ABSTRACT
Play is truly universal. Adults and children play, in times of peace and war (BenAri 1989; Feige & Ben-Ari 1991), in leisure and pain, in hospitals and churches (La Barre 1969 [orig. 1962]), even in extermination camps.2 The Frenchman Jean-Gabriel de Tarde (1843-1904) made play coterminous with social effervescence, declaring: ‘Social evolution begins and ends in games and fêtes’. This puts the ludic in the centre, albeit in a nineteenth century, evolutionary way. In this contribution, I should like to examine ludic phenomena in Japan, guided by the work of a more recent scholar, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945). It may seem surprising. Huizinga’s contributions to Japanese studies are negligible, as shown below. His links to anthropology are more important. They are briefly sketched to illustrate his influence in the humanities. His studies of the ludic are the main subject of this chapter. My examples of ludic manifestations in Japan are based on reports and studies by folklorists and anthropologists and on personal observation.
