Scientific research on Japanese traditional culture - Cases of “Kana-ami”, the way of tea and calligraphy

日本の伝統文化である「金網」，「茶道」，「書道」の科学的研究

2017-09-25

2017-09-25

Japan is an ancient country with more than one thousand years of history and a lot of traditional handicraft techniques. Especially in Kyoto, Kyoto has set the quality standard for Japanese arts and crafts. The city remains the most important center of traditional Japanese crafts nowadays. In the ancient period, numbers of old craftsmen improve their skill in order to head to Kyoto for serving the Emperor. Nowadays, the traditional industry has been developed well in Japan. The traditional handicraft，traditional ceremony and traditional artwork have deeply entrenched within Japanese people’s heart. With the advent of the industrial revolution and mechanization production, Mechanical products have been an extensive application in modern Japanese daily life, which replaces the most of the Japanese traditional product. Particularly worried about is that young person willing to engage in fewer and fewer people of traditional crafts. One of the important restrictive problems in future of Japanese traditional industry development is that learners have to accept training with a long time in order to become an excellent traditional craftsman. In general, nearly all of handwork skills and knowledge were passed to learners by oral teaching and action imitation. Therefore, it is very difficult for most of the learners to master and duplicate those excellent skills. They have to take considerable time and effort to do practice again and again with the aid of indescribable motion perceiving. Therefore, it is not easy for a learner to catch the key technical point of handwork skill only based on teachers’ demonstration. In other words, scientific understanding for expert’s handwork skill is useful in the real teaching application. It is urgent time to pay attention to reduce the time of training cycle and keep healthy development of this traditional industry. In this research, scientific technology was applied to the talent cultivation of traditional industry. The emphasis of this research was on the study of the different human factors between expert and non-expert influenced on traditional skills. For a better explanation that the scientific technology how to catch the key points of traditional skills from the most outstanding masters, “Kana-ami”, The way of tea and calligraphy, three application cases were paid attention, which represent the traditional handicraft, traditional ceremony, traditional artwork, respectively. In the first case of “Kana-ami”, the structure, aesthetics and performance characteristics of “Kana-ami” hexagons were clarified by comparing products made by expert and non-expert. The expert and non-expert’s consecutive fingers behavior of weaving motion were investigated by motion analysis system, especially the continuous working conditions and its relationship with final products’ structure issue also focused. In addition, the related hexagonal structures were also investigated for comparing. It is found that expert’s working motion could support his continuous weaving process and stability structure compared to the non-expert. In the second case of the way of tea, the surface bubble distribution of the tea made by expert and non-expert were focused. The three tea whisks and five tea bowls were selected and clarified as factors influencing on tea making. It found that the tea whisks and tea bowls had a very small impact for the expert on the bubble distribution of the final tea. Furthermore, the expert and non-expert’s tea making motion was investigated by the high-speed camera system. The subjects’ behavioral motion characteristics of tea making motion were inspected and discussed. The difference of tea making motion between expert and non-expert was found clearly. In the third case of calligraphy, in order to provide some artistic guidelines and evaluation suggestions, a numerical evaluation system of calligraphy was proposed and established. The characteristics of four type fonts and calligraphy works were clarified clearly by this system in order to verify this system’s practicability. Four type fonts of “Kaisho”, “Gyosho”, “Sousho” and “Hiragana” were investigated by evaluation system. The “Hiragana” works and “Kanji” works were also measured in order to compare the style of “hiragana” and “Kanji”. Furthermore, the writing characteristics were also paid attention by writing digitizing index. The motions of two experts and two beginners were also recorded by video cameras, and analyzed by software. All subjects' writing characteristics were found. Based on three cases of scientific research on Japanese traditional culture, tacit knowledge of expert’s technique was clarified clearly by numerical method. In the future, it may contribute to learners to program a reference for helping the learner training.

博士（学術）

京都工芸繊維大学

14303甲第856号

http://hdl.handle.net/10212/2432

eng

ETD

Thesis or Dissertation

Thesis