内容の説明
During the 1930s, Oka Masao spent many years in Vienna, first as a student of theculture-historical school of ethnology (culture circle theory) under Wilhelm
Schmidt, Wilhelm Koppers, and Robert Heine-Geldern, later as the founding
director of the Institute of Japanese Studies at Vienna University. This paper traces
Oka’s engagement with German-language approaches to ethnology and folklore
studies (Volkskunde). It starts with a discussion of the diffusionist culture circle
theory Oka encountered in Vienna and which he used to frame his PhD dissertation
on Japanese ethnogenesis (Cultural Strate in Ancient Japan, 1935). Special
emphasis is then placed on Oka’s reception of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, an early
German proponent of folklore studies, who was rediscovered in the 1920s and
stylized as the founding father of Volkskunde under the Nazi regime. The paper
traces Oka’s shift from culture-historical ethnology to the politically utilizable and
present-oriented Volkskunde he found in Riehl’s works. It examines to what extent
Oka’s reception of Riehl’s voluminous and often contradictory oeuvre was shaped
by National Socialist reinterpretations and selective readings, how Oka utilized
Riehl’s thought to advertise ethnology’s political usefulness for the Japanese
colonial empire during the wartime, and finally how he attempted to reconcile
culture-historical ethnology with Riehl’s present-oriented approach in the postwar
period. Throughout, the paper highlights how the different methodological
approaches are reflected in (and give shape to) Oka’s use of the term minzoku (folk,
ethnic group).
| 期間 | 2月 15 2026 |
|---|---|
| イベント タイトル | International Symposium "Who is the Volk? A German Concept and its Japanese Trajectories" |
| イベント タイプ | 会議 |
| 場所 | 日本マップに表示 |
| 認知度 | 国際 |