Constructing the Japanese Ethnography of Modernity

One afternoon in tokyo in the summer of 1921, ten Waseda University students visited the home of Gonda Yasunosuke, the critic of Japanese popular culture. Each was writing a dissertation on popular entertainment (minsbū goraku). Tell us, they asked Gonda, what were the authoritative texts they could find at Maruzen, the emporium specializing in foreign books? They wanted the real thing—Western language theoretical sources. “Forget it,” replied Gonda, “there aren't any in the Maruzen catalog. Go to Asakusa—Asakusa's your text.” The young men wanted an imported, printed master text, but Gonda would not comply. Instead, he demanded personal experience that would give them an understanding of cultural forms that a reading of printed texts (and, moreover, of imported printed texts) could not yield. He directed them to do on-site fieldwork in Asakusa Park where female and male laborers from large- and small-scale industries, artisans, and white-collar middleclass nouveaux riches mingled to play (Gonda 1922a [GYS 1:291–92]).