Shared Abodes, Disparate Visions: Japanese Anthropology during the Allied Occupation

摘要

During World War II, the US enlisted behavioral scientists to provide intelligence on combatant nations. In 1945–1951, when Japan was put under Allied occupation in the wake of military defeat, American anthropologists were dispatched to work for the Civil Information and Education Section under General Headquarters in Tokyo, under whose orders they carried out a number of social science surveys throughout rural Japan. The first of these anthropologists, Herbert Passin, hired a number of young Japanese survey assistants trained in the fields of anthropology, sociology, folklore studies and law. They conducted field surveys in farming and fishing villages. On the foundations of these surveys, the US established Japan studies, while Japan imported American-style cultural anthropology. In this article, I chronicle the specific contents of these surveys, while at the same time clarifying the process through which cultural anthropology was established at Tokyo University.