Objectives

The late Chie Nakane, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, had a research career which stretched from the middle of the 1950s to the 2000s and she left behind approximately 60,000 photos (negative film and prints) taken during the course of her research activities. The aim of this project is to create a digital data archive of these photos, including as much detailed information as possible, and make it available to the general public. The late Nakane visited a wide range of different regions for research purposes, including South Asia, China, Japan, Europe and the Unites States, and she photographed each of these areas over an extended period of time. In order to provide detailed information, it is therefore essential to enlist the help of local people and researchers specializing in those regions. We would like to utilize this project to create a digital data archive in collaboration with many researchers and local collaborators, and make it publicly available.

Description

The late Chie Nakane was a pioneer of social anthropology in Japan. The photographic materials (hereafter "materials") for which we are proposing to create a digital archive were taken during her research and academic activities from the 1950s onwards, after she first embarked on the study of social anthropology. Her studies in this field began with research on the indigenous ethnic groups in northeastern India and then expanded to include ethnic groups in Bhutan and Nepal, and later, Hindus in the central and southern parts of the Indian subcontinent. She also conducted research on rural areas of Japan, Tibet, and the ethnic minorities of southwestern China. Her work culminated in research that comprehensively compares the kinship and social structures of Asian societies from Japan to India.

After studying overseas in the US and UK, which were considered to be at the cutting edge of social anthropology research at the time, she had extensive interactions with a wide range of academics, including cultural and social anthropologists from all over the world. In addition to her work in research and education at institutions such as the University of Tokyo's Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, she served as a member or chair of numerous committees of academic as well as public administration both domestically and internationally. For example, she was closely involved with the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers from the time it first started, visiting many of the countries where volunteers were deployed to inspect the progress of projects and provide suggestions for their development. In the course of these pursuits, she traveled to many parts of the world and took numerous photographs as a record of her academic and other related activities.

These materials include all of the photographs relating to these research and academic activities, and are a particularly valuable resource for understanding the situation in the mid-20th century of various Asian societies, Japan, Europe, the US, Oceania, South America and Africa. Tracing the footsteps of Nakane's activities through her photographs will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of Asian studies from the mid-20th century to the present day, the history of social anthropology research, and the history of academic administration in Japan.

The creation and publication of a digital archive of these materials by Minpaku will engage the interest of people in a variety of fields, including not only social anthropology and ethnology, but also Asian regional studies and academic administrative history.

Nakane's research activities and range of activities were extremely broad, so in order to grasp the full picture and publish detailed information about her photographs, it will be essential to collaborate with researchers with a wide ranges of research interests, as well as people related to the areas where the photographs were taken. Through the framework of this project, therefore, we will create digital archives with the cooperation of numerous researchers and other collaborators.

Expected results

Tracing the footsteps of the late Chie Nakane's research and academic activities from the mid-1950s to the 2000s, this project will construct an archive of approximately 60,000 photographs depicting people's food, clothing, dwellings, livelihoods, religious practices, cityscapes and natural surroundings in countries and regions such as Japan, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, the US, Southeast Asia, West Asia, South America and Africa. For each photograph, basic information will be provided about the subject, as well as the location and estimated time it was taken. In addition, the more important photographs will be accompanied by detailed explanations provided by researchers in other fields, such as cultural/ social anthropology and Japanese folklore, as well as local people. This information will generally be provided in Japanese, but wherever possible, descriptions will also be provided in other languages, such as English and Chinese.