Fieldwork in Japan

New Trends and Challenges

Abstract

This special issue presents six papers based on these presentations, and includes also an additional one on ethnography in Japan that was not part of the original conference. The authors address how fieldwork has changed and how they respond to challenges when accessing the field, specifically in their reciprocal relations with informants, when choosing the best means of presenting results and teaching research methods to students. I argue that a discussion about ethics, transparency, and teaching research methods in Japanese Studies and in Area Studies in general is necessary in order to produce reliable, comparable, and comprehensive results that scholars from Area Studies and from the social science disciplines alike can relate to. Thus, beyond summarizing the outcomes of the discussion in the anthropology section of the aforementioned conference, this special issue hopes to inspire further conversations within and beyond Japanese Studies communities both in and outside of Germany.