「VAoJ」has returned safely to Osaka after research in Tokyo・「VAoJ」は東京で研究をして、無事大阪に帰りました

Image: Inō Tadataka (1745-1818), the famous Japanese surveyor and cartographer whose bronze statue resides in the Tomioka Hachiman Shrine grounds in present-day Monzen Nakacho, joined the 「VAoJ」team at the nearby izakaya Daruma for a few drinks, fieldwork and photography.

画像：伊能忠敬（1745-1818) ―― 現在の門前仲町にある富岡八幡宮の境内に銅像が立つ、著名な測量家・地図製作者である彼が、近隣の居酒屋「だるま」で「VAoJ」チームに加わり、酒を酌み交わしながら、現地調査や写真撮影を行いました。

Additional photos are scheduled to be released soon.

近いうちに追加の写真が公開される予定です。

2026 Kayashima Shrine Summer Festival / 令和八年 萱島神社夏祭り / Dedicated to my friend and colleague Inge...

This post started after talking with my friend and colleague, Inge. Since we probably wouldn't see each other for a while during the summer break, she asked me to send her a couple of pictures. So the nearby summer festival at the Kayashima Jinja gave me a chance to do some interesting photography and get a couple of good shots for Inge. I chose the two shots above because they illustrate the fun and crowded atmosphere of the night fair where people go to meet up with friends and buy delicious summer snacks and drinks. My photos feature my favorite festival treat, tamago senbei: a crisp shrimp cracker with a fried egg, savory sauce and mayonnaise. As I was enjoying my tamago senbei, many people around me were enjoying theirs as well. I hope you like these shots, Inge!

The shrine ・ 神社 ・ jinja

Of course, being a visual anthropologist, I wanted to do more in this post and show the context and components of this occasion to add to my several previous posts about the summer festival and other events at or near the shrine. Kayashima Jinja, while small, is famous because its primary deity is a large tree. When the Keihan Kayashima Train Station was constructed, it was built around the tree. The tree/deity is said to be quite powerful and generous, so it attracts a lot of people at new years, the setsubun celebration and summer festival. I have included a list of previous VAoJ reporting with more facts and observations at the end of this post readers and viewers who want more specific information.

This year, this sacred wood branch「御神木の枝」which is part of the camphor tree「クスノキ」at Kayashima Shrine considered to be a Shinto deity「神 ・ kami」was prominently displayed.

The local standing drink bar ・ 地元の立ち呑み ・ jimoto no tachinomi

For several years, this drinking establishment always sold corn-on-the-cob roasted in butter and soy sauce. I always looked forward to this treat. But recently the tachinomi was bought by new owners who decided not to sell it this year. Very unfortunate...

The night fair ・ 夜店 ・ yomise

An egg on a shrimp cracker with sauce ・ たまごせんべい ・ tamago senbei

Yum! おいしい! うまい!

The trash ・ ごみ ・ gomi

Yes, Japan is such a clean country... And who says there are no trash bins in public? And don't forget to seperate your recyclable trash...

Goodnight ・ おやすみ ・ oyasumi

It was probably too early when I limped back home struggling to carry my canes, camera and snacks. For many the party was just getting started... But for me, I needed to get home to watch the Hanshin Tigers baseball game.

Day 2: The portable shrine ・ 神輿 ・ mikoshi

Back in the day, the parading of the portable shrine or mikoshi, a large one for the adults and a smaller one for the children, to bestow the blessings of the local deity to the residents of the shrine parish, was grand, energetic and exciting. But in the last several years it has become smaller, mellower and easier; it seems more obligatory rather than fulfilling. This is due to demographic trends and shifts in most areas of Japan (i.e. decreases in birth rates and an aging society), a lack of interest and involvement in neighborhood events (much of the neighborhood has been gentrified and turned into a bed-town) and global warming (every year seems to be getting hotter and more humid). The COVID-19 pandemic certainly did not help. In other words, the majority of participants are older people along with fewer young adults and children willing and able to participate in a difficult, laborious and grueling undertaking under the hot summer sun. The adult mikoshi is now carried on a truck rather than the sweating necks and shoulders of strong, young men (and women). Culture changes. Humans need to adapt to a changing environment (ironically caused by the humans thmeselves...).

Previous VAOJ posts on the summer festival at the Kayashima Shrine:

Here is a list of VAoJ posts related to Kayashima Shrine. It probably is not a complete list, but hopefully these are good sources to explore to find more information. As this blog/website is organized by chronological date and time, these posts seem to be a mish-mash of discourses influenced by my observations, interests and personal circumstances during various ethnographic moments. In relation to the VAoJ website/project as a whole, it is interesting to see when I moved from theories, methods and work of others to my own (auto)ethnographic endeavors and productions. It is not so surprising that this change occurred around the time I obtained my Nikon D-700 camera. It is also interesting (and nostaligic in a way) to see pauses and breaks of my work due to injuries, hospitalizations, the COVID-19 pandemic and other important happenings. So rather than a mish-mash, VAoJ might better be described as a multimodal exercise, where one can explore the posts and put together various pieces of the puzzle that is the visual anthropology of Japan.

2013 summer festival in 5 parts:

Visual Anthropology of Japan, Local Matsuri I: The Mikoshi, posted July 30, 2013.

Visual Anthropology of Japan, Local Matsuri II: Evening Activities, posted July 31, 2013.

Visual Anthropology of Japan, Local Matsuri III: Tamago Senbei, posted August 1, 2013.

Visual Anthropology of Japan, Local Matsuri IV: People, posted August 2, 2013.

Visual Anthropology of Japan, Local Matsuri V: くわしく, posted August 3, 2013.

2014 summer festival

Visual Anthropology of Japan, Local Matsuri, 2014 Edition, posted August 17, 2014.

2018 tondo matsuri post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2018/01/remains-of-2018-kayashima-shrine-tondo.html Remains of the 2018 Kayashima Shrine Tondo Festival, posted January 15, 2018.

2018 setsubun festival

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2018/02/2018-setsubun-shots-kayashima-jinjya.html 2018 Setsubun Shots @ Kayashima Jinja, posted February 24, 2018.

2018 summer festival post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2018/07/kayashima-jinja-summer-festival-mikoshi.html Kayashima Jinja Summer Festival: Mikoshi Procession Viewed from the Cool(er) Convenience of My Window, posted July 31, 2018

2019 setsubun festival post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2019/02/local-setsubun-celebration-at-kayashima.html Local Setsubun Celebration at Kayashima Shrine, Osaka, Japan, Feb. 3, 2019, posted February 3, 2019.

2019 jalan-jalan post on tachinomiya refurbish

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2019/06/jalan-jalan-68-neighborhood-tachinomiya.html Jalan Jalan (68): Neighborhood Tachinomiya Under Construction - a noren to protect the entrance and a cover for the whole building during renovation... posted June 19, 2019.

2019 jalan-jalan post on tachinomiya new signage

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2019/06/jalan-jalan-69-and-heres-new-signage.html Jalan Jalan (69): And here's the new signage for the neighborhood tachinomiya (I wish I could have been there for the unveiling...), posted June 24, 2019.

2020 new year's post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2020/01/ringing-in-reiwa-2-kayashima-jinja.html Ringing in Reiwa 2 @ Kayashima Jinja, posted January 3, 2020.

2022 summer festival post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-subdued-2022-kayashima-summer.html The subdued 2022 Kayashima summer festival - no children and the mikoshi is carried on a truck... posted July 24, 2022.

2023 new year's post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2023/01/first-visit-to-kayashima-shrine-for-new.html First visit to Kayashima Shrine for the New Year 2023, posted January 3, 2023

2023 summer festival

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2023/08/kayashima-summer-festival-july-2023.html Kayashima Summer Festival (July, 2023), posted August 2, 2023

2025 summer festival post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2025/07/kayashima-shrine-summer-matsuri-july-27.html Kayashima Shrine Summer Matsuri (July 27, 2025) / 萱島神社夏祭り（2025年7月27日, posted July 27, 2025.

2026 new year's post

https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2026/01/kayashima-shrine-after-new-years-rush.html Kayashima Shrine 萱島神社 After the New Year's Rush, posted January 4, 2026.

New Book!「The Art of Getting By: Wisdom and Resilience from China’s Migrant Women」by Kevin Ming

My friend and colleague Kevin Ming has published his new book, The Art of Getting By: Wisdom and Resilience from China’s Migrant Women (Algora Publishing 2026). Here is a brief description from the publisher:

Sound Bite

A work that is simultaneously ethnographic fieldwork, social theory, and intimate portraiture, The Art of Getting By takes us into a hidden world and nestles in, learning some of the ways people keep themselves intact in tough circumstances.

Introduction

The Art of Getting By: Wisdom and Resilience from China's Migrant Women invites readers into the disappearing alleyways and vibrant communities of southern China's urban villages, offering an intimate look at the lives of poor migrant women navigating worlds of exposure and exploitation. Through what Kevin David Ming calls a "vagrant anthropology," this book chronicles two decades of walking, listening, and storying with women who work in the sexual labor industry, primarily in falang (hair salon brothels), but also beyond, in China, Malaysia, and Thailand.

This unique narrative gathers fragments of life—snatches of song, shared meals, daily gossip, and poignant personal histories—to illuminate the ingenuity, resilience, and complex desires of its subjects. We meet Wangjing, whose dreams of a modern kitchen reflect aspirations for respectability and security for her family. We learn from Qi Qi about the careful art of "fishing" for customers in upscale hotel bars, a delicate dance of observation and performance. Christine's story reveals a love for literature and a quiet determination to write her own future, even amidst challenging circumstances. These women, often dismissed or stereotyped, are shown to be adept at forming connections and finding temporary inhabitance in worlds designed for their estrangement.

Beyond individual portraits, the book uncovers the broader forces shaping these lives: the relentless pace of urban development that obliterates communities, the "cannibalizing capitalist present" that scavenges on networks of care, and the enduring weight of filial obligations. It challenges conventional notions of hope, offering instead a vision of "present hope"—an energetic continuance born from struggle and the indeterminacy of an uncertain future.

For more information: https://www.algora.com/product/the-art-of-getting-by/

"Japan’s largest exhibition of women photographers rights a wrong in cultural history"

Miwa Yanagi’s “Elevator Girl House” series skewers the superficiality of gender roles through staged images. | ©YANAGI MIWA

Photo and text source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2026/07/10/art/japanese-female-photographers-exhibition/

By Jennifer Pastore, The Japan Times Contributing writer

For decades, women working in photography have had to fight for a place in the spotlight. “I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now,” a 2024 anthology and an ongoing international exhibition, seeks to give them the recognition they deserve.

Tokyo’s T3 Photography Festival previewed part of the exhibition last year, but the larger show, which has toured Europe and North America and attracted some 140,000 visitors, opened July 4 at Hikarie Hall in Shibuya. Organized by Bunkamura, the exhibition expands the roster to 30 women, adding Hisae Imai, Ai Iwane, Aya Fujioka and Tomoko Yoneda and bringing the total number of works on view to 200.

Twenty of the featured photographers attended the show’s preopening at Hikarie Hall. Each was called on stage in an emotional gathering of photographic talent rare in its scope and intergenerational representation.

“For a long time, the Japanese photography world has been a male-dominated society … In most cases, women were either a rare exception or merely an afterthought, says Mariko Takeuchi, a photography critic and the lead curator of the Tokyo exhibition. “The exhibition brought together artists from a wide range of generations. I believe that seeing the journeys of these female photographers come together in this tangible form, as an event that evoked that history, left a strong impression on everyone present.”

Takeuchi says that the participants were selected for their excellence — not just their status as women photographers — and that womanhood was just one aspect among a complex range of identities. The organizers took care to focus on the uniqueness of each photographer, rather than present a generalized survey.

The works are arranged in four sections that explore the possibilities of photography as a medium, its role in memory and documentation, its expressions of gender and the body and its ability to capture both the banality and magic of everyday life. The openness of the high-ceilinged rooms allows large-scale works, some of which hang from the ceiling, to be displayed even more impactfully, as though the photographers are speaking to each other. This characteristic is enhanced by unconventional textures and mediums, including scrolls of photographic paper, ceramic works and even a fabric tent.

The show includes living masters like Miyako Ishiuchi, whose series “Mother’s” (2000-05) meditates on memories of her late mother by documenting her possessions; Mao Ishikawa, who examines the American military presence in Okinawa from her lived experience documenting bars for servicemen; Kunie Sugiura, who blends science and art in photograms that directly capture light on canvas and paper, without a camera; and Miwa Yanagi, who in series like “Elevator Girl House” (1994-99) skewers the rigid superficiality of gender roles through staged, fantastical images, such as a pair of scenes showing dozens of women lined up mannequin-like in glass cases and collapsed onto a conveyor belt.

Foremothers of the genre are also given their dues: Eiko Yamazawa (1899-1995) was a pioneering commercial photographer who developed vibrant abstract compositions in primary colors beginning in the 1950s; Toyoko Tokiwa (1928-2019) opened doors with her 1957 photobook “Kiken na Adabana” (“Dangerous Poison Flowers”) that portrayed Yokohama’s red-light district; Hisae Imai (1931-2009) produced avant-garde images based on literary works like “Hamlet.”

The show also features artists expanding their practices beyond photography and taking the medium beyond two dimensions, as seen in installations by Hiroko Komatsu, Yuki Tawada, Ai Iwane and Yurie Nagashima.

There are also a few surprises: Mika Ninagawa, known for hypersaturated color, turns to black and white with recent video works, while the chance to see Hitomi Watanabe’s shots of the Zenkyoto student uprising of the 1960s, taken from behind the barricades in her urgent yet poetic style, should not be missed as these photographs are rarely exhibited at Japanese museums.

While this exhibition is the first presentation of Japanese women photographers of this scale, it is by no means meant to be comprehensive. It is, however, meant to right a longstanding wrong.

Read more and see more photos of the event at The Japan Times.

A day that will live in infamy: "Trump says 'Islamic Republic of Japan' fired missiles at U.S. aircraft carrier'"

Click on the article to see a clear view.

Source: https://japantoday.com/category/politics/trump-says-japan-rather-iran-in-gaffe-over-missile-attack-on-u.s.-ship (July 9, 2026)

BONUS VIDEO!

Go to 7:00 to see the big news!

Source: The Daily Show with Ronny Chieng, July 9, 2026
YouTube url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpTRbj5mtcM

"EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America" // Exhibition @ Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Image from https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/everybody-artifact-history-disability-america

Thanks to Mori Soya Sensei for sharing information about this exhibition from Corbett OToole's FB post:

Disability History is under attack Right Now.
There’s a new White House report stating that only some Americans should be represented at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
The ONLY comprehensive collection of disability history in the US is at that museum.
If the White House wins, we all lose access to histories of disabled people and all Americans stories and materials. The only materials allowed with be White House approved perspectives (i.e. white privileged)

Links:

EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America: https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/everybody-artifact-history-disability-america

Quote:

People with disabilities have been present throughout American history, but rarely appear in textbooks or shared public memories. Curator Katherine Ott introduces a new online exhibition that helps us understand the American experience and reveals how complicated history really is.

Over 100 years ago, an African American woman named Sarah Savage did something that caused her to be institutionalized at Central State Hospital, a "lunatic asylum" in Milledgeville, Georgia. She died there in 1882. Little else is known about her—when and where she was born, who she loved and who loved her, how she died, and what got her locked up. We don't even know if marker #72 belongs to her or a white man named Nathaniel Cowart—the cemetery was segregated and burial numbers used twice.

In the 1860s or 1870s, Benjamin Franklin was caught in a freezing storm in the Dakota Territory, lost his hands and feet to frostbite, and afterwards made a living selling cartes-de-visite (small photographs printed on thick paper cards) of himself.

There are thousands upon thousands of such stories about people with disabilities that never make it into the history books. To broaden the familiar narratives of American history and give presence to some of the "disappeared" in American history, we created an online exhibition about disability drawn from the museum's collections. The online exhibition is at the center of the museum's work in unraveling the intricate ways in which stigma, rights, and everyday realities intertwine.

The museum has dozens of photographic images of people with disabilities. We know neither the name nor circumstances of most of them. Being anonymous or forgotten does not mean that you are invisible. We can piece together past experiences by combining what the image tells us (about age, clothing, location, era, activity) with what we know about the history of disability in America. Such things as surfaced roads, escalators and elevators, the internet, as well as the closing of asylums and even the availability of inexpensive eye-glasses and a host of medical treatments have created circumstances that enabled political and social change. Our artifacts can explain events such as protests, hospitalization, first communion, and graduation and what they meant in the lives of people. Artifacts give shape and substance to historical experiences in ways that retrieve stories of those who did not have the resources, support, or power to leave a mark.

EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America: https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/everybody

Quote:

Many stories and events related to people with disabilities never make it into the history books or shared public memories. Familiar concepts and events such as citizenship, work, and wars become more complicated, challenge our assumptions about what counts as history, and transform our connection with each other when viewed from the historical perspective of people with disabilities, America’s largest minority.

Knowing these histories deepens understanding of the American experience and reveals how complicated history really is. In addition, when history comes through artifacts, distinct themes emerge—for example, the significance of place, relationships, and technology—that are less apparent when only books and words are used.

The EveryBody online exhibition is an introduction to the history of disability in America, covering politics, relationships, work, technology, health and more. Just as language about disability has changed (with movement away from stigmatizing terms such as crippled, handicapped, or invalid), so has understanding of it, with civil rights becoming paramount.

Check this out! Lots of good and important things to see!

The Rainy Season Indeed is Here (the last three Hanshin Tigers games - including today - have been canceled); the stream looks like pea soup but has an awful stench..

Dead Cherry Tree Branches and River Weed before the Onset of the Rainy Season

For a good memory post: https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-master-of-canal-with-his-long-pole.html