The Tōno Monogatari and the Yamanba Tradition

Record summary

Kunio Yanagita’s The Tōno Monogatari records oral traditions from northeastern Japan, including mountain beings and human-like female figures associated with remote landscapes. The yamauba or yamanba tradition is relevant to shape-changing folklore because later retellings sometimes connect these beings with transformation, seduction, child-rearing, or frightening metamorphosis. The collection is a literary and folkloristic rendering of informants’ narratives, not a field report establishing supernatural events. Researchers should distinguish Yanagita’s editorial shaping from earlier oral transmission and from later popular representations of the yamanba.