Research on Vigor(GENKI) of the Aged in Community Culture

随着“老龄化社会”或“老龄化社会”的到来，许多人似乎对此有黑暗和悲观的印象。但我们看到了很多朝气蓬勃或朝气蓬勃的老年男女。因此，我们通过实证性的研究来探寻“快乐而充满希望的长寿社会”的可能性。我们的基本研究态度是，我们从不把老年人的形象限制在一个简单统一的框架内，我们必须在各种特定的场景中研究老年人的实际生活。由于每个老年男性/女性都有自己独特的生活，他/她的生活在每一种风格中都有生机和活力，所以我们调查了岐阜县、熊本县、佐贺县等县的一些社区的“活力老人”的真实生活和他们的当地文化状况。特别是，我们详细报道了对Ychiyo-Za复兴做出贡献的老年人，Ychiyo-Za是当地的一个古老的剧院，现在是熊本县山贺市社区复兴的象征。他们组织并大力推动了面临灭亡危机的雅居乐复兴运动，通过这一研究，我们发现了老年人为社区的复兴做出独特贡献的可能性。一方面，山河的老年人对他们的社区和文化有着强烈的依恋和自豪。另一方面，他们脱离了社会的常识，有时会提出坚决的反对。依恋与骄傲、自由与反对：这些态度的独特结合成功地复兴了当地的老剧院，并鼓励了社区及其文化。

With the coming of "the ageing society" or "the aged society" many people seem to have dark and gloomy images of that. But we have seen a lot of elderly men and women who are full of vigor or vitality. Accordingly we have searched for possibility of "the cheerful and hopeful long-life society" through our empirical studies.Our basic attitude of research is that we never confine the images of the aged into a simple and unified frame and that we have to study actual lives of the aged in various specific scenes. Because each elderly man/woman has his/her own particular life and his/her life has vigor or vitality in each style.So we have investigated the real lives of "the vigorous elderly people" in some communities of the prefectures of Gifu, Kumamoto, Saga, etc. and their local cultural conditions. Especially we report in detail on the aged who contributed to the revival of YACHIYO-ZA, an old local theater which now is a symbol of renaissance of the community of Yamaga City of Kumamoto Prefecture. They organized and promoted vigorously the movement for the revival of YACHIYO-ZA which had faced a crisis of ruin.By this research we found a possibility of unique contribution of the aged to refreshment of a community. On one hand the aged of Yamaga are attached to and proud of their community and its culture strongly. On the other, they are free from the common senses of the community and sometimes raise resolute objections. Attachment and pride, freedom and objection : the unique combination of these attitude functioned successfully to revive the old local theater and to encourage the community and its culture.