Legends of Japan: Collected by the Father of Japanese Folklore (Bunbu Press Japan Library Book 7)

A foundational classic of Japanese folklore, available in English for the first time.

In Legends of Japan , Kunio Yanagita—widely regarded as the father of Japanese folklore studies—opens a window onto the mysterious, sacred, and deeply human world of Japan’s village traditions.

First published in 1929–1930 as Nihon no Densetsu , this landmark work gathers regional legends of miraculous springs, one-eyed fish, sacred stones, protective old-woman deities, mountain rivalries, wandering Jizō figures, divine battles, and roadside wonders once known to farmers, travelers, elders, and children across Japan. Yanagita does more than preserve strange tales: he reveals how ordinary people understood the landscape around them, and how local memory bound communities to wells, ponds, shrines, bridges, trees, and mountains.

This edition is the first complete English translation of Nihon no Densetsu , making one of Yanagita’s essential works accessible to English-language readers in full for the first time.

Warm, reflective, and rich with insight, Legends of Japan will appeal to readers of Japanese folklore, mythology, Shinto-Buddhist folk belief, yōkai lore, Lafcadio Hearn, cultural history, anthropology, and classic world literature.

A rare invitation into a Japan of sacred places and living stories—where every village path, stone image, and mountain pass may still remember an older world.