Goulet.pdf

Millie Creighton
On one occasion when several of us went to a kissaten, I had a
chance to ask the older of these two women how she had gotten in-
volved in the class. She said she happened to turn the television on to
annhk (Nihon Ho ̄ so ̄ Kyo ̄ kai, Japan Broadcasting Corporation) pro-
gram on Korean language one day and thought it seemed interesting.
As Japan’s national educational television station, nhk offers several
such language classes, and the books that coincide with these courses
are stocked by bookstores throughout Japan, so viewers may pur-
chase them easily. She therefore took the television version of a Ko-
rean language course offered by the station. After that initial involve-
ment, she said, she heard about the city’s free conversation course and
thought it might be kind of interesting. She decided to try it. Listen-
ing to her, I felt a bit envious about the ease with which her language
ability apparently progressed after this initial seemingly haphazard
interest in learning Korean.
At some point in the evening, I began explaining my research on de-
partment stores. The younger of these two women then mentioned that
she had once worked for a large Tokyo department store as a regular
employee after she graduated from junior college. Always eager for
more data, I asked if I could interview her about the time she spent as
a department store employee. She thought for a bit and then agreed to
do it. We immediately set a time and place to have the interview.
So far, I was behaving like the good ethnographer. I did not con-
fuse a group social outing, based on specific criteria of group forma-
tion, with a one-on-one interview about my research topic. I explic-
itly asked if she would be willing to do this, and systematically set up
an interview for a separate time and place (during which I would ask
her many of the same questions I asked other department store em-
ployees I interviewed). This meant another time, another coffee shop,
more questions and answers over yet another glass of colored drink-
able stuff, this time while taking copious notes in one of those field
notebooks. When this interview did occur, I directed its focus toward
this woman’s time as a department store employee, keeping the in-
formant “on topic.” I asked about and gathered facts regarding the
conditions of her work, her status, what precisely she did. I also went
beyond this to ask about the feelings and meanings it held for her,