Focus on Haniwa Terracotta Dancers and explain the Recent re-interpretation.
Archaeologist Shuichi Goto identified these two figures as dancing people in 1931. In his paper “The Significance of Haniwa”, Goto classified haniwa according to their clothing, equipment, and posture and analyzed the occupational characteristics of each haniwa. Goto discovered a group of music-playing haniwa exemplified by “A Boy Playing the Koto” and “A Boy Playing the Taiko Drum” excavated from the Kamitakeshi (Gōshi) Tenjinyama Tumulus in Isezaki City, Gunma Prefecture. The two figures excavated from the Nohara burial mound were cited as examples of the corresponding dancing figures and thus were designated as the “Dancing Man and Woman.”However, since the 1990s, doubts have been raised about the validity of these classification methods. For example, in the case of Dancing Haniwa, Goto regarded the act of raising one arm as dancing in comparison with other haniwa playing instruments, but this is made without concrete evidence. Yoshimichi Tsukada claims that it is more reasonable to consider the Dancing Haniwa to be horse herders because their characteristic attributes such as “raising one arm,” “equipped with a sickle on the waist band,” “represented only from waist and above,” and “having a hairstyle apportioned on both sides of the head” are elements widely shared with horse keeper haniwa, which depict horse pulling with one arm raised and holding a rein. Furthermore, haniwa often depict breasts to distinguish women, which the larger figure of the Dancing Haniwa does not have. Therefore, Tsukada argues that both figures should be considered to be male herders, rejecting the earlier interpretation of these haniwa as dancers.
haniwa Isezaki Tumulus Haniwa