183 - Folkloric Studies

【民俗学、minzokugaku】

[Lit. Study of the peoples' local customs. Other names include "folkloristics" and "folklore studies".]

Folkloristics is a discipline that studies the general traditions, folklore, and cultural lifestyles of individual communities, mainly through the research and collection of folkloric legends, traditional rituals, and customs.

The subjects of these studies range from those more closely connected to daily life, such as clothing, food, housing, livelihood, familial ceremonies, and rites, to legends, folktales, folk songs, strange phenomena, divination, and even religion.

In the Meiji and Taisho periods, folkloric studies were known as "ethnography", and the subject matter was still vague, however, in the Showa period, Kunio Yanagida, who is considered the father of Japanese folkloristics, used the term "folklore" to describe his research, which he called "folkloric theory" or "locality studies", and the term has come to be in general use ever since.

In folkloric studies, the research method is mainly fieldwork since the object of study is the folk traditions handed down in a local community over generations, or in other words, matters that haven't been preserved in literature.

It is a very significant field of research, as it systematizes the lives of ordinary people from the past to the present, clarifying matters of the world as seen from the perspective of the common man, which many other studies, such as religious studies, history, sociology, and archaeology, have overlooked or failed to address.

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).

79 - Don't Drop Me This Time

【今度は落とさないでね、kondo wa otonasai dene】

A beautiful couple had a child. The child was the legitimate offspring of the couple, but he bore no resemblance to either of his parents and was hideously disfigured. The child caused a rift in the couple's relationship, and they decided to kill the source of the fissure. In other words, they wanted to kill the child.

The couple takes their six-year-old child to the lake under the guise of a trip. With the happy child in tow, the couple boarded the ferry. When the child suddenly complains of the need to urinate, the couple pushes the child from behind, drowning him in the lake.

A few years later, the couple had another child. Unlike the previous child, this one resembled the couple and was very beautiful. One day, when the child was six years old, the child suddenly asked to go to the lake. The couple headed for the lake as the child wished. It was the lake where they had drowned their first child a few years before.

While on the ferry, the child complains of the need to urinate, and the couple tells him to go to the lake to do his business. The child does as his parents tell him and heads for the lake. At that moment, the child suddenly muttered,

"Don't drop me this time."

His face--- was the same as the child who died six years prior.

In similar rumors, an unmarried couple has a child and kills them in distress. Later, they get married and have another child. The setting is a little different, but the end result is the same.

This story, in fact, has existed since ancient times. A man kills a traveling monk for his money and goods, and later, a child is born to him. One night, the child goes outside and unexpectedly turns to his father and says, "It was a night like this when you killed me, wasn't it?" The child's face had changed to that of the monk.

Koizumi Yakumo, known for his ghost stories, also left a similar story in his "Unknown Faces of Japan". In the story, a parent kills his child out of poverty, then is denounced by the figure of their own child.

In the Edo period, it was not uncommon for people to leave their children in the mountains because of poverty. This has changed in the present day, where people abandon their children because they have "had it with them". This story alone is a direct expression of the state of society, manifested as a rumor.