Folklore Research in Japan

Abstract

JAPAN and England present obvious geographical similarities, with implications for the folklorist. Each is a proud island nation facing a vast conglomerate mainland. In both countries insularity has bred a long-lived, homogeneous folk culture, and intellectual energy has produced inquiring folklorists to examine this submerged culture. Japanese folklore theory has indeed been influenced by English rather than continental methods of investigation. But there the analogies end. In England I knew the language but had come half a century too late to meet the vigorous Victorian folklorists. In Japan I arrived in the midst of the efflorescence of folklore studies, but could neither talk to the folklore scholars nor read their writings veiled in an impenetrable tongue-impenetrable during a ten months stay. As a lesson in establishing relations with foreign folklorists, the experience was invaluable, and not without its ludicrous aspects. The chain of events that led me to Japan began at a regional meeting of the American Folklore Society in Lexington, Kentucky, in May 1953. During the meeting I received a note from George K. Brady, professor of English at the University of Kentucky, who wished to introduce Masanori Takatsuka, visiting him that year to collaborate on a translation of the Japanese Folklore Dictionary (Minzokugaku Jiten, Tokyo, I95I). Professor Brady had spent some months in Japan after the war on government service, and had fallen in love with the land, its people, and its culture. Although approaching retirement, he had expanded his intellectual commitments and course offerings from English bibliography to Japanese culture. Neither Brady nor Takatsuka were folklorists, but their common field of English literature had brought them together, and Brady's colleague Jansen had suggested the cooperative folklore publications of Kunio Yanagita and his Japanese Folklore Institute as worthy subjects for translation.