áMinyo (traditional Japanese folk songs) are songs whose authors are not remembered, which the common people wrote and sung for themselves. However, as a result of social changes, this form of folk art has become a treasured part of the offcial national heritage.
Even the genre term minyo is an ambiguous one. The word minyo first appeared as a translation from the German Volkslied. It came to be used in something like the present meaning among the "new-type folk song movement," which flourished from the Taisho era to the early stages of the Showa era. In the new post-World War I order, Japan, half a century after the Meiji Restoration, needed a "new nationalism." Minyo became a part of this new national culture. Simultaneously, it came to have the character of a cultural good or product, appearing in mass media and circulating among the people.
This paper discusses the Ise-ondo, a type of minyo from the Ise region (Mie Prefecture). In Ise, seicho Ise-ondo ("correct tune Iseondo" or "standard edition Ise-ondo"), which were accompanied on the shamisen and featured dance arrangements, were produced. The Ise-ondo were intimately related to the tourist industry of Ise, which was a famous resort area. And as new massproduced media such as the vinyl record emerged, fuelling the "new-type minyo" boom, a revival of Ise-ondo was recommended by local intellectuals who were familiar with the old minyo, local government, tourist organizations, and the local mass media.
When minyo began to circulate as goods, they were recordings of a standard edition of the song. However, once these versions were disseminated and a distribution system was set up, new variations based on the standard edition were produced, resulting in new consumer choices. Thus, the seicho Ise-ondo unified the variations in previous Ise-ondo, after which various new versions of seicho Ise-ondo resulted in a move back to multiplicity.
If the history of the Ise-ondo is looked at from the media viewpoint, there are two aspects to this question the role of minyo as a product recorded on media or circulated by the mass media, and that of minyo's own function as media.
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