Kunio Yanagita

Kunio Yanagita (柳田 國男, Yanagita Kunio, July 31, 1875 – August 8, 1962) was a Japanese scholar and considered the father of Japanese native folkloristics, or minzokugaku.[1]

Kunio Yanagita
柳田 國男
Kunio Yanagita, circa 1940
Born
Kunio Matsuoka

(1875-07-31)July 31, 1875
 Japan Fukusaki, Hyōgo Prefecture
DiedAugust 8, 1962(1962-08-08) (aged 87)
Tokyo, Japan
NationalityJapanese
OccupationBureaucrat, Scholar, Writer
Known forTōno Monogatari (遠野物語)

Momotarō no Tanjō(桃太郎の誕生)

Nihon mukashibanashi meii ("Japanese Folk Tales")
Spouse(s)Taka Yanagita (1904)
Parent(s)Yakusai Matsuoka (father) Naohei Yanagita (father-in-law)
Japanese name
Hiraganaやなぎた くにお
Kyūjitai栁田 國男
Shinjitai柳田 国男

Biography

Yanagita was born Kunio Matsuoka in Fukusaki, Hyōgo Prefecture to Yakusai Matsuoka, a local physician. The fifth of eight children, Yanagita's prospects of inheritance were poor. Naohei Yanagita, a prominent court justice with no sons, saw the ambitious Matsuoka to be a promising heir and offered his daughter Taka's hand in marriage in exchange for adopting the family name. Kunio recognized the benefit of adopting the Yanagita name, and was formally adopted into the family in 1901.[2]

After graduating with a degree in law from Tokyo Imperial University, he became employed as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. In the course of his bureaucratic duties, Yanagita had the opportunity to travel throughout mainland Japan. During these business trips, Yanagita became increasingly interested in observing and recording details pertaining to local village customs. Under the influence of literary friends such as the writer Shimazaki Toson, Yanagita published works supposedly based on local oral traditions such as Tales of Tono (1912). He collaborated extensively with folklorist Kizen Sasaki, and they published several books together.

The Matsuoka brothers prior to Kunio's adoption by Yanagita

Yanagita's focus on local traditions was part of a larger effort to insert the lives of commoners into narratives of Japanese history. He argued that historical narratives were typically dominated by events pertaining to rulers and high-ranking officials. Yanagita claimed that these narratives focused on elite-centered historical events and ignored the relative uneventfulness and repetition that characterized the lives of ordinary Japanese people across history. He emphasized the unique practices of different groups of common people, such as sanka or mountain dwellers, and island dwellers. His work is frequently groundbreaking and sometimes has unique cultural records.[3]

Major works
Yakusai Matsuoka's home
  • Tōno Monogatari (遠野物語) – a record of folk legends (as opposed to a folk tale) gathered in Tōno, Iwate Prefecture. Famous yōkai in the stories include kappa and zashiki-warashi.[4]
  • Kagyūkō (蝸牛考) – Yanagita revealed that the distribution of dialects for the word snail forms concentric circles on the Japanese archipelago (Center versus periphery theory of dialectical diffusion over time).
  • Momotarō no Tanjō (桃太郎の誕生) – He depicted some facets of Japanese society by analyzing the famous folk tale Momotarō. His methodology was followed by many ethnologists and anthropologists.
  • Kaijō no Michi (海上の道) – He sought the origin of the Japanese culture in Okinawa, though many of his speculations were denied by later researchers. He was inspired by picking up a palm nut borne by the Kuroshio Current when he was wandering on a beach in Iragomisaki, Aichi Prefecture.
  • Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale – A selection of Japanese folktales and data from Yanagita Kunio's Nihon mukashi-banashi meii (日本昔話名彙), translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer.[5]

See also

Notes
  1. Mori, Koichi (1980). Yanagita Kunio: An Interpretive Study. Nanzan University: Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.
  2. Yonemoto, Marcia (2016). The Problem of Women in Early Modern Japan. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520292000.
  3. Yokoyama, Manabu (1987). Ryûkyû koku shisetsu torai no kenkyû 琉球国使節渡来の研究. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kôbunkan.
  4. Yanagita, Kunio; Translated by Ronald A. Morse (2008). The Legends of Tono. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-2767-4.
  5. Yanagita, Kunio; Translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer (1986). Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-36812-X.

References
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