PROFILE Masakazu Tanaka, Ph.D. 1955 March - Born in Wakayama City 1980 March - M.Phil. Religious Studies, Tohoku University 1986 July - Ph.D. Anthropology (LSE, London University) 1986 Aug - Research Fellow, National Museum of Ethnology (Japan) 1988 June - Associate Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University 1993 April - In Charge of Graduate School of Human and Enviromental Science, Kyoto University 2004 April - Professor, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University >> Go to Contact Information >> Go to Graduate School >> Go to Main Menu

ABOUT MY FIELDWORK I conducted my fieldwork from June 1982 to November of the following year in a Tamil fishing village in Sri Lanka. This was my first major experience of fieldwork, but my encounter with Tamil society goes back a little further when in the summer of 1981 I had the opportunity to spend some time in a village in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. It became increasingly difficult to conduct fieldwork in July 1983 when riots began in Colombo attacking the Tamil population. By 1984, the Tamil guerrillas had established themselves and it became virtually impossible to continue with my research. I returned to Sri Lanka eight years later in 1991. With the acceleration of fighting, the Tamil population of Sri Lanka flooded into countries such as India, Australia, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Canada as refugees. Then in the summer of 1997, I went back to London for the first time in eleven years (I had completed my Ph.D. there in 1986) and there I met the children of the people from the fishing village where I did my fieldwork. There were around ten of them who had migrated and settled in London. In 1998, I went to Canada twice where my project was to interview the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees whose population is said to be more than one hundred fifty thousand. As the conditions in Sri Lanka were getting worse, I started another fieldwork at the Nataraja Temple of Chidambaram in South India in 1987. I already had a job in Japan by then, so I was only able to do fieldwork for a few months in a year, though I have managed to spend nearly a year and a half in India all together. I still have ongoing research interests in Sri Lanka and India. At the same time, however, I have began to expand my field of interests. Since a few years ago, I have been visiting museums holding private collections in tourist areas of Japan. In addition I did some research in Shimane peninsula. Currently my major research is concerned with 110,000 strong U.S. Military people in Japan. Please refer to my list of publications for details. >> Go to Publications To see my recent work: >> Go to What's New

Dates		MAJOR RESEARCH OVERSEAS
1998 July ~ 1998 August		Singapore, Hawaii and Canada
1997 December ~ 1998 January		India and Hawaii
1997 July ~ 1997 August		England
1995 December ~ 1996 January		Sri Lanka and Italy (EC Conference)
1994 February ~ 1994 March		India
1993 November ~ 1993 December		India
1991 July ~ 1991 September		Sri Lanka
1990 December ~ 1991 January		India
1990 July ~ 1990 August		India and Sri Lanka
1989 September ~ 1989 November		India
1988 November ~ 1989 February		India
1987 November ~ 1988 March		India
1982 June ~ 1983 November		Sri Lanka