Background: Overview Mythology Yōkai & Bakemono Folklore in Art Content: Mukashibanashi Densetsu Kaidan Kotowaza   Further Reading Resources

An Overview of Japanese Folklore I. Japanese folklore can be divided into categories many and varied, and range from subjects of interest to the historian, the archaeologist, and the anthropologist, among many other disciplines. And so folklore is much too complicated to satisfactorily explore in one introductory website. As a result of this, Mukashibanashi Library will be concentrating on only four of these categories. These are mukashibanashi 昔話, folk stories; densetsu 伝説, legends; kaidan 怪談, meaning "strange talk", and encompassing ghost stories, stories of yōkai and bakemono and other eerie, unexplainable things; and kotowaza 諺, proverbs and folk sayings. Needless to say, there is a lot of overlapping between categories, but I have tried my best to categorize as accurately as possible. As for mythology, or shinwagaku 神話学, I have included background information on the Kojiki, the Nihon Shoki, and the Hotsuma Tsutae, as well as the most important stories from Japanese mythology. However, as the myths of Japan were mostly written in a high and regal manner, for the sake of the Emperor and the higher classes, they do not reflect the earthy character and concerns of the commoners of traditional Japan. For this reason, mythology will not be a focus of this website. The contents of Mukashibanashi Library are, as is the case of virtually every library, by no means complete. However, I have strived to make them as definitive as possible. This site is also not meant to be a primary source; the reader is encouraged to investigate more deeply on his or her own. Only through thorough research can one clearly understand the subject; and even then there is much that remains unclear or occluded. There is no substitute for doing your own research, I believe, when at all possible. In this spirit, I have provided references for those interested in further reading. Other useful resources will be scholarly articles on the subject, such as those that can be found in the journal Asian Folklore Studies, among many others. JSTOR is a somewhat useful site, though it does have the unfortunate condition that one must be attending a university with membership in order to view its content.   II. There are many different types of beings in Japanese folklore, which are unfamiliar to Westerners. Here is a short introduction to these beings, and the roles they play in folk stories and legends. Kami 神 : These are the gods of Japan. Said to equal eight million in number, the kami often show up in many folktales, and in many guises. They are not all-powerful, and can have humanlike flaws. They can become angry and vengeful if they are not regularly worshipped and honored, but are still thought of as holy and divine. There is a kami for everything in nature; from the sun and the sea, to stones and rivers; every blade of grass is supposed to have its own kami. Oni 鬼 : The best translation of this word is "ogre", though it is often translated as "demon" or "devil". Oni are typical villains in folktales, and are wild, mountain-dwelling ogres that have blue, black or red skin, the horns of an ox, and wear a tiger-skin loincloth. The oni almost always carries an iron club called tetsubō or kanabō. They can be wise and cunning, or slow and stupid, depending on who's telling the tale. They are also symbols of strength and invincibility. Tennin 天人 : These heavenly beings originally come from Chinese mythology, but have worked their way into Japanese folklore as well. Said to live on the moon or in the heavens, they sometimes come down to earth, wearing their hagoromo or "feather cloak". The heroine of one of the most famous folktales of Japan, Kaguya-hime, was a tennyo (天女), a female tennin. They are often clad in robes of red, blue and green. Sennyo 仙女 : These unearthly beauties perform similar roles to tennyo, but usually live by themselves in the mountains or underground. Sennin 仙人 : Despite their similarity in name to sennyo, the sennin are actually humans who, through ascetic practices (including a steady diet of pine needles) have attained immortality and supernatural powers such as flight, projection of the soul, and ability to speak with animals. Bakemono 化け物 or obake お化け : A generic term for monster, and used as such in folktales. A bakemono can be any type of monster and is often not described in detail. However, Japan also has a quite large mass of bakemono that are very specifically described in habit and form. More information about these monsters, also called yōkai 妖怪, can be found here, or at The Obakemono Project. Chōja 長者 : A chōja is a class of relatively rich people at the village level. Often chōja are leaders or headmen of the village, and a popular motif in fairytales is to see a poor man or woman become a chōja through some extraordinary events. One can also lose all one's money, and still retain their chōja status. Nushi 主 : A term meaning "lord" or "master", nushi is often the appelation given to a spirit of a certain pond, lake, waterfall, marsh, or other such geographic location. It can come in the form of an animal (such as a water spider or a snake) or a human, and in the latter case it will often appear as a priest or an old hag. These nushi are usually antagonistic in nature. For a story of a nushi in spider form, see "The Water Spider".   III. It would, I believe, be remiss to establish a website on Japanese folklore without going into a short summary of folklore studies in Japan, and the most well known pioneer of these studies, Yanagita Kunio 柳田 國男. Born in 1875, in Fukusaki in Hyogo Prefecture, Yanagita's folklore studies began when he became intersted in the village customs of the many places he visited in the course of his business travels for the Ministry of Agriculture. His first great work was a small book called Tōno monogatari, or Legends of Tōno, which was based on the writings of Tōno native Sasaki Kizen. The book was a collection of folk tales narrated to him by the local farmer-scholar, and was the first step in Yanagita's lifelong study of the folklore and traditions of rural Japan. Yanagita left the Ministry of Agriculture for a low ranking position at the legislative bureau, and in his free time there began work on his folklore studies. His earliest essays and lectures on the subject concerned mysterious figures and phenomena that centered in the mountains, such as tengu, yamabito, and traveling strangers. Later on his focus shifted to what he called jōmin 常民, or "common folk", which was his newly-coined term for the slow-changing, plain-dwelling rice farmers of Japan's history. He felt that history as a whole overlooked these commoners, and one of his biggest goals was to create from unorthodox sources a history of the folk and their beliefs. One of the greatest criticisms of Yanagita's work was (and is) that his ideas were too subjective, too based on his own feelings and interpretations. Yet this sort of approach, one that relied on empathy and feeling, was in Yanagita's mind essential to the study of the folk's lore and life. By the mid to late thirties, Yanagita's work had spawned many folklore studies societies and periodicals, and Yanagita had attracted many colleagues and followers, such as Seki Keigo, who traveled to different parts of Japan in efforts to collect new versions of stories. Yanagita died at age 88, having published thirty-six books in his lifetime. For a fuller examination of Yanagita's life, please see my article at the SamuraiWiki. And for a more in-depth study of his times, his views and his works, as well as several of his colleagues, please read the informative Civilization and Monsters by Gerald Figal.