Japanese Folkloric Dance Course at School

Abstract

Japanese folkloric dance course has lately become popular at universities as a means to inform students about Japanese culture. However, it is no easy work to teach this course at the university level. The dance training system in a traditional community is in most cases handed down from generation to generation. It is quite different from the usual school teaching method. In a traditional community, the novice learns how to dance, watching the expert dancer dancing. It is seldom explained in words. But the school teacher almost always talk to explain.

Many folk dances which are taught at schools are no genuine folk dance. They are reconstructed, that is, choreographed. They are created, for example, by theatrical companies such as Warabi-za. The present paper examines, after tracing the history of what is referred to as Minbu-Kyoiku (The teaching of Japanese folk dances at schools), why teachers do not readily select genuine folk dances as appropriate teaching material for their students, and also points out what is lost by adopting theatricaly reconstructed dances.