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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY INITIAL DEBT is to the United States Educational Commission in Japan, which awarded me an appointment as Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Tokyo for the academic year 1956-57 and so made possible the present undertaking. The Commission also provided funds for translation and research assistants.

The Japanese Folklore Institute in Seijo-machi, Tokyo, proved a treasure house for me, and I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to Kunio Yanagita, its founder, Tokihiko Oto, its director, and Toichi Mabuchi, one of its advisors and Professor of Anthropology at Tokyo Metropolitan University, all of whom extended me every kindness. At the Institute, Miss Yasuyo Ishiwara, a graduate of Tokyo Women's Christian College, spent long hours with me translating Japanese legends and giving me the benefit of her training and knowledge as an assistant to Professor Yanagita. Naofusa Hirai, director of the Institute of Classical Studies at Kokugakuin University, acted as interpreter when I first visited the Institute and proved a friend throughout the year. Also at the Institute I met Fanny Hagin Mayer, who generously allowed me to read her unpublished translation of Professor Yanagita's Classification of Japanese Folk Tales (Nippon Mukashi-banashi Meii) and accompanied me on a trip to Niigata. At the KBS Library, curator Makoto Kuwabara aided me in tracking down studies of Japanese folklore in their fine collection of Western-language books and journals on Japan.

My student at Tokyo University, Kayoko Saito, who subsequently studied in the United States on a Fulbright award and is now back at the university as a graduate student, helped me in important ways—by collecting legends from her grandmother, by translating for me, and by introducing me to Professor Masahiro Ikegami, now at Showa Medical University, and interpreting the two private lectures with slides he kindly gave me on the syncretism of folk religion with Buddhism and Shintoism as seen in Japanese mountain religion. Teigo Yoshida, Professor of Sociology at Kyushu University, contributed to my volume a folk legend he had collected during his field work. Authors of collections of Japanese legends who personally or through correspondence have generously granted me permission to publish translations of their texts are Keigo Seki, noted student of the Japanese folk tale; Riboku Dobashi; Kazuo Katsurai; Kiyoshi Mitarai; Chihei Nakamura; and Shogo Nakano; to all of whom I am deeply indebted, as well as to the other authors listed in the sources, who have faithfully recorded Japanese legends. Masaharu Murai generously procured for me a copy ofhis translation Legends and Folktales of Shinshu when I met him in Nagano.

On my return to the United States I was fortunate to meet Ichiro Hori, an outstanding younger Japanese folklore scholar then lecturing at Harvard University and the University of Chicago on popular Buddhism, and Mrs. Hori, the daughter of Professor Yanagita. Professor Hori has graciously read my introduction and given me helpful suggestions. To contributors of the forthcoming Studies in Japanese Folklore which I am editing for the Indiana University Folklore Series, I must express gratitude for a preview of their illuminating articles. My deep thanks go to Professor George K. Brady of the University of Kentucky, who has helped make available in English translation important Japanese folklore studies, and who has aided me in personal ways. Indiana University has bountifully provided me with research facilities.

Both Miss Ishiwara and Miss Saito, named above, and Meredith Weatherby of the Tuttle Company have been most helpful in checking my manuscript and straightening out certain perplexing points.

Finally, I must express my pleasure and good fortune to have as publisher an old friend and classmate, Charles E. Tuttle, who has been so active in the publication of "books to span the East and West."

Bloomington, Indiana, June, 1961

RICHARD M. DORSON