Japanese Folk Tale

xvi Translator's Notes
The arrangement of the folk tales was Yanagita's prerogative, of
course, but there is some criticism in Japanese circles about his dividing
the tales into only two main groups, "Folk Tales in Complete
Form" and "Derived Tales." A few think that "Stories about Destiny"
should be a separate group, and they are listed as such in many new
collections. The question still remains as to what, exactly, Yanagita
meant by "Derived Tales." In general, they are shorter and have fewer
episodes than stories in the first group. Stories about the origin of
animals may have been originally parts of a longer cycle. Yanagita
placed the titles of most humorous stories in parentheses because he
regarded them as closer to anecdotes than to folk tales in form.
A line placed to the right of titles which Yanagita considered to
be important is in the original Table of Contents. They come close in
number to the one hundred tales he mentions in "About Folk Tales."
The current volume does not mark each such title in the Table of
Contents, and I have thus set these titles in italics in the Alphabetical
List of Titles as well as the list of Japanese titles in the last part of
the volume. Other types are considered related to or close to the
titles near them, or to be traces of tales which may yet be found in
more complete form. This accounts for several tale-types which appear
to be duplications.
Yanagita did not number his tale-types, a necessary step for an
index, because he did not intend his work to be an index. He considered
it too soon to number tales, for he anticipated that new tale-types
would come to light. Cross-reference to the work of Yanagita is by
the title of a tale-type. I have numbered his tale-types to facilitate
cross-reference to the anthology of complete versions of them,
Ancient Tales in Modern Japan (Indiana Uni versi ty Press, 1985), which
is arranged according to the Guide. No significance beyond that should
be attached to the numbers in this translation. Students may feel more
comfortable with some sort of numbering, but Yanagita's judgment that
it was too soon to number Japanese folk tales appears to have been
sound in light of the several systems of numbers which have been
presented by Seki Keigo and Hiroko Ikeda.
Western students who do research in Japan experience many frustrations.
Information is not presented in the assertive style of academic
disciplines to which they are accustomed. Open-ended statements
which allow for uncertainty are the accepted way of presenting
studies in Japan. Japanese scholars have bowed only recently to the
Western ritual of footnotes. But foreign students learn to live with
circumstances in Japan and to work with them. The notes of Yanagita
presented in this work might be considered unique even in Japanese
reference material, but the work is nonetheless valid and outstandingly
useful. I have relied upon it for more than thirty years of research,
translation and writing in the field of the Japanese folk tale. The 3000
items drawn from 200 and more sources will be useful to any scholar.