When the Voice of the Mountains Dwells on the Stage: An Eco-museum Knitted by Life in Oshika Village (1990s)

When the Voice of the Mountains Dwells on the Stage: An Eco-museum Knitted by Life in Oshika Village (1990s)
Oshika Village, located in a deep valley in southern Nagano Prefecture, is a mountain village nestled between the Southern Alps and the Median Tectonic Line, with terraced rice paddies and terraced fields spread out along the mountain slopes. The village's declining and aging population was quickly approaching, and the traditional culture and lifestyle techniques rooted in the village life were in danger of being lost. In the 1990s, as the sense of crisis grew, a new perspective emerged in Oshika Village: "Life itself is a cultural resource," and an eco-museum approach began, in which the entire region was regarded as an open-air museum.
At the center of this movement was the Oshika Kabuki performed by the villagers. This rural kabuki, with records dating back to the Edo period (1603-1867), was the crystallization of a communal culture in which the villagers were responsible for all the actors, the stage, and the musical accompaniment. However, the long postwar period, which saw a continuing exodus of the population to urban areas, has brought a serious shortage of performers and an aging population, and a crisis of succession has become a reality. Under these circumstances, an attempt was made to reconsider kabuki not simply as a traditional performing art, but as an activity inseparable from the life history of the village. The recording of rehearsals, the preservation of old people's stories, and the creation of backstage footage were systematically conducted, and the daily labor and customs that support the stage came to be treated as a valuable cultural resource.
At the same time, the mountainous landscape surrounding Oshika Village began to be recognized as a new cultural resource. The complexity of the geology exposed by the Median Tectonic Line, the steep ridges of the Southern Alps, and the scenery of the shrine pavilions and terraced rice paddies nestled in the valleys were positioned not for their tourist value, but as outdoor resources that had been formed in conjunction with the lives of the villagers. People became aware that the history of the village, the rhythm of farming, and the place of prayer were linked to the natural environment, and community development that did not separate culture from nature gradually took root.
These efforts have shaped Oshika Village's unique attitude of not protecting cultural assets by enclosing them in buildings, but by treating the very lives of the villagers as the stage for their culture, recording them, and passing them on to the future. Activities to pass on the Oshika Kabuki tradition and the practice of reevaluating the value of the mountain landscape began to take root as a regional policy, in step with the spread of the eco-museum concept in the 1990s. The efforts of Oshika Village, where history and culture are woven directly into the daily life of those who live with the mountains, continue to be important as a way to reconsider the future of mountain villages.