Echigo - blind woman

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Blind woman (from Echigo) : Echigo Goze

***** Location:Japan
***** Season: Non-seasonal Topic
***** Category: Humanity

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Explanation

blind woman, goze 女盲, ごぜ, ゴゼ, 瞽女
blind nun, ama goze 尼ごぜ、あまごぜ

blind woman from Echigo, Echigo goze 越後女盲
越後ごぜ , 「瞽女（ごぜ）」
海御前（あまごぜ）



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The ideographs for goze mean "blind" and "woman."
The ideographs are, however, read in this manner because the word goze already existed. In fact, it probably derived from the term mekura gozen 盲御前, which also means blind woman (gozen is a formal second-person pronoun). Although the term goze can be found in medieval records, other terms such as mōjo 盲女, jomō 女盲　and the like were also in use (especially in written records) until the modern era. In the spoken language, the term goze was usually suffixed by an honorific: goze-san, goze-sa, goze-don, and the like.

Organizations

From the Edo period (1600-1868) goze organized themselves in a number of ways. Few large-scale organizations have been found in urban areas, though during the nineteenth century some documents speak of a goze association in the city of Edo. In Osaka and some regional towns goze were sometimes informally linked to the pleasure quarters, where they were called to perform their songs at parties and the like.

Goze organizations developed most in rural areas and continued to exist in Niigata (once known as Echigo) and Nagano prefectures well into the twentieth century (the last important active goze, Kobayashi Haru 小林ハル, died in 2005, age 105).

From the Edo period onward, other goze groups were found from Kyushu in the south to approximately Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures in the north. Farther north blind women tended to become shamans (known as itako, waka, miko or the like) rather than goze.

Large and important groups were especially active in the Kantō and surrounding areas, in what are today Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Tokyo-to. Other groups were formed in Nagano and Gifu prefectures, and somewhat farther south, in Aichi prefecture. In addition to the well-known groups of Niigata prefecture, groups existed in other areas along the western seaboard, including Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui prefectures.

Suzuki Shōei (1996 and elsewhere) divides the organizations of Echigo goze into three main types.

1. Goze organizations such as the one in Takada (today Jōetsu-shi), in which a limited number of goze houses (in early twentieth-century Takada 17) were concentrated in the city and in which each house was led by a master teacher who passed on the rights to her position and property to her top (or favorite) student after her death. Girls who wished to become goze had to move to the city and enter the house (fictitious family) of the goze teacher. Sometimes they were adopted by the teacher as a daughter.

2. Organizations such as the one centered on Nagaoka, in which goze remained in the countryside, often their own home, after completing their apprenticeship with a goze elsewhere. These goze teachers were loosely linked to one another by their relation to the goze head in Nagaoka (a position assumed by a goze who, after becoming the head, assumed the name Yamamoto Goi). Once each year the goze of the Nagaoka group assembled at their headquarters, the house of Yamamoto Goi, to celebrate a ceremony known as myōonkō (妙音講) in which their history and the rules of their organization was read out loud. A this they deliberated on what to do about members who had broken rules, ate a celebratory meal, and performed for one another.

3. Organizations such as the one found in Iida (Nagano prefecture), in which the position of head rotated among members.

The repertory of most goze has been lost, but songs of goze from Niigata, Nagano, Saitama, and Kagoshima prefectures have been recorded. The vast majority of these recordings are from what is today Niigata prefecture.

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Japanese Reference

高田瞽女の成り立ち Takada Goze
長岡瞽女 Nagaoka Goze
source : 越後瞽女（えちご ごぜ）

Singing On YouTube: ごぜうた・瞽女歌・ごぜ歌
source : www.echigo-gozeuta.com/


瞽女と瞽女唄の研究 : Groemer, Gerald
近世の川柳に見られる瞽女
source : bookweb.kinokuniya


瞽女(ごぜ)という盲目の女旅芸人がいた。
source : saikaku/yobansshi


ごぜのつらはらずに置いてしちをかり　　
江戸川潜流　安永四年　

気の毒なことに、盲目の女と交わった後では、一発殴っておくと後難がないという俗信があったらしい。しかし、身体を戴いた上に金を借り，その上に殴るなど後味が悪い.

- Reference -


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Worldwide use


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Things found on the way

Echigo Province

Echigo (越後国, Echigo no kuni) was an old province in north-central Japan, on the Sea of Japan side, northernmost part of the Hokurikudō (北陸道）circuit. It bordered on Uzen, Iwashiro, Kozuke, Shinano, and Etchu provinces. Today the area is part of Niigata prefecture, which also includes the island which was the old Sado province.



Echigo was established by the division of Koshi province (越国 or 古志国) in the end of 7th century AD with Iwafune and Nutari District. It occupied the northeast part of Niigata prefecture today and was one of two border provinces with Emishi (the other is Mutsu). Echigo was given four districts of Kubiki, Koshi, Uonuma and Kanbara in 702. When Japan extended the territory a little northward in 708, Dewa District was established under Echigo. But this district transformed to Dewa Province in 712. Temporally Sado Province had been merged between 743 and 752. Since the division of Sado in 752, the territory of Echigo had never been changed.

Echigo was ruled by Uesugi Kenshin and his heirs during the Sengoku period; later it became a fief of Ieyasu's Matsudaira relatives.

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. Echigo joofu 越後上布（えちごじょうふ）
Joofu cloth from Echigo 　

kigo for all Summer



. Echigojishi 、越後獅子（えちごじし）lion dance from Echigo

kigo for the New Year


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................... Issa's Haiku about Echigo


こがらしや壁のうしろはえちご山
kogarashi ya kabe no ushiro wa echigo yama

winter wind--
behind the wall
is the deep north

In Issa's time "the mountains of Echigo" would have been synonymous with a cold place in the north, but for most English readers this connotation is nonexistent.

another version

. facing the river--
next door, it seems
Echigo mountains



大雪や膳の際から越後山
ôyuki ya zen no kiwa kara echigo yama

heavy snow--
from the dinner tray's edge
Echigo mountains


越後馬夜露払って通りけり
echigo uma yo tsuyu haratte tôri keri

Echigo horse--
sweeping away the evening dew
in passing


Tr. David Lanoue




the "Jumping Horse of Echigo" appears on the slope of Mount Myokosen when the snow begins to melt and announces the spring season to the farmers.

Myookoosen 妙高山の雪形　”跳ね馬 ”Mount Myokosan


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Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉and his walk through the North of Japan:

. - - - Station 33 - Echigo 越後路 - - - .


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HAIKU

in Fifth Month rain
behind me too...
a blind woman from Echigo

satsuki ame mata ato kara mo echigo goze
五月雨又後からも越後女盲

by Issa, 1821

Shinji Ogawa notes that mata ato kara mo means "from the behind also (a blind woman from Echigo)," implying that there are other blind women from Echigo in front. He adds, "They may or may not be beggars. They might be on the way to Zenkooji Temple."

Tr. David Lanoue


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干し稲やごぜの姿となりにけり
hoshi ine ya goze no sugata to nari ni keri

drying rice -
they really look like
the blind singers



©　shunrai.shashin-haiku.jp


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Related words

***** . Niigata Ryoori 新潟郷土料理
Local Food from Echigo and Niigata

***** . World Handicap Day / Black Day .


***** . WKD : Blind People .
shakutoo-e 積塔会 (しゃくとうえ)
ceremony for blind people

- #echigo -
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