Keywords

tactile culture, manual learning, universal museum

Objectives

This project continues the “Practical research to create a museum that everyone can enjoy—an experiment in designing exhibits for the visually impaired” joint research project conducted 2009-2011. Its objective is to further explore tactile culture (learning facts through physical contact that only touch provides) from an anthropological perspective. According to Sawatte tanoshimu hakubutsukan—unibaasaru myuujiamu (The Touch-and-Enjoy Museum—The Possibility of a Universal Museum, Hirose, published in May 2012 by Seikyusha), the volume in which the results of the previous research were published, it should be possible to produce an introductory casebook dedicated to the proposition that the universal museum will be one that everyone can enjoy. This project’s aim will be to produce this book with an eye to providing concrete examples to frame debate about the universal museum and, more broadly, its contributions to building a cooperative, multicultural society in the 21st century. Until now anthropological research on touch has been rare compared to anthropological research on vision (imagery) and hearing (sound). This research will address this lack by focusing on tactile culture, starting with the “manual learning” employed in designing museum exhibits.

Research Results

The following three writing pieces by Hirose are the results of this joint research: (1) “Touch the world”, written and edited by Hirose (September 2014), (2) “The barrier freedom of knowledge”, jointly written and edited by Hirose and other researchers (December 2014), and (3) “A different culture from the viewpoint of a body” written by Hirose (March, 2015). These three pieces did not summarize the discussions of this joint research, but rather adopted a part of the research results. Therefore, these are positioned as the secondary achievement reports. Meanwhile, it is clear that Hirose applied the knowledge obtained through this joint research to writing and editing these three pieces and referred to the content of “An Anthropological Study of Tactile Culture.” It also needs to be specified that the members of this joint research wrote some parts and offered advice on the editing of these pieces.

The writing piece of (1) is an interdisciplinary and full-fledged tactile culture argument analyzing the tactile culture from three viewpoints of science, art and communication. The question of “what is ‘touching’’” was fundamental to this joint research and had been discussed repetitively. Based on the results of these discussions, Hirose also developed a tentative assumption about “the universal design for sightseeing.”

The writing piece of (2) was a report made at “The Symposium on Barrier Freedom” held at Kyoto University on June 2013. A great deal of support was provided by the members of these joint researches for the planning of this symposium. On the joint research over the past two and a half years, our main subject was “application of the theories of universal museums to other fields.” In the first half of our research activities, we focused on collecting information about the barrier freedom in advanced education (including the study meeting held on March 2013). It can be considered that the symposium at Kyoto University followed as an extension of this subject.

The writing piece of (3) was a report on the research conducted outside the National Museum of Ethnology by Hirose during the period from August 2013 to March 2014. Although no study meeting was held for this joint research during Hirose’s absence, it is clear that these eight months, in which each member thoroughly contemplated and conducted experiments in their own fields, led to the perfection of this joint research in the final fiscal year. While Hirose was staying in the U.S.A., a lively exchange of opinions in the ML of this research team impelled Hirose to write this piece. The publication of this piece allowed us to share a new theme of “theories of the body” and a vital issue that could lead to the next joint research.