Folk Legends of Japan

The true folk legend, as distinguished from the fairy tale or literary embellishment, is one of the sure keys to a people's beliefs, customs, and ways of thinking. Japan possesses more such legends than any Occidental country. And yet this great body of legendry, with its wealth of meaning, its significance and its

sheer fascination, has until now been only rarely available in English translations usually in out-of-the-way publications. The present volume presents a representative collection of over one hundred Japanese folk legends. These have been selected by a distinguished American folklorist, drawn from expert Japanese transcriptions of orally told legends, and carefully translated in such a way as to bring out the charming, unadorned, and sometimes disarmingly frank folk quality of the originals. Each legend is carefully annotated for the student, scholar, and a full bibliography is provided.