A major task in contemporary anthropology is the creation of dialogic space among all the people concerned with the culture studied, without privileging one kind of discourse over another. Seen globally, Japan is placed on the periphery of the academic world system. The Japanese have long been objects of representation, but their voices are seldom heard at the center. The frequent neglect of Japanese scholarship on Japan among Japanologists in the Anglophone community attests to this point. This book analyzes this situation by showing how anthropological knowledge is produced, disseminated, and consumed on a global scale.

About Editors and Authors

KUWAYAMA Takami is a Japanese scholar specializing in cultural anthropology and folklore. He served as Associate Professor at the Commonwealth University of Virginia, as Associate Professor at Soka University and as Professor in the Graduate School of Hokkaido University, and is currently Professor in the Faculty of Sociology, Kwansei Gakuin University. At present he is engaged in anthropological and folkloristic research on the idea of “the native” in Japanese studies in Japan and overseas. He graduated from the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, in 1978 and completed a Doctoral Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1989.