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

When the Voice of the Mountains Dwells on the Stage: An Eco-museum Created by Life in Oshika Village (1990s)
Oshika Village in Nagano Prefecture is a mountain village surrounded by the rugged mountains of the Southern Alps and the unique topography of the Median Tectonic Line, where terraced rice paddies and valley-side villages have lived in harmony with nature. However, with the outflow of the postwar population and the aging of the population, the village's culture and lifestyle were facing a crisis of decline. Against this backdrop, a new awareness emerged in Oshika Village in the 1990s that "life itself is a cultural resource," and an eco-museum approach began to take shape, in which the entire region was regarded as an outdoor museum.
At the center of this movement was the Oshika Kabuki. In the 1990s, there was a growing movement to reconsider kabuki as the history of village life itself, not only through the preservation of tradition, but also through the recording of rehearsals and backstage performances, the testimony of elders, and the preservation of costumes and masks. There was a growing movement to reconsider Kabuki as the history of village life itself. This documentation process went beyond the protection of cultural assets and developed into an attempt to reorganize the values of the region.
At the same time, the mountain landscape surrounding Oshika Village was also reevaluated as a cultural resource. The geological features of the mountains, the shrine flora in the valleys, and the terraced rice paddy fields were treated as outdoor resources connected to the history of the village, and the attitude of not separating culture and nature permeated regional policy. As a result, Oshika Village was reevaluated as a space where life, culture, and nature mutually support each other, and regional development proceeded in a manner that merged with the eco-museum concept.