[Book Review] Tsuneichi Miyamoto's 'The Forgotten Japanese' — The Whereabouts of Voices Not Written in History
[The following is intended as an introductory text/sub-text]
Introduction: Who Were the Forgotten?
The title 'The Forgotten Japanese' has a certain powerful resonance. However, this book is not merely about longing for a lost hometown. Rather, what Tsuneichi Miyamoto is observing here is the lives of people who, in the midst of the grand history since modernization, have somehow become difficult to see and the narratives of each of those lands. Village meetings, the social circles of women, the memories of the elderly, the half-lives of those who wandered. Such things inevitably recede into the background within state systems and textbook history. However, it goes without saying that the time lived by the people there was not thin.
Tsuneichi Miyamoto was a writer who listened intently to such 'things that are hard to remain.' Born on Suo-Oshima Island and learning from Kunio Yanagita and Keizo Shibusawa, he was a folklorist who spent many years walking throughout the country, collecting the oral traditions of common people. This book is a masterpiece born from that accumulation and has been read as a classic of folklore studies to this day. Moreover, what is valued here is not organizing customs like dictionary entries, but rather each individual's experience and the weight of the life behind that person. Therefore, this book is both a source material and a record of anonymous lives.
This book contains thirteen pieces, including 'In Tsushima,' 'Village Meetings,' 'Women's Social Circles,' and 'Tosa Genji.' What is lined up there are not spectacular events or central politics. However, as you read, what becomes visible is just how diverse the layers of life were that actually made up the land called Japan. I believe 'The Forgotten Japanese' is a book that rescues people who have been placed outside of history, while at the same time quietly questioning what we have left behind as history and what we have overlooked.
Chapter 1: What Kind of Book is 'The Forgotten Japanese'?
This book was first published by Miraisha in 1960. It was later included in a collection of works, and the Iwanami Bunko edition was published in 1984. Although it is now widely known as Tsuneichi Miyamoto's masterpiece, its appeal does not lie in organizing and presenting the customs of so-called 'old Japan'. Instead, it lies in the fact that, within a modernizing Japan, he attempted to preserve the memories of people who lived rooted in the land, along with the tone of their voices.
Miyamoto does not simply line up the stories he heard in various places as folktales; he writes them in a way that lets the gestures, judgments, hardships, and wisdom of the people who lived there seep through. For this reason, although it is an academic book, it has a unique warmth. For example, in 'In Tsushima,' a story is told about how it took a whole day at a village meeting to decide whether or not to borrow old documents, and in 'Village Meetings,' the nature of age-based order and generational succession seen in villages in western Japan is depicted, including the differences from eastern Japan. Also, in 'Women's Social Circles,' the communal nature where women take the lead in rice planting is recorded, and in 'Tosa Genji,' the narrative of a blind beggar is recorded, each in an unforgettable way.
In other words, this book is more than a book explaining village systems; it is a book that conveys how people lived within those systems. Moreover, the people who appear there are those whom conventional historical narratives have not shed much light on. Women, the elderly, children, wanderers, and those who learned to read and write and changed the village. Such existences appear in this book not as supporting roles, but as those at the center of their respective lands. Herein lies a major feature of this book. Tsuneichi Miyamoto did not try to draw the large outlines of the state and its systems, but rather tried to recapture the image of Japan from the voices of the people living inside and outside those outlines.
Chapter 2: Village Life and People's Voices
What leaves the first impression when reading this book is that the village is not depicted as a monolithic community. Certainly, there is mutual aid and solidarity there. For example, in 'Searching for a Child,' the sight of villagers searching in full force for a child who has gone missing is recorded, conveying the strength of the community's bonds. But at the same time, the village has its own logic, its own distribution of roles, and its own time for deciding things. The story of spending a whole day on a 'meeting' does not seem to show its slowness, but rather tells of the weight required for a community to function as a community.
Even more interesting is that there are many layers within the village. 'Women's Social Circles' is a typical example. There, women support the space, laugh, and talk in a way different from the logic of men. The exchanges during rice planting and the bonds among women alone are too precious to be dismissed as mere customs. This is because another form of community, invisible from the surface of the village, is alive there. The words of systems and power are usually what remain at the center of history, but this book teaches us that actual life was supported by the chatter, labor, and presence surrounding them.
Also, many stories from the elderly appear in this book, but they are not just old tales. Stories about how every household had two years' worth of food during the Meiji era, how the village changed when a road was built, and the surprise when a cow first came to the village. Even if each detail seems small, they certainly convey the flow of time in that land. Things that are not in history textbooks, but were major events for that land, are quietly preserved here.
And what must not be forgotten is the perspective of the 'literate tradition-bearer.' Miyamoto also focused on how farmers and villagers who learned to read and write compared the outside world with their own villages and changed the way the village was. There is a keen eye here that is not just a simple praise of a primitive community. The village is not a closed world, but one that changes little by little through learning, movement, and comparison. The depth of this book lies in the fact that he tried to record even those changes. 'The Forgotten Japanese' is not a book for admiring the traces of old Japan, but a book that looks at how people's lives have continued, wavered, and been passed down.
Chapter 3: Scooping Up Lives Not Written in History
The value of 'The Forgotten Japanese' does not end with just vividly conveying the atmosphere of old villages. Rather, the reason this book has been read to this day is likely because it carefully scoops up things that are easily spilled from ordinary history. What Tsuneichi Miyamoto tried to record was not state systems or political events, but how people worked, aged, talked, and spent their days in that land. Although such activities certainly shaped that era, they are easily overlooked as 'trivial matters' when looking back later. I believe this book is an attempt to re-examine history from the side of those 'trivial matters'.
The narratives contained in this book are not grand heroic tales. However, the weight of a person's life resides in them. The half-life told by a blind man, the memories of an elderly person who walked the village, the beliefs of a grandfather or elder, the laughter of women. Such narratives are fragmentary if viewed as records. However, those fragments are also pieces of life that have spilled out of modern grand historical narratives. By listening to them, Miyamoto tried to illuminate history from the backside.
Come to think of it, what tends to remain as history are systems, policies, wars, laws, or the words of famous people. However, the reality of the people who actually lived through an era was not made up of just that. How they stored food, what they discussed in the village, in what order they rotated caretakers, what kind of jokes the women exchanged. The texture of life in that era resides in the accumulation of such details. This book makes one feel that strongly. In places where the light of grand history is hard to reach, a different time was actually flowing. Isn't that discovery the core of 'The Forgotten Japanese'?
Moreover, Tsuneichi Miyamoto's way of writing does not simply state as a general theory that 'common people are also the bearers of history.' He actually goes to the land, listens to the person's words, and tries to preserve them along with the habits and pauses of their voice. Therefore, the reader encounters them not as the abstract word 'masses,' but as someone concrete. There, people appear not as data, but as beings with unique lives. In this respect, this book seems to be both a book of folklore and a book of deep respect for anonymous lives.
Chapter 4: The Warmth of the Community and What Lies Within
However, when reading 'Forgotten Japanese', what one should be careful about is not to view the community depicted there as an ideal utopia just as it is. This book certainly contains scenes of mutual aid. The stories of the whole village searching for a child, or the sense of consensus symbolized by village meetings, evoke forms of solidarity that have become distant from urban life after modernization. It is natural for contemporary readers to be drawn to that. However, what Miyamoto records is not just a community that is merely warm.
There is order in village meetings. There are roles for generations. In a village, there is a distribution of who takes on what at which stage. People there are not drifting freely, but living while being given their respective positions. Also, the reason the 'world of women' is so impressive is likely because it is depicted not as a mere margin of a male-dominated society, but as a space that stands on the logic and connections of the women themselves. While there is a sense of liberation there that differs from the men's society, there must also have been other disciplines and atmospheres.
In other words, a community is a place of warmth, but at the same time, a place of placement. While people are protected and supported within it, they are also incorporated into the logic of that community. What makes this book excellent is that it conveys both sides without idealizing them. The reason the existence of wandering people and the blind leaves such an impression is likely not because they are outside the community, but because they stand in a place like the boundary between the inside and the outside. The village is not a closed, monolithic entity, but exists as a place that holds center and periphery, role and deviation, stability and movement. Miyamoto brings such complexity to the surface from the details of voices.
This is also suggestive for us in the modern age. One could simply lament that the community has been lost. But on the other hand, the community also had its own stifling nature. 'Forgotten Japanese' is not a book that speaks only of one or the other. Rather, it is a book that quietly shows us the concrete form of the conditions of what it means for people to live together with someone.
Chapter 5: What Falls Through the Cracks of Modern Light
Reading it in this way, the meaning of the word 'forgotten' in the book's title also becomes visible little by little. It is likely not just that times have changed and old customs have disappeared. What is more important is what has been left behind as history, and what has been placed outside as something insignificant. The modern state organizes systems, grasps land, classifies people, and weaves history into one grand narrative. In that process, the details of life and the narratives of each land that are difficult to fit into that inevitably become harder to see. What Tsuneichi Miyamoto recorded was precisely that world on the side that had been made difficult to see.
Therefore, 'Forgotten Japanese' can be read not only as a book that misses the lost image of Japan, but as a book that records what falls through the cracks of the modern perspective. Village meetings, the world of women, and the sight of those who gained literacy changing the village might be nothing more than small matters when viewed from the framework of central history. However, within those small matters lies the reality of how people lived. I believe Miyamoto tried to preserve that reality as words before it was leveled, standardized, and pushed into oblivion during modernization.
Of course, one cannot accept the world depicted in this book as the 'essence of Japan' just as it is. In fact, it has been pointed out that this book has a bias toward the image of villages in Western Japan. However, the reason this book is still important is that it shows that there was indeed a life-world that could not be recovered into a single standard image of Japan. What was forgotten is not the past itself. It is the depth of the lives of nameless people that existed within the past. 'Forgotten Japanese' is a book that attempts to regain that depth, and at the same time, it is likely a book that asks what we ourselves are overlooking now.
Conclusion: The Forgotten Voice Is Still Not Far Away
What remains after finishing 'Forgotten Japanese' is not a simple nostalgia for the lost past. Rather, it is the sense that we are always recording something while simultaneously letting something slip away. The history of the state, the history of systems, and the history of the economy are certainly necessary. However, the details of life that cannot fit into them, the language rooted in the land, and the judgments, hardships, and laughter of nameless people become difficult to see in the shadow of such grand history. What Tsuneichi Miyamoto left behind was precisely the outline of those things that had become difficult to see.
The people who appear in this book are not special heroes. However, the narrative of each and every one of them has the weight of lived time. And that weight should not be neatly closed as a thing of the past. Even now, there are people who live their days outside the center of society, unable to be put into words well, and remaining difficult to record. If we think that way, 'Forgotten Japanese' is a book that looks back at the Japan of the past, and at the same time, a book that questions what we in the present are trying to see and what we are overlooking.
Perhaps it is not just someone from the distant past who has been forgotten. The fact that this book quietly makes one think about that is where its unfading power lies.