Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama: Sensuous Remembering

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama explores the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. The author focuses on the "water trade" in the Koganecho neighborhood, where exploitative and stigmatized labor took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. Through embodied knowledge, sensory experiences, and the imagery of water, the author examines Yokohama's memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement and the effects of displacement on those who occupy or inhabit the site today.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 232 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama

Reflects on the politics, poetics, and ethics of remembering the lives of transnational migrant sex workers in postcolonial Japan. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the port city of Yokohama, the book focuses on the "water trade" in the Koganecho neighborhood, where exploitative and stigmatized labor took place, involving sexual services performed by migrant women. In recent years, the city has sought to rebrand Koganecho, evicting transnational migrant sex workers who had been integral to postindustrial development and erasing their past presence. The author explores Yokohama's memoryscapes in the aftermath of displacement through embodied knowledge, engaging her senses and ethics as a colonizer-researcher as she navigates the elusive past through traces that remain in the present. She examines the city's built environment, official historical narratives, films, and photographic works. With few brothels and workers remaining, Yoshimizu fills the gap with her own interactions, encounters, and imaginings. Yoshimizu also writes through the imagery of water in ways that are informed by the local usage and imaginations—the ocean, flowing rivers, swamps, humidity, alcohol, the fluidity of relationships, and transient lives. The water also offers a way to sense the "ghost," or the displaced lives and the effects of displacement, that, like humid air, stick to those who occupy or inhabit the site of displacement today. This interdisciplinary work makes a valuable contribution to sensory studies, memory studies, migration studies, and Asian studies.

Weight: 450g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367693602