the content of his book. 

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 22 March 2018, Washington D.C.

This episode's guest is Guha Shankar, Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Asian Ethnology Editorial Board.

Episode Summary

Intro :32

Association with Frank Korom, co-editor of Asian Ethnology 3:50

The story behind the film Hosay Trinidad 6:20

Graduate studies in anthropology 11:06

Work at the American Folklife Center; how the Center has evolved 16:15

Resources at the Center 28:00 

Publications and films discussed in this episode

Film

Bishop, John and Korom, Frank J. Hosay Trinidad. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 1999.

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.

Copyright 2019 by Asian Ethnology Podcast

Intro :35

Religion in contemporary Japan since the publication of Religion in Contemporary Japan (1991) 4:15

Lack of evidence concerning “new spirituality movements”; the importance of considering decline in popularity of religion 5:45

Revisiting Agonshū since the death of the founder; work with religious studies scholar Erica Baffelli 11:39

Transformation of Agonshū founder and leader Kiriyama into “the second Buddha”; the aging of Agonshū 13:40

Problems with the category of Japanese “new religions” 15:15

Issues related to succession after the death of the founder; commemoration, veneration, and implicit nationalism in Agonshū 19:50

Work on Aum Shinrikyō and the impact of the Aum affair of 1995; religion and violence 25:05

Religions, mind control, and the “anti-cult” movement in Japan 28:08

Outro 28:36

This episode's guests are Ian Reader, professor emeritus of The University of Manchester, and Erica Baffelli, senior lecturer in Japanese Studies who is also at The University of Manchester. Ian Reader's work on Aum Shinrikyō is widely known in Japan and overseas. Erica Baffelli is also well-known for her work on media and post-Aum religions (Aleph and Hikari no Wa) as well as work with former Aum members. The interviews were conducted on 6 July, 2018, the day the Japanese government released news of the executions of the leader of Aum Shinrikyō, Asahara Shōkō, and 6 other major figures in the organization.

This episode's guest is Erica Baffelli, senior lecturer in Japanese Studies at The University of Manchester. Erica’s research interests include religion in contemporary Japan, new religions, religion and media, and religion, women and violence. She discusses her work interviewing members of Japanese new religions and the issues researchers face while producing research on these groups.