Yanagita Kunio almost singlehandedly initiated the serious study of folklore in Japan. Even modern Japanese folklorists who may disagree with his approach or his methods must take his body of work as a point of departure for their own. This book, first published in 1990, puts Yanagita’s career within a historical framework and context, full of detail about Japanese political and literary trends which influenced or were influenced by the folklore scholarship of Yanagita.

There is a crisis in the world today, and that is the crisis of addiction. It is not new nor even extraordinary, but common and universal in the history of mankind. The world is always looking for answers-for reasons and solutions to all of our problems. There is a new remedy out there for everything it seems and they all claim to have the sure thing. The problem is that too many of them don't work at all and too many more simply miss the mark. They don't really understand what the root of...

Five years after Beijing's pragmatic new leadership embarked on its Four Modernizations program, the obstacles to change in China are becoming apparent, agree the contributors to this book. Focusing on developments since Mao's death and pointing to the negative effects of China's massive bureaucracy, the regime's reluctance to give up Soviet-style

Boldly illustrated and superbly translated, Folk Legends from Tono captures the spirit of Japanese peasant culture undergoing rapid transformation into the modern era. This is the first time these 299 tales have been published in English. Morse’s insightful interpretation of the tales, his rich cultural annotations, and the evocative original illustrations make this book unforgettable.In 2008, a companion volume of 118 tales was published by Rowman & Littlefield as the The Legends ...