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Since the 2000s, the number of academic articles using autoethnography that have been published has increased signifi cantly, predominantly in the United States. Autoethnography can be classifi ed in two ways: "evocative," which describes the writer's subjectivity and emotions without hiding them, and "analytical," which has a higher affi nity with "traditional" academic research. Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner , the driving forces behind autoethnography, placed the former —evocative autoethnography — at the core of their work. In Japan, research using autoethnography has gradually begun to be conducted, but most studies are analytical in nature and rarely evocative. This may indicate that the full range of autoethnography methodologies has not yet been explored in Japan. This paper highlights the implications and diffi culties of evocative writing in the human sciences in the Japanese context, where the traditional positivist paradigm is still dominant. First, we consider the development of autoethnography in the United States and the initial controversy between the evocative and analytic approaches. Second, we review the current use of research methods in Japan and confirm that although autoethnography has started to spread, few evocative descriptions could be found. In other words, autoethnography continues to be mostly limited to the analytic approach. Next, we discuss why undergraduate and graduate students are interested in autoethnography, based on the narratives shared in autoethnography workshops. Our fi ndings reveal the necessity and signifi cance of self-description for not only "honest" research, but also including perspectives that have not been adequately captured previously. However, the traditional positivist paradigm that persists has led to hesitation about self-description. Methods of description are also discussed, including how to describe past experiences and the extent to which creative work should be incorporated. Other issues regarding autoethnography are also raised, such as whether descriptions by authors who have overcome suffering may be potentially harmful to readers who are still suffering. We then analyze the motivation for evocative and autobiographical writings and the diffi culties and significance of self-descriptive writing for faculty in the human sciences, based on Izumi Chiba's recently published self-description and the reader's comments. We argue that existing academic rules prevent even faculty members from engaging in evocative writing and that approval by the fellow faculty members leads to the relativization of traditional rules. For Chiba, the description of past negative experiences not only reconstructs and heals the self but also provokes a self-narrative for the reader. We suggest that composition, like artistic creations, presented with a clear and honest description, are not opposed to each other, but are complementary and multi-layered in nature. Comments from other faculty members about Chiba's self-description also indicate that evocative writings can be an opportunity for critical examination of academic premises. Evocative writing has not yet been fully discussed and explored in Japanese academia but opens up a rich area of research that has been excluded from the human sciences until now. Moreover, its content has the potential to be perceived as an honest and credible narrative.