Harumi befu biography graphic organizer

They consulted a shaman, who concluded that they had angered the gods by cutting down a persimmon tree in their garden to make room for an extension to the house to accommodate their son. They duly planted a new persimmon tree by way of expiation, with the shaman chanting incantations at the ceremonial planting. When we arrived at the house, Harumi was relieved to find the tree looking strong and healthy, and the son hale and hearty in his mids.

Apparently the shaman had done the trick. Yet when we asked if the Aokis had consulted a shaman to explain the giant earthquake and tsunami that had destroyed half their neighborhood, they found the question perplexing. It had never crossed their minds. Like most Japanese, they viewed it as a natural disaster, just one of those things. Harumi was interested to see how the logic of supernatural causes of misfortune apparently applied at the personal or family level, but not at the larger societal level.

At Wisconsin he worked with a very interesting anthropologist called Chester S. But I digress. And so although Harumi went on to harumi befu biography graphic organizer eminence, he was never associated with one particular group of people or ethnographic site as so many anthropologists are. Instead he had made his name as an all-rounder or theoretician rather than an ethnographer.

Unlike Hendry and Sugimoto, who have gone through half a dozen editions of their textbooks. Harumi never updated his popular textbook, I know not why. The dissertation is entitled Hamlet in a Nationand has occasionally been mistaken for a work of Shakespearean literary criticism. Harumi criticizes earlier ethnographers for confusing the buraku with the mura villagea larger administrative unit that typically includes a dozen or more buraku.

Harumi calls the buraku the fundamental unit of rural society, arguing that the even smaller aza is relatively unimportant in identity formation. In rice-cultivating districts, the interrelationship between aza and buraku is closely tied to rice paddy irrigation: often a buraku will be made up of aza that share the same water source p. Despite his short period of fieldwork, Harumi managed to get around three hamlets, all of them near Sendai in Miyagi prefecture: Shimo-Okada, Ushirokoji and Sokomae.

The first two date back to the Edo era, while Sokomae had been established on reclaimed marshland in the s and was populated by incomers, most of them laborers who had helped with the land reclamation projects. Reading the thesis after sixty years, one is struck anew by the complexity of Japanese rural society and the sensitive observation that Harumi brought to it.

I wish Harumi had told us a little more about this secessionist household, but anyway — this is just one small instance of a general complexity of both administrative structure and personal identity. A single buraku may straddle two school districts; the same aza may use the agricultural cooperative of one buraku to sell its produce, while attending meetings of a different one; and there is a pervasive vagueness as to the status of each social unit.

Historically, the work is notable for capturing rural life in the wake of the great land reform instituted by the occupation authorities in the wake of World War 2. However, the occupation authorities basically allocated to each peasant the land he had been renting previously, so that significant gaps in wealth based on the area of land cultivated had survived the reform.

Geographically, it is significant as the first serious anthropological study, in English, at least, of northeastern Japan: previous prominent works by EmbreeKumamoto NorbeckOkayama and Beardsley, Hall and Wardalso Okayama had somehow focused on southwestern Japan. Maybe it is something that AJJ should consider. I well remember the first time I met Mark Bookman.

As a long-term wheelchair user and disabilities activist, Mark was often subjected to indignities by the public and the authorities, and must have felt both depressed and angry when, for example, he discovered that there were a quarter of a million apartments available for rent in the greater Tokyo area, but less than a thousand even claiming to be wheelchair accessible and virtually none that really were accessible for a man in a kilogram motorized wheelchair.

He could have become an angry activist, lambasting the government and the private sector for their ignorance and apathy regarding the rights of people with disabilities, and I would have supported him if he had taken that course. Instead, however, he chose the road of collaboration. Not that he swallowed or muted his critique of the powers that be — he expressed his views clearly but calmly in a number of committees and forums, most famously the one that planned accessibility for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics that were finally held last year.

He was a pragmatist, who recognized that he could best contribute to the disability movement by speaking truth to power in places where those in power would actually be listening. Many people not directly involved in the disability movement are prone to lump together different kinds of disability into an amorphous mass, and feel vaguely sympathetic or not as the case may be.

But Mark, with his wealth of research and intense personal experience, recognized that different kinds of disability are received very differently by politicians, government officials and the general public. And like it or not, they are to a degree in competition for limited government funds. For example, Mark observed that blind people in Japan seemed to get a better deal than deaf people.

Assistant professor to associate professor anthropology Stanford California University, — Visiting associate professor University Michigan, Ann Arbor, — Harumi Befu has been listed as a noteworthy anthropology educator by Marquis Who's Who. Co-organizer Japanese-American Environmental Conference, Member American Anthropological Association life, nominating committeeAssociation for Asian Studies life, board directors, various officesJapanese Society for Ethnology, European Association for Japanese Studies.

Reading, camping, hiking. Back to Profile. Photos Works. Access Items must be requested in advance and viewed on-site. More options. Find it at other libraries via WorldCat Limited preview. Finding aid Finding aid Summary The collection comprises materials pertaining to the incarceration of Befu's family during World War II, along with pre-war Japanese postcards.

Bibliographic information. Earliest date Latest date Note Harumi Befu was a cultural and social anthropologist, professor, and author. He was born in Los Angeles, California, and spent his youth in Japan. Joining Stanford University's faculty inBefu played a pivotal role in establishing Japanese studies at the university. Librarian view Catkey: in