elided phonemes. Titles, unless otherwise noted, have been invented by the author on the basis of either the content or the first line. No text is given in hiragana, the Japanese syllabary, for two reasons: (a) the songs form part of an oral tradition, hence may be transcribed as properly in romaji as in hiragana; and (b) in some ways the syllabary is misleading. The word used to indicate the first person singular in standard Japanese is ‘watakushi’ but in Kuma this word is often pronounced ‘watashi’ or ‘watasi’ and it is impossible to indicate these two different pronunciations in hiragana. Similar difficulties would attend the use in this study of the new government-sponsored method of transcription of Japanese syllables into roman letters.
The collection of texts was made in southern Japan in 1935–36.[1] In the village of Suye most of the texts were transcribed by Ella Embree when first heard at some gathering, then were at a later date checked for accuracy with the singer or some other villager.[2] The singers themselves sometimes furnished an explanation of a difficult line, while a college educated native of Suye, Mr. Keisuke Aiko, and Mr. Toshio Sano, a graduate of the Tokyo Language School, assisted in preparing the preliminary English translations. The final translations were worked out in Hawaii with the assistance of Professor Yukuo Uyehara of the Oriental Institute of the University of Hawaii.[3]
University of Hawaii
July 1941
- ↑ The field work was financed by the Social Science Research Committee of the University of Chicago. An ethnographic monograph based on the research, Suye Mura, A Japanese Village, was published by the University of Chicago Press (1939). Some of the songs given below first appeared in Suye Mura. The University of Chicago Press has kindly permitted the reprinting of such texts here.
- ↑ An interesting characteristic of folk society, that everything must be in its proper social context, was shown in the difficulty informants found in remembering the words of songs when alone and not singing. They felt, and said so, that they could not remember the songs properly without samisen music, a group of friends, and a drink.
- ↑ Whenever any variation in text or translation of songs appearing both in Suye Mura, A Japanese Village (see note 10) and in this collection appears, the text or translation given in this collection may be regarded as the more accurate.
