Doing Fieldwork in Japan

edited by Theodore C. Bestor, Patricia G. Steinhoff, and Victoria Lyon Bestor

University of Hawai’i Press, 2003

 

392 pages (with map, 21 photos, glossary, bibliography, and index)

ISBN: 0-8248-2525-X (cloth edition), 0-8248-2734-1 (paper edition)

$55.00 cloth edition; $22.95 paper edition

 

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UH Press catalogue 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

 

1          Introduction: Doing Fieldwork in Japan

Theodore C. Bestor, Patricia G. Steinhoff, and Victoria Lyon Bestor              

 

Starting Out

 

21             Taking Note of Teen Culture in Japan: Dear Diary, Dear Fieldworker

Merry Isaacs White 

 

36        New Notes from the Underground: Doing Fieldwork without a Site

Patricia G. Steinhoff 

 

55        From Scrambled Messages to an Impromptu Dip: Serendipity in Finding a Field Location

Joy Hendry 

 

71        Fieldwork with Japanese Religious Groups

Helen Hardacre 

 

89             Chance, Fate and Undisciplined Meanderings: A Pilgrimage through the Fieldwork Maze

Ian Reader 

 

Navigating Bureaucratic Mazes

 

109          Getting Cooperation in Policy-Oriented Research

Samuel Coleman 

 

124          JET Lag: Studying a Multilevel Program over Time 

David L. McConnell 

 

139       Getting In and Getting Along in the Prosecutor's Office      

David T. Johnson 

 

156       In Search of the Japanese State            

            Sheila A. Smith 

 

176       Doing Media Research in Japan           

Ellis S. Krauss 

 

Asking: Surveys, Interviews, Access

 

195       Fact-Rich, Data-Poor: Japan as Sociologists' Heaven and Hell

Mary C. Brinton 

 

214       Beginning Trials and Tribulations: Rural Community Study and Tokyo City Survey

Suzanne Culter 

 

229       Research Among the Bureaucrats: Substance and Process

John Creighton Campbell 

 

248       Dealing with the Unexpected: Field Research in Japanese Politics

David M. Arase 

 

261       Studying the Social History of Contemporary Japan

Andrew Gordon  

 

Outsiders in Insiders’ Networks

 

277       Unraveling the Web of Song

Christine R. Yano  

 

294       Bottom Up, Top Down, and Sideways: Studying Corporations, Government

            Programs, and NPOs

Glenda S. Roberts

 

315       Inquisitive Observation: Following Networks in Urban Fieldwork    

Theodore C. Bestor 

 

335       Responsibility and the Limits of Identification: Fieldwork among Japanese and              

Japanese Brazilian Workers in Japan                                                           

Joshua Hotaka Roth 

 

352       Time and Ethnology: Long-Term Field Research

Robert J. Smith 

 

 

367       Appendix: Digital Resources and Fieldwork    

            Victoria Lyon Bestor

 

375       Glossary

 

383          Bibliography

 

397          About the Contributors

 

401          Index

 

 

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