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| 1 |
ID:
160274
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| 2 |
ID:
160275
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| Summary/Abstract |
Kyokutei Bakin’s epic novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (Chronicle of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi Clan of Nansō; 106 volumes, 1814–42) tells of the adventures of eight human warriors who inherit the spirit of a mysterious dog. Popular during its own day, it has enjoyed countless retellings on the stage, screen, and page. This article compares the shifting representations of dog–human interactions in Bakin’s text with its antecedents in Chinese legend and Japanese folktales, and with two recent retellings: Sakuraba Kazuki’s novel Fuse: Gansaku Satomi Hakkenden (Fuse: A Counterfeit Chronicle of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi Clan, 2010) and its animated-film adaptation, Fuse: Teppō musume no torimonochō (Fuse: A Tale of a Girl with a Hunting Gun, dir. Miyaji Masayuki, 2012). Contemporary retellings confirm the cultural staying power of the strange tradition of stories about marriages between humans and dogs. In the film adaptation, some of Sakuraba’s more imaginative twists on animal–human relationships have been supplanted by global young-adult-fiction conventions such as ‘beastly’ boys and girls who save them. This is a return to the holy bride of Bakin’s novel and the self-sacrificing animal wives of other folktales.
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| 3 |
ID:
160272
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| Summary/Abstract |
Keirin – fixed-gear bicycle racing – is one of four forms of state-sponsored sports gambling in Japan. Originally started in 1948 as a way for prefectural governments to generate income for post-war reconstruction, keirin grew to become one of the country’s most popular gambling-sports. Today there are over 2,000 registered keirin riders, who compete in five main classes. Like with other sports, becoming a keirin rider requires intensive training of the body; however, it also requires training of the mind. Would-be keirin athletes must undergo an 11-month training course before they are allowed to compete. The aim is to produce bodies that can both perform athletically and conform to the sport’s strict rules, thus contributing to its legitimacy as a form of legal gaming. Keirin’s rules and regulations are meant to structure competition in a way that creates conditions for gambling by forcing cooperation, as well as competition, among riders, thereby introducing uncertainties and enabling odds. It is said that no rider can win a race alone. In this paper I employ an assemblage-theory approach to engage with the tension between gambling and sport that is central to the keirin enterprise. I argue that within the keirin assemblage rider-athletes are called upon to labor in ways that both enable the gambling-sport project and create coherence between the at times incongruent domains of sport and gambling.
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| 4 |
ID:
160273
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the 1980s, Japanese dancers have won top prizes at some of the most demanding international dance competitions, and several have been promoted to the top ranks of major dance companies around the world. In this article, I explore the interplay between Japanese dancers and Western centers of dance, focusing on the paths and decisions dancers took as they went abroad to further their careers. As part of this movement, Japanese dancers are sometimes identified as such though their numbers have grown and they have become part of a globalized dance scene. At the same time, the paper explores the relationship between the development of a bodily habitus necessary to become a dancer and the artistry involved in communicating a message or emotion through the body. I argue that dancers understand their movement and growth as artists in relationship to their technique and artistry.
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| 5 |
ID:
160271
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| Summary/Abstract |
Even in 2018, a relatively small number of Japanese women play soccer; however, the Japan Football Association (JFA) and its affiliated leagues have played a central role in the development of the women’s game globally. In the earliest years of the new semi-professional L-League, team owners and trainers were committed to bringing some of the best female soccer players in the world to Japan, but that strategy changed dramatically just a decade later. Instead of foreign internationals playing in Japan, top Japanese national team members were heading abroad. This significant shift in the flow of female players provides a unique vantage point from which to think about the development of elite women’s soccer in Japan and to contemplate underlying assumptions about how soccer expertise is developed and transmitted. I will argue that the unique history of Japanese women’s soccer migration encourages us to ask some more probing questions about the logics that undergird many female players’ decisions to move from one country to the next. Common to these decisions are tacit ideas about the power of physical proximity and place, which I analyse using the anthropological concept of contagion.
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| 6 |
ID:
160270
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| Summary/Abstract |
Baseball occupies a privileged position as Japan’s most popular sport, commanding ample attention across numerous levels and contexts of play. Baseball’s popularity has also inspired value-laden and sometimes nationalistic language around its athletes and how the sport is played. These associations, linking baseball and its athletes to the Japanese nation today, arise in a diverse sporting landscape where transnational movement by athletically gifted individuals is possible. This article asks how the bodies of non-Japanese baseball players are remade or rejected as Japanese baseball bodies. Through a focus on interpretations of bodily capability and athletic potential, I map shifting views of transnational identity as they are tied to bodily interpretations. I argue that how athlete’s accomplishments and failures are viewed and interpreted insidiously serve to embed perceptions of racial and ethnic difference. These perceptions of difference divide Japanese from non-Japanese baseball players through a focus on height, strength, and speed as well as attitude, reverence, and commitment to the team and its hierarchies. Baseball thereby becomes a conduit that perpetuates and preserves categories of ethno-racial difference and superficial views of the other.
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| 7 |
ID:
160269
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines high-end traditional Japanese kitchens and their increasing acceptance of new technologies such as digital steam convection ovens, and new bodies such as female and non-Japanese cooks. It particularly focuses on the effects of these changes on the bodily techniques of the apprentice cook (itamae shokunin). By installing new technologies and machines, restaurant kitchens specializing in ‘traditional’ Japanese haute cuisine have lessened their dependence on human bodies whose senses have been professionally trained through years of apprenticeship. In admitting Japanese female and foreign cooks, traditional Japanese kitchens have also begun loosening a once rigid hierarchy. Such changes have been accompanied by the emergence of explicit cooking instructions and the creation of more precise recipes. Based on interviews with chefs and cooks, and observational fieldwork in professional kitchens in Kyoto, this article shows that recent changes do not constitute a simple replacement of sensory-reliant human labor with mechanized production methods. Rather, the value of Japanese haute cuisine today continues to depend on the labor of bodies whose senses have been honed in the hierarchical space of the traditional kitchen.
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