Database of ritual songs of Miyako Islands

2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 16320027
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese literature
• Research Institution: University of the Ryukyus
• Principal Investigator: TAMAKI Masami University of the Ryukyus, Faculty of Law and Letters, professor (30101455)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): AKAMINE Masanobu University of the Ryukyus, Faculty of Law and Letters, professor (40192893) ; TAKSHASHI Toshizou Okinawa international University, 総合文化学部, professor (40088779) ; KARIMATA Shigehis University of the Ryukyus, Faculty of Law and Letters, professor (50224712) ; OHGO Taro University of the Ryukyus, Faculty of Law and Letters, associate professor (30253941) ; KUMADA Susumu University of the Ryukyus, Institute of Okinawa Prefectual University of Arts, associate professor (30215024)
• Project Period (FY): 2004 – 2007
• Keywords: Ritual songs / Miyako Islands / Ritual / datebase / dictionary of Miyako songs

Research Abstract

The purpose of this project is double folds; 1) to preserve the traditional ballads of Miyako Islands in high quality video images and digital sounds for a permanent repository, which will enable future researchers to engage in a variety investigations, 2) to establish a basis and frame work for "Dictionary of Ritual songs of Miyako Islands," which consists of the components of index words, Chinese ideograms, interpretation words and examples of their usages. The data were collected from the islands of Kurima, Ikema, Irabu, and Tarama. All the ballads of respective islands were recorded with a digital camcorder and a digital tape recorder. The database in "ceremonial lyrics" was created from both the existing printed materials and lyrics which have been transcribed from the recorded materials by the project team. The ballads of Miyako have remarkable differences in sounds, reflecting their regional dialects. Therefore, it is impossible to treat the same words as the same items in the index words. A comparative study on Miyako and other Okinawan dialects is also impossible due to their singular differences in pronunciation. In order to solve the problems, the index words (lemma) of the database were written in Proto-Okinawan, which enabled a comparative examination with "the Great Okinawan Classic Word Dictionary." However, the three points should be noted; that there are still many unknown words which cannot be seen in the proto-forms, that the original version of the book, "Song of the Miyako Islands," edited by Risaburo Tajima in Meiji Era, was reproduced by the project team, and that the project team found great benefits from the book's annotations, as opposed to the past research dependency on the handwritten copies.