ABSTRACT
After I returned to Tokyo there were many times when I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep at all before the short summer night had ended, as I lay awake thinking about my next trip to Amakusa. Since I had envisioned moving into the house of a karayuki-san, this would be the real journey. While on the one hand my heart was drawn toward Amakusa, on the other I was tormented by doubts that even if I went, it might not be possible to collect the kind of material I sought. My research methods certainly deviated from the norm, but I felt my background investigation was thorough and although I had set out initially just to test the waters, my trip resulted in a concrete objective in the form of Osaki. Yet as these thoughts went through my mind, black clouds of anxiety again made their appearance.
