Namba
From Gottsupedia
- Note: a large portion of this article is from the NY Time article listed below in the references, because I haven't written my own yet and I feel this one is fairly balanced in it's view on the subject. As I go through my books and track down more original sources on the subject, I will replace the NY Times parts with original work until this article is 100% original. (after which this note will be gone, so if it's still here that means a lot of this is still NY times.)
Nanba (ナンバ) - not to be confused with the district in Osaka - is the term used to describe the way Japanese people were believed to walk before Western influence and education, particularly physical education, became the standard.
Some scholars in Japan, notably Kono Yoshinori, argue that from ancient times until perhaps 150 years ago, virtually all Japanese learned to walk in a special style called the namba, in which the right arm and leg swing forward at the same time, and then the left arm and leg swing forward.
It seems counter-intuitive today because almost everybody in the world, including Japanese, now walks the opposite way, with the right leg and left arm moving forward at the same time, and vice-versa in a twisting motion.
Yet in Japan, if these scholars are right, the namba at one time was almost universal. In fact, it is thought that people often did not swing their arms much at all, but at a minimum their right shoulder moved with the right leg and left shoulder with the left leg.
In the past, Japanese were deliberately educated in how they should walk, said Masaichi Nomura, a leading cultural anthropologist at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. They were shown by their parents how to walk in the home, in a tatami room. But now in modern Japan, there's no walking education at all. People walk any way they want to.
If Professor Nomura and other scholars who have written about the namba are correct and it was common in olden times, then the training of young people in a particular walking style underscores the regimentation of life in ancient Japan. Conversely, the decline of the walk reflects the way society has opened up in the 19th and 20th centuries to a greater pluralism of ideas, values and even ways of walking.
Still, the research on namba walking -- in scholarly works written only in Japanese -- has attracted little attention abroad or even here in Japan until fairly recently through the growing fame of Kono Yoshinori and his teachings. Most scholars who have studied the issue appear to agree with Professor Nomura, but because there is little discussion about the theories, it is difficult to know how credible the idea of the namba is. There is some evidence, but it seems skimpy.
Ancient histories do not address the subject, and there is little evidence that Chinese or other visitors saw anything different about how the Japanese walked. So scholars have conducted research in part by studying old paintings or woodblock prints. Sure enough, the pictures seem to show most Japanese moving their right shoulders or arms forward with their right legs, or left shoulders and arms with the left leg. this type of movement is also evident in Japanese classical martial arts (bujutsu), as well as traditional dance and performing arts such as Noh. Scholars have noted that namba is evident in more ritualized kinds of movement -- such as noh opera, kabuki theater, folk dancing or bujutsu -- usually involve the right leg moving with the right arm, or the left leg with the left arm in "hanmi" （半身: hanmi, literally half-body）style. Namba itself is a kabuki term referring to this kind of synchronism between arms and legs.
Past efforts by some Japanese to emphasize their uniqueness have fallen into disfavor. People now laugh at the Government's old suggestions that the Japanese could not eat much foreign beef because of the special nature of Japanese intestines, or that they could not import foreign skis because of the unique nature of Japanese snow. Perhaps to avoid falling into the uniqueness trap, the scholars say that the namba was not exclusively Japanese and that there is some evidence that at times Mongols and Turks and other peoples also walked in this way.
Even today, the scholars argue, a bit of the namba has survived in the way the Japanese walk: they say that many Japanese bend their knees slightly and swing their arms less when walking than Westerners do, and that the Japanese are more likely to step flatly or forward on their toes, while Americans and Europeans step on to their heels first.
I find the theory very interesting and original, said Ryugo Matsui, a cultural anthropologist at Surugadai University near Tokyo. I personally feel that even now some Japanese walk with little swing of their hands, different from Westerners.
Ancient Japanese apparently taught not only their children to walk in this way but also their horses. For traditional events like yabusame, or archery from horseback, horses were trained to walk first with their right legs and then with their left legs -- an equine version of the namba. The trainers used poles to keep the right legs moving together and the left legs together.
The horses were trained to run this way in order to prevent wild up-and-down movements, which would make archery from horseback very difficult, said Shigekatsu Motoyoshi, president of the Japanese Society of Equine Science. Pacers in American harness racing are also trained to run in this manner.
One might think that teaching kids (let alone horses) to walk with their arms and legs in synchronism is the ultimate example of Japanese protocol and conformity. But Professor Nomura says the opposite is true of Japan today.
Westerners generally have the same walking style, Professor Nomura said, while the Japanese display much greater variation: some swinging their arms, others keeping their arms at their sides; some stepping onto their toes, others onto their heels, some stepping high and others shuffling. The namba lives in some Japanese, he said, but its greatest legacy is what might be called Japan's pede-diversity.
Today's Japanese walk in a very individualist style, he said. Westerners tend to walk all in the same way, while there's much greater variety, much greater variation, among Japanese walkers.
According to gottsu-iiyan
- Sorry that most of this is from the NY Times. I'm working more content from other sources.
Anyway, from what I've seen, scholars saying that namba is so deeply ingrained in Japanese that they can still see it today is little more than another attempt to grasp for more excuses to say "We Japanese are unqiue." It's classic Nihonjinron. I don't see namba at all in Japanese young people, and elderly people in any country swing their arms less and walk differently from young people, anyway. The, I personally feel that even now some Japanese walk with little swing of their hands, different from Westerners. argument is a load of bullcrap. Japanese swing their arms as much as anyone; so much so that in crowds, because I'm taller than most, I constantly have to be on guard to block the occasional back-hand to the groin or umbrella in the solar plexus from the person in front of me.
- The above quote, Today's Japanese walk in a very individualist style. Westerners tend to walk all in the same way, while there's much greater variety, much greater variation, among Japanese walkers. I think this is also a huge steaming pile of crap being spewed by Professor Nomura because, either he has never been to a "western" country or weasn't paying attention when he did. "Westerners" do not all walk the same way and Japanese do not have these unique variations that can't be found anywhere else.
In Tokyo their are a lot of "silly walks[1]," but I doubt they are namba derived "unique" walks.
- Having said the above, I do think that there is a profound difference in the way Japanese used their bodies in general prior to the Meiji reform generation when western physical education was introduced. (see Kono Yoshinori)
However, the scholars trying to tie that into modern Japanese is a pathetic as the suits who walk around thinking they have samurai spirit because they just worked 16hours, or atheletes who attribute success to "yamato-damashi" (oddly, their yamato-damashi is never responsible when they lose).
References
English
- NY Times archives
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E1DE103BF93BA25757C0A96F958260
- Many more to come.
