2002 Volume 40 Pages 127-141
Japanese traditional performance such as folkloric dance and music has points of interest in terms of the way in which they are taught. Compared to the modern system of education, they are learned in a rather ad hoc way, lacking systematic thought regarding education. However, it is precisely this aspect of teaching that Lave and Wenger called the “legitimate peripheral participation” where a novice first acquires seemingly insignificant aspects of the object of learning, reaching step by step to the core target as is seen in the traditional apprentice and disciplines in the West.
If it is true that Japanese traditional performances have also been preserved under the similar teaching concepts up to the present day, it is no longer possible today where even a folkloric performance must be taught for school boys and girls alien to a traditional way of thinking. Kurokawa Sansa Odori (folkloric dance) in the Iwate region, for example, is taught now in a complete systematic way as if it is a subject in the school curriculum. However, this change in the way of teaching affected the nature of traditional dance and we need to reflect upon this kind of “modernization” of the teaching method.
