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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank several colleagues and organizations who have been helpful in developing this project. Art Markman at the University of Texas at Austin has been supportive of my research and my participation in the Human Dimensions of Organizations program at Texas for many years. Thanks go to the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, which provided an office during my sabbatical leave in 2019, during which much of this book was written. Colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas have also been important interlocutors in relation to many ideas that take shape in this book. Several individuals have assisted me with various aspects of the research and writing, including Jamie Gunderson, Tomoko Hetherington, Kumiko Kawachi, Tomoko Traphagan, and Sarah Summers and their advice and work are greatly appreciated. Tamotsu Kawamura at Miyagi University provided very useful help related to government policies on rural revitalization.
Finally, I want to give my sincere thanks to the many people in Iwate with whom I have shared hours of enjoyable conversation and friendship over the years. Ethnographic fieldwork is, on the one hand, a scientific endeavor in that the ethnographer is trying to systematically collect data and generate an understanding of the lifeways and ideas of people