Fieldwork in Japan: New Trends and ChallengesCornelia Reiher

ASIEN – Nr. 149 (2018) pp. 5–13

Japanese Studies is an interdisciplinary field. Research focusing on Japan’s society, politics, culture, and history draws from a wide variety of theories and methods across multiple disciplines. The challenge of producing both an area-sensitive yet also academically sound study is not only a problem for scholars and students of Japanese Studies, but also for all researchers working within the field of Area Studies — who have to adapt methods developed in various other disciplines (mostly in the West) to a specific (and often non-Western) field site and research subject. In addition, new trends, topics, and tools have recently emerged in social science research about Japan. These includes the transnationalization of research subjects and technological innovations that provide new means of getting in touch with informants via social media, accessing data online, analyzing data through software programs, and making large sets of data available for other researchers or the public. These new opportunities also pose ethical challenges with regard to protecting the privacy of informants, while also creating new forms of reciprocity within social media networks (Lewis 2015)…