Distance and Fieldwork in a Pandemic: How Not ‘Being there’ is Impacting Research on Japan

Abstract

Fieldwork is about ‘being there’ in the field to gather data. But what happens when researchers cannot visit the field? This article explores how Japan scholars have been dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on their research. It examines how restrictions on travel affect access to materials and engagement with fieldwork subjects, highlighting how the pandemic has created both obstructions and opportunities. The term ‘fieldwork’ usually involves ethnographic methods of data collection such as participant observation and interviews, but a wider interpretation encompasses visiting archives, libraries and museums. This article takes an inclusive definition of fieldwork to discover the impact of not ‘being there’ for scholars of Japan. Findings show that the inability to ‘be there’ has led more scholars to seek out material from online data repositories, archives and library collections. However, while the demand for online resources is increasing, materials are not always easily accessible to Japan scholars. The impact of travel restrictions on librarians has in turn affected the aggregation of materials, which has occasioned scholars to seek alternative methods of sourcing materials. Finally, through a case study, this article examines the methods scholars are adopting in digital ethnographic data collection to adjust to not ‘being there’.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ NIJL defines pre-modern Japanese texts as ‘books from before the Edo period’ (NIJL 2018).

² Restrictions by Japan Post have not been limited to the US; in June 2021 only post weighing under 2 kg could be sent from Japan to Australia (Sally McLaren, personal communication, 29 June 2021). Most countries faced some acceptance and delivery delays from Japan throughout 2021–2022 which were resolved in the latter months of 2022/early 2023. For a full list of countries and suspensions, see Japan Post International Mail news (https://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/information/index_en.html).

³ For this article I have interviewed and considered researchers primarily in the Anglophone world. Scholars in other East Asian countries may well have access to collections of sources Anglophones are unaware of, as the article by Seto (this issue) demonstrates.

⁴ The NCC includes European institutions such as NAN (National Archives of the Netherlands), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the British Library and so on. There are collaborations between universities in other countries, such as ALIM (Asian Libraries in Melbourne), a joint venture between Monash University and the University of Melbourne, or UKIRA (UK Information on Asia) but the US network is the most extensive and well-established.

⁵ The issues with archival bias, both with physical collections and digital collections, have been well documented and I do not have the space to discuss them here (see Decker 2013; Skarpelis, 2020; Traub, van Ossenbruggen & Hardman, 2015).

⁶ Of course, there are many challenges to conducting ethnography digitally, such as defining the boundaries of the ‘field’, data definitions, parameters and management, questions of ethics, to name a few (see Markham, 2020). I have selected these two as primary issues in the current circumstances. For a discussion of the ‘networked field’ see de Seta, 2020.

⁷ For more on this issue see de Seta (2020).

⁸ Kato teaches fieldwork methods to undergraduate students, and prior to the pandemic he would take students to a fieldwork site where they would take photographs, conduct interviews, and bring back that data to write papers. Therefore, discovering new fieldwork approaches for his students is vital at this time.