Kizaemon Aruga in his “Sirakaba” Days

Abstract

Kizaemon Aruga is well known as one of the gteat scholars of the Japanese rural sociology. When and why he decided to study Japanese society ? At 27, he met with Kunio Yanagita, the greatest folklorist in Japan, and began to study Japanese folklore. Before then he was a main member of “Sirakaba” literary movement which intended to realize the European individualism in Japan. Indeed, he had been among the true admirers of Europian culture, especialy its arts and literature, and had written some poems, musical essays and a play. So it had been a riddle why Aruga changed his couse after when he met with K. Yanagita and to study Japanese society. In this article, the author examined this problem by means of the analysis of his unique 2 acts play, “Blizzard”, written in his “Sirakaba” days. The first reason of Aruga's changing cource was in the similarity of the theme between “Blizzard” and his later sociological study. The subject of “Blizzard” was the reason of the downfall of tenant farmers. And this phenomenon Aruga examined from another side in his sociological study of landowner systems in after years. The second reason was the discovery of the sympathetic view for common people in Yanagita's folklore. This discovery enforced Aruga to realize his play's weekness, that is, “Blizzard” had not a humanistic point of view for lower classes. These two factors led Aruga to study Japanese culture with deep sympathy.