Abstract
In wartime Japan, folklore studies (minzokugaku) as an academic discipline emerged at the same time as the rise of the culture film (bunka eiga). Both helped mobilize peripheral areas and firmly created the image of a unitary nation. This paper focuses on Living by the Earth (Tsuchi ni ikiru, 1941), directed by Miki Shigeru, and its spinoff photo album titled People of the Snow Country (Yukiguni no minzoku, 1944). Miki filmed rural life and ordinary people in the Tohoku region under the strong influence of Yanagita Kunio, a founder of Japanese folklore studies, and published the photo album in collaboration with Yanagita. In this project, vanishing customs were paradoxically regarded as objects impossible to photograph. However, that paradox enhanced the value of the project and made it easier to construct an imagined national community through the discourse of folklore studies.
Highlights
All names in the text are given in Japanese order with the exception of the author attribution above
The discourses on folklore studies and the culture film had formal similarities, and they formed archetypal expressions of an inversion that they shared with the hegemonic discourse following the “China Incident” that led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937
It has been widely argued that Okinawa played a key role for Yanagita Kunio and the establishment of folklore studies,11 the relationship between the culture film and Okinawa shall be discussed in a separate paper, since films featuring the snow country were the core of this film genre
Summary
As an academic discipline, emerged at the same time as the rise of the culture film. According to Tsumura, the total war system following the China Incident caused the nation to turn its gaze toward rural areas, and the number of films featuring villages suddenly increased in this period. It has been widely argued that Okinawa played a key role for Yanagita Kunio and the establishment of folklore studies, the relationship between the culture film and Okinawa shall be discussed in a separate paper, since films featuring the snow country were the core of this film genre. The film never focuses on poverty in the countryside or intense agrarian disputes These views of rural Japan produced under the wartime totalitarian order concealed the harsh “reality” as well as contradictions between people in the nation.. Rural areas and rural people will gain new value and meaning, which will give birth to a new idea of a Japanese nation
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