Japanese Folk Music

When collecting and cataloguing min’yô song texts—as exemplified in a large-scale publication by the Nippon Hôsô Kyôkai (Japan Broadcasting Corporation, 1944–1993)—Japanese scholars tend to use strongly functionalist classifications: that is, they describe the social contexts in which the songs are used (for example, rice-pounding songs). Categories of this sort are based on common usage but are often criticized for their overlapping divisions and lack of coherent organizational criteria...