Preface

This work of Yanagi ta 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. W hen 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 Y anagi ta 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 farmerstheir
antiquated tools, their meager incomes, and the poor educational
opportuni ties for their sons. Although Yanagita belonged to the intellectual
elite because of his education and because he was a governviii
Preface
ment 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 Tono. 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 Tono later to
hear more tales. The result was Tono monogatari (Tono tales), which
he published in 1910.2 Yanagi ta 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 Kendo and Takagi Toshio, then set
out to gather tales. Ishii published his Nippon zenkoku kokumin do wa
(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 shu (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 Kyodo kenkyu (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.
Yanagi ta 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 sosho
(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.
Preface ix
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 RyGkyG
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 fiftyseven,
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.
Yanagi ta 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
saishil tech6, when at the hearthside of a farmhouse shows how he
was able to establish warm, personal contacts in his travels. Although
x Preface
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
kenkyu was republished by Iwasaki Bijitsusha in 1980, which shows how
highly that effort is regarded today. And Sanseido 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 a ware of the
Aarne-Thompson Types'? 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 V ladamir
Propp, the categoriest of Levi-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 11.8
Yanagi ta 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 shu, 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.
A ttempts by Seki Keigo and Hirbko 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
Preface xi
sUbtopics which he felt fitted Japanese tradition. He was not hampered
by paper shortages when he published his Nihon mukashibanashi shiisei,
lO 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 Shiisei, 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 Shu.sei. 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
exper ience in indexing. Although she relied upon Yanagi ta' s Guide and
early volumes of Seki's Shu.sei, 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-Literature ll+ was published in
1971. This was her adaptation of the Second Revision of Aarne-Thompson's
work 15 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 puqlished, but plans for the project had been set
up in 1941 when the former president, Komori Shinichiro, 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
xii Preface
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
otogizoshi 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 Yanagi ta 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.
Fanny Hagin Mayer
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, Tono monogatari, Shuseido, 1910.
3. Ishii Kendo, Nippon zenkoku kokumin dowa, Dobunkan, 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 shu. Musashino Shoin, 1913.
5. Yanagita Kunio, Nihon no mukashibanashi, jo. Ars, 1930.
6. Yanagita Kunio, supervision, Nihon Hoso Kyokai, ed., Nihon densetsu
meii. Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai, 1950.
7. Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, FFC
No. 70. Helsinki, 1928.