THE HARUMI BEFU PRIZE

Harumi Befu, emeritus professor of Stanford University and the founder of AJJ, passed away on 4 August 2022 at the age of 92. Thanks to a very generous donation from his widow, Kei, the prize has been funded for ten years. It is worth 250,000 yen annually, and is awarded for the best presentation by an emerging scholar (defined as any researcher who does not yet have a tenured position) at the annual AJJ conference.

The judging panel, consisting of 16 members of the AJJ Executive Committee and 10 invited senior scholars, decided unanimously to award the inaugural Harumi Befu Prize to Anna Wozny, post-doctoral fellow at Tokyo College in the University of Tokyo, for her presentation "Marriage-hunting: intimacy at the nexus of state and market forces." The runner-up was Maiko Kodaka, adjunct lecturer at Sophia University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, for her presentation "Women's Consumption of Sex: The Question of Sex Positivism." The judging panel also highly commended two other presentations: "Suffering and Conflicts of Women Priests in Jinja Shinto," by Koure Makita, PhD candidate, Keio University, and "Silences out of the Past: Fables of Rescue and the Politics of Historical Memory in Multicultural Japan" by Dylan O'Brien, PhD candidate, University of California at San Diego.

 

THE MARK BOOKMAN PRIZE

Mark Bookman was a highly gifted young scholar of disability issues in Japan. He himself suffered from a very rare disease, which sadly took his life in December 2022, just after last year's AJJ conference, when he was just 31 years old. Thanks to a very generous donation from his family, the prize has been funded for ten years. It is worth 50,000 yen annually, and is awarded for the best presentation relating to disabilities or marginalised groups by an emerging scholar at the annual AJJ conference.

The judging panel decided unanimously to award the inaugural Mark Bookman Prize to Esben Petersen, non-tenured instructor at Ritsumeikan University, for his presentation, "Supporting Individuals with Autism in Japan: A Personal Insight." A special jury prize of 30,000 yen was awarded to Mark Frisina, a 4th year undergraduate at Temple University Japan, for his presentation, "Building community in care homes: Shizen Camp's 10-year mission to empower those in the child welfare system in Japan." The judges also highly commended Yoshiko Taniguchi, an MA candidate at International Christian University, for her presentation, "Structural Violence as Experienced by Street-involved Youth. An Intersectional Analysis of Tōyoko Kids in Kabukichō, Tokyo, Japan."

It is exciting to see the anthropology of Japan being enriched by these talented newcomers, and we look forward to seeing the battle for the Befu and Bookman Prizes intensify in the years to come.

The abstracts of the seven award-winning papers may be viewed at the AJJ homepage: