All objects are political: reflections on fieldwork in Japan

Abstract

The  title  of  Paul  Rabinow’s  classic  work Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco(1977)  inspired  a  review  of  the  author’s  fieldwork  experience  in  Japan  between  2004  and  2006.  The  time  prior  to  this  fieldwork, the research itself, and the ex-perience  of  returning  from  the  field  are  described through ethnographic vignettes that  explore  how  a  research  project  fo-cused  on  katakana  script  as  a  cultural  practice  took  shape.  In  this  process,  the  transliteration  of  loanwords  in  Japanese  reveals  writing  as  a  site  of  reflexivity  for  a consideration of the cultural experience of  both  the  ethnographer’s  interlocutors  and the anthropologist himself.