Asian Folklore Studies articles

Recent articles from Asian Folklore Studies

Editors' introduction.(Editorial)
April 1, 2007... WE ARE pleased to present this special double issue of Asian Folklore Studies in honor of Professor Peter Knecht, who has stepped down as the journals editor after a highly successful tenure of twenty-six years. Peter's departure is lamentable for many of us as readers, contributors, and...

Rice: representations and reality.(Report)
April 1, 2007... EVEN if most Japanese today may no longer eat rice at every meal, rice is still not only their staple food (shushoku [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), it is also the food par excellence. Unless they have eaten a bowl of rice, Japanese may not feel they have eaten to satisfaction even after...

Female shamans in eastern Japan during the Edo Period.(Report)
April 1, 2007... THANKS largely to the efforts of many anthropologists and folklorists, including of course Peter Knecht, the longtime editor of this journal, the ghostly outlines of contemporary Japanese shamanism have begun to be transmitted to a non-Japanese readership. A rough picture had already emerged...

The true history of Shido temple.(Report)
April 1, 2007... SHIDOJI [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a Shingon temple dedicated to Eleven-Headed Kannon [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], faces Shido Bay about fifteen kilometers east of Takamatsu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], at the northeast corner of Shikoku. It...

The making of tojin: construction of the other in early modern Japan.(Report)
April 1, 2007... THIS article examines the kinds of worldviews and images of foreign Others the nonelite people of premodern Japan constructed, and how folk belief and knowledge contributed to this construction. (1) Recent scholarship on Japanese history has shown how open Japan was under the Tokugawa...