Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Jömin is a central concept in Kunio Yanagita's research into Japanese folklore. Yanagita (1875–1962), founder of Japanese folklore studies or folkloristics, invented this term by combining two characters – jö (also pronounced tsune ), used either as a noun or a modifier, meaning “usual,” “ordinary,” “average,” or “conventional,” and min , a noun meaning “people.” Jömin thus means “common people” as distinguished from both elites in the ruling class and people placed at the bottom of society, including outcastes. No proper equivalent is found in European languages, but its meaning is close to that of the German Volk or the English “folk.” The importance attached to the study of jömin in Yanagita's research may be explained in terms of his theory of history. Defining folkloristics as a historical science, Yanagita contended that orthodox historiography, using almost exclusively written documents as data, merely recorded the lives of great individuals and dramatic events. Commoners, who made up the majority of the population, were described as the anonymous masses without emotion and character, if described at all. Dissatisfied with this practice, Yanagita placed jömin at the center of historical inquiry. He also proposed new methods for studying history. Instead of doing archival research, he conducted fieldwork. Yanagita reasoned that, since Japan modernized relatively ... log in or subscribe to read full text