〈口語訳〉遠野物語 [Tōno monogatari: kōgoyaku]

by Kunio Yanagita, 柳田 國男

岩手県の遠野地方に語り伝えられてきた里の神、山の神、ザシキワラシ、オシラサマ、山男、山女、かっぱ、天狗などのはなしを美しく簡潔な文語文でつづり、日本民俗学発祥の記念塔となった名著をわかりやすい口語文でよむ。

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature, Folklore, Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Mythology

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Yanagita was a scholar, writer and native Japanese folklorist.

Kunio YANAGITA 柳田国男 (not to be confused with Kunio YANAGIDA 柳田 邦夫).

Reviews

[Flor C. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Si están en la búsqueda de saber un poco más sobre la cultura de Japón no pierdan su tiempo (ni su dinero) con este libro.

Mi sobrina de cuatro años puede contar de manera más coherente y entretenida una historia.

Puedo agrupar en los dedos de una mano la cantidad de relatos que me gustaron entre los más de 100 existentes!

Una decepción total, creo que ahora sé mucho menos sobre mitología japonesa de lo que conocía antes de leer "Mitos populares".

Me siento estafada y estoy muy molesta.

[Alexander Páez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reseña en el blog: http://dondeterminaelinfinito.blogspo...

La editorial Quaterni ha publicado este año una de las obras de cultura japonesa, antropológicamente hablando que más ganas tenía de leer. De hecho, tenía miradas varias ediciones en inglés. Tôno Monogatari es una de las obras clave del siglo XX para conocer la etnología japonesa. En este caso la edición es una impresionante traducción directamente del japonés por la profesora Mariló Rodriguez del Alisal. Junto a unas breves notas introductorias sobre la pronunciación, la presentación de la novela y unos agradecimientos, encontramos una biografía resumida pero muy completa sobre Yanagita Kunio y la región de Tôno que contiene diez poblaciones: Tsuchibuchi, Tsukumoushi, Matsuzaki, Aozasa, Kamigo, Otomo, Ayaori, Masuzawa, Miyamori y Tassobe; las cuales es necesario recordar o por lo menos revisar durante la lectura; donde el autor investigó para realizar sus estudios. A partir de la página 41 ya podemos empezar a leer el trabajo propiamente dicho de Yanagita Kunio...

Si quieres seguir leyendo la reseña, pincha en el link de arriba

[Pipat Methavanitpong · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is not good for leisure reading. It contains many short stories which may relate or not relate to next stories. It is hard to grasp an idea of what is going on with read stories. You will get nothing from this book.

The thing is there is no story going on. There is neither protagonist nor villain. Stories in this book are comparable to campfire stories that may be passed through generations or just happen at the time of narrating.

My Japanese teacher said this book is valuable to Japanese. As the time of writing, Japanese didn't know what is Japanese. Japan was in confusion of its identity as influences from foreign flooding in. So, the author wanted to remind Japanese people about traditional Japanese wisdom. The importance of this book is the context of the book itself.

[Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 2015, I visited the rural Japanese town of Tono in Iwate prefecture, excited to see the place known as the “City of Folklore.” Nestled into a fertile valley surrounded by forest covered mountains, local attractions in Tono include a kappa brook (home of the “mischievous water spirits,” kappa, and Unedori-Sama, the matchmaking Shinto shrine, among other well preserved vestiges of Japanese preindustrial culture. This was the landscape that inspired scholar Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962), who collected the folk legends of the region at the turn of the twentieth century.

Visiting the town after befriending Kizen Sasaki, a local who had moved to Tokyo, Kunio was fascinated by the stories Sasaki shared from his hometown, and was sparked to explore Tono and collect these tales. The book he published in 1910, Tono-Monogatari (Legends of Tono), became one of the cornerstones of Japanese folklore studies. A slim, fascinating treatise, the Legends of Tono consists of some 119 short vignettes recording tales and stories of the Tono region, as told to Kunio by Kizen. Both eerie and oddly prosaic, the tales reflect the everyday life and concerns of the people of this remote place, both their fears and their desires. Nature, farming, religion, all are dealt with in these stories. Including legends of the kappa, the tengu, snow women, and other supernatural entities, other tales discuss local landmarks and eccentric townspeople.

Throughout the legends, certain elements seem evident and rather disturbing to the modern reader, including a deep suspicion and fear of outsiders- encountering any stranger on the roads or woods outside of the little villages of the Tono valley evokes great fear from the townspeople. Others are more classic folkloric motifs, such as a hunter hearing a premonition of a family tragedy back home. Among the most interesting legends in the book were explanations of local traditions still practiced and evident in Tono, such as the tale of Oshira-sama. A tragic tale of a girl who fell in love with a horse, until her father killed it and hung it from a tree, Oshira-sama became a kami still honored in Tono. Shrines to Oshira-sama can be still seen in the traditional "magariya" farmhouses. Read more about this and other books I read inspired by my trip to Japan at my blog, Reading Rainstorm.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an interesting read. Some of the stories are outright bizarre. Others are a bit dull. But more than a few are humorous and invite a chuckle when they end abruptly, often with a deadpan remark that something awful happened to some unfortunate character.

Taken together, these stories help to create an image of what life was like hundreds of years ago in the old villages of Tono, and how the various mythologies were intertwined with the very geography of the land. I look forward to reading the follow-up book "Folk Legends from Tono".

[Alex Pler · Rating 3 out of 5]

En la región de Tōno abundan las leyendas sobre kappas, tengus, zorros y otros yokais. Kunio Yanagita fue el primer autor que recopiló esas historias orales. La credulidad que desprenden es parte de su encanto. Tengo ganas de visitar la zona y creer en todos esos espíritus 👺

[Brittany · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all I read this book in English, not Japanese. My Japanese isn't that good. But I wish it was so I could have read it in Japanese, because the translated version must have lost some of the meaning. A lot of the stories were boring, or just ended. For example: "She was never heard from again...." There were a few stories that were good, but I expected more. I bought this book beacuse I visited Tono and really liked the place and its folklore, but the book just didn't live up to my expectaions. *sigh*

[S. Kallahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good resource. Sense of proximity between the tales and place, making these stories disturbing. Less didactic than fables, more about the relationship between story and place and experience.

I wish editors, translators, etc. would stop making reference to the Grimm Brothers as comparison. Do they do this with folk tales out of other regions? Yes, okay, we understand there is a universal desire to tell stories to make sense of experience... but that's about where the resemblance ends.

[Motheaten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edition read: "Japanese Folk Tales: a Revised Edition" translated by Fanny Hagin Mayer.
The Japanese folk tales emerged during the Edo period, featuring animal spirits and the yokai (supernatural being), yamauba; an old crone with long hair and tattered kimono. Some of the folk tales read like a moral story.

[Mauri · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd book. A series of brief stories that took place (supposedly)in Tono, Iwate Prefecture. Some of them are clearly supernatural, whereas others are "merely" spectacular encounters with the animals of the forest. The spookiest ones were those that could have been the work of psychopathic human beings, no mountain demons required.

[Manecita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relatos interesantes , pero es importante señalar que la lectura la presentación ,dedicatorias y varios es importante realizarla para entender el contexto e importancia de este autor en Japón

[José Luis Valenciano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962), no fue la primera persona interesada en el folclore japonés, pero sí la primera que, de un modo más metódico e innovador e influido por folcloristas europeos como los hermanos Grimm, comenzó a recoger las historias de la tradición oral japonesa, que corrían riesgo de desaparecer para siempre en la era Meiji. Su mérito consistió además en lograr convencer y animar a otros para que hicieran lo mismo, en un momento en que este tipo de historias eran viatas como una rémora del pasado de la que había que librarse para abrazar el ideal de civilización ilustrada.
Estudió derecho y trabajó para el Ministerio de Agricultura, lo que le permitió viajar mucho y acercarse a la población local de zonas remotas. Su objetivo era también mejorar las condiciones de vida de la población rural y escribió informes y trabajos que se oponían al modelo dominante de desarrollo económico de su época.
El libro, "Leyendas de Tono", recoge múltiples historias de yokai (espíritus y seres sobrenaturales como los kappa) y aparecidos de la pequeña aldea de Tono, en la actual prefectura de Iwate, situado en la región de Tohoku, al norte de la isla de Honshu. Contadas con sencillez y sin artificios, no por ello dejan de causar una honda impresión, pues no se encuentran edulcoradas ni dulcificadas, al igual que los cuentos de los hermanos Grimm en su primera edición.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see why this work would be relevant for Japanese folklore studies, but ... Omg ... SO boring. I was expecting exciting legends similar to the Grimm Tales, and instead got shocking plot twists such as:

*Massive Spoiler!*

"A guy was shooting at a deer. The deer didn't move. Upon closer inspection, the deer turned out to be a big rock". (You can't see me facepalming, but I am).

Really enjoyed the intro though.

[Alexander Kegels · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decided to read this based on a top 10 Japanese books list in preparation for my trip there later this year.

Would not recommend to others unless they are specifically looking for short (very short) “legends”. I was expecting slightly more elaborate stories opposed to the 5-20 sentence long tales present in this book.

Despite this the book did provide some insight into Japanse folklore and this was ultimately my intended purpose for reading.

[Ericka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a series of newspaper article-like entries of the strange and sometimes frightening things that happened in Tono. It gives you an interesting insight into the culture of this part of Japan.

[Cassandra Castillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un libro bastante interesante si te gusta la historia y cultura Japonesa. De lo contrario aléjate de él, no es un libro de terror. Adicional te explican el contexto social del autor y su importancia.

[Lovely Fortune · Rating 3 out of 5]

For my film class on Japanese monster mythology/folklore.

This is a quick detailing of the various legends in a Japanese mountain town. Fun for those who are interested in Japan and the country's history.

[Sixwing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what it says on the cover: a collection of legends from Tono, Japan. Short, enjoyable, and occasionally baffling.

[Artak Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una ligera introducción sobre el Japón rural y una colección de historias. Agradable.

[Yates Buckley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting historical record of stories and local folklore of a small remote Japanese town.

[Geert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overrated and too expensive for what it is. In the overview of the editions, I see between 120 and 330 pages. My book has...83 pages. A bad joke to say the least, and someone is pocketing here in a cheap way, and it's not the original author who died 60 years ago.

Still, the stories are not bad but very rough, and very short. The photographs are of a terrible quality.

[Ally Yang]

【7 July 2022 / 博客來 / 117】

[Amy Chavez · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for the content, 4 stars for the translation, which was difficult to understand at times.

[Lucía Colomo · Rating 3 out of 5]

No es lo que me esperaba, de ahí la puntuación.
Pero está bien para curiosear sobre el folklore japonés.

[JdiegoDelgado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a conventional read, but an interesting one. Bunch of short stories that are not related from each other, but gathered from different parts of Japan.

[Gómez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Folklore japonés por el que no sería raro que otras culturas se sintieran celosas.

[Ad · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is almost 100 years ago that Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) wrote his famous "Legends of Tono" (Tono Monogatari) and to celebrate this the 1975 translation by Ronald A. Morse has now been republished in a beautiful expanded version. It is an excellent translation that captures the terseness and realism of the original. In addition, there are several introductions: a new one by the translator, and previous ones by him and Richard Dorson about the author, the book and its significance. There is also an extensive new bibliography and the text has been enhanced with some well-chosen photographs.

Yanagita Kunio was one of those privileged persons who married a well-to-do partner and could spend most of his life dabbling in his hobbies: literature and (increasingly as a real vocation) folklore studies. The early (1910) Legends of Tono stands on the borderline of these two activities: it is excellent literature but also a precious record of peasant life in the rural Tono area in Tohoku (Iwate prefecture).

I would not in the first place call it legends, though - as Dorson says in his introduction, many of the 119 short pieces are rather "memorates," i.e. "remarkable and extraordinary experiences told in the first person." Although two fairy tales have been included as well, many of the records are not even stories, but flimsy pieces of things heard or seen. That makes the book all the more interesting as a real account of the world of Tono - both things seen and unseen... much space is taken up by the fear for the supernatural.

We find the mountain god and deities who guard the home, such as oshira-sama; goblin's like kappa and tengu; weird behavior by monkeys and wolves; cases of kamikakushi, strange disappearances of people; and the superstition that whoever gets rich, the choja, must have had supernatural assistance. But there is also a story of a son who murdered his mother, a real and shocking happening.

We also can see Yanagita's fascination with mountain folk religion start in this book. The "memorates" were told to Yanagita by Sakai Kizen, a young native of Tono whom he met in Tokyo. Subsequently, Yanagita also visited the area, riding on horseback through the villages.

Countless memorates like the above must have existed, but they have been wiped out with the brains that contained them. Thanks to the record Yanagita Kunio so carefully took only those about this small northern group of villages and market town of Tono have survived. It is no surprise that Legends of Tono is by far the most popular among the hundreds of scholarly books Yanagita wrote. The town of Tono now lives off these legends - it has based its tourist industry on them.

[Inkeri · Rating 1 out of 5]

These are not legends. "Man sees a monkey" is not legend. "Old man feeds foxes" is a nice story but also not a legend. Terribly family tragedies are not legends, and possibly would be better forgotten. If you are collecting legends, don't just write down everything one man tells you in a bar.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yanagito Kunio assembled this excellent collection of legends from northeastern Japan in the first decade of the 20th century. Yanagita was influenced by the Grimm brothers, but in only a few cases does he collect "tales," in the manner they did. Except for the occasional historical setting, these are brief accounts of supernatural encounters that have happened within the memory of those speaking with the author. Of course, it could be that if he had been then 50 years earlier, he would have heard the same stories repeated by a different group of respondents also claiming first or secondhand knowledge.

The abductions of women and children by mountain men, uncanny encounters with kami, the spirits of the mountains, divination and folk rituals all figure into the accounts that are seldom more than a paragraph long. It's the straightforward, matter-of-factness of the renditions that give them their cumulative power. They are for the most part simply curious rather than scary, although I would hate to run into the red-faced man who can stand pressed against the wall directly about the front door of your house. Yikes!

[Dominique Lamssies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone wanting to read this book needs to know a little about the history. It was written by Kunio Yanagita, the father of Japanese folklore studies. This is his seminal work, but it can be confusing for people because it's essentially an outline. Yanagita went through the Tono area (northern Honshu) and collected the oral traditions of the area. He wrote down the basics of what he heard, and some people believe he was actually going to come back later and write a longer version, but in 1910, he just published this book. So many of the stories are just one or two paragraphs long and are just statements of fact. These stories are field notes and were not meant to be entertaining.

Since it's publication, the stories have become intrisic to Japanese culture. The famous Manga artist Mizuki Shigeru (creator of Ge-Ge-Ge-No Kitarou) has used several of the stories for his prints.

Recommended for lovers of Japanese folklore.