Chie Nakane interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 19th October 2009

0:05:07 Born in Tokyo in 1926; my father's grandfather came to Edo to serve in the Shogunate; [CN on the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate he went to Hamamatsu on way to Kyoto, about 250 km. west of Tokyo]; my paternal grandfather became a mining engineer [CN for Ashio-Dozan which was originally owned by the Tokugawa government]; he was killed in an accident, because of which the company took responsibility for my father's education; he went to college specializing in mining, now Akita University; when he graduated it was not a good time for finding a job; he became a mathematics teacher in a middle school, but a friend suggested he would be better off as a lawyer so that is what he did; he practiced as a lawyer in an office in Tokyo, and it was there that I was born; my mother's came from a traditional, old type of family, in Okazaki where Tokugawa Ieyasu was born; she was a typical Japanese housewife and mother; she wanted me to have a very ordinary career - to marry and become a good wife and mother; I had a younger brother who died two years ago; he was a lawyer; when I was sitting the university entrance exam my father said that I should go into the faculty of law; I said I was not interested and that he should let my brother do law; I told my father that I wanted to go to somewhere like Central Asia which I would not be able to do if I specialized in law

5:44:16 My father went first to China when I was still young, so I didn't go then but remained in my maternal grandmother's house; after two or three years we were told that a high school for girls and boys was to be set up in Peking, and that it was better to come there to join my father; that was in about 1937 when I was in the sixth year of primary school; remember when I was in primary school in Tokyo that it was a time of increasing population; as there were not enough schools we had to do half-day classes; I often mistook which part of the day I was supposed to go to school; at that time I really liked painting, which I still do occasionally; we were in China for six years altogether; in Peking there were no Japanese colleges, so after high school I went back to Tokyo to Tsuda College; we sometimes went out from Peking, but not often as it was not very safe to travel; I don't remember much anti-Japanese feeling in Peking but it was certainly unsettled outside; I had no idea about Tibet at that time but simply wanted to travel to central Asia, an ambition that stemmed from childhood reading of books on innermost Asia; at university I looked for a department specializing in central Asia and found it in oriental history; at school I liked to read novels, often Japanese translations of American novels like 'Gone with the Wind'; also very interested in translations of Sven Hedin's works

11:54:01 I went to Tokyo University; at that time I was thankful for the American occupation as Tokyo University did not accept women before then; it happened when I was at college so I was able to do so; I was in Tokyo during the bombing but Tsuda College was in a suburb of Tokyo so it was not so badly hit; at university I was influenced by Professor Namio Egami who specialized on Mongolia and archaeology, and also Professor Tatsuro Yamamoto who specialized in Vietnam; when I enrolled in the department of oriental history the majority of the students were specializing on China; I found that what the thought about China was quite different from what I knew about it; felt that if I was to study Tibet then I should understand Tibetan society and people; the students specializing in China had never gone there and their only image of it was from books; seeing just how mistaken they could be made me feel that unless I went there I would also have the wrong image of Tibet; I then wondered what was the science to study living people and someone told me about anthropology; in the faculty of literature at Tokyo University there was no department of anthropology, but it was taught in the faculty of science so I went there; however, the area studied was quite different from central Asia; someone suggested that I should approach the CIA where there must be books on anthropology; I went to their library but found most of the books on anthropology dealt with American Indians so quite different from Tibetans; after two years occupation ended and foreign books became available; among them I had found books by Professors Giuseppe Tucci [‘Tibetan Painted Scrolls’, three volumes published in Rome 1949] and George Roerich [‘The Blue Annals’ parts I & 2, published 1949 & 1953] on Tibet; Roerich's book was published in Calcutta so I wrote to him care of the publisher, asking whether I could study under him if I went to India; he replied that he would be happy to do so; fortunately, the Indian Government started a scholarship for Japanese students; I sat the examination and passed, and then went to India; I went to Kalimpong where he was, and at the same time was affiliated to the Anthropological Survey of India in Calcutta; I divided my time spending half a year in Kalimpong and the other half in Calcutta in the department of anthropology, with occasional fieldwork elsewhere; this was in 1953, and I felt no fear about studying in India as I was so keen to study under Dr Roerich and to go to Tibet; [CN Dr Roerich was a Russian aristocrat with the disciplined toughness of an explorer. He has travelled through Tibet in 1925-26 and had a profound knowledge of the Tibetan people, their language and its classics. At the time I knew him he was preparing a new Tibetan dictionary]; India was a good place for me to go at that time as you couldn't go to Tibet through China; I thought I would be able to cross the Himalayas from India to get to Tibet

19:22:19 I remember Kalimpong as being very beautiful with numbers of Tibetan aristocrats who had second houses there; their daughters were about my age so I became friendly with them; they knew that I wanted to go to Tibet and invited me to go there with them as they used to go to Lhasa every year, however I was told by the Japanese Consul General in Calcutta that I should not cross the border; since I could not go to Tibet I decided to do fieldwork in Sikkim and other adjacent areas in the Himalayas; I studied Bhotias and Lepchas and also the monastery system; I knew the earlier work of Geoffrey Gorer but I never met him; as my scholarship was for two years I also managed to do some fieldwork in Assam studying the Garo and Khasi, and also among the Angami and Tangkhul Nagas; I also did some fieldwork in the south with Nayars; towards the end of my two years I happened to meet a Swedish lady [CN Dr Andera Andreen] who asked me about my researches in some detail; six months later I received a telegram from Stockholm [CM from the Erin Wagner Foundation] offering me research money for one year, so I was able to stay for another year in India; they asked me to study matrilineal people so I concentrated on the Garo and Khasi, and the Nayars; after that year the Foundation gave me another year's funding; I wanted to write a thesis in Europe so they agreed that I go to Sweden; my supervisor in India was the Swedish Ambassador to New Delhi, [CN Mrs Alva Myrdal] who was a sociologist; in the summer of 1956 when I had completed three years in India, the Third World Congress of Sociology was held in Amsterdam; Mrs Myrdal suggested that I should go to it and I read a paper on Garo social organization; I then went to Stockholm where I gave my report to the Foundation; a board member of was President of Uppsala University [CN Dr Siegelstat] who told me that because anthropology was not well developed in Sweden that I should go to London; he kindly wrote a letter to Raymond Firth for me, so finally I arrived at the real place for anthropology

25:53:24 At the time Lorraine Lancaster was there among others; Lucy Mair was teaching but I did not attend her lectures; I met Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf there; Firth also suggested I go to Cambridge to meet Edmund Leach [CN I was delighted to do so as I had read his book, ‘Political Systems of Highland Burma’, which was published in 1954 when I was in India. I attended his lecture in Cambridge, after which there was an evening seminar at his house where I spoke on the Garo kinship system. I was interested to find that when I was speaking, the seminar members were drinking beer, so it was a very relaxed occasion. After this first meeting I met Leach on a number of occasions, both in Cambridge and London. He was a very dynamic person, in contrast to Firth who was more disciplined, and an excellent teacher. He was somewhat feared amond anthropologists because he was inclined to attack them if he disagreed with them, however distinguished they might be. His intellectual power was superb and he had confidence in it. He seemed to be free from the prejudices and precautions of ordinary persons. His argumentative disposition led to antagonism between himself and Professor Meyer Fortes, which was widely known about in Cambridge at that time. I was put in an awkward position on one occasion when both invited me to stay with them after a lecture. I managed the difficulty of hurting either by telling Leach that I would dine at his house, but stay the night at Meyer’s. Luckily, both accepted my suggestion. Leach was a strong man, a big physical presence. He once drove me from London to Cambridge at such speed that I was terrified. However, he was also and English gentleman with a warm heart. Once when I was in Cambridge he invited me to his silver wedding dinner with Celia, just the three of us, in a restaurant. When he became the Provost of King’s College he kindly invited me to stay in the Provost’s Lodge. He seemed to enjoy the role of Provost in spite of the various commitments. It is an unforgettable memory for me to have been touched by the lives of Edmund and Celia. I remember even small things, such as Edmund giving his dog a piece of chocolate every night before going to bed.]; I wrote up my work on the Garo during the six months I stayed in London, then fortunately, Professor Yamamoto of Tokyo University arranged for me to go to study Tibetology under Professor Giuseppe Tucci; I went from London to Rome in 1956; Professor Tucci kindly offered me a research allowance [CM through the IsMEO: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, of which he was the Director]; he was always busy so he used to telephone me when he had a free moment and asked me to come immediately; [CN Tucci was a devoted scholar but I was surprised to see that even he sometimes took a lot of time to solve the meaning of a difficult Tibetan sentence. When in Rome he was extremely busy as he spent half the year in Nepal and elsewhere to continue his Tibetan research]; I had by then been four years away from Japan; during those years I had been a research assistant in Tokyo University; at this point the University informed me that if I did not go back to Japan the post would be terminated, so of course I went back; during my absence the University had established a department of cultural anthropology and I was asked to teach the subject; I was not interested in lecturing undergraduate students, but do enjoy discussing theses with post-graduates; at that time I taught on my fieldwork in India, on matrilineal societies and the hill tribes of Assam and Sikkim

30:36:06 During my first sojourn in India I had gone up to Cherrapunji and stayed there some time; I found the people very attractive; I met Robbins Burling in the Garo Hills, and also did a little work on Tangkhul and Angami Nagas but I have not published anything on them; I started working on Japanese society some time afterwards; after returning in Tokyo in 1957 I stayed there for one year and then was invited by Professors Sol Tax and Fred Eggan to Chicago University to teach on Japan and India; I taught a graduate course there for one year; I intended to go back to Japan after that but Fürer-Haimendorf invited me to London and I stayed there for a further year, teaching at SOAS jointly with Haimendorf on India; both he and Betty collaborated together and were very nice, and I enjoyed my second stay in London; during that time I attended Firth’s seminar again; the atmosphere between SOAS and the LSE was quite different, SOAS was much more relaxed; I worked for a short time in Nepal with Haimendorf in the 1970s; he was not an aggressive fieldworker in searching out information, but absorbed what he saw and what he was told; I first came to know Adrian Mayer in Firth's seminar, so before I went to SOAS; description of Edmund Leach (see above)

37:53:06 During my second sojourn in London (1960-61) I prepared the manuscript for two books: 'Kinship and Economic Organization in Rural Japan', published in London in 1970, and ‘Garo and Khasi: a comparative Study of Matrilineal Systems', published in Paris in the same year; when I first went from London to Rome, on the way I had stopped in Paris and met Levi-Strauss; he suggested that I publish on the Garo and Khasi in Paris; the second time I went to London to teach I wrote that book on matrilineal systems; I met Levi-Strauss first in 1956 when he was very nice and felt like a colleague, but after some time he became so famous that he changed into an aloof figure, and was not so attractive; I could not stay longer away from Japan as by that stage I was an associate professor at Tokyo; then in March 1959 the Dalai Lama left Tibet and many Tibetans followed him; it was in the 1960s that I started to go to India to study Tibetan refugees, aristocrats, monks and peasants; I continued to visit India every year until the 1980s [CN I often stayed at Taring House in Rajpur. Mr and Mrs Taring came from leading aristocratic familes, and Mr Taring had occupied an important post in the Tibetan Government. They were so kind and helped with my study. These experiences in India gave me an understanding of how Tibetan society worked.]; towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, China gradually opened and I began to go to China and Tibet; the Japanese Government sent the first Cultural and Academic Mission to new China and I was one of the members; that was the first time that I met Fei Xiaotong about whom Professor Firth had often told me [CN He had been a student of anthropology under Malinowski twenty years before at the LSE. He was also well known among sociologists in Japan through his book ‘Peasant Life in China’ (London, 1937)]; from 1982 I used to commute to China; Fei Xiaotong was kind enough to prepare for my fieldwork in the Tibetan area; China was so political that unless you knew the top people it was very difficult to get permission at that time, particularly for interior areas such as Tibet; [CN By this time, Fei, after his long period of hardship, became one of the top figures in the uppermost strata of the Chinese political system, though he was not a member of the Communist Party. At the same time he was a distinguished professor at Peking University, and created the Institute of Sociology and Anthropology.]; every time it was he that got me permission and arranged my assistants to go to Tibet; first I went to Tibetan areas in Gansu and Sichuan, but later to Tibet proper; there were special drivers that went to Tibet, quite different from ordinary taxi drivers; that driver became very friendly so whenever I went there he drove me; I was able to travel round freely and was able to meet scholars there; I was studying modern history of Tibet from the eighteenth century onwards, both historical and anthropological work; I last went to Tibet in 1996

44:16:23 Tibet is at a very high altitude and the people have developed a special way of thinking; they have developed Buddhist thinking which spans top scholars down to peasants; the scholars are knowledgeable so it is not like studying some tribes; I could talk with scholars but also with peasant nomads; many kinds of elements are mixed up in Tibet; I can speak Tibetan, but not very well; in my fieldwork I took photographs, but not as many as Haimendorf; I did take some film but it is very difficult for one person to do all these things; my filming was 8mm; I will possibly give my field notes to the University archive but I have to put it in order first

47:04:00 When I came back from my second stay in London I was approached by an editor of a leading journal for intellectuals (Chuo-Koron), asking me to contribute an essay on any subject I liked; when I came back from London, Japan looked a bit exotic, so I decided to write on Japan and the Japanese people; before that there was a world  sociological congress at Evian at which I read a paper on Japan; Ernest Gellner was in charge of that session; he suggested that I should develop it as a book, so when the publisher approached me I decided to write on Japan; it was published by Weidenfeld in England as 'Japanese Society'; an idea that has been picked up from the book was Japan as a vertical society; this idea came from work in India and observing English society - caste and class; then when I looked at Japan it was always vertical and I wanted to develop a theory of how it had become so; China is both vertical and horizontal, unlike Japan; before that many foreigners had written on Japan, most of which was not satisfactory, but neither was much that was written by Japanese on the subject; I wrote the book in about two weeks and it was published in the journal; it received praise from the critics and then I was approached by many publishers; I was encouraged to lengthen it but make it a little easier for the public; I had no time to do so, but one publisher, Kodansha, was prepared to take it as it was so I agreed; I wrote it at some hotel near the sea with no books to refer to; there are books written on Japan by foreigners that are good in parts, but not as a whole; it is different with India where there are many good books by foreigners; Ruth Benedict never came to Japan so her book is special and was enjoyed by most Japanese intellectuals; Robert Smith's book had a much smaller impact; Lafcadio Hearn and Yanagita Kunio are much earlier and their thinking is of an older style; if I had not known India and England I could not have written the book which is why it is difficult for the Japanese themselves to see their own culture; I enjoy writing when I have a good idea; [CN These days I am concentrating on Tibetan studies, especially from the seventeenth century until the first half of the twentieth century. I am combining historical and anthropological approaches, in order to clarify what Tibet is, how it was constructed, and how if used to function under the supreme figure of the Dalai Lama.]

55:04:19 My advice to a young anthropologist is to study what genuinely interests you, as I did with Tibet; I do enjoy oil painting, listening to music and eating good original dishes wherever I happen to be, but not Tibetan food except when in Tibet