Whose Practice Was Kokkuri-san?：Focusing on Its Popularity in the Late Nineteenth Century

こっくりさんは誰のものだったのか：19世紀末の流行時を中心に

Whose Practice Was Kokkuri-san?：Focusing on Its Popularity in the Late Nineteenth Century

The purpose of this study is to identify the social actors who sustained the Kokkuri-san boom that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Previous studies on Kokkuri-san have predominantly taken one of two approaches: either treating Kokkuri-san as self-evidently belonging to children’s culture, or focusing on its popularity during the Meiji period and interpreting it as a form of adult entertainment. Drawing on materials related to Kokkuri-san up to the end of the nineteenth century, this study analyzes how children and adults were involved in Kokkuri-san from a relational perspective. The analysis demonstrates that the practice of Kokkuri-san was deeply embedded in everyday life and widely shared, without a clear separation between children and adults. At the same time, among members of the educated classes, an emerging tendency can be observed to downgrade Kokkuri-san by reclassifying it as a children’s game.

Creators YOSHIOKA Kazushi

[EISSN]2189-4825