Happy Tachinomiya Halloween - and - (Pre-)Announcement: AJJ Presentation in December: "Tachinomiya: Photo Exhibition as Research Method"

Here's another post about Halloween in Japan. Again, Halloween has exploded here in the last several years in terms of celebrations, events and merchandise. Halloween has even touched the traditional tachinomiya that has been the subject of my latest research and photo exhibition. The photo above shows the Halloween decorations up now at the shop (yes, research continues - see below). The following shots are from my previous fieldwork in 2015. None of these shots have been showed before because I didn't want to deal with Halloween issues in the exhibition. So here they are for you now to enjoy. And if you can't make it to the tachinomiya to enjoy the Halloween decorations, the Christmas decorations will undoubtedly be up soon.

I have been informed that my paper presentation, "Tachinomiya: Photo Exhibition as Research Method" has been accepted for the Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ) Fall Meetings in December at Doshisha University in Kyoto. As soon as the official schedule is announced I will post my formal announcement with the thesis for the presentation as well as information about the AJJ meetings. For more information about my project see the posts listed below.

And Happy Halloween from VAOJ!

Photo Exhibition and Visual Ethnography - "Tachinomiya: There Are Two Sides to Every Noren"
URL: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2016/01/photo-exhibition-and-visual-ethnography.html

"Tachinomiya" Photo Exhibition and Visual Ethnography: The First Week
URL: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2016/02/tachinomiya-photo-exhibition-and-visual.html

"Tachinomiya" - A Successful and Memorable Photo Exhibition/Event/Research Method
URL: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2016/02/the-exhibitionevent-tachinomiya.html

「31st」- A Film about Halloween in Japan

Halloween in Japan has exploded in the last 10-15 years or so. Now, Halloween merchandise and activities start in August and sometimes even continue into November. I would even make the claim that Halloween sales and celebrations rival those of Christmas in Japan. Globalization moves quickly. The recent popularity of Halloween here is hard to convey to my students, after all many of them are used to such things in their own countries. But the numerous comments and observations of old-timers and long-term residents voicing their own surprise ("Where did all this Halloween stuff come from?") justify my comments here. One of my former students noticed some differences between the celebrations in Japan and the United States and decided to make a short film about the subject. I think the film is quite good in capturing the differences as well as student attitudes towards the holiday and their use of social media. I am happy he has made it available on YouTube. Watch, enjoy and get in the trick-or-treating mood.

2017 秋祭り: It was a rainy fall festival this year...

But the rain would not keep the danjiri from rolling through the neighborhood nor would it dampen the spirits of the participants.

Previous VAOJ Fall Festival Photo Essays:

2016 Fall Festival: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2016/10/2016-autumn-festival.html

2014 Fall Festival: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2014/11/2014-fall-festival.html

2013 Fall Festival: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2013/11/2013-fall-festival.html

2012 Fall Festival: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2012/10/2012-fall-festival.html

2010 Local Matsuri in Classic Black & White: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2010/11/local-matsuri-in-classic-black-white.html

2010 Local Matsuri In Living Color: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.jp/2010/11/local-matsuri-in-living-color.html

Halloween at Tokyo Skytree... and the cats do not look happy!

Video from The Japan Times - Multimedia, Oct. 19, 2017.

"Traveling Across Japan" - A New York Times Photo Story about Hiroyuki Ito

Photo and text borrowed from The New York Times, Oct. 21, 2017.

Hiroyuki Ito, a photographer who grew up in Tokyo, wanted to see more of his country. So he spent two months this summer documenting interesting moments.

Hiroyuki Ito covered a lot of ground this summer: Moji, Dazaifu, Hakata, Yanagawa and Kumamoto on Japan’s Kyushu Island; Kochi-city and Cape Ashizuri in Kochi; Atami in Shizuoka and Omiya, Saitama. 54 cities in 18 prefectures, to be exact.

He was looking to capture the way people live outside of Tokyo — the faces, architecture, even, sometimes, what he sees in a trash can.

“I like to document the small things people do on a daily basis that are not significant enough to be listed in the history books,” he said. “I would like to think that that’s part of history, too, but not in an obvious or romantic way.”

With that in mind, the Mr. Ito got in a car with three of his best friends from elementary school and drove 90 minutes from Tokyo to Atami, a kitschy seaside city that is a popular destination for family vacations. “I think that’s part of Japanese culture, too,” he said of the country’s goofier tourist attractions.

Read and see the whole story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/style/traveling-across-japan.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=nytmm_FadingSlideShow_item&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Thanks to E.K. for the heads up on this story.

"A mission to capture the full range of half-Japanese experience — in 192 photos"

Photo and text borrowed from The Japan Times, 10/8/17.

The son of a Japanese father and Belgian mother, photographer Tetsuro Miyazaki grew up in a multilingual and multicultural environment.

“My younger sister and I were raised in Dutch-French-bilingual Brussels, where our dad would speak Japanese to us, our mom would speak Dutch, and they would communicate in French between themselves,” says Miyazaki, now 39. Annual summer vacations spent in Japan and Saturday school helped him connect further with his father’s culture.

Reflection on his own cultural heritage was a catalyst for the “Hafu2Hafu” project, a collection of portraits of other bicultural Japanese people.

“As a half-Japanese photographer, living in Amsterdam at that time, I wanted to take on a personal project that would force me to pick up my camera and meet people,” Miyazaki says.

He began by speaking with Dutch hāfu.

...

After interest in his initial sessions with Dutch hāfu led to invitations to present his work at symposiums overseas, Miyazaki came up with an ambitious plan to photograph a hāfu person with one parent from every other nation in the world.

“Since there are 193 sovereign countries, there are 192 possible different combinations. The idea behind this is that I want to show how diverse being half-Japanese can be and I want to understand the different aspects of it. What influences the way we experience the ‘half-Japanese’ side of our identity?”

Miyazaki says he has been humbled by the willingness of his subjects to open up and talk about their personal feelings. While each one has a unique story, some common themes have emerged.

“One topic that always comes up is about the sense of belonging,” he notes. “What also struck me is that most hāfu people find themselves to be quite empathic. While I can’t say for sure, I believe it has a lot to do with having to interpret two different languages, the corresponding nonverbal communication, cultural backgrounds and, sometimes, religious differences.”

Miyazaki’s interviews with participants who grew up in Japan reveal the sometimes ambivalent attitudes that bicultural people may encounter in this traditionally homogenic society.

“Both those raised abroad and those raised in Japan want to ‘belong’ to Japan more than most of them do. But this is more ‘painful’ when one is living in Japan. Even if you understand the Japanese language or the customs very well, you may not be considered Japanese and often do not get treated as such,” Miyazaki points out.

“Another difference is what ‘the other half’ is. There are Western hāfu, hāfu with African heritage or a Latin parent and then Asian hāfu. They all have very different experiences, both in Japan and abroad,” he says.

Some foreign parents of bicultural Japanese kids dislike the connotation of the label “half” and advocate for such people to be called “double.” Based on his interviews so far, however, Miyazaki says that most bicultural adults do not share this view.

“Although some dislike the label half/hāfu, most of them embrace it. It has also struck me that the dislike comes from the parents, who do not want to refer to their child as ‘half.'”

Read the whole article: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/10/08/issues/mission-capture-full-range-half-japanese-experience-192-photos/

Hafu2Hafu web page: http://hafu2hafu.org/

Hafu2Hafu Presentation and Workshop
Sunday, October 15 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
at Sophia University, Tokyo
More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/684305078440940/