Pioneering “fun cultural activities”
Sekiya Sonoda
Honorary member, Japanese Society for the Study of Human Welfare and Culture

1. Culture was born out of play

It was Johan Huizinga, a Dutch cultural historian active in the first half of the twentieth century, who expounded the view that “culture arises in and as play.” In his book “Homo Ludens” (“the playing man” in Latin), written in 1936, he pointed out that play can generally be found at the roots of culture that make people human. It is indeed clearly true that play-like elements are firmly rooted at the base of almost all activities which could be called cultural, whether music, painting, sports, or academic study. However, Huizinga says that not only these but also the law, the courts, and even war were originally “forms of play”. If we observe children’s play, there are always conventions, which is to say, rules, whether in tag or in hide and seek, and they recreate these rules freely to fit the situation as they play. He says that this ability becomes the foundation for creating the rules, laws, and systems which are indispensable when carrying out work as an adult.

Moreover, Huizinga raises the alarm that this spirit of animated play is being lost in our modern society. Play has become ambitious, drawing in a large number of people, and all kinds of equipment enabling dynamic enjoyment are being developed. However, Huizinga suggests that these are perhaps manipulating us, degenerating into means to make us act to suit someone else’s purposes. He asserts that we need to reclaim free, spontaneous, creative play, rather than play which is used by government propaganda and commercialism.

2. A gap has developed between play and “culture”

The everyday lives of people today are packed with play. Television, radio, and smartphones bring us music, dramas, and comedy shows every day. If we go out into the town, there are various places to play, so many restaurants where we can pursue the enjoyment of eating that it is hard to choose, as well as pachinko parlors for older men, amusement arcades for young people, and larger-scale leisure facilities for families. Transport options to these places are also gradually improving, and it is true that venues which can be enjoyed even by people with disabilities are becoming more widespread. Nor is it only a question of light-hearted leisure: halls where people can enjoy “refined” performances such as music or theatre, art galleries and museums where they can come into contact with ancient and modern art from the East and West, and libraries housing books and materials on every field have been built in many towns. Opportunities to experience “culture” are by no means limited. However, the situation is not without aspects which feel somehow lacking. This is because of concerns that a gap has developed between fun play and serious culture, and that the two may be in the process of becoming completely distinct.

Let us turn our attention to the play = cultural activity of “singing”. Being happy to sing songs and listen to performances is in humans’ original nature, and everyone from children at nursery to adults mad about karaoke are connected by an unbroken chain of enjoyment of music. However, when it comes to the solo or group singing or the musical performances carried out under the title of “cultural activities”, the number of devotees immediately shrinks to just a handful. Even if people who passionately sing popular songs or the theme songs from animations are invited to join a four-part mixed chorus or an orchestra, they run the other way, saying “I’m no good at reading musical scores.” There are hardly any nursery children who dislike drawing pictures, but once they become adults, the majority of people convince themselves that they are no good at drawing, and only a handful of people ever turn to a drawing pad or canvas.

In the past, songs, pictures, and the plastic arts were an integral part of everyday life, and everyone was both a creator and, at the same time, a recipient of these works. The separation of the two has advanced along with modernization: the professions of singer and artist, specialists supplying songs or art, have become self-sustaining while, on the other hand, audiences and buyers who pay money to enjoy these have appeared, and the “cultural industries” have come into being. As a result, the type of play envisaged by Huizinga has broken down, with cultural creation being “elevated” to a serious enterprise while, on the other hand, the masses have become mere consumers of passive forms of play.

3. The world of Art Brut

Are people with some kind of physical or communication disability distanced from cultural play? It is true that there are problems to do with restrictions on their access to cultural facilities or participation in cultural programmes, and although we can say that improvements have been made, many issues still remain. However, there is a different perspective.

Most people think that disabilities which impede people’s daily lives also act as barriers in the way of play and culture. For example, they think that people who cannot see cannot enjoy pictures, or that music is irrelevant to people who cannot hear. However, disabilities may be inconveniences when it comes to living in society but, in another way, they are the person’s distinguishing characteristic. We could even go so far as to say that they are the person’s individuality, and so there is the potential for the birth of a unique, highly individual culture in response. The sign language used by those who cannot hear has created a linguistic culture equivalent in value to those of spoken languages, and when it comes to music, it is not impossible for them to enjoy the rhythm of percussion instruments reverberating through their bodies or to learn how to use their voices and sing. People who cannot see are also leveraging their rich powers of imagination to draw original pictures and create photographic works. I, too, once asked the blind illustrator Emu Namae to draw the cover of one of my books, “Designing Time”. I love the result, a work with a unique atmosphere befitting a book cover.

The artistic activities of intellectually disabled people have been attracting particular attention as a branch of this category known as Art Brut (meaning “raw art” in French), with exhibitions held around the country. Human abilities are many and varied, and even if someone is seen as “disabled” in a certain area because they cannot reach a societal standard, there are many fields in which they can display strengths which surpass those of ordinary people if a different measure is used.

When it comes to the realm of the arts, some kind of “disability” can also become a major impetus to create works. There are countless examples of people who have leveraged the difficulties they face in their daily lives, society’s lack of understanding, or persecution to compose poetry or write novels, gaining many readers. Stories of various disabled people, such as the beautiful blind girl who is the principal character of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s “Story of Shunkin” or the characters with developmental disabilities who appear in the works of Nobel laureate for literature Kenzaburo Oe, have been read and turned into films, making an impression on many people. In recent years, I recall the way that “A Banana? At This Time of the Night?”, which depicts the daily life of a person with muscular dystrophy living unapologetically and freely, generated a great stir and was turned into a hit film starring Yo Oizumi. To sum up, “disability” can become the mother of new cultural creation.

4. A recommendation for cultural recreation based on disabled people’s daily lives

We need to think seriously about bringing various forms of cultural enjoyment into disabled people’s daily lives. Moreover, this means not simply passively enjoying great cultural works, but also aiming to make cultural recreation in which they participate and create together with their companions an everyday occurrence. Seeking out and nurturing the outstanding creators of Art Brut is certainly important, but enabling all disabled people to discover their own preferred style of “personalized cultural activity” and entrench this in their daily lives is surely a prerequisite. The same perspective holds true for sports: as I pointed out in these pages last time, I would like us to accord greater importance to working on “lifelong sports” for all disabled people than to nurturing a tiny minority of elite athletes. By the same logic, I would like to roll out creative ways for all disabled people to make the most of what they like in order to enjoy their daily lives in more cultural ways.

Making use of Huizinga’s point that culture arises and develops in play, let us pursue various forms of play in the midst of daily life, including singing, playing musical instruments, drawing, creating, telling stories, writing, dancing, and performing... Researching the methods, venues, and tools to achieve this and honing our expertise in supporting these is our role as recreation supporters.