ABSTRACT
In order for the Japanese – rather than Westerners – to provide a new cultural value in the present, it's critical to push to the extreme thinking through things in a nanba-like manner. That is, in a manner of rice-cropping agriculture in paddies, a thinking style that is available to nobody other than the Japanese. Nanba refers to a specific human locomotion, and the extract included here deals with nanba that was practiced by Hijikata Tatsumi. According to Takechi, Hijikata's nanba is a variant, marked by the vertical location of the hip, differentiated from the authentic nanba characterized by a certain angle of the lower end of the spine. Takechi connects this incongruity with two conditions of the Tohoku region where Hijikata came from: field conditions unsuitable for rice-cropping agriculture in paddies and equestrian culture as a historical background. These conditions, says Takechi, determined Hijikata's version of nanba.
