“The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale”
This work of Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), who started the movement to collect folk tales in Japan and led it for more than fifty years, has been delayed in coming to the attention of Japanologists and folklore scholars. It is my purpose in bringing out this edition of the Japanese sage’s book, The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale, to call attention to Yanagita’s great work and leadership in collecting Japanese folk tale treasures and in building up an apparatus for the study of their priceless cultural legacy. By rendering The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale into English and editing this imposing body of 347 folk tale-types and the distribution of their variants in Japan, I have attempted to bring this corpus into conformity with Japanese folk tale scholarship for the use of scholars in the West. It was called to the attention of Western scholars first by Naoe Hiroji. In his translated article in 1949, he called it “the largest accomplishment of Japanese Folklore Science after the war.... This scholarly work sums up the result of thirty years of fairy tale research.”1
Yanagita Kunio should be understood as a prominent figure in modern Japanese intellectual circles in order to give a perspective to his approach to the folk tales of Japan and the leadership he provided for collecting and publishing them. Yanagita was born Matsuoka Kunio, the fourth of seven sons of Matsuoka Misao, a physician and scholar of Confucian classics. Due to his poor health, Kunio did not continue beyond the local elementary school. He was sent to his older brother who was a doctor and then to another who had literary friends. Kunio read all he could get his hands on in the fields of history, literature, and Japanese classics. He met prominent literary men and began to try his hand at writing poetry in his early teens.
When Kunio was nineteen, he passed the entrance examinations to First Higher School, Tokyo. When he completed his study there, his brothers pooled their resources to send him to Tokyo Imperial University, from which he graduated in 1900 from the Department of Law, Division of Political Science. In the following year, he was appointed to a post in the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture. In the same year, he took the name Yanagita when he became engaged to Ko, the youngest daughter of Yanagita Naohei, a Justice of the Supreme Court.
Duties in the Ministry of Agriculture took Yanagita to outlying regions where he could see at first hand the conditions of farmers—their antiquated tools, their meager incomes, and the poor educational opportunities for their sons. Although Yanagita belonged to the intellectual elite because of his education and because he was a government official, he still had a way of meeting farmers man to man. He sat by their open hearths to exchange views on their problems, to sample their local foods with a relish, and to listen to their dialect and legends. Yanagita established the habit early in his work of taking down detailed notes on what he saw and heard and making entries in his diary. These notes provided the basis for his many lectures and articles.
The young official also had literary talent. He had begun to publish his poems when he was sixteen years old. He belonged to a group of young writers who were interested in current literature both at home and in Europe. He had a good reading command of English and French and could get along with German and Dutch. In 1907 Yanagita helped found the Ibsen Society of Japan. It was his interest in poetry which led him first to the folk tale. He had noticed some poems of Sasaki Kyoseki (later called Sasaki Kizen), who was a student at Waseda University. Yanagita arranged a meeting with him. Sasaki told Yanagita at that time some tales and legends that had been handed down in his family in Tōno. Yanagita was struck by the unmistakable traces of old Japanese beliefs in the tales. He resolved to investigate them further. He took the opportunity when he visited Tōno later to hear more tales. The result was Tōno monogatari (Tōno tales), which he published in 1910.2 Yanagita then encouraged Sasaki to collect other folk tales in his area and made it possible for him to publish them.
Two of Yanagita’s friends, Ishii Kendō and Takagi Toshio, then set out to gather tales. Ishii published his Nippon zenkoku kokumin dōwa (All-Japan stories for children)3 in 1911, attributing each story to some old province in the country. Takagi, who was on the staff of the newspaper Asahi Shinbun, advertised in it for tales and took time to edit what came in. He published his Nihon densetsu shū (Japanese legends)4 in 1913. Here we see the pattern of Yanagita’s ability to enlist others to join his efforts.
Yanagita and Takagi started the journal Kyōdo kenkyū (Local studies) in 1912. This publication provided an outlet for information about life in all corners of Japan. Many men with whom Yanagita had made contacts earlier now provided information about folkloristic topics, including folk tales. The journal had to be suspended after four years because the work of the two young editors had changed, but during that interval it had received items from 200 contributors. They lived in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka or Hokkaido, and in thirty-eight prefectures, as well as in Korea, China and Formosa.
Yanagita was appointed Chief Secretary to the House of Peers in 1914 and held that position until 1919. He went to Geneva in 1921 with the official group of observers from Japan to the League of Nations, serving in that capacity for nearly two years. When he returned to Japan, he joined the editorial staff of Asahi Shinbun. In the meantime, his interest in folklore and folk tales grew. He invited a number of men, including Sasaki Kizen, to contribute to Rohen sōsho (Hearth-side series), some forty little books on folklore and folk tales from Hokkaido in the north to the Marianas in the south. By 1930 Yanagita was able to select a representative body of folk tales for publication. His Nihon no mukashibanashi, jo (Japanese Folk Tales, Vol. 1)5 became the standard item in the field for many years, being listed in bibliographies to the present. It was not simplified for children. The second volume contained tales from Korea, the Ainu, the Ryūkyū Islands, and Formosa that had been selected by specialists in those areas.
Yanagita’s work on the Asahi Shinbun involved extensive travel and lecturing. He finally resigned from it in 1932, at the age of fifty-seven, an age when most men would be looking forward to retirement, in order to devote his full time to his cultural studies in folklore. He raised money for young collectors to go into the field to look for tales, he started publishing houses and journals to publish their findings, wrote introductions for their books, and traveled and lectured to build up interest. Groups began to be formed at schools or in local centers to study their own material, frequently after Yanagita had given a lecture for them. At the gun, or county, level, books were compiled to record local industries, government, religious sites, and history, usually devoting space to folk tales and legends that were being preserved. Most of their publications were sent in either manuscript or printed form to Yanagita, and from these he built up his extensive files of notes on tales and legends. Because of his paternal interest, he was in touch with activities in all of his land.
If one examines the years to which source material in this reference work of Yanagita belongs, one can to some extent chart the spread of the movement to collect tales. Yanagita used only six items that had appeared before 1910. There are sixteen sources that appeared in the decade 1910-1919, and fifty-three in the following decade. He drew from 100 sources in the 1930’s, after which restrictions and shortages due to World War II brought publishing to a virtual halt.
Sasaki Kizen died in 1933, leaving seven collections of tales and many articles. Among the young men whom Yanagita was encouraging was Seki Keigo, a teacher from Nagasaki. Yanagita had written an introduction for Seki’s collection of tales from his native Shimabara. Since Seki showed promise, Yanagita opened opportunities in editorial work to him.
Yanagita was quite capable of writing his introduction to this present work, but a few comments by the translator may be helpful. His use of the chatty “mashita” endings for verbs was proof that he did not intend his essay “About Folk Tales” to be a scholarly presentation to this very important reference work.
Yanagita wrote of the difference between a legend and a folk tale and of Seki’s original interest in the legend. When the present work on folk tales was being compiled, Yanagita invited Seki to take the main responsibility in compiling the companion work on Japanese legends.6 By comparing the main division in that work with those in this work on folk tales, one can see clearly how Japanese regard legends. The titles for the legend’s division are “Trees,” “Stones and Cliffs,” “Water,” “Graves,” “Hills and Passes,” and “Shrines.” Legends give brief accounts of what was said to have happened at named places and they are not stories of village life.
Yanagita’s story of how he used the little handbook, Mukashibanashi saishū techō, when at the hearthside of a farmhouse shows how he was able to establish warm, personal contacts in his travels. Although he expressed doubts about the results of the little book, the titles with only a couple of exceptions have become standard names in new collections as well as in this reference work. The Mukashibanashi kenkyū was republished by Iwasaki Bijitsusha in 1980, which shows how highly that effort is regarded today. And Sanseidō republished the Zenkoku editions of folk tales in 1973-1974. One can conclude that the steps Yanagita took in guiding efforts to collect folk tales were wise ones.
Yanagita’s comments upon approaches to the folk tale were based upon his background in reading and experience. He was aware of the Aarne-Thompson Types,7 but it did not contain oriental material and its comparative approach was different from his. He treated tales as wholes and looked in them for old cultural and religious themes. That does not mean that he was not interested in the similarity between tales in other countries and those in Japan. He wrote before the modern innovations in methodology—the morphological work of Vladamir Propp, the categoriest of Lèvi-Strauss, the motifime-sequence of Alan Dundes. But he probably would not have been impressed had he heard of them.
Yanagita’s speculation about the interchange of tales in the distant past now seems to have been warranted by recent etymological studies. The Japanese language is now regarded as a composite with strains from other composite languages. In a lecture to KBS Friends in 1953, Seki Keigo pointed to the similarity of a tale in Japan with that of one told by Altai tribes in the Baikal region of Mongolia, two regions with no historical contact. This is a tale about a bee and a dream of treasure. He said the version told in Niigata Prefecture was closer to the Altaian version than to versions told in other parts of Japan.
Yanagita’s hope that his reference work would encourage others to report tales has been well fulfilled by the great volume of new collections which have been published since World War II.8
Yanagita received a number of honors for his efforts in the field of folklore in Japan. He received the Asahi Cultural Award in 1941, was made a member of Japan Art Academy in 1947, and he received the Order of Cultural Merit in 1951. Yanagita’s authorized collection of writings, Teihon Yanagita Kunio shū, numbers thirty-one volumes and five supplemental volumes, each about five hundred pages long. It is estimated that this represents only about sixty percent of his total writings.
The only recognition by Westerners of the activity of collecting and publishing Japanese folk tales before World War II was when Eugen Diederichs sent Fritz Rumpf to Japan in the mid-1930’s to make translations of folk tales.9 Rumpf selected thirty-six items from Yanagita’s collection of tales. Cultural exchange was becoming difficult in the West at that time, and scholars in the United States gave Rumpf’s and Yanagita’s work little attention.
Attempts by Seki Keigo and Hirōko Ikeda to index Japanese folk tales deserve comment. Seki had access to materials in Yanagita’s hands, but from the start he was interested in the comparative approach to tales in Europe. He set up his own files according to Aarne-Thompson—”Animal Tales,” “Ordinary Tales,” and “Jokes,” with subtopics which he felt fitted Japanese tradition. He was not hampered by paper shortages when he published his Nihon mukashibanashi shūsei,10 so he could give a complete rendition of a normative version of a tale for each tale-type. He followed it with entries according to geographical distribution, sources, notes and references as Yanagita had done in his Guide, but with more numerous entries.
The only difference, actually, between the presentations of Seki and Yanagita was that Seki numbered tale-types, thus placing it into the category of an index. He numbered tale-types to 671 in the text of his Shūsei, but at the end of Part Three, he presented a kata (type) index in which he reduced the number of tale-types and changed their order. This resulted in a new number for a tale-type. Seki’s work “Types of Japanese Folktales,11 reduced the number of tale-types again and made changes in their order, hence a third number for a tale-type. Seki presented themes in this work in the Finnish method of handling variants, adding sources and distribution below. The English work has never been produced in Japanese, and cross-reference to Seki’s work is by the numbers in the text of his Shūsei. Seki has retained that numbering in his Nihon mukashibanashi taisei,12 but he gives new numbers to newly discovered tale-types. It remains to be seen how they will be utilized in subsequent cross-referencing.
Hiroko Ikeda, a research assistant on Yanagita’s staff who could speak English, was sent to the United States to introduce the work of Japanese folklorists to academic circles there. She contributed entries to Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature,13 as her first experience in indexing. Although she relied upon Yanagita’s Guide and early volumes of Seki’s Shūsei, she made no reference to them in her entries, and Thompson did not list them in his bibliography. Ikeda’s A Type and Motif Index of Japanese Folk-Literature14 was published in 1971. This was her adaptation of the Second Revision of Aarne-Thompson’s work15 to Japanese material. She also employed the Finnish method of treating variants, but with more detailed breakdowns and references to sources than Seki had done. Her work, vexingly enough, gave yet a fourth number to a Japanese tale-type. Her numbering is not used in cross-referencing in Japan.
I have omitted a translation of the official N.H.K. (Japan Broadcasting Association) preface to Yanagita’s work because, as usual, such contributions have little scholarly value. Takanao Iwasaburo, whose name appears as the writer, was president of N.H.K. at the time Yanagita’s Guide was published, but plans for the project had been set up in 1941 when the former president, Komori Shinichirō, was living. In spite of Takano’s enthusiasm for the results, his Preface does not give a reliable account of the circumstances. N.H.K. provided a place to do work, furnished materials, and paid Yanagita’s assistants who worked upon his files under his supervision. N.H.K. also stored the complete work outside of Tokyo to protect it from bombing and lent the support of its name to the project when restrictions upon publishing by individuals would have made it difficult for Yanagita to complete the undertaking alone.
The folk tale is now a recognized area for research at several universities in Japan. A major project in the field has been the publication of Nihon mukashibanashi jiten,16 a dictionary-encyclopedia that explains terms concerning oral literature as well as titles to the folk tales and their distribution. It also includes names of scholars in the field in the several countries of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. More than 150 scholars and collectors have contributed to the volume. It shows the extent of interest among modern Japanese not only in their native folk tales, but in the work of scholars in the West.
Japanologists have overlooked the folk tales of Japan, perhaps because the scope of Japanese studies was established before folk tales were being collected in Japan. The entries of Ikeda in Thompson’s Motif-Index failed to open to Western scholars the great work of Yanagita and deprived them of any idea of the great number of collectors and scholars in Japan and the folk tales which they had made available. Areas in Japanese studies have broadened considerably since World War II. In the last few years Japanese oral literature such as otogizōshi and Nara-ehon, partly illustrated and partly script, and ballads are being studied. This present volume will open the field of oral literature still further to Western scholars.
History is usually divided into periods of time marked off by records of certain events or great personalities, but cultural history is a continuously flowing stream of human concepts. The contents of tributaries never actually merge into the main trunks of great rivers. They retain their characteristic sediments. In the same way, the strong currents of culture seem to affect changes, but old outlooks and practices are preserved along the margins and in little eddies. These relics of the past, still identifiable in Japanese custom and thought, are what Yanagita looked for in the tales of his land. This handbook will point to such relics of Japan’s cultural heritage in folk tales for scholars in the West.
Footnotes
1. Naoe Hiroji, “Post-war Folklore Research Work in Japan,” Folklore Studies, VIII (1950), p. 281. The use of the term “fairy tale” for “folk tale” by the translator was unfortunate.
2. Yanagita Kunio, Tōno monogatari, Shuseidō, 1910.
3. Ishii Kendō, Nippon zenkoku kokumin dōwa, Dōbunkan, 1911. I have retained the old reading “Nippon” for Ishii because it sounds like a challenge, which he intended it to be, to the sugary tales for children that Iwaya Sazanami had put out.
4. Takagi Toshio, Nihon densetsu shū. Musashino Shoin, 1913.
5. Yanagita Kunio, Nihon no mukashibanashi, jō. Ars, 1930.
6. Yanagita Kunio, supervision, Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, ed., Nihon densetsu meii. Nihon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1950.
7. Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, FFC No. 70. Helsinki, 1928.
8. Fanny Hagin Mayer, “Japan’s Folk tale Boom,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Winter 1978), pp. 215-224.
9. Fritz Rumpf, Japanische Volksmärchen. Jena: Diederichs, 1938.
10. Seki Keigo, Nihon mukashibanashi shūsei. Kadokawa. Part One (one volume), 1950; Part Two (three volumes), 1955; Part Three (two volumes), 1958.
11. Seki Keigo, “Types of Japanese Folktales,” Asian Folklore Studies, XXV (1966).
12. Seki Keigo, Nihon mukashibanashi taisei. Kadokawa, 12 volumes starting in 1978.
13. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature (six volumes). Indiana University Press, 1958.
14. Hiroko Ikeda, A Type and Motif Index of Japanese Folk-Literature, FFC No. 209. Helsinki, 1971.
15. Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, Second Revision, FFC 184. Helsinki, 1961.
16. Nihon mukashibanashi jiten. Kōbundō, 1977.
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