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

随着“老龄化社会”或“老年社会”的到来，许多人似乎对此有黑暗和悲观的印象。但是我们也看到了很多精力充沛的老年男女。据此，我们通过实证研究探索了“快乐而充满希望的长寿社会”的可能性。我们研究的基本态度是绝不把老年人的形象局限在一个简单统一的框架里，而是要在各种具体场景中研究老年人的实际生活。因为每个老人都有自己独特的生活，他/她的生活在每一种风格中都有活力。因此，我们对岐阜县、熊本县、佐贺县等地部分社区的“活力老人”的真实生活和当地文化状况进行了调查。特别是，我们详细报道了为熊本县山长市社区复兴的象征——古老的地方剧院“YACHIYO-ZA”的复兴做出贡献的老年人。他们积极组织和推动了挽救濒临破产的八世会的运动。通过这项研究，我们发现了老年人对社区恢复的独特贡献的可能性。一方面，Yamaga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意见。依恋和骄傲，自由和反对：这些态度的独特组合成功地复兴了古老的当地剧院，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.