Basic Study of Production, Circulation and Consumption of African Cultural Representations in Japan

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Japanese cultural anthropologists and local practitioners who actually are working on Africa are engaged in representing African cultures to Japanese peoples. On the one hand cultural anthropologists produce many specialized narratives concerning African cultures through their own anthropological fieldwork in Africa, On the other hand many Japanese local practitioners and travelers from Africa also represent African cultures through their own experiences in Africa. But these two ways of representing African cultures are often contradicted and even disconnected in Japan. In other words anthropological narratives based upon theory of cultural concept are disconnected from local practitioners^1 narrative emerging from their naive experiences of African cultures, I think this disconnection is blocking an appropriate evaluation for Japanese contributions to Africa, The objective of my basic study of representing African cultures in Japan constructs new relationships between anthropological … More practices and activities of local practitioners in Africa within the global situation.Achieving this aim firstly I started unlearnig my anthropological practices in terms of local practitioners from Japan to Africa. Second, focusing on Japanese travel discourses and literatures on Africa, I tried making clear the position of Japanese anthropologists in Africa. Third, I made an experiment for making the contact zone in which anthropologists and local practitioners are talking about their own African cultural experiences. Through theses basic studies I could have my anthropological vision for representing African cultures to Japanese and Africans in the different way from the long-established one. For example I am focusing on the new local cultural networks between rebirthing from Minamata disease in Kumamoto, Japan and from reconciling apartheid in Sowet, South Africa, This case study would be a model for connecting cultural anthropology with local practitioners in both local and global locations. Less