Kadokuri no Uta to Kame Onna Odori no Laughter - Folk Scenery of Yakushima Island and the Showa Period (1950s)

Kadokuri no Uta to Kame Onna Odori no Laughter - Folk Scenery of Yakushima Island and the Showa Period (1950s)

Yakushima in the 1950s, before the wave of development in the island, was a time when old beliefs and community customs were still alive in daily life. The "gate rounding" depicted in the author's memory was a custom that symbolized the rhythm of life in such a folk society. On the evening of the seventh day of the New Year, after finishing dinner, children would gather in their neighborhoods and walk from house to house, singing festive songs as they went. They would sing "Yao-no-ta-osu," the customary "Kadomatsu," or "The pine tree at Kido has flourished this year," and raise their voices in front of the gates of each house. The song was not just a New Year's greeting, but also a small prayer of thanks for the nature and labor of the land.

When the children finished singing, they would receive rice cakes and congratulatory gifts, and finally gather at an absent house to eat and share zenzai (sweetened red bean soup). The laughter that night had a warmth that confirmed the solidarity of the community. The author says that he made the mistake of falling into a pot of manure at one of the houses while making the rounds of the gate. The episode was later recounted as a memory that resonates with the "Turtle Woman Dance," a representative folk art of Yakushima. In the Kameonna Odori dance, a play on words is developed by combining the words "turtle" (kame) and "jar" (kame), and the game between a man and a woman is performed humorously. The comical plot, in which a man visits the turtle woman through the back door and falls into a jar, reminds us of our own past mistakes, and seems to lay the memory of community on top of the laughter.

Underlying this custom is the character of a "rite of passage" in which children participate in social rituals as members of the community for the first time. Going from house to house in the village to recite a prayer of thanksgiving at the time of rebirth, the New Year, was an act of praying for the cycle of life and a bountiful rice harvest. The "igusu" (Japanese bush warbler) and "flying fish" in the song are symbols of the bounty of spring and the sea, and are good omen motifs that herald a bountiful harvest. Since the rice harvest was low on Yakushima Island and sweet potatoes were the staple food, the words "a thousand stones, two thousand stones" in the festive poem expresses the longing for a bountiful rice harvest. The children's voices were depicting in the night sky an ideal farming year that could not be realized in reality.

After World War II, Yakushima Island was rapidly modernized through timber harvesting and power development, but in this folk landscape from the early Showa period to the 1960s, there are signs of a time when nature and humans were still breathing together. The songs of the gate rounders echoed a sense of communal connection and respect for nature, instead of economic affluence. The laughter of the Turtle Woman Dance was also an island wisdom that laughed off poverty and hardship, a "communal humor" that brought people together through shared shame.

These two events were not mere games or entertainments, but devices that loosely reconnected the boundaries between man and nature, man and woman, and children and adults. The power of laughter in the folklore of Yakushima is the very wisdom of living with nature. The cheerful melody of the Kameonna Odori dance and the voices of the children who make the rounds of the gate still echo faintly in the night winds of the island.