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Japanese folklore encompasses the informally learned folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people as expressed in its oral traditions, customs, and material culture.
In Japanese, the term minkan denshō (民間伝承, "transmissions among the folk") is used to describe folklore. The academic study of folklore is known as minzokugaku (民俗学). Folklorists also employ the term minzoku shiryō (民俗資料) or "folklore material" (民俗資料) to refer to the objects and arts they study.
Men dressed as namahage, wearing ogre-like masks and traditional straw capes ( mino ) make rounds of homes, [1] in an annual ritual of the Oga Peninsula area of the Northeast region. These ogre-men masquerade as kami looking to instill fear in the children who are lazily idling around the fire. This is a particularly colorful example of folk practice still kept alive.
A parallel custom is the secretive Akamata-Kuromata [ ja ] ritual of the Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa which does not allow itself to be photographed. [2] [3]
Many, though increasingly fewer households maintain a kamidana or a small Shinto altar shelf. [4] The Shinto version of the kitchen god is the Kamado kami ( かまど神 ), and the syncretic Buddhist version is the Kōjin, a deity of the hearth enshrined in the kitchen.
Japanese popular cults or kō ( 講 ) [5] are sometimes devoted to particular deities and buddhas, e.g. the angry Fudō Myōō or the healer Yakushi Nyorai. But many cults centered around paying respects to sacred sites such as the Ise Shrine (Ise-kō or okage-mairi [ ja ]) or Mount Fuji ( Fuji-kō [ ja ], by which many local mock-Fuji shrines have been erected). Pilgrimage to these meccas declined after the Edo period. But recently, the Shikoku Pilgrimage of the eighty-eight temple sites (commonly known as ohenro-san) has become fashionable. Popular media and cottage industries now extoll a number of shrines and sacred natural sites as power spots [ ja ].
There is a long list of practices performed to ward evil (yakuyoke (厄除け)) [6] or expel evil (yakubarai, oharai ( yaku-barai [ ja ])), e.g. sounding the drums. [6] In some areas it is common to place a small mound of salt outside the house ( morijio [ ja ]). [7] [8] Salt-scattering is generally considered purifying [7] (it is employed in sumo tournaments, [7] to give a well-known example). A stock routine in period or even contemporary drama involves a master of the house telling his wife to scatter salt after an undesirable visitor has just left. Contrarily, lighting sparks with flint just as a someone is leaving the house was considered lucky.
No one now engages in the silent vigil required by the Kōshin cult, but it might be noted that this cult has been associated with the iconic three See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys. [9]
There are certain vestiges of geomancy introduced into Japan from China through Onmyōdō. The word kimon [ ja ], "ogre's gate", colloquially refers to anything that a person may have constant ill luck with, but in the original sense designates the northeasterly direction, considered to be unlucky or dangerously inviting of ill-intended spirits [9] (cf. Konjin). There is also a Japanese version of Feng Shui known as kasō [ ja ] [10] or literally "house physiognomy". Closely connected is the Yin-yang path or Onmyōdō, and its concepts such as katatagae [ "direction changing" ] also known as kataimi, [11] which was widely practiced by nobles in the Heian period. A widely known taboo ( kitamakura [ ja ]) advises against sleeping with your head faced north, [12] though it is doubtful if anyone now seriously heeds this prohibition. [12]
In Japanese folklore, pheasants were considered messengers from heaven. However, researchers from Japan's Graduate University for Advanced Studies and National Institute of Polar Research claimed in March 2020 that red pheasant tails witnessed across the night sky over Japan in 620 A.D., might be a red aurora produced during a magnetic storm. [13]
As in most developed nations, it is increasingly difficult to find living storytellers of oral tradition. But there is a wealth of folktales collected through the ages. The name mukashi-banashi (tales of "long ago" or from "bygone times") has been applied to the common folktale, since they typically open with the formula "Mukashi..." [14] (akin to "Once upon a time..."). They also close with some set phrase like "dotto harai" [14] (a variant form being Dondo Hare).
These tales had been told in their local dialects, which may be difficult to understand to outsiders, both because of intonation and pronunciation differences, conjugations, and vocabulary. Many folktales collected from the field are actually "translations" into standard Japanese (or more like adaptations, merging several collected versions).
Classic folktales such as Momotarō , which most Japanese today are familiarized through pictured children's storybooks, manga, or other popularizations, can be traced to picture-books printed in the Edo period, though their prototypical stories may go back much further. The versions retold by children's story author Sazanami Iwaya [ ja ] (1870–1933) [15] had a strong hand in establishing the forms usually known today.
Two creatures are particularly known for their abilities to transform into humans or other beings and objects, the kitsune (fox) and tanuki (the Japanese raccoon dog; pictured). They occur frequently in folktales of humorous nature, such as the tanuki, Bunbuku Chagama, who could shapeshift into a teapot.
Marriages between humans and non-humans (irui konin tan ( 異類婚姻譚 , "tales of heterotype marriages")) comprise a major category or motif in Japanese folklore. Japanese heterotype examples such as the crane story describes a sustained period of married life between the interspecies couple, in contrast to Western examples like Frog Prince or the Leda myth where the supernatural encounter is brief. An unusual pairing occurs in the story of the Hamaguri nyōbo [ ja ] (蛤女房, "clam wife"), which exist in both a politer written version ( otogi-zōshi ) and in a more rustic and vulgar oral tale. The gender is reversed in the tale of Tanishi chōja [ ja ] where a bride is wedded to a tiny tanishi (river snail).
A number of folktales were adapted for stage performance by playwright Junji Kinoshita, notably Yūzuru ( Twilight Crane , 1949), [16] based on the folktale Tsuru no Ongaeshi or "a crane who repaid its gratitude".
A great deal of interest currently gravitates towards Japanese monsters taken from traditional Japanese sources. Some of the yōkai or strange beings are the stuff of folklore, orally transmitted and propagated among the populace. But one must realize that many beings or stories about them were spun and deliberately invented by professional writers during the Edo Period and earlier, and they are not folkloric in the strict sense.
Some well-known craft objects such as netsuke, raccoon dog earthenware (Shigaraki ware), may be classed as traditional Japanese crafts.
A number of articles of daily household use (mingu (民具)), amassed by Keizo Shibusawa, became the Attic Museum collection, now mostly housed in the National Museum of Ethnology in Suita, Osaka. The Mingei movement spearheaded by Yanagi Sōetsu sought to appreciate folk craft from an aesthetic viewpoint.
Some of the articles below are essential for understanding traditional Japanese culture. The type of material used is also part of folklore.
A fairy tale is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, pixies, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, magic, and enchantments.
Japanese folktales are an important cultural aspect of Japan. In commonplace usage, they signify a certain set of well-known classic tales, with a vague distinction of whether they fit the rigorous definition of "folktale" or not among various types of folklore. The admixed impostors are literate written pieces, dating back to the Muromachi period or even earlier times in the Middle Ages. These would not normally qualify for the English description "folktales".
In Japanese folklore, kitsune are foxes that possess paranormal abilities that increase as they get older and wiser. According to folklore, the kitsune-foxes can bewitch people, just like the tanuki they have the ability to shapeshift into human or other forms, and to trick or fool human beings. While some folktales speak of kitsune employing this ability to trick others—as foxes in folklore often do—other stories portray them as faithful guardians, friends, and lovers.
Yōkai are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. The kanji representation of the word yōkai comprises two characters that both mean "suspicious, doubtful", and while the Japanese name is simply the Japanese transliteration or pronunciation of the Chinese term yaoguai, some Japanese commentators argue that the word yōkai has taken on multiple different meanings particular to a Japanese context, including referring to a large number of uniquely Japanese creatures.
A kappa—also known as kawatarō, komahiki, with a boss called kawatora or suiko—is a reptiloid kami with similarities to yōkai found in traditional Japanese folklore. Kappa can become harmful when they are not respected as gods. They are typically depicted as green, human-like beings with webbed hands and feet and turtle-like carapaces on their backs. A depression on its head, called its "dish" (sara), retains water, and if this is damaged or its liquid is lost, the kappa is severely weakened.
Momotarō is a popular hero of Japanese folklore. His name is often translated as Peach Boy, but is directly translated as Peach + Tarō, a common Japanese given name. Momotarō is also the title of various books, films and other works that portray the tale of this hero.
Ikiryō, also known as shōryō (しょうりょう), seirei (せいれい), or ikisudama (いきすだま), is a disembodied spirit or ghost in Japanese popular belief and fiction that leaves the body of a living person and subsequently haunts other people or places, sometimes across great distances. The term(s) are used in contrast to shiryō, which refers to the spirit of those who are already deceased.
The Namahage are demonlike beings portrayed by men wearing hefty oni (ogre) masks and traditional straw capes (mino) during a New Year's ritual, in local northern Japanese folklore of the Oga Peninsula area of Akita Prefecture.
Inugami, like kitsunetsuki, is a spiritual possession by the spirit of a dog, widely known about in western Japan. They seemed firmly rooted until recent years in eastern Ōita Prefecture, Shimane Prefecture, and a part of Kōchi Prefecture in northern Shikoku, and it is also theorized that Shikoku, where no foxes (kitsune) could be found, is the main base of the inugami. Furthermore, traces of belief in inugami exists in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, all of Kyushu, even going past the Satsunan Islands all the way to the Okinawa Prefecture. In the Miyazaki Prefecture, the Kuma District, Kumamoto Prefecture, and Yakushima, the local dialect pronounces it "ingami" and in Tanegashima, they are called "irigami." It can also be written in kanji as 狗神.
Keigo Seki was a Japanese folklorist. He joined a group under Yanagita Kunio, but often came to different conclusions regarding the same folktales. Along with collecting and compiling folktales, Seki also arranged them into a series of categories.
Shippeitaro or Shippei Taro is the name of a helper dog in the Japanese fairy tale by the same name.
Kagura is a type of Shinto ritual ceremonial dance. The term is a contraction of the phrase kami no kura, indicating the presence of gods in the practice.
This is the glossary of Shinto, including major terms on the subject. Words followed by an asterisk (*) are illustrated by an image in one of the photo galleries.
Atmospheric ghost lights are lights that appear in the atmosphere without an obvious cause. Examples include the onibi, hitodama and will-o'-wisp. They are often seen in humid climates.
A mino (蓑) is a traditional Japanese raincoat made out of straw. Traditional mino are an article of outerwear covering the entire body, although shorter ones resembling grass skirts were also historically used to cover the lower body alone. Similar straw capes were also used in China, Vietnam and Korea.
Kanjo Nawa is a Japanese custom of stretching shimenawa, a variety of laid rope, with fetishes hung at the border of a village. Michi Kiri (道切り) is just a similar custom. The term Kanjo Nawa also refers to the rope itself.
Urikohime, Uriko-hime or Uriko Hime is a dark Japanese folktale about a girl that is born out of a melon, adopted by a family and replaced by a evil creature named Amanojaku.
Fujiko (富士講) is a Japanese religious group. One of the popular beliefs established in the Edo period, especially in the Kanto centered on Edo, with a lineage of Kakugyo. The term "Fujikō" is usually used to refer to the religious system and religious movement in general. The term is also sometimes used to refer to Mount Fuji and its divine spirits.
The Snail Son is a character that appears in Japanese folktales, as a type of enchanted husband that becomes disenchanted from his animal form and becomes a handsome man. Some tales are related to the cycle of Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband.
直接民衆の語る物語からではなく)巌谷小波が定型化し、それが国定 教科書によって広く普及されたそういう桃太郎の話