Japanese Folk Tale
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The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale Copublished with Asian Folklore Studies YANAGITA KUNIO (1875 -1962) The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale Translated and Edited by FANNY HAGIN MAYER INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington This volume is a translation of Nihon mukashibanashi meii, compiled under the supervision of Yanagita Kunio and edited by Nihon Hoso Kyokai. Tokyo: Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai, 1948. This book has been produced from camera-ready copy provided by ASIAN FOLKLORE STUDIES, Nanzan University, Nagoya, japan. © All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nihon mukashibanashi meii. English. The Yanagita Kunio guide to the japanese folk tale. "Translation of Nihon mukashibanashi meii, compiled under the supervision of Yanagita Kunio and edited by Nihon Hoso Kyokai." T.p. verso. "This book has been produced from camera-ready copy provided by Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan University, Nagoya,japan."-T.p. verso. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Tales-japan-History and criticism. I. Yanagita, Kunio, 1875-1962. II. Mayer, Fanny Hagin, 1899- III. Nihon Hoso Kyokai. IV. Title. GR340.N52213 1986 398.2'0952 85-45291 ISBN 0-253-36812-X 2 3 4 5 90 89 88 87 86 Contents Preface vii Translator's Notes xiv Acknowledgements xvii About Folk Tales by Yanagita Kunio xix PART ONE Folk Tales in Complete Form Chapter 1. Propitious Births 3 Chapter 2. The Life of Unusual Children 14 Chapter 3. Unpromising Marriages That Became Happy 18 Chapter 4. Stepchildren Stories 44 Chapter 5. Brothers Not Alike 60 Chapter 6. Finding Treasures 65 Chapter 7. Overcoming Evils 92 Chapter 8. Help from Animals 124 Chapter 9. The Power of Words 144 Chapter 10. Cleverness at Work 149 PART TWO Derived Tales Chapter 11. Stories about Destiny 191 Chapter 12. Ghost Stories 197 Chapter 13. Humorous Stories: Exaggerations 208 Chapter 14. Humorous Stories: Profitless Imitation 235 Chapter 15. Humorous Stories: Tales of Foolish Villages 241 Chapter 16. Tales about Birds, Beasts, Plants, and Trees 254 Chapter 17. Miscellaneous Stories between Folk Tales and legends 310 The F ascina tion of Folk Tales and Names, Beginnings and Endings 315 vi Contents Bibliography of Sources 323 Reference Index 341 Glossary 345 An Alphabetical List of Titles with Tale Numbers 351 Alphabetical List of Japanese Titles to Tale-Types 356 Geographical Index 360 Maps 364 Preface This work of Yanagi ta Kunio (1875-1962), who started the move ment 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 edit ing this imposing body of 347 folk tale-types and the distribution of their variants in Japan, I have attempted to bring this corpus into con formity 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 Univer sity, 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 farmers their antiquated tools, their meager incomes, and the poor educational opportuni ties for their sons. Although Yanagita belonged to the intel lectual elite because of his education and because he was a govern- viii 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 pub lish 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 Wase da 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 prefec tures, 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 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.