Translator’s Notes

The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale may seem at first glance to one who is accustomed to well-defined, clearly presented reference material to be confusion compounded. The brief notes may prove frustrating to one who expects to find a digest of tales. The arrangement is primarily by the title of a tale-type. The geographical distribution of variants listed by prefecture, which follows, is according to Japanese order, from the northeast to the southwest. Most of the names of the prefectures may be readily recognized by those familiar with Japan, but the gun within them and frequently lesser units will doubtless be unfamiliar. Some prefectures list more than ten gun as having reported folk tales. A reader will get the idea from the geographical designations that he is probing into the corners of the whole of Japan.

What has been going on in those corners of Japan is of more importance. The abbreviated titles of more than two hundred sources of collected tales that follow the geographical designation attest to the fact that folks at those places have now recorded tales which have been handed down for generations among them. These abbreviated titles form the basis for the entries in the Bibliography of Sources (from p. 323), which will open a whole new area of research to Western scholars. The abbreviated title is then followed by the name of the tale as it appears in the source. The English version is not necessarily a literal translation. Titles have never been applied systematically to folk tales in Japan. A title may be one used by the storyteller, one supplied by the collector, or even by the editor of the published version. The diversity in titles confirms the fact that the folk tale is not a standardized product in Japan. It is a living, widely distributed form of oral literature. I have enclosed the Japanese version of titles in parentheses for those who may enjoy the dialect in which some are rendered.

The titles are then followed by notations, which are just that—notes. They were selected from the files of Yanagita Kunio, the great scholar, which had been built up over the years, and not made especially for the Guide. In other words, a student must knuckle down and read the source for the complete version of the entry. Many notes are no more than marginalia which can be seen in the books of Yanagita’s library, which is now housed in Seijo University.

Some students may be inclined to consult the Guide in Japanese, directly, but by doing so they cannot make use of the work I offer as editor. Proof reading of the original work had to be kept to a minimum because of the shortage of paper in Japan when it was published. I was asked by Yanagita and members of his staff to make corrections in the text where I found errors. Because of the same shortage, many titles to stories had to be omitted. I have furnished over 1300 of them after consulting the source material, and at the same time I made uniform pagination, supplying it in many instances. The new Japanese edition of 1971 modernized some characters and brought place names up to date, but it made no corrections. I see no reason to alter administrative geographical names when they are still identifiable. The basis for my rendition of place names is Ikei Kasuka, Saikin chōsa Nihon bunken chizu awasete chimei sōran (Osaka, 1937). No period in particular is designated on the map of old provinces which I made. I simply include those mentioned in the text.

I have rounded out some of the notes into simple sentences, but left others alone to preserve the feeling of notes, which they are. I have edited some notes to give direction to those which Yanagita left as questions in light of the facts now available. It is possible that some selections of notes were not suitable and some appear more than once. Yanagita’s comments point perhaps to an old version, to a version where episodes have been combined, where the work of a professional storyteller is apparent, or to one depending upon a translation from a foreign source. Yanagita even points to poor versions. A beginner can glean considerable information and sidelights on the tales from Yanagita’s jottings. Nearly half of the tale-types have a condensed version of a normative example. Others can be guessed by their titles and notations. The scarcity of notes was due to the fact that only samplings could be used in order to keep the work within a single volume.

Items listed as “further reference” following the entries sometimes will be the least satisfactory to Western students. They are Yanagita’s personal notations which he added, and there is no way now to be sure what he had in mind when he made them. It is enough for Japanese to see the notations of this famous scholar, and few would attempt to probe them. I edited a few, particularly the foreign entries. The references open the door to comparative studies within Japanese literature. Although the references, too, are highly selective, they may challenge some student in the West who is looking for a new approach to Japanese studies. Themes belonging to folk tales included in written literature can be recognized only by one who has had access to the folk tales.

My other contribution to this volume is the Bibliography of Sources. It gives the correct transcription of Japanese titles, names of authors, publishers, and the like. Yanagita’s library was not cataloged at the time the Guide was compiled. His assistants who worked on the project decided to list relevant books which were on the shelves of the N.H.K. library where they did their work. Their list in the volume is not a complete representation of sources. I have noted in the Bibliography the items which have been republished recently and others which are scheduled to be revised and enlarged. The present efforts to make available sources which have been out of print shows how highly the early work of collectors is valued. I have also furnished several indexes and lists for students with specialized interests.

The arrangement of the folk tales was Yanagita’s prerogative, of course, but there is some criticism in Japanese circles about his dividing the tales into only two main groups, “Folk Tales in Complete Form” and “Derived Tales.” A few think that “Stories about Destiny” should be a separate group, and they are listed as such in many new collections. The question still remains as to what, exactly, Yanagita meant by “Derived Tales.” In general, they are shorter and have fewer episodes than stories in the first group. Stories about the origin of animals may have been originally parts of a longer cycle. Yanagita placed the titles of most humorous stories in parentheses because he regarded them as closer to anecdotes than to folk tales in form.

A line placed to the right of titles which Yanagita considered to be important is in the original Table of Contents. They come close in number to the one hundred tales he mentions in “About Folk Tales.” The current volume does not mark each such title in the Table of Contents, and I have thus set these titles in italics in the Alphabetical List of Titles as well as the list of Japanese titles in the last part of the volume. Other types are considered related to or close to the titles near them, or to be traces of tales which may yet be found in more complete form. This accounts for several tale-types which appear to be duplications.

Yanagita did not number his tale-types, a necessary step for an index, because he did not intend his work to be an index. He considered it too soon to number tales, for he anticipated that new tale-types would come to light. Cross-reference to the work of Yanagita is by the title of a tale-type. I have numbered his tale-types to facilitate cross-reference to the anthology of complete versions of them, Ancient Tales in Modern Japan (Indiana University Press, 1985), which is arranged according to the Guide. No significance beyond that should be attached to the numbers in this translation. Students may feel more comfortable with some sort of numbering, but Yanagita’s judgment that it was too soon to number Japanese folk tales appears to have been sound in light of the several systems of numbers which have been presented by Seki Keigo and Hiroko Ikeda.

Western students who do research in Japan experience many frustrations. Information is not presented in the assertive style of academic disciplines to which they are accustomed. Open-ended statements which allow for uncertainty are the accepted way of presenting studies in Japan. Japanese scholars have bowed only recently to the Western ritual of footnotes. But foreign students learn to live with circumstances in Japan and to work with them. The notes of Yanagita presented in this work might be considered unique even in Japanese reference material, but the work is nonetheless valid and outstandingly useful. I have relied upon it for more than thirty years of research, translation and writing in the field of the Japanese folk tale. The 3000 items drawn from 200 and more sources will be useful to any scholar.