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Dancing Lessons from God
and Russ Bernard were the instructors. Bert Pelto was also to have been an instructor, but
circumstances did not allow his participation in that particular year.
2. In Japan, citizenship is tied to being entered on a family-line registration system, so
one either has to be added to an existing family registration, or be the initiator of a new
one (a much rarer occurrence). With the assumption that women marry out of their natal
families, where they are “crossed out” and written into the husband’s family (true in the
overwhelming majority of cases), Japanese law recognized citizenship only through a Japa-
nese father in most cases. A woman was not allowed to pass citizenship to her children un-
til changes in the Japanese family act in 1983. At that time, those with a Japanese mother
could apply and receive citizenship but had to assume a Japanese name. There were many
contradictions to this earlier system in terms of children of mixed parentage. For exam-
ple, children of Japanese men who had moved and taken permanent residence abroad were
granted Japanese citizenship at birth even though they were born and raised elsewhere,
whereas children born and raised in Japan to a Japanese mother but not a Japanese father
did not receive Japanese citizenship.
3. In including this quotation from Wolcott, I believe it should be made clear that he is
not criticizing those who are willing to set off with no “clear idea of exactly where they
are headed” but, conversely, seems to be poking fun at those who cannot set out without a
plan. For context, I include more of the quotation here: “Place and purpose have to inter-
sect. For the ethnographer I think there is no necessary order as to which must come first.
Here I put emphasis on place because I think it somewhat peculiar to ethnography that
where one conducts research plays such an important role.... When the question comes
first—a seemingly more logical way to begin for those who can’t set out until they have a
clear idea of exactly where they are headed—recognition must still be given to the fact that
place will impose constraints anyway, so one’s guiding question(s) must still be fine-tuned
and adjusted to the situation” (Wolcott 1999 , 39 – 40 ).
4. I follow the convention of not capitalizing designations such as world war II as a
means of questioning whether such a practice grants greater value to wars, potentially re-
ifies them, and thus enters into their repetition.
5. Prejudice against Ainu in Japan has been so strong that, when this organization was
initiated, there was even reluctance to use the word “Ainu” in the title of the organization.
Hence, it was instead called Utari Kyokai. Utari is an Ainu word meaning “friend” and
kyokai is a Japanese word meaning “association.” At different times, there have been de-
bates over changing the name. When the organization started in 1946 it was actually called
the Hokkaido ̄ Ainu Kyokai, but there was a decision to change the name at the organiza-
tion’s general meeting in 1960 because some members felt uncomfortable with the use of
the term Ainu because it carried such strong discrimination in Japan; the constitution mod-
ified the name change in 1961 (Creighton 1995 c, 78 , note 7 ). Since that time, some Ainu
have been encouraging re-embracing the name “Ainu” in the title, but at the time of my in-
volvement here, the organization went by the name of Utari Kyokai.
6. In a recent book, Merry White suggests the pressures that have existed in Japan for
people to conform to some kind of expectations of normalcy in social roles, in her cho-
sen title, Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval. The book deals with
examples of “normal” Japanese today, showing that many individuals and families ac-
tually live lives—often like the women in this story that depend on circumstances rather
