The 19th Public Lecture Held by the Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage: “Inheritance of Traditional Performing Art Considered through Promotional Efforts”
On November 7, 2025, the 19th Public Lecture, titled “Inheritance of Traditional Performing Art Considered through Promotional Efforts,” was held at the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN), in the basement seminar room.
At the beginning of the first half of the Public Lecture, Ms. MAEHARA Megumi, Head of Intangible Cultural Properties Section, explained the purpose of the lectures. Afterwards, Mr. IIDA Tsutomu, Senior Specialist of Textbooks for Elementary and Secondary Education in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, provided a lecture titled “The National Curriculum Standard and Traditional Performing Arts Described in the Textbooks.” In this lecture, he described the National Curriculum Standard as a key pillar to popularize traditional performing arts in education at schools, and the description of traditional performing arts in textbooks as a guideline for the Standard. Following his lecture, Ms. KAMATA Sayumi, Researcher of the Department, and Ms. MAEHARA conducted presentations titled, respectively, “Efforts to Provide Traditional Performing Arts Experiences in Schools in Tokyo,” and “Efforts to Promote Traditional Performing Arts in and out of Schools in Okinawa.” Through these presentations, the presenters clarified the current situations and challenges in traditional performing arts promotion.
In the latter half of the Public Lecture, Mr. KINEYA Katsushizu and Mr. KINEYA Katsujiro played Nagauta “Kuramayama,” and talked about the opportunities in which they had become engaged in traditional performing arts and their training afterwards (Photo 1, Interviewer: Ms. KAMATA). Afterwards, Mr. TANAHARA Kenta, an Uta Sanshin (Traditional Ryūkyū Music) player, played works titled “Mutouhanafuubushi” and “Saginjyashi syukkwebushi” and talked about how he came to know traditional Ryūkyū music, and some of the challenges he faced during his activities. (Photo 2, interviewer: Ms. MAEHARA).
After the lectures, a round table talk was held in which Ms. OSHIO Satomi, Professor of Miyagi University of Education, who worked for traditional performing art promotion through the training of teachers, joined and exchanged opinions with the other participants on the current situation and challenges regarding training and promoting the traditional performing arts in and outside of schools, from their respective viewpoints of their regions and standpoints. (Photo 3).
The Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage will share the information gleaned at the Public Lecture through collaboration with people of various standpoints and seek solutions for the challenges of promotion and inheritance of intangible cultural properties. We plan to publish a report on this Public Lecture in the next fiscal year.