1. Introduction

　

 Kunio Yanagida, the father of Japan's folklore study, has left various accomplishments in the field of Japanese culture. Born in 1875 in Hyogo Prefecture, Yanagida moved to Fukawa, Ibaraki Prefecture, when he was 12 or 13 years old. He graduated from the Tokyo Imperial University in 1900 and joined the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. Though he was born to the Matsuokas, he was adopted by the Yanagidas of the Iida Clan of Shinshu in 1901. In his 20s, Yanagida studied agricultural policies and agricultural economics, and after the age of 30, he came to know the lifestyle of people called Yamabito, or Sanjin, during a trip to Shiiba-mura in Kyushu. (Nochi no Kari Kotoba no Ki). That's how Yanagida began visiting Tono and he wrote the Tono Monogatari in 1910. Nochi no Kari Kotoba no Ki and Tono Monogatari are regarded as the starting point of folklore studies in Japan. Entering the Taisho era, Yanagida created a magazine called Kyodo Kenkyu and wrote numerous theses under various pen names. Until his death in 1962, Yanagida had bequeathed so many works and in Kaijo no Michi, he set the roots of Japanese culture in the Southern Culture. Since I've been studying Kunio Yanagida's ideas on education for a long time, I decided to take a look at manga from the perspective of folklore and I've framed a hypothesis that folklore, as represented by Tono Monogatari, has a profound link with (the primitive form of) manga culture. The following is a study of Tono Monogatari based on the hypothesis.

　

2. How Tono Monogatari was formed and its stories

　

 Tono Monogatari is a series of stories told by Kizen Sasaki of Tono, Iwate Prefecture, and written down by Yanagida as he felt. Kizen, a literary youth who studied at Tetsugakukan (currently Toyo University) as well as at Waseda University, was from Yamaguchi of Tono-go and grew up listening to numerous oral legends told by storytellers from a very young age. Yanagida visited and listened to Kizen several times between November 1908 and the following summer and compiled 119 tales into one book. Here are some of the well-known stories from Tono Monogatari.

[Read out Material 7: A tale of spirited away]

 You can find stories similar to this in many places. I also grew up in the mountains of Nagano and have memories of listening to stories like this, sitting by the fireside, when I was young.

[Read out Material 58: A tale of Kappa]

 There is a place called Kappabuchi by the side of a river that runs through Tsuchibuchi-mura of Tono, which many tourists visit. People from places where Kappa legends exist gather at Kappabuchi and hold a symposium there.

[Read out Material 56: A tale of Kappa]

 My view is that Kappa overlaps with the image of handicapped. I think this story shows how people in the village handled children born with handicaps.

[Read out Material 69: A tale of Oshirasama]

 Oshirasama is the most famous tale in Tono. It's also associated with sericulture and mulberry trees. In Tohoku, horses are treated as family members and this is based on an episode in such circumstances. If you visit Denshoen in Tono, you can see thousands of Oshirasama hanged at one corner.

　

3. Manga-like nature

　

 In order to analyze the manga-like nature of Tono Monogatari, I define the conditions for "being manga-like" as follows. In case of manga with a storyline, the conditions are 1) plot, 2) panels, 3) pictures (imagination) and 4) lines (simple language). There may be other conditions, but I'd like to focus on these four for now.

　

1) Quality of Tono Monogatari's plot

 What's unique about storylines of manga is that they are unconstrained by commonsense. The more unlikely and obscene it is, the more interesting. However strong the enemy is, the hero would never die in a manga story.

 Though Oshirasama is rather specific to the Tono region, tales of spirited away and Kappa exist throughout Japan. It may appear farfetched from the perspective of modern day commonsense, but it's a fact that such tales have been handed down orally. Japan's culture and folklife have been uncovered with the help of such stories. These orally handed down stories have manga-like plots and point to the fact that conventional thinking different from the rational thinking of the West existed among Japan's common people. For example, the method of communication with an alien world is the same as in Devilman and it appears that interaction with an alien world has great significance in the Japanese culture. It is believed that Minamoto no Yoshitsune learned martial arts from a Tengu in Mt. Kurama but what are Tengus? Are they someone who kidnap and spirit away humans as often seen in literary lore? Or, are they descendants of the Jomon man and different from rice-cultivating people?

 Either way, interaction with people in an alien world has a significant meaning. The original form of manga-like concept may be such folklore - a pre-modern era imagination as in Tono Monogatari that has been handed down from 200 to 300 years ago.

　

2) Simplicity enabled by panels

 One feature of folklore stories is their simplicity that can be framed into panels. The story of Oshirasama can be fitted into the following panels: (1) Once upon a time, there was a poor farmer. (2) He lost his wife but had a beautiful daughter. (3) They had a horse. The daughter loved the horse very much and used to sleep in the stable at night. (4) The father learned of this fact. (5) He hanged the horse on a mulberry tree and killed it. (6) In the evening, the daughter noticed that the horse was gone. (7) She searched for the horse and found it dead under the mulberry tree. (8) She wept clinging on to the horse's neck. (9) The father saw this and cut off the horse's neck. (10) The daughter rode the neck of the horse and ascended to heaven. As just described, the tale of Oshirasama can be completely framed into the panels of a manga and one can visualize each scene as it is. This tempo is very similar to that of manga.

　

3) Imagination that becomes pictures

 Folklores are handed down from mouth to mouth, without taking the form of literature. In that sense, Yanagida's literature is based on the premise that the absence of characters is what forms the undercurrent of Japanese culture. When conveying a story orally, a listener will have difficulties unless you talk in a way that inspires practical visualization. Folk tales often have a start that says "Once upon a time." The story would fail to gain reality unless the listener can generate concrete images such as how long ago it was and what kind of place it was. A storyteller would put it like "That was around the time your grandpa and grandma were born" or "That was when there still existed five cherry trees along the mountain path." On the other hand, listeners should also create their own "old time" and "place" with their imagination as they listen to the story. The principle that the images to be handed down are freely created by the storytellers and they can change it flexibly appears to be the same in the case of manga. For example, a four-panel comic strip would show only persons and actions and the rest are to be imagined by readers on their own. In that sense, imagination in both folklore and manga share a common logic.

　

4) Simplicity of language

 Manga is played out in pictures and panels and explanation using language is eliminated. As a rule, words are limited to those inside speech balloons and the composition of manga is extremely simple. This simplicity of language is the very feature of manga. At the same time, the everyday language of common people was also simple. Yanagida explained this using the following example.

 A traveler was walking on a trail, when it suddenly started to rain heavily. As he started to run in search of a shelter, he saw a farmer strolling leisurely in front of him. The traveler asked the farmer why he was not running. The farmer quietly answered, "It's also raining ahead."

 Everything is in this short phrase. "It's raining so heavily here, so it'll be the same ahead (even if you run, you'll get wet anyway)." You don't have to say all that but you can understand everything he meant. Yanagida felt admiration for the fact that common people were communicating in an extremely simple way. As you can see from waka poetry and haiku, I believe Japanese have the world's best command of language in a simple manner. I believe this ability has led to the simplicity of manga, which you can grasp at a glance.

　

4. Spiritual roots of manga lie in folklore

　

 The Japanese folklore study pioneered by Kunio Yanagida enhanced the research of folklore through accumulation of Japanese folklore-related materials while criticizing the ways in which modern studies worked. Yanagida continuously criticized the fact that most modern studies were mere copies of Western studies and not rooted in Japanese culture. In postwar days, there was a tendency of having excessive emphasis on Western studies, of which Masao Maruyama of political science and Hisao Otsuka of economics are examples. However, books written by scholars of studies rooted in Japanese culture represented by Kunio Yanagida and Kumagusu Minakata are still popular as before, whereas, I believe there are few people who'd read Masao Maruyama or Hisao Otsuka now. This is because their researches are basically supported by foreign studies.

 The same can be said about manga. Original mangas that are rooted in Japanese culture will continue to be read. Yanagida claimed that for studies based on letters and books to truly spread its roots into Japanese culture, each of them need to be taken to the level of common people's lives and tested there. Numerous folklore scholars as well as intellectuals have been saying similar things. For example, Tadao Umesao says all studies need to be filtered using folklore at least once.

 There is a daring theory that states one of the reasons for manga's remarkable breakthrough in the 20^th century is that manga consummated mass, pop cultures, something that couldn't have been achieved by studies and textbooks backed by modern studies. Once I had manga in a symbolic face-off with textbooks. Textbooks have the background of research and are items that are required on a national level, while manga's existence runs counter to that. I used to say that both manga and textbooks are necessary to make human beings grow up. However, I have widened my views and I now believe that manga is something different from modern studies and is the integration of the culture on a mass level, or of the common people.

 I believe the Japanese manga culture definitely changed, especially after the advent of mangas with storylines. Osamu Tezuka pioneered various things, and cartoonists currently in their 50s and 60s have inherited his accomplishments and have widened the field into various genres. My understanding is that people such as Shotaro Ishinomori are a sort of culmination of that. These genres of Japan's manga culture cover a formidable range and incorporate all kinds of culture that are not covered by modern studies, books or texts.

 Therefore, while culture that is conveyed through letters and books are definitely important, the diverse information represented by oral art has been resulting in the unique form of what is known as manga. I would like to consider that history as the history of manga in the 20^th century.

 Tono Monogatari came out in 1910, which was towards the end of Meiji era, but the stories themselves were probably handed down from the Edo period. In other words, these tales are the end result of the history of cultures outside of the written culture that was monopolized by a small section of academics and intellectuals.