2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Creating a Multicultural Japan: Ethnographic Study and Digital Oral Interview Archive of Social Integration by Civic Institutions Supporting Recent Migrants in Kanto
| Project/Area Number |
18K02006
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| Research Institution | Sophia University |
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Principal Investigator |
Slater David 上智大学, 国際教養学部, 教授 (70296888)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | archive / oral narrative / refugees |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We were able to exceed many of the key benchmarks we set at the start of our application. These included more than 400 hours of video with more than 75 different narrators over 186 interviews. Distinctive characteristics of the archive include in-depth interviewing (at least 6 2-hour interviewers per person) of 10 refugees, focusing on the 1. political situation that resulted in their persecution; 2. their treacherous travels to Japan; 3. their lives trying to fit into civil society, including a detailed focus on the state and civil society actors who were most instrumental in their lives. For this subset of the interview archived we created an open access website, combining their narratives with background information and other resources for extended presentation of their stories, each about 12,000 words in length. The open website is here: https://refugeevoicesjapannet.wordpress.com/. As such, we have added what is the largest oral narrative archive of refugees in Japan.
Also, we have also generated 5 different short video projects, which we have shown to audiences from the UK, US and of course Japan. The archive and the films have been nominated for the David Plath Award in visual anthropology, and are currently being used in more than a dozen classrooms around the world.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
The last two years of this project has required us to develop new interview and ethnographic research techniques in order to protect researchers and research subject in this time of covid. Last year, we were able to turn this challenge into an opportunity, developing and presenting new approaches and techniques. This year, we were able to take advantage of these new techniques to re-double our efforts in data collection.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Considering the set backs due to covid, it was important for us to focus our efforts during this last year of the grant on data collection rather than publication--which we did. Thus, we are perfectly situated to use this exceptional data in publications. We currently have a contract with University of Hawaii Press for a monography on refugees in Japan, and two scholarly articles in preparation in top journals in Japanese Studies and Refugee Studies. Moreover, we are now able to build upon this foundation to pivot slightly to begin interviews with Ukrainian war evacuees currently residing in communities in Kanto, using the approaches and techniques we developed and refined during the course of our project so far.
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| Causes of Carryover |
As noted above, since the majority of the data collection of our project depended upon face to face interview situation, during COVID-19 outbreak, it was impossible to complete th eproject as planned. Since the majority of our funding is earmarked for data collection and processing (transcription, translating and coding) we were unable to spend the full amount of grant.
In 2022, the COVID-19 situation has eased for both the refugee narrators but also for the data collectors, transcribers and translators. This external situation, combined with our continued effort to make data collection under COVID-19 conditions safer and more efficient, we fully expect to spend the remainder of the grants in 2022.
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