Goze

Goze (Japanese瞽 女, dt " blind woman (s) " ) were blind Japanese women who earned their living from it as a traveling musicians to play the shamisen and singing traditional Japanese songs. They hired themselves out usually at festivals ( matsuri ) in rural areas.

The profession of Gotse appeared already in the Japanese Middle Ages, but was only in the 16th or 17th century of greater importance as a profession for blind women. Sidelines as a masseuse or a shaman ( Itako ) he was usually the only way for blind women in Japanese society to make its own maintenance and their families not to be a burden.

They organized themselves often in groups of some blind women (and sometimes sighted guide inside ), the mutually supported, and whose leader acted as guide. Large groups were in Echigo ( Niigata Prefecture ), Kai ( Yamanashi Prefecture ), Shinano ( Nagano Prefecture), Shizuoka Prefecture, Gifu Prefecture. Many smaller groups of Kyushu to the Kanto area were active up to the prewar period.

The traditional culture of the Goze was only observed in the period after the Second World War to a greater degree by research. Due to the changed social conditions in modern Japan, especially of state equality and advancement of handicapped, there are currently no active Goze more. The last Goze champion, Kobayashi Haru (小林 ハル), died on 25 April 2005 at the age of 105 years.

Bibliography

• Ingrid Fritsch 1991 "The Sociological Significance of Historically Unreliable Documents in the Case of Japanese musical Guilds, " in Yoshihiko Tokumaru et al. eds, Tradition and it 's Future in Music. Report of SIMS 1990 Osaka, pp. 147-52. Tokyo and Osaka: Mita Press.
• 1992 "Blind Female Musicians on the Road: The Social Organization of ' Goze ' in Japan, " Chime Journal, 5 ( Spring): 58-64.
• 1996 Japan's blind singer in the protection of the deity Myōon - Benzaiten. Munich: Iudicium.

• 2001 " The Guild of the Blind in Tokugawa Japan, " Monumenta Nipponica, 56.3:349-380.
• 2007 Goze to goze - uta no Kenkyu瞽女 と 瞽女 唄 の 研究. Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press ( Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai ). Vol 1: Research; vol. 2: Historical material.