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Film has a long history of spectral association, from the possibilities of projection, the dancing image that hangs in the air, to the translucence of the media itself. Taking inspiration from a Japanese animation, Michael Chapman, Professor and Chair of Architecture and Industrial Design at Western Sydney University, has created a series of works that seek to fill in the haunted blanks and uncanny parallaxes that exist between the space we view and perceive in the filmic sequence and an 'objective' reality of that architecture. He uses some of the compositional protocols of the traditional scroll and machinery to produce his proposal – a parallel world that haunts the absences and holes within the original. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the Japanese fairy tales "Kaguya-hime, the Maiden of the Moonlight", "The Crane" and "The Snow Maiden", whose main characters are close in their semantics to Japanese goddesses. The characteristic features of the poetics of these fairy tales are the absence of a happy ending, tragedy, and the connection of the heroines with the elements, astral images, and the world of birds and animals. Through the motif of metamorphosis, these three tales reveal the theme of unhappy love. The image of Kaguya-hime can be interpreted in two ways: 1) the visible signs of an adult beauty are only a mask under which a child is hiding, and 2) the protagonist is a stranger who realizes that her life among people is temporary, here she must gain certain experience, go through a series of trials, and then return to her real home (the Moon) as a different person. The second model associates Kaguya-hime with the heroines of fairy tales from different nations because she also needs to go through the ritual of rebirth (life-death-life) and metaphorical initiation into adulthood. But while the heroes of European fairy tales leave their home (the "human world"), enter the forest or the thirty-ninth realm (a foreign space), and go through trials there, for Kaguya-hime, the foreign space is the human world (the Earth), and the Moon is her native space to which she later returns. Therefore, the role of the spatial planes through which the protagonist passes is mirrored in this Japanese fairy tale. Accordingly, Kaguya-hime herself is associated with a goddess who briefly appears in the life of an old couple and makes them happy. She enters the world of people with the help of a bamboo stalk, which acquires the semantics of a "door" between time and space planes, magically connected to the Moon and the other world. Kaguya-hime gives her foster parents her love and material values: the old man begins to find silver coins in the bamboo stalks every day. Silver is associated with the moonlight. Thus, at the very beginning of the tale, the connection between Kaguya-hime and the Moon is outlined. The motif of the magical endowment of the parents of the miracle girl with silver and gold by the Grandfather-knows-everything (the Sun, not the Moon) is found in the Ukrainian fairy tale "How a Herder's Daughter Became a Queen". The amazing heroine of the fairy tale "The Crane" is similar to the enchanted beauty from the Ukrainian fairy tale "The Bird Girl". In both texts, an amazing girl appears as an assistant to the protagonist, helping him to become rich by using the magic of weaving. However, whereas in the Japanese tale, the man loses his wife by breaking his promise (he spies on the woman's work and sees her as a bird), the Ukrainian tale has a happy ending. The difference between the two texts also lies in the prerequisites for establishing a marriage relationship between a female bird and a man. In the tale "The Crane", a young man helps a wounded bird to heal and at the same time, he does not expect to meet her again, as a human. In the Ukrainian fairy tale, the bird seeks rebirth through death: she asks the young man to behead her so that she can become his wife. The characters of the Ukrainian fairy tale "The Cane Girl" are partly similar to the characters of the fairy tales "Kaguya-hime, the Maiden of the Moonlight", and "The Crane". Yuki-Onna, the wonderful woman from the tale "The Snow Maiden", has vivid ethno-psycho- logical specificity, tends to be the goddess of death, and is associated with rituals of transition. The heroine first initiates the young man Minokita into the mystery of life-death-life (killing his old master in front of him) and thus contributes to the hero's age-related initiation, later becomes his faithful wife and reveals her demonic nature after her husband breaks his vow. An important place in the poetics of the analyzed tales is occupied by images-symbols of the moon, bamboo, silver, bird, feathers, night, winter, snow, river, boundary, and Death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yokai demons occupy a very important place in the culture and history of Japan. Yokai are the treasured key to the cultural code of Japanese nation , without which it is impossible to comprehend Kokoro – the Soul of Japan. The rapid fascination with Japanese demonology in the West and in Russia is by no means accidental, and the history of the Western world’s acquaintance with Japanese yokai is full of breathtaking stories. The article tells about the history of the study of Japanese demonology in the West and in Russia, and analyzes the reasons and features of the mass fascination with yokai in the world. A detailed overview of sources includes translations of works of fiction and studies devoted to yokai. The article pays special attention to the differences in the perception of Japanese demons in Western countries and among the Russian audience. The author sees the reason for this in the difference in mentalities – the Ango-Saxon ratio versus the Russian mythological consciousness.

In 2003 Japanese folk horror game Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly directed by Makoto Shibata, the protagonist bears witness to an ancient tradition of a community linked to the ritual sacrifice of twins, which results in the female victim becoming a malevolent spirit. Gradually the player, as Mio, equipped with the Camera Obscura, transitions from observer to participant in the cycle of events that results in sacrificing their own twin sister. This article focuses on establishing the game within the folk horror subgenre, before examining three female characters: Mio, the protagonist, who shifts from witness/voyeur to participant; Mayu, their twin, who transitions from unwilling to willing sacrifice; and Sae, the victim of the original ritual and antagonist. In Fatal Frame II, the Camera Obscura, which captures the supernatural world, is the lens through which past and present blur as the player is confronted by the twisted beliefs of the village. Through analysis of the game's narrative, ludic elements, and visual aesthetics, I examine how these roles fit within the context of folk horror, gender and Japanese folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of Japanese folktales in Angela Carter's oeuvre, focusing especially on the figure of the Japanese fox trickster that appears in Fireworks, Love, and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. In these works, the shape-shifting body of the East-Asian fox becomes a site of conflict between contrasting categories (male/female, European/Asian, human/animal) and mirrors the process by which the characters are turned into commodified, fictionalized representations of gender and race. The trickster's ability to shift across the animal–human border also provides Carter with a narrative device to interrogate the cultural boundaries that define both sexuality and humanity (as opposed to bestiality)—a topic that prefigures her critique of patriarchal and anthropocentric hierarchies in The Bloody Chamber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Japanese historiography, the date of death of Minamoto no Yoshitsune is usually given as June 15, 1189, from official chronicles such as the Azuma kagami to gunki monogatari. This changed in the Edo period. New narrative versions of Yoshitsune's fate emerged in the 17th century, some of them identified Yoshitsune with the Ainu kamuy Okikurmi or with Genghis Khan, while others declared him the ancestor of the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. These claims are found in historiography and in works of fiction but always existed in parallel with the "official" historiography according to which he had died in 1189. This article argues that the narrative of Yoshitsune's survival continued to exist throughout the Edo and Meiji periods because it corroborated the Japanese territorial expansion in the north, on Hokkaidō and the surrounding region. It should not be viewed as simple fiction or folklore but as a mythological narrative that served the very specific purpose of asserting Japanese claims to a formerly foreign territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bruno Taut, the German architect and planner, and Charlotte Perriand, the French designer and architect, left their respective countries abruptly during the Nazi regime to work as design consultants for the Japanese export industry. Japan might seem an odd choice under the political circumstances, but for both it was a pragmatic solution to problems at home. They were hired by national design centers that aimed to promote Japanese folkloristic traditions with an inflection of modernism in order to make their products attractive to the Western market. As newcomers there, Taut and Perriand were caught in the conflict between local culture and international modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definitions of fairy and folk tales are heterogeneous, westernized, and may even contradict each other. Therefore, Japanese folktales may present certain features that differ from the literary canon. On another note, the worldwide influence of Japanese culture cannot be denied, so it is no surprise that the current Japanese soft power strategy is based on the international exhibition of a modern Japan where anime (animation) and manga (comic) play a key role. According to Amber Slaven, anime stories are highly influenced by Japanese folklore. Hence, anime spectators are in permanent touch with Japanese folklore even if they are not aware of it. In this chapter, the InuYasha animation (2000-2004)--a story that combines common narratives of anime and settings of Japanese folklore--will be analyzed by considering both conventional descriptions of folktales and specific traits of Japanese stories. The aim is to provide an insight into Japanese folktales from a contemporary perspective that helps anime viewers to identify these stories as an evolution of Japanese traditions. Ultimately, a comprehensive definition of folktales that tries to avoid Orientalist dynamics will be suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth encounter issues of religion in the process of identity formation. However, most prior studies have focused on Christian youth in Western counties. This study examined the relationship between identity formation and religious beliefs in the Eastern national context where Buddhism and non-institutional folk religions are prevalent. Participants were 969 Japanese youth (51.3% female; Mage = 20.1). Both literal and symbolic religious beliefs were included and both a variable- and person-oriented approach were used based on the three-factor identity model. The results from the variable-oriented approach (i.e., identity processes) demonstrated that identity commitment was positively associated with literal religious beliefs, whereas reconsideration of commitment was positively associated with both literal and symbolic religious beliefs. Findings from the person-oriented approach (i.e., identity statuses) confirmed these results. Overall, this study highlights the importance of religious beliefs in the process of identity formation among youth in an Eastern national context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biwako is the largest lake in Japan. Its waters, islands and shores have a rich mythology due, in substantial part, to their close proximity to the ancient cities of Kyoto and Nara. This article focuses on two interlinked aspects of the region's aquatic legends. The first concerns the presence of ningyo (folkloric fish-bodied and human headed creatures credited with human-like intelligence) around the eastern part of the lake and their interaction with human communities. In several accounts, the ningyo were caught and killed by local villagers and a number of temples have subsequently claimed to hold the mummified bodies of these creatures. Nihonshoki, an imperial chronicle from the 1720s CE, tells of a ningyo that appeared as an omen of the death of a prince and folklore relates that the same prince enshrined a mummified ningyo in a local temple before his demise. In this manner, the prince, the legendary ningyo, the preserved ningyo, local villagers and the region's enshrining religious institutions are intertwined within the aquatic system of Biwako. Secondly, the lake is known for centuries-old sanctuary islands on which Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines have been built. These contain sacred statues and talismans and indicate the manner in which the entire domain of individual islands is an object of worship. The (supposedly preserved) ningyo artefacts of shoreline and inland temples and the enshrined islands manifest and animate the overall aquapelagic assembly of the region. I use the word "animate" to express the manner in which local ningyo legends and sacred island spaces are experienced as "real". The preserved ningyo artefacts and islands are animated in the spatialconceptual context of the lake as the materiality of its water generates a whole territory of mythical and contemporary landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The people's mind can conjure up a certain imagery that denies the reality of death and proclaims eternity and perpetual youth. The story of Urashima Tarō is well known across Japan and there is no child or adult who does not know the tale of the fisherman who rescued a turtle. In return for his kindness, the turtle assumed human form and took him under the sea, to the Dragon Palace, where he stayed three years, till he became homesick and wanted to go back to his village, but, upon his return, he learned that three hundred years had passed and his family was long dead. The story of Urashima first appeared in Tango Fudoki (713), then in Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan, 720) and, a few decades later, in 759, in Man'yōshū (Collection of the ten thousand leaves), the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry. There is a "feminine" counterpart to this story, the legend of Happyaku Bikuni (The eight-hundred-year-old nun) about a quasi-immortal woman who wandered throughout Japan till she reached Wakasa/Obama, where she died at an age of eight hundred years. The woman had attained eternal youth after accidentally eating mermaid flesh. The two tales introduce different perspectives on immortality and eternal youth, but, interestingly enough, both are strongly connected with water, either by plunging to the bottom of the sea, into the Dragon Palace, or by eating the flesh of a marine creature. Even if the "immortality context" of Urashima Tarō and Happyaku Bikuni may differ--the fisherman's immortality is topological, related to the special attributes of a given space; the nun's immortality is circumstantial, rendered by a set of events that made her consume mermaid flesh--what unites the two characters is their "unintentionality." They neither asked for eternal youth nor pursued immortality as desperately as Gilgamesh or Ponce de Leon, but they were involuntarily pushed towards that outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article discusses kanashibari, the Japanese version of an experiential phenomenon better known in North America as the "Old Hag." A native of Japan, the author provides cultural background on kanashibari and investigates kanashibari personal experience narratives so as to demonstrate how Japanese individuals self-diagnose their experiences by referring to culturally prescribed explanations (both scientific and supernatural) for the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to introduce Japanese demonology. The paper focuses on the spirits known as yōkai, providing answers from the incredibly scarce publications in Polish covering issues related to Japanese demonology. The article examines the origin of the term yōkai and thedifferences in meaning between yōkai, mononoke and ayakashi. It goes on to explain the difference between yōkai and kami, as well as introducing a categorisation of spirits to explain how new yōkai are generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to clarify the emergence of Matsumoto Nobuhiro as an ethnologist in the period 1919-23. Matsumoto Nobuhiro (1897-1981) was an ethnologist who is known as a pioneer in Southeast Asian studies and the Japanese mythology in Japan. Previous researches have already pointed out the influence of Yanagita Kunio and of the French School of Sociology on Matsumoto's academic work from the late 1920s. However, they did not examine Matsumoto's research in the early 1920s when Matsumoto started studying ethnology. The clarification of the formation of Matsumoto's ethnology in this period can contribute to the understanding of emergence and formation of ethnology in Japan. Based on the analysis of Matsumoto's writing in the period 1919-23, this paper explains that Matsumoto became ethnologist because he joined the discussion on the human origins under influence of Evolutionism. It argues that he researched primitive culture of various peoples in order to clarify the origins of the Japanese and Chinese culture. Further, the paper shows that Matsumoto became ethnologist due to studying Western ethnology under the guidance of ethno-psychologist Kawai Teiichi and folklorist Yanagita Kunio, and it mentions also influence of Matsumoto's teachers of Chinese history on the formation of Matsumoto's ethnology. Therefore, the paper demonstrates that the Japanese ethnology emerged from the discussion on the human origins under influence of Evolutionism by importing Western ethnological theories in close relation with the Japanese folklore studies and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the 1976 undiagnosed disease and death of German student Anneliese Michel, the article considers the history of sleep paralysis in medical texts and popular culture. Topics considered include the definition for "nightmare" which appeared in the 1755 "Dictionary" by Samuel Johnson, the supernatural nature of the Japanese term for sleep paralysis "kanashibari," and the Japanese supernatural creature known as Yamachichi which attacks sleepers by stealing their breaths.

Takahata Isao's animated ilm Heisei tanuki gassen pompoko (Tanuki Battle of the Heisei Era, 1994) is a unique demonstration of the afinity between the supernatural aspects of folklore and animation itself. Featuring anthropomorphized animals that possess the uncanny powers attributed to them by folklore, Pompoko mobilizes the medium to display the animals' shape-shifting skills in their war against the humans who threaten their habitat. Pompoko's visual extrapolation of folk belief allows these animals to become more than a nostalgic reification of stable Japanese identity . By forcing drastic encounters between the realistic and the fantastic, Takahata's film questions whether the human anxieties embodied in fox and raccoon dog folklore are really a thing of the past. I argue that Pompoko, through the medium of anime, shows how folklore can become an effective ideological tool for questioning what it actually means to be a (post)modern Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terayama Shūji (1936-1983) is best known for his work with the experimental theater group Tenjo Sajiki. He was also a poet, photographer, essayist, filmmaker, and the author of a number critically neglected short stories that have been described as "genso dowa" --fantastic fairy tales. In addition to exploring Japanese folktales and legends, Terayama appropriated themes and motifs from the European fairy-tale canon. In 1979 he not only premiered his play "Aohigeko no shiro" (Duke Bluebeard' s Castle) but also published two collections of fairy tales. The first of these, "Boku ga okami datta koro: sakasama dowa shi" (When I Was a Wolf: Topsy-Turvy Fairy Tales), is a collection of classic fairy tales and other canonical works that he "tests" by taking them apart and, as the subtitle suggests, turning them inside out and upside down before reconstructing them in his own inimitable style. "Akazukin"-- translated here as "Red Riding Hood"--is taken from this collection and is the first of Terayama's topsy-turvy fairy tales to be translated into English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese countercultural icon Terayama Shuji produced three projects in the years 1961-1979 that rework the legend of Bluebeard, often intermixing the folkloric narrative with contemporary lived reality. This was a countervailing tendency to the tide of texts emerging at the time that demythologize Bluebeard by means of historical figures such as Gilles de Rais. Terayama' s work on Bluebeard might best be understood as an effort to frustrate the mapping of folklore and legend to practices of the past and to insist on the liberational potential of taking possession of narratives in the folkloric mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ōba Minako (1930-2007) was captivated by the imaginative world of the mukashibanashi (folktales) and otogi-banashi (fairy tales) of Japan and also by classical Western fairy tales, especially those by the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen. This lifelong fascination helped shape her writing, which often defies conventional categorization. To show how these classical tales and the modern world are seamlessly woven together in Ōba's consciousness as a feminist sociocultural raconteur, I begin by examining her subversive retelling of Japan's oldest literary fairy tale, "Taketori monogatari" (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter), before focusing on one of her most thought-provoking modern fairy tales: "Yamauba no bisho" (The Smile of a Mountain Witch). In this allegorical tale the eponymous yamauba (mountain witch) is transported into a modern patriarchal society with all its inherent trials and tribulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I attend to the particular social and revelatory functions that the folkloric has been made to perform in the Japanese tradition. Reaching deep into literary history, I examine the gazetteer (fudoki) and the explanatory tale (setsuwa) as two crucial premodern sites of collection, examining the ways that folkloric texts are embedded in their surrounding literary projects, before turning to a consideration of contemporary women's fiction. I investigate folklore, not in terms of typology or motif, but rather as a shared cultural reference that can be adjusted, embroidered upon, altered radically, or changed subtly as an act of cultural intervention. This reframing of folklore sheds light on the exigency of tales about sex with nonhumans in contemporary feminist fiction, where encounters with the anomalous reveal the consistent, persistent, but generally unseen or invisible workings of a gendered, and sexually violent, world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I begin this discussion of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" in Japan with a brief history of some Japanese mermaid stories, including the introduction of Andersen's famous literary fairy tale in 1904. I then focus on one contemporary transformation of the tale written by Ogawa Yōko in response to illustrations by Higami Kumiko: "Ningyo hoseki shokunin no isshō" (The Life of a Mermaid's Jeweler, 2006). After analyzing Ogawa's exploration of gender roles, voice/voicelessness and unreliability, and her images of loss of self through death, dissolution, and disappearance, I suggest some of the ways in which these elements may relate to the pleasures of reading fairy-tale transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Namahage is a Japanese New Year's Eve ritual in which masked demon-deity figures enter private households to chase and frighten children. The first half of this article situates Namahage within the historical and theoretical context of Japanese folkloristics, and discusses strategies employed by the community to adapt the tradition for tourism. The second half further explores the role of tourism, particularly by invoking the notion of the "uninvited guest" and the process by which private ritual transforms into public performance. It is argued that one way to understand heritage tourism is to shift questions of "authenticity"from the object of tourism to the embodied subject of the visitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of scholarly discourse on shikigami reveals diverse understandings of what this thaumaturgical emblem of Onmyōdō (way of yin and yang) represents. From a metaphorical reference to shikisen (an augury using astrological calculations and an augury instrument called shikiban), to a type of magical curse, to a supernatural being, the various explanations offered by Japanese scholars highlight the ambivalent nature of shikigami and demonstrate the difficulties in establishing the exact nature of this enigmatic being. Although such variations in definition are a result of changing textual constructions of shikigami in Japanese classical literature, literary narratives still function as a useful source of social and cultural studies of early Japanese society. Through my study of shikigami, I seek to highlight the significance of Onmyōdō in Japanese religiosity and provoke further studies in Japanese folklore beliefs while examining the use of literary narratives in religious studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The main purpose of this chapter is to discuss cultural norms in the process of handing down traditional folk music. In doing so, I focus on learning what successors of the tradition think about the orthodoxy of their music and what they think is the ideal way to pass down cultural heritage. In addition, considering that cultural norms are socially constructed in the moment, it should be also examined what leads people to have such notions. Design/methodology/approach -- To achieve these purposes, I look at practices of handing down traditional folk music in Japan, developing five case studies of various ohayashi. I also analyze yosakoi, which is modernly arranged local folk music that is widely spread across the country in the form of community festivals. Findings -- The successors of traditions tend to consider tracing the roots of their music as an obligation. On the other hand, in the case of music with no exact origin, its successors seek to find their identities by learning lessons from local anonymous ancestors. Meanwhile, there are people who consider its economic value as a raison d'être for traditional music. Originality/value -- What gives originality to this chapter is that I adopt an approach, employing regional and urban sociology methods, of comparing the characteristics of the regions in which local folk music is based. Along with perspectives on macro social changes and the principle of music group formation, I also discuss the transformation of expertise in folk culture associated with the rise of institutional reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Greek mythology, the chimera was a monstrous creature, composed of the parts of multiple animals. Later, the name has come to be applied to any fantastic or horrible creation of the imagination, and also to a hybrid plant of mixed characteristics. In addition, the Japanese folklore has also produced examples of such an imaginative hybridization, such as Nue, Baku, Raiju. Nue is a legendary creature with the head of a monkey, the body of a raccoon dog, the legs of a tiger, and a snake like tail. It was killed by Minamoto no Yorimasa as the monster was draining the emperor out of energy, causing him a terrible illness. Baku is a spirit who devours dreams and is sometimes depicted as a supernatural being with an elephant's trunk, rhinoceros eyes, an ox tail, and tiger paws. In China it was believed that sleeping on a Baku pelt could protect a person from pestilence and its image was a powerful talisman against the evil. Raiju (lit. "the thunder animal") was a legendary creature whose body looked like a cat, a raccoon dog, monkey or weasel. Raiju appeared whenever a thunder struck, scratching the ground with animal like claws. The above mentioned examples indicate that monsters are not mere just metaphors of beastliness. Their veneration as well as rejection form the very the image of the numinous stark dualism: mysterium tremendum et fascinans ("fearful and fascinating mystery") - as coined by Rudolf Otto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a cycle of legends popular in Japan from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Featuring a deadly confrontation between a tanuki ("raccoon dog") and a steam train, these narratives enact a conflict between a traditional animal of Japanese folk belief and a new technology that was rapidly transforming the countryside; they articulate anxiety about, and resistance to, the burgeoning infrastructure of modernity and the changes it would bring to the natural and cultural environments. Furthermore, as narratives of haunting, in which restless memories of the past disturb the easy flow of the present, these tales allow us to productively consider the relationship between time and place while also gesturing to the way tales of haunting can assume not only an affective quality, but political and ideological shades as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the resurgence of themes and products from the mid-1950s, known in Japan as the Showa 30s, in Japanese popular culture. Particular focus is given to Kadogami (Hearth Deity) masks in Japan's Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. According to the author, many modern Japanese people are attracted to ideas and values associated with the masks, including genuineness and community, which they perceive as missing in their own lives. Details related to economic and political conditions in Japan and their effects on multiple generations of Japanese people are presented. Other topics include nostalgia, social norms, and Japanese folklore.

This study will examine what creates the appeal of Japanese animal-wife tales. To reach this end, this study undertakes two parallel tasks. One is to understand what characterizes these tales in terms of gender-specific behaviour of the two tale figures, an animal woman (i.e., an animal in human female form) and a human male. The other is to delve into the motivation of that gender-specific behaviour, and to understand how these tales revolve around the symbolic inversion of social codes concerning normative connubial manners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined one of the seven famous Japanese laughter festivals called the Mountain Goddess Festival. A comparative analysis of an old narrative for an origin of the festival with that of a modern one has revealed a continuing folk belief in the local deity’s guardian role in the community. The result of an on-site anthropological field research demonstrated that the tradition of the laughter festival has been reinvented by adding new elements for its continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the "Nue" episode of "Heike monogatari," a Kakuichi-bon. The "Nue" episode, a eulogistic piece, is said to commemorate the Minamoto warrior Yorimasa, who is said to embody "poetic and military skills." The episode is also said to describe two events that marked Yorimasa's life, which culminate in two subjugations of a creature called a nue. It notes how the episode depicts Yorimasa's skills with ambivalence, and shows that the monster nue is in fact a mirror image of Yorimasa as a poet and a warrior.

The article examines an urban legend derived from Japan, which is about a woman who would wear a surgical mask and scare children by revealing her mouth that was slit from ear-to-ear. The mythic woman was refered to as kuchi-sake-onna, which literally translated means mouth (kuchi) slit/spit (sake) women (onna), or Slit-Mouthed Woman. The article explains that the origins of the Slit-Mouthed Woman are hard to determine, but the reports of her appearing in areas of Japan began in the late 1970s. A brief historical overview of the Slit-Mouthed Woman is presented. The article also looks at the feminist implications of the Slit-Mouthed Woman, and how she was depicted by the mass media and the general public.

This article explores the use of literature as a source of historical and ethnographic data. It focuses on the writer Ema Shū and his massive historical novel Yama no tami, or "The Mountain Folk." The novel describes a peasant rebellion that engulfed the remote Hida region in 1869, just as Japan began to modernize. Ema first conceived the novel during the increasing militarism of the 1930s, and was himself subjected to police surveillance for his political activities. In response, he recreated himself as a folklorist, combing the mountain villages of Hida for ethnographic data. This allowed him to interview older residents about their experiences during the rebellion, which he then incorporated directly into his narrative. Through a presentation and analysis of several key excerpts, I will demonstrate that Ema's novel, though fictionalized, is nevertheless essential in recovering the lives and experiences of a remote mountain people and understanding their resistance to modernization reforms. I will also argue that Ema intended his novel not merely as an exercise in evoking the past, but as a veiled expression of dissent against the militarist Japanese government of his own era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japanese visual and textual sources are replete with images and descriptions of Kumano bikuni, the itinerant and seemingly ubiquitous proselytizer nuns known for preaching upon elaborate paintings of heavens and hells at crossroads, bridges, and other public spaces in early Edo-period Japan. Although the women's painted props survive, their stories do not. In this article. I seek to explore the likely contents of Kumano bikuni's preaching upon (non-human) animals and the animal realm by examining seemingly related stories employed in a variety of Japanese proselytizing traditions in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including didactic accounts preserved in sutra commentaries, works of popular Buddhist fiction, and one "official" temple history. By extrapolating tales and ideas from these near-contemporaneous textual sources, I attempt to reconstruct some broad aspects of the lost sermon stories of Kumano bikuni, as well as to illuminate some traditional late medieval) Japanese beliefs concerning animals and human animal relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of Western colonial expansion in Asia, the Meiji government of Japan (1868–1912) began a massive push toward bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment). This campaign was not limited to the political sphere but extended into the cultural realm, resulting in growing public interest in all things Western. Despite this sea change in Japanese cultural orientation, however, there was a constant literary undercurrent of nativism and a recurrent interest in folk practices and oral traditions as well as in the Japanese countryside, rather than the developing cityscape. Focusing on the work of ethnographer Yanagita Kunio and his impact on the Meiji literary climate and particularly on the work of Izumi Kyōka, this article will suggest some of the ways in which Japanese authors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mined the folklore and rural customs of Japan's past in order to express their fear, excitement, and ambivalence about life in the modern age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of Shuten Dōoji is one of Japan's most famous oni (demon/ogre) legends. By imperial command, the warrior-hero Minamoto no Raikō (948-1021) and his men conquer the cannibalistic demons, Shuten Dōji and his diabolical cohorts, who have abducted and eaten young maidens from in and around the capital. "Shuten dōji" belongs to a literary genre called otogi zōshi or "companion tales," short stories written from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries for the purpose of entertainment and moral/religious edification. Despite the legend's longevity, popularity, and literary significance, to date, there has only been one English translation of the otogi zōshi "Shuten dōji" Rendered more than one century ago, that translation was intended for young readers and is much abbreviated. The present translation is the first full-length annotated translation of the otogi zōshi "Shuten dōji." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the concept of kotodama, the Japanese folk belief that a soul dwelling in words has the supernatural power to make an idea in the human brain come true by verbalizing it. Historical review of kotodama; Role of the kotodama belief in communication activities; Problems brought about by the belief.

Presents a tribute to the late Japanese folklore scholar Miyata Noboru. Childhood in Yokohama; Impact of Noboru's death on folklorists; Books written; Reflection of his longing for worlds of the strange in his research, titled `The common people and religion'; Two consistent features that characterize Miyata.