Where does a nation learn? Anthropologist John Singleton and a team of scholars looked beyond Japan's schools: into Noh theaters, pottery workshops, a neighborhood garage, a public bathhouse, a baseball field and the boats of shellfish divers.
Learning in Likely Places brings their studies of apprenticeship in Japan together. Singleton's idea is simple: people learn a skill best in the place where it is used, among the people who use it every day.
The first part is about the traditional arts. It covers the family-run schools of the arts, the old writings on how to pass on Noh theater, the way painters of the Kano school learned by copying their masters, and seven features of a traditional Japanese approach to learning.
The second part visits craft apprenticeships: potters in Mashiko, mechanics in a neighborhood garage, doctors and Suzuki music teachers. The third looks at work and community life: how women become shellfish divers, what people learn at the public bathhouse, how children find their place through local festivals. The last part includes baseball legend Oh Sadaharu learning his swing, and Americans learning to work for a Japanese boss.
The closing chapter by David Plath sums up the book in its title: "Calluses: When Culture Gets Under Your Skin."
Read a review of the book in The Journal of Asian Studies
Sources
Singleton, J. (Ed.). (1998). Learning in likely places: Varieties of apprenticeship in Japan. Cambridge University Press.