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who were not usually keen about government-funded projects, kindly accepted
my request to participate, partially because I used to work for an
NGO and had a personal network within the NGO community.
After the membership formation, the group decided to spend the first
year sharing their own experiences working for NGOs and identifying issues
and problems that NGOs have faced. 8 After a year of monthly meetings
in the FASID office, the group felt a need to go out and conduct field
research to further our understanding of how the issues and problems we
identified could be dealt with in a specific and concrete development setting.
In particular, the group members were interested in how NGOs as
outsiders can play a facilitative role for project beneficiaries without imposing
ideas on them, developing top-down relationships or creating unilateral
dependency.
The group members discussed and chose Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, Japan
from among several possible research sites. Among many reasons for
selecting Ishigaki, a decisive one was that most study group members showed
a strong interest in Ishigaki. 9 A couple of the members who actually wanted
to leave the group after the first year agreed to stay if we chose Ishigaki.
Contacting Ishigaki
Prior to initiating group research in Ishigaki, I visited the island for the first
time as the group’s representative, met with local leaders such as local government
officers, members of the municipal assembly, community activists
and local NGO practitioners, and explained the objectives of the research
to them. Although I had to be accountable to FASID as well as MOFA, I
also wanted to contribute to the study group members as well as the Ishigaki
people through this project.
I knew that, in addition to the problems islands typically face, such as the
lack of higher education institutions, the low numbers of doctors, and the
limited job opportunities, Ishigaki suffered from environmental destruction
caused by the exploitative activities of outside developers. People who
kindly gathered for my meeting were keen to address these issues, and ac-
8 For a detailed report of the first year’s research activity, see Suzuki (1999).
9 In addition to study group members’ interests, five additional reasons were noted: First, because
Ishigaki is an island and thus by definition somewhat isolated, the impact of outsiders on it can
easily and clearly be identified. Second, the scale of Ishigaki Island was proper for our research:
about 45,000 people live on this island, which has an area of 230 square kilometers. Third, the long
history of Ishigaki’s cultural, economic and social interactions with Southeast Asia and China
encompasses valuable experiences from which the study group could learn. Fourth, Ishigaki has
faced typical developmental problems that Asian, African and Latin American countries have
experienced. Fifth, studying development issues in Ishigaki could yield insights into the need for
intra-national development issues within Japan more broadly.