International Center for Folk Culture Studies

In partnership with the Japanese Society of Ethnology (JSE; now the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology), which was founded in 1934, the Shibusawa Foundation for Ethnological Studies and its predecessor the Association of Ethnology supported systematic scientific research work with an ethnographic basis. When the Shibusawa Foundation was dissolved in 1999, its collections were transferred to the Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture(ISJFC), Kanagawa University. These are the core records that document the JSE’s activities, but the work of deciphering them has not yet begun. The objective of this project is to organize them in a form usable by researchers and utilize them to show how ethnology and cultural anthropology evolved in Japan, mainly during World War II and the Occupation. The results will form the basis for a comprehensive review of the history of these disciplines, drawing as appropriate on related archives dispersed around the country. In addition to close examination of the materials, follow-up field studies will be conducted at the locations of past organized ethnographic studies in order to discover new information, to determine the influence of Anglo-American and other anthropological theories and methodologies, and to clarify the position and role of the JSE in the academic world and the historical context of Japanese society at the time.