Abstract
Professor Miriam L. Kingsberg
Visiting Scholar at Columbia University
Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese History, University of Colorado at Boulder
Fieldwork, Ethnology, and Empire:
The Making of Japan’s “Transwar Generation” of Social Scientists
Born in roughly the first two decades of the twentieth century, the “transwar generation”
of Japanese social scientists was intellectually active before 1945, yet responsible for
rebuilding theories, disciplines, and institutions afterwards. This paper looks at the
formation of transwar social scientists as a generational cohort. Rather than ideology,
what bound these scholars together was their shared commitment to methodology.
Japanese social scientists of the 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts worldwide, were
captivated by Polish-born British social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski’s
fieldwork involving long-term immersion among the population under analysis. During
the “Malinowski boom,” Japanese students of the imperial Other embraced direct,
sustained experience as the foundation of legitimate, “objective” scholarship. Rather than
working alone, however, they generally ventured into the field in teams to minimize
danger, maximize resources, and collect comprehensive information. Team fieldwork in
turn produced a unique relationship among Japanese social scientists, their research
subjects, and the imperial state. Whereas this methodology allowed social scientists to
secure their professional position, it also suppressed most potential for political dissent,
and cast a long shadow into the postwar period.