Abstract
This paper focuses on the legal mobilization by the community in making a foundation of Gion Festival Yamahoko Association. Law has two faces, law as milieu and law as resource, for communities. When changes of milieu including changes of law have a severe effect to the traditional festival, people deal with it by the legal mobilization that is making a foundation of Yamahoko Association. I re searched Yamahoko associations for about three years and in this paper pick up four associations that had called up law. The mobilization of law is tied to obtaining three big essential resources “human,” “material” and “pecuniary,” in conservation of the traditional festival. Gion Festival has more than 1000-year-old history in Kyoto and a very traditional style. In such a traditional festival, the making of the foundation has beneficial effects on “pecuniary,” “material” and “human” resources, moving the estate “cho-ie” (community’s common house) and the festival goods “yamahoko” to the fundamental property of the foundation. Each association makes it possible to preserve Japanese traditional festival by using the modern law. Here we can observe the different connection between the society and the law from the aspect that the mobilizing law typically implies modernization, democratization and westernization to the society.
