Peer Support of Despair and Enthusiasm: An Ethnography of People with Mental Disabilities

Anthropology is often introduced as a discipline that overturns values taken for granted. However, such overturning often remains at the level of a "pleasant betrayal" at best. Ethnographies concerning themes such as mental health, welfare for the disabled, and peer activities—which are handled in this book—tend to be particularly prone to becoming "pleasant" in content.

In contrast, I wrote this book because I wanted to consider the meaning of the various "unpleasant" sensations I experienced during my fieldwork. Of course, I am not trying to say that "unpleasant" ethnographies are superior and "pleasant" ones are inferior.

Much less do I want to brandish a hopeless story, saying, "Look, reality is this unpleasant."

However, as long as I, an able-bodied person, am writing about people with mental disabilities, I want to avoid writing only stories that are convenient for able-bodied people. In many cases, a "pleasant betrayal" is nothing more than a convenient betrayal that allows the majority, including able-bodied people, to feel as though they have reflected on their own position without that position ever being threatened. As far as I know, learning through fieldwork is not that sweet.

The sensation of being "unpleasant" originally occupied an important position in the activities of the Yokohama Peer Staff Association (commonly known as YPS), a group for people with mental disabilities that served as the research site for this book. YPS's unique activity process, called "Omatsuri" (Festival), involves using improvised performances such as song and dance to involve people who intended to come as spectators in the activity before they know it. Spectators who feel an "unpleasant" sensation toward the impromptu performances, which are sometimes described as "madness," gradually become "insiders" of YPS as they repeatedly clap or laugh out of awkwardness.

Following the activities of YPS, I wrote this book so that the process of reading it itself becomes an "Omatsuri." As you read through while feeling "unpleasant" sensations here and there, you should realize that you yourself are part of the problems handled in this book. This is also something I learned while conducting my fieldwork. In society, there are no convenient spectators.

Peer Support of Despair and Enthusiasm: An Ethnography of People with Mental Disabilities

Saaya Yokoyama

Sekai Shisosha

304 pages, 2,970 yen (tax included)