Fieldwork Photos

Merry White

In 1975-6 I conducted my dissertation fieldwork in Japan, and as an absorbing sideline activity, took a year of tea ceremony lessons in the Omotesenke style in Tokyo. This was my public performance meant to display what I'd learned, both in tea and in the wearing of kimono.

During 2002-3, I was visiting professor at the Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies, a consortium program for American undergraduates to which Boston University belongs. This was an opportunity to learn Kyoto and ,one page ahead of the students, to teach it.


Seasonalism is part of an aesthetic of nature, and cherry blossom time in Kyoto epitomizes the evanescence of seasonality

 


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Fall is the other Kyoto season-and my favorite as the color lasts longer and the crowds have more scope for participation.

The "Daimonji" is a character, "dai" for "big"

carved out of the greenery on a Kyoto hillside,

and set afire in the late afternoon



                                                                                                                

The Mo-an café, a converted tea house at the top of a hill along a hiking trail in Kyoto, became the site of my personal pilgrimage to wonderful coffee and views.

 



Schoolgirls in junior high school are on a class trip to Kyoto and vainly attempt an organized group shot with fingers in the conventional "Victory" mide.



A large demonstration in the center of Kyoto against the war in Iraq, one of many such in 2002-3.

Participant observation at Heian Shrine


Kyoto culinary tourism: sampling the tsukemono on Kyoto's Nishiki street, known as "pickle street" to tourists

Taken in hand by the Colonel in Kyoto


Fashion under construction: cutting edges in Kyoto


Development from the "grounds" up: coffee for schools in rural Cambodia
In 2002-3, while resident in Kyoto and conducting resarch on the social history of cafes in Japan, I learned of a project to build schools in devasted areas of Cambodia. When I also learned the coffee was the main crop of the area, and that it cannot be exported due to overplantig in Vietnam, I helped put the experts whom I had met together with the farmers in Cambodia,and helped to start the export of Cambodian coffee to Japan. We now have eleven Japanese specialty roasting companies buying our coffee, and one in America. The blends are doing very well and the companies all donate a percentage of sales to community building. There are now about 220 elementary schools in the project and one of them, built by Richard Dyck, is named for the man who directed both of our dissertations, Ezra F. Vogel.





Drawings by fifth and sixth graders