We are pleased to present the latest issue of *Asian Ethnology*. As we announced
in our last note (AE 76–2), we decided to publish this year’s volume as a double
issue. We wish to announce that Nanzan University has agreed to provide the
journal with a new part-time position for an editorial and web assistant, whose
main duties include dealing with technical aspects of podcast and journal
production. This decision has had a profound impact on the journal over the past
eight months, and we are grateful to Nanzan University for providing this
opportunity to the journal.
In April, we welcomed Ben Huffman, a graduate student at Nagoya University, as
the new editorial and web assistant based at Nanzan University. Ben’s presence
and technical proficiency has allowed us to develop the journal further,
including our new social media presence on Facebook and Twitter, as well as
podcast production. His addition to the team working on the journal has given us
the opportunity to maintain production as in past years, which will allow us to
publish two issues next year. One of these will be a special issue.
Readers will notice that we have introduced a number of stylistic changes to the
journal, including the use of the Chicago Manual of Style format. In the past,
we used a mixture of Chicago and other elements, including the use of small
caps. We also included Asian scripts as much as possible. However, we have
decided not to include foreign scripts any longer—apart from exceptional cases
where the inclusion of a particular script is vital to the understanding of the
essay in which it is being used—because it became a burden to decide when to use
scripts other than English and when not to use them. *Asian Ethnology* is an
English-language journal and while we still include diacritical marks as
determined by the Library of Congress’ Transliteration System
(https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html), the inclusion of Asian scripts is
not relevant or even applicable to all the material we publish in the journal,
but transliteration does help specialists in their readings of articles included
in the journal.
We have also simplified the layout to a certain extent. These changes may seem
minor but when we consider the production of the journal, they are actually
quite significant in terms of the time required to prepare it for publication.
We have made these changes in order to keep the journal production smooth,
efficient, and on time. This, in turn, means that we are able to publish more
material while still maintaining the journal’s quality standards. We are now
rejecting more articles than we are accepting, which means that we are receiving
greater recognition in the fields of anthropological and folkloristic study, not
to mention cultural studies in general. This ultimately allows us to include
only the best and most rigorously refereed articles submitted to us. We trust
that you will understand and accept these decisions, while also considering
submitting elements of your own work to the journal.
Finally, in addition to changing the reviews layout slightly, we have introduced
a new policy whereby there will be separate country notifications if there are
two or more reviews per country, but if there is only one review we will use the
broader regional identifications, like Central Asia, Inner Asia, South Asia, or
Southeast Asia.
As always, we thank you for your support of the journal.
21 December, Nagoya