著者

田中 大介

出版者

社会学研究会

雑誌

ソシオロジ (ISSN:05841380)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.2, pp.57-73,147, 2006

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This paper will use Kunio Yanagita's discourse with regard to modem transportation to consider how he formulated his folklore methodology. Because the transportation environment Yanagita addressed was in the pre-war period, this then is an historical sociological study with regard to modern transportation through Yanagita's discourse.<br> Yanagita placed a great emphasis on travel, as have the Japanese folklorists who have succeeded him. However, they have tended to underestimate modern transportation and to palace greater value on pedestrian travel. Yanagita also shared this tendency, believing that travel by railway the old folk stratum as an object of analysis and that rail travel would invalidate his analysis as well.<br> Yanagita distinguished between pedestrian travel (travail) in the early period and sightseeing, mainly using modern transportation, is seen as the golden age of travel for Yanagita and it can be said that modern/pedestrian traffic is not a choice between alternative s.<br> Then what was modern transportation, especially railway transportation, for Yanagita?<br> He regarded transportation by rail as an opportunity to travel widely and to see scenery from the "windows of trains." In this mode of travel, landscape was not "scenery as sign" (as might be found in a guidebook), but "scenery as a trace" (offering an interpretation of people's lives and history).<br> That is, Yanagita's folklore method was to collect, classify and systematize "scenery as traces" encountered during the course of his travels. Finally this paper suggests that his transportation theory and his approach to travel share a common meaning from a sociological perspective.