Christmas Shopping in Kyobashi...

A call out to my friends and colleagues, visual and multimodal anthropologists, cultural anthropologists, photographers & sake and tachinomiya lovers in Tokyo and the surrounding area; VAoJ is making a rare appearance in Tokyo for a special lecture:「The Intersections of the Sensory, Multimodal and Ba: The Tachinomi Project」Please share and spread the word...

Check it out!

July 17, 2024, 18:00-19:30
Room 402, 4F, Building 2
Sophia University, Tokyo

Abstract:「The Tachinomi Project」is a visual ethnography based upon the con- vergence of social science research and contemporary art. The project began with long-term participant-observation and a photographic exhibition featuring a 40-year-old tachinomiya (standing drink bar) in Osaka called Tenbun. The study sought to explore photography in public spaces, privacy and image ethics while showcasing a “grimy” (Farrer 2019) and stimulating atmosphere with colorful characters including the shop owner, employees and regular customers. The interactions with Tenbun collaborators and gallery audience at the exhibition became the first of several post-fieldwork encounters, leading to the re-positioning of the research into wider social and academic contexts during and after the COVID 19 pandemic. This present account utilizes reflexivity, autoethnographic vignettes (Stevens 2013) and photography to explore the intersections of the sensory (Pink 2013 [2009], multimodal (Collins et al. 2017), and ba (Kajimaru et al. 2021) of Tenbun and other eating and drinking establishments.

Click here for some background on the project.

Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

Standing Drink Bar「Tenbun」Old Boys Reunion 立ち呑みの居酒屋「天文」O.B. 会

We were on the bus, traveling through the borderlands between Osaka and Kyoto Prefectures when the imojōchū began to kick in.

We had just finished an hour-and-a-half of “all you can eat/all you can drink” at a traditional izakaya banquet. This kind of gluttonous binging and imbibing pushes participants, especially those on a pensioner’s budget with little left over after pachinko and horse race betting activities, to extremes, to make sure they get their money’s worth. Since the food turned out to be only standard fare, we concentrated on the drinking: beer, sake (nihonshu) and sweet potato distilled liquor (imojōchū; usually 25-35% alcohol).

A half hour in we were getting livelier and louder, and receiving dirty looks and disapproving frowns from the shop staff and other customers. Our severs were stingy, only allowing us to order a new drink after giving up the empty vessel from the previous beverage. Some of us countered this policy by pouring alcohol into PET bottles and plastic bags for secret take-out. We drank steadily until the last order. Somehow, we all were able to stand, pay our portions of the bill, use the toilet and stumble to the return bus without too much trouble.

What started out as a gathering of long-lost friends taking a short trip on a privately rented bus with quiet small talk of recent illnesses, hospitalizations and deceased drinking companions, was now a drunken cacophony of laughing, shouting, quiz games and attempts at singing enka. We exited the bus at the Keihan Kuzuha train station, took a memorial photo and made our way to the shopping arcade, formerly the aged, everyman Norengai (“Noren Street”), home to several traditional eating and drinking establishments. Recently this arcade was gentrified and renamed “El Kuzuha.” The older shops, many of which closed due to COVID-19, were conveniently replaced with fashionable chain restaurants. We wandered through the corridors until deciding on an acceptable pub for our continued revelry.

This post-fieldwork encounter chronicles a reunion of the owner and regular customers (the O.B.s or Old Boys) of a 40-year-old tachinomiya (“standing drink bar”) in Osaka called Tenbun, that closed in 2020.

Imojōchū has a strong taste and pungent smell, even when mixed with ice and water. For me, drinking it results in a contemplative body buzz; but when combined with beer and sake, the odoriferous contemplation turns into a gregarious stupidity. Nonetheless, this can be fun with the right people at the right time.

The Tenbun O.B. reunion was such a righteous group and occasion.

After all, we were trying to resurrect something. Not a specific time, place, feeling, memory or dream. Something more, perhaps a sort of fluid liminal communitas (and I do not use these terms lightly) that, in the past, we could enter at will, or at least between Tenbun’s usual business hours Monday through Saturday. The hour of day (or night), people, circumstances, jokes, arguments, daily specials and drinks always varied and at the same time enmeshed to create this familiar something. Looking back, I can see how we took it for granted, the longest-term customers for as long as 40 years. But now we missed it. And we wanted it back, even if only for this one day.

Of course, none of the O.B.s explained the reunion in these terms, except for the over-analyzing anthropologist with a camera, soaking in another post-fieldwork experience. Ba…

To be continued…

Announcement: VAoJ @Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture 上智大学比較文化研究所「The Tachinomi Project」July 17, 2024

Dowload flyer here: https://www.icc-sophia.com/_files/ugd/2edff9_6a975eb58ccc4236ad4014881870fc43.pdf

SOPHIA UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF COMPARATIVE CULTURE: https://www.icc-sophia.com/

56 (pt.2): After work...

This is what replaced Tenbun:「"Takoyaki/side dishes standing bar Peke x Peke"」

Tenbun closed on March 28, 2020. The space it occupied was empty for a year and a half. Then on October 10, 2021, a new shop opened, Peke x Peke. I walked by the new shop a few times but never felt right about going in. But a couple weeks ago I went there to take photos and I did go in for a drink. Of course, it just wasn't the same. It seemed (bias warning) too new, artificial, cheap, trying too hard to be hip and stripped of any tradition and personality. I couldn't believe they tore out the beautiful old counter and replaced it with what they did. There weren't many customers (but it was a Monday evening) and none of the old Tenbun regulars were there. Replacing old shops with new chain stores is a part of the gentrification process going on at Keihan line train stations. Peke x Peke is not a chain. The manager told me that this is the only location with this particular configuration. But the owner has multiple shops.

You can get a good idea of the new configuration in my photos and then with photos from a web site I include below. Scroll to the end of this post for a link to see our beloved Tenbun.

Photos that accompnaied the announcement of the new shop on "Ko-shin," the Hirakata-shi Featured Event (i.e. advertisements) website.
https://www.hira2.jp/open-close/batubatu-20211018.html

Congratulatory flowers in front of the shop when it opened.

The new layout, counter, big screen TV...

Seating...

Take-out window.

Here's where to go to see Tenbun:
https://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2020/12/behind-scenestenbun-closingpresentation.html

Midnight Presentation (2)

Original images from: https://www.netflix.com/jp-en/title/80113037

https://www.snapgalleries.com/product/barry-feinstein-george-harrison-all-things-must-pass-poster-image-friar-park-england-1970/

「Tenbun’s Last Call: Drinking Establishments in Japan Before and During COVID-19」@ New York Conference on Asian Studies 2021, Oct. 1-2

Midnight Presentation

Original image from: https://www.netflix.com/jp-en/title/80113037

「Tenbun’s Last Call: Drinking Establishments in Japan Before and During COVID-19」@ New York Conference on Asian Studies 2021, Oct. 1-2

「There Are Two Sides to Every Noren: Photo Exhibition as Art and Anthropology」@ A/R/P (Art/Research/Practice) 2021, October 3

There Are Two Sides to Every Noren:

Photo Exhibition as Art and Anthropology

のれんの表裏には異なる意味があります:

アートと人類学としての写真展

Abstract: Visual anthropology is an intersection of art and science – it entails commitment, ethical concerns, close relationships and ever-changing negotiations with participants (subjects and audience). This on-going research project is a visual ethnography of a tachinomiya (Japanese standing bar) in Osaka called Tenbun. It is based on my years of patronage, including two years of dedicated participant-observation and photography. Tenbun features many kinds of food and drink, a lively and relaxed atmosphere and plenty of colorful characters including the owner, employees and regular customers. One outstanding feature of this tachinomiya is its long, dark blue noren, a kind of fabric curtain as its entrance that signals that the shop is open for business and provides partial seclusion for the shop and customers. The noren can be seen as a fluid wall; when calm it blocks much of the view from the outside, but when the wind blows its separated partitions offer more glimpses of the inside. The glimpses can be narrow or revealing. One cannot control the wind; this fluid wall illustrates the complexities of personal privacy in public spaces in Japan, especially in the context of taking photographs in public and image rights. An important component of this project was a photo exhibition with prints and portraits illustrating the atmosphere of Tenbun. Initially I thought the photo exhibition to be the final product of the fieldwork and research. But I found the exhibition and interactions with the gallery audience to reveal important aspects of heuristic processes, meaning-creation, evocation and multivocality. Viewers were doing more than merely looking at my photographs, they were analyzing, scrutinizing, reacting and providing various interpretations and valuable feedback. In this multi-media presentation, I will discuss the "post-fieldwork encounters" of the photo exhibition as a collaborative media event through multimodal analyses and autoethnographic vignettes.

A/R/P (Art/Research/Practice) 2021

Tokyo University of the Arts 

Oct. 3 - Session 7 - 13:30 - 15:00

via Zoom (conference registration required - free!)

For more information about the conference and program:
https://arp.geidai.ac.jp/?fbclid=IwAR2sMtNm5ANkyfKO6iaSuRcLOl7GXktKmxlhcBrGJWq7oxZH42-FLmLTM4c

I'm really looking forward to this conference!

おすすめ！Check out Can Tamura's presentation, "Pandemic-Friendly Posthuman Ethnographic Filmmaking: The 24 Solar Terms of Echigo-Tsumari," Session 8, Oct. 3, 15:15-16:45.

「Tenbun’s Last Call: Drinking Establishments in Japan Before and During COVID-19」@ New York Conference on Asian Studies 2021, Oct. 1-2

Abstract: This presentation is a multimodal visual ethnography of drinking establishments such as izakaya (“Japanese pubs”) and tachinomiya (“standing bars”) in Japan before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus will be on a 40-year-old standing bar in Osaka called Tenbun. Tenbun serves many kinds of alcohol and food items and has a lively atmosphere with plenty of colorful characters, including the owner, employees and regular customers. Not only is it a popular place to eat and drink, it is an important setting for socialization. This study is based upon over two years of dedicated participant-observation and photography, a photo exhibition and other post-fieldwork encounters. COVID-19 has brought changes for eating and drinking establishments in terms of safety precautions and consumption behavior; many shops have been forced to close. Tenbun closed shop in March, 2020. This research project examines the intersection of food anthropology, multimodal research methods, recent research on drinking establishments and the plethora of “foodie” media productions. It has also become a form of salvage ethnography. My data and photographs not only preserve Tenbun but also document the eating, drinking and socializing habits of Japan before the COVID-19 pandemic.

SUNY Brockport, Brockport, New York

October 1, 2021 - Session A1

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT (12:00 - 1:30 AM, Oct. 2 Japan time)

via Zoom (conference registration required)

For information on the conference and program:
https://www.brockport.edu/academics/conferences/new_york_asian_studies/