Wanting memories: histories, remembrances and sentiments inscribed in music and dance of the Ogasawara Islands

Abstract

This thesis explores histories, remembrances and sentiments inscribed in music and dance of the Ogasawara Islands. Through a musical ethnography, the thesis illustrates the identity and dignity of this small, remote but extensively connected community in the Pacific. Since the first settlement of 1830, the islanders have suffered various hardships caused by colonialism, war and international politics. As a result, a fracturing of memories has occurred that created a deep sorrow in the islanders’ sentiments. However they hardly stand idle lamenting loss and absence while trying to console their sentiments through singing and dancing. The want of memories reveals a responsive sense of yearning, and calls for multiple forms of historical narratives, practices and performances. Music and dance can be vital media to recollect and retrieve things past, because they preserve various fragments of the past in song lyrics, bodily movements and dance choreographies. These fragmented memories are often judged as ambiguous, incomplete and defective in conventional historiography. A diversity of Ogasawara musical activities appears to represent the fracturing of memories, but it actually provides an alternative view to see the islands beyond mere historical factuality, and enriches our historical consciousness, understandings and experiences towards collective remembrance. In this view from the frontier, the thesis recognises Ogasawara’s own memories that are associated with many other places and peoples, and affirms its identity and dignity beyond imagined boundaries of border, nation and ethnicity. Show more