Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine a meaning of preservation of folk rituals. In Japan, not a few traditional rituals are held in depopulated rural areas where the communities themselves are having difficulty to remain. Meanwhile, the traditional rituals, which originally were a part of people's daily life, have been attempted to preserve as important cultural heritage or tourist attractions. Thus, the traditional rituals are encouraged to show more people and last as long as possible. However, as is often the case with cultural heritage, the more intentionally they try to preserve their traditional rituals, the more alienated from the rituals they become. What does the “preservation”mean for the people who actually perform the rituals?
This paper refers to a small community which refused to “preserve” their traditional dance, Taiko-odori. Because of severe depopulation, their dance was to vanish in near future. Hence their neighbor communities suggested to “preserve” the Taiko-odori by increasing the members of dancers and performing it altogether.
Although the Taiko-odori used to be often performed outside of the community, they refused this suggestion. Paradoxically, the community's decision was to perform the Taiko-odori by themselves until when the performers decrease to two as their ancestors' tradition. For the people in this severely depopulating community, the preservation of their traditional ritual was not to merely prolong the history of the dance nor to increase the performers, but to vanish it by themselves in near future. As a conclusion, even if the traditional rituals were valuable enough to attract tourists or to be preserved as cultural heritage, they cannot be essentially preserved when a social order of performer community is invaded.
