比較文学研究小論文(H29-1-20)
Essay (Comparative Literature) on Chapter 4 “Pickled Culture)
Alan Booth traveled by foot around a remote and hidden region
in Japan which is a world of farmers, fishermen, shopkeepers,
and school children, and traditions, folk arts and festivals.
He stayed at ryokan and drank beers at shabby country bars,
where he met many people, local or traveling. His outgoing
temperament and fluent Japanese speaking ability gave him
a lot of opportunities to have a friendly conversation with them
and get some useful information. He also had quite a few
anecdotal experiences thanks to them. Accordingly, it is certain
that he could give his readers, especially foreign people, an insider's
Japan.
A year or two after his trip to Tsugaru, probably in 1989,
he travels deep into central Japan from Nagoya to Gokayama.
In this journey he makes many interesting observations as usual
and some ironical remarks, too. Out of his remarks, I'd like to
examine two important ones; (360)
a. One is that he likes to consider the Shirakawa-Go village
a "theme-park".
b. The other is that he calls the Noh and the Gasshozukuri
a "pickled culture".
1.Why does he feel it to be a "Theme park"?
When he visits the Mihoro Dam and drops in at the Toyama house
(旧遠山家民俗館), an example of Gasshozukuri, which was an ancient
farmer's house built in 1827, he begins to have the first suspicion
of a "theme park":
Toyama House : It is fit only to remind us of what "the real Japan"
was like once upon a time and to provide visitors with an
opportunity to go "oooh" and "ahhh" and "natsukashii"
at the
sight of battered old farm implements that they have no idea
how to use." (355)
This is a real house preserved as a museum in which once a big family
of twenty or more lived together. It is a faithful image/copy of farmers's
lives of those times and a reflection of a profound reality. In this sense,
we may call it the most primitive stage of theme park. It has no
entertainment, no rides, no restaurant, but only educational
demonstrations which give us a feeling of nostalgia.
Once I visited Hida Folk Village (Hida no Sato) at Takayama. It is a
typical theme park which has over 30 thatched houses collected from
original locations in the area, including Gasshozukuri (some of them are
National Cultural Treasures) in a 99,000 square meter site.
There is, even in the Shirakawa-Go village, an outdoor museum of
Gasshozukuri houses (Gasshozuuri Minka-en). It is next to the Village's
Tourist Parking.
Then he enters into the village of Shirakawa-Go and stays in a Ryokan.
Here his suspicion grows;
The ryokan had a large video screen that descended heavily from
the ceiling and was revealed when purple curtains parted – a touch
of drama that fostered my growing suspicion that I had wandered
not into a village but upon a theme park.(359-360)
Probably he had never experienced such kind of video shows at ryokan
in other regions, needless to say, in Tsugaru. I have experienced it
sometimes in cottages/hotels in nature parks, such as Oze, Yaeyama
islands, etc.
And his suspicion grows further:
I was out by nine to look round the village, or the theme park,
it was no simple matter to say which. (361)
His suspicion persists.
[It] made a stroll round the paths a pleasant exercise, even to
one who had come equipped with neither camera nor tripod nor
the willing suspension of critical appraisal upon which theme parks
rely. (362)
Having specialized in drama as a degree subject at Birmingham University
and believing that the theater was his vocation arising out of love,
Alan Booth came to like “a grandiloquent theory that, in order to
survive the competition of film, television, and other newfangled media,
ive theater must make a return to its roots and their performances
must contain strong elements of celebration and ritual.”(362)
After several experimental directions of plays, he found translations
of four Noh plays in Donald Keene's Anthology of
Japanese Literature.
He was interested in the fact that "here in a form of drama still
apparently
alive and well in present-day Japan resided all the elements that he
believed live theater required to secure its role in modern society, not
least an unbroken connection with its roots."(363) He “staged the plays
as modern dance dramas with six female performers dressed in leotards
and tights, using masks, a bare stage, small percussion instruments, and
a great deal of mime and ritualized gesture."(363)
It
reminded me of the experimental Noh play of At the Hawk's Well
written and directed by Yeats and performed by a Japanese male dancer
in 1915 in London.
As a matter of fact, ten years ago, I learned it from Dr. Peter Makin and
read an English libretto of the Noh play Nishikigi translated by Fenollosa
and Ezra Pound under his guidance here at Kandai. I read also Tristan,
a kind of modern Noh play written by Ezra Pound.
In 1970, the year of the Expo in Osaka, Alan Booth came to Japan to
see the Noh himself and spent much time at the Kanze Kaikan.
However, he was soon assailed by disillusion. He found that the Noh
theater was not a living force but a pickled culture:
Like much else in Japan that is deemed worthy of awe, the Noh has
been stripped of any connection with life as it is actually lived and
frozen into a fossil. Far from actively "involving" modern spectators,
it haughtily ignores them. Its outward forms have remained as
unchanged as possible since the time of its fourteenth century
founders. (366)
He criticizes that; "it is rather as if all modern productions of Shakes-
peare's plays in England were mounted on replicas of the Elizabethan
stage, in Elizabethan costumes and in the broad Devonian dialect which
spoken English in Elizabethan times is thought to have resembled"(366).
He was also disappointed with the fact that “the performers of the
principal roles were mostly men in their sixties and seventies playing
teenagers or young unmarried women”(366). And he even makes fun
of them:
Verisimilitude is of no importance in the Noh, and the most respected
of these performers, some of them officially designated by the
government as Living National Treasures, more nearly resembled
Dying National Treasures. (366-367)
Strolling around the breezy paths of
Shirakawa-Go, he was reminded
of why (he) had come to Japan in the first place. It was not in search
of the coyly picturesque but of something (he) had thought might be
living and was dead (362).
However, in the final paragraph of the
chapter, he admits that he is
unable to make up his mind for certain whether Japan's signposted
fossil culture disappointed and infuriated him or whether he should
simply be grateful that the Noh and gasshozukuri village had not
vanished altogether. Was it better for an art to die and be decently
buried or to die and be pickled in formaldehyde?
(369)
a. The Shirakawa-Go is not definitely a theme park
According to the definition of a theme park by Random House, it is
"an amusement park in which landscaping, buildings, and attractions
are based on one or more specific themes, such as jungle wildlife,
fairy tales, or the Old West."
(http://www.dictionary.com/browse/theme-park?s=t）
The Shirakawa-Go attracts great number of tourists to its Gasshozukuri
houses and wonderful landscaping. It provides them with ryokans, souvenir
shops and restaurants. Accordingly some people are engaged in tourist
related businesses in the village. But it is not an amusement park!
The Gasshozukuri village was a traditional human settlement in the
first place. It has a long history. Gasshozukuri houses are preserved
at their original locations where villagers actually live their daily lives
and the villagers are connected with a strong sense of community.
The Gasshozukuri houses, originated from 11th century, maintain
thatched roofs in good conditions through the conventional collaboration
efforts of residents. Here, too, special attention is paid to the use of
traditional materials and techniques. It is not for a museum, but for
their daily lives.
Actually Shirakawa-Go as well as Gokayama were inscribed on the
World Heritage List, cultural criteria iv and v of UNESCO in 1995.
Criterion iv: The Historic Village of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama
are outstanding examples of traditional human settlements that
are perfectly adapted to their environment and their social and
economic raison-d'être.
Criterion v: It is of considerable significance that the social structure
of these villages, of which their layouts are the material manifestation,
has survived despite the drastic economic changes in Japan since 1950.
As a result they preserve both the spiritual and the material evidence
of their long history. (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/734)
b. Noh has been almost a “pickled culture” or a “fossil culture”
It is true that the Noh, originated in the
14th century, sticks to its
traditional style up to nowadays and looks old-fashioned. Especially
just after the Second World War, the Noh was in a crisis of life or
death because it lost many play houses (Noh-gaku-do) by war damage.
On top of that, during the war, the Noh performers dispersed.
Accordingly many branches of traditional Noh familes became very
difficult to maintain. However, for the last 50 years, thanks to a lot
of effort by the people engaged in the Noh performance and its
promotion and also to strong support from the government, the
situation has been changed for the better. Consequently, the Noh
is yet a living art among us, especially among senior people.
Having a lesson of Utai or Yoh-kyoku (which is a singing part of Noh)
is popular as a hobby of middle aged persons. Not only among aged
persons but even among younger persons Noh art is popular. Most
colleges in Japan have club activities of Noh art, such as Kanze-ryu
Noh-gaku club,. Of course, Kandai has a Noh club, too.
And we have to pay attention to the fact that there are various
activities of Modern Noh (Gendai Noh) throughout Japan. A couple
of years ago, a Noh play titled “Abe no Seimei” （「安倍晴明」）
was successfully performed in Tokyo and Osaka.
c. The Gasshozukuri house may be a “pickled culture”
The Gasshozukuri house may be a “pickled culture” in the sense
that it is not well adapted to the change of the modern society.
However, as Bruno Taut (1880-1938), a German architect, praised
in his writings, "Gasshozukuri is architecturally rational and logical".
It is because that the roof is an A-frame, a steep slope in the
shape of hands praying (the literal meaning of gassho is praying
hands) to protect the house from the exceptionally heavy snow
in the region. In addition, the space right under the distinct roof
is cut out and used effectively as workspace.
(http://kyodonews.net/news/2015/03/26/9725)
This is the one of the reasons that they have been inscribed on
the UNESCO's World Heritage List.
The UNESCO appraises that "the Gasshozukuri house is a unique
farmhouse style that makes use of highly rational structural systems
evolved to adapt to the natural environment and site-specific social
and economic circumstances in particular the cultivation of mulberry
trees and the rearing of silkworms. The large houses have steeply-
pitched thatched roofs and have been preserved in groups, many
with their original outbuildings which permit the associated landscapes
to remain intact." (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/734)
4. Conclusion
The above mentioned ironical remarks made by Alan Booth about the
Shirakawa-Go and its Gasshozukuri houses, and Noh, are impolite to
the people of the village who live in its Gasshozukuri houses and to
the people who are engaged in the performance of Noh art. He might
have lacked a definite understanding of what is really going on inside
the village and the Noh society.
However, his first impressions may be right in terms of his having
contacted only the surface of the matter. Frankly speaking, my own
first impressions about Noh and the Shirakawa-Go and the
Gasshozukuri houses were the same as his.
He himself confesses that "I am unable to make up his mind for certain
whether Japan's signposted fossil culture disappointed and infuriated
him or whether I should simply be grateful that the Noh and gassho-
zukuri villages had not vanished altogether." (369)