Japanese Animal-Wife Tales

Narrating Gender Reality in Japanese Folktale Tradition

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• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781453913444
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Social Sciences

A familiar, beloved, and yet misunderstood character in the Japanese folktale tradition is the animal-woman, an earthly animal that assumes the form of a female human. In order to articulate the characteristics that make Japanese Animal-Wife tales unique, this trailblazing book Japanese Animal-Wife Tales: Narrating Gender Reality in Japanese Folktale Tradition challenges long-held characterizations of them in folklore scholarship. By re-examining the gender-specific behaviors of both the animal-woman and her human spouse, the book recovers the sociocultural and historical contexts that underlay their behaviors to demonstrate the actual gender characteristics that shaped the original Japanese Animal-Wife tales, highlighting the assertive, rather than naïve, personality of women in early Japanese folktale tradition. This new approach to the study of Japanese folktales and culture will interest researchers and students in a variety of fields, including Japanese studies, comparative folklore studies, culture studies, Asian studies, and anthropology.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Demystifying Misconstrued Genders in Japanese Animal-Wife Tales
• Chapter 2. The Theoretical Characteristics of Japanese Animal-Wife Tales
• Chapter 3. The Search for the Main Theme of Japanese Animal-Wife Tales
• Conclusion: Narrating Gender Reality behind Japanese Folktale Tradition
• Appendix I: Inada’s Tale-Types of Japanese Animal-Wife Tales
• Appendix II: Seki’s Tale-Types of Japanese Animal-Wife Tales
• Appendix III: Korean and Chinese Pond-Snail Wife Tale-Types
• Appendix IV: Olrik’s Epic Laws of Folk Narrative: The Opening and the Closing Laws
• Appendix V: Feminism and Storytellers
• Appendix VI: Marriage Customs in Ancient and Premodern Japan
• Appendix VII: An Analysis of Bluebeard Story and Japanese Animal-Wife Tales
• Bibliography
• Index