Kobe Women's University’s Research Center of Classic Performing Arts has digitized around 8,500 photos of religious services in Okinawa from field work conducted there a regional culture study seminar at Konan University. These photos were taken during surveys spanning twenty years, from 1978 to 1998.
Okinawa Prefecture extends 1,000 km east to west and 400 km north to south, making it highly difficult to conduct field work throughout the prefecture. The current collection of data, previously unseen in its scale, documents 33 different religious rites that can be classified into 28 categories covering Iheya-jima Island to the north to Hateruma-jima Island to the south, and Iriomote-jima Island to the west.
Not only for the sheer number of photos in the database is it valuable, but also for the recording of ceremonies that will never again be held, such as the Izaiho: religious service of Kutaka-jima Island, and others which, although not yet extinct, have taken on a remarkably different form from the original.
The seminar on Okinawa religious rites was started in September 1974. Prof. Kaoru Takasaka, then associate professor of Konan University, in the summer of the same year visited Okinawa with his graduate students to conduct a preliminary survey of religious ceremonies from the main island to Yaeyama Island. Interest in studying Okinawa was rising at that time when Okinawa was being returned to Japan; the activity of Prof. Takasaka’s study group was one of the earliest to pioneer such interest.
The results of the surveys were published in “Chiiki Bunka Kenkyu” (Regional culture studies, Volume 1-4) starting in December 1975. Further work carried out for another 20 years can be read about in the following publications which have contributed greatly to academia: 『おもろさうし原注索引』 (Omorozo:shi original notes index, Nansei-insatsu,1980), 『沖縄の祭祀－事例と課題－』 (Okinawan religious rites-description and issues, Miyai-shoten, 1987), and 『沖縄祭祀の研究』(Study of Okinawa religious rites, Kanrin-shobo, 1994).
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