community creation by residents and tourists via takachiho kagura in japanese rural area社区居民和游客通过创建takachiho kagura日本农村地区.pdfVIP

Sociology Mind 2012. Vol.2, No.3, 306-312 Published Online July 2012 in SciRes (http ://www.SciRP.org/journal/sm) /10.4236/sm.2012.23041 Community Creation by Residents and Tourists via Takachiho kagura in Japanese Rural Area Shiro Horiuchi Shibauta Institute of Technology, Saitama, Japan Email: horiuchi.shiro@ Received February 22nd nd th , 2012; revised April 2 , 2012; accepted May 5 , 2012 Rural communities are disappearing in Japan due to aging, depopulation, and changes in lifestyles. Re- cently, outsiders such as immigrants, volunteers, and tourists cooperate with residents to revive and maintain rural communities. This paper uses my fieldwork in the rural areas of Takachiho, where the Japanese traditional dance kagura is well-known, to consider the possibility that residents and tourists cooperatively create shared communities. Actually, an increasing number of tourists visit Takachiho to see kagura. Consequently, some dancers miss “classical” kagura, which involved almost exclusively local residents in intimate interactions. Nonetheless, many dancers welcome the influx of tourists and its stimulation of community festivals. Some tourists are attracted to kagura at community festivals, and