Study of anthropology in Japan was started in the 1880's by
Shogoro Tsuboi, the first professor of anthropology at the University
of Tokyo. Professor Tsuboi was interested in archaeology and
material culture related to folk-customs in Japan. He also undertook
an extensive study of changing patterns of clothing, under the
contemporary impact of western culture. Later, together with his
successor, Ryuzo Torii, Professor Tsuboi did fieldwork in Northern
and other parts of Asia, where their interests embraced a balanced
mix of archaeology, ethnography and material culture.
Another important figure in Japanese anthropology is Keizo
Shibusawa, a businessman and, soon after the World War II, a
Minister of Finance. In 1921 he established a small private
museum, the "Attic Museum", in his own home. Mr. Shibusawa
and his group collected and studied straw sandals and hats, clothes
and various kinds of utensils traditionally used by Japanese peasants.
During the 1920's, this group greatly accelerated the study of
material culture, and their method gradually became the basic
orientation for the field. It should be noted, however, that their
interest was focused only on the geographical distribution of each
item, and did not extend to the holistic study of the cultural context.
As a result, the study of material culture was somewhat isolated
from the mainstream of anthropology which had focused on social
and kinship organization and ethnohistory among other things.
This situation exists even today, and most anthropologists in Japan
are little inclined to study material culture.
Consequently, the authors emphasize that material culture
should be studied from the "functionalistic" perspective, within
a holistic framework. Hence the structural analysis of the relationship
between man and material culture should be a basic subject,
and the influence of material culture on man should also be carefully
studied as an important topic in this changing society. In Japan,
for example, the disappearance of the irori, or traditional hearth
on the floor of rural houses, resulted in the destruction of the strictly
institutionalized seating arrangements around the hearth, thereby
accelerating the change of interpersonal relationships within the
family.
Among other aspects emphasized by the authors are the
importance of understanding the "folk system", in addition to
"analytical system" of technology, for example, the need for census
study of a large sample of a single artifact in order to trace individual
variations within a community; and the urgent need to
include automobiles, refregerators, and other modern devices in
the analysis and understanding of the present-day folk-life both in
city and village.
The discussion is elaborated with examples drawn from three
pieces of research that the authors recently undertook : Ohtsuka's
study of fishing communities in Hokkaido, which emphasizes the
existence of individual variations of fishing implements within a
community and the relationship with each fisherman's skill and
habit; Nakamura's study of the classification and distribution of
hoes among agricultural villages in flatland areas; and Ogyu's field
survey of recent changes in the material culture of Akiyama, long
famous as one of the most isolated mountain village regions in
central Japan, but which, since about 1970, has been rapidly
changing under the influence of tourism.
物資文化研究の方法をめぐって
KH_003_2_004.pdf
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