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Goze (瞽女
?) is a Japanese historic term
referring to visually impaired Japanese women, of whom most worked
as musicians.
Etymology
The ideographs for goze mean "blind" and "woman." The
ideographs are, however, read in this manner because the word
goze already existed. In fact, it probably derived from
the term mekura gozen 盲御前, which also means blind
woman (gozen is a formal second-person pronoun). Although
the term goze can be found in medieval records, other
terms such as mōjo 盲女, jomō 女盲 and the like were
also in use (especially in written records) until the modern era.
In the spoken language, the term goze was usually suffixed
by an honorific: goze-san, goze-sa,
goze-don, and the like.
Organizations
From the Edo period
(1600-1868) goze organized themselves in a number of ways.
Few large-scale organizations have been found in urban areas,
though during the nineteenth century some documents speak of a
goze association in the city of Edo. In Osaka
and some regional towns goze were sometimes informally
linked to the pleasure quarters, where they were called to perform
their songs at parties and the like.
Goze organizations developed most in rural areas and
continued to exist in Niigata (once known as Echigo) and
Nagano
prefectures well into the twentieth century (the last important
active goze, Haru Kobayashi (小林ハル, Kobayashi Haru
?), died in 2005, age 105).
From the Edo period onward, other goze groups were
found from Kyushu in the south to approximately Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures in the north. Farther
north blind women tended to become shamans (known as itako, waka,
miko or the like) rather than goze. Large and
important groups were especially active in the Kantō and
surrounding areas, in what are today Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Tokyo-to. Other groups were formed in Nagano and
Gifu
prefectures, and somewhat farther south, in Aichi
prefecture. In addition to the well-known groups of Niigata
prefecture, groups existed in other areas along the western
seaboard, including Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui
prefectures.
Suzuki Shōei (1996 and elsewhere) divides the organizations of
Echigo goze into three main types.
- Goze organizations such as the one in Takada (today
the city of Jōetsu), in which a limited number of
goze houses (in early twentieth-century Takada 17) were
concentrated in the city and in which each house was led by a
master teacher who passed on the rights to her position and
property to her top (or favorite) student after her death. Girls
who wished to become goze had to move to the city and
enter the house (fictitious family) of the goze teacher.
Sometimes they were adopted by the teacher as a daughter.
- Organizations such as the one centered on Nagaoka, in which goze remained in the
countryside, often their own home, after completing their
apprenticeship with a goze elsewhere. These goze
teachers were loosely linked to one another by their relation to
the goze head in Nagaoka (a position assumed by a
goze who, after becoming the head, assumed the name
Yamamoto Goi). Once each year the goze of the Nagaoka
group assembled at their headquarters, the house of Yamamoto Goi,
to celebrate a ceremony known as myōonkō (妙音講) in which
their history and the rules of their organization was read out
loud. A this they deliberated on what to do about members who had
broken rules, ate a celebratory meal, and performed for one
another.
- Organizations such as the one found in Iida (Nagano prefecture), in which the
position of head rotated among members.
Rules
Goze organizations existed to allow blind women a
degree of independence in pursuing their careers as musicians (or
in some cases massage). The rules that governed Echigo
goze were said to have been decreed by ancient emperors,
but no copy of these rules earlier than the late seventeenth
century have been found. The central rules governing goze
behavior was to obey teachers, to be humble towards donors, and not
engage in activities that might contravene the morality of the
feudal society in which goze operated. Although not
stipulated in detail, perhaps the most important rule was, as was
expected of nuns, not to have a lover, marry, or produce offspring.
If such an offense was detected, it easily resulted in the
expulsion of a goze from the group.
Such rules were necessary in part because many goze
spent a good part of the year on the road, touring from village to
village and depending on farmers to allow them to spend the night
and use their houses as makeshift concert halls. Reputation and
recognition as an officially sanctioned, upright occupation was
thus of great importance in making the career of the goze
possible. In addition, because Edo-period society was rife with
discrimination against women, itinerants, musicians, and anyone
with a visual disability, membership in an association that was
recognized as legitimate and honorable provided an important tool
in fighting the deep-seated prejudice that any woman not firmly in
the grips of a male-dominated family was likely to be a dubious
vagabond or even prostitute.
Songs
The repertory of most goze has been lost, but songs of
goze from Niigata, Nagano, Saitama, and Kagoshima
prefectures have been recorded. The vast majority of these
recordings are from what is today Niigata prefecture.
The repertory of Niigata (Echigo) goze can be divided
into several distinct categories:
- Saimon matsusaka 祭文松坂. Long strophic songs in a 7-5
syllable meter, often based on archaic tales, sometimes with a
Buddhist message. The melody to which these texts are sung were
probably a variant of the Echigo folk song "Matsusaka bushi." These
songs were probably created during the eighteenth century, though
elements of the texts are no doubt far older. They were usually
only transmitted from one goze to another.
- Kudoki 口説. Long strophic songs in a 7-7- syllable
meter. Texts usually feature double love-suicides or some other
melodramatic and sometimes newsworthy theme. The melody to which
these texts were sung is a variant of the Echigo folk song "Shinpo
kōdaiji" 新保広大寺. "Kudoki" did not appear until the mid-nineteenth
century. Although they were a highly typical goze song,
they were sometimes also sung by other types of performers.
- "Songs performed before doorways" (kadozuke uta 門付け唄).
A functional designation applying to any song used by goze
as they made their way from door to door collecting donations.
Goze usually sang whatever inhabitants of a given area
wished to hear, but in the Niigata goze repertory some
unique songs were used exclusively for such purposes.
- Folk songs (min'yō 民謡). Rural songs, usually with no
known composer, learned by the populace informally. Many types of
folk songs constituted an important part of the goze
repertory, and were especially useful in livening up parties when
goze were summoned to perform.
- "Classical" or "semi-classical" songs. Besides the genres
listed above, most goze also knew a songs belonging to
genres such as nagauta, jōruri,
hauta, or kouta. Such songs were often learned from
professional musicians outside the goze community.
References
- Fritsch, Ingrid. “The Sociological Significance of Historically
Unreliable Documents in the Case of Japanese Musical Guilds,” in
Tokumaru Yosihiko, et al. eds, Tradition and its Future in
Music. Report of SIMS 1990 Ōsaka, pp. 147-52. Tokyo and
Osaka: Mita Press.
- Fritsch, Ingrid. “Blind Female Musicians on the Road: The
Social Organization of ‘Goze’ in Japan,” Chime Journal, 5
(Spring) 1992: pp. 58-64.
- Fritsch, Ingrid. Japans Blinde Sänger im Schutz der
Gottheit Myōon-Benzaiten. München: Iudicium, 1996,
pp. 198-231.
- Groemer, Gerald. “The Guild of the Blind in Tokugawa Japan,”
Monumenta Nipponica (2001), 56.3: pp. 349-380.
- Groemer, Gerald. Goze to goze-uta no
kenkyū (瞽女と瞽女唄の研究). Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press (Nagoya
Daigaku Shuppankai), 2007. Vol. 1: Research; vol. 2: Historical
materials.
- Harich-Schneider, Eta. “Regional Folk Songs and Itinerant
Minstrels in Japan,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society, no. 10 (1957), pp. 132-3.
- Harich-Schneider, Eta. “The Last Remnants of a Mendicant
Musicians Guild: The Goze in Northern Honshū (Japan).” Journal
of the International Folk Music Council, 11 (1959):
56-59.
- Katō, Yasuaki (加藤康昭). Nihon mōjin shakai-shi kenkyū
(日本盲人社会史研究). Miraisha, 1974.
- Saitō, Shin’ichi (斎藤真一). Goze: mōmoku no tabi
geinin (瞽女 盲目の旅芸人). Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1972.
- Saitō, Shin’ichi. Echigo goze nikki (越後瞽女日記). Kawade
Shobō Shinsha, 1972.
- Sakuma, Jun’ichi (佐久間淳一). Agakita goze to goze-uta
shū (阿賀北瞽女と瞽女唄集). Shibata-shi: Shibata-shi Bunkazai Chōsa
Shingikai, 1975.
- Sakuma, Jun’ichi. "Goze no minzoku" (瞽女の民俗)
(Minzoku mingei sōsho, vol. 91). Iwasaki Bijutsu-sha,
1986.
- Suzuki, Shōei (鈴木昭英). Goze: shinkō to
geinō (瞽女 信仰と芸能). Koshi Shōin, 1996.
- Suzuki, Shōei, et al., eds. Ihira Take kikigaki: Echigo no
goze (伊平タケ聞き書 越後の瞽女). Kōdansha, 1976.
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