Research and Study in Folklore Based upon Regional Differences in Roles and Reasons for

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This research comprises fieldwork that investigates the roles and reasons for living of the aged in traditional communal societies that serve as strategies and measures for enhancing old age. Particular attention was paid to the folk custom of mura-inkyo (village retirement) in communities in the Kinki region. According to the custom of mura-inkyo, all males 1 retire from village administration when they reach 60 years of age, whereupon they assume central roles in the miyaza (council of elders representing families associated with a local shrine) related to rituals involving tutelary deities. The service to the shrine performed by the elders who make up the miyaza produced substantial changes in the individuals involved. We witnessed at close hand elderly people whose feelings of gratitude toward deities and nature were being deepened through various experiences such as shojin kessai, a purification ritual involving abstinence from meat, fish and alcohol, and first-hand experience of … More serious illness. We were able to detect a transformation from being merely an old person to being a sanctified elder.Even in communities such as farming villages in the Tohoku region and urban neighborhoods in Kyoto City where there is no formal system of traditional communities for handing roles over to the next generation or changes in roles as a result of mura-inkyo, a time comes when the people living there realize that some day they will grow old. It was in this connection that we interviewed veterans from the war, who have personal experience in confronting death, which lies at the other end of old age. Two interesting phenomena came out of these interviews. One is the diversity of forms in which they expressed their feelings toward those who died in the war. The second is the individual sense of loss that encompasses the acquisition of a means of expressing those feelings toward the dead. The point at which these people experience this loss and acquisition is the point at which they begin to think about what remains of their lives, and in most cases the occurred after they had turned sixty. We were able to confirm that this realization that they must do the things they had yet to do during the time remaining gave them reasons for living and that there existed reasons for living that were brought about by internal changes within an individual that were separate from the reasons for living for the aged provided within the miyaza system for elders in the Kinki region. This research uses specific examples to make a comparison of the reasons for living found within the miyaza system and the reasons for living found within an individual's life. Less