Felicity Jane Greenland
Department Kyoto University of Foreign Studies Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies Position Associate Professor |
|
Date | 2021/03/14 |
Presentation Theme | Songs the Japanese Whalemen Sang |
Conference | Traditional Song Forum |
Conference Type | International |
Presentation Type | Speech (General) |
Contribution Type | Individual |
Venue | Online |
Details | Explanation of research to date, and comparison with Western sea-shanties, tailored to an international association of English language folk song researchers and practitioners. Emphasis is placed on issues of indexing, in relation to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Folk Song Indexing Project of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and the Roud Index of British and American folk song.
Premodern whaling in Japan generated a sizeable corpus of folksongs offering insight into the practices and attitudes of the time. Pertaining to in-shore small-type coastal whaling, these songs were not ‘sea shanties’ as such but make an interesting counterpart to their Western contemporaries. The Japanese songs include celebration songs, sung before and after short whaling trips, and work songs for capstan work, flensing and net-mending. This talk summarises my research to date, including mapping, content analysis and an attempt at indexing the lyrics for regional and international comparison. Video: goto 20:00 |