著者
小笠原 博毅
出版者
神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科
雑誌
国際文化学研究 (ISSN:13405217)
巻号頁・発行日
no.30, pp.101-114, 2008-07

Synopsis: Drawing upon five ways that could provide a better understanding of contemporary Japanese society, this paper attempts to tentatively construct views that clarify how specific cultural currents affect our lives under the neo-liberal political and economic condition. These five ways do not regard the field of culture as self-evident. Culture should not be prioritised in social analysis. Even if culture could be considered as relatively autonomous, in what condition can we say so? What force can make it possible to represent culture as relatively autonomous? The important task I would like to propose here is to re-address contemporary Japanese culture as an ensemble of uncertain practices. First, the 1980s is considered as the period that has generated a particular pattern of cultural nationalism among intellectuals. Second, the global trend of 'made-in-Japan' worked as a potential campaign for promoting the neoliberal fashion of cultural production. Third, ai, sorrow/love, is valuable to analyse who is 'in' and who is 'out' of a community that can enjoy a specific kind of love, that is, nationalism. Love without sorrow to others, I suggest, could inevitably lead to drawing a rigid line between 'in' and 'out'. Fourth, ido, moving/sameness-difference makes it possible for us to see the way that the irresistible trend of migration has long been a part of Japanese society. However, this obvious history of moving is submerged by the recent cultural nationalism into the logic of sameness-difference. Those who do not move are 'same' while moving generates difference. Then, the communality among those who do not seem to move is expected and presumed. Fifth and last, the warning words of the African-American savant W.E.B.DuBois in 1930s remind us that Japan has been ceaselessly involved in the global modern geopolitics of 'colour line', the racialised division, since her modernisation. Although this history is not properly recognised, DuBois is useful to reexamine this historical negligence. It is particularly true to those who believe that contemporary Japan has little to do with race and racism. Instead, they are keen to problematise 'race' as exception, the thing that rarely matters in the traditionally tolerant cultural environment. Introducing the Tokyo municipal governor Ishihara Shintaro's deliberately racist speech, I examine the ways in which 'race' comes to occupy the central part among political relations rather than to be an occasionally discussed, peripheral and simple political issue.
著者
金野 美奈子
出版者
神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科
雑誌
国際文化学研究 (ISSN:13405217)
巻号頁・発行日
no.28, pp.1-33, 2007-07

Is 'gender' still a useful concept for social analysis? This paper answers positively to this question by reconceptualizing gender for a more open understanding. From an interdisciplinary perspective it takes up several important contributions in the last decade to determine a major theoretical problem they faced. Recent theoretical attempts can be categorized in three distinctive approaches by the analytical concepts mainly used in these attempts: the action approach, the social structure approach, and the power approach. This paper examines representative theories from each of these approaches. The theory of Judith Butler (literally criticism) and West and Zimmerman (sociology) from the action approach, Iris Marion Young (political philosophy) from the social structure approach, Ehara Yumiko (sociology) from the power approach. Focusing on different aspects of gender, these theorists commonly faced the problem of subjectivity and objectivity. Although they try to theorize gender as part of objective structure of society, their arguments lead them to a point where they have to confront the fact that the social is fundamentally constituted by the subjective. Yet they have so far failed to fully explore its implication so that they remain unable to grasp the whole spectrum of the gendered social reality, which is inherently pluralistic. This paper draws on the theory of social institution by Seiyama Kazuo, one of the most sophisticated theoretical statements within the tradition of interpretative sociology, and apply it to the theorizing of gender. Although Seiyama does not focus on gender, analytical concepts he provides are nonetheless useful. His main theoretical contribution is that he establishes the centrality of the subjective within the social, as well as that he shows a clear understanding of how the social reality takes on such powerful objectivity for social actors. He distinguishes two components in the social reality, namely, purely 'empirical existence' and 'ideal existence.' Ideal existence exists only in the social reality, which is ultimately constituted by the actors' meaning-endowing subjectivity, but nonetheless forms a fundamental component of the social reality. 'Woman' and 'man' can be understood as primary examples of such ideal existence. Thus understood, the concept of gender will enable us to relate to the centrality of subjectivity in the constitution of the gendered social reality. This also opens up new horizons for the gender analysis that have tended to narrowly focus on identifying injustice suffered by women, to fully incorporate the enabling as well as constraining construction of gender in a variety of contexts and contents into both empirical and normative analysis of the social.
著者
寺内 直子
出版者
神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科
雑誌
国際文化学研究 : 神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科紀要 (ISSN:13405217)
巻号頁・発行日
no.30, pp.1-29, 2008-07

This paper examines the musical practice of gagaku, the royal court music of Japan, in the early 1940s, which follows an essay of the author published in 2002, discussing on the gagaku recording in 1903. Recently, several old wax cylinders or 78-rpm records have become available in the form of CD reproduction, which can provide innumerous opportunities for scholars to listento and analyze actual practices of periods. It, however, seems that the materials have not been paid full attention by the academic world. This paper, considering carefully the pitfalls of old recordings, analyze tempo and phrasing of the performance of togaku, a sub-genre in gagaku, in 'The Album of Japanese Music', produced by Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai in the early 1940s and compare them with those of recordings made by Frederick Gaisberg in 1903. Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai (KBS) was established in 1934 under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education, aiming at promotion of cultural exchange between Japan and foreign countries. KBS produced various records and films of Japanese culture and sent them overseas, one of which was The Album of Japanese Music. It is 10-inches, 78-rpm records, not-for-sale item, and consists of 60 discs (120 sides) arranged into 5 volumes, which covers wide range of Japanese musical genres, such as gagaku (royal court music), shomyo (Buddhist chants), no (medieval masked play), biwa (narrative with lute), shakuhachi (bamboo flute), shamisen (three-stringed lute), kagura & sairei bayashi (folk festival music), komori-uta (cradle songs), warabe-uta (children's songs), and riyo (min'yo) (folk songs). It is also noteworthy that the highest level of artists of the time performed for the Album. Among togaku repertoire in the KBS records, three pieces, 'Etenraku', 'Seigaiha', and 'Bato' (in tada-bydshi rhythm) can be found played in kangen (or music without dance) style, while 'Taiheiraku no ha', 'Taiheiraku no kyu', 'Bato' (in yatara-byoshi rhythm), and 'Chogeishi' are performed in bugaku (or music for dance) style. Tempo of the bugaku pieces is much faster than that of kangen in the KBS records. We can find similar difference in tempo between bugaku and kangen in the present-day practice of the late 20^<th> to the early 21^<st> centuries. On the other hand, togaku pieces (in kangen) in the 1903's recording are all performed in very fast tempi, like bugaku is today. In other words, the distinction between bugaku and kangen styles in terms of tempo was not yet obvious in 1903, but can be clearly found in the KBS records of the 1940s. Besides, we can see another difference between Gaisberg and KBS records in the aspect of phrasing. Melodies of the Gaisberg recording were all cut into bigger phrases that are blown with one breath, while those in the KBS set were into smaller sizes, inserted with many brief breath cuts. Namely, as slower the tempo of kangen became, the smaller units the phrases were divided into, as is kangen today. According to these facts, it is possible of say that the distinction of kangen style from bugaku in terms of tempo and phrasing was not obvious in the early twentieth century, but became clear in the 1940s. In other words, today's kangen style in slow tempo and with more breath cuts was established by the early 1940s.