(Please note: the Japanese custom of using family names first has been followed in this review, as translator Morse did in his translation.)
Folk Legends from Tono should not be confused with The Legends of Tono. The latter, titled Tono Monogatari in Japanese, is the classic collection by Yanagita Kunio, published in 1910 and translated into English by Ronald A. Morse in 1975. In contrast, Folk Legends from Tono was part of an expanded 1935 edition of the 1910 work and was intended as a celebration of Yanagita’s sixtieth birthday.
The main informant for the 1910 work was Sasaki Kizen, as Yanagita stated clearly in the first sentence of his original book, calling his friend Sasaki Kyoseki. More than twenty years later, Sasaki became involved in collecting new stories for the expanded edition and sent several installments of texts to Yanagita to include in the new edition. However, two years before the expanded edition was published, Sasaki Kizen died suddenly. It was then decided that the expanded edition should also honor Sasaki. Yanagita edited some of the stories, and a university graduate edited the rest. According to an appendix in Morse’s latest translation, the expansion “led to an awkwardly constructed Japanese volume with the two separate and independent sections under one title . . . the original 119 legends (1910) followed by a supplemental (1935) section of 299 legends” (146).
It is this supplemental section of 299 legends that comprises the 2015 translation in Folk Legends of Tono. Because the organization of the supplemental section in 1935 was considered unwieldy, “randomly collected and poorly edited” (148), translator Morse decided to regroup the stories using his own logical divisions: “a textually constructed community with ever-expanding concentric circles, starting with the biological individual at the center and then moving outward to include broader and broader domains of social and cultural engagement—a linkage to death, souls, and the unknown; extended family and kinship ties: attempting to control the unknown through divination; encounters between settled farmers and quasi-human mountain people; mutual survival with the animal kingdom; intrusive political structures; and finally annual festive celebrations of life” (148).
The first chapter, entitled “Biology and Human Emotions,” focuses on hardships suffered by humans as shown in drastic measures such as infanticide and euthanasia of the elderly, as well as other measures for survival. In the first story, a child was strangled and buried in the dirt floor of the kitchen. But the child’s hands emerged from the dirt; the child was still alive. The infant was dug up and raised as part of the family. One of her eyes had been crushed during burial, so she was blind in that eye (1).
The next chapters present “Souls Adrift Between Two Worlds” (near-death experiences); “Family, Kinship and Household Deities” (spirits such as foxes and horses which hang around the home); “Sidestepping Misfortune and Evil” (beliefs such as “You should not kill a snake that appears near a house because it is likely to be the soul or spirit of an ancestor returning in a different form” [58]); “Survival on the Edge” (confrontation with half-human predators, such as long stretchy-necked ghosts or shape-shifting animals); “Tracking Nature’s Trickster Animals” (foxes, badgers, snakes, cats, and kappa); “Glimpses of Modern Monsters” (stories which cast a negative light on Meiji law enforcement); and “No Spirit Forgotten” (a miscellany including the story of a man who, grieving for his dead wife, wrapped her body in pampas grass, made rice cakes using her body, and then ate her, thus explaining why people in that community now eat pampas grass-wrapped rice balls in May (137).
An example from “Glimpses of Modern Monsters” is funny, about a samurai who was eating at a teahouse with his attendants:
“One of the villagers was Manjiro from Oshita who was a ruffian. He suddenly snatched the samurai’s rice ball and gobbled it down. He was about to grab his fish as well when the samurai’s face turned red. Without saying a word, the samurai drew his sword and took a swipe at Manjiro. Manjiro avoided the swipe, then grabbed the sword, and bent it badly between the cornerstones of the teahouse. He then bad-mouthed the samurai. It is said the samurai left the teahouse humiliated. Later, it was revealed that the samurai was from the large castle town of Morioka. As might be expected, the samurai didn’t say anything about a mere peasant farmer taking his sword. Nothing came of the incident.” (264-224). (125).
(It should be noted that the numbers at the end of each text (in this case, 264-224) indicate first, the order of the story in Morse’s translation, followed by the original order of the story in the 1935 version.)
For folklorists, especially those interested in Japanese culture, this book is a delight to read. Although the stories have no analysis except for perfunctory notes at the beginning of each chapter, they are entertaining in and of themselves, and they ring with the authenticity of the times. They can certainly provide comparative fodder for scholars studying specific folk motifs and legendary monsters and ghosts.
Although Yanagita has sometimes been accused of taking advantage of Sasaki, it is clear that Sasaki was a willing contributor to both of Yanagita’s works on Tono legendry. Why else would Sasaki, twenty-plus years after the first book, send scores of new texts to Yanagita for use in the expanded edition? Any graduate student loyal to a beloved professor understands the motivation. Without Yanagita, the stories might never have reached print. They were a good team, and they both received the credit in this second work.
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[Review length: 934 words • Review posted on January 11, 2017]