Japanese Folklore Studies and History: Pre-War and Post-War Inflections

Abstract

By exploring the relationship of Yanagita Kunio and folklore studies (minzokugaku) in reverse chronology, I argue that latent political and disciplinary concerns undergird minzokugaku’s reputation as a marginalized social science distinct from anthropology and history. The intellectual boundaries among these disciplines were founded on Yanagita’s rejection of anthropology’s Euro-centric comparative framework and history’s concern for elites. Yanagita’s double-rejection partially explains minzokugaku’s marginality within the academy and its appropriation by activists and intellectuals in the post-war era.