Kunio Yanagita

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After graduating with a degree in law from Tokyo Imperial University, Yanagita began a career as a civil servant, working for the Department of Agricultural Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, that would last for about 20 years. Over the course of his time in bureaucracy, duties, Yanagita he traveled around the countrysides of Honshū, the mainland of Japan. During these business trips, Yanagita became increasingly focused on the affairs of rural villages and their agricultural economic policy.

As time passed, Yanagita began growing increasingly critical of the lack of concern for local autonomy allowed by the policies favored by his fellow civil servants. He gradually began to advocate in support of these groups, pushing for a shift in agricultural focus to center around cooperatives of small farmers rather than wealthy landlords. It is believed that the pushback he received against his values and ideas may have contributed to his change in careers and shift toward folklore studies.

Yanagita’s departure from the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce allowed him the opportunity to further investigate rural Japan. He began in-depth analysis, traveling around to record stories of local customs, practices, and beliefs. It was at this point that his literary friends, including writer Shimazaki Toson, began encouraging him to publish works based on oral traditions and customs of rural villages. His most famous example of this is a book known as The Legends of Tōno (1912). It is a compilation of short stories, practices, beliefs, and anecdotes from Tōno, a small, rural community surrounded by mountains in Iwate.

From here, Yanagita’s work developed into the anthropological study of folklore that he is still known for today. He published many other works, including several with folklorist Kizen Sasaki, with whom he collaborated extensively.

Yanagita's focus on local traditions was part of a larger effort to insert the lives of commoners into narratives of Japanese history. He argued that historical narratives were typically dominated by events pertaining to rulers and high-ranking officials. Yanagita claimed that these narratives focused on elite-centered historical events and ignored the relative uneventfulness and repetition that characterized the lives of ordinary Japanese people across history. He emphasized the unique practices of different groups of common people, such as sanka or mountain dwellers, and island dwellers. He also focused primarily on what he saw as the three areas of folklore studies: material objects, oral transmission, and mental or emotional phenomenon. This third category, accessible only to those who share a deep understanding through similar experiences, is considered the main focus of folklore studies.

As a whole, Yanagita’s work is highly memorable and genre-defining. He is one of the premiere folklorists of Japan, and he helped to create the field of minzokugaku itself, earning him the title of “father of modern Japanese folklore.”

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