Community Creation by Residents and Tourists via Takachiho &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;kagura&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; in Japanese Rural Area

Shiro Horiuchi

doi:10.4236/sm.2012.23041

Abstract

Rural communities are disappearing in Japan due to aging, depopulation, and changes in lifestyles. Recently, outsiders such as immigrants, volunteers, and tourists cooperate with residents to revive and maintain rural communities. This paper uses my fieldwork in the rural areas of Takachiho, where the Japanese traditional dance kagura is well-known, to consider the possibility that residents and tourists cooperatively create shared communities. Actually, an increasing number of tourists visit Takachiho to see kagura. Consequently, some dancers miss “classical” kagura, which involved almost exclusively local residents in intimate interactions. Nonetheless, many dancers welcome the influx of tourists and its stimulation of community festivals. Some tourists are attracted to kagura at community festivals, and some dancers and tourists have tried to forge bridges between their groups to create a shared community. The existence of kagura becomes an important common symbol that connects members of local communities.

Highlights

Throughout history, ideas about communities have attracted continuous attention from sociologists (Tönnies, 1887; MacIver, 1924), who have studied various communities in the forms of local villages or cities, companies or schools, and even Internet groups (Delanty, 2003)
To maintain the beneficial functions of the community, members almost always reify their membership in some way and exclude outsiders (Cohen, 1985)
Members continually construct social boundaries between themselves and outsiders to ensure the identity of the community (Lamont & Molnar, 2002)

Summary

Introduction

Throughout history, ideas about communities have attracted continuous attention from sociologists (Tönnies, 1887; MacIver, 1924), who have studied various communities in the forms of local villages or cities, companies or schools, and even Internet groups (Delanty, 2003). During the 1970s, the number of dancers decreased because of depopulation and aging in the area During those times, Takachiho kagura was selected as an intangible cultural asset by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan, and some residents were officially invited to perform kagura in several European countries. The minimal audiences at midnight and at the finale of kagura performed in public buildings compared with those performed in private homes reflects the loss of the traditional meaning of kagura as a festival event. This paper has introduced three dichotomous categories of people in Takachiho: community members versus outsiders, residents versus tourists, and dancers versus audiences.

Public

Discussion