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Tadashi Kanehisa

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Tadashi Kanehisa
Born1906
Shodon, Setouchi-chō, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan
Died1997 (aged 90–91)
Kagoshima, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan
CitizenshipJapan
Alma materKyushu Imperial University
Known forFolkloristic study of the Amami Islands of southwestern Japan
Scientific career
FieldsFolkloristics, Linguistics

Tadashi Kanehisa (金きむ久ひさ 正ただし, Kanehisa Tadashi, 1906–1997) was a Japanese folklorist and linguist who worked on the language and culture of his home island Kakeroma, and by extension, Amami Ōshima of southwestern Japan. As an informant of the Shodon dialect, he also worked with linguists Yukio Uemura, Shirō Hattori and Samuel E. Martin.

Biography

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Kanehisa was born to a wealthy family in Shodon, a village in southwestern Kakeroma Island of the Amami Islands. Unlike his half-brothers and sisters, he was grown up by his grandparents. His grandfather Minesato (嶺みね佐登さと) was an important source of his folkloristic studies in his later life.[1]

He studied English literature at Kyushu Imperial University. Being disappointed with it, he spent about five years pursuing folkloristic studies in his hometown Shodon. He then worked for the Nagasaki Prefectural Government while teaching linguistics at Kwassui Women's College. He published his folkloristic work at the Nantō (Southern Islands) edited by Eikichi Kazari, and the Tabi to Densetsu (Travels and Legends). He won fame for his paper Amori Onagu (天降あまくだり女人にょにん) (1943), where he proposed a couple of novel theories on Amami's swan maiden motif, a conundrum originally posed by Shomu Nobori. His work was highly commended by Kunio Yanagita, the father of Japanese folkloristics. His main source of information was a group of young men from Amami who had been drafted into the armament industry in Nagasaki. His informants were all killed by the U.S. atomic bombing on Nagasaki in 1945. He himself gradually lost his eyesight after the bombing.[2]

After World War II, he returned to Shodon and soon moved to Naze (part of modern-day Amami City), the center of Amami Ōshima. His blindness kept him from using his talent for prestigious jobs. He ran a private-tutoring school for the English language during daytime while continuing folkloristic and linguistic research at night. His decades of work resulted in the book titled Amami ni ikiru Nihon kodai bunka (Ancient Japanese Culture Still Alive in Amami). Its publication was done with the help from linguist Shirō Hattori.[3]

Being a linguist himself, he worked as an informant of the Shodon dialect, which is part of the Southern Amami Ōshima dialect group of the Japonic languages. He worked with Yukio Uemura,[4] Shirō Hattori and Samuel Martin.[5] He was praised as an ideal informant by Hattori. His primarily linguistic work include the Amami hōgen on'in no sandai tokushoku (Three features of the Amami dialect phonology) and the Amami ni ikiru kotengo (Literary language still alive in Amami). He spent his final years in Kagoshima. He died in 1997, leaving an uncompleted dictionary of the Amami dialect.[2]

Notes

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  1. ^ Unasaka Noboru 海うみ坂さか昇のぼる (2004). "Kanehisa Tadashi: 1937 nen no nikki o chūshin ni 金きむ久ひさ正せい–一いち九きゅう三さん七なな年ねんの日記にっきを中心ちゅうしんに". In Matsumoto Hirotake 松本まつもと泰やすし丈たけ and Tabata Chiaki 田畑たばた千秋ちあき (ed.). Amami fukki 50 nen 奄美あまみ復帰ふっき50年ねん (in Japanese). pp. 335–339.
  2. ^ a b Yamashita Kin'ichi 山下やました欣一きんいち (2011). Kaisetsu 解説かいせつ. In Kanehisa Tadashi. Amami ni ikiru Nihon kodai bunka 奄美あまみに生いきる日本にっぽん古代こだい文化ぶんか (Ancient Japanese Culture Still Alive in Amami). pages=493–506.
  3. ^ Kanehisa Tadashi 金久かねく正せい (2011) [1963]. Amami ni ikiru Nihon kodai bunka 奄美あまみに生いきる日本にっぽん古代こだい文化ぶんか (Ancient Japanese Culture Still Alive in Amami) (in Japanese).
  4. ^ Karimata Shigehisa 狩俣かりまた繁しげる久ひさ (1995). "Kagoshima-ken Ōshima-gun Setouchi-cho Shodon hōgen no fonēmu 鹿児島かごしま県けん大島おおしま郡ぐん瀬戸内せとうち町まち諸鈍しょどん方言ほうげんフォネーム (上うえ) (The Phonemes of the Shodon dialect in Amami-Oshima (Part 1))". Nihon Tōyō bunka ronshū 日本にっぽん東洋とうよう文化ぶんか論集ろんしゅう (1): 1–23. Archived from the original on 2015-04-10. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  5. ^ Samuel E. Martin (1970). "Shodon: A Dialect of the Northern Ryukyus". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 90 (1): 97–139. doi:10.2307/598434. JSTOR 598434.
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  • Ayahavela (in Japanese): Kanehisa's son Noboru Unasaka's website. Some excerpts from Kanehisa's book.
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