164 - Folklore

【フォークロア、fookuroa】

[There is another term for folklore in Japan (民間伝承), the one here is the Japanese pronunciation of the English term, for this reason, its application can and will differ from how we use it. To differentiate between them, I'll put the English one in all caps. Forgive me if this entry is still confusing.]

The term was originally coined by William J. Thoms in England in the mid-19th century. In English, "FOLK" means "originated from the people" and "LORE" means "knowledge, traditions". In other words, "FOLKLORE" can be used today to describe "folklore" or the discipline that emerged from it, "folkloristics". However, while the Japanese term for "folklore" deals with all things rooted in people's daily lives, "FOLKLORE" mainly deals with the legends themselves.

FOLKLORE refers to legends and superstitions that have been passed down among the people of a particular region for many years and generations, and are therefore quite different from "urban legends" as rumors whose origin and basis are unknown, and which spread explosively with the development of media.

In 17th- and 18th-century England, the germination of what we now call folkloristic scholarship had already begun, and many folklore collections had begun to be made. Among the scholars, the aforementioned William J. Thoms utilized the term "FOLKLORE" and called for its study as a discipline, and later, in 1878, Thoms and G. L. Gomme founded the British Folklore Society, which laid the foundation for folklore studies as we know it today.

This wave of the establishment of folklore societies in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and other countries spread to Japan, leading to the establishment of the Japanese Folklore Society in the Taisho era (1912-1926).