Ethnograpy Written by Villegers

Research Project

Project/Area Number	08610314
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	文化人類学(含民族学・民俗学)
Research Institution	University of Tsukuba
Principal Investigator	FURUIE Shimpei University of Tsukuba Institution of History and Anthropology Assistant Professor, 歴史・人類学系, 講師 (40173520)
Project Period (FY)	1996 – 1998
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1998)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000) Fiscal Year 1998: ¥300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000) Fiscal Year 1997: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000) Fiscal Year 1996: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
Keywords	informant / ethnography / Japanese Folklore / Okinawa / 字誌 / 生活誌 / 村落開発伝承 / 親族集団
Research Abstract	I would like to stress the importance of a view of informants in villages in order to know them deeply. This point of view will help us 1) to understand the cultural back ground for the Okinawan people self- discovery movement which arose in the mid to late 1970s, along with the lifting of political change after returning to main-island Japan. 2) to reconsider the general idea of "informant". Japanese Folklore gave a definition to "informant" as a people who was born and brought up in a village and who could explain his daily life objectively to reseachers. To tell the truth, mostly all of informants in a village have experience in moving out of village ( e.g. emigration to the Philippins, Hawaii, South America, working away from home to main-island Japan, military service, association with discent group and so on ). They can explain their life subjectively and relatively. In addition to this, I appraise villagers' ethnography as a message which contains their imagination on their folklore.