This is my part of our panel presentation/film at DISTRIBUTE 2020:
Neighborhood Autumn Festival in Japan: A Multimodal Visual Ethnography and Performance
Abstract:
I am a long-term resident of Shirogaki-cho, a small bedroom community located between a busy train station and two major expressways. Most of my neighbors are strangers, especially those people moving into the new apartment buildings that are increasingly replacing the traditional-style homes. However, there is a small group of families and individuals that organize and participate in traditional festivals and occasions. The largest of these events is the Autumn Festival; for two days these people push and pull a large wooden cart called a danjiri around the neighborhood to bestow blessings from the Shinto gods of the local shrine. As the resident anthropologist I have been allowed to participate with this group, both as an event photographer and major cart pusher (with the latter being a more appreciated contribution).
This project is a performative visual ethnography of the Autumn Festival composed of autoethnographic vignettes, “self-reflexive explorations” (Docot 2019) and fifteen years of data gathering and photography. The research is influenced by Dore’s neighborhood study approach (1958), Ben-Ari’s discussion of community volunteer organizations (1991) and Bestor’s exploration of local identities, culture change and community bonding (1989, 1992). This project is sensory (Pink 2009) and multimodal in terms of continued media production, collaborative relationships and reciprocities and shifting research positions and goals (Collins, Durington and Gill 2017). The goal here is a multi-media performance to disseminate ethnographic data based upon my own juxtaposed memories and experiences.
References:
Ben-Ari, Eyal (1991). Changing Japanese Suburbia. New York: Kegan Paul International Ltd.
Bestor, Theodore C. (1989). Neighborhood Tokyo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bestor, Theodore C. (1992). Neighborhood Tokyo (film). Media Production Group (MPG), Asian Educational Media Service (AEMS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
S.M. Collins, M. Durington and H. Gill (2017). Mulitimodality: An Invitation. American Anthropologist, Vol. 119, No. 1: 142–153.
Docot, Dada (December 2019). Taking the Long Route: Ethnographic Metacommentary as Method in the Anthropological Film Practice, Current Anthropology 60, no. 6: 774-795.
Dore, Ronald P. (1958). City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.
Pink, Sarah (2009). Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
For some more background on this project:
「Visual Anthropology of Japan: Neighborhood Fall Festival」Presentation at AJJ 2019 Spring Workshop @ Minpaku: https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2019/04/visual-anthropology-of-japan.html
NOTE: I will post more information about my research in the context of our panel along with bonus sources and photos on Friday, May 8, 2020. Stay tuned to VAOJ!
For more on the panel and conference:
DISTRIBUTED MULTIMODALITIES: ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS IN MEMORY AND PERFORMANCE: https://distributedmultimodalities.carrd.co/
Our Panel Schedule (FR-4) - Our film will be streamed/shown at 3 times (these are the times in Osaka - make the conversion for your own time zone):
Friday, May 8, 2020, 12:00 PM
Friday, May 8, 2020, 20:00 PM
Saturday, May 9, 2020, 4:00 AM
DISTRIBUTE 2020: https://distribute.utoronto.ca/
DISTRIBUTE 2020 SCHEDULE: https://distribute.utoronto.ca/program/
NOTE: If you are interested, please register as soon as possible. The process is a bit challenging... But the fee is only $10!
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