The Forgotten Japanese: Encounters with Rural Life and Folklore

by Tsuneichi Miyamoto, Jeffrey Irish (Translator)

Tsuneichi Miyamoto (1907–1981), a leading Japanese folklore scholar and rural advocate, walked 160,000 kilometers to conduct interviews and capture a dying way of life. This collection of photos, vignettes, and life stories from pre- and postwar rural Japan is the first English translation of his modern Japanese classic. From blowfish to landslides, Miyamoto's stories come to life in Jeffrey Irish's fluid translation.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, History, Travel, Folklore, Asia, Anthropology

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2010

About the author

Tsuneichi Miyamoto (宮本常一) was a Japanese ethnologist focusing on life in rural Japan.

Reviews

[Books on Asia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a necessary read for anyone interested in Japanese countryside lifestyles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the book description, I was under the impression the book was about the author's walks through Japan. It is that, but more. He also adds statistics and chapter studies on certain villages.

The author, Miyamoto Tsuneichi, is author of many ethnographical books on Japanese society, but this is the only one I know of that is translated into English. He is quite a well-known scholar and author in Japan.

In this book we learn about Black Hoe laborers, the origin of distrust of outsiders, honke-bunkei, ujigami local gods, fox spirits, rural samurai, the shift from tenant farming and land reforms of 1946, sericulture, the Tempō Famine of 1833-1836, himaya sheds, and much, much more.

This is a keeper for the book shelves as I am sure I will refer back to it often.

Note: This book was rated one of the "Top 12 Books Read in 2020" by reviewers at Books on Asia: https://booksonasia.net/2020/12/14/ou...

[Maura McGrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miyamoto comments on the value of one man's efforts to record in detail the minutia of daily life and language of rice farmers from his village, noting how his recording of the mundane and the obvious serves as a book of treasures to those for whom such details are neither mundane nor obvious. Perhaps Miyamoto know at the time that his work, too, would serve as such to future persons, as this collection of essays and stories is indeed a treasure. Of course much of the stories relayed are extracts fr conversations held with locals (and here it should be noted that while it is impossible to grasp all of the idiosyncrasies held by language in a translated work, Irish does a wonderful job if capturing the spirit of each speaker and relaying their words in a way an English-speaker can appreciate without difficulty), but it is Miyamoto's strength to bring out such stories from the folk he interacts with and to record those stories in a way that highlights how significant they are in their insignificance. Overall it is an inspired work, relevant both for its contents and as a guidance on how to go about conducting ethnographic work.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his Translator’s Note at the beginning of Forgotten Irish disclosed that Miyamoto based this book on interviews he did with a wide array of people across many rural regions of Japan. He estimated that the author walked about 100,000 miles in doing this over the course of the 1930’-1950’s!

This is an impressive collection of people’s stories and recollections of what life was like during those years. Readers will learn about such things as planting and harvesting rituals and social events like festivals. Also described are such social dynamics as how families pass on their farm from one generation to the next, how branch families are formed and sustained, and how men of the community who do not inherit land build a life for themselves. The latter was particularly interesting in that some of them become ‘worldly people’ whose traveling work as cow traders, hunters, etc brought back a lot of information to their community. Those men who become more literate became ‘transmitters’ of knowledge that they had gained to others. The author opined that both of these types of men dispelled the stereotype that Japanese rural villages in those times were isolated. The way in which one village evolved from the late 19th into the mid 20th century and how another dealt with a massive flood and landslide which took many lives and destroyed numerous homes and farms in 1889 were thoroughly explained in three chapters.

Irish’s translation put Miyamoto’s prose into a highly readable narrative, conversational style of prose. Black and white photos of some of the people and places described enhanced my engagement with the book. There is also an 11 page Glossary which provided translations of various terms, the names of places, brief descriptions of various events, etc.

I have a few modest criticisms of Forgotten. While the textured descriptions provide great insight into the individuals interviewed, sometimes the descriptions of places and events are so detailed as to make it slow going in places. Second, I wish the photos had been larger to allow for a more clear view of what was depicted. Third, maps in the book would have made it much more reader friendly. Miyamoto went to many different places. I had to disrupt my reading to look them up on Google Maps.

This book was originally published in 1960 but not translated until 2010. As is true of any country rural life in Japan has changed significantly over the last 50+ years. On the one hand, it has become much more mechanized and thus less labor intensive. On the other hand, because young people have largely emigrated to the cities the average age of Japanese farmers is 70.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+o...

It would be very interesting and instructive should someone do a follow up on Forgotten. In the meantime, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning about life in rural Japan in the years leading up to and after WWII.

[LilithEmm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, intimate look at the rural life in Japan before and after World War II: the author's interest in the lives of his subjects and his deep respect for them shines through the writing and presents this largely unheard testament to Japanese history without pretension.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this documentation, a glimpse into a way of life that is largely gone.