RESUMEN
In the current Japanese education for medical and health professionals, experiential learning in communities is widely promoted. Students visit a community and participate in community life. This paper introduces the perspectives and methods of cultural anthropological fieldwork and examines how they can be applied to community-based experiential learning and what effects are produced. This paper is based on a case study in a Japanese medical school. What is significant in experiential learning through fieldwork is that students participate in community life firsthand and retain this firsthand experience as a sensory experience. This ingrained sense is then transformed into new findings, not through application of the students’ pre-existing knowledge but through subsequent reflective practices.