Rethinking Folk Performance in Early Medieval Japan

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19K13054
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Review Section	Basic Section 02010:Japanese literature-related
Research Institution	Kyushu University
Principal Investigator	Lazarus Ashton 九州大学, 人文科学研究院, 講師 (20814065)
Project Period (FY)	2019-04-01 – 2021-03-31
Project Status	Discontinued (Fiscal Year 2020)
Budget Amount *help	¥3,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥900,000) Fiscal Year 2022: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000) Fiscal Year 2021: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000) Fiscal Year 2020: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000) Fiscal Year 2019: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000)
Keywords	Japanese performance / Japanese literature / Folk performance / 芸能史 / 日本中世文化 / 庶民芸能 / Medieval Japan / Performance history
Outline of Research at the Start	This project reassesses the position of folk performance in the wider social, political, and cultural environment of the early medieval period. I examine a range of textual and visual sources to show how folk performance created charged spaces of interclass contact. Modern accounts of medieval Japanese culture often highlight the centrality of action, corporeality, and interclass mixing, contrasting it with the stasis and gentility of the court culture that dominated the preceding classical period. I will contribute a new perspective on this shift, one focused on non-elite groups.
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	Due to a change in employment, my time spent researching on this grant was unfortunately cut short. Nonetheless, over the past two years I have made progress toward the goals outlined in my original proposal. My book manuscript, which is nearing completion, re-centers non-elites in the cultural history of early medieval Japan, demonstrating the degree to which their embodied practices impacted the wider cultural environment. Through my research I have been able to show that class and social status during this time period were not entirely deterministic; and that performance in particular created charged spaces of interclass contact. I believe that continued work in this direction will yield new approaches to thinking about the relationship between representation and embodiment in premodern times.