Food and the Heart

4

In the classification of folklore materials in my draft, this is recognized as the third particularly important tradition, and it is a strong reason that this study must become national in the future. It is not easy to list them one by one, but the first is whether the principles or theories that characterize the politics of the country today, the ideals of life which are named masculinity or full-fledged, the root of the moral law which must be sanctioned if broken, the standard of happiness and unhappiness from the point of view of the individual, and the implicit techniques for substituting it, the external laws and forces which are perceived to be difficult to move by the force of the technique alone, the ideas of some of these important things, have always been unchanged or have changed with the times. If this was the case, the degree of variation was not uniform throughout the country, and whether there was a slight variation from place to place or not? These have not yet been vaguely observed by anyone. It is impossible to live endlessly, leaving this to the devotees who are likely to emerge in the future.

masculinity（名）男らしさ

full-fledged（形）一人前の

sanction（動）制裁する

implicit（形）暗黙の

What we are about to find out is that when the Japanese were to read the morals books of the early modern period or to be lectured on various new doctrines of faith, they actually realized that they already had something quite advanced on our side, and they did not abandon it and put a new one in an empty container, but tried to mix it with the existing one as circumstances permitted. In the West, as well, when the history of Christianity was newly examined by lay researchers, the interest in folk studies suddenly shifted to faith, and this 'perenniality without unification' of indigenous religions also stimulated the desire for knowledge among our friends in Japan. I confess that I was one of those intoxicated, and I could not wait for the day when those who lived in the village would come to know and speak for themselves, and I thought that it would not be impossible to discover this reality from the outside by drawing some ancient books published in the capital, which had been handed down only a little. With their extraordinary insight, Orikuchi and his colleagues often guessed right and proved it later. But as long as we continue to do so, we will never feel safe, and in fact, the academic community cannot stand the inconvenience of revision. The reason for this is very simple: in the old days people's lives were only a matter of one group, and they did not keep them in separate drawers, as they do today: faith is faith, economy is economy, and home is home. Our discussion was inevitably close to fortune-telling or betting because we tried to go through the branches and leaves without looking at it from the ground up. The beginning of religion was originally the people's view of life, but to clarify this in detail, the correct order is to start with how we felt about this world.

doctrine（名）教義

perenniality（名）永続性

unification（名）統一

indigenous（形）土着の

intoxicate（動）陶酔させる

insight（名）洞察力

guess right......推測を当てる

revision（名）改正、改訂

drawer（名）引き出し

inevitably（副）不可避的に

And it was no use worrying about us when the important actors did not care about it and did not interest us. Fortunately, in recent years the momentum has taken a turn, and the idea that we should study the local area from within and without has germinated, so we must be eager to campaign not to keep our ability to do so in the same style of research that anyone can do. One way, then, is to simply talk frankly about the everyday things that people in rural areas have neglected to reflect on, or the small facts that were supposed to yield some results, that were actually the key to the problems that we are still struggling with. For this reason, I would not necessarily be ashamed to reveal my ignorance and would gladly ask others to teach me, but it may be that there was a feeling in the world that I could not work as a student of the social sciences without being regarded as an expert a little. There was a tendency to have a lot of problems and to keep them secret and wait for local knowledge to be provided. Otherwise, they put up imperfect assumptions and competed with fantasy-rich young people for merit. Today's study of folklore is also a study to explain folklore, but at any rate, the method that we originally expected was not adopted. We have not seen a man who is tolerant enough to wait for the inference which comes naturally by the comparison of certain facts. Even with the start of nationwide local studies, more people seem to be wandering around in as innocuous a field as possible, hoping to avoid influencing their own conclusions. On the other hand, it is our fault for completely misleading people in a world where various unfounded dogmas are believed.

actor（名）当事者

momentum（名）勢い、気運

germinate（動）生まれる

yield（動）生み出す

assumption（名）仮定、前提

tolerant（形）寛容な、耐性のある

inference（名）推論、推測

comparison（名）比較

nationwide（形）全国的な

innocuous（形）無難な、当たり障りのない

unfounded（形）事実無根の

dogma（名）独断