Boat Race FUNAGURO: Tradition and Acculturation

Abstract

Traditional boat races are held all over the world. They are popular in East Asia as well as South East Asia. Especially, southern China, Taiwan and the western areas and south east islands of Japan can be cited. Among them, Okinawa and Nagasaki are famous for boat races. The boat races there are termed as Hari and Pearon. Both of them are originally influenced by China, and have been held since much earlier times. The boat races whose ancestry is different from Hari and Peiron exist in Japan. Those boat races competed in traditional Japanese-style boats were once frequently carried out in the areas centering on western Japan. While paddles are used as a tool for propulsion in Hari and Peiron, ro is used in the traditional Japanese boat races. Ro was the most popular tool for propulsion in Japan. The areas where Japanese-style boat race was flourishing are in northern Kyushu. One of the areas is Tsushima Island that is located closest to the Korean Peninsula. In Tsushima, people have been familiar with the boat race, calling the boat race ‘Funagoro’. Boats were regarded as valuable as human's life in the island which is surrounded on all four sides by the sea. Boats were indispensable to people's lives. Up until the pre-war period, Tsushima's main industry was agriculture rather than fishery. Boats in Tsushima were used for agriculture. Therefore, they were larger than fishing boats in their size. The boat race was conducted using those boats. The boat race in Tsushima was held as a ritual and an event wishing for rain in draught. Characteristic of the race in Tsushima is that the attendants in the race were limited to the first boy, namely an heir, of native families of the island. Those families were labeled as ‘Honko’. As Tsushima is situated on a country's border, the boat race implied militaristic factors. Although the boat races had been frequently seen till around the thirtieth year of Showa era (1955), they gradually dwindled along with decrease of wooden boats. At present, the boat races remain in only several places of the island. They have been continued as an event of the summer festival.