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- Convenor:
-
Mark Teeuwen
(University of Oslo)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Paulina Kolata
(University of Copenhagen)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Lokaal 0.2
- Sessions:
- Saturday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Depopulation threatens the survival of many traditional matsuri throughout Japan. Yet a remarkable number of matsuri are finding ways to adapt to new circumstances and survive. This panel investigates the strategies that make this possible.
Long Abstract:
For decades now, scholars, administrators and journalists have predicted the demise of rural festivals in Japan. Depopulation, especially the lack of youngsters, has been the main reason for their pessimism. Indeed, a good number of matsuri have disappeared in recent years, while many others are teetering on the brink. Yet it is also a fact that many festivals have shown remarkable resilience. In this panel, we ask why so many matsuri in places affected by depopulation have not only survived, but even gained a new sense of meaningful urgency.
Matsuri are often labelled as expressions of “traditional culture,” and many are the object of preservation measures. The discourse of matsuri decline in fact reflects an increased concern with the fate of previously little valued events. Matsuri that were once dismissed as regrettable “mayhem” (omatsuri sawagi) are now increasingly treasured as expressions of local and national culture, communal events that foster social cohesion (kizuna), mediums of spiritual healing (iyashi), a source of local pride, and tourism resources. A growing number have been designated as intangible folk heritage, resulting in some public interest and support, while reorganising the caretakers of the matsuri in “preservation associations” (hozonkai). Preservation, in fact, has become the key concept of public policies concerning “traditional culture.” This undeniably conveys a sense that matsuri have become a relics from the past that need ever higher levees to prevent them from being flushed away by the rising waters of modernity.
In practice, however, no preservation policy can save an event that has lost its contemporary relevance. The survival rate of festivals in contemporary Japan shows that caretakers are succeeding in creating a sense of relevance strong enough to inspire costly investments of time and money. This panel will explore how matsuri are defying the rhetoric of preservation even as they face an uncertain future. How are matsuri reinventing themselves in dwindling communities by creating new meanings and embracing new strategies of engagement? Is there a sense that depopulation makes matsuri more important?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 19 August, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Depopulation affects both city centres and rural villages. Rather than killing matsuri, however, a lack of local caretakers has inspired various adaptations, transforming matsuri by giving them new networks, functions, and meanings. This paper surveys survival strategies through case studies.
Paper long abstract:
This first talk of the panel introduces the issue through a few brief case studies. What strategies are matsuri caretakers using to keep their local matsuri alive and relevant in a context of depopulation? In what ways do their efforts change the mode of the matsuri? And how does the changing meaning of a matsuri under new circumstances affect its design?
Depopulation can take many forms. Not only remote villages, but also central city districts lose residents, and disasters have emptied towns and villages alike in a single blow. In this presentation I will introduce examples of matsuri in a city, a rural area, and a disaster zone, all equally emptied of inhabitants; and yet, the festivals that constituted the main events of these places have survived and even thrived. In the process, however, they have taken on different meanings and new social functions.
Enlarging the pool of caretakers by inviting in relative outsiders is a widespread practice in matsuri around the country. In many cases, this is systematised through active recruitment. Volunteer groups take on tasks that were once the exclusive domain of locals, and matsuri communities make special efforts to engage children by means of so-called “mini matsuri.” Ideally, outside volunteers revisit the festival, and eventually even take on central roles in its organisation. In the process, the matsuri enlarges its catchment area by drawing on human resources from elsewhere. I will illustrate this process by discussing some examples from city festivals.
Matsuri that have become less visible can also take on new meaning as a mysterious treasure of local tradition. This can inspire local groups to experiment with the local matsuri format in new settings, creating novel events with new human networks and meanings. A rural festival will be adduced to exemplify these processes.
Finally, a disaster can give a festival new significance, and, in the process, new life. I will investigate this process through a matsuri that was temporarily wiped out by the 2011 tsunami, but that has since survived both evacuation and Covid19 – while undergoing a radical reorientation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how community organizers in Akita have successfully maintained the practice and transmission of local folk festivals. I investigate participants’ attitudes towards the festivals and describe some of the ways they have responded to the challenges of depopulation.
Paper long abstract:
Bureaucrats and early ethnographers have been signaling the impending ruin of rural villages and their traditions since the Meiji period. Some communities, however, have shown remarkable resilience in preserving their local festivals. For this paper I discuss how community organizers in Akita have successfully maintained the practice and transmission of their local folk festivals despite rapid depopulation in the region; give some insight into the modern attitudes that participants have towards the festivals; and describe some of the ways organizers and participants have responded to the challenges of preserving their local heritage.
The three festivals I selected for this project each serve different religious and social functions for their respective communities and are celebrated at different times of the year. What unites these festivals is both their physical location (around the base of Akita’s Mount Taihei) and their ties to mountain-worship practices once popular in the Taihei area.
Despite these communities’ resilience, there has been some degree of adaptation and change in the way the festivals are held—for example, the extent to which participants engage in the festivals, or participants’ attitudes toward the religious aspects of the festivals. Thus far it seems as though these changes have not affected the integrity of the festivals. What would affect the festivals’ integrity, however, would be if they were to become commodified and form what Christopher Ray calls a “culture economy.” Establishing a culture economy has the twofold benefit of revitalizing the rural economy and preserving culture. Scholars have argued that commodifying local culture is an effective way to revitalize Japan’s rural regions. While this approach may be successful for commodifying tangible cultural items, interlocutors with whom I have met suggest that commodifying their festivals (which are intangible) is not how they envision the future of their festivals.
In this presentation, therefore, I discuss the challenges that commodifying these festivals would pose to the festivals’ integrity and what the organizers are doing instead to maintain their resilience in preserving their festival traditions.
Paper short abstract:
The Hanamatsuri festivals of Okumikawa are performed in a region that has been affected both by severe depopulation and evacuation due to dam construction. Yet many of these festivals survive, including one “in exile”. What strategies are making this possible?
Paper long abstract:
Hanamatsuri is a string of festival events performed from November to January in villages in the Kitashitara District of Aichi Prefecture. After the area where they are held, these festivals are called Okumikawa no Hanamatsuri. This area has many matsuri and folk performing arts that date back to the late medieval or early modern period, and that are transmitted until this day. In recent years, however, due to the aging and depopulation of the area’s mountain villages, a shortage of hands threatens the survival of many of these matsuri. In the 1930s, when the first surveys were carried out, there were Hanamatsuri in more than twenty places, but now there are fewer than ten.
The Hanamatsuri was designated as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan in 1975, and has been preserved and inherited by local communities, with the help of both local authorities and minzokugaku researchers. Efforts are being made to utilize it as a local resource, for example by the construction of the Hanamatsuri Kaikan Hall in Tôei Town. However, the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 stopped the festival in its tracks, bringing it to the verge of collapse. In recent times depopulation has caused some Hanamatsuri festivals to be relocated or temporarily cancelled. The building of two dams (completed in 1956 and 1972) has inundated multiple villages, forcing the inhabitants to resettle elsewhere. As a result, the Hanamatsuri of these villages have been moved to the urban area of Toyohashi, where a new Hanamatsuri is performed to this day. In this report, I will trace the contemporary history of the Hanamatsuri festivals and outline the changes that they have undergone. In particular, I will analyse the strategies that have helped these festivals to survive in the face of radical social change.