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

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. ( )