‘Slowly, Steadily, Carefully’: Imagining a Better Tomorrow through Shinji Yamashita’s Public Anthropology

This special issue explores topics dear to Japanese anthropologist Shinji Yamashita—the nation-state, migration, diversity, globalisation, and tourism—spanning varied cultural and geographic landscapes. In this introduction, we show how the contributions in this collection extend the inquiries through which the authors of the articles have been guided and mentored by Yamashita over the years. The articles in this collection draw on Yamashita’s work to also initiate a critical exploration of the anthropological field—the current state of anthropology in Japan, the project of public anthropology, the latest developments in anthropology of disaster, and anthropological methods that consider the increasingly transnational context of lives today. We aim to engage imaginatively with the issues raised by Yamashita’s extensive scholarship and to offer ways of building a more inclusive, diverse, and just society. We also emphasise the influence of mentors working outside the Euro-American sphere and pay tribute to the project of world anthropologies.