Tag: Rural Heritage
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Back from the Field
Wow… 6 months of fieldwork went fast. Too fast. I am now back in Oslo. As soon as I returned I had to move in to a new apartment and prepare for my midway assessment, which is this coming Friday, the 14th. I have not yet had time to process the loads of data I…
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Blog from the Field (Nov 6)
It has been a while since my last blog—things have just been too turbulent. October 16th I left Oslo for Akita to embark on 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Akita, Japan. Before leaving Oslo however I had to vacant my researcher-housing apartment (UiO limits researchers to 12 months of housing!). That meant I had…
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Poetry from the Field
The good news is that my visa was finally issued and I have it in hand! I can now book my flights! Initially I planned to be in Akita at the start of September. In hind sight, I am glad for the delay. I took an overload of courses in the spring, attended 2 PhD…
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EAJS 2023 Workshop & Conference
3:30pm, 19 August 2023.This marks the first moment since last October that I had NO new applications, course work, reports, courses, workshops, presentations, or any other deadline-type thing to do!! Hallelujah! 笑 hahaha… I ended this summer on a very high-note with regards to my project. From 14–17 August I (and 19 other outstanding researchers)…
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An Even More “Perfect Storm:” Climate Change + Rural Depopulation
As rural populations continue to plummet, how will rural regions’ ability to respond to climate disasters be affected? It’s been 2 weeks since record rainfall in Akita caused residents to seek emergency shelter, halted shinkansen and other rail services, triggered landslides, and caused flood damage to hundreds of homes and business. According to Japan Meteorological…
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The DELUGE has come
In Writing Culture, George Marcus wrote about 2 types of ethnography: the salvage mode and the redemptive mode. He described the “salvage mode” as being ethnography conducted before the DELUGE. Well, last week that “deluge” came to Akita, but not in the metaphorical sense that Marcus meant it. Beginning around July 15 while other parts…
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41 Dances NEWLY added to UNESCO
Of course, right after I leave Akita the big news hits: the Nishimonai Bon Odori is inscribed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity! There are many bon-odori 盆踊り(i.e., dances performed during the time of O-bon お盆 at the end of summer) in Akita, but the one performed in the quiet rural town of…
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Accepted to EAJS!
Back in December my advisor Prof. Mark Teeuwen and I put together a panel application for the International Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS). One other scholar will be joining us from Japan. The conference will be hosted by the Institute of Japanese Studies at Ghent University (Belgium). The title of the…
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Research Questions
Research Questions, those bedeviling things… While writing my initial research proposal, I agonized over and over about what my research questions should be. My friends, who are seasoned academics, laughed and said, “Just write whatever—your research questions will change a hundred times between now and when you finish your dissertation!” Easy for them to say!…
Rural Culture in Japan 