Felicity Jane Greenland    Department   Kyoto University of Foreign Studies  Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies    Position   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