Category: Japanese Culture 日本の文化

日本文が後ろに続きます。

This morning I visited Daikan’yama i-Studio to see the exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Takashi Inukai, a leading scholar in the field of Man’yoshu. For those of you who don’t know it, Man’yoshu is Japan’s oldest collection of tanka poems created more than 1,300 years ago by emperors down to aristocrats and unknown common people nationwide. Inukai was an authority on the studies of the ancient poetry for over 50 years, teaching at many schools including Osaka University and Konan Women’s University as a professor.

According to the biography displayed in the exhibition room, he was born on April 1, 1907, in Tokyo. His first encounter with Man’yoshu was in the classroom of the high school in Kumamoto. Through the teachers of the high school he was greatly attracted by the beautiful words, melodious rhythms, and expressive images of the 4,516 verses.

After graduating from Tokyo University in 1932, he got a teaching job at Kanagawa Prefectural Yokohama Dai-ichi Junior High School, or Jinchu, where he taught for ten years. In 1942, he moved to Taiwan and became a professor of Taipei High School, teaching many students including Lee Teng-hui, who became a Taiwanese president 45 years later.

When the WWII came to an end in 1945, the Island of Taiwan belonged no longer to Japan, and accordingly he lost his teaching job. He returned to the mainland and landed at Wakayama. After that, he started living within the Kansai district. It was very convenient for him, because the area had plenty of places where the Man’yoshu verses were created and it could help his profound research of it. When he got a job at Osaka University in 1950, he made up his mind to walk around the places where each poem was sung to help him understand it more deeply. His idea impressed the students very much. They proposed him to make a trip to those places to understand the feelings of the ancient people. He agreed. He and his students went for more than 250 trips all over the country for almost 50 years, until he died in 1998. The total number of participants of those trips reached more than 40,000 (including me).

His contribution to the studies of Man’yoshu affected many people very much. In addition to writing papers and books as a specialist, he made his best efforts to spread it to the general public who aren’t familiar with pedantic literatures. He put his own melodies to each poem and sang it to the people to make it suit the popular taste. His “propagation” of Man’yoshu had influenced many artists, including Peggy Hayama, a singer, and Machiko Satonaka, a cartoonist who wrote Tenjo no Niji, a comic describing the life of Empress Jito.

His achievements was the object of public admiration in all directions. In 1978, he received the Order of the Riging Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. The following year he was invited to the Imperial Palace and showed a tanka in front of Emperor Hirohito. Also, he gave a lecture on Man’yoshu to Hirohito on the top of a hill in Asuka, Nara, on December 4 that year. He was qualified as a person of cultural merit in 1987. The Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star, was posthumously conferred on him on October 3, 1998, the very day that he passed away.

I have ever met him on our way of the trips by Osaka University students. He was very frank, friendly and humorous. Although the term that I was in touch with him for is much shorter than that of his life, I feel that I am sharing very many memories with him.

I uploaded the pictures of the exhibition to Flickr.

今朝、代官山ｉスタジオで「犬養孝生誕100年回顧展」というのをやっていたので見に行ってきました。犬養孝は、万葉集の研究の権威で、大阪大学や甲南女子大学などの教授として50年以上にわたって研究にたずさわってきた人です。

展示室にあった年譜によると、犬養孝は1907年4月1日に東京で出生し、熊本の第五高等学校にいたときに初めて万葉集と出会い、その美しい言葉、躍動的なリズム、表現力豊かな心象風景などに魅惑されたといわれます。

1932年に東京大学を卒業後、神奈川県立横浜第一中学校（神中）に奉職し10年間教鞭をとりました。そのあと台湾に移って台北高等学校の教授となり、数多くの学生を教えました。教え子の中には、後に台湾総統となった李登輝氏もいたとのことです。

終戦後、台湾は日本の領土でなくなったので、帰還船で内地へ帰り和歌山に上陸しました。そして、万葉集の歌の宝庫である関西に居を構え、1950年には大阪大学で教えることとなり、そのころから、万葉集を理解するために実際に現地を歩くという研究スタイルを確立させていったそうです。その考え方に学生たちは共鳴し、万葉集の故地を歩くツアーを提案しました。これは「大阪大学萬葉旅行」として、犬養が1992年に死去するまで50年近くにわたって250回以上も続けられました。この旅行の参加者は延べ4万人以上で、私もその中に含まれています。

犬養の万葉集研究は多くの人に影響を与えました。論文や著書を書くほかに、衒学的な学問としての文学になじみのない一般層に対して万葉集を広めることにも努力しました。万葉集の一首ずつに独自の節をつけ、それを人々の前で朗誦することにより、万葉集を一般向きのものとしました。犬養の“布教活動”は多くのアーティストに影響を与え、歌手のペギー葉山や、「天上の虹」を描いた漫画家の里中満智子も、すべて犬養孝が原点です。

これらの業績は多方面から評価され、1978年には勲三等旭日中綬章を受章、翌年の歌会始には宮中に召され、昭和天皇の御前で歌を読み上げられました。またその年の12月4日には、奈良県明日香・甘樫丘の上で昭和天皇をお迎えし、御進講を行いました。1987年には文化功労者に叙せられました。そして、死去した1998年10月3日には、正四位勲二等瑞宝章が追贈されました。

私は学生のときに萬葉旅行でこの犬養先生にお会いしたことがありますが、非常にフランクでフレンドリーでユーモラスな方だった記憶があります。実際に犬養先生と接した期間は犬養先生の人生に比べればごくわずかの期間なのですが、非常に多くの記憶が残っているような気がします。

回顧展の模様をFlickrにアップしました。