Interview
| Prof. KATAOKA Tatsuki | |
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Professor, Graduate School of Asian and African Studies, Kyoto UniversityCareer
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| Interviewer | |
 SHIMIZU Daichi |
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 ISHIYAMA Miya |
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Introduction
| SHIMIZU： We will now begin the interview. I would like to ask Professor Kataoka about his memories at the University of Tsukuba and his current research. Now, Prof. Kataoka, could you introduce yourself? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： My name is KATAOKA Tatsuki. After graduating from the University of Tsukuba as a 5th generation of alumni of the College of International Relations, I was aworded master’s degree from the Graduate School of Area Studies, which currently is the Master’s and Doctoral Program in International Public Policy. After receiving my master’s degree, I went on to earn a second master’s degree from the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies at Kyushu University, where I also earned a doctorate. I am currently a professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Studies, Kyoto University. |
What makes you being interested in your research field?
| SHIMIZU： What kind of research are you doing? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： My reaserch focuses on the following two areas; Japan and South Asia. I have mainly done my research on the culture and religion of mountain minorities, particularly in Thailand. I have also started my research on Chinese mausoleums and temples in urban areas. In addition, my research has focused on folk beliefs in Ehime Prefecture for current 5-6 years. Regarding to my south Asian research, my papers sometimes focus on migration history and politics that are not directly related to religion or culture. |
| SHIMIZU： What makes you being interested in your research field? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： My interest originated in my graduation thesis seminar. I have been interested in the southeast Asia. Since there were many political science courses in the international relations curriculum at the time, I wrote my thesis on Thai politics. As a result of choosing the political parties in Thailand as my research theme, I wanted to deepen my research about the theme. I finally went on to a master’s degree program in the Graduate School of Area Studies. However, just before I was about to enter the program, a coup d’état (the 1991 coup) took place in Thailand, and the military government came to power. The moment I entered the program, the parliament was closed and I had nothing to research. |
| ISHIYAMA： That was a tremendous timing. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes it was. Then I wanted to think about national unity in Thailand and became interested in ethnic minority issues. So I decided to study the people who lived furthest from the capital and seemed to be far from the mainstream anyway. I actually went to the mountainous areas of Thailand and found many Christian villages. I thought the Christian culture was interesting and continued my research on the field. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： As I continued my research, I found out that these people had migrated to Thailand from China or Myanmar during the Cold War. Knowing this background, I began to think not only about their religion, but also about their history and politics, and here I am today. The reason why I started researching Chinese temples and shrines is also related to my research on ethnic minorities in the Thai mountains. When I went to the Thai mountains, I found that there were many people who came from the Chinese overland route. There were also people from the sea, and I realized that the history and political dynamics of Southeast Asia were driven by people coming in from mainland China. So I became interested in them and started researching their culture, Chinese temples and gods. |
| ISHIYAMA： I felt that your research interests have shifted from political science to anthropological perspectives, and that you have such a wide perspectives on your research fields. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Thank you very much. I took mostly political science related courses when I was an undergraduate student. After I entered graduate school, I started reading only anthropologists’ books. Even after my interest shifted to anthropology in that way, I still sometimes remember that I studied only political science during my four years in university. I think that’s a big part of it. |
| ISHIYAMA： When I read your book on your research on ethnic minorities in the Thai mountains, I wondered if your research also incorporated a political science perspective, and I wondered if you yourself were aware of that perspective when you wrote the book. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I think it rather depends on the nature of the field. The area I focused, the Thai Mountains, is on the edge of the country. Thailand borders other countries. Since the mountain ridges are the borders in Southeast Asia, the ethnic minorities that I studied are the front line of international politics. Whenever there is a conflict with a neighboring country, something happens there first. I naturally have to think about international politics when I am with these people. |
| ISHIYAMA： As my first impression, I just thought that Thai Mountains Area was far away from the politics of the country. However, it is quite the opposite situation. I think it is very interesting… |
Memories at the University of Tsukuba
| SHIMIZU： Was your supervisor Professor Ayabe when you were in the University? I was curious about it after I read your book, “Ethnography of the Thai Mountainous Minorities: Nation, Ethnicity, and Culture of the Christian Lahu,”1 which summarizes your research on the Thai mountainous minorities. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes, my supervisor was Prof. Ayabe Hiroko2 when I was an undergraduate student. |
| SHIMIZU： Have you changed your supervisor after you entered graduate school? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes, that’s right. Prof. Hiroko Ayabe was not a faculty member of the Graduate School of Area Studies. I had originally read the research of Prof. Tsuneo Ayabe3 who is Yuko Ayabe’s husband, introduced by Prof. Yuko Ayabe. Prof. Tsuneo Ayabe was a fuclty member of the Graduate School of Area Studies at the time, so he was my supervisor during my master’s period. |
| SHIMIZU： I see. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I spent three years on my master’s degree, and in the third year, Prof. Tsuneo Ayabe retired. Therefore, when I wrote my master’s thesis, I had Prof. Masaki Onozawa4 look over my thesis. |
| SHIMIZU： I know you have been involved with many different teachers. Is there anything in particular that has impressed you? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Let’s see… There used to be Fresemi5 , which was different from the seminors with supervisors…is it still being conducted now? |
| SHIMIZU： Yes it is. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： How about Tatekon6 ？ |
| SHIMIZU： Although we haven’t done it after the Covid 19 began to spread, we did Tatekon before that. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： When I was in the first grade, a home-room class was assigned to the students and they belonged to the class through the undergraduate life. I was in class 2 and our homeroom teacher was Prof. Yutaka Tsujinaka7 , who’s field is Japanese Politics. Then there was an incident. The students in the other class got drunk at a party and dropped their teacher into a pond. They were scolded severely by their homeroom teacher. |
| SHIMIZU： No way! At the Matsumi Pond8 ？ |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I think that was around the Matsumi Pond. This was my most memorable episode related to professors. |
| SHIMIZU： Yes, it is indeed a strong episode. It is an episode that would be hard to include in an article…. |
| ISHIYAMA： No, let’s definitely include these interesting episodes. I think that is nice memory. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： And as for memories of teachers, well…. I heard so many interesting stories from various professors… I was impressed by what one professor, not as a supervisor or seminar teacher, said to me in a regular class. |
| SHIMIZU： What did the professor say? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： The class was held in a large classroom with a good number of students. At the beginning of the class, the professor said “You can choose whether or not to come to the class. If there are those who get an 80 without ever coming to class and those who come to class every time but only get an 80, the one who gets an 80 without coming to class is obviously better.” Although I had forgotten these words for a long time, I remember them when I started teaching. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I also took a class taught by Prof. Yutaka Akino9 , who passed away while working in Asia, and what he said left a strong impression on me. He said, “In one semester at university, I can teach two or three new books at most. You can read a new book in about three hours. If you are going to talk about it for a whole semester, it is a waste of time for those who are confident that they can read it by themselves and really understand it.” He said that if you are confident that you can read and understand the root story by yourself, you don’t need to go to class. |
| ISHIYAMA： Do you take that stance in your teaching? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes I do. At the beginning of the class, I tell students that the university is the highest academic institution and that they have both the freedom to study and the freedom to drop out, so do what you want. I tell them to do as they please, but I get a lot of flak from the academic affairs for not saying that…. |
| ISHIYAMA： It seems to be much tougher now. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes, exactly. They ask me to make sure to do attendance check. |
| SHIMIZU： Do you vary your involvement between undergraduate and graduate students? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Regarding to the graduate school students, they should study voluntarily without people telling them what to do. Therefore, I am taking this stance more strongly against them. They entered graduate school in the freedom to study/not to study. |
| SHIMIZU： That really sinks in…. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I am speaking now with a sinking feeling because I have been down this road myself. |
| ISHIYAMA： So in a sense, you learned your stance on teaching through your relationships with professors at university and graduate school. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Now that I think about it, yes. |
| ISHIYAMA： I thought that not only your research field but also the time you spent at the University of Tsukuba remained with him and became one of the foundations of your way of thinking. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes, the experience of spending my undergraduate and master’s years at the University of Tsukuba was significant for me. |
Memories through Tsukuba life
| SHIMIZU： You received your master’s degree from the University of Tsukuba, then went on to Kyushu University for your master’s and doctoral degrees, and now you are working at Kyoto University. How does the Kyshu University differ from the University of Tsukuba? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： The environment back then was quite different from today. Even the Tsukuba Express was not open. Almost all first-year students were lived in dormitories as buses were the only public transportation available. |
| SHIMIZU： Like Ichinoya-shukusha10？ |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I have lived in Ichinoya. My hometown was Tokyo, but it was not an easy commute even from there. Everyone did live in dormitories. |
| SHIMIZU： It seems that most first-year students are still in dormitories. Since there are not many apartments and they have many classes on the first year, it is easier for them to attend classes by staying in a dormitory. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： It was a great environment to make friends and get to know people. The four years I spent in the dormitory were like a school trip. |
| SHIMIZU： I understand that feeling very well. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： We would gather in someone’s room with a bottle of liquor, and when we got drunk, we would say the name of the girl we liked, and it was like that every night. |
| SHIMIZU： It’s good, students still do that kind of thing. How did you spend your time in graduate school? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： When I was in graduate school, I was in an apartment. I did not why, but my one senior, two seniors, and my classmate all lived in the apartment next to each other. We came and went each othrer frequently. We lived in the apartment without locking the door. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： My senior’s house was our hangout. When my senpai was working part-time, we would go into his room without permission to drink and watch TV. While we were doing so, our classmates would also gather there. |
| ISHIYAMA： It sounds interesting. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes it was. One of my classmates now teaches at the university and his apartment was right across from mine. Our windows faced each other. We would open the window and talk there like “Shall we go out to eat? “ |
| ISHIYAMA： It’s a cartoonish situation! |
| Prof. KATAOKA： When a female student from outside the prefecture who had a close research field came to visit us, we discussed with each other about where she should stay (because we were all boys). In the end, we would open the room of my friend who lived in the best room among us and let him stay in my room. We really lived together as a unit. |
| ISHIYAMA： You cooperated with each other to deal with such situations as well. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： It was a very rough life. We would gather in someone’s room, drink, and complains about professors. |
| ISHIYAMA： Student topics really don’t change over time. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes it does. That is why I try to avoid hanging around the graduate student rooms as much as possible, so that students will not have a hard time saying bad things about me. |
| ISHIYAMA： I see that you are taking care of your students. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Students have the right to speak ill of their teachers, you know. |
| ISHIYAMA： You’re very student-friendly. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Because I was like that myself. I used to say to the younger students in the seminar, “You can ignore that comment by the professor.” Maybe our students are saying, “You don’t have to listen to that comment by Kataoka.” |
| SHIMIZU： But I met a student who is a member of your seminar the other day, and he said that Prof. Kataoka is a good teacher who gives him sweets. Hearing that, and interviewing you today, I have the impression that Prof. Kataoka is very frank. |
About Prof. Kataoka’s research
| SHIMIZU： So far, I got the impression that your experiences in the College of International Relations and the Graduate School of Area Studies are very much connected to what you are doing now. Let me ask you about your future prospects as a researcher. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I don’t have an idea of what I am going to do in the future, but I have a lot of papers to write. I am thinking about finishing the homework I have in front of me. |
| SHIMIZU： I have the impression that researchers in cultural anthropology have accumulated a lot of information from their fieldwork, and that they have a lot of things they want to analyze inspired by their fieldwork. Is that the case with you as well? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Yes, there are many things I would like to think about from the information obtained through fieldwork. In fact, I have found that some of my hypotheses were overturned when I actually went into the field, and I was sometimes intrigued by things that I had never seen before. |
| ISHIYAMA： Perhaps this is connected to the story of how the your perception was overturned during your fieldwork, but I was also very impressed by the story you wrote in your book about the perception of Christianity among the Lahu, a minority tribe in the mountainous areas of Thailand. As you wrote in your book, I also felt “Isn’t it arrogant not to tolerate the existence of many gods?” I was surprised to read that Lahu people thought it was arrogant to think that they could choose their own god, and I realized that I had taken my own viewpoint as universal. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Of course, it is not only the Lahu I focused, but also monotheists think that way. When I talk with my colleagues researching about Southeast Asia, where there are many Muslims, we are all surprised at the same point. This is probably a common idea in places where Christianity and Islam are prevalent, but for us, it is more exotic and interesting. |
| ISHIYAMA： Yes, that’s right. I was very shocked because it was an idea that had never occurred to me. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I was also shocked and thought “Oh, that is true.” |
| ISHIYAMA： What can I say, there is no such thing as a universal idea anywhere, I thought while reading your book. But at the same time, I wondered how similar Lahu’s cultural system was to Japan’s. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I am editing a book titled“Anthropology of Asia.”11Among the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, there are some that are undeniably like the “Monkey-Crab Battle” and others that are just like the “Kojiki.” |
| ISHIYAMA： Why do you think so many similarities emerge? Does it have something to do with the fact that the mountainous area where Lahu lives is so similar to the Japanese landscape? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： I was just thinking about that. If they are following a common pattern because of a common environment, then it would be parallel evolution. If they have common roots, then we are talking about propagation. It is a very difficult story. It’s one of those issues that we have to think about carefully. |
| SHIMIZU： Your recent research is focusing on not only in Southeast Asia but also in Japan. Is that in order to investigate the similarities between the cultures of the mountain minorities in Thailand and Japan? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： No, it is not for very academic reasons. The Kikuma-cho in Ehime Prefecture where I am currently conducting research is where my late mother’s birthplace was located. Since all my relatives have left for the Kanto area, there are only traces of it now. That is why I am just trying to investigate. It’s not a very academic explanation, but when I told my aunt that I wanted to go there, she said, “That’s because your mother makes you go there.” |
| ISHIYAMA： It’s actually very interesting to see the culture of the place of your roots and the stories that are told. It’s interesting because it’s quite influenced by the local character of the area, the human temperament and history. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： The area around University of Tsukuba is also a treasure trove of folklore. |
| ISHIYAMA： Oh, is that so? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： When I was at the University of Tsukuba, I conducted an interview survey of folklore near the university as part of my practical training, and I heard many interesting stories that I cannot include in this interview. |
| ISHIYAMA： I really want to know about it. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： If you don’t put it in the article, I’ll tell you about it later. |
| ISHIYAMA： Thank you very much! |
Message to the students and prospective students in the Master’s and Doctoral programs in International Public Policy
| SHIMIZU： To wrap up, could you please give some message to the students and prospective students in the Master’s and Doctoral programs in International Public Policy? |
| Prof. KATAOKA： As I have mentioned so far, there is freedom to learn and freedom to fall in the highest academic institution. And especially those who want to study and learn one more level. In other words, for those who want to go to college or graduate school, remember: teachers lie. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Of course, we can be very suspicious of what teachers teach up to high school, but the reality is that everyone is so busy trying to learn that their time is usually up there. The lies they tell are not an attempt to deceive. If there are listeners or readers for the paper you are writing or speaking, there will come a time when someone will criticize your research, saying, “This data is old or wrong,” or “This phenomenon should be looked at in this way.” When you write a paper, you are always looking for something new in the previous studies, aren’t you? We researchers are valuable because we know where our predecessors’ research is wrong and where it needs to be updated. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： That is why, at the beginning, I would like you to spend your student life doubting the words of your advisors and other teachers who are familiar to you. |
| SHIMIZU： I have learned the attitude toward my predecessors today. I thought that I really have to go beyond my advisor. I will keep that feeling in mind and work hard from now on! And thank you very much for taking the time for this long interview. |
| ISHIYAMA： Thank you very much for today’s interview. |
| Prof. KATAOKA： Then please tell the students of the College of International Studies and the graduate students of the International Public Policy to enjoy their student life. I had no regrets during my time at the University of Tsukuba. |
| SHIMIZU： I will! Thank you so much for your time today. |
注
１．”Ethnography of the Thai Mountainous Monotheists: Nation, Ethnicity, and Culture of the Christian Lahu” details Prof. Kataoka’s research through his fieldwork in the Thai mountains. It is also available for purchase at this link:
https://amzn.asia/d/2b8XfgB
２． Prof. Hiroko Ayabe held a professorship in the Institute of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Tsukuba, where she also taught in the College of International Relations (now the College of International Studies). Her research interests include linguistics with a focus on Thailand.
３．Prof. Tsuneo Ayabe was a member of the Institute of History and Anthropology. He is a cultural anthropologist with Thailand as his field.
４．Prof. Masaki Onozawa was a faculty member of the Institute of History and Anthropology at the University of Tsukuba. Like Prof. Tsuneo Ayabe, he is a cultural anthropologist whose field of study is Thailand.
５． One of the required courses for first-year students of the University of Tsukuba. It includes orientation after enrollment and sharing of interests among students.
６．A party that includes all students from the first year to the senior year of the university. In some generations, it is also called Tatenomi (vertical drinking parties). In my generation, drinking parties with students of the same grade are called Yokonomi (horizontal drinking parties).
７．He was a faculty member of the Department of Political Science, Institute of Social Sciences at University of Tsukuba. He is currently serving as President of Toyo Gakuen University.
８．This is a pond in the area one in the University of Tsukuba. It is a good place to have lunch on a sunny day. In the past school festival (Soho Festival), there was an event in which students dressed as horses ran through the pond.
９．Prof. Yutaka Akino was a member of the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. He was killed in the line of duty while serving as a member of the Tajikistan Monitoring Mission sent by the United Nations in 1998. A memorial to Prof. Akino still hangs in the research building of the College of International Studies, and Master’s and Doctoral programs in International Public Policy. He specialized in Russian diplomacy and Central Asian politics.
１０．The dormitory is located at the northern end of Tsukuba University. It is full of nature. Many first-year students of the university live in the dormitory. After lectures are over and we go home, we all get together to eat dinner and spend time. It is a wonderful environment to make friends. I felt that I was destined to work at the same part-time job as the friend I roomed next to in my first year of university when I was in my second year of master’s program.
１１．”Anthropology of Asia” contains Prof. Kataoka’s ideas on anthropology and examples on the Lahu research that appeared in this interview. You can buy it at this link. Please take a look. https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4861103576