OGATA, Shirabe
Assistant Professor
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi,
Tokyo, 183-8534, Japan
Email: ogatas[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp
Personal Homepage:
Research interests: Anthropology of Arts, Nigerian area studies
Documenting the lives of people through consideration of elements that consist of arts and lifestories.
Considering elements that consist of arts such as materials, sensuosity, institutions, and life stories which consist of things and events like money, livelihood, relationships, and communities, I have been documenting the lives of people in Nigeria in a form of ethnography.
To reveal what arts are in Nigeria, it is significant to focus on various elements like mutual aids and beliefs of local communities, and international art market and art history that emanated from Western modernity. Life stories as individual narratives also suggest connections of those various elements.
Materials, things, and practices that are called “arts” do not indicate only genre, category, works of art, and artistic activities but they also show us connections with things and events that pass across existing frames of art. This unexpected expansion is what makes me excited and encourages further research.
Recent Interests:
Applying the method that I used in Nigeria and the theory that I gained from the research in Nigeria to the research in Kyoto Japan, I have recently been working on a comparative study of Nigeria and Japan. The more it focuses on arts, the more it discover s the way of being of local communities, which is also the case in Nigeria. At the same time, something peculiar to a specific area in Kyoto is revealed such as the important roles of cafes and restaurants through which art practices are often accepted and promoted. Without being preoccupied with research in Nigeria which is far from Japan in a sense of view of Orientalism, my goal is to carry out researches that make me rethink ways of being of Japan and Asia which is familiar to me and myself.
Research Projects:
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