Kunio Yanagita

Kunio Yanagita
柳田 國男
Kunio Yanagita, circa 1940
Born
Kunio Matsuoka

(1875-07-31)July 31, 1875
DiedAugust 8, 1962(1962-08-08) (aged 87)
Tokyo, Japan
NationalityJapanese
Occupation(s)Bureaucrat, Folklorist, Scholar, Writer
Known forTōno Monogatari (遠野物語)
Momotarō no Tanjō (桃太郎の誕生)
Nihon mukashibanashi meii ("Japanese Folk Tales")
SpouseTaka Yanagita (1904)
ParentYakusai Matsuoka (father) Naohei Yanagita (father-in-law)
Japanese name
Kyūjitai栁田 國男
Shinjitai柳田 国男
Transcriptions
RomanizationYanagita Kunio

Kunio Yanagita (Japanese: 柳田 國男, Hepburn: Yanagita Kunio, July 31, 1875 – August 8, 1962) was a Japanese author, scholar, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a change in his career. His pursuit of this led to his eventual establishment of Japanese native folkloristics, or minzokugaku, as an academic field in Japan. As a result, he is often considered to be the father of modern Japanese folklore studies.[1]

  1. ^ Mori, Koichi (1980). Yanagita Kunio: An Interpretive Study. Nanzan University: Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.