This website was created in order to serve as a report for our ethnographic research for the ‘Japan Research’ course. This course is offered by Sophia University and instructed by Dr. David Slater who can be contacted through: dhslater@gmail.com . The purpose of this course is to gather information on our field site essentially obtained through fieldwork-based observations and interviews, along with key readings corresponding to urbanism and spatial theory. Tokyo was the main field site for this course, wherein our group settled on Kasumigaseki as our main focus.
We chose Kasumigaseki as our main field site because we were interested in learning more of the political dynamics of the locale. Since major authoritative landmarks (such as the National Diet and the Emperor’s Palace) are found in the area, we wanted to find out what sort of unique activities were cropping up. We were intrigued by the many counter-cultural protests that starkly contrasted many other parts of Tokyo’s social norms. Due to the fact that the location holds such a significant meaning to both the Japanese Government and citizens, many scheduled protests were held every Friday evening which we were able to collect qualitative data from.
Each week we attended the Friday night protests for the anti-nuclear movement. The demonstrations ran from 7PM until 9PM each week, and we would typically arrive about thirty minutes early each week in order to observe everything from start to finish. Obviously taking in everything was impossible, but we split into two groups of two people in order to maximize the amount of information we could feasibly take in. Interviews occurred almost every week, though not always in formal fashion. The interviews with officials and event organizers were held off-site and conducted externally from the events.
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Demonstrating Space: Kasumigaseki 