Rethinking training in cultural anthropology : meeting the new needs of Japanese society

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This is the report of a research project on anthropological education in Japan, and the extent to which it is meeting the changing social needs of the contemporary world. The project was carried out from April 2001-March 2003, with the support of a grant-in-aid for scientific research from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The report consists of three parts. Part One, "Problems in Anthropological Education in Contemporary Japan," is the result of the first year's research. Subjects analyzed include : the trends in the subjects of BA theses submitted to the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo, anthropology textbooks in Japan ; the anthropology curriculum and teaching practices at major Japanese universities ; job markets for graduate students in anthropology ; and institutional restructuring at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. The report suggests directions that anthropology education should take in the future in Japan. Part Two and Part Three are the fruits of the second year's research. Part Two is entitled "How can we relate classic anthropological theories to issues in the contemporary world." This deals with the problems we are facing in anthropology teaching today in which the classic theories in anthropology bear no clear relationship to contemporary issues. Part Three contains three papers presented at a panel on the "Reproduction of Anthropological Knowledge and the East Asian Future" at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association held in New Orleans in November, 2002, as part out of the output from this research project, and one paper which is related to the topic. Taken as a whole, the report proposes ways in which anthropology and anthropology education can be upgraded to meet the new social circumstances of the contemporary world.