| The first publication of the journal, Native Studies, in 1913 marked the formal establishment of scientific Japanese folklore study. Two theoretical books, Folk Inheritance Theory and Research Methods of Native life, written by Yanagita Kunio in 1934 and 1935 laid down the theoretical system of Japanese folklore study. Until the 1950s and the 1960s, propelled by studies and researches of a number of outstanding folklorists like Yanagita Kunio, Orikuchi Shinobu, Minakata Kumakusu and Shibuzawa Keizou, systematic study had taken form in a wide range of fields like folk beliefs, verbal culture and art, seasons and festivals, life and rites, and family and clans, and the characteristic of taking mountainous and fishing villages as subjects had taken shape. The excellent research ability and leadership of Yanagita Kunio endowed folklore study under the highly centralized system with strong personal charm, so that the study is also called Yanagita Kunio folklore study.Year 1955 to 1973 witnessed a rapid development of Japanese economy, which brought about great changes to Japanese society and economy as well as irreversible and tremendous changes to people's lifestyle and ideology. Nationwide urbanization and depopulation changed the appearance of mountainous and fishing villages fundamentally. As a result, Japanese folklore study was confronted with 'the crisis of disappearance of research subject'. The passing away of the key figure Yanagita Kunio in 1962 also made this period an important watershed in the history of Japanese folklore study. Meanwhile, in the latter half part of the 20th century, a trend of multiple disciplines advancing side by side was seen in academic circles. Interdisciplinary communication and permeation progressed and the achievements reaped by other related disciplines gave an impetus to folklore study.Considering the changes in reality, Japanese folklorists tried to find out a way out on one hand, and on the other hand made theoretical reflection and reexamination from inside. Tuboi Hirofumi was the representative in this period, who reviewed the basic cultural structure study, came up with a brand new theoretical system of folklore culture pluralism, realized the breakthrough from the fixed framework of "post Yanagita Kunio folklore study", and completed the transition to 'post-Yanagita period'. At the same time, with the growth of a number of young and middle-aged folklorists who were not directly and personally trained by Yanagita Kunio, Japanese academic circles of folklore developed a trend of thoughts which are different from traditional study and research. For example, new research fields with urban folklore and environment folklore as representatives, and academic debates with folklore culture pluralism and "ke, kegare and hare" as representatives. These thoughts showed striking differences from traditional folklore study in research subject and methodology, therefore arousing great interest in experts and scholars.In 1975 on the occasion of the hundredth publication of an academic journal Japanese Folklore, the Folklore Society of Japan decided to publish a trend special biyearly, aiming at keep track of study trend periodically, summarizing research results, guiding the development of folklore study and offer suggestions on study trend. A number of trend special and academic works mentions often the studies and researches on urban folklore, environment folklore, folklore cultural pluralism and "ke, kegare and hare" triple element system, and recognizes them as new research trend and praises their prosperous development.This dissertation takes aim at, by historically examining and investigating some hot research fields in Japanese folklore study since the 1970s, analyzing the overall development features of modern Japanese folklore with a few researches, discussing the essential issues of this discipline, outlining the development tracks of Japanese folklore study in the past three decades by taking academic background into consideration, and finally defining present research features. The hot research fields here refer to the fields and issues that attracted much attention and are much debated, compared with those before the 1970s. For instance, fields of "new trend" or "much-concerned hot issues" universally agreed by Japanese folklore circles in the aspects of occurrences, number of research articles, attention received, and control of discursive power and so on. It does not mean that traditional study on mountainous and fishing villages, folks, family and marriage, rites and beliefs came to halt. They were making steady progress, only that they were not prominent as hot issues, thus are not discussed here because of the delimitation of hot issues. Therefore it requires clarification that though the four fields and theoretical systems selected here may not necessarily be the core issues nor essential issues in Japanese folklore study, there must be reasons and meaning for those research fields or problems to recently attract much attention and have wide repercussion, and they definitely develop relationships with fundamental and core studies. This dissertation tries to present reflections on something that are related to discipline development and essentials, by means of examining the studies and researches of these hot fields. The methodology adopted here is that it centers on the trend specials of Japanese Folklore, together with first-hand data from works and articles in various fields, and makes detailed interpretation synchronically and diachronically, so as to reach a summary of the academic history since the 1970s.The dissertation is divided into six chapters with an exordium and a conclusion. The main body has four chapters and an appendix is included. The exordium part presents a discussion of the topic selection, the meaning, the methodology and previous studies. The body part is a comprehensive study of four research fields and theoretical systems that has been hot in recent years, that is, urban folklore, environment folklore, folklore culture pluralism and the triple element system of "ke, kegare and hare".First, in the field of urban folklore Kurayishi Tadahiko published Residential District in 1973, which marked the origination of urban folklore. After a period of fast development in the 1980s and 1990s, urban folklore study began to advance steadily in the 21st century. By including urban area, which is previously marginal or even excluded, as a research subject, urban folklore study transforms folklore study into intimate folk study that focuses on daily life and culture. Present urban folklore study centers on big cities and traditional feudal cities, more specifically city celebrations, folklore of new residential district, city tales and downtown folklore. Reflecting on paradigm of "folklore inheritance entity" and "inheritance parent entity", the research theory and methodology emphasize longitudinal inheritance, which has individuals and family as the center, the aggregation of different functions, the validity of the subject that study modern society, and the writings with their emphasis on personal history. Urban folklore study has the characteristic of pluralism in Japanese folklore study since 1970s. Its meaning lies in that it doesn't regard city as a collective one that is separate from others but re-examines countryside folklore by re-discovering the folklore elements in cities. In this way, universal research theory in folklore is established.As regards the core and basic analyzing concepts of Japanese folklore, based on "ke and hare" paradigm, Namihira Emiko in 1972 for the first time put forward a third element "kegare" other than "ke (secularity) and hare (sacredness)". Inspired by it, many experts in the 1970s and the 1980s were involved in the discussions of the triple element system, and then established different triple analyzing paradigms with "ke, kegare and hare" by Sakurai Tokutarou being the most influential. "ke" and "hare" are two analyzing concepts put forward by Yanagita Kunio, which respectively refer to regular, constant time and space and sacrificing, special time and space like festivals and rites. The two have clear boundaries and strong comparability in form. In the debate of the two forms, with Ito Kanji as a representative, many experts elaborated on their relationship of mutual conversion and mutual complementarity. Based on this, Sakurai Tokutarou added "kegare" to the third element definition and interpreted the triple element system as that "life under ke is an important part of Japanese folklore. The maintenance of ke consumes energy, and when energy declines or exhausts, that is, normal life and production are unable to continue, it is necessary to setup days of hare or perform rites to restore energy so as to return to the life and production of ke". He used the triple element system to analyze the construction of people's living pace and further stressed that folklore as grassroots' culture should pay more attention to people life of "ke". The study in this hot field constructs a more reasonable analyzing concept system by establishing a third element in the bipolar system of "ke and hare". It follows the tradition and at the same time innovates, thus perfecting Japanese folklore methodology.In the early 1990s, words like nature, environment and ecology were frequently seen in folklore study. Environment folklore study is different from environment protection ideas in ecology and the claims and standing point of environment protectionists. And it is quite different from the traditional folklore study that describes countryside in simple and general terms. The study of environment folklore focuses on the elements that construct the complex natural environment, further specifies the technical construct, behavior mode, the real state of living and production folklore by understanding environment, human production and life in an organic, continuous, varied and comprehensive way, and highlights the subjectivity of nature. Nomoto Kannyichi, Shinohara Tooru, Torigoe Tadayuki are the representatives. They put forward the conception of environment folklore from the unique perspectives of "ecological chain in folklore study", '"non-official records of natural sciences' by folks who have dealings with nature" and "landscape theory and folklore symbols in environment protection and its positive effects" and the like. Besides, Yasumuro Satoru and Suga Yutaka criticized the stress on material theory and technique theory in the previous studies of laboring and livelihood, and began by considering natural environment elements in production to investigate respectively the real state of compound laboring and production and COMMONS theory, which is an institutional system of resource use, exploitation, management and maintenance. Although perspectives and concerned aspects are different, they share the common features of relationship analysis between humans and the environment and thus all belong to environment folklore study. This field takes modern society into consideration, attaches more importance to positive effects of folks' local knowledge and recreational elements in laboring, examines in the micro level the relationship between human and nature, human and human by introducing ecology, environment theory and sociology thoughts into folklore behavior and system, enriches the theories of production folklore and living folklore, and provides empirical evidences to support the thoughts on the essence of human existence.Another theoretical system, pluralism, is an effort to construct Japanese folklore methodological system. Folklore study focuses on rice growing culture to the extent of ignoring the other groups and cultures and contributing to the monism illusion that Japan is a mizuho country, and Japanese culture is rice-growing culture. However, with the appearance of new findings in archaeology, in the 1960s and the 1970s "racial culture" theory put forward by ethnologist Oka Masao and the theory of "evergreen broad leaf culture" mainly advocated by Nakao Sasuke and Sasaki Koumei brought the agriculture of grain growing and root crop growing in Jomon period, the period before rice growing, into the consideration of scholars. Against the background of drying farming culture which is characterized by field burning cultivation, Tuboi Hirofumi reflected on "taro New Year" and "the causes of Japanese choosing rice" from the perspective of folklore, reasoned out the existence of farming system, and established the pluralism theory of "rice cake New Year" vs. "taro New Year", rice growing agriculture vs. dry farming agriculture. In this theory, they are of equal value. Tuboi Hirofumi revised the monism theory of rice-growing of Yanagita Kunio, developed Japanese study from monism to pluralism, and provided a new methodology to Japanese folklore study. A series of works by Tuboi Hirofumi in the late 1970s and early 1980s exerts longstanding influence on Japanese folklore circles, contributes to later development of dry farming study and the pluralism study of Japanese east to west and north to south from the perspective of regional types, and gives an impetus to Japanese basic culture study. To date there are discussions on Tuboi Hirofumi's theory, especially in the field of laboring and livelihood. In the 1990s Yasumuro Satoru and others came up with the idea of "compound laboring and livelihood" with emphasis on the perspective of "compound" as opposed to "type" theory.The conclusion part is a summary of the main points in the dissertation. By reviewing the academic history of the four different theories, that is, urban folklore, environment folklore, folklore pluralism and the triple element system, common features can be found among them: (1) re-interpretation, reflection and criticism of traditional research paradigm; and (2) development that is peculiar to each theory on a multidisciplinary basis. Modern Japanese folklore study does not confine itself to the framework of traditional folklore, rather reacts quickly to social changes and draws on new research results, broadens the view through cross-sectional study with related disciplines and longitudinal advancement of theory. Its actual research reflects the basic features of folklore study as a "modern science" and the positive aspect of "considering reality, solving problems and studying for human welfare" deserves evaluation and borrowing. Among the origins of the hot fields, the key figure in the major trend is Tuboi Hirofumi, who put forward folklore culture pluralism and criticized the authoritative theory of Yanagita Kunio. Tuboi Hirofumi went through both "Yanagita Kunio period" and "post-Yanagita period" and achieved successful transition between different generations and social realities. His "taro culture" greatly promoted the study in the middle and latter 20th century in the aspects of providing viewpoint and research attitude and was a latent force in the development of Japanese hot fields in recent 30 years. Therefore Tuboi Hirofumi is not a failure in the study after the 1970s. His idea influenced the development of folklore study in the past three decades, and the study in the hot fields of urban folklore, environment folklore and triple element system justify the existence of the main thread. Researches in the future will have a close eye on Japanese folklore study and mediate on the construction of the system of folklore methodology and the formation of universal principles. |
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