Studies in Mountain Village Life (edit title)

• Rated 5 stars

“A fascinating and in-depth report of the folk studies done by Yanagita Kunio and his colleagues in Japan's mountain villages between 1936 and 1937. This is an English translation of a Japanese work, originally titled [i]Sanson seikatsu no kenkyū[/i] (山村生活の研究). It covers matters of everyday life and tradition such as relations between family and neighbors, mutual labor exchange and obligation, superstitions about plants and animals, beliefs about mountain deities and vengeful ghosts, layout of farmhouses, the lives of children, festival and drinking party customs, mountain occupations, and more. An extremely interesting and valuable book, and one of the few in English on the subject. My only lament is that it is long out of print, and extremely hard to obtain even in a library. ”