Kunio Yanagita
Founder of Japanese native folkloristics (minzokugaku).
via Wikipedia: Kunio Yanagita · see source
Kunio Yanagita was a Japanese author, scholar, ethnographer, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a change in his career. His pursuit of this led to his eventual establishment of Japanese native folkloristics, or minzokugaku, as an academic field in Japan. As a result, he is often considered to be the father of modern Japanese folklore studies.
Quick Facts
- Birth name
- Kunio Matsuoka
- Born
- 31 July 1875
- Birthplace
- Fukusaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan
- Died
- 8 August 1962
- Place of death
- Tokyo, Japan
- Known for
- Tōno Monogatari (遠野物語)
- Momotarō no Tanjō (桃太郎の誕生)
- Nihon mukashibanashi meii ("Japanese Folk Tales")
- Occupation
- Bureaucrat
- Folklorist
- Scholar
- Writer
- Spouse
- Taka Yanagita (1904)
Facts from the source article.
Early life
Yanagita was born as the fifth child of the Matsuoka family in Fukusaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, with the name Kunio Matsuoka. He was adopted into the family of court justice Naohei Yanagita, a common practice for families without a son. The adoption was formalized through his marriage to Naohei's daughter, Taka, in 1901, after which he took the name Kunio Yanagita. From a young age he showed interest in literature, especially poetry and Western works. His later folklore studies were shaped by reading ethnologies by Western anthropologists such as Edward Burnett Tylor.
Career
After graduating in law from Tokyo Imperial University, Yanagita worked as a civil servant for about twenty years in the Department of Agricultural Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. While still a civic official, he was active in literary movements and formed the Ipusen-kai, an Ibsen Society, after being impacted by Henrik Ibsen's works. During business trips across Honshū, he became increasingly focused on rural villages and agricultural economic policy. He grew critical of the lack of concern for local autonomy in government policies and advocated for cooperatives of small farmers over wealthy landlords. Pushback against his ideas may have contributed to his shift toward folklore studies. After leaving the ministry, he traveled to record local customs, practices, and beliefs. Encouraged by literary friends including writer Shimazaki Toson, he published works based on oral traditions, most famously The Legends of Tōno (1912), a compilation of stories from the rural community of Tōno in Iwate. His work then developed into anthropological folklore study, and he collaborated extensively with folklorist Kizen Sasaki.
Major works
Tōno Monogatari is Yanagita's most famous work, a record of folk legends, stories, and traditions gathered in Tōno, Iwate Prefecture, featuring yōkai such as kappa and zashiki-warashi and stories of the hunter Sasaki Kahee. In Kagyūkō, he revealed that the distribution of dialects for the word snail forms concentric circles on the Japanese archipelago, illustrating a center versus periphery theory of dialectical diffusion. Momotarō no Tanjō analyzes themes of Japanese folklore and society using the tale of Momotarō as a reference for understanding Japanese culture; his methodology has been followed by many ethnologists and anthropologists. Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale is a selection of Japanese folktales and data from his Nihon mukashi-banashi meii, translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer. Nochi no Kari-kotoba no Ki, privately published, focuses on the traditions and hunting practices of a mountain community in Miyazaki Prefecture and is considered one of the first works of Japanese folklore studies.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Kunio Yanagita born?
Kunio Yanagita was born on 31 July 1875 in Fukusaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan.
When did Kunio Yanagita die?
Kunio Yanagita died on 8 August 1962 in Tokyo, Japan.
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