Kashio Nemoto (根本甲子男 1903–1989)

Nemoto, the folk culture’s memory keeper

Kashio Nemoto.

In 1922, Nemoto succeeded his father’s business, a dry-goods shop. In 1946, he founded the Kameya industrial plant, specialized in the manufacturing of electrical measuring instruments. He also showed on the side a great enthousiasm in restoring the Furyu-Mono, a very stylish sort of float festival. He was entrusted in 1958 with the position of Ibaraki Prefecture Cultural Assets Expert Adviser (would be nowadays called a Member of the Ibaraki Prefecture Council for the Protection of Cultural Properties) until 1980. The Furyu-Mono is an event that had been going on since Edo period until it was struck by the Second World War in 1945 when more than half of the float and the dolls’heads were reduced to ashes. The Hitachi Local Performing Art Preservation Board, with Kashio Nemoto as its very first President, was responsible for its restoration in 1958. This gorgeously decorated festival float, or Furyu-Mono, gained a great popularity thoughout all Japan and is considered as a very precious form of folk enterntainment. The Furyu-Mono was designated as one of Japan’s significant tangible folk cultural assets in 1959 and one of Japan’s important intangible folk cultural assets in 1977.

Hitachi Furyu-Mono.

Japanese version of this article available here.