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In light of the tendency in studies of Japanese discourse and communication to account for patterns of social interaction in terms of cultural concepts such as wa (“harmony”), omoiyari (“empathy”), and enryo (“restraint”), this report sets out to demonstrate how much of an endogenously produced, local achievement social interaction can be in Japanese. To do so, the techniques and principles of conversation analysis are employed to describe how a particular social action, the expression of concession to statements of opposition, is produced by participants in a set of Japanese university faculty meetings. Although it is suggested that the very direct and explicit design of the concession displays could be explained in terms of concepts such as wa and/or enryo, it is nonetheless argued that the interactional significance of this action can be best understood by undertaking a detailed, sequential analysis of the interaction. The analysis itself is divided into two parts: First it is demonstrated that the concessions are products of the participants’ close attendance to and monitoring of the details of the unfolding interaction; second it is shown that instead of turning to pre-determined cultural concepts to account for the trajectory of the interaction, it is possible to understand the concession displays by situating them within the flow of the interaction itself.

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In this article, we engage in the recent debate concerning the utility of conversation analysis (CA) for feminist purposes. Using analysis of a Japanese phone-in consultation TV program, we take the position that CA has much to contribute to the feminist critique of Japanese society. Combining two strands of CA research, Hutchby's reconsideration of power as an interactional achievement and membership category analysis (MCA), we show in the analysis that CA makes it possible not only to point out places in the interaction where participants orient to gender, but also to track how the sequential structure of the interaction is used to invoke and reinforce ideological beliefs about women. Following the analysis, we discuss four ways that our analysis may be used to further feminism in Japan.

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