Ethnic Culture Conservation in Japan
“Kano-kabu of Gobōno
—Swidden Cultivation in Gobōno Village of Obanazawa City, Yamagata”
 2001 by the Tohoku Culture Research Center of Tohoku University of Art and Design (TUAD): All rights reserved
Running Time: 48 minutes
Planned by: AKASAKA Norio
Produced and directed by: MUGURUMA Yumi and the students of TUAD
Music Selected by: SONODA Yoshinobu
The Tohoku Culture Research Center of Tohoku University of Art and Design (TUAD) has been carrying out the “Documentary Film Project” since 2001, aiming at producing documentary films on folklore. The films are to visually record the folklore, which is destined to fade away in Tohoku area.
Students leaded by IIZUKA Toshio, a film producer of Amour, Inc., shoot the films through their fresh sensibility, seriously facing the reality of the people’s lives there. The project, thus, not only aims at recording the visual data of folklore, but also at finding the practical methods to interest and involve younger generations in the folk world.
In the first film, we recorded the swidden cultivation in Gobōno Village, where there was only one family left, who barely managed the swidden. Through recording the methods and techniques of the cultivation, we attempted to clarify the significance of the swidden in the mountainous lives of people, and the reason why it had been eventually abandoned.
“Shina-ori Woven in Sekigawa Village
—Texture made of Tree Bark in Sekigawa Village of Atsumi Town, Yamagata”
2002 by the Tohoku Culture Research Center of Tohoku University of Art and Design (TUAD): All rights reserved.
Running Time: 55 minutes
Planned by: AKASAKA Norio
Produced and directed by: MUGURUMA Yumi and the students of TUAD
Music Selected by: SONODA Yoshinobu
As the second film, we recorded people’s lives, throughout the year, in Sekigawa Village of Atsumi Town, Yamagata, where people are engaged in weaving textile made of the bark of the Shina (Japanese linden) Trees. Shina-weaving used to be the task, widely accepted as women’s work in wintertime. People in Sekigawa Village are now trying to find a new value of Shina textile, not as a useful tool in daily life but as the source of tourist attraction, in order to keep and transmit the techniques of the Shina-weaving. In the film, we attempted to show how could a folk cultural tradition be handed down to the next generations, and what would be the difficulties and obstacles involved in its process.
MUGURUMA Yumi (1970－ ) is Associate Professor of Folklore Studies at Tohoku University of Art and Design, Yamagata, Japan. She studies lifestyles of people coexisting with nature through the study of “sacrifice” and “swidden cultivation,” and searches for the methods of transmitting folk cultures and traditions to the younger generations through producing documentary films with the students.
Publications: Kami Hito wo Kuu. Tokyo: Shinyo-sya, 2003. (Awarded “25th Suntory Prize for Arts and Sciences”)
Samazama na Seigyo. Edited by AKASAKA Norio. Tokyo: Iwanami Syoten, 2002
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