ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I look at how the gender of the ethnographer affects the process of ethnographic research in various ways. Gender, as well as sexuality, race, ethnicity, or class, is one of the issues faced by the researcher. One very important influence relates to the “experiences” of the ethnographer during the field research.
First, I describe how I managed to enter art, culinary, and fashion organizations, as entry is the most critical phase of fieldwork. Partly because of my gender, I encountered different types of difficulties in accessing cultural organizations and in building rapport with informants in the given field. Second, I reflect on my field experience studying fashion organizations and Tokyo Fashion Week, as my story, just as much as many other ethnographic tales, may be useful to understand how the gender of the ethnographer affects ethnographic research. In doing so, I explore how I developed a new research question that I did not consider at the beginning of my fieldwork—“How are women marginalized in the fashion world in Tokyo, where the majority of the workers are women?” Through participant observation, I found out who belonged to the fashion world in Tokyo and that those who had power were mostly men. Without entering and observing the field, it would have been impossible for me to notice the gender issue in the fashion industry, where most insiders took for granted that it is a man’s world.
