Invitation to Ethno-Kinesiology

by

Yosuke Washiya

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Exercise Sciences University of Toronto

© Copyright by Yosuke Washiya 2019

Invitation to Ethno-Kinesiology

Yosuke Washiya

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Exercise Sciences

University of Toronto

2019

Abstract

Many studies today have not considered the foundation of our meta-methods, which are

predominantly linguistic and thus descriptive. Any academic understanding we are pursuing is

linguistically and descriptively preformed, and this preformation in turn usually precedes academic

inquiry. Instead of adapting appropriate methods for the research designed, this study seeks to

know what can be objectivized as the object, and how. Using a video camera, and making an

ethnographic film, from three different case studies internationally, this study attempts to cultivate

a different academic realm that has been missing and can complement existing studies’

unawareness and imbalances, particularly the studies of physical culture and movements. This

dissertation argues for method driven inquiry, to let method capture, engage, and correspond with

the research. How can we find what can be the object of academic inquiry, and how can we find

the question to be pursued? As a result of the process of filmmaking and participation in the

practice of judo, this research argues to move from thick to ‘thin description’, present-congruency,

and a meta-methodology of subtraction. A new academic realm, ‘Ethno-Kinesiology’ is proposed

as a novel way to engage in the research of movement.

Keywords: techniques of the body, film ethnography, methodology, physical culture,

Henri Bergson, intuition, duration

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Acknowledgments

This project was a journey of six years, or even longer in some sense, starting even before I

began my PhD program in Toronto. I could have drowned in this sea of journey, without all the

support I received from so many people. Among them, here, I would like to particularly thank

and acknowledge those who weave this journey together with me.

First and foremost, everyone who participated in this research project. For their kind and

generous heart and friendships. This journey was impossible without all of you. Kazunori

Matsumura, for inviting me into academia and inquiry in the field, from the field. Bruce Kidd,

for opening the door for this journey, and for demonstrating sincere attitude as an academic.

Peter Donnelly for showing endless curiosity as a scholar. Mike Atkinson, for breaking all the

barriers I had been stuck with, and illuminating wide open possibilities for doing research. I will

never forget your class that changed my entire career. Philip Vannini, for your insights. I cannot

deny a massive influence from your work, and I am thrilled to work with you in the coming

future. Masayuki and Mitsuko Takao, for all the intellectual discussions we had over delicious

homemade meals. I could not continue this journey without your kind and warm support. Patrick

Jachyra, for your friendship. It was so fortunate for me to have you as a colleague. Tomonori

Ishioka, for your being a peer scholar and also my older brother. This work is influenced by

dialogues with your works. Philip Toppin and Conely de Leon, I am so lucky that this journey

also let me share many other life events with you. Time we shared, from boxing sparring

sessions to late night sushi dinners, shaped this project in many regards. Kosuke, Ayami, Sayuri,

and Honori Washiya, for always giving me positive energy and smiles. Milijan and Gordana

Lukić, for your bottomless, veliko srce. You let me stay calm and focus on this project in any

difficult times. Dunja Lukić and Aaron Haddad, for your unmeasurable amount of support and

inspiration. All the endless conversations we had were source of The Force to keep inquiring. I

am so lucky to have you as my family. Kaoru and Kunio Washiya, for all those newspaper clips,

books, and letters you sent me enabled me to keep swimming. In a sense, the seed of my

curiosity and the mind of a researcher started from my grade one summer project researching

pressed flowers with you. You taught me the joy of inquiry. You gave me insights, creativity and

persistence, and let me pursue my works to be meaningful and joyful. Thank you for letting me

pursue my goal and letting me believe in myself. Vuk, Jasen, and Kai Washiya, for your smiles

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and cries and wet diapers. You amaze me. All those moments that let me encounter your growth

kept me in this journey going, going, and going.

Lastly, Ljubica Washiya. This journey was literally with you. Dark nights, freezing mornings,

windy days, you were always there with me. Thank you for always being a warm and bright

anchor throughout the journey. I do not know where the next journey will lead us to, but I am

sure that it will be great if you are here.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... iii

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................. v

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. ix

List of Appendices ............................................................................................................................ x

Prologue ......................................................................................................................................... 1

Let the method speak ...................................................................................................................... 1

Format of this project ...................................................................................................................... 2

Messy realizations ........................................................................................................................... 3

On creativity .................................................................................................................................... 3

The poem ........................................................................................................................................ 4

Chapter 1. Escaping from described movements ....................................................................... 6

How this research started ................................................................................................................ 9

Problems of categorizations around culturalism ........................................................................... 11

Shifting interests ........................................................................................................................... 12

Cultural, linguistic ......................................................................................................................... 13

Captured ........................................................................................................................................ 14

What is it to seek the technique? ................................................................................................... 14

My biggest struggle – Paradoxical ................................................................................................ 16

Illogical thoughts – Eugen Herrigel .............................................................................................. 18

Beyond Herrigel ............................................................................................................................ 19

Chapter 2. Limit of description ................................................................................................. 21

In training ...................................................................................................................................... 23

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Techniques without names ............................................................................................................ 24

Why less descriptive? ................................................................................................................... 25

What is ‘a technique of the body’? ............................................................................................... 28

Today’s ‘techniques of the body’ as mainstream methodological foundation ............................. 30

Against culturalism and hybridity ................................................................................................. 31

Methodological coupling .............................................................................................................. 32

Driven by the question of what is ‘the technique’? ...................................................................... 33

Techniques are in their nature, descriptive. .................................................................................. 34

Rethinking the starting line ........................................................................................................... 36

Good-bye to ‘the technique’ ......................................................................................................... 37

Chapter 3. Wandering in a dark labyrinth .............................................................................. 39

Behind thick description ............................................................................................................... 41

The dilemma ................................................................................................................................. 42

Something I lost due to thick description ..................................................................................... 42

Like this, undivided, leave things as chaos ................................................................................... 44

Toward ‘thinness’ of description, as the matter of time ............................................................... 45

‘Thin’ description .......................................................................................................................... 46

Non-representational? ................................................................................................................... 47

The eye is mud .............................................................................................................................. 49

The impact of this work ................................................................................................................ 50

Chapter 4. Shaky footage from the field: Envisioning a new terrain with film-based

inquiry ..................................................................................................................................... 53

Beginning of this research ............................................................................................................ 54

Tacit knowledge? .......................................................................................................................... 55

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Shape of knowing: MacDougall’s ethnographic film approach ................................................... 57

Shaky footage from the field ......................................................................................................... 57

In the field with a video camera .................................................................................................... 58

Weaving with the lens ................................................................................................................... 59

Past or present ............................................................................................................................... 61

Inseparability ................................................................................................................................. 62

Engagement ................................................................................................................................... 63

The horizon of film-based inquiry ................................................................................................ 64

Chapter 5. From bricoleur to ‘carver’ ...................................................................................... 65

Scholars are busy thinking about end products ............................................................................. 65

Failures from Tokyo ..................................................................................................................... 66

Engagement in the field ................................................................................................................ 69

Regret ............................................................................................................................................ 69

Subtraction highlighted ................................................................................................................. 70

Addition counter-highlighted ........................................................................................................ 70

Spatialization of time .................................................................................................................... 71

Transition lost ............................................................................................................................... 75

Duration ........................................................................................................................................ 76

From bricoleur to ‘carver’ ............................................................................................................. 78

On academic ‘carving’ .................................................................................................................. 79

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Chapter 6. Invitation to Ethno-Kinesiology ............................................................................. 81

Intuition as a way to deal with spatialization ................................................................................ 81

From addition to subtraction ......................................................................................................... 83

The meta-methodology of addition .......................................................................................... 83

Knowledge ........................................................................................................................ 83

Embodiment ...................................................................................................................... 84

The meta-methodology of ‘subtraction’ ................................................................................... 85

Subtracting knowledge ...................................................................................................... 85

Subtracting the body ......................................................................................................... 86

Ontological reformation .................................................................................................... 86

Absence ......................................................................................................................................... 88

In film ethnography .................................................................................................................. 88

Invitation to ‘Ethno-Kinesiology’ ................................................................................................. 91

Pursuing the object-to-be ......................................................................................................... 94

Artistic-making ........................................................................................................................ 95

Subtracting ............................................................................................................................... 96

On the films of this dissertation ............................................................................................... 97

What does Ethno-Kinesiology look like? ................................................................................ 98

Future directions ....................................................................................................................... 98

References ................................................................................................................................... 100

Copyright Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 107

Appendix A – Ethno-Kinesiology: Film Ethnographic Journey of Judo .................................... 109

Appendix B – Legacy and Legitimacy- Historical Ethnography of a Judo Dojo in Montréal,

Canada ................................................................................................................................... 110

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List of Figures

Figure 1-1. Osoto-gari judo technique according to the Kawaishi Method

Figure 2-1. Tai-otoshi judo technique according to the Kawaishi Method

Figure 2-2. Seoi-nage judo technique according to the Kawaishi Method

Figure 2-3. Field notes from December 4th, 2014

Figure 3-1. Excerpt from field notes of hand drawn pictures of judo in motion.

Figure 4-1. Page from field notes written after training at the dojo

Figure 5-1. Still images from filmed footage at Challenge Judo Club, Toronto, Canada

Figure 5-2. Descriptions for each of the still images presented in Figure 5-1

x

List of Appendices

Appendix A – Ethno-Kinesiology: Film Ethnographic Journey of Judo

Appendix B – Legacy and Legitimacy- Historical Ethnography of a Judo Dojo in Montréal,

Canada

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Prologue

南海之帝為儵，北海之帝為忽，中央之帝為渾沌。儵與忽時相與遇於渾沌

之，渾沌待之甚善。儵與忽謀報渾沌之德，曰：「人皆有七竅以視聽食，此

獨無有，嘗試鑿之。」日鑿一竅，七日而渾沌死。

Normally, method is something that you choose after you have decided on the object to research.

Among diverse methods, you often need pick only one in order to gather data effectively and

efficiently, so as to facilitate forthcoming examination and analysis.

Many studies today, however, have not considered the foundation of our meta-methods – they

are predominantly linguistic and thus descriptive. No matter what kind of method you choose,

studies are constrained within the methodological realm of linguistic descriptions. This

dissertation is no exception, as I am typing these letters, which are in and of themselves, a

particular constraint operating within the specific, limited methodological realm of written

language.

Any academic understanding we are pursuing is linguistically and descriptively

preformed, and this preformation in turn usually precedes academic inquiry.

Let the method speak

This dissertation is an attempt to address such methodological preformation. Instead of adapting

appropriate methods for the research designed, this project lets method speak. By doing so, this

study seeks to know what can be objectivized as the object, and how. Using a video camera, and

making an ethnographic film, are specific attempts to serve this purpose.

You might wonder here: What is this thesis exactly going to present? Methods should be picked

as the best fit by considering what the object is and problems to tackle it with. If you are

conducting film based ethnographic research, video filming should be chosen as a method, based

on the research object and problem defined, followed by data collection and analysis. Surely a

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centralizing method is not only missing from this academic format, but is also failing to bring a

solid discussion about its object.

If you are looking for such structure in this work, and start being worried (or maybe irritated), it

might be the sign that you are already captured in the very specific, narrow and perhaps

problematic format of modern sciences which already contains a specific methodology in itself

as a default setting. These taken-for-granted (methodological) views are exactly the target that

this thesis aims to problematize and tackle.

It is not my intention to provide an alternative method by criticizing a major academic

methodological format, as this argument is also benefiting from it. The point of this attempt is

rather, cultivating a different academic realm that has been missing and can complement existing

studies’ unawareness and imbalances, particularly the studies of physical culture and movements.

To do so, the question this project keeps in mind is: How can we find what can be the object of

academic inquiry, and how can we find the question to be pursued?

To pursue this question, I decided to let method capture, engage, and correspond with the

research, and see what it can say: Method driven inquiry. This is the concise explanation of

what this dissertation will engage in. By going through the process of picking up a specific

method, in this case film ethnography, this dissertation activates the methodological discussion,

and highlights its very outcome of engaging with academic method and methodology. Through

this project, a new terrain to explore will be illustrated: Quantitative or qualitative. Knowledge

and embodiment. Those typical frameworks are targets that this study will challenge to break

down in an academic field that is more or less close-ended.

Format of this project

For the purpose of this dissertation, which focuses on method driven inquiry, the order and the

structure of this paper would appear unconventional. I am not doing so to write in a non-

conventional format. The pathway I walk along through this project, the process, is important.

The question to pursue, the method to examine, and discussion to be highlighted, all the contents

of this project, are connected to each other inseparably. Thus, it is also important for the writing

of this dissertation to be following the process of inquiry so as not to lose the steps and moves

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from which the project evolved. For this reason, I request readers to follow the chapters as they

are presented. Although I personally enjoy and at times prefer the beauty of reading passages in a

range of freedom, such as reading backwards, the best way I believe this project can be

experienced by reading is, retracing the process of this inquiry.

Messy realizations

The line between field and non-field is so vague. In Chapter 1, I start the discussion by

explaining how this inquiry started in the first place. This is not to simply to bring the

background information to the foreground. While many studies would not show how they refine

the questions to pursue in their studies – the very process of refining the question itself, including

the object to pursue, plays an important part of academic inquiry (Washiya, 2017a). The process

is quite messy, far from straightforward. It is common that such a messy process is what studies

tend to omit. Look at those beautiful writings of theses and books. It is rare to see struggles,

detours, failures and mistakes that scholars encountered. Where did they go?

And importantly, life itself to this point involved carrying my own baggage of knowledge, or

past experience, which largely affect the finding of questions. Indeed, it involved a process of my

own realization of the baggage that I have. It is important to describe them, not to highlight them

as a background context of this study, but contrary, making their context as the very process,

inseparable threads that weave this project. However, it is not possible, and even not necessary to

write of all the threads, and thus the process becomes rather subtractive – what not to write

initiates what to write, describe, to be highlighted or paid attention to.

On creativity

Firstly, this project is not claiming creativity or innovation solely by taking or stating to take an

unconventional approach, nor picking up a ‘newly emerging’ method as an alternative to existing

ones. You need to refrain from categorizing this work as taking up a ‘visual method’ to achieve

unconventional examination of physical culture. Similarly, I do not set creativity simply as the

antinomy for conventional. While studies or research institutions merely encourage creativity

and innovativeness today, the creativity itself is left so vague. What is creative? As long as

studies keep being satisfied with their work as creative solely by alternating their methods to

those that appear to be new or simply taking up things that are claimed ‘innovative’, their

contribution can stay in exactly the same realm of what they tried to overcome. This project will

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not take those concepts as de facto. Rather, it attempts to shift the dimensions we are relying on.

Through this radical shift, I am hoping that this thesis and the project will demonstrate a

modality of creative work to pursue beyond existing realms.

The poem

To close this introduction, I would like to explain the intention of the quote at the beginning of

this prologue. I learned this poem in high school, during a classic Chinese class and had

forgotten all about it. After this research started, this poem began to emerge from the deep sea of

my memory, and kept hanging around somewhere in my head. It is composed by Zhuangzi in

around 4th century BC in today's China. In considering the descriptive methodology we are

relying on, the poem about a mythological story is insightful. Here is the English translation:

The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu [Brief], and the emperor of the North Sea

was called Hu [Sudden], and the emperor of the central region was called Hun-tun

[Chaos]. Shu and Hu from time to time came together for a meeting in the territory of

Hun-tun, and Hun-tun treated them very generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they

could repay his kindness. “All men,” they said, “have seven openings so they can see,

hear, eat, and breathe. But Hun-tun alone doesn’t have any. Let’s try boring him some!”

Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hun-tun died. (Zhuangzi &

Watson, 1964, p.95)

While this is often understood as the story that tells the dangers of imposing civilization on

primal nature (Walls, 1998, p.55) the insight rather, lies beyond the simple dichotomy between

civilized and primal. The implication is the matter of how we should face nature to understand it

as it is, without imposing our own framework, which can fundamentally kill nature. Do we really

know nature as it is? Do we pay maximum effort to understand chaos as it is? If this world is

chaotic, our understandings cannot be so straightforward. Do we really face the chaotic nature of

our lives?

Probably, if I truly follow the most important wisdom the poem provokes, I should have not even

provided the translation. I am afraid, once I did, the essence living in there might die. The point I

risk to highlight is that academic works are playing a dangerous game, and probably we do not

5

always think about it. Yes, we need to spell things out; otherwise the wisdom is not shared. In the

meantime, the wisdom would be already dead when we do so.

I should stop adding further explanations here.

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Chapter 1.

Escaping from described movements

A dream: a man who unlearns the world's languages until nowhere on earth does

he understand what people are saying. What is there in language? What does it

conceal? What does it rob one of? (Canetti, 1978, p.21)

I approach the change room door. Somebody is already there. Two or three people. Low

voices echo through a wooden door. Sounds like Russian. I grab the doorknob and push

slowly. Two guys’ glances strike me. One is a tall, white Russian guy I have met the

other day. What was his name? I shake hands with him, then turn to the other guy, his

face covered by a beard. His age is not certain but he may be younger than me. “Hey.”

My voice goes low. We exchange handshakes, his grip is strong. The bearded face

introduces himself as Miroza. He is from Azerbaijan, studying computer science at a

college nearby. He came to Canada last year. He wants to go visit Japan sometime. He

keeps talking, while undressing. Hair covers his thick chest. He is approximately my

height, maybe slightly shorter, heavier though, probably around 100kg. He is well

experienced. I can tell, not only from the black belt he was about to wrap around his

waist, but also from the way he tied it, so smooth and quick. Long arms and short legs, a

typical posture of a good judoka. “See you there man.” He leaves the change room with

his feet wide apart. Again, a typical posture of an experienced judoka. He must be good.

I was bound to learn throughout the training session I was participating in, that he was the real

deal. During ne-waza (ground techniques), he executed multiple techniques on me. While I have

some experience learning judo, mostly through the Japanese public education system in physical

education classes, I was no less than the dummy doll sitting in the corner of the dojo (gym) for

free-throw training. He even attempted to heal lock, which is not permitted in judo today.

I tap my hand in forfeit on his body almost automatically. “Man, you cannot do that in

judo, can you?” I ask. Miroza steps aside and releases his hands and sits down. He is

chuckling. “Ha-ha, yes, you are right, man,” says Miroza. He is just playing with me.

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“You have been training for long?” I ask him while adjusting my disheveled judo-gi.

“Yeah, not that much these days though. Just come when I have time,” responds Miroza.

I kneel to seiza (traditional sitting form), bow, and we shake hands. His handgrip is

strong again. My hands are too sore to firmly hold his. Today’s training has just started,

probably more than halfway to go. I am not sure I can tie my belt firmly enough. I notice

sweat has started to pour off my body.

Randori (free sparring) came at the end of the training, and my exhaustion at this point, was

extreme. The thick judo-gi (judo uniform) I was wearing, was wet around my neck. I had not had

this feeling of my body ablaze in a long time. I started noticing body parts that I have not even

sensed for ages. I realized I have fore arms, which felt twice as big as normal. Somehow it

reminded me of a grueling part-time construction job I had done to fund my doctoral studies –

the first time I spent an entire day mixing cement. If I were not using my body efficiently, my

muscle would wear out and become painfully sore, and quickly.

Randori is called. “Ten minutes, for those who want.” Fellow judoka slowly start

moving. Some eagerly walk around to find a partner, while some move away toward the

wall to rest and observe. I keep standing in the middle of the dojo, tying my loosened

belt, and catching my breath. “Let’s do, man.” Miroza says as he approaches me. I knew

I would have to spar with him today. “Sure.” I respond. Looking for a space to spar, we

move away to a blank space in a corner. I see two other randori started next to us. My

breath goes shallow. I touch my belt, making sure it is tightened enough. I put Miroza in

the center of my narrowing eyesight. Feelings and words start to recede. His body is

moving right and left. Or is it my body? I bow. Maybe he did as well. And it started.

What happened afterward was quite a disaster. I had only one attempt at throwing, where I

almost caught Miroza off balance, with an ura-nage (backdrop throw), a dead or alive sort of

throw. It was like a typical ethnographic experience, where the newcomer’s capability needed to

be evaluated by the old members (Ishioka, 2013). I needed Miroza to experience that I could

fight. At least I had a few moments of luck, even lifting his two legs for a second above the

tatami (gym mat) was probably lucky enough. I was completely smashed – thrown repeatedly. I

8

stood up, grappled with him, found myself on the tatami mat, and stood up again. I do not

remember how many times I was thrown, or even what I was seeing and hearing at the moment.

My senses had disappeared somewhere, and now, by writing about the moment, I am striving to

recover what it is exactly that my body went through.

I did not realize until we shook hands and headed to the wall to rest, that crowds in the

gym were watching this disaster/triumph, taking place randomly in this dojo. I hear

Miroza and others are chatting in Russian. I sit down against the wall. I hear another

randori match has started. My body is heavy, like a sinking stone in dark water. I notice

warm evaporation comes from inside my body out, and the steady stream of sweat

coming down from my head. I have a lingering sensation of my right chest punched by

his opened hand. Slowly, I started to recall that Miroza threw me exclusively executing

the same technique.

The end of the randori session came. Training was at last finished, but it felt like a workout to

lift my sinking, exhausted body from the tatami. We lined up and bowed to sensei (teacher)

Alim. The line collapsed and fellows started spreading out again – some started stretching while

others headed directly to the change room. Miroza came and shook hands with my soft grip.

I lay down on the tatami. I keep looking at the ceiling and trying to stretch my body. That

was good training. It’s been a while since the last time I sweat this much. I found the

ceiling of this building is high.

I stand up. Sensei approaches me. “How do you feel?” I assume that Sensei wants to talk

to me to make sure that I was physically fine. I had been lying down for a while. “Yes,

pretty good. Thank you for the training today.” I muster. “You’re welcome.” responds

Sensei. We start walking toward the entrance. The others have already left. “I was

smashed so much. Miroza is so good.” I tell Sensei, not sure how much he saw of our

sparring. “He was on the Azerbaijani junior national team”. Sensei says and smiles.

Makes sense. “Although he is not training like in the past any more”. Sensei

continues. ”Because everybody knows you are Japanese, they were so worried that you

9

were going to beat everyone.” The cultural stereotype quickly deflated in my exhausted

exhale. “Well it’s not fair, I am not that good.” I shake hands with Sensei, and enter the

vacant change room. Sorry to all the judoka in Japan, but I am too exhausted to even

catch my train home…

On the bumpy subway ride home, I started jotting down my notes from the training. Partially as

field notes for my plan to potentially start researching at this judo gym, and partially because of

my long-term habit of recording the physical activities I do, habituated from my career playing

varsity rugby back in the past. However, this time I was extra motivated to record in detail the

training, as the throw Miroza executed on me was haunting me. I wanted to know the technique,

prevent the same thing from happening again, and ideally, master the technique. My right hand

in which I was holding a pen got noticeably shaky. I needed to stop holding it and massage the

fire out from my forearm from time to time during the train ride back home.

The first thing that came to my mind was the difficulty to articulate the situation.

I do not remember well. Is my memory a leaking hourglass? Did I not have such memory

from the beginning? Damn. I cannot describe the technique.

The subway slows down.

The sparring was only for five minutes or so. However, the entire experience around the time

was so dense – the density of the moment became so packed and congested, leaving the

experience in a foggy forest of memory. I could not write enough down to complete the entire

picture of the technique.

The subway door opens. The notebook is thrown into my duffle bag and I lift myself out

from the train.

How this research started

The beginning of this research project is somewhat elusive. This project itself is the product of

chaotic thoughts and many practices that I consciously and unconsciously lived in my everyday

10

life. The chaos, however, gradually led to the start of this dissertation. Thus, at least, unpacking

the context behind this project would be useful to show how the direction of this journey was

slowly set.

Prior to this project, I conducted a pilot study on judo in Canada and the legacy of Japanese

immigrants. It was, indeed, what I was originally planning to take on as a dissertation topic. By

learning how the historical background of judo spread in Canada collided with an intertwined

trajectory of Japanese immigrants’ (re)settlement after World War II (WWII), I expected that

studying the trajectory would provide us with a new scope to understand social cohesion and

coexistence. With this picture in mind, I visited judo dojo across Canada, from British Columbia

to Quebec, around 10 dojo in total, each with various and unique conditions. Their sizes differed,

along with their sources of funding and competition levels, among others. Some are large well-

funded dojo producing internationally competing judoka, while some are barely standing with

just a few participants. Through listening to the stories of people at the dojos, I came to see ties

between the current judo practitioners in Canada and the history of immigrants from Japan who

experienced WWII and how deeply embedded those experiences and or traumas are.

Eventually, I focused on a dojo in Montreal, resulting in a published paper (Washiya, 2015), see

Appendix B, and a realization of a fundamental limitation to my approach:

Firstly, although I managed to elaborate a discussion from a case study, I found a fundamental

limitation of my approach, starting with the category of ‘Japanese’. The uniqueness of practice, I

argued in the paper, is found in how the dojo strives to sustain itself despite decreasing

membership. In the particular dojo, today, no Japanese descendants are practicing judo, but

Japanese-ness is sustained and imagined among the practitioners. The legacy of being a

‘Japanese-opened dojo’ became the authenticity found in their dojo by themselves, and the

authenticity simultaneously strengthened their imagined legacy of ‘Japanese-ness’. The

discussion is, however, eventually depending on the concept of ‘Japanese-ness’, which, I rely on

the categorization of ‘Japanese’ I made in the beginning of the research. This, I found, cannot go

beyond the tautological discussion. In the end, the methodological concept of ‘Japanese-ness’ I

used to secure the collectivity of research objectives remained as the core part of the answer to

11

the research question. The argument ended up pointing out the practice with ‘Japanese-ness’ as

the key, which started from assuming ‘Japanese-ness’ as a category from the beginning of the

study itself.

What if the category of Japanese itself is questioned? Is it a solid category? More specifically,

what is it? I felt that beginning a study with the category of Japanese was leading me down a

narrow aisle where somehow ‘Japanese-ness’, as a category needed to be static, unquestioned

and guaranteed (See, for instance, Kumate & Falcous, 2017). I could not help thinking of the

naivety of an approach that always assumes such categories as rigid and reliable.

Problems of categorizations around culturalism

This indeed, was a conflict with my own experience in ‘multi-cultural’ Canada.

Cultural. This is a magical word that helps us to understand things. A wholesome, organic,

inclusive word. In the globalizing city of Toronto, and more broadly in Canada, cultural diversity

is perceived to broaden our societal values, and perceptions. There is no denying that multi-

cultural Canada has been accepting me, an immigrant, so well, and that I have enjoyed and

gained so much personally from this celebration of cultural diversity in many respects. Simply

finding a plethora of martial arts options in different neighborhoods, for instance, Muay Thai, or

Brazilian jujitsu, made me excited to think that the world is gathered here.

In the meantime, the very concept of cultural, or categories given, such as Japanese, can limit our

understanding of the world. I have been finding that the concept of multi-cultural allows us to

use a powerful lens to see people sorted into categories so easily and wholly, without grasping

the very details of what a category can mean, and who a person can be. ‘Clash of civilizations’

(Huntington, 2003) is such a typical idea frequently referred to that is based on categorized

groups or civilizations, existing first of all, as a solid category. Furthermore, globalization does

not necessarily broaden our minds, our understanding of the globalizing world:

[T]he World is becoming smaller and larger at the same time; cultural space is shrinking

and expanding. Localism and ethnicity are conceptualized as inseparable sides of the

same coin, and each may (re)assert itself either as a defensive reaction to, or a result of,

the increasingly global context of social life. (Jenkins, 2008, p.45)

12

Things around us can eventually remain at the surface level where multi-culturalism is celebrated

without seriously considering what the categorizations, cultural in this case, can mask and hide.

Throughout my daily journeys in Toronto, I was starting to feel we are losing the sensibility to

find details and differences among things, because of these strong tides of culturalization and

categorization.

Shifting interests

Meanwhile, the pilot study also brought a way to see how people engage and communicate

beyond ‘cultural’ or any sort of categorization. In the case study I conducted, in one way or

another my encounters with people repeatedly led me to reflect on the presence of linguistic

gaps, not only between Japanese speakers and English or French speakers, but sometimes

between the Japanese first generation and second generation, French speakers with English

command and those with none, and other language speakers with English as a second language,

and so on. The reactions to those linguistic gaps by the people were also similar: there was some

difficulty to understand, but overall, it was managed.

How, then, is it commonly and often casually claimed that physical activities are a good way to

overcome linguistic gaps even though there is a good amount of communication required?

Especially at the time when judo was relatively unknown among the majority of people in

Canada, and the rules and conditions are heavily conceptual? Probably, there is a lot of wisdom

and struggle that played out in those practices, and indeed, it has been taking place everywhere in

the world today as well, not necessarily beyond linguistic gaps, but primarily, beyond

subjectivities.

I was curious to know the practical dimension of how the gaps are managed, as it was exactly

what I was struggling with in a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, and yet mono-linguistic Toronto.

I was frustrated by the difficulty of communicating in English during classroom discussion. Yes,

English is the official language here; obviously I knew about it and prepared for it. But, I was so

frustrated that the degree of conversation I could have with my imperfect, heavy accent and

grammatical errors differed so much depending on the people I was speaking with. While some

people in my home department, Exercise Sciences, had a tendency to catch what I was trying to

say, classes held by other departments, for example, proved to be rough and exceedingly

13

challenging. It was not about the topic we were dealing with, as the subject matter I presented

was based, more or less, on a similar discipline. Meanwhile, I was grateful that at least some of

the students in those classes could usually catch my words and respond.

What was it that enabled some people to understand imperfect English while with others it was

like talking to a wall? It became clear to me that “English native speakers” are not a single,

homogenous group. Was it a matter of language capability? Or an individual’s past experience

with foreign speakers, such as having parents whose native language was not English? Was it

having the kindness or patience to listen to others? Was it having an imagination and an

analogical, but not logical, abductive ability to guess what others are talking about? These

struggles made me think that indeed, even within the same linguistic group, the way people

speak, listen, and understand cannot be the same.

Cultural, linguistic

With those struggles, based on my everyday life as a graduate student in this globalized era, in

tow, I started looking for a judo dojo in Toronto to seek any possible research object nearby,

ideally in a multi-linguistic environment with the hope of finding a break through the wall of

culturalization and linguistic communication.

Adding to this, I tried to find a place where I could participate as a member. While I was not

envisioning becoming a (judo) fighter like Wacquant (2004) or Spencer (2012) did, at least I was

envisioning engaging in physical activity as a participant from which I could also take part in as

an observational apprentice scholar. Plus, and this was more important in the depth of my heart, I

was eager to engage with something physical, instead of conceptual. I needed some time off

from dealing with the alphabet.

I started to research judo dojo in downtown Toronto, spending some time searching on the

Internet with key words such as ‘judo’, ‘downtown Toronto’ and ‘cheap’. I participated in

several sessions at some clubs and asked around for reputations. I finally came to a club, which

was reachable by public transit from my apartment at the time. The club’s web page contained

Cyrillic text, which also peaked my curiosity. The gym was operated by a family who had moved

to Toronto from the Ukraine. Two sons had won many tournaments internationally. There were

14

many photos uploaded, with the smiley faces of children. I sent a request for a trial practice, and

soon I received a welcoming e-mail, with some grammatical inconsistencies. I confirmed the day

to join, one snowy winter Saturday in 2014. And so this dissertation project continued.

Captured

Since the first session at the dojo, every time I had randori with Miroza, I was so keen to avoid

the technique that smashed me. The impact of the first randori session was so strong that it was

almost as if I was waiting for the technique coming, and apparently this helped Miroza to execute

a variety of techniques that he could manipulate. After having several randori with him, I found

that the varieties of techniques in his arsenal were limited, yet the technique was enough to keep

me captured in his hands and thrown down to the mat over and over. It appeared that Miroza

enjoyed controlling my body, left and right, up and down, throwing me as much as he wished. It

would be almost funny to see my randori with him – I was so aggressively defending, with stiff

upper arms to keep my distance from him, and Miroza so calmly handling my force and stiffness,

converting it into his momentum to conduct the technique again and again.

Although I was completely overcome by the technique, and kept struggling with grasping what it

was, my process of going around being captured by the technique came to be a turning point to

break down something fundamental, something that I was taking for granted in the pursuit of

capturing the technique.

What is it to seek the technique?

I gradually started to memorize what he does, in a more qualitative sense – how hard he pushes,

how fast he pulls, simultaneously in which direction he steps forward and back, and so on.

Eventually realizing, it must be the irregular form of osoto-gari (large outer reap throwing

technique):

15

Figure 1-1. Osoto-gari judo technique according to the Kawaishi Method (Kawaishi & Gailhat, n.d., pp.30-31)

Pushing my chest enabled Miroza to control my body, as my upper body became stiff and tried

to recover balance, while my legs became still and ‘frozen’, all of which somehow helped

Miroza convert into enough momentum to throw my body to the mat. The difficulty of how it is

done – how fast, how strong, which part of chest, which hand, from which angle, and so on

remains indescribable.

Today, academic endeavor is indivisible from the effort of description. Surely the further I was

able to describe the moment of facing the technique, the more nuanced, sensed, and precise it

would become? However, the more I described, including considering the use of technological

devices to scan brain activity of athletes (for example, Naito & Hirose, 2014) in the way

progressive sport scientists would prefer, I felt I keep losing something. I could not stop finding a

16

significant gap between what I have been describing and what I experienced with Miroza, the

technique, on the first day.

It would partially be due to a matter of my memory – I cannot recall the technique Miroza

repeated in detail. Or maybe more precisely put, I could not recognize the details. Perhaps every

time I sparred with Miroza, I was so keen to see the technique coming, and to prevent myself

from being thrown, that my focus on my own body and my movement were amplified, at the cost

of observing Miroza’s. I was keen about observing his randori with other peers, wishing to get a

good view of the technique from an external position to compensate the insufficiency of

observation during my own grapple with him. This attempt was not so helpful to solve my

dilemma, as the view from aside was just from aside, different from the view from the inside.

Thoughts come in retrospect – maybe I should have let myself be thrown, intentionally, to focus

on how I was thrown rather than to furiously defend it, or maybe I should have simply asked him

how to do the technique. Before I started engaging with my research at the dojo officially,

though, Miroza stopped coming to the dojo.

My biggest struggle – Paradoxical

However, even if I could remember everything, and I could record every aspect of the technique,

I would not be able to describe it in a way that would necessarily be reproducible by myself or

others. The struggle with describing the technique Miroza conducted with me is that to me, the

technique was not conducted solely by Miroza, based on his subjective physicality or capability

to operate his body, against my body as his object to manipulate. It was not a simple dichotomy

of subject and object. It was as if I was cooperating with him to throw me by resisting so fiercely

not to be thrown. It was beyond cause and effect; when I was resisting hard, Miroza took

advantage of my stiffness, and I was thrown. The more I resisted, the more I was thrown, almost

as if I was willing to be thrown, while I resisted so tenaciously not to be.

This experience may sound paradoxical, because we would normally assume that there is a

logical order to be followed – if you are not willing to be thrown, you would not be willing to be

thrown. However, what I experienced was unreasonable in this sense, and yet reasonable for me

to understand, from my phenomenological experience. It was rather a cooperative practice where

multiple elements amalgamated – my body, Miroza’s right hand, my ego not to be thrown,

17

Miroza’s will to throw me, the atmosphere, the crowd, the conversation I had earlier with him,

and so many countless matters intertwined and resonated into the sequence of movement. Lines

that were drawn to divide my mind, my body, Miroza’s body, and all those different parts and

pieces receded to the background of linguistic explanations.

Probably, this situation was made more vivid by the fact that we were tied to each other, by

grappling with each other in order to throw – the dilemma of judo that to approach your

opponent, you need to let your body be grasped by your opponent, so as to have a good enough

grip to execute a throw. If you do not want be thrown, then you simply should not get close to

the opponent, but in judo you must get close enough in order to throw your opponent as well. In

this way, through the four sets of arms and hands, gripping each other, Miroza and I were almost

an entity, two people, but also an entity, and not. The movement can be understood as the matter

of this entity, instead of two divided humans, or cogitos, or even smaller pieces of neuro-

muscular objects that are so vague, and so chaotic. It was like dancing around with little aesthetic

beauty, one throws, one is thrown, and yet one performed a specific sequence of movement. At

the same moment, I was overcome by a state in which I could hear nothing and my eyesight

narrowed, and yet things were moving and rolling around as “flow” which Csikszentmihalyi

(1975, p.36) characterizes (also, see, Atkinson, 2009). Flow experience happens maybe when we

cannot rely on words to give reasonable explanations, to break it down, to articulate. It was a

paradoxical experience; subject and object, body parts, and all those things not separated, and yet

divided.

You might think Miroza simply took advantage of my physical condition, caused by my

psychological situation. Surely psychological condition, physical condition and physical-

psychological reactions are taking place – like lights switching on and off, as cause and effect.

This, is probably the normal, ordinary, and logical understanding of how physical movement

happens. However, here the emphasis is on the experience with Miroza’s technique going

beyond such logical order. In this horizon, where things get paradoxical, as subject and object for

instance, understanding the movement in the way we normally do, within the frame of cause and

effect (descriptively) seems to have a limitation: Why not what we call cause can be effect, and

effect can be cause, and not be both, and not be either, all at once, simultaneously?

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The experience’s provocation is not about whether questioning two humans can be one entity, or

the accuracy of body-mind dualism. But instead, provokes the approach we are used to, that

requires us to discuss things based on divided pieces of atoms that can be connected in limited

ways, and, or, either, would not allow us to understand things simultaneously. The uneasy

feeling, my struggle, encapsulates that what we call illogical and paradoxical can be natural, and

we might somehow mistake that natural should not be paradoxical, under the name of logical.

Illogical thoughts – Eugen Herrigel

Let me bring Eugen Herrigel’s work on his own experience here to illuminate the struggle I had

with the paradox of the technique. Herrigel is a Kantian philosopher from Germany, who taught

at university in Japan in the 1940s and spent six years learning Japanese archery (kyujutsu). His

teacher, Kyuzo Awa was a famous master of both sword and kyujutsu who initially refused to

teach Herrigel based on his prior unsuccessful teaching experiences with non-Japanese speakers.

Herrigel’s work on reflexing his learning experience of kyujutsu is regarded as an introductive

work of Zen to the Western world (Watts, 1957; Ogata, 1959), and his struggles in learning are

characterized as the reflection of academic limitation, which understands foreign cultural

practice as something caused by different cultural epistemology (Inoue, 2006).

However, the implication of this work should be found in his struggle to understand illogical

explanations during his learning experiences. The struggle is typically reflected in the way cause

and effect is explained by the master. Herrigel (1968) writes:

[O]ne day I asked the Master: ‘How can the shot be loosed if “I” do not do it?

‘”It” shoots,’ he replied.

‘I have heard you say that several times before, so let me put it another way: How can I

wait self-obviously for the shot if “I” am no longer there?’

‘”It” waits at the highest tension.’

‘And who or what is this “It”?’

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‘Once you have understood that, you will have no further need of me. And if I tried to

give you a clue at the cost of your own experience, I should be the worst of teachers and

should deserve to be sacked! So let’s stop talking it and go on practicing.’ (p.74)

Eventually, Herrigel (1968) got to the point that:

“Is it ‘I’ who draw the bow, or is it the bow that draws me into the state of highest

tension? Do ‘I’ hit the goal, or does the goal hit me? Is it ‘I’ spiritual when seen by the

eyes of the body, and corporeal when seen by the eyes of the spirit - or both or neither?

Bow, arrow, goal and ego, all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate

them. And even the need to separate has gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot,

everything becomes so clear and straightforward and so ridiculously simple….” (p.85)

Beyond Herrigel

There are two possible ways to understand Herrigel’s experience. One way is that accepting the

illogical experience as the product of cultural difference, which is based on epistemological

difference of the same ontological reality. Instead of being destructed by rhetorical issues that

confuse cause and effect, subject and object, ego and egoless, understanding the matter

scientifically instead of spiritually. This makes sense for many of us, as subject and object are

different as de facto. This is the starting line of his methodological attitude as well. Along with

such an approach, say, my paradoxical experience of the technique with Miroza would be

examined, not as the ontological matter (whether actually the actors are separated or not) but

rather as an epistemological matter (how such paradoxical understanding is enabled). The

majority of studies today that cope with such illogical and paradoxical experiences, if there are

any, would take this approach.

The other way is to examine the paradox and chaos as it is, as the world and reality, not as the

matter of epistemological issues of the existing ontological reality, but as the reality experienced.

It is our methodological approach that makes the reality appear as paradoxical and illogical, such

as that subject and object cannot be the same and yet different, or does not allow “it” to shoot.

However, imagine if there is no such difference between subject and object, cause and effect, in

this case, “it” shoots would not be illogical. The point to be highlighted is not whether logical

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and concise description of reality are produced by epistemological precisions, but rather about

the methodological approach, how subjects, objects, arrow, ego, and those things systematically

enforce us to follow specific orders to understand before objectivizing things to be observed.

Things can be logical, not because of how subjects and objects are understood, but because of the

way those concepts are produced within the system of language. What Master Awa’s approach

highlights here is that instead of his objects being understood differently, or given different

meanings (objects, signified), his approach simply negates the way Herrigel presupposed objects

to be separated. Things can be one, and also two simultaneously. Things can be paradoxical, in

its nature.

Since the randori with Miroza, and experiencing the chaotic and paradoxical moments, my

approach to understand started inclining to the latter approach. Instead of criticizing and

modifying our epistemological view along with conceptual tools to bring to the field, such as I,

you, to throw, to be thrown, I started paying more attention to the detailed way that an

experience can appear paradoxical from a point of view, yet natural from the way I experienced

it. In this way, without exoticizing/culturalising the illogical explanation of objects, I can simply

pursue the way that enables us to see – I am thrown, resisting to be thrown, but not willingly, and

thus, willingly.

At this time, I was not sure the feelings and experiences thus far had defined the direction of this

dissertation. The chaotic and paradoxical experience, at least, made me keener and more open to

those that are not necessarily cleanly described, like that of my experience sparring Miroza. I

came to be more cautious, or perhaps more aware of these moments than ever before, cautious

not to disturb the moment itself by my intervention of description. At least, I started feeling

something new; that a new way to engage with this world was about to open up in front of me.

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Chapter 2.

Limit of description

三島、太陽と鉄

「一つの外国語を学ぶようにして、肉体の言葉を学んだ」

Later, much later, thanks to the sun and the steel, I was to learn the language of

the flesh, much as one might learn a foreign language. (Mishima, 1971, p.6)

We are undeniably dependent on language, almost unable to escape from a linguistically based

understanding of this world. Even those matters that are essentially non-linguistic, such as that

which Mishima beautifully articulates, are a mere reflection of our methodological limitation to

capture reality that depends on language. I am curious if anyone has suggested dismantling

language in order to learn, learn more about flesh? Or is flesh only graspable when inserting

linguistic description as Mishima did above? The force of language is so powerful that it requires

a radical change, in order for us to push back on the underlining current, and for us to understand

learning before it gets swallowed by the tide.

After one training session, Ivan and Igor approached me. They were both brown belt, strongly

built twins from Russia, studying engineering at the local college. They had thrown me enough

times, and I had thrown them very few times in our past sparring sessions.

“Hey Yosuke”. The twins approach. “How do you call that technique in Japanese? The

one we learned today”. “Which one”? Not sure as we practiced several techniques, I

thought. “This one”. Ivan grabs Igor’s arm and rappels. Half rotates his body and puts his

backside into Igor’s stomach side. Igor’s body comes to the front, flipped by Ivan’s right

leg sticking out lower to ground level. Ivan simultaneously pulls Igor’s sleeve down to

the ground, while his rappel goes upward. Igor lands on the mat on his back. “I think this

is called tai-otoshi”. “Tai otoshi?” Igor tries to repeat it. “What does it mean in

Japanese?” Ivan replies. “Tai means body, and otoshi means drop down”. I see Ivan nods

his head strongly several times. “That makes sense. Actually, in Russian, we say it in a

similar way.”

22

An illustration of tai-otoshi according to the Kawaishi Method brought to Europe, below:

Figure 2-1. Tai-otoshi judo technique according to the Kawaishi Method (Kawaishi & Gailhat, n.d., pp. 84-85)

We practiced the technique that day in training, without having been informed of its name. Ivan,

Igor, myself, and the other members who trained that day also shared that we learned it without

knowing the name. I knew the name was tai-otoshi while we were learning the technique, as I

had learned the name previously during physical education class in Japan. I could not tell the

difference between what Sensei did and what my other Japanese teachers had demonstrated back

then. Ivan and Igor asking me the name of the technique in Japanese was an interesting incident,

as it revealed that they seem they know names of judo techniques in Russian. By asking the

name in Japanese and making sense of it, they seemed to have made an addition to their system

of nomenclature. The point here is that for some reason, Sensei did not tell us the name of the

23

technique, and the pupils often did not share a common linguistic and descriptive platform of

what we learned.

In training

During my three-year, weekly participation at the Challenge Judo Club (CJC) in north Toronto,

Canada, with the exception of summer camp, training sessions1 were structured as follows.

Pupils would start coming in to the tatami area of the dojo approximately five minutes ahead of

the official start. At this time, there were elementary school aged children training and the older

pupils coming in would find free spots to wait for their session start. Some would sit down on a

sofa, normally reserved for parents. After the children’s training had ended, to start the adult

session, Sensei called for a line up. The pupils would start to form a line, facing towards Sensei at

the front, with the higher-level belts on the right side. The highest belt initiated the greeting

ritual, then warm up started, typically a combination of playing soccer or handball followed by

jogging and stretching. The training would then move on to gymnastic training such as tumbling,

as well as some basic conditioning including abdominal crunches, pushups, and neck trainings.

After warming up, Sensei would make students line up again, and he would choose one pupil to

demonstrate a technique with. Normally, Sensei taught something new at each session, or at least

different from the previous sessions. Usually, the demonstration started with groundwork and no

name was introduced. Sensei explained what to do, with order, and demonstrated the technique.

Following this, students partnered up, usually with their similar level and body size/weight, then

scattered around far enough from each other so as to not disturb other pairs. Sensei would walk

around and give some individual advice, and sometimes stop and perform the technique on

pupils. After pupils spent some time attempting the technique, Sensei added more advice for

everyone. This was done usually from the spot where Sensei had stopped and found some

1 Each session had around ten pupils in attendance, from age of twelve to forty-five, both men and women. The

demography of participants periodically changed during the period of my involvement. The dojo also accepted

visitors who were not constant members of the dojo. During my research, the dojo relocated further north from

downtown Toronto, which affected an increase in junior participants from the surrounding suburban neighborhoods,

and the numbers of older downtown-based participants decreased.

24

common issues or points of explanation that needed to be added, and sometimes Sensei would

ask pupils to line up again and observe another demonstration.

Water break was given, often when the teenagers asked, and pupils would line up again and

another demonstration would happen. This time, throws (from standing position) were

demonstrated. The teaching approach was similar to that of ground techniques, and after having

another break, a sparring session came which did not exceed more than fifteen minutes. Finally,

pupils lined up again, bowing to Sensei, after which Sensei would give some comments and

announcements for coming training sessions. With that, the formal training ended. During my

stay with the CJC, there were a couple of teenagers who competed internationally, and they

tended to have some extra sessions after training. Some older pupils would lift weights in the

corner of the dojo, but most of the pupils would start to chat and leave the tatami area.

Techniques without names

During the training sessions, Sensei normally gave no names for the techniques we learned

except occasional mentions, such as seoi-nage, drop seoi-nage, ippon seoi-nage, tomoe-nage,

limited techniques, which were almost commonly, shared “key words” in the dojo. In any case,

there were substantially more cases that were simply carried out and demonstrated without

informing the pupils of the names. Interestingly, I have never encountered the students asking

Sensei for a name each time we learned techniques. It seems though, students had their own way

to manage this, without depending on nomenclatural information.

One time, I came to talk about the less descriptive approach at CJC with Vern. Vern, born in

Taiwan and grown up in Canada, was my age and was often to be my sparring partner, as his

level and body size were close to mine. In his car, while he was dropping me off at the nearest

train station after training, as he often did, we were talking about the training we just had that

day, as per usual.

“Hey Vern, did you notice Sensei does not really tell us the names for each technique he

teaches?” I ask. He keeps his hands on the wheel and replies. “Oh yes, I noticed that too.

I need to pay extra effort. You know what I do? I come back home and check the name at

home.”

25

“Do you have dictionary or something?”

“No, no, checking online.”

“How do you search them, though?”

“Just searching, you know, I am using this web site and try to find. For example, this

happened, one day, I wanted to see the technique I learned that day, and I went through

this web site. I could not find the exact one, but I found similar one. I think that was close

enough.”

The less descriptive approach Sensei conducted left Vern re-questing for his question and

answer, motivating him to search more on his own. In his search he got to some answers, which

still required him to improvise. In this way, students needed to be attentive to a wide-open

possibility of movements to learn. Seeking linguistic description is merely one of them.

Why less descriptive?

It is easy to estimate that the less described explanation was coming from Sensei’s fluency in

English, or a lack of knowledge of all the correct terms. But, he could have announced the name

in whatever form he knew, as the bilingual students fluent in both English and Russian often

helped Sensei clarify what he attempted to say in English. Perhaps, however, he simply did not

use names so often. When he did, those were limited techniques considered as fundamental ones,

such as seoi-nage. Here, the focal point is that uniqueness of such a less descriptive practice, as

judo is heavily tied with nomenclature – each technique has its name, and when a new emerging

technique appears, it is named and spread by the judo community2 .

2 “Korean seoi-nage”, for instance, spread in the past decade globally. It is a transformed version of the orthodox

seoi-nage and received attention because of its use by South Korean judoka in international competitions.

26

Figure 2-2. Seoi-nage judo technique according to the Kawaishi Method (Kawaishi & Gailhat, n.d., p.76-77)

Although the approach Sensei takes is irregular, I started to find that this very practice of less

descriptive learning leaves matters chaotic. When I learned a technique, I was often not sure

where it started and ended. Sometimes I could not tell whether the techniques were demonstrated

for the first time or second time on the same day, or on different days, were the same or different.

When I did not have an exact reference point, I just needed to memorize the technique as the

sequence of movement as a seamless whole, instead of the collective mass of moments done by

conjoined mechanically divided pieces of my body.

For instance, below are my field notes from December 4th, 2014:

27

Figure 2-3. Field notes from December 4th, 2014

While the drawings of movements are chronologically arranged, together with some notes of

descriptions, I did not write any particular heading for the notes except “ground work” at the top

of the page. I do not know the name for what I drew and wrote. I was simply remembering the

technique, as a technique.

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In this context, my participation within this judo practice deepened differently than ever before; I

started to understand bodily that the movements are executed in fundamentally different ways,

but that they all come to belong to the same category of "technique", like an index to refer to.

Sometimes there were names that I thought I already knew, in those cases the names were

attached to the movements automatically. That naming and categorization, such as grappling, or

throwing techniques, helped me to further categorize new movements into each category by

finding the sameness.

In contrast to those movements I experienced in the field that can ultimately happen without

having names to learn, sharing physical movements in order to learn them as objects, makes this

linguistic and symbolic approach unavoidable. The spelled-out words, such as seoi-nage, are

tools that can be shared in communication with others. Even more, it becomes an index for

ourselves to recall and engage with the past memory from the present mind, to communicate

with one self.

This discussion is no exception to linguistic description. When it comes to academic attempts,

we need to rely on words and symbols in order to share the objects we are talking about in order

to be on the same platform of academic discussion.

The point here is that academic works, particularly those focusing on physical movements in

many realms, are constructed based on this approach relying on the technique or any relevant

conceptual frameworks; movements are named, captured, and spelled out, as the category of the

activity (such as judo) or the movements (such as seoi-nage), or even a specified part of the body

(such as triceps) in order to objectivise physical movements to be investigated. While a linguistic

approach is commonly used in everyday life, it also contains a conceptual background,

academically. Below, I illustrate how the technique conceptually developed, and how the

concept is woven into current academic condition, and into my own struggles in the field.

What is ‘a technique of the body’?

They all become, in a manner of speaking, parts of a machine or, better, spokes of a

wheel: the magical round dance, performed and sung, becomes the ideal image of the

situation... Each body shares the same passion, each face wears the same mask, each

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voice utters the same cry...To see all these figures masked with the image of the same

desire, to hear all mouths uttering proof of their certainty- everyone is carried away, there

is no possibility of resistance, by the convictions of the whole group. All the people are

merged in the excitement of the dance. In their feverish agitation they become but one

body, one soul. It is then that the corporate social group genuinely manifests itself,

because each different cell, each individual is closely merged with that of the next, like

the cells which make up an individual organism. (Mauss, 2001, pp. 163-164)

Historically, the technique has been a staple concept in the social sciences. It was Mauss that

elaborated the methodological scope to include the human body. By linking the body to

“techniques of the Body” or body techniques, he elaborated the way to approach broad

dimensions of human life. “The body is man's first and most natural instrument. Or more

accurately, not to speak of instruments, man's first and most natural object, and at the same time,

technical means, is his body.” (Mauss, 1973, p. 75) Many studies have been pursuing this

framework to facilitate their research. Learning particular techniques of the body is inseparable

from the social order and relationships embodied in social environments. For instance,

educational environments are produced along with exercising social authorities, and learning

takes place with pupils’ practice such as “prestigious imitation” (Mauss, 1973, p. 73). Hunter and

Saunders (1995) characterize that the concept highlights that we are “inducted” (p. 75) into

bodily attributes without rational choices or tests and hypothesis to implement to learn.

However, this does not mean techniques are beyond our conscious knowledge or “unconscious

domain” (Hunter & Saunders, 1995, p. 75).They fall neither within nor beyond the reach of

knowledge, because they belong to another department of existence. This domain Mauss calls

training or ‘prestigious imitation’, its hallmark being not scientific circumspection but habitual

virtuosity” (Hunter & Saunders, 1995, p.75).

The concept has been producing the foundation for studies to rely on subjectivity not as isolated

matter, but as the intersection between physical, psychological, and social, in chronological

connection between past and present (Levi-Strauss, 1987, p.8). The scope toward the concept of

habitus that is used widely today in academic works is also inheriting Mauss’s focus on the

techniques that are acquired socially, and consider the technique as a product of the intersecting

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biological, physical, and cultural.

This enables studies to pursue “all the possibilities of the human body and of the methods of

apprenticeship” (Levi-Strauss, 1987, p.8) which illuminates the social more than a mere mass of

individuals (see, Durkheim,1951; Mauss, 2007). Even further, the apprenticeship becomes a

method, which enables us to study production of habitus instead of the products of habitus

(Wacquant, 2005).

Today’s ‘techniques of the body’ as mainstream methodological foundation

Today, many scholars deploy the technique or related conceptual frames as the basis of their

studies with or without the use of the exact terminology of the technique. Categorizations of a

specific movement or specific social groups, essentially provide scholars a platform for their

scope. Here, the concept of the technique enables scholars to find diversity in movements as well

as social groups consisting of those who pursue a specific type of physical movement or “body

project” (Shilling, 2003, p.5).

From cultural analysis to biological experiments, categorizations of movement are the

methodological backbone of studies today. The concept enables categorizations to be envisioned

and enables collectivity to be defined. For instance, in his work Mauss (1973) raised the example

of soldiers’ resting positions, which he defined as techniques, thus opening the analytical scope

of the study towards those cultural groups who share the technique, as well as those who don’t.

The categorization of physical movement enables us to imagine different social groups along

with the physical movements and make comparisons, which in turn enables us to consider how

globalization brought “cultural” diversity, for instance.

It is based on this methodological foundation that increasing attention is given to the body and

the technique (Becker, 2004). To go beyond the body-mind dichotomies, embodiment becomes

the focal point for studies to investigate in a cultural world where to make a “biological body into

being” (Norland, 2009, p.5) is specific for each social and cultural collective.

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Based on the framework focusing on embodiment, Wacquant (2005) for example proposes carnal

sociology: embodied experience is the starting point for analyzing human participation.

A carnal sociology that seeks to situate itself not outside or above practice but at its

“point of production” requires that we immerse ourselves as deeply and as durably as

possible into the cosmos under examination; that we submit ourselves to its specific

temporality and contingencies; that we acquire the embodied dispositions it demands and

nurtures, so that we may grasp it via the prethetic understanding that defines the native

relation to that world - not as one world among many. (Wacquant, 2005, p.466)

Against culturalism and hybridity

Studies that elaborate their theoretical and conceptual understanding of human life, particularly

of the lived, phenomenological body, by and large adapt this methodological framework of the

techniques of the body: The “technique of the body” is identified, and the group of people who

share the process of acquiring the technique become identifiable, and thus chronological changes

of human performance, including those of researchers’ themselves is enabled. Techniques of the

body have been utilized as “a method of classification” (Turner, 1992, p.44), which gives a

foundation to categorize people to exclude/include along with the particular bodily movement. It

is probably one of the most influential parts of the concept of the technique of the body, which

prepares collective groups as a solid and fundamental category to be set up, methodologically.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a good example that sheds light on the problem of depending on

the classificatory without considering the methodological limitation that the classificatory can

enforce. The term MMA is commonly used by the general population, and increasingly in

academic studies. The point concerning culture and classification here is twofold.

Firstly, as Carrington and McDonald (2001) point out, in MMA there is no monolithic culture or

collective of discrete homogenous groups disconnected by the surrounding environments. All

culture, citing Said (1994), is “involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid,

heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithis” (p.xxv). Thus, MMA can be

reflecting today’s globalizing and intersecting different cultural practices, especially of martial

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arts around the world as “a hybridization of fighting styles” (Sanchez & Malcolm, 2010, p.40)

and considered as the amalgamation of ‘eastern’ and ‘western’.

In contrast, it is also difficult to ignore the fact that such a notion of hybridity is depending on

multiplicities. As Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell (2007) note, there are scholars whose work

goes beyond so-called Cartesian dualism and those segregations that are indeed depending

heavily on a priori dichotomic distinctions. References to cultural, multi-cultural and a hybridity

of cultures, assume each culture as a solid entity that is different from the other. Thus, by

adopting the single category MMA for mixed martial arts, for example, it not only frames the

specific types of physical movements that are part of MMA, it also reserves each component of

MMA as explicit and independent entities with the possible inter-penetration ignored. While the

name MMA is commonly used in our everyday life, scholars do not necessarily need to follow

the framework treating the category as a conclusive, closed entity of objects to investigate.

Studies can pursue what the practices are of people who do so-called MMA, before limiting their

academic scope to MMA itself.

Methodological coupling

Based on my field experience at least I started realizing that myself, within the field as a

researcher, had been relying on such separatism of social and linguistic groups, and even the

classification of each technique I observed. It was beyond my attention that my reliance on the

technique, conceptually, plays a critical role in my academic approach, and can indeed, simplify

our understanding, methodologically.

By relying on the concept, I had been attempting to encapsulate the sequence of movements I

experienced with Miroza to refer to it, as the technique. It, the technique enabled me to keep

referring and imagining the experience I had as the same category of experience (the technique),

which enabled me to frame the people practicing judo in the dojo as a rigid social group. Because

of this, I can discuss it right now, as a single category, otherwise it could be a multiple, endless,

spectrum of movements where we do not know the start or end, who and what is involved and

how. Here, my linguistic approach of naming, and the attempt of articulation, plays a key role to

reduce differences in the movement itself, the spectrum of movement to be captured,

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encapsulated, frozen, into a solid unchanging object (the technique) in order to compare,

induct/deduct, and discuss reasonably.

Driven by the question of what is ‘the technique’?

What is the technique? It was the question that I was driven to pursue. However, the question is

depending on the concept of the technique itself.

The question “what?” is thus correlative with what it wishes to discover, and already has

recourse to it. Its quest occurs entirely within being, in the midst of what it is seeking. It

is ontology, and at the same time has a part in the effectuation of the very being it seeks

to understand. If the question “what?” in its adherence to being is at the origin of all

thought ( can it be otherwise, as long as thought proceeds by determinate terms?), all

research and all philosophy go back to ontology, to the understanding of the being of

entities, the understanding of essence. Being would be not only what is most

problematical; it would be what is most intelligible. (Levinas, 1991, pp.23-24)

Once I started to be dependent on the technique, forthcoming movements were also sorted out

with reference to the technique and related frameworks accordingly: The new technique is

imaginable by depending on other techniques I already know, as old ones. Miroza’s technique

was categorized right away, as my finding the differences from what I knew previously as a

technique (osoto-gari) as an index to compare with, thus this concept of a technique (osoto-gari)

helped me to distinguish from, and even highlight the uniqueness of the technique. The one I

describe as a technique becomes the pre-condition for the other technique (Simmel, 1994). Here,

the technique, even knowledge of a single technique, plays as an index3 to label and memorize

other movements to be sorted by. Based on the index, we can further define and describe things

as the same and determine the line to separate things that are new and different. Movements can

be new and different from each other every single time they are performed, and the

categorization of those movements plays the role of bundling, gathering, and drawing lines to

indicate the same, and help map the bundles of differences. Reference to the movement again

3 Index here refers not to a Piercian term, but simply the literal meaning

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and again and thereby requires you, the readers to also accept it as the same: the technique. Even

further, the descriptive approach helps to stabilize pre-held nomenclature. Technique A is

different from technique B, and by the same token, technique B becomes different from

technique A. The more techniques are used, the more they are mutually strengthening the

methodology itself.

Techniques are in their nature, descriptive.

Importantly, the way the technique is imagined and applied as description actually constricts the

performance of physical movements to the way that they can be described. Elias’s work is

insightful here, particularly his elucidation of how linguistic description designates the way we

objectivise the world.

Elias states:

Consequently we always feel impelled to make quite senseless conceptual distinctions,

like “the individual and society,” which makes it seem that “the individual” and “society”

were two separate things, like tables and chairs or pots and pans. One can find oneself

caught up in long discussions of the nature of the relationship between these two

apparently separate objects. Yet on another level of awareness one may know perfectly

well that societies are composed of individuals, and that individuals can only possess

specifically human characteristics such as their abilities to speak, think, and live, in and

through their relationships with other people- “in society.” (Elias, 1978, p.113)

In its nature, linguistic description cannot leave things undivided. Physical movements to be

described into the technique are no exception of this. The more descriptions accumulate, it is

unavoidable to make objects engendered, separated, and divided. By relying on description, we

are to divide physical movements in the way we can articulate and divide, such as the “actor”

separated from the activity, and objects distinguished from relationships.

The discussion goes even further. Once I started describing, further descriptions came as chains

of re-actions, with grammatical rules to follow. This reflects a point that description is not a mere

neutral approach, piling up descriptions here and there in order to represent reality as the way it

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is. Rather, it directs to a specific direction where a particular linguistic system governs (Elias,

1998).

The point raised here is the matter of (meta)methodology – in this case, the methodology of

linguistic description that we are depending on. The technique, which I had been seeking might

be there, not because such a technique exists externally to our experiences, but because I tried to

seek it through my experience, with a specific methodological attitude of linguistic description.

The more I intend to describe, the more cause and effects are defined, and the more each subject

and object are vividly divided. Detailed descriptions are making clear the divisions between each

object to be described, and guide us to frame things in cause and effect.

When you envision the technique, the linguistic methodology is there already behind it, shaping

the signifier, while simultaneously igniting the signified. In this way, we make movements into

conceptualized objects – and the movements are defined into a specific shape that can be slotted

into the dichotomy of signified/signifier.

Thus, the technique, we are so much relying on, is a concept that not only divides the nature of

movement, but the descriptive approach enables the concept of the technique and envisions

movement as something that can be framed within descriptive methodology. Even those matters

that are not framed by description are envisioned as “indescribable matter” in the bigger and

major realm of descriptive manner (Lahav, 1990). Therefore, the phrase “techniques without

names” that I defined from my field experience is not precise enough: once I envision a

technique as a category, it is already objectivized together with descriptive methodology. Thus,

the technique is more than a conceptual framework to use; it is an approach that performs the

world to be captured in a very specific ontological way.

If I extend this approach, then, it is not merely Cartesian dualism that enforces the separation of

body and mind, or that describes phenomenological experience to be paradoxical and illogical.

Subject and object cannot be described as subject, object, both of them, and neither of them, at

the same time, and not at the same time, not because of the nature of the objects, but because of

the descriptive methodology itself. Body/mind dualism occurs, not because body and mind are

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separated different entities by themselves. It is linguistic descriptions that require body and mind

to be separated, as different entities, which enables the dualistic view towards what we call body

and mind.

How many of us, especially of those studying physical cultural practices from social scientific

perspectives, are dedicated to see what it is we are studying, and capture as it is, before

discussing it as something that we have already categorized? At least my experience with Miroza

with the technique became a turning point to shed light on the paradox, the methodological

impact of relying on the term the technique.

Linguistic description,especially that of the widely used technique, leads us to pre-frame what we

face even before we actually investigate what it is. Things are pre-possessed. Pre-cut

systematically. Indeed, my describing the methodological issue provoked by the technique ‘in a

specific shape’ itself is limiting the possible ontological state of the objects to pursue in a very

much eucridical way, ‘shape’ which does not withhold other sensorial or somatic senses.

Interestingly, Elias himself was cautious about Figuration, as the term itself can be the product of

process-reduction (Elias, 1998, p.38).

Rethinking the starting line

Linguistic description, or our practice of articulation, sets up a technique, and characterizes,

discusses, analyses, and represents in specific ways which we are required to follow; like an

attempt of building up bricks to re-trace the original experience. What scholars are striving for is

to find appropriate bricks to put along with the original experience. The shapes. The texture. The

size. The color. Different material to bring. Maybe straws. The approach is destined to fail,

especially when we intend to re-trace physical movements by using bricks – simply because,

experiences are not composed by bricks (language and symbols) nor was even a building. It was

a movement.

We have been chasing to build up bricks of descriptions. The shape we can construct by using

bricks is limited. As bricks are, pre-designed by our intent to utilize them – building up. This,

somehow recalls what the myth of the Tower of Babel implies. There are so many buildings in

academia today seeking to go up.

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A descriptive approach is literally ‘shaping’ our academic works, as well as preparing objects to

be shaped, as shapeable materials. If there is a thing that a descriptive approach cannot shape as

its objects, such a thing would not be objectivized. Is there any other way, from a very different

approach, methodologically? Perhaps throwing the bricks away and forgetting about using bricks

at all to ‘build up’?

Good-bye to ‘the technique’

The engagement at the dojo, tackling the technique gradually objectivized my deep dependency

on linguistic description of the technique, but even further, our dependency on linguistic

descriptions as a methodological backbone. It is so common for us today to see understanding as

linguistic description. Once we receive words and symbols that are produced, we almost

automatically start juggling the two balls of decoding and encoding to seek meanings. At least,

we normally do not refuse to handle descriptions as the medium of our academic approach. This

must be largely owing to our trust toward the descriptive approach, an almost non-critical

acceptance of the descriptive as (meta)methodological foundation. Well understood is almost

equal to that of well described, often called articulated, which is reflected in academic products

and communication almost exclusively exchanged and published in the form of descriptions.

Thus, in this circumstance, the ‘Kingdom of description’, would require massive efforts for us to

relativize the fundamental restrictions we have around the descriptive methodology we are

heavily relying on.

Once we know the name of the technique, however, it is difficult to live our life without relying

on it, like those who live in light cannot recognize darkness in the cave more than non-

enlightendness (Gertz, 2010).

Here the descriptive methodology emerges as the key. If we can throw away a descriptive

approach, if possible, this will be a methodological challenge to provoke something new,

something different from dependency on the technique.

After I started noticing the coupling of the technique and description, and the methodological

limitation that weaves our own experiences, I started to detach myself from the concept of the

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technique and started to pay attention to the movements I experience, gradually. It would be

much easier to simply follow and find names, by using nomenclature. However, if I choose to

follow a descriptive approach, I feel everything that I had started grasping would slip from my

fingers. My field notes had more pictures than words than ever before. The notes are vague and

unarticulated, and the unsorted chaos is driving me now to explore the physical experience

differently.

In the next chapter, I highlight the limitation of how a descriptive approach shapes its object to

be objectivized in the way it can be described. This will be an invitation for you to get onboard a

new methodological journey.

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Chapter 3.

Wandering in a dark labyrinth

Philosophy [nature] is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands

continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first

learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

(Galilei, 1623, p.4)

Social science has long been a discipline of linguistic words. Consider the image of a page from

my field notebook below:

Figure 3-1. Excerpt from field notes of hand drawn pictures of judo in motion.

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If I were to claim that the above notes are the final academic product of my research, and not the

by-product such as data to be analyzed, you surely would not agree. Why do we have this

reaction? It is likely that the assumption is to see the notes as mere data – having too little

articulation of academic discussions or results. The notes do not represent any numbers and

symbols that compose what Galilei (1623) referred to as, ‘the grand book, the universe’ (p.4).

Final products, academic products, are far more polished, meaning well-articulated numbers and

discussions in a specific format, and often of a specific quantity – we are expecting academic

products to be a specific shape.

Indeed, dependency on descriptions is not limited to social science, but it is the matter

transcending the social /natural or qualitative/quantitative sciences. Consider symbols in general,

from signs, numbers, and words that are used in any scientific practice. This attempt is well

reflected by our effort of understanding the world by using alphabets – genomes, mathematical

equations, and words – the world we live in is explained and constructed with a maximum effort

by using the combinations, for example, of 26 letters, and numbers from 0 to 9. Hand drawn

pictures of judo in motion, as above, thus would not seem to explain the world, and would resign

to mere data to support a digitizing practice.

In the meantime, those final academic products that we get to hold in our hands, or see in front of

our eyes, do not vividly retain the original experiences that a researcher had directly. Or perhaps,

researchers are asked not leave any traces from the field. There are no drops of sweat or coffee

stains. The heavy penmanship piercing through the pages disappears. Anger in the field is

magically reduced into several black letters of the same font – a-n-g-e-r on clean white paper.

Today, the tendency is going even further as more and more information is accessible online, as

if the information is there external to our life and we simply need to access it as we choose. What

we call knowledge, now, seems not so far away in the galaxy waiting to be discovered, rather it

is waiting to be simply accessed digitally and downloaded to computers. It is not only academic

results that are digitized; the process for us get to those academic works are as well – from hand

writing to typing, paper to PDF files, library to the internet. Several clicks, and there you go –

going through books and books, from page to page analogically is largely becoming a way of the

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past. The gap between the field and knowledge seems wider than ever before, and the

serendipities that can influence our lives are eliminated by our own approach.

It is clear that our academic works are heavily dependent upon description as the methodological

foundation. Here, what Galilei (1623) states seems to not only still live on today, but appears to

be becoming bigger and bigger; the purpose of science became reading/deciphering/revealing the

truth of knowledge of this world, which is already there external to us and waiting to be read. We

are just busy deciphering the written, by using words/symbols that we already have.

Behind thick description

In this circumstance, it seems natural that scholars are eager to seek a useful and convenient

mediation/method that can help them reach the answer, to decipher and to represent neatly.

Richness of understanding as knowledge is thus connected to the ‘thickness’ of descriptions –

dense descriptions of social life to achieve cultural interpretations –this logic is characterized by

concepts such as “thick description”(Geertz, 1973, pp.6-7). This reflects a default position that

studies seek to further their descriptions to fully capture their objects, especially those that

normally cannot be described, and conceptual elaborations are celebrated. To do so, varieties of

angles, settings, times, categories, objects, locations, and not least, methods, are adapted in order

to achieve describing more.

Thickness, which is largely based on the notion of descriptions, is situated as the mantra for

many studies today. From socio-cultural to behavioral, and even biological approaches, studies

are by and large initiated by descriptive approaches that perceive ontological objects as

definable, and seek to sophisticate the measure to approach epistemologically.

Importantly, the ontological object to be described needs to be there in order to be described.

Based on this starting line, many discussions go toward emphasizing their epistemological part

with the object to be investigated ontologically presupposed; the world is there, and the

substance is how we can perceive world differently, by adding different perspectives, and how

we intellectually understand the world. As reflected in the concept the techniques of the body; the

argument goes towards understanding epistemological issues of the specific group of people as

defined collectively, grouped and categorized by the notion of the technique.

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The dilemma

Adding description, thicker and thicker, is the way scholars are driven in an epistemological

effort to represent nuanced and sensed representation of the ontological reality. The descriptive

approach does not allow things to remain unstated, undescribed, in the way that Sensei had done.

It forces us to state, comment, vocalize the unstated, and describe even the moments of silence as

‘silence’. While the descriptive approach illustrates a given situation, it is dependent on masking

other actions that are taking place at the same moment. By this approach, we only can suppose

and imply the silence, by spelling it out, and by continuing to describe the condition. The

limitation of a descriptive-based approach is well illuminated here: The action of the undescribed

is only imaginable through a descriptive way.

Something I lost due to thick description

The dilemma I outline here is that when field practice is done less descriptively, the illustration

of the practice intervenes with the actual practice in the field.

Squeeze. Push. Pull. Down. Like this.

Sensei said a few words, which was his action before making meanings for pupils. Whether his

approach is intentional or not, with some meanings behind of the unsaid or not, at least his less

descriptive action activates our practice including my experience of confusion. For instance,

without observing visually, we cannot tell which part of the demonstrator opponent’s body

Sensei was squeezing. Yes, I can describe where they were from my view by myself as an

observer. Approximately 10 cm below the chin. Toward his left chest. Fifty milliseconds after

one opponent taps their hand or feet on the other’s, or on the tatami mat. If I were to further

pursue to describe what Sensei means, I should interview Sensei and ask for the details. Or

maybe I should set up monitoring cables on Sensei’s head, and record how the brains and neuro-

spines are acting as sources of ‘data’ to show what ‘this’ indicates. In these ways, at least, thick

descriptions we seek would eventually be achieved, if not completed.

However, even with the visual participation in the field, I still could not point out what exactly

Sensei was indicating by the word, ‘this’. It could be degree of pain. Can you see pain? I can

imagine pain in people’s expressions, but I cannot see the pain itself. It can be the texture of the

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opponent’s body, such as muscles hardened by resistance. It can be neither. It can be both. It can

be something else that I did not expect, such as sound. Or perhaps something I did not even

realize, or fathom being important, like the smell. It can indeed, be nothing to be indicated but a

succession of movements. The point invoked here is that by trying to thicken description, I

infringe on the very way Sensei actually does – less descriptive and chaotic instruction. By

description, I might mistakenly insert words and meanings that are the very things Sensei’s

action avoids intentionally or not. Or even further, by description, I set an assumption that the

world is there as a describable object. The idea of thick description works here as the driving

force for us to pursue this methodological approach further and further. It, indeed, is the start of

an endeavour that leaves us farther and farther from the moment and movement itself.

Like this.

It invites us to find what it indicates, by seeking the meaning of the word, ‘this’. What is

illustrated here is the vagueness of Sensei’s direction, rather than a need for an explicit

clarification of what is indicated. The absence indicated by those few words becomes a trigger

for our action of seeking. Barthes’s argument on haiku is suggestive on this point. Barthes (1989)

claims that description and definition are two functions of writing that disappear in haiku: Where

Western art transforms impression into description, haiku does not, instead, haiku is rather

“counter-descriptive”(p.77) and can “achieve exemption from meaning” (p.81).

The haiku diminishes to the point of pure and sole designation. It's that, it’s this, says the

haiku, it’s so. Or better still: so! …Here meaning is only a flash, a slash of light: When

the light of sense goes out, but with a flash that has revealed the invisible world,

Shakespeare wrote ; but the haiku's flash illumines, reveals nothing; it is the flash of a

photograph one takes very carefully (in the Japanese manner) but having neglected to

load the camera with film. (Barthes, 1998, p.83)

Sensei’s less descriptive approach can be understood here; ‘this’ is not to indicate something

decisively, like pointing out the signified as the function of signifier. The attempt functions

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instead as decreasing such dichotomies of the classificatory, and the products are written just to

write.

(H)aiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the

haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that! with a movement so

immediate (so stripped of any mediation: that of knowledge, of nomination, or even of

possession) that what is designated is the very inanity of any classification of the object :

nothing special, says the haiku. (Barthes, 1998, p.83)

The importance found in less descriptive practice in haiku would be not only applicable to how

Sensei practices his teaching, but even further, provocative as it might be, facilitating what the

students do; learning nothing more and nothing less than simply ‘this’, but not learning any other

things classified as a specific type of techniques of the body. Here, Sensei’s less descriptive

approach brings a new scope to illustrate how physical movements are woven in our everyday

lives.

Like this, undivided, leave things as chaos

It seems deep down, our methodological attitude is one of trust in and belief of thick description,

which is somehow equalized as better and richer (read, scientific) understanding. When Galilei

refers to the book on which philosophy, nature, and our understanding of this world are written,

he sees the book as “…written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles,

circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a

single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth” (Galilei, 1623, p.4). In

this way, academic inquiry has been almost decisively aimed in a specific direction; a strive for

making the yet unknown into the known, to uncover and decipher those that have not been

described in the book yet.

It not only restricts academic inquiries in being less descriptive, it also preconditions

methodological approaches to be divided. The division starts taking place from the moment

description is produced, even from the moment the simple word that Sensei says, ‘this’. Elias

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points out the division of descriptions from the very moment they occur as ‘process reduction’

(Elias, 1978, p.112).

Our languages are constructed in such a way that we can often only express constant

movement or constant change in ways which imply that it has the character of an isolated

object at rest, and then, almost as an afterthought, adding a verb which expresses the fact

that the thing with this character is now changing.

By adding descriptions to illustrate movements, making them thicker and thicker, we keep

reducing the initial process of movements and thus our awareness of the world becomes limited.

Even further, we put values on “change-reducing abstraction” (Elias, 1982, p.13) as academic

achievements. Elias (1982) urges that atemporality becomes the essential condition of matters

epistemologically, as well as that changes and movements of this world are ontologically set

essentially as non-moving. This substantively affects the views of the world itself that we live in,

as Elias (1982) remarks: “Knowledge of that which is devoid of all movements which can be

represented by timeless abstractions, appears not only as more appropriate, but also as more

profound than knowledge of change-continua themselves and of their immanent sequential

order” (p.13).

Toward ‘thinness’ of description, as the matter of time

The less descriptive approach I came to find at the CJC in Toronto, counter-highlights the

methodological tradition of thick description. To this day, I do not know the exact reason why

Sensei avoided explanations. Perhaps there was no intention on his part. However, the point is

that no matter what the reason or intention was behind it, or structural causes and effects, his less

descriptive actions activated the judo practice in the way it appeared. Technically, I could have

asked and received an answer to this question, but I chose not to – in hopes of not losing sight of

my own journey to understand. Huxley (1979) illuminates well the dilemma of depending on

linguistic descriptions:

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into

which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the

accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him

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in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of

reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

(p.104).

By thickening description, we are doomed to lose the movement we attempted to grasp. Even

further, we start taking that available information as the piece of ontological reality. The

available information is process-reduced, and thus becomes transferable over time and location

as an atemporal, frozen package of concepts. The way we grasp the world is indeed, heavily

affected by the very approach we use, thus the world we strive to understand is already

preformed in the way we can describe it, in the shape of languages and symbols.

Description thus is not a mere method that we are freely choosing in order to understand the

ontological reality. In other words, description is the key action that produces the reality to be

objectivized. If so, then, what if we reduce description itself? Do we fail to understand the

world? Or, can we understand the world differently? Here, in facing the meta-methodological

limitation of description, I propose thin description as an approach to explore. The discussion

around the technique reveals that the ontological preformation that a descriptive approach brings

is widely accepted among studies focusing on physical movement, almost as a default. In

contrast, less descriptive practice in the field illuminates that first and foremost, there is a

qualitative gap between physical movement that people engage in and the descriptions of it.

Sensei’s practice highlighted this gap, and how taken for granted descriptive methods for

physical learning are.

‘Thin’ description

Proposing thin description is the attempt to shed light on the default position by which our

understanding of physical movement has been narrowly structured.

While the practice in the field is less descriptively conducted, and the less descriptive approach

seems to function as the key of the field practice to proceed, our academic approach is not geared

to grasp such less descriptive practice as it is. By setting thinness of description as the direction

to pursue, the method attempts to highlight what it can grasp and how the world to be grasped

emerges. As thick description has no precise measurement or definition of how ‘thick’ exactly,

47

thinness here emerges only in comparison with thickness. Simply for now, I leave thinness as a

methodological direction to pursue rather than setting a definite measurement.

Non-representational?

There is a linkage here of a thin descriptive approach with non-representational or more-than

representational theory and their methodologies (see, for example, Thrift, 2007; Lorimer, 2005;

Vannini, 2015). Emerging mainly from geographers in the 1990s, these studies focused on

understanding everyday life experiences of people, which tended to be lost in those studies that

pursued to uncover and represent meanings behind daily acts (McHugh, 2009; Boltanski &

Porter, 2012). Ingold’s (2015) word for a non-representational approach illuminates the key

point, “In truth, it is articulation that has silenced the word, by drawing it out and fixing its

coordinate of reference, independently of the vocal - gestural currents of its production.” (p.ix)

The driving force for those non-representational approaches is based on the ontological view

toward the world that is more than what we can grasp and represent in the way we do. Based on

the critical view, non- representational methodologies seek and cultivate their academic products

to be more than a re-presentation of something already there framed and waiting to be

represented. In this attempt, the researcher’s physical engagement through the body to join the

world becomes the key issue (Vannini, 2015a, p.321). Here, the non-representational approach

aims to “escape from the domain of the word, representation” (Ingold, 2015, p.viii) which

echoes with this project, which is underscoring the very process of academic engagement.

With consideration of insights from non-representational methodologies, it is important to

highlight the difference between thin description and non-representation. Non-representational

approaches are geared toward reforming their academic products to ‘animate’ instead of

represent.

By ‘animating’ lifeworlds, non-representational ethnographic styles aim to enliven,

render, cultural geographies resonate, rupture, re-imagine, and to generate possibilities

for fabulation. If indeed there is a quintessential non-representational style, then it is that

of becoming entangled in relations and objects, rather than studying their structures and

48

symbolic meanings, thus animating the potential of these meshworks for our geographical

imagination. (Vannini, 2015a, pp.319-320)

A performative approach is the key concept behind the non-representational methodologies

(Thrift & Dewsbury, 2000, p.412). This is reflected by the decreased focus on representing

empirical reality prior to the act of representation, and more on academic practice and

performativity so that they can be “enacting multiple and diverse potentials of

what knowledge can become afterwards” (Vannini, 2015b, p.12). To do so, the emphasis is on

their effort to transfer the invisible to visible, silences to audible (see, Vannini, 2015b) or “to

produce spaces which flirt and flout, gyre and gimble, twist and shout” (Thrift & Dewsbury,

2000, p.412).

Although the non-representative effort is cultivating a new academic terrain, especially engaging

a diversity of modalities of academic end products, in a view, those works are still standing on

the same academic domain that relies on description. By imagining a non-representational

approach, what they are seeking to achieve is inseparable from the representational approach

itself, and the representational paradigm. As Russel (2001) explains:

[W]e cannot say, there is this and this in the world, but not that, for to say so would

apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case,

since it would require that logic should go beyond the boundaries of the world as if it

could contemplate these boundaries from the other side also. (p.16)

Non-representational approaches are in a sense, setting a bird’s eye view that can overview a

whole and thus it can claim the necessity of capturing or non-representing ontological objects

that have not been grasped by major representational works. In other words, imagination towards

those that have not been well captured by studies is enabled by the methodological attitude that

foresees or ‘foresenses’ wider than existing studies that fail to present. In the meantime, their

bird’s eye view is still based on descriptive methodology from which objects of the studies are

tailored prior to conducting their research in a describable manner. In other words, by

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maintaining a descriptive methodology, a non-representational approach imagines what it would

non-represent in its work.

Instead of transferring the invisible to visible, or capturing silence, this project puts its focal point

on grasping matters that we have not fully investigated, or even have not imagined ontologically

through addressing methodology of description itself. This project is keen to sense matters that

appear paradoxical, chaotic, and tautological for our descriptive logic. To do so, this project

attempts to shift the methodological approach, from thickening description to thinning it, instead

of seeking an alternative modality of academic representation.

The eye is mud

In contrast to a bird’s eye view that enables us to assume the whole is grasped, Hulme (1936)

offers the view that what exists is a gradation of colour undivided, continuously and essentially,

where we cannot capture the whole nor the boundary. What the eyes see then, are not “things as

they are, but only sees certain fixed types” (Hulme, 1936, p.159). He continues:

World is indescribable, that is, not reducible to counters ; and particularly it is impossible

to include it all under one large counter such as “God” or “Truth” and the other

verbalisms, or the disease of the symbolic language. (Hulme, 1936, p.221)

Furthermore, Hulme (1936) claims an alternate modality to the eagle’s eye view to understand

the world: “But the eye is in the mud, the eye is mud. Pure seeing of the whole process is

impossible. Little fancies help us along, but we never get pure disinterested intellect.” (p.239)

How can we grasp, silence as silence, methodologically? Instead of attempting to transfer

invisible to visible, making silence audible, by setting an eagle’s eye view that can set a

boundary to be transferred, this project is dedicated to becoming mud. Thus, it is important to

note here that this is not the attempt to merely examine a creative approach to present new things

that have not been able to be conveyed or expressed, or dare I say ‘give a voice’ for those who

did not have one. Thin description is an approach to practice being in mud, simply by reducing

descriptions that help us set boundaries from external viewpoints, external to the time we live in.

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It is here, of course, that the popular misunderstanding about originality comes in. It is

usually understood by the outsider in the arts that originality is a desirable quality in

itself. Nothing of the kind. It is only the defects of language that make originality

necessary. It is because language will not carry over the exact thing you want to say, that

you are compelled simply, in order to be accurate, to invent original ways of stating

things. (Hulme, 1936, p.162)

This project strives to conduct a thin descriptive approach, as a modality of academic inquiry,

instead of producing a thinly described academic product.

Thus, this becomes a process-oriented attempt, instead of expecting the end product to say

something, to show something specific. For this point, this project can be characterized as the

attempt of doing thin description. As we see above, descriptions are tied with classification

which pre-determine objects to study ontologically. Non-representational works are no

exception, despite offering different modalities of end products, due to their dependency on

descriptive methodology. A thin descriptive approach is rather an attempt to escape from such

preformation by any forms of descriptions, including symbols to use, in order to re-investigate

what we can capture ontologically. Put in another way; this is an attempt that lets the

methodology capture the world, objectivise the objects to be emerged.

The emphasis here would differ from what sociological investigations generally seek (Gold,

1997) since the object is set as yet-to be objectivised, by its attempt not to depend on pre-fixed

classifications of ‘the social’ (Latour, 2005) its’ methodological investigation which would not

provide any conclusive answer for epistemological interpretation on particular communities or

groups.

The impact of this work

By doing thin description, what can we grasp? Through fieldwork and theoretical discussions, a

methodological question emerged. In considering how our academic works are inseparable from

descriptions, this attempt is itself an uneasy task. To tackle with this descriptive methodology

that is the foundation of academic works, I pick up a video camera to conduct film ethnography.

Film ethnography is a suitable medium for the purpose, simply because it allows me to avoid the

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use of descriptions through the visual and sound recording process, as well as the film editing

process. This means that the video camera does not completely eliminate any descriptive

materials, such as conversation of the people, and can objectivise the field. In the following

chapter, I illustrate the methodological discussion on the specific medium and the possibilities.

Upon deciding to bring a video camera into the field, I also needed to bring a context to put the

lens towards. Three different geographic locations of differing groups of people were chosen as

objects to film. With consideration that the core of this inquiry is in doing thin description, I

decided to base the film on two connected threads: Judo, as a form of physical movement and

learning, as a form of communication.

The filming objects are categorizable in many ways. Here, in considering the point of thin

description, I leave the categorizations and classifications of those objects-to-be minimal for

now. Below, I present the backgrounds of the research objects categorized by the geographic

locations, as well as specific features I found in each of the objects being filmed:

Challenge Judo Club, Toronto, Canada. Since key ideas and surprising findings came from

the experience with this dojo, it was a natural choice for me to ask members at the CJC to

conduct this project.

Sensei Kikuchi, Paris, France. As the name of techniques and nomenclature in the judo was an

initial point of question in this study, I attempted to contact a legendary judo teacher in France,

Master Awazu, to interview. He moved from Japan to France in 1950 at the age of 27, and

inherited the so-called Kawaishi Method used in France to teach judo. The method is unique in

its not using names to teach techniques and instead, using numbers in cohesion with the

movement of the techniques. Through an acquaintance connection, I attempted to reach Master

Awazu, but could not hear back from him immediately. This eventually made me film Sensei

Kikuchi, who teaches judo in France, and who was the mediator between Master Awazu and me.

During the research process, Master Awazu passed away, at the age of 92.

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Judoka Kawasora, Hiroshima, Japan. Adding to those cases that are essentially illuminating

linguistic gaps, I started to seek the possibility to investigate gaps even before linguistic

communication takes place. With this in mind, I started desktop research on judo with visually

impaired participants. I came to find a newspaper article, which writes about a young man in

Hiroshima, Japan, who represented the national judo team for visually impaired athletes. I

envisioned that capturing how he practiced judo would bring something different, given his

different senses.

And with these three case studies, I started my film ethnographic journey of thin description.

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Chapter 4.

Shaky footage from the field: Envisioning a new terrain with film-

based inquiry

Figure 4-1. Page from field notes written after training at the dojo

Figure 4-1 features a page from my field notes. The handwriting is extremely shaky, due to

writing the entry on a bumpy subway journey with a forearm sore from judo training at the dojo

where I was conducting my fieldwork. During that journey I tried to record all of my participant

observations at the dojo that day. I also jotted down notes for my own learning, including

sketches of the body and body parts changing positions and angles, with comments on power,

speed, and rhythm, juxtaposed with images of the opponent’s body.

Normally, we do not expect academic work to be composed solely of field notes. The end

products of fieldwork are usually journal articles, books, and other academic outcomes that have

been through analyses and have provoked theoretical discussions. Field notes, in contrast, form

the background to these end products; they are not academic works in and of themselves (see

Van Maanen, 2011). As a result of this distinction, the academic products we tend to encounter,

including this chapter, appear as neatly aligned symbols on the screen or page. No matter how

hot it was in the field, the papers in the published book never drip with the researchers’ sweat.

No matter how thick a speaker’s accent is, it disappears during the transcription of the interview.

No matter how shaky the researchers’ hands were on site, the typing up of their field notes

eliminates all of the untidiness. This article is no exception. In this ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’

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(McLuhan, 1962), we are receiving academic outcomes in universal, reproducible, articulated

formats, giving the appearance of expanding the gap between field experiences and academic

products.

However, using a digital device interrupts the comforts, dependent on the separation of field and

representation, or data collection and analysis. Devices such as video cameras unavoidably

reflect researchers’ corporeality in the field. Here, through portraying the context of taking up a

video camera and my own filming engagement in the field, I bring focus back to the line between

field and academic products, which has long been taken for granted in socio-cultural inquiries.

Beginning of this research

I approach my apartment door. My sports bag is almost dragging on the floor. It feels

much heavier today, not solely due to my sore forearms. I spend some time fumbling with

my key, inserting it in the keyhole, and taking it out again. I open the door and try to find

a spot to put down the bag. I remove my heavy winter coat and half-wet boots, open the

bag, and pull out a damp double- weave judo-gi. With the moisture still on my hands, I

then pull out a brand- new camera bag. I rescue the camera from the damp, carefully open

the screen, and hear the camera turn on. I open a small cover and slide out the memory

card. I move to my desktop computer in the corner of the living room and slot in the

memory card. I drink a glass of cold tea. Clicking the mouse a couple of times, the screen

starts to show people in blue and white moving around. My throat becomes dry and my

pulse quickens … The footage is too blurry, and some parts are too shaky. I cannot hear

what the guys are saying while grappling with each other in ne-waza. Instead, I hear only

my racing breath as I filmed them.

The beginning of my film-based inquiry was catastrophic. With little experience of handling a

video camera, except when doing some amateur filming of wedding ceremonies for my friends, I

struggled initially with my new Sony HDR- CX900. The camera had too many options, and the

settings seemed over- whelming. In short, the device was much more complicated than a cell

phone. The images I viewed at home were always significantly different from what I was used to

seeing in documentary films.

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I could keep debating the technical difficulties surrounding the creation of an academic product

from this film-based inquiry. However, the focal point of this chapter is located in the

engagement of filming itself. First, it is worth explaining how I came to include a video camera

in my fieldwork.

Tacit knowledge?

I started judo training at a dojo in north Toronto in the winter of 2014, partially for a research

project but also for personal reasons. I wanted a break from intense university coursework –

some form of strenuous workout through which I could achieve a qualitative change in my

physical ability. A family of immigrants from the Ukraine (specifically, the Crimean Peninsula)

owns the dojo, and most of the adult participants are from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

As the training continued, I gradually realized that the instructor was teaching the various

techniques without mentioning their technical names. In all martial arts, including judo, there

tends to be a highly systematized nomenclature4, With my own limited experience of learning

judo within the high-school curriculum in Japan, my new instructor’s approach seemed highly

irregular. Had he forgotten the names? Had he never known them in the first place? These

questions were answered in later sessions, when I heard the instructor referring to several

techniques by name. So, had he just adopted a novel, idiosyncratic teaching style? Or was I

experiencing something similar to what Eugen Herrigel experienced while learning Japanese

archery in the 1920s, when he faced a different ontology and epistemology of physical cultural

practice (Herrigel, 1953)? Either way, the education continued, and the students eventually

demonstrated the techniques they had learned more or less in the way the instructor directed.

Here, using a video camera might seem a natural choice, given the multi-modal character of a

video-based approach to grasp complex physical movements in flow, which are much more

4 The importance of learning judo techniques and the problems with naming them are characterized, for example, by

the invention of the Kawaishi method by a Japanese instructor who taught judo in France in the post-World War II

era. This method utilizes a numerical system instead of names.

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difficult to capture in words and still images (Laplantine, 2015; Vannini, 2015c). The linguistic

diversity of the dojo also provided an incentive to adopt visual images and sounds as the medium

to address non-discursive, non- linguistic practices. It is simple to characterize the non-

descriptive learning at the dojo as the practice of ‘tacit knowledge’ (Polanyi, 1958). Addressing

the tacit dimension can link well with so-called visual methods that scholars adopt to overcome

the logo-centricity of academic inquiry (Grasseni, 2004; Heider, 2006; Pink, 2007, 2011; Banks

& Ruby, 2011). The use of images and sounds has become an effective way to examine

indescribable subject matter. Images and sounds can serve to enrich the representation of multi-

sensory contexts, especially through the use of film that can include all forms of verbal

communication in performance, such as accent, speed, and gestures (Henley, 2004).

While this chapter shares the centering of the issue of logo-centricity as a methodological

limitation with those studies that adopt visual methods, my decision to pick up a video camera

was differently directed. In contrast to the commonly articulated opinion that visual methods can

convey nuances and senses that textualized representation cannot fully express, or enable data

collection for analysis as well as representation (see Rich & O’Connell, 2012; Liegl & Schindler,

2013), my primary intention was to destabilize the taken-for-granted notion of ‘knowledge’ that

is inserted in our understanding of physical movement and learning without examining its

methodological limitations.

Through experiences in the field, I started to wonder whether presupposing knowledge – in its

tacit or explicit form – prior to undertaking research misses the reality of practice itself. It is the

degree of description, in a sense, but not the matter of describability. After observing that the

instructor did know the names of the various techniques in another language (in this case,

Russian), and that the pupils could describe what they were learning in their own ways, the

cognitive issues of whether the ‘knowledge’ assumed to be there was describable or not receded

in importance. This different way of understanding the learning of a practice in the field began to

shift my perspective: the notion of tacit/explicit is just a methodological framework that is

largely accepted today on the basis of the firm understanding of knowledge as a rigid concept.

How- ever, if we perceive it as merely a type of methodological framework that steers our

academic approach (Mol, 2002), we begin to see that there are alternative ways to illustrate

reality. This realization guided me to pursue the modality of learning in the form of practice,

without depending on the category of describability.

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Shape of knowing: MacDougall’s ethnographic film approach

For this methodological challenge of illuminating the modality of learning without depending on

the concept of knowledge, MacDougall’s ethnographic film approach focuses on a modality of

knowing:

Seeing, hearing, and other forms of sensory knowledge are accordingly located in

individual experience or in cultural and historical collectivities. They are seen as

extending the reach of the discipline without fundamentally altering it. Methods that

directly address the senses, such as photography and film, tend to be treated similarly –

that is, chiefly as adjuncts to formulating knowledge at a higher level of abstraction. In

accepting this, historians and anthropologists preserve the value of knowledge as

meaning, but they miss an opportunity to embrace the knowledge of being (MacDougall,

2006, 6).

MacDougall is one of a handful of ethnographic researchers who produce films rather than

written texts (Pink, 2009). In contrast with using film as a method situated within the major

disciplinary frameworks, his approach elaborates the reassembly of knowledge by shifting the

methodological approach itself. He notes:

What is thought is only implied, unless it is appended in writing or speech. Some would

say that images, then, are not in any sense knowledge. They simply make knowledge

possible, as data from observations. But in another sense they are what we know, or have

known, prior to any comparison, judgement, or explanation. (MacDougall, 2006, 5)

Given that there is a methodological difference between filmmaking and writing (MacDougall,

1997, 2006), this chapter particularly focuses on how shaky footage was produced during my

film-based inquiry.

Shaky footage from the field

I was filming while also training. Sometimes the camera was in my hands, usually as I

approached pupils and the instructor from a short distance away. By holding the camera, I

disturbed the space as people tried to avoid crashing into both the camera and myself. During a

lesson, the students would line up across the room in front of the instructor, repeat the techniques

58

he demonstrated, and address the common mistakes he identified. This was one of the safe

moments during training when I could hold the camera and look into the screen without worrying

about interfering with the class. Sometimes I would mount the camera on a tripod, or place it

directly on the tatami mat. Most of the time, the footage was captured while I myself was

training. I would leave the camera in an unobtrusive place where it would not disrupt the learning

practice or disturb any spectators, such as parents.

The resulting footage tended to get shaky whenever I picked up the camera after finishing a

training session. This was most notable after groundwork training (especially sparring), which

often left me exhausted. In addition to the shaky footage, my rough, deep breathing is clearly

audible. Hence, my corporeality in the field is directly reflected in the footage and on the

soundtrack, in sharp contrast to what happens when taking field notes. Unlike descriptions that

can refer to a specific moment only later (what was there and how things were in motion), the

end product of filming directly reflects corporeality and the way the camera was held in real time.

In the field with a video camera

Filming during academic research has become far more prevalent as general attitudes toward

visual media have developed (Banks & Ruby, 2011). Most members of the dojo brought their

own cameras or cell phones into the lessons from time to time, so my use of a video camera was

largely uncontroversial. However, it did have some impact on the interplay between the actors in

the gym. For instance, when I mounted the camera on a tripod near the wall of the dojo, people

often avoided obstructing the view of the camera by not standing directly in front of the lens,

even when the equipment was turned off. Similarly, when I held the camera in my hand during a

training session, my own physical movement was affected: I would simultaneously try not to

interrupt the training by unintentionally crashing into someone on the mat next me and shield the

camera from the other participants. Eventually, the use of the camera wove the fabric of the field

from the threads of the practice of learning judo and the practice of filming. Moreover, the action

of filming provokes further interplays and interactions: for instance, some of the adult pupils

asked me to film their performance so they could assess their technique with their own eyes. By

contrast, most of the younger pupils paid much less attention to the camera. This may be

explained by the fact that staff members take pictures from time to time and upload the images to

their social media accounts, and the kids are specifically asked not to react to the cameras.

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Nevertheless, in my video footage, some of the kids’ eyes repeatedly stray toward the lens, and

the effort they are putting into ‘ignoring’ the camera is obvious. Others took pains to avoid

venturing into the camera’s field of view. While most of the members of the dojo agreed to the

filming, some preferred not to be filmed themselves. To accommodate their requests, or to avoid

disrupting their learning, I carefully managed what the camera recorded.

In this sense, the filming practice is dictated not only by those actions with the camera that are

perceivable dramaturgically (Goffman, 1959), but also by what is not filmed. Such actions are

continuously woven into the field itself, enmeshed with each other, together with the presence of

the recording equipment, my practice of filming, and all other actions in the background.

Weaving with the lens

One extract from my field notes showcases how the field is continuously woven:

After finishing lunch, there was no one left in the dining hall. After greeting Lara and

Tana, who were cooking in the kitchen at the back of the hall, I grabbed a chair close

to the open window where the cool breeze was coming in. Nikita and Sasha sat

down next to me, on my left. I opened my laptop and searched for a particular piece

of footage from the previous training session. Nikita started leaning towards the

screen, which was filled with thumbnails of footage, while Sasha removed the lens

cover of my video camera, on the table, and put his eye to the lens.

Sasha and Nikita, aged 11 and 12, were attending a summer judo camp organized by the dojo.

After lunch, they asked me to show them some of the footage from that morning’s training

session. They wanted to check their performances, as they knew I had filmed them training as a

pair.

I opened a file, enlarged the screen, fast-forwarded through the footage, and searched for

an orange belt and blue judo-gi – the visual markers of these two judoka. Nikita looked at

a shot of himself throwing Sasha by maneuvering his legs.

Nikita said, ‘We are doing, like …’

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Before he could finish his sentence, Sasha cut in, ‘… horribly’, with one eye still looking

through the camera lens and the other closed.

Nikita added, ‘Yeah.’

After I noticed Sasha picking up the video camera, I expected him to start filming the laptop’s

screen. I imagined that this would produce some interesting footage that would show how the

two boys recalled and remembered the judo techniques they had learned in relation to my film-

based inquiry. With this idea in mind, I quietly reached over and moved a piece of camera

equipment that I thought might interfere with his filming of the laptop.

I did not observe whether Sasha actually filmed the screen or not; I just continued watching the

footage of the morning’s training with Nikita. I also do not know whether Sasha was aware of

what I expected him to do, as I did not ask him anything and he made no comment. I did not

even see how or what he filmed, as at that moment I decided I should continue to focus on

sharing the training footage with them, as we had set out to do in the first place. Later, I went

through everything the camera had recorded that day and found approximately two minutes of

extremely unfocused, shaky footage. It starts with Tana washing rice in the kitchen, then zooms

into the side of my face before shifting to my hands, a watermelon on a table, and finally the

laptop’s screen, immediately after the moment when I moved the piece of equipment out of the

way.

The camera definitely played a significant role here. The entire engagement around Sasha’s

capturing of shaky footage illuminates how the field was woven together by the actions the

people who were present, including my own ‘ontological commitment’(Ingold, 2014, p. 388)

through participant observation.

Now, I should note that the above description of what transpired in the dining hall does not fully

illustrate either the footage itself or how the filming took place. I am well aware that written

descriptions are never as complete as the footage itself, but it is not my intention in this chapter

to examine the inadequacy of such descriptions. Rather, by focusing on the physical engagement

of filming in the field, three methodological implications arise.

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Past or present

Relying on description, field notes or end products of description are distanced from the actual

moment in the field itself, as they always come after the experience has occurred. This,

‘ethnographic present’, as Pink (2014, p. 413) terms it, is an outcome that is always referred to in

the past. Thus, by going through editing iterations, including theoretical discussions, the end

product is far removed from the real time in the field. Ingold criticizes this as ‘temporal

distortion’ and ‘retrospective conversion’ of researchers’ engagement in the field (Ingold, 2014,

p. 386).

Filming stands in vivid contrast to description. As an inquiry, it needs to be embedded in a web

of actions in the field. The key point here is the temporal congruence of the filming, especially of

the present. During filming, the moment is directly reflected in what is captured through the lens.

It is the outcome of the ongoing present-moment engagement, through the practice of participant

observation that cannot separate participation and observation. It is always facing the

present, and capturing it, without the intention of reporting something as a past event.

When filming in the dojo – both when I held the camera in my hands and when I mounted it on a

stationary tripod – I was sensitive to what was going on around the camera in every single

moment. For example, to avoid the camera crashing into the judoka, I had to predict where the

various training partners would move at any given moment. This was especially difficult during

randori, when my efforts not to disrupt my peers’ learning practice demanded additional focus

and attention. My eyes went back and forth from the monitor to the pupils and their movements,

while listening to the sounds behind me so as not to hit anybody or anything. Eventually, I

realized that whatever the end products may look like, I needed to keep recording in the moment,

continuously.

All those experiences are temporal, based on the past (memory) while anticipating the future,

enabled by engaging in the temporal present. If we pay attention to the process of filming, rather

than the end product of that filming, the present-congruent nature of the process becomes clear,

and may be set in sharp contrast to description-based approaches that can only refer to the past.

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Inseparability

The present-congruent nature of filming further highlights the fact that the present moment is

sculpted by an enmeshed web of actions rather than discrete subjects or elements. The filming

experiences produced shaky footage that was woven together with many actions in the field. The

latter were more than a collection of single actions by independent actors, such as humans, which

create networks. No single actors wait to be recorded simply by virtue of being in a certain place;

rather, actions involving materials, environments, memories, human bodies, and other elements

are constantly enacted. Ingold calls this ‘meshwork’. As opposed to a network which is

assembled by independent actors making relations as points, in the sense of space, Ingold

emphasizes the temporality of lines that are continuously moving and growing over time (Ingold,

2013, p. 132). Sasha’s filming of the laptop’s screen can be articulated in the network between

him and myself, along with other elements in the field. However, the way his filming was

enacted is not so simple so as to be separated into what was responsible for causing it. Instead,

there were confluent time lines, and the more I describe those lines here, the more that

description paradoxically ruptures the initial undivided entity into small pieces. Such attempts at

description eventually result in ‘process reduction’ (Elias, 1978, p. 112) as the original flow and

continuity of movements are lost. Moreover, as Vannini (2015c) points out, the use of images

suffers from a similar risk.

Here, when writing this chapter, I hesitantly inserted my field notes and described how Sasha

was filming, concerned that my very articulation demonstrates contradiction with what I am

expecting from film-based inquiry. The words, categorizations, and separations by naming actors

can destruct, pre-guide, and serve as a limitation for future audiences tracing the way I divided

real-time practice by my descriptions. It is like setting artificial stones in a wilderness; the stones

become stepping-stones for people, and the wilderness becomes a trail. You might not get lost on

the trail, but you will also never discover something new, or stumble across a new approach that

will enable you to see something new. Did Sasha film the laptop’s screen of his own free will?

Did I surreptitiously encourage him to do so? Or did a combination of the two – or something

else entirely – make him pick up the camera and turn it on? These questions are rooted in seeking

a single cause for the result of an event that is heavily dependent on the articulation of subjects

and objects.

63

In contrast, if we can perceive Sasha’s filming as an example of meshwork, the realities in

the field can be understood as a web of actions taking place and overlapping with each other,

without articulating anything in the field. They are not a collection of already separated

parts, individual actions, nor dependent on subject and object, cause and effect, agency, and

so on. Rather, meshwork is continuously woven, involving people, materials, memories,

shaky footage, and many other indivisible things in the field – what Ingold terms a practice

of ‘correspondence’ (Ingold, 2014, p. 389). Here, film-based inquiry suggests a different

possibility for grasping reality, without any need to divide the original entity into discrete

actors. This type of inquiry allows us to focus on the present experience without articulating

it or sending it to the past, because it does not enforce discrete identities upon whatever is

observed in the field.

Engagement

Physical engagement is crucial here, especially when filming aims to focus on non-linguistic

features without assuming them to be translated into other forms of representations. The way the

camera is held or positioned reflects the end products of the footage. Academic intentions,

human dynamics in the field, material and environmental factors, and many other elements are

continuously enacted by a web of actions involving the camera.

Ingold (2014) points out that, much as scientific methodologies have been immersed in the

framing of human existence between being in the world and knowing about it, participation

and observation are perceived in a different realm. He claims that participant observation is

an action that takes place between ontology and epistemology (Ingold, 2000), not a

technique to capture something that is externally there by itself in the field (Ingold, 2014).

He stresses that such participant observation is a practice of ‘correspondence’ (Ingold, 2013,

pp. 105–108), and argues, ‘To practice participant observation, then, is to join in

correspondence with those with whom we learn or among whom we study, in a movement

that goes forward rather than back in time’ (Ingold, 2014, p. 390).

Hence, film-based inquiry foregrounds how the temporal present plays a key role in the field that

focuses on the modality, and further enriches the practice, of participant observation. If we

simply bring a video camera to the field, expecting to produce innovative, creative, multi-modal

products by collecting data and analyzing them, the result would still follow a conventional

64

approach and would be restricted within its presupposed methodology. Rather, as this chap- ter

highlights, the implications of using a video camera in the field relate to how the field itself is

enacted together with the camera. With this approach, unquestioned methodological limitations –

such as separating data collection and representation, field and analysis, or, as Dewsbury (2010)

points out, ‘know-and tell’ politics within the social sciences – are destabilized by grasping a

continuously woven web of actions.

The horizon of film-based inquiry

Using a film-based approach, which lies between field experience and representation, provokes

the methodological issue around how we engage time and temporality in the field. It emerges as

the issue in front of us, not within the research object, but within our hands. If a researcher tries

to bridge the gap between field practice and the end product by using a video camera in the field,

they will never succeed in addressing the issue outlined above. Simply by attempting to bridge

the gap, the researcher has already acknowledged that it is there ontologically, so they are still

within the methodological framework.

Here, film-based inquiry evokes a new methodological approach corresponding to the field in the

temporal-present engagement. At the very least, filming in the field weaves the footage, which

prompts us to ‘open up our perception to what is going on there so that we, in turn, can respond’

(Ingold, 2013, p. 7). In this way, even shaky footage is a valuable product from the field, since

we can envision different methodological possibilities by highlighting the temporal present and

the inseparable meshwork of reality in the field.

65

Chapter 5.

From bricoleur to ‘carver’

「あれは眉（まみえ）や鼻を鑿（のみ）で作るんじゃない。あの通りの眉

や鼻が木の中に埋（うま）っているのを、鑿と槌の力で掘り出すまでだ。

まるで土の中から石を掘り出すようなものだから決して間違うはずはな

い」－夏目漱石

He isn’t making eyebrows and noses with his chisel. What he’s really doing is

excavating with the help of mallet and chisel those nose and eyebrow shapes that

lie buried in the wood. He can’t go wrong. It’s just like digging stones up from the

soil. (Natsume, 1974)

Scholars are busy thinking about end products

Vannini (2015c) reminds us that simply bringing high-end video cameras and editing software

alone would not directly improve the quality of film ethnographic end products. Rather, a high

degree of professional film making skills are needed, along with the right technology to produce

something of aesthetic and academic value, otherwise there is a risk of “the embarrassing

amateurism that comes from clueless optimism and excessive self-confidence” (Vannini, 2015c,

p.234). He goes on:

[S]loppy productions will bring negative light and will cause loss of attention not only

onto the producer, but regrettably also onto the methodological field as a whole. Making

deliberate, careful, and wise technological choices, therefore, is of the outmost

importance. (Vannini, 2015c, p.236)

While it does make sense that an amateur filmmaker using advanced technologies does not

necessarily result in meaningful end products, in the meantime, Vannini’s perspective appears

somehow disturbing. This does not mean that I am personally offended by the criticism targeting

my own work due to its amateur filming skill. The total opposite is the case; I am aware that the

quality of footage I produced throughout this project was far from aesthetic and that it is filled

with countless failures coming from my novice filming skills and inadequacy of technological

66

control. For instance, one of the series of footage that I filmed turned out having no sound

recorded. I had just purchased a new microphone in order to improve the sound quality, and I

was too excited to set up the microphone on my video camera properly, I forgot to turn it on – or

I did not do a sound check prior to filming. As such, there is so much footage from that particular

day, which consequently, was full of regret coming back from the field.

My feeling of disturbance is probably stemming from an unbalanced emphasis; the weight is too

heavy on academic end products and their provocativeness, but scarcely on the process of getting

to the products. There are some leaps between method and results in such views: How are the

skills, techniques, and aesthetics of a film ethnographer in their method developed? Are there

such aesthetics that are universally shared? What is aesthetic? Above all, are such non-aesthetic,

immature, novice attempts at filmmaking not academically insightful? By putting too much

emphasis on the forms and aesthetics in the end product, possible academic inspirations and

implications that filmmaking can methodologically bring are closed off.

Indeed, while so many studies are keen about how their end products would appear, I wonder

how often we could encounter ‘embarrassing’ quality of academic works. In any format of

academic works today, most of them are well polished and neatly decorated, at least in their

appearances. It is rare to find something like ‘shaky footage’ that leaves scholars’ struggles and

failures in the field in the final products of papers, or even film products directly reflecting the

engagement with people, as their performativity in the field.

With this in mind, this chapter examines the failures of film-based inquiry. Below I share what

might appear as one embarrassing failure within the footage I gathered. Please open the link

below, and enter the password indicated:

https://vimeo.com/277928539

(password: usuikijutsu)

Failures from Tokyo

The footage is from my fieldwork in Tokyo. I was walking with a man, Kawasora, who

participated in the periodical training camp of the national visually impaired judo team of Japan,

held at the Kodokan dojo, the headquarters of the judo association in Tokyo. It was morning, on

67

the way to the training site from the accommodation where all the trainees and staff members

stayed. It was indeed the second day I met Kawasora in person. Although we had exchanged

nearly fifty e-mails until that time, I knew very little about him – not by the way of descriptive

information, but as a human being who walks, eats, and speaks, with his scarce eyesight and

silenced ears. Somehow, after joining the camp as a researcher, I ended up being assigned by the

camp organizing committee to stay in the same room with Kawasora and “help him if needed”.

Someone around him told me he can see lights, and vague shapes of objects in front of him, but it

was hard for me to tell how much, and how he may have seen differently these things differently

to me. The relatively unprepared and unstructured decision was something that I needed to adjust

to.

By spending a night in shared accommodation with him, I started to better understand the degree

to which he can do things by himself. He spoke orally, with some accents, and a somewhat

limited vocabulary, but it is not a critical obstacle to understand what he is saying. The problem

was rather, resting on my side. I did not have an agile, responsive way to communicate with him

except by sending e-mails. We exchanged e-mails back and forth in the quiet room, short

sentences, mainly some jokes. There was always a time lag in our communication, which I had

never experienced before.

Some amount of time had passed, probably around forty minutes since we came into the room.

Kawasora suddenly spoke to me.

He looks at me and asks to guide him to the bathroom. I tap his back twice with my open

hand, the way I started telling him that I am here. We leave the room. A thought flashes

through my mind whether I should grab a video camera, and I decline. Not the priority

now, I need to take him to the toilet. Kawasora finds his slippers in the hallway without a

problem. The old, classic Japanese style accommodation (ryokan) is tight and narrow.

The wooden hallway is leading us to small aisles left and right, and our footsteps are

constantly making creaking sounds on the wooden floor. Kawasora is carefully touching

the wall on his right side with his right hand, and with his left hand holding my right

shoulder. We keep going straight. There are three stairs just before the washroom sign. I

shrug down my shoulder, indicating that there are stairs. His step becomes shorter, and

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touching the wall carefully, he goes down the stairs. We arrive at the washroom. I touch

his right hand and let him touch the doorknob. He opens the door. There are other sets of

slippers waiting there for bathroom use only, but I do not know how to tell him.

Kawasora keeps going inside, and I pull his arm toward the toilet. I touch his back when

he gets in front of the toilet. He starts. I step back to the door and wait for him to come

back.

After finishing breakfast in the morning, we took off to Kodokan, located in the middle of a

classic town where small houses and apartments tightly standing next to each other surround

narrow roads. The street was busy with people on their morning commute on foot or by bicycle.

Cars were coming and going. The trainees and staff members had taken off from the ryokan

together, but soon the crowd became spread out almost reflecting the degree of eyesight of each

trainee – those who could see more were walking faster. We walked at the very end of the group.

Kawasora was holding my right shoulder with his left hand, while pulling his suitcase with his

right hand. I was holding my video camera with my left hand pointing the lens towards

Kawasora’s upper body. The filming was itself was not easy at all, as I was paying attention to

Kawasora’s safety, as well as making sure that the lens of video camera was heading toward the

direction I had intended. Since I was not able to look into the monitor, I was not fully sure how

accurately the lens was directed, or whether or not objects in the Kawasora’s periphery, such as

my face, would be captured, or distracting. I just kept filming. I did not know how horrible the

exposure would turn out. This attempt at filming is probably infuriating from a non-amateur

filmmaker’s approach, and it ends with Kawasora almost falling down. Kawasora’s face seems

unchanged for a while, but we can see him showing a confused, wry expression in the footage. I

could not see his face at the moment.

I wonder if viewers might be simply assuming that he lost his balance. However, he tripped,

because I suddenly stopped walking and asked people around whether the path to take was the

right one, as I could not see other groups of people walking ahead of us. My sudden halt made

Kawasora lose his balance, in combination with the steep slope we were on. I did not think

enough about the possibility that his exceedingly heavy, stuffed backpack had been affecting his

balance while walking. This incident happened in the intersecting web of relations between

Kawasora, me with the video camera, conversation I was having with people behind us, my

69

inattention, the weight of the luggage, the slope, and many others. The key is that the video

camera captures the very moment, before the incident is named or meanings are gleaned.

Engagement in the field

The footage well reflects my engagement in the field. While it was me who turned the lens

toward the specific objects to film, who decided when to turn on the video camera to start

filming, which angle, from which position, and how to keep the stability of the camera, I also

needed to adjust myself, my filming, to whatever was going on around me, around the video

camera. While filming, I was trying not to film faces of random people around us to adjust to

ethics concerns. Even those who I received consent from, I was hesitant to film them at this

point, which limited the scope of the camera more than the actual technical possibilities of the

lens. The filming was also adjusted to the fact that I was walking along with Kawasora. My

walking speed was adjusted to him, or so I thought. I was focusing on my right shoulder as I

could tell his grip tensed when our walking speed was not synchronized well. I also was paying

attention to his footsteps, not only visually, but also to their sound, as I found he got off balance

soon after the rhythm of his steps became irregular. The pavement in the narrow street was

relatively helpful in this regard, as it made our steps rather audible. If I was wearing sound

control headphones, for example, to focus more on the quality of sound recorded, I would not be

able to rely on those sounds around me.

Regret

In retrospect, I could have filmed the slope together with Kawasora. A steep, sudden downhill

came up from the flat road we were on at the moment of his near-fall. I regret I did not film the

slope, as the filmed footage itself cannot let viewers fully grasp what was going on around

Kawasora. Viewers cannot see the steep slope as a critical factor or “actants” (Latour, 2005,

p.143) of the intersecting web of the network. As I describe now, without making the description

thicker, the footage itself cannot explicitly convey the exclusive component of how the network

is networked by each actor to play and participate in.

I believe that this regret of how I conducted the filming and how the filming turned out could

have been avoided with better technical skill. Better, in this case, is not only referring to those

technological dimensions such as sound and image qualities, but also the control of filming

through a better foresight of what could happen in the next moment and the skill to adjust the

70

video filming accordingly. Or even further, adjust the present situation to the act of filming along

with the ideal state of footages to be turned out in the future. Instead of having enough of such

skills and foresight, I was busy keeping the video camera on, without managing well the external

conditions such as sound, light, exposure, and all those technical elements which I cannot even

name due to not knowing this area. The unstable camera position and strange angle revealed my

novice filming skill and technological and aesthetic immatureness.

Subtraction highlighted

In the meantime, this regret is highlighting the very nature of filming; in principle, I deem it to be

the practice of subtraction. Filming is eventually limited where present action (filming) is

restricted within the future result (footages) that requires us to subtract from what we have

filmed. No matter how poor the footage turns out, we still need to use them as the source of

filmmaking. The selection of footages thus becomes subtractive, rather than additional.

Indeed, subtraction is characterizing not only the editing process, but also the practice of filming

itself. Pointing the lens toward specific objects is enabled by subtracting those not to be included

in the view. Unlike audio recording, which can collect sounds around 360 degrees of a

microphone, a video camera can only collect images within the width of the lens. This limitation,

the subtractive nature of a video camera guides filming to focus on its object. By this way, the

material nature of a video camera first and foremost, initiates a subtractive film ethnographic

practice even to the extent of myself, the videographer, becoming subtracted and diluted into the

entity of filming; I am required to become closer and closer to the video camera; the line between

my view point and that of the camera lens is lessened; I imagine what the lens will record; my

appearance in the footage is reduced, my voice, or even my intervention, such as setting up the

situation to film in the way that I want, are reduced. In the effort of improvising within the entity,

I myself am increasingly subtracted.

Addition counter-highlighted

Thinking of film-based inquiry as a subtractive approach contrasts sharply with the other, major

direction – addition. As discussed in the previous chapters, in the strong academic currents of a

thick descriptive methodology, addition is situated as the foundation of academic practice. The

additional approach is open-ended; it allows descriptions to keep being added, almost with no

limit, unlike using images and sound that are limited to the moment they took place.

71

For example, by adding descriptions about the above footage from Tokyo, the background

context of the tripping incident is illustrated. Describing Kawasora here as being deaf and blind

would successfully categorize him, which would in a way help the audience and readers come to

envision what was going on at the moment more decisively.

However, the way I describe the footage is essentially different, qualitatively, from what was

actually taking place due to the nature of description (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). The point

here is that because of the static unchanging nature of description, we can add further

explanations to write up afterwards. The atemporality of descriptions enables us to pursue the

additional approach.

Spatialization of time

Henri Bergson’s thoughts provide an insightful scope to examine this additional methodology

and atemporality. For example, Bergson argues that scientific thoughts are dealing with lines that

are spatialized as the trajectories of movement, but not the movements themselves. We can

divide such lines into parts at our disposal, and that is how scientific examinations and analysis

are executed. Bergson argues that time is spatialized by such an approach. To explain his

argument, among other cases, Bergson (1911a) calls on Zeno's Paradox of the tortoise and

Achilles:

When Achilles pursues the tortoise, each of his steps must be treated as indivisible, and so

must each step of the tortoise. After a certain number of steps, Achilles will have overtaken

the tortoise. There is nothing simpler. If you insist on dividing the two motions further,

distinguish both on the one side and on the other, in the course of Achilles and in that of

the tortoise, the sub-multiples of the steps of each of them; but respect the natural

articulations of the two courses. As long as you respect them, no difficulty will arise,

because you will follow the indications of experience. But Zeno's device is to reconstruct

the movement of Achilles according to a law arbitrarily chosen. Achilles with a first step

is supposed to arrive at the point where the tortoise was, with a second step at the point

which it has moved to while he was making the first, and so on. In this case, Achilles would

always have a new step to take. But obviously, to overtake the tortoise, he goes about it in

72

quite another way. The movement considered by Zeno would only be the equivalent of the

movement of Achilles if we could treat the movement as we treat the interval passed

through, decomposable and recomposable at will. Once you subscribe to this first

absurdity, all the others follow. (p.311)

By transferring movement into pieces of immobile moments separated from each other, time is

spread into space. This is how we examine the fluidity of the world, scientifically. Movements,

color, time, and such lose continuity of their own, and thus we can discuss and analyze them in

our hands, as static objects. Our intellectual and scientific practices take geometry for granted,

assuming its presence even prior to scientific observation. “[I]t is a latent geometry, immanent in

our idea of space, which is the main spring of our intellect and the cause of its working.”

(Bergson, 1911a, p.211)

It is our scientific, intellectual effort that translates the quality of time, into a spatialized time of

quantity (Kerszberg 1997). Objects to observe external to our self are spatially constructed by

our mind. Kreps (2015) notes:

The consciousness of animals is the same, of course, with the same instinct as humans,

just more of it, and with the same intelligence as humans, just less of it. But the quantity

of intelligence in the human progressively changes how consciousness perceives reality”

(p.74)

By this way, “we are now standing before our own shadow” (Bergson, 2013, p.133). While we

assume we are examining objects we perceived, we have already replaced the experienced time

(von Lunen, 2016) itself by static states of descriptions. As Kreps (2015) explains, descriptions,

including language, cannot be separated from objects that they refer to. Even further, those

objects and objective reality are from our own perception, which indeed we are also the part of,

and we fix by a descriptive approach. To perceive a line drawn as a line, we need to achieve an

external point of view.

Such criticism against spatialization of time goes even further and provokes that those visual

images used for non-descriptive methods as well spatialize time. Bergson characterizes it as our

73

“cinematographical habits of intellect” (Bergson, 1911a, p.312) and criticizes its discontinuity of

the original flow. Consider the figures below:

74

Figure 5-1. Still images from filmed footage at Challenge Judo Club, Toronto, Canada

Figure 5-2. Descriptions for each of the still images presented in Figure 5-1

先生がディマの右腕を差

し込んだ状態。

先生がディマの背中に覆

いかぶさるように移動。

ディマの顔が歪み始め

る。

先生の体がディマの上に

移動。ディマの右半身が

畳から浮き上がってい

る。

ディマの左半身が畳に押

し付けられている。

先生の右手はディマの右

腕を差し込んだまま、先

生の足は畳に移り始めて

いる。

先生の下半身は完全に畳

に移動して膝立ち。ディ

マの上半身は畳から離れ

ている。

ディマの体は完全にひっ

くり返った状態。顔はさ

っきよりも歪んでいる。

先生の左手がディマの浮

き始めた左肩を抑えてい

る。先生の右肩はディマ

の右腹付近を押さえてい

る。

先生の左手がディマの左

肩へ移動。ディマの左半

身側面が畳に接触。

先生の上半身がディマの

上半身を畳との間で挟ん

でいる状態。

ディマは解き放たれて起

き上がろうとしている。

先生は四つん這いで両手

を畳に預けている。

75

Cinematographical thought is characterized by the images above. Figure 5-1 is a succession of

images, going clockwise. Indeed, these are still images taken from my filmed footage, which has

even more stills in between those shown. As Hadjioannou (2012) notes, indeed, filmed footage is

constructed of a certain number of static images per second. Bergson (1946) notes that:

The film upon which the successive states of a wholly calculable system are pictured could

be run off at any speed at all without changing a thing on it. In fact, this speed is fixed,

since the unrolling of the film corresponds to a certain duration of our inner life--to that

one and to no other. The film which is unrolling is therefore in all probability attached to

consciousness which has duration and which regulates its movement…It shows that if one

can cut out from the universe the systems for which time is only an abstraction, a relation,

a number, the universe itself becomes something different. (p.21)

Figure 5-2 is the description of each image presented in Figure 5-1. As has been discussed in

previous chapters, space to add description for each image is open ended.

While studies adopting a video camera or visual medium tend to aim to capture qualitative

dimensions of reality over the quantitative, logos-centric understandings, the juxtapositions of

Figures 5-1 and 5-2, with what Bergson points out, illuminates that visual images or descriptions

are both in the realm of spatialization. They cannot be simply taken for granted as the binary of

qualitative and quantitative anymore. Bergson goes on to urge us that once we set our intellectual

approach toward matters in the world, the methodological approach is guided toward such

spatialization; “To perceive means to immobilize” (Bergson, 1911b, p.275).

Transition lost

“When we say "The child becomes a man," let us take care not to fathom too deeply the

literal meaning of the expression, or we shall find that, when we posit the subject "child,"

the attribute "man" does not yet apply to it, and that, when we express the attribute "man,"

it applies no more to the subject "child." The reality, which is the transition from childhood

to manhood, has slipped between our fingers. We have only the imaginary stops "child"

and "man," and we are very near to saying that one of these stops is the other” (Bergson,

1911a, p.312-313)

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The point emerges that transition is lost in our hands, by creating static stops by our hands –

which are our “habits of language” or “the cinematographical mechanism of thought” (Bergson,

1911a, p.313) that is almost destined to spatialize the reality we experience, shaped into

extension and quantity (Kleinherenbrink 2014).

The truth is that if language here were molded on reality, we should not say "The child

becomes the man," but "There is becoming from the child to the man." In the first

proposition, "becomes" is a verb of indeterminate meaning, intended to mask the absurdity

into which we fall when we attribute the state "man" to the subject "child." It behaves in

much the same way as the movement, always the same, of the cinematographical film, a

movement hidden in the apparatus and whose function it is to superpose the successive

pictures on one another in order to imitate the movement of the real object. In the second

proposition, "becoming" is a subject. It comes to the front. (Bergson, 1911a, p.313).

Duration

While spatialized time is seen as the major scientific approach, Bergson advocates to get out

from it, and set movement as being there prior to space (Linstead & Mullarkey, 2003), if we are

to understand the objects of movement itself. This is how Bergson comes to underscore the

difference from clock-time (time spatialized) and time of continuity without transition. Bergson

calls such time, ‘duration’.

In a word, pure duration might well be nothing but a succession of qualitative changes,

which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outlines, without any tendency

to externalize themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with number:

it would be pure heterogeneity. (Bergson, 2013, p.104)

If must be emphasized that we ought not to understand duration as a geometric way; even the

metaphor of the ‘line’ I have been using in this chapter, for instance, is by itself already started

spatialization. Line is extensity, homogeneous by itself and cannot include heterogeneity and

diversity within the lines themselves (Winkler, 2006).

77

The key point of the concept of duration here is its state of inter-penetration. “Without that

survival of the past into the present there would be no duration but only instantaneity.” (Bergson,

1946, p.211). Duration is not experienced as dividable pieces, such as that of “an ‘instant’ of

duration” (Kreps, 2015, p.164). Each elements of duration interpenetrate each other, as the

present is penetrated by the past.”

Bergson notes that "each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be distinguished or

isolated from it except by abstract thought’’ (Bergson, 2013, p.101). Thus, drawing a line

between "the now-point (impression) and what has just run off (retentions)" (Winkler, 2006,

p.104) is not accurate.

Methodology of addition is thus highlighted here as a de-temporalized, spatialized practice.

Because each of the moments, or pieces of duration, are the moment not to be mutually

interpenetrating, we can add to it, like bricks; it is homogeneous by itself and cannot be

heterogeneous, as demonstrated in Figures 5-1 and 5-2 presented above, each figure, a stack of

bricks.

In a word, pure duration might well be nothing but a succession of qualitative changes,

which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outlines, without any tendency

to externalize themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with number:

it would be pure heterogeneity. (Bergson, 2013, p.104)

Under spatialization, heterogeneity is replaced by homogeneity. Here, the paradox of Achilles

and the tortoise introduced above can be paraphrased in this way:

The paradox emerges, because the nature of descriptions allow readers to understand Achilles

and the tortoise as movement (simultaneity), yet allowing readers to accept Achilles to move

separately, after Turtle gets to the specific geometric point. In other words, by the spatialization

of time “future appears to co-exist with the present and succession is converted into

juxtaposition” (Čapek 1987, p.135). Figures X and Y, are exact cases representing such a

juxtaposition converted from original duration.

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In a sense, what we call paradox is, then, something that we find as the gap between

homogeneity and heterogeneity, juxtaposition and succession. Let us recall Herrigel’s

paradoxical experience: When the master’s explanation of arrow and ego appeared paradoxical

and illogical to Herrigel, it became paradoxical since the arrow and ego are both spatialized,

which does not allow each of them to be interpenetrated duration but merely homogeneous,

separated entities that are juxtaposed. If so, then paradox that we perceive is a mere a result of

spatialization. When I experienced losing the explicit line separating Miroza and myself as

described in Chapter 1, the paradoxical experience was created as a matter of duration I

forcefully articulated, thus spatialized. Paradox is then showcasing the issue of the spatialization

of time.

From bricoleur to ‘carver’

To deal with such paradox, I propose two metaphors for the methodology of film ethnography.

Filming is, in a sense, a practice of what Lévi-Strauss (1966) called “bricolage” (p.16). The

notion represents a dispositional attitude of people working with whatever resources are

available. Philosophical approaches are no exception, as they require some degree of bringing

any resources to theoretically and conceptually elaborate our understandings (Gibson, 2016).

Methodology of subtraction found in the practice of filming then, brings a different angle. When

a bricoleur uses whatever resources they can reach within a closed set of materials, the resources

to be are collected during their excavations. On the one hand, filming is the process of collecting

footages, from which editing is done. Editing footage is work like that of a bricoleur, who

assembles film from a limited source of footages. For this sake, footages or “the elements are

collected or retained on the principle that ‘they may always come in handy’” (Levis-Strauss,

1966, p.18).

On the other hand, filming also illuminates the subtractive practice in the field from which a

bricoleur would find the tool to use. Here, I characterize the methodology of subtraction by the

metaphor of the carver. Like a carver selecting a specific material to sculpt from of many

possible choices, film-based researchers choose where to point their lens, in exclusively a

specific direction in every moment. Like carvers putting a chisel to a specific point of the object

in their hands to carve out, a film-based approach keeps cutting off from whatever they have

already filmed. Like carvers that need to throw away those materials they separated from the

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sculpture, footages subtracted from edits are cast aside. The carvers need to subtract from what is

in front of them. This makes a vivid contrast with the methodology of addition. Unlike the

methodology of addition, subtraction is designated to dig down and carve out discussions.

The metaphor of the carver also elucidates Bergson’s view that for him, in order to perceive, he

subtracts from all the possible senses, in order to come up with a sense of the world. Such a

“wider and higher form of existence” (Bergson, 1911a, p.187) when perceived is subtracted, but

not added to the point it crystalizes as an object of perception. Perception is itself, subtraction

that omits those what are not regarded as useful objects by our “vital functions” (Mullarkey,

1995, p.250). “When pure memory becomes engaged during the act of perception, the subject

purposively selects from the entire stock of recollections” (Shapiro, 2013, p.143).

On academic ‘carving’

By newly demonstrating subtraction as a methodological approach, contrasting studies using the

methodology of addition that have long been taken for granted become objectivized. The

metaphor of carver at least foregrounds the ultimate limitation of our intellectual attempts, being

the part of an entire duration without having an external view point. When we make effort to add

(descriptions), the same effort takes us further away from what we are eager to capture. The

point is, then, whether or not, and how, we deal with such ultimate limitation.

Matisse, the painter and sculptor himself notes: “Movement is in itself unstable and is not suited

to something durable like a statue, unless the artist is aware of the entire action of which he

represents only a moment.” (Matisse, 1995, p.40)

Simply pursuing spatialization of time, including ‘thick description’ cannot avoid the pitfall.

That being said, the metaphor highlights grasping ontological reality as an entity to carve out, but

not as an object to construct by the pieces of entity that are presupposed as its part. In the hands

of a carver, the reality to tackle with loses its own lines gradually. The carver keeps deleting the

line that separates the inside and the outside, the lines that we take for granted are constantly

challenged and changed.

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Subtractive practice comes here as a possibility – it does not articulate a new approach that can

free us from spatialization. Instead, it can demonstrate the direction to pursue, or effort to pay, in

aiming to achieve duration. Facing the methodological limitation scholastic engagement

withholds, our default position in understanding movement, the carver suggests a new horizon

that film ethnography can cultivate, which, by its technical restriction is subtractive in nature.

What does it look like to be a carver in the field? In the next chapter, a practical direction

considering duration is elucidated.

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Chapter 6.

Invitation to Ethno-Kinesiology

秘する花を知ること。秘すれば花なり、秘せずば花なるべからず、とな

り。この分け目を知ること、肝要の花なり。（世阿弥)

If it is hidden, it is the flower; if it is not hidden, it is not the Flower. Knowledge

of this distinction is an essential of the flower. (Zeami, 2006, p. 134)

As illustrated throughout the previous chapters, the overarching approach in academia today, to

understand physical movement is largely descriptive, which by and large preforms the perception

of the world. What if we lead away from descriptive methodology? How then can we understand

physical movement? By setting ‘thin description’ as the methodological direction to pursue, this

project is dedicated to conducting ‘method driven inquiry’, particularly through film

ethnography. This chapter further elucidates the academic possibility of the proposed subtractive

meta-methodology as a driving force to cultivate a new academic terrain.

Intuition as a way to deal with spatialization

As discussed in Chapter 5, there is a strong current that drives us to spatialize physical

movement. As Bergson describes, the current is the product of our habitual thought. Quality is

spatialized: Consider for example duration as experienced by one’s body – it is measured by

clock time with numbers, which does not allow one another to be penetrated. Present and past

would not inter-penetrate each other if we were to follow clock time. Pursuing logical arguments

is thus regulated by the rules that our intellectual functions created and adapted, including the

systems of numbers and language.

In a word, pure duration might well be nothing but a succession of qualitative changes,

which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outlines, without any tendency

to externalize themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with number:

it would be pure heterogeneity. (Bergson, 2013, p.104)

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By this way, experienced physical movement becomes the object to ‘reconstruct’ as if the

experience was ontologically constructed, built up, and re-presented. Physical movement is

preformed in this manner when we are too descriptive.

To attain the movement itself, then we need to go against the current of spatialization. Achieving

it requires massive effort. Bergson considers the effort akin to a kind of violence toward our

mind, in order to “reverse the direction of the operation by which it habitually thinks, has

perpetually to revise, or rather to recast, all its categories" (Bergson, 1912, p.69).

Certainly, concepts are necessary to it, for all the other sciences work as a rule with

concepts, and metaphysics cannot dispense with the other science. But it is only truly

itself when it goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself from rigid and

ready-made concepts in order to create a kind very different from those which we

habitually use; I mean supple, mobile, and almost fluid representations, always ready to

mold themselves on the fleeting forms of intuition. (Bergson, 1912, p.21)

Intuition is suggested in this context, as the driving force to seek succession, “a growth from

within” (Bergson, 1946, p.35), “to get back the movement and rhythm” (Bergson, 1946, p.102).

While analytical thoughts are based on immobility, “intuition places itself in mobility” (Bergson,

1912, p.47). Intuition emphasizes its going from things to the products of analytical thoughts, as

opposed to the other way around that we habitually do.

After Bergson’s death, his concepts and approach to understand movement which once heavily

influenced the world, receded. Recent studies however, started re-highlighting the insight

(Pearson, 2005). One of the hurdles that Bergson’s argument contains is that intuition, for

instance, itself is quite conceptual and far from indicating a practical approach, even though the

concept encourages parting from a conceptual understanding of movement. He also notes that

intuition gets mistaken as instinct or feeling (Bergson, 1946). Similarly, intuition has been

highlighted by scholars often merely as an approach to sympathizing with and understanding

people in the field without keeping their viewpoint as external to the field (Charmaz & Mitchell,

2001, p.163) which is mistaking the essential point of the concept. Bergson’s intuition is not a

mere sympathy directed against isolated individuals to go beyond internal and external divisions.

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“[T]o think intuitively is to think in duration” (Bergson, 1946, p.38), but not simply to think in

someone else’s shoes as once we set the others’ view point, it is spatialized.

Furthermore, intuitive effort is always done with the fundamental restriction that the intuition is a

concept usually to be communicated to others by descriptions, such as numbers and languages

that are spatialized (Bergson, 1911a; Bergson, 1946). When intuition is set as the practice

“without any expression, translation, or symbolic representation” (Bergson, 1912, p.9) we are

destined to describe, as I am doing now. Academic arguments, including what Bergson proposes,

are thus essentially taking place within a spatialized realm from which duration cannot be

understood as it is: “[W]e believe that we can form a faithful representation of duration by

setting in line the concepts of unity, multiplicity, continuity, finite or infinite divisibility,

etc. There precisely is the illusion” (Bergson, 1912, p.18).

From addition to subtraction

On this fundamental difficulty in practicing intuition, the metaphor of the carver presented in the

previous chapter digs into Bergson’s argument on intuitive effort from a different angle.

The meta-methodology of addition

From the view of the carver, our habitual thoughts are captured as the meta-methodology of

addition: By adding descriptions and conceptual elaborations, we attempt to reconstruct the

whole of the object and retrace the duration we once experienced. How the meta-methodology of

addition preforms our scientific practice can be highlighted by examining those taken for granted

concepts that we habitually utilize.

Knowledge

Take knowledge, for instance. It is commonplace for us to consider our understanding of the

world as the matter of collecting knowledge in various forms. Tacit knowledge is a typical

example. The concept, especially of the word ‘tacit’ showcases how we modify the modality of a

concept by adjusting it to the meta-methodology of addition we use, instead of modifying the

methodological foundation that produces the concept of knowledge itself. Consider the plethora

of adjectives out there available to use in given language, waiting to be added, in order to modify

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existing concepts so that they can be adjusted instead of addressing those concepts themselves or

the linguistic foundation behind them.

To label an object with a certain concept is to mark in precise terms the kind of action or attitude

the object should suggest to us. All knowledge, properly so called, is then oriented in a certain

direction, or taken from a certain point of view. (Bergson, 1912, p.41)

The technique such as the one I was keen to find during my judo practice at CJC, at the

beginning of this project, was not only a process-reduced form of knowledge of the specific

movement but was also the result of my spatialization of what I experienced. Bergson discusses

that our scientific view and understanding are replaced by knowledge, out of the essential reality

of becoming.

Essentially reality is growth, becoming, and ceaseless change. However, it is our habitual

thoughts that format “its origin and evolution as an arrangement and rearrangement of parts

which supposedly merely shift from one place to another” (Bergson, 1946, p.113). By this way,

theoretically, we “…should be able to foresee any one state of the whole: by positing a definite

number of stable elements one has, predetermined, all their possible combinations” (Bergson,

1946, p.113). In this way, we grasp the whole, and produce immobile concepts as knowledge.

When seeking the technique during judo practice, I was attempting to transfer movement into

knowledge, and I needed to set an external, bird’s eye view from which I could see the whole of

the movement in order to do so. By doing so, movement was captured statically, and immobility

comes as the result (Linstead, 2014). What we call knowledge is a product of such process, and

by which we can keep adding to the pile of knowledge by handling static information and

descriptions.

Embodiment

The concept is the focal point of studies that analyze “human participation in a cultural world"

(Csordas, 1993, p.135) in which the body is regarded as the foundation for us to internalize

cultural and social influences. The term initiates dialectical thoughts to overcome simple

dichotomy between subject and object, body and mind, physical and social, and lead us to pursue

“a practical mastery of the fundamental corporeal, visual, and mental schemata” (Wacquant,

1992, p. 237).

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Here as well, embodiment is depending on addition of such concepts as ‘disposition’ or ‘habitus’

to explain one’s life. To embody, there needs to be something to be embodied, which needs to be

external to the body as you cannot embody something that you already have. “Things must first

be separate in order to be together. Practically and logically, it would be senseless to relate that

which was not separate, or to relate that which in some sense does not remain separate” (Simmel,

1994, p.408). This way, lines are continuingly drawn between a geometric external to internal, or

the chronological not yet-embodied body to the already embodied body. Those lines make

concepts become individuated and solidified, which enables studies examining “a lived-through

structure-in-process that is continually subject to change through the learning of additional body

techniques” (Spencer, 2009, p.120). The meta-methodology of addition therefore comes along

with preformed categories, such as body techniques.

Knowledge. Embodiment. Many studies today are depending on the concepts. Those concepts

are not merely explaining about the object but are ultimately making up those objects in the way

that concepts can objectivize them. While knowledge and embodiment are mostly concepts that

are taken for granted, it is us conducting the preformation of the world to understand it as

spatialized, by depending on “ready-made ideas” (Bergson, 1946, p.132).

The meta-methodology of ‘subtraction’

While the metaphor of the carver illuminated the meta-methodology of addition that many

studies are pursuing, it also enables us to envision the other direction to pursue; the meta-

methodology of subtraction.

Subtracting knowledge

If we were to subtract the concept of knowledge, for instance, the long-established concepts of

what we call teachers and learners would become absurd; the mediation of knowledge helps

thicken the line drawn between the two positions. If there is no knowledge or any equivalent

concept that is to be inserted between teacher and learner, the separation along the line would be

thinned. By removing the concept to be inserted, teacher and learner, teaching and learning, or

even taught and learned can be undivided as the line separating the two recedes. By this way, the

two polarized matters are not the polar opposite practice any more. Teachers learn by teaching,

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while learners teach by learning – the actions of teachers and learners would become less

articulated and more absurd, in the direction where matters are inter-penetrated.

Subtracting the body

Consider subtracting one’s body, as another example. The line with which we secure our being

would be shaken, and is reminiscent of the dilemma I had with Miroza: I experienced randori

with Miroza as if he and I were an entity, the line dividing Miroza and I receded as the sparring

progressed, but still I was a separate individual from Miroza, who smashed my body so easily

against my will, yet I felt I had somehow collaborated with his throwing me willingly, yet

unwillingly. Now, by subtracting those lines isolating my body from Miroza’s, my cogito, the

moment, and so forth; the paradoxical feeling I had turned to be quite natural. Paradoxes and the

illogic that I found in the movement experienced become simply the matter of deficiency found

in the realm of linguistic descriptions. Even further, finding a paradox can be the moment we

notice duration is spatialized. When describing the process of becoming, the description would

surely contain paradoxes as it is the outcome of twisting durational to spatial.

The meta-methodology of subtraction not only goes against additional methodology, it illustrates

a practical direction that intuitive practice can take. Instead of depending on the concept of

intuition, which we tend to speak of by the form of a noun, a pre-made object to be handled,

subtraction indicates action to take. By this way, intuitive effort can be performed not by simply

inserting a dispositional concept, as that of Bergson’s intuition, but by our action of subtraction.

Ontological reformation

The discussion on meta-methodology of subtraction also illuminates an ontological setting that

we can further delve into.

The foundation of subtraction is demonstrated by how it captures the whole. For carvers, they are

within the whole, their viewpoint internal of the entity. Unlike methodologies of addition that are

aiming to find the whole by building it up from whatever materials they have as the end product,

subtraction is rather the attempt to dig into the whole in which we are embedded. Subtraction is

based on this ontological setting as its start, in sharp contrast with the methodology of addition,

based on having less to start with and heading towards increasing its ‘possessions’ in the end.

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Bergson claims, “We go from absence to presence, from the void to the full, in virtue of the

fundamental illusion of our understanding” (Bergson, 1911a, pp.274-275).

On artistic making

Against this illusion of our habitual thoughts and understanding, Bergson’s approach provoked

arts and activities of artists as a channel for intuitive effort to be expressed (Grosz, 2005).

What is the aim of art if not to show us, in nature and in the mind, outside of us and

within us, things which did not explicitly strike our senses and our consciousness? The

poet and the novelist who express a mood certainly do not create it out of nothing; they

would not be understood by us if we did not observe within ourselves, up to a certain

point, what they say about others. As they speak, shades of emotion and thought appear

to us which might long since have been brought out in us but which remained invisible;

just like the photographic image which has not yet been plunged into the bath where it

will be revealed. The poet is this revealing agent. But nowhere is the function of the artist

shown as clearly as in that art which gives the most important place to imitation, I mean

painting. The great painters are men who possess a certain vision of things which has or

will become the vision of all men. (Bergson, 1946, p.159)

Based on Bergson's discussion, Hulme (1936) extends the application of intuition to artistic

practice. Thinking of a poem, for example, Hulme discusses that we not only express, we indeed

think in the stock of words. Reality, for this reason, is not fully perceived. The artist, in contrary,

is not merely conveying nuances and senses to be expressed sufficiently, rather an artist "is able

to emancipate himself from the moulds which language and ordinary perception force on him

and be able to see things freshly as they really are" (Hulme, 1936, p.166).

Now, on this artistic inclination that studies pursuing Bergson’s concept of intuition, the

metaphor of the carver can propose a practical direction.

Imagine carvers at work, subtracting from the material they face. Here, we should not assume

that the material is a single, immobile and unchanging object. Quite contrary, the material to face

is a wholistic entity in which the carvers are embedded. The material is continuingly changing its

texture, the way it reflects light, its appearance from the carvers’ eyes, and so on. Carvers as

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well, changing continuingly their body positions, their pulse, their (dis)satisfaction against how

the material appears, and countless changes. The carvers are simply doing subtraction. By doing

so, they can even subtract aesthetics or sensibilities to be expressed from the moment and leave it

to the matter of future becoming.

Take for instance, Matisse’s, thoughts on carving a statue:

By removing oneself from the literal representation of movement one attains greater

beauty and grandeur… a man hurling a discus will be caught at the moment in which he

gathers his strength, or at least, if he is shown in the most strained and precarious position

implied by his action, the sculptor will have epitomized and condensed it so that

equilibrium is re-established, thereby suggesting the idea of duration. (Matisse, 1995,

p.40)

For the carvers, they not only subtract the material by carving, but also subtract the desire of

achieving the entire movement by a single moment. By doing so, duration comes to be

suggested, by absence.

Absence

Here, absence plays a key role. For example, consider Sartre’s discussion on pictures: “But in the

imaging attitude, the picture is nothing but a way for Pierre to appear to me as absent. So the

picture gives Pierre, though Pierre is not there” (Sartre, 2004, p.32). Absence of something,

delivers an appearance. “Nothing” designates the absence of what we are seeking, we desire,

expect” (Bergson, 1946, p.114). Subtraction enables us to create absence, which is always in

conjunction with the desire for entity to be prolonged.

In film ethnography

Film ethnography is re-situated here; it is the pursuit of film making, which as illustrated in

previous chapters, is a process of subtractive engagement. The subtraction includes, for instance,

a “desire to endow duration with the same attributes as extensity, to interpret a succession by a

simultaneity, and to express the idea of freedom in a language into which it is obviously

untranslatable” (Bergson, 2013, p.221). Indeed, invention of film itself is originated from the

keen interest to seek succession (Laplantine, 2015). The sequences are “by no means constituted

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by ideas, but rather by images” (Laplantine, 2015, p.63) that are sensible objects. Similarly

Bergson notes:

No image can replace the intuition of duration, but many diverse images, borrowed from

very different orders of things, may, by the convergence of their action, direct

consciousness to the precise point where there is a certain intuition to be seized. By

choosing images as dissimilar as possible, we shall prevent any one of them from

usurping the place of the intuition it is intended to call up, since it would then be driven

away at once by its rivals. (Bergson, 1912, p.16)

Here, the point of filming is that the succession is not residing in the film products themselves,

but is coproduced with the viewers (see, Prendeville, 2013). Viewers, are made to wait, from

moment to moment, and the performance is enabled by not knowing what to expect in the next

moment; an absence of knowing.

Counting and measuring are schemata in which imagination serves as a prelude to

understanding. We must attentively follow - even sometimes in a numerical way - the

rhythmic pattern of the melody rather than allow ourselves to be lulled by it. In other

words, we cannot apprehend duration except by means of time. We have no pure intuition

of duration. The rhythmic pattern allows us to attain duration through time, because of

the prerational movement of the schematizing activity awakened in us by the rhythmic

schema. We imitate the movement deep within ourselves in order to grasp it in the object.

We put ourselves in harmony with the imperious becoming of this object. We introduce

order not by an act of understanding but by a movement that imitates number in

traversing a succession. Without this element of order, we would become lost in the

movement and unable to identify it properly. (Dufrenne, 1973, p.263)

Unlike written words or photographic image(s) to be shown simultaneously, film requires an

audience to wait for the next moment to come. Movement of film, in this case, is duration to be

experienced by viewers who can follow the changes, instead of consuming each moment of each

image as individual pieces and thus satisfied in each moment. In other words, viewers need to be

able to wait, the waiting creating dissatisfaction, desire and imagination for the forthcoming

moments.

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Bergson’s famous quote echoes here:

If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I must, willy nilly, wait until the sugar melts.

This little fact is big with meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not that

mathematical time which would apply equally well to the entire history of the material

world, even if that history were spread out instantaneously in space. It coincides with my

impatience, that is to say, with a certain portion of my own duration, which I cannot

protract or contract as I Eke. It is no longer something thought, it is something lived. It is

no longer a relation, it is an absolute. (Bergson, 1911a, pp.9-10)

Film is a typical example, which can illuminate well the interdependency of each image, or

durational inter-penetration. Entity is imagined in absence as the form of dissatisfaction. Another

view of subtraction, from a painter:

By used to photography that is taken by anyone just by pushing a shutter we tend to think

that three dimensional matters can be ‘directly’ represented. Photography, however, are

mere ‘shadows of things’. Painters strive to present ‘the reality of things’, and forcing the

three dimensional things compressed into two dimensional. Juice that is forced out at the

time, equivalent to one dimension, spark out like radioactivity, from the surface. This is

the ‘reality’ what painters saw, or believed, which is the origin of touching by paintings.

It requires energy. The energy is spiral, and distorted. It is natural to be distorted.

Distorted is natural. (Horikoshi, 2008, p. 192)

Again, by the subtraction of a dimension, viewers are set to prolong the absence to be filled.

Prolongation is strictly the matter of duration, retardation that is brought by hindering everything

to be given at the same time (Bergson, 1946).

In this sense, setting the product of arts as academic production would be misleading. Artistic

sensibilities are found and engraved through the process of academic production with the

dialogical contacts with people who co-experience the production. Subtractive effort plays the

key role here, which invite people to fulfill the absence.

The metaphor of the carver, thus, provokes that the outcome from the attempt of carving should

not be finished. The point is that they can bring the flair of arts and aesthetics, not as essence to

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be inserted in the work, but to be found by people who come in to contact with it, or realize them

being the whole. To invite viewers, then, studies need to subtract scholastic authors: As Barthes

(1997) notes, “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (p.148). Here

as well, subtraction would be the key. In this sense, subtraction is the invitation to prolongation,

which would be the driving force for us to get into duration, ceaseless change, relentless

becoming, to delve into. Aesthetics and artistic sensibilities are experienced though the

prolongation.

Such an approach of the meta-methodology of subtraction, through its present congruent practice

in continuing independency with(in) the whole, obtains what Ingold and Hallam (2007)

characterize as a form of improvisation, as opposed to innovation:

The difference between improvisation and innovation, then, is not that the one works

within established convention while the other breaks with it, but that the former

characterizes creativity by way of its processes, the latter by way of its products. (p.2)

The metaphor of the carver, in this way, demonstrates creativity as a concrete practice instead of

solely a concept external to the process of engagement.

Invitation to ‘Ethno-Kinesiology’

But the lead-line sunk to the sea bottom brings up a fluid mass which the sun’s bottom

brings up a fluid mass which the sun’s heat quickly dries into solid and discontinuous

grains of sand. And the intuition of duration, when it is exposed to the rays of the

understanding, in like manner quickly turns into fixed, distinct, and immobile concepts.

(Bergson, 1912, p.76)

Here, the sea and land are different entities, and Bergson’s work is urging us to delve into the

realm of the sea, duration and movement, from the geometric space of the land where science is

habituated. Do we understand physical movement, the matter in the sea? We do, and we are

accumulating the knowledge, by using the manner of land, spatialization. In this way, however,

what we understand is no longer what it was, the very modality of knowing.

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Even further, as has been discussed throughout this project, a spatialized approach is eroding the

sea of movement, by preforming physical movement as a spatialized object, in boxes such as

culture, the technique, knowledge, and so on. Here, we need to notice that capturing and

understanding movement would be a different matter. We are so focused on understanding in the

way we are habituated to and comfortable with, that we are not even considering whether we

actually capture those physical movements and the differences within them before we objectivise

them as a homogenous entity to understand, scientifically. Can we sense something more than

the ‘sixth sense’, for instance? Since we have been boxed into such categorizations, we would

not be able to even imagine such an object-to-be beyond the boxed senses we are habituated to.

“[W]hile science needs symbols for its analytical development, the main object of metaphysics is

to do away with symbols” (Bergson, 1912, p.79).

Bergson urges intuition as the driving force to achieve capturing human movement as it is. From

the meta-methodology of subtraction then, I propose action to ignite intuition; instead of

encouraging to simply use intuition, a noun, subtraction directly suggests first and foremost, a

specific modality of action to take, a verb. Here, you might wonder, subtraction of what? This is

exactly the point that subtraction provokes. The object comes after the action of subtraction, after

which spatialization and scientific examination can be pursued. The object is not residing as

defacto, nor to be found in the spaces between static subjects, but to be found, captured, and

objectivized by the action of subtraction. In this way, we can foreground the process of

capturing an object-to-be, before letting our habitual thoughts spatialize a research object. We

need to capture our world, our physical movements, before understanding them within a

scientific framework, but not the other way around. If we do not capture well, or in a limited

way, our understanding would be limited accordingly. In considering the homogenizations of

‘science’ in academia, not only limited by positivism, but also all the scientific preformation in

examining physical movements, how we capture such movements as they are, is a critical issue

to be addressed.

Art and artistic practice becomes the key here. For example, Ingold (2011) sees the

commonalities between anthropology and art in the coupling of observation and action. The

coupling takes place, as “the artist is drawn in to the world, even as he or she draws it out in the

gestures of description and the traces they yield” (p.141). Ingold illuminates the commonality by

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drawing a sharp contrast between anthropology and ethnography, in the latter’s separation of

observation and action of description.

‘The field’ for the ethnographer is imagined as the place where object(s) reside from which

ethnographic description is made as afterthoughts on how people act and perceive things in the

field, from the present point of an armchair. Anthropologists, in contrast, do thinking and writing

in and with the world, to themselves and to the world. Ingold (2011) describes this

embeddedness of anthropologists as “correspondence”. (p.241)

Ingold (2011) demonstrates a direction that film ethnographic inquiry could pursue. Producing

film is the coupling of observation and action, which demonstrates the “inquisitive mode of

inhabiting the world, of being with” (p.241). Filmmaking might then, be better referred to

anthropology instead of ethnography.

In the meantime, Ingold (2011) distinguishes anthropological writing from art, by its centering of

“verbal correspondence” (p.241) in anthropological dialogue and thus “anthropological writing is

not an art of description” (p.241). However, when anthropology is distinguished from art, by its

end product, there could be artistic sensibility found in the correspondence, particularly in the

end product. It is important that the end product is not framed as the production of art, or as using

art-based methods, as such frameworks presuppose art in a specific modality a priori. Instead,

engaging in an artistic (academic) process of making is worthwhile to be considered.

Here, what makes something artistic is still unclear, both in so-called disciplines of art, but also

conventional academic works. Say, a study is done with no intent of artistic intervention or

production. Still though, such academic inquiry can contain artistic sensibilities. Why not find

poetic sensibilities in works following conventional writing format? ‘Artistic’ is not clear, and

that is the beauty of pursuing it. The artistic then should not be separated from academic

production, especially if we are open to find the sensibility in the products.

Similarly, artistic-making would not bring a clear base for scientific discussion. A painting, say,

would not allow scholars to perceive data, concepts and argument that are frozen as information.

Reading, sensing, hearing of such artistic production would differ from person to person, or even

the same person could find differences in the same production. For this inaccessibility to

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dialogical exchange, Ingold shies away from including artistic work inside of the lines of

anthropology.

Still, however, there is a possibility to include artistic-making in academic inquiry. What if we

consider artistic production as the attempt of capturing raw, fresh, vague and unknown objects-

to-be, and the phase can later on set up a descriptive, spatialized object of science? Using artistic

production not in an enclosed and conclusive way by itself, but rather focused on as a process of

inquiry, which opens up for the further scientific, descriptive, geometric discussions and

understandings, by the absence of those.

To foreground such meta-methodology of subtraction, an artistic engagement to pursue capturing

an object-to-be before placing it within a scientific scope, I hereby propose Ethno-Kinesiology

as a new academic realm. While academic realms and disciplines are set based on either the

objects or methodological approaches, Ethno-Kinesiology would be an approach that will

objectivize such objects as its end point, by its exclusive focus on the modality of inquiry

through the research process.

The key principles of Ethno-Kinesiology are three-fold:

Pursuing the object-to-be

Ethno-Kinesiology’s primary focus is on ontology: capturing the object-to-be without letting

symbols and descriptions dismiss them into the realm of the geometric, spatialized understanding

of so-called science. Ethno-Kinesiology is inspired by Ethnomusicology, a discipline rooted in

ethnographic fieldwork, studying social and cultural aspects of music, often in non-western

musical cultures in order to think about cross-cultural differences (“Ethnomusicology”, n.d.).

Ethnomusicology formulates the disciplinary approach along with the object to focus on, across

the world. The discipline’s focus on differences of music and collecting the practices from

around the world is insightful, and resembles the practice of natural historians collecting

differences from around the natural world, with both aiming to house the findings often in a

shareable way. Ethnomusicology goes further by capturing dynamic, durational, and intangible

human practices that cannot be simply preserved and showcased as static objects.

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In the meantime, Ethno-Kinesiology also emphasizes that the academic inquiry itself is an active,

and experiential practice. Artistic-making, in a sense, is what people do in their everyday lives,

and this approach is sharing the foundation of the human practice of making.

In this point, Ethno-Kinesiology also intersects with experiential learning. While there would be

no learning without experiencing, the focus of the educational package increasingly adapted in

various type of classrooms today, Ethno-Kinesiology can propose to shift experiential learning to

abandon ‘knowledge’ expected to be learned in each experience a priori, and instead make it an

open-ended inquiry through which learners will discover something, an object-to-be, by the

endless journey of knowing. For this reason, Ethno-Kinesiology is open ended, and leaves the

conclusive remarks postponed—so the vagueness, uncertainty and absence would be always

there.

Artistic-making

Ethno-Kinesiology is heading toward physical movement in diverse forms, based on the physical

engagement in subtractive meta-methodology-typically reflected by the engagement of artistic-

making. Put aside an expected academic impact, hypothesis to prove, or representing meanings

to be expressed through the products, Ethno-Kinesiology focuses on doing subtraction. Artistic-

making is in a sense, a name for doing subtraction, after which further scientific, spatialized

pursuits would be prepared. This naturally intersects with what this project emphasized as thin

description. Artistic-making is not necessarily separated from descriptions, as it can often be the

intersection of movement and concepts. Imagine calligraphy, for instance, which can blur the

line between painting and words.

Instead of completely negating symbols and descriptions, Ethno-Kinesiology pursues thinness of

description. The implication is not residing in the end product to present, or non-represent

something, but rather in the forthcoming process of inquiry.

Similarly, the artistic making is not limited to producing material objects. On one hand, it is

crucial for Ethno-Kinesiology to share artistic productions. It can take various forms, however,

from museum exhibits to street performances, even those that would not fit conventional

academic classrooms or format. Making artistic performances, such as dramas, pantomimes, or

even athletic performance could be included.

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Here, through artistic-making, those who conduct Ethno-Kinesiology will experience becoming

something. Or more precisely, the becoming is to be illuminated in our ever changing everyday

life. The outcome of the Ethno-Kinesiological engagement also goes through the process of

becoming, together with viewers, audiences, and readers to something which we do not know

yet. The object-to-be sought through Ethno-Kinesiology is thus not limited within the contents of

the product. The very product as well, becomes the object-to-be.

Subtracting

As we see, meta-methodology of subtraction is the core concept of Ethno-Kinesiology. By

subtracting what we think we already know or subtracting lines that categorize things within the

same boxes, Ethno-Kinesiological practice invites us to be involved, to inquire, and to

experience the dissatisfaction of the absence. The inquiry is a pursuit of questions, knowing what

we do not know, instead of making the world to be explicit.

One of the practical questions to conduct subtraction is, to which degree do we keep subtracting?

Do we subtract ourselves? Do we subtract the outcome of the Ethno-Kinesiological practice?

There is no rigid answer for such questions. At least, Ethno-Kinesiology seeks to leave lines

vague in order to keep things undivided. The vagueness at least would be a driving force for

studies to fill out the gap in theoretical, conceptual, and practical ways.

Doing subtraction may be a fearsome attempt for us, especially since we are used to addition as

the only direction to pursue, knowing that the subtraction can ultimately lead to emptiness.

Indeed, such fear is something that the methodology of addition would not have provoked. We

should consider, however, that emptiness is still a geometric term that we are using, and thus

such a fear of emptiness or even the state of not knowing is only based on our scientific,

spatialized understanding, there is a whole other possibility to pursue emptiness, perhaps

emptiness spatialized is not emptiness after all.

“We have no interest in listening to the uninterrupted humming of life's depths. And yet, that is

where real duration is” (Bergson, 1946, p.176). The humming would be what Ethno-Kinesiology

is looking for to capture. Doing Ethno-Kinesiology, is purely practical in this sense, ready to

simply listen, without thinking, and eager to dive into the depth of life, the movement, the reality.

If we consider our habitual thought of spatialization, we would better even not to assume the

97

depth or the sea in geometric ways. Instead, make our body dive, and then let the depth of sea to

dive in to be found.

On the films of this dissertation

In retrospect, Ethno-Kinesiology is exactly reflected here as the film-based inquiry of my project.

The outcome of this artistic production is attached in Appendix A of this thesis, as such products

are not exactly aiming to achieve scientific (read, “spatialized”) production. There are no notes

or arguments on those films I attached. In this way, discussions of the films are left wide open

now, allowing us objectivize whatever we wish from the object-to-be presented in the film. In

this regard, the film is appropriate to be put in the appendix for this dissertation, as the point of

the outcomes of artistic engagement are not bringing up scientific knowledge decisively, but

rather to provoke scientific engagement of knowing as open- ended action.

For instance, through the video-filming inquiry I conducted throughout the dissertation work

(judo), the framework holds so many elements and differences within. When facing judo

practices in different locations, in different contexts, with different groups of people, it is easy to

discuss the uniqueness of each practice under the same name of ‘judo’. However, forcing the

category of ‘judo’ onto what was filmed can be put into question, if you watch the film works in

Appendix A. Ethno-Kinesiological projects would be a stepping stone for further scientific

studies to investigate each difference, to the degree that ‘judo’, the initial framework, recedes and

the uniqueness and character of what those films can potentially objectivize would overtake as

object for further study. To the degree which the start line of describing and finishing

objectivizing the object-to-be as object has become absurd. Yes, in this way by Ethno-

Kinesiology, academic works in general appear more confusing and less clear. It is an attempt to

re-dig into what we think we already know, and make us confused again. This confusion reflects

the very heart of Ethno-Kinesiological practice to achieve, as the confusion, knowing not

knowing, propels our inquiry further. For this sake, Ethno-Kinesiology seeks to make the

inquiry, the artistic- making to be messy, twisted, and ambivalent. Ethno-Kinesiology might

appear as a detour, or a waste of time to get to logical answers or “knowledge” to produce.

Again, though, such remarks are only possible if you believe in logical descriptions and the

logics of knowledge as the only approach.

98

What does Ethno-Kinesiology look like?

Imagine opportunities to encounter scholars’ artistic engagement on physical movement in

various forms. Ethno-Kinesiological products would propose such encounters in diverse forms.

Like natural history has been doing, and museums partially facilitating linkage, Ethno-

Kinesiological projects would be able to bring physical movements and experiences as unique,

confusing and ambivalent collections of encounters. Ethno-Kinesiological products are like that

of an entrance gate, which invites you into further academic inquiry in your own ways – it can be

mathematical, biological, phenomenological, and the list would continue.

Indeed, Ethno-Kinesiology enlarges what any scholar can be doing unconsciously or without any

attention. You cannot forget your body, our physical experiences are based on our bodies, from

which we pursue any form of science. However, as discussed in this dissertation, academic

works are heavily focused on geometric, spatialized discussion, so-called science. This is why,

scholars of physical experiences, many of them situated in academic departments of Kinesiology,

are expected to initiate this Ethno-Kinesiological twist. Even if you do not agree with Ethno-

Kinesiological attempts logically, your physical experiences may – ask your body, question your

physical experiences and rethink how much we do not know, how much we are confused, and

astonished in any ecstatic moment that loses words. Seeking ourselves to let words go. The key

words we would use as guiding lights to delve into the deep sea would be thin description,

subtraction and ambivalence in our physical movements – being aware of the need to trust our

bodies over the brightly shining light of the words themselves.

Future directions

The more I proceeded with this writing, I could not stop noticing an undercurrent to this work:

Zen philosophy. While the synchrony between the idea of subtraction and the core values of Zen

philosophy, such as不立文字, typically translated into English as “words cannot be enough”, I

do not have deep enough knowledge to include such wisdoms into this dissertation project. This

would be a point that future study needs to further pursue, foreseeing the possibility to bridge the

so-called West and East, or even further, dismantle such geometric gaps. Maybe I should not

even consider them as two different shores between West and East – as they might be indeed

99

fundamentally connected, in the deep bottom of the sea. My attempts for this project then, focus

on how we have been simply focusing on a specific side of the shore, even though the shores

only appear to be divided by our views of the world. Thus, it would be a key step for Ethno-

Kinesiology to include and elaborate on Zen philosophy. This point also connects with the

necessity of highlighting Henri Bergson’s philosophy in Ethno-Kinesiology, particularly of the

argument on time. For now, I just illuminate here a possible discussion in the future that

Bergson’s works might be an intersection of West and East by his extraordinary approach to time

and to leave away from scientific tendencies of the spatialization of time.

The pathway that Ethno-Kinesiology needs to take in order to get over the limitations seems

long. Nevertheless, I would like to invite you to this new approach, not to overcome any

shortcomings of existing academia, nor to propose Ethno-Kinesiology as an alternative, but to

fulfill and balance out the current overly scientific (read, spatialized) academic climate.

I hope this work is the first step to illustrate imbalances we face in academic inquiry today, and is

able to let us jump into a new modality of academic knowing toward physical movement yet to

be explored. The academic frontier line is not only external to us, it is in us, our modality of

inquiry.

You are invited.

100

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Copyright Acknowledgements

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Appendix A – Ethno-Kinesiology: Film Ethnographic Journey of Judo

Part 1 – https://youtu.be/OhvJJ3TZGvk

Part 2 – https://youtu.be/8nIFBvkJeKE

Part 3 – https://youtu.be/dY9z-HjywGw

Part 4 – https://youtu.be/mqchetLVP5k

Part 5 – https://youtu.be/Ub0zTDqqevU

Part 6 – https://youtu.be/zBIpUQNsVjA

Part 7 – https://youtu.be/EZefPukJlDs

Part 8 – https://youtu.be/xwso-4aCL4k

Part 9 – https://youtu.be/FQ4j1qY8TGo

Part 10 – https://youtu.be/DKvFA38_IRY

Part 11 – https://youtu.be/4L_Vj7wKIzQ

Part 12 – https://youtu.be/awI2kbhDexc

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Appendix B – Legacy and Legitimacy- Historical Ethnography of a Judo Dojo in Montréal, Canada

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Legacy and legitimacy: historical ethnography of ajudo dojo in Montréal, Canada

Yosuke Washiya

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© 2015 taylor & Francis

Legacy and legitimacy: historical ethnography of a judo dojo in Montréal, Canada

Yosuke Washiya

Graduate School of exercise Sciences, University of toronto, toronto, canada

Judo in Canada was once a highly ethnic practice among Nikkei1 (Canadian of Japanese descendants) people. Whereas baseball was a symbolic practice of assimilation into Canadian society for them, judo had been more oriented towards maintaining the ethnic culture and embodiment of ethnic identity (Dore 2002). Through fieldwork, prior to choosing a specific object to study, I visited active judo dojos (gyms) throughout Canada, from British Columbia and Alberta, to Ontario and Québec. Some of the dojos enjoy high participation and boast great facilities. Some are located within a local Japanese community centre and facilitate the presentation of symbolic identity among the decreasing Nikkei population. Some are struggling with issues of continuity. What struck me is that the dispersion of judo in Canada has inherited the experiences of Nikkei people during and post-Second World War. I often encountered the collective discourse of people (exclusively male, second generation) who learned judo in internment camps where they spent time as children. Those who practiced judo played an important role in its development in Canada in the post-war era.

In thinking of this process, judo can be characterized as the physical activity that was based on Nikkei people’s experience of diasporic2 dispersion. While these experiences are telling of internal identification and external categorization through the ethnic bodily prac-tice of judo at the time (Dore 2002), judo has widely spread all over Canada as a globalized Olympic sport today. In the meantime, some dojos opened by Nikkei people show significant

ABSTRACTThrough fieldwork in a judo dojo (gym) in Montréal, Canada, the author found that assuming the members’ practice as embodiment of identity does not resonate with the actual practice they are producing. Instead of framing the practice as identity politics, this study focuses on the practice itself to highlight agency and practice within the social conditions in transformation. By adapting a historical ethnographic approach, this paper describes how the past is connected to the present as ‘actant’ to produce present practice. The paper discusses that there is little momentum of the people pursuing ‘distinction’, and their emphasis is on the continuity of their practice. Drawing on the pragmatic sociological approach, this study further discusses how legacy and legitimacy are constructed to produce their practice.

CONTACT yosuke Washiya yosuke.washiya@mail.utoronto.ca

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changes when compared to the pre-war context, especially in regard to ethnicity.3 The S dojo4 in Montréal is one such case. Home to Olympic medalists, Montréal is now the biggest judo city in Canada, producing many high performance athletes. Located in the province where high performance judo athletes gather, this Nikkei-opened dojo had just celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2012. Later, through fieldwork, I learned that the dojo has no active members of Japanese descendants.5

Beyond identity politics

To address the experiences of judo in Canada that had a deeply embedded ethnic group experience, identity politics would be the framework that the academic gaze would often adapt. Indeed, sport has been studied as a form of ethnic categorization and dichotomy in many cases; sport as enriching cultural diversity on the one hand, and encouraging ethnic disunity on the other hand. For example, one of the primary works on immigrants and sport in Canada is led by Harney (1985), who refers to the sport practice of immigrant people as ‘choosing sides’ (Harney 1985); he illuminates immigrants’ choices to pursue either Canadian culture or old country games.6 This view of juxtaposing ethnic solidarity and assimilation as two main directions in seeing the sport practice of immigrants is shared broadly with later studies (for example, assimilation is framed in the studies of Day 1981; Heinonen, Harvey, and Fox 2005; Morrow and Wamsley 2005; Sintonen 1993). Similarly, differentiation is emphasized, for example, by Kidd (1985) who claims that studies on assimilation have been premised on assimilation and lack analysis from the perspective of the immigrant groups themselves. This anti-hegemony perspective is shared largely with by other studies exploring differentiation.

Although such differentiation-assimilation dichotomy has been the dominant approach for a long time, recent studies seek to go beyond the limit of this perspective (Field 2012). Postmodern approaches have deconstructed many essentialist views, and the main discussion has moved to constructing our understanding of senses of identity, such as race, ethnicity and gender (see, Joseph 2008; Nakamura 2012). Within structure and subject, how this floating signifier of identity is embodied alters the centre of arguments. Meanwhile, it is important to point out that such discussions are focusing on identities that are embodied by individuals. Although the embodiment of identity between structure and subject is the most basic sociological concept inherent to many studies (for example, Brubaker 2005), those discussions often reduce the experiences of people into matters of identity politics in static forms. This methodological framework restrains our view to fall within the length of time and context in which the categories of identities, such as ‘Japanese’, are applicable. Thereby, the changes and shifts in the realities people experience are not fully captured.

Through fieldwork in Canada, visiting active judo dojo from west to east, I often encoun-tered that assuming (a) category/categories that subjects embody as their identity simply does not resonate with the actual practices. Many dojos now include people with various backgrounds. In seeing judo as a single ethnic practice, the validity in many cases is lost; the actual practice itself is not necessarily the practice of embodying identity. Therefore, it is worthwhile to step back from the argument as a focus on (symbolic) meanings of ethnicity or politics of identity, and instead to focus on the practice itself that agency produces.

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Historical ethnography

Through meeting and having conversations with people in many locations, I started to notice the unique characteristics of S dojo in Montréal, which struggles to maintain itself. Past and history appeared as the key elements that illuminate S dojo and the practice of the people there. Naturally, this paper pays special attention to the past experience and historical data collection. However, this is not merely aiming at the collection of historical facts or empirical data as the past record used to compose historiography. Rather, the point of this paper is to show how the past is connected to the present practices in a judo dojo in current contexts. It was Bourdieu that characterized one’s ‘embodied history’ (Bourdieu 1990) that produces one’s practice within the given social space as habitus (see, also Bourdieu 1977). The central concepts and approaches in Bourdieu’s theories are inherently historical, particularly that of practice produced which is neither entirely in the unconscious nor entirely consciously reproduced (Steinmetz 2011). This paper adapts the gaze towards past experiences of people that are tied to present practice. However, its emphasis is on taking the past as an agency, or as Latour might call it ‘actant’, (Latour 2005) which is an object enmeshed into present practice. Any act around the past, such as remembering, are not merely a copy of the past experienced by individuals, but can be examined as ‘an act of re-collecting of re-member-ing whereby the spatio-temporalities of minds, bodies and things constantly re-relate with each other’ (Schillmeier 2014). Thus, rather than depending on the past as the ‘black box’ of habitus that (re) produces present practice, this paper underscores how past experiences are related to the present practice, and how the experiences are connected to the ongoing process.

Historical ethnography provides a suitable approach to examine this case. It emphasizes its methodological stance that attention to the present without exploring the deep past is virtually inconceivable (Rogers 2009). For example, Reddy uses historical ethnography to discuss a history of emotion in a dynamic explanation of change through past to present (Reddy 1997). A key factor is that both fieldwork and archives are elaborated with the aid of analytic frameworks derived from both anthropology and history. While a good number of studies have claimed historical ethnography as their method, they still leave space for relatively broad understandings of their methodological approaches as intersecting history and ethnography. For example, Vaughan characterizes historical ethnography as an ‘arche-ological revisit’ (Vaughan 2004) which is ‘an attempt to elicit structure and culture from the documents created prior to an event in order to understand how people in another time and place made sense of things’(Vaughan 2004). As Vaughan brings Burawoy’s discussion (2003) that researchers return to the same research field and conduct research again, Vaughan’s emphasis is on reflexive work on his own theorizing process. This paper underscores instead how the people in focus understand their past experience. By including the process of my documenting the past – when retrieving pictures from people for example – it can be the very space in which emerging memory is observable. This means that this paper is not a mixture of ethnography and history, but is an ethnographic description of historical expe-riences that are connected to present practice.

The fieldwork was conducted for 20 days in Montréal between August and November of 2013, and I conducted interviews in Toronto in December and January of 2014. During the research, I interviewed 24 people and observed four training sessions. To illustrate the reality of experiences specific to the space of the dojo examined, I attempted to include

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perspectives from outside of that space as well – those of people who do (did) not participate, the physical space of the dojo in times outside of the practice of judo, and those people belonging to other dojos. I also asked some of the people I met to bring archival data, such as pictures and albums. This does not only give historical positivistic data, it also enables me to capture how the past is recalled in conjunction with present contexts.

Picturing the dojo

The Roxboro area is on the outskirts of Montréal, about a 30-min train ride to downtown. About 7 min walk from the station in Roxboro, a judo dojo is located in a commercial plaza, next to a Jamaican restaurant and a Punjab market. Across the street’s two lanes, I could see people constantly coming and going through the door of a Lebanese bakery. The sign of the dojo on top of the window shows an illustration of two judoka grappling, with the words ‘judo, karate, and ninjutsu’7 depicted. The big window of the dojo facing the street enables people to observe training that is in session. On the window of the dojo, there are colourful posters advertising Russian sambo. Some of them were written in Cyrillic letters. The posters are clean and new, which makes a vivid contrast with the fading and discoloured judo sign above.8

As I enter the gym, two boys in their early teens are training. An instructor, Simon, is leaning against the wall and giving advice. I greeted David, in his 40s, who come over to shake hands. He is one of the instructors of the dojo who I emailed prior to my visit. David explained the number of the students today was much lower than usual. ‘Since it is the middle of summer, the dojo is spacious’.

There are many old photos on the wall. In the centre of the dojo, a photo of Jigoro Kano, the founder of Kodokan Judo, is placed high on the wall as is the norm for most of the dojos in Canada. Some posters of judo tournaments in Japan from 10 years ago are still there on the other side of the wall. For spectators, there are small chairs on the window side. Since the building is designed as a commercial space, the layout is of an irregular shape for judo training. Green tatami mats are on the floor, making two sets of incomplete judo rinks. It is noticeable that the tatami had been used for a long time. Bathrooms and lockers are in the basement, and there are random items such as T-shirts and barbells for strength training left on the floor.

Judo in Canada, with its diasporic legacy

What attracted my attention is that the S dojo was opened by Nikkei people in the 1950s. This is something special if we consider the history of diasporic dispersion of Japanese immigrants after the Second World War during which the Nikkei people have been experi-encing struggles of resettlement in Canada (La Violette 1948). One of the causes preventing their resettlement was that they were identified as Japanese; even though most of them were Canadian citizens born and raised in Canada. ‘Enemy-Alien’, the term used to refer to Nikkei people in Canada during the Second World War, produced interactions at symbolic levels, both within the Nikkei people and amongst others. There are countless stories about the discrimination Nikkei people have faced. This discrimination was connected to the label of ‘enemy’, and was often strengthened by racism (e.g. Shinpo 1975; Suenaga 2010). All the Nikkei people in Canada were forced to move away from Vancouver by 1942(Miki 2004).

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Some of the men were relocated to road camps and worked on railroad construction. Nikkei people who could finance themselves moved to interior locations such as sugar beet farms in Alberta. Those who could not afford to move were sent to internment camps. Under the orders of the government, their property and assets were taken and sold after the Nikkei peo-ple were sent to camps, historical events that triggered the redress movement in late 1980s.9 After the end of the Second World War, Nikkei people were forced to make a decision. Move themselves east of the Rocky Mountains, or sign papers renouncing their Canadian citizenship and agree to be deported to Japan. The deportation policy was cancelled later, but by then about 4000 people were sent to Japan (Oiwa 2006), and many had moved east. Miki writes that the movements of all Japanese Canadians were policed until 1949:

By then, when they were finally able to return to the B.C. coast, nothing remained of their collective lives. With all their properties and businesses gone, and forcibly dispersed all across the country, the vast majority of Japanese Canadians resigned themselves to lives in new towns and cities and began to rebuild their lives .... (2004, 3)

In thinking of the background context, as well as exclusive experiences shared by the people, the S dojo started its operation at first exclusive atmosphere, where most members were the Nikkei. However, some people told me that their experience of exclusion was milder than those who experienced life in Toronto. Mrs. Nomura, the wife of the founder of the S dojo told me that:

Unlike Toronto, Montréal had little Asian population, and people did not have that much strong hostility. Besides, most of the Nikkei people could find the job often with the help of Jewish people. Here in Montréal, Francophone people are also undermined, so Japanese people did not have to suffer oppression.

The demographic and specific climate in Montréal seemed to help attract a larger group of people to the S dojo right after the end of the Second World War and was not limited to those of Japanese heritage.

Historical outline of the dojo

It was in such an atmosphere that the dojo started its operation as a non-profit volunteer based club in 1952. The club’s historical data and information are recorded in the form of annual bulletin which enable this study to trace the historical background. Prior to its opening, Fred Nomura, one of its founders, started teaching judo at a YMCA in downtown Montréal in 1946.10 In 1950, Nomura started teaching Judo at McGill University. It was the first university in Canada with an organized judo class. The class was formed at the request of the director of the Department of Athletics at McGill University at the time. At the dojo, soft canvas padded mats were used instead of the traditional tatami mats. The popularity of the judo club is discernible from McGill annual albums especially after 1952, since the number of people in Judo-gi (uniform) increased dramatically. Since then, the S dojo has continued sending teachers to the McGill university judo club. Some of the members at McGill University also belonged to the S dojo. During the time, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics sil-ver medalist, McKenzie, started his judo career at the YMCA, taught by Nomura. Although his relation to the S dojo is limited to a short period of time, his name is often referred to among the members of the S dojo.

The S dojo was named by Nomura. The first physical dojo was in the basement of Loisir St-Jean Baptiste community center on Rachel Street. The dojo used wrestling mats, as tatami

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was unavailable. Within a year, in 1953, it moved to Drolet Street, with large storefront windows, and with an auto spring beneath the mats covered with canvas. The set-up of the dojo was largely done with the help of the fathers of the students. Roy, Nikkei of the second generation and a former member of the club, recalled that his father was one of the people who dedicated time and effort to create the space of the dojo. Since his father was a carpenter, he helped with the physical construction by using the skills of his trade. The use of the car spring technique has been adapted for a long time since then.

The early establishment of the dojo played an important role in Québec judo. From 1953 to 1966, the S dojo sponsored provincial individual and team championships until Judo Québec took over the tournaments. In 1955, the dojo moved again, this time to a Catholic community centre on Sherbrook Street East. The dojo had received much support from the local Christian group. While the support was acknowledged, a member expressed some concern that this connection to a specific religion prevented new members from joining, especially those post-war immigrants from Japan.11 In 1958, the dojo moved to Notre Dame Street East, then Decarie Street in 1966, Victoria Street near Jean-Talon station in 1984, Cegep de Vieux Montréal in 1986, Sunnybrook Community Center from 1989 to 1997, and then in 1997, settled in Gouin, Roxboro, the current location.

Multilingual practice from the past

Although the initial driving force opening the judo dojo was the Nikkei people, the dojo was not exclusively for the Nikkei community right from the beginning. Those who trained at the YMCA or McGill University joined the S dojo in the early period of the dojo, and some of them remained there as instructors. The only obvious occasions in which ethnic-ity becomes visible is the language used to address systems specific to Judo. Numbers are counted in Japanese. All the names of the skills and rituals are also in Japanese. Most of the training is directed in English. Casual conversations among students are also in English. However, when Francophone students gather, the instructions are given in French as well. For example, I noticed that John, an instructor, was giving direction in French to a crowd of kids working on a skill. He walked over to a boy and gave directions in detail and left. A few minutes later, he took a glance at the same boy, and came to give the direction again. He explained in English this time. In the dojo, mainly three forms of language are exchanged; French, English and Japanese. This multilingual practice is produced by the combination of pupils’ and instructors’ language skills.

The first generations of teachers were mostly second generation Nikkei who spoke English as their first language. Naturally, their judo lectures were in English. Although French speak-ers were present from the time that English was the language of instruction, the teaching was somehow managed. David, who is a Francophone, started judo at the YMCA and the S dojo in 1970s recalls that:

At the time, we did not have problem with communication. Sensei (teacher) spoke English, and students tend to understand English well. Even for those French speakers, instruction in English was not a matter, I guess.

Now, the members of the S dojo are composed of multiple ethnic backgrounds, as David notes: ‘many ethnic backgrounds, Francophone, Anglophone, Scottish descendants, and all those mixed kids, like, Canadian’.

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During the warm up, instructor Simon made students count numbers from one to ten in Japanese. From right to left, students took over each turn with each warm up form. While most of the students counted numbers correctly, one student started to count in a different language. When Simon asked the student to count properly, the student replies ‘Because I am Chinese. I am not Japanese’. Several kids were laughing at it. Soon, the pupil restarted to count in Japanese. (field notes, 13 November 2013)

Imagining the ‘Japanese’ judo

The dojo’s practice has been in constant contact with finding the heritage of authentic Japanese judo, or ‘Japanese-ness’. There are two connotations; in a contemporary sense, or of that brought by new comers from Japan, and as historical sense, or that of brought by Nikkei (Canadian) people. Judo as techniques of the body include a variety of styles, tactics, teaching and training methods, and even rules that have changed with time. The S dojo has had many teachers throughout its history some of whom are involved to this day. While Nikkei teachers, such as Nomura offered instruction in the way that he himself had learned judo, students sometimes encounter different styles under the same category of Japanese judo from Japanese people who came and trained together.

At the beginning of the training session at the S dojo, students sit down in a line, facing the teachers. After bowing, the warm up starts. The first half of the session is dedicated to the basic Ukemi (falling techniques) skills. It is well arranged for kids not to be bored by the repetition of basics by incorporating game-style training. Then Nagewaza (throwing techniques) and Newaza (grappling techniques) start. Instructor Pierre, with his 200 lb body, playfully grappled with a student who then falls to the matt. They bow to each other after each paired training session. Pierre gives all the students high-fives. At the end of the training, Simon gives a short speech, a one minute meditation, then bowing; to sensei, to each other, and to Kodokan. (field notes, 10 August 2013)

David and Simon, both instructors, express the importance of teaching discipline and a sense of respect through their training. The emphasis on discipline is inherited from Nomura’s instruction. Sophie, a former member who earned a black belt as the first woman in Canada, recalls the long speech given by Nomura at the end of each training session. ‘It was really, really long, and after that, we did not remember it at all. But Nomura sensei was very strict about those things’.

Sophie, in her 70s, came to the dojo with a pile of photo albums. On learning of my intent to hear the history of the dojo, Simon sent an email to former members, and she kindly showed up. Surprisingly, she came to the dojo with her old judo-gi, and participated for a while. She started judo in her high school, influenced by her boyfriend at the time. Although she had no knowledge of judo, she soon became interested and started to train seriously. Since a high school teacher was also a member of the S dojo, she was invited to join the dojo after finishing judo practice in her school programme. ‘The first day I joined the S dojo, it was very scary. Nomura sensei was the first Japanese person I had ever met. He has the very slant eyes, and he was so scary’. Since then, her life was dependent on judo. She went to Kodokan dojo in Tokyo to train judo for two months during her time at university. There, she met her future husband who was the brother of Suzuki, occasionally teaching at the S dojo at the time. She showed me a photo album that she brought to share. There are some black and white photos from the time when she just started judo, and also some photos from the S dojo’s annual parties.

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While on the one hand Nomura’s way of instructing was perceived with acknowledge-ment, on the other, Suzuki the founder of the H dojo in Montréal recalls the instruction a little bit differently:

Nomura-san was talking to the students about Japanese culture with some kind of colored way. There were so many talks, and such long talks, but the point was, all the students were trying to listen. You know, the kids were smart, Canadian kids, filled with curiosity about Japanese culture. I think sensei was enjoying this relation different from the past; everybody listens to them, and pays respect to them.

Suzuki came to Montréal in 1968, and the H dojo has been at the centre of the national training system of Canada for many years. He had been a Canadian national coach for years, who has trained Olympic medalists. In his first three years, he was teaching at the S dojo three times a week. Suzuki is the only person who received a ‘salary’ as an instructor in the S dojo.12 Suzuki’s migration to Canada was influenced by several people from Montréal, including McKenzie who he met at Kodokan in Tokyo where they trained together.

Suzuki’s views toward the S dojo are based on his experience in Japan where he grew up. He found gaps between the judo in the S dojo and the training he experienced:

The S dojo at the time was teaching very differently from the Japanese way I knew. They were teaching the old type of judo which they learned from their parents’ generation in Canada. It was funny sometimes after I demonstrated a move, some teachers came over and said, ‘it is not the correct way’. I needed to explain the contemporary Japanese judo in Japan, but soon I started to try to adjust to their way. Perhaps, they needed to maintain their authority, and they didn’t want me to break it. The students who came were those who were interested in Japanese culture and had a huge respect for it. They respected the teachers too, and you know, for the teachers, it should be an important feeling after being excluded and treated badly.

Suzuki was a national level competitor in Japan, and still highly competitive at the time. The teachers of the S dojo were, on the other hand, at a grass-roots level. He comments that ‘They could teach, as long as the students were beginners. But once strong competitors came, they could not handle them at all’. From Suzuki’s perspective, Nikkei instructors were managing their capacity and teaching in a way such that they could maintain their authority. ‘Judo has been evolving. The judo they were teaching was simply out of date. They did not work on it’.

In contrast, David expresses that the S dojo is not seeking high-performance athletes, like the H dojo. Perhaps, this is one of the points illustrating the different characters of the S dojo and the H dojo, the two dojos with Japanese roots and that have experienced different routes. While the S dojo focuses on educational, lifelong judo as a volunteer based community, the H dojo emphasizes developing judo both at a high performance level and a recreational level.13

‘The oldest Japanese judo dojo’

The founding members of S dojo could be considered as the entire Japanese Canadian com-munity at that time, since everyone gave their time and effort to building and participating in the school during its rocky beginnings’. (S Dojo 1992, 2)

The current teachers recognize the close ties of the dojo to the Nikkei community. Similarly, they emphasize their inheritance of the history of the Nikkei people in Canada. I heard members of the S dojo often describing their dojo as inheriting ‘the oldest Japanese judo’ in Canada. David says that ‘Among the several judo dojos in Montréal, or even in Québec, the

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S dojo is the oldest dojo inheriting Japanese judo’. In the S dojo, the emphasis on Japanese judo is visible in their pedagogic structure; teachers facing the pupils lined up with belt hierarchy and straight sitting (seiza) at the start and end of training, finishing with medi-tation (mokusou), bowing to practice partners, and so on.

Once training finishes, kids start to rush to the entrance of the dojo. The shoe rack is standing one meter away from the tatami mat, and a boy jumps to the shoe rack, putting on shoes, and starts to run to the entrance. David stops him and tells him he should have bowed (to the dojo) before leaving the tatami mat. The boy returns to face the room, bows quickly, and runs through the entrance. David looks back at me and says, ‘I need to repeat this again and again’. (field notes, 10 August 2013)

Their education on bowing seems to be working well; every time the kids leave the mat, including when they get their water bottles during periods of rest – they bow. This bodily action is embedded in all members, including the instructors.

Maintaining the legacy of the dojo

On a wall of the dojo, there is a picture in a wooden relief that says:In memory of Fred Y. Nomura 1917–1999 Founder S dojo (1952). Through his devotion the club he made a difference in our lives. His spirit will always be embedded in the Judo we teach.

Respect for the Nikkei teachers is often heard from the current instructors. When John passed me a videotape which is produced by the members to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the dojo in 1997, he told me that ‘you will see our sensei in the video’. ‘Sensei’ is a Japanese term referring to teacher, showing respect.

After finishing training and making sure that all the kids have left, Simon takes me to the parking lot to show me his archival materials that he keeps at his home garage. He brings five boxes of photos, an address book, and even receipts of the monthly fees that are all kept in a file. I also found that while relatively new records were all written in English, some older records were written in Japanese, such as the record of the meetings held among Nikkei parents. The attendance record seemed to have been kept for quite a long time and recorded in a manner that is not practiced anymore. Simon smiled and told me in English with a slight accent that ‘I do not know what to do with the records. Since I took over the records, I just try not to lose them’. (field notes, 10 August 2013)

He started judo when he came to Montréal as a graduate student from Denmark. Judo was something that he could dedicate himself to in his stressful academic days. He is still involved in judo, now as the chief of the dojo. The ‘legacy’ taken over is also detectable from members’ passion to keep the dojo a volunteer owned, non-profit organization.14 The people there often emphasize a volunteer mindset. The newsletter written for the 40th anniversary of the S dojo tells that:

S dojo has changed, as has Judo now that it is such an international sport, but the club still continues as a non-profit organization and the sensei are all volunteers. The club continues to emphasize the important fundamentals and principles of Judo, which so many remember as the S dojo’s trademark. (S Dojo 1992, 3)

The non-profit and volunteer based approach to the practice of judo is causing friction with those people teaching judo as their source of livelihood. A young Japanese judo instructor, teaching temporarily at the H dojo expressed that the dominant beliefs of non-profit, vol-unteer driven work can be an obstacle for him to teach. ‘People think judo is a cheap sport,

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and they would not pay for the judo school. This ends up lowering the respect of high quality teaching, and prevents developing the performance of judo in Canada’.15

The financial aspect is also an issue for the S dojo. As the history of the relocation shows, they do not have their own property, and have been struggling to secure their space to train. The most recent move was caused by the problem of an increasing rent fee. And now, the same issue is still going on. Simon mentioned that they are expecting to have support from the local municipality knowing that there is an increasing need for youth activities.

Discussion: legacy and legitimacy

What this historical ethnography captured is discussed in two points below.First, their practice of judo is now conducted without accentuating identity politics. The

ethnic identity is symbolically used to differentiate their space as one used for judo rather than as a source of identity to be embodied by members. In one sense, the differentiation of their space could be characterized as seeking the authenticity of ‘the oldest Japanese judo’. However, it is important to note that their practice of seeking ‘Japanese-ness’ is not con-structed as the definite sense of being ‘Japanese’. In contrast to the H dojo which holds more of a contemporary sense of ‘Japanese-ness’, teachers at the S dojo find their own ‘Japanese-ness’ in their legacy that they inherited; pedagogies, values and virtues, and particularly the space of judo under the name of the S dojo that are maintained with their efforts.

Legitimacy arises here as the focal point. Unlike finding authenticity in their practice, assuring legacy instead seems to be more focused on preserving their practice itself with little momentum to pursue ‘distinction’ (Bourdieu 1984) or to obtain a higher position in their given field. Bourdieu’s approach argues that an individual’s habitus within the power relations that oppress individuals in a passive form that assumes that people seek a higher position within the social space. In other words, such an approach is ‘utilitarianism-de-rived sociology’ (Boltanski and Thévenot 2000) that perceives individual dispositions as optimizing their own interest. However, the practice this paper captured is not aimed at producing high performance athletes, or social recognition that is meant to elevate their socio-economic position. Their practice is rather, produced with their ‘practical reasoning’ (Silber 2003) that legitimates their own stance toward their legacy to strive for continuing the S dojo. This is what Boltanski discusses as ‘justification’ (Boltanski and Porter 2012), which is an approach of pragmatic sociology that illuminates the actions of individuals that are situated within, and are dealing with, a situation for their own reasons. Unlike the critical theoretic approach such as Bourdieu takes, or those critical cultural studies that understand human activities as the confrontation and conflicts against hegemonic power, the practice this paper addresses is not simply reproduced against assumed others in power relations. Nor is the practice of this legacy-construction and legitimacy-seeking necessarily reproduced by a static structure of habitus. Legacy legitimizes their practice of maintaining their dojo, and legitimacy simultaneously stabilizes the production of their legacy from an experienced-past. This intertwined legacy-construction and legitimacy-seeking produces the continuity of the current practice of the S dojo.

It is important to note that legacy and legitimacy are constructed within the constant change and shifts of the circumstances the people at the S dojo face; unstable individual identities, changing socio-political conditions, ethnic diversities, economic situations, and that many aspects construct their practice in a dynamic form. From this perspective the

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past is not simply reducing their practice in a deterministic form. Indeed, the legacy that is constructed is chosen, and legitimacy is found in the experienced-past out of many possible options both in a diachronical and synchronical sense.

Interestingly, many judo dojos in Canada with Nikkei history have published their own historical archives and memorial booklets. The experienced-past among people and their own approach toward the past seem to play a more important role than the manner in which we place a sociological gaze on them. Rather than seeing such activities as an embodiment of identity, or assuming history as reproducing structured practice, deeper analysis on how the practice is transforming and continuing from the past to the present, and from people to people will elaborate our academic understanding of human agencies.

In facing the drastic change in their demography, this case study underlines the real-ity of struggling for continuity as the intersection of practices: legacy and legitimacy that construct each other as well as produce the entire practice of judo at the S dojo. Although further study is needed, especially regarding the logic of practices that pursue continuity, the historical ethnography that this paper adapts brings a fresh perspective that can con-nect past to present, and bridges practice and agency to represent how people struggle to continue their everyday life and physical culture.

Notes

1. I will refer to them as ‘Nikkei’ people, which means ‘Japanese descendant born and raised outside Japan’ in Japanese. The term is used for people in global Japanese diaspora. For example, people who are decedents of Japanese immigrants in Brazil are called ‘Nikkei Brazilian’. Some of them refer to themselves as ‘Nikkei’, but the degree of such identification differs from one another.

2. Here, the term ‘diasporic’ includes ‘dispersion’ in a broader sense (see, Brubaker 2005; Tölölyan 1991). While some of the Nikkei migrants are referred to as Japanese ‘diaspora’ (see, for example, Lesser 2007; White 2003), this paper uses the term diasporic thereby, highlighting dispersion of Nikkei people’s experience to suggest both from Japan to Canada, and within Canada by discrimination and forceful relocation.

3. ‘Ethnicity’ in this paper is not definitive identification but the awareness of ‘collective identification’ (Jenkins 2008) that people identify themselves with.

4. All names presented hereafter in this study are pseudonyms. 5. In general, pre-war Japanese immigrants and the descendants tend to be quite mixed by

inter-marriage. Besides, in the case of Montréal, many Nikkei people left to Toronto due to the political and economic situation in the province of Québec.

6. For example, revival of the Glengary highland games in 1948 and Scottish highland culture in Canada (Mason 2005).

7. After I learned that karate and ninjutsu were sharing the space of the dojo in the beginning, and now ninjutsu is no longer offered since several years ago.

8. David explained that the S dojo rents the space to the sambo club on the days judo training is not occurring. ‘They are good folks. They train completely in Russian’. The sambo training attracts many Russian-speaking immigrants. While the S dojo had two students, the sambo club had around 15 students that same week, with five parents observing the training (Field notes, 9 August 2013).

9. Most of the assets were not returned to the Nikkei owners, since those were used for auctions or the cost for maintaining camps. Furthermore those properties and or businesses were sold at ludicrously low prices (Taylor 2004).This caused Nikkei people to lose their motive to rebuild their lives in Canada (Kage 1998).

10. It seems there were judo dojos in the middle of the 20th century in Québec. The detail is uncertain.

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11. Interview with Roy (9 August 2013).12. Interview with David (7 August 2013).13. The H dojo also opened for children and adults. One of the students in an adult class expresses

that the dojo provides high quality lectures and it is not difficult for her to keep up with the training for recreation. Interview with Satoh (15 November 2013).

14. For example, the registration fee for children is $45 for a month, $110 for three months, $150 for five months, and $290 from September to June. This is cheaper than a similar type of judo dojo in Toronto.

15. Interview with Yokoyama (17 November 2013).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the Toyota foundation.

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