, also sometimes Sun-Hee Sasaki and Kyōseki Sasaki (5 October 1886 – 29 September 1933), was a Japanese

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

, sometimes known as the ''Japanese

Grimm Grimm may refer to: People * Grimm (surname) * Brothers Grimm, German linguists ** Jacob Grimm (1785–1863), German philologist, jurist and mythologist ** Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), German author, the younger of the Brothers Grimm * Christian ...

''.Dorson, Richard M. (1975) "Foreword" ''in'' Kunio, Yanagita (1975) ''The legends of Tono'' (translated with an introduction by Ronald A. Morse) Japan Foundation, Tokyo,

Biography

He was the son of a wealthy farming family from

Tōno, Iwate is a city in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 26,378, and a population density of 31.6 persons per km2 in 10,759 households. The total area of the city is . Tōno is known as "The City of Folklore" for its rura ...

. He attended Shiritsu Tetsugakukan (now

Toyo University is a university with several branches in Japan, including Hakusan, Asaka, Kawagoe, Itakura, and Akabane. Overview The predecessor to Toyo University was , which was founded at Rinsho-in Temple by Enryo Inoue in 1887. Inoue felt that the ...

) and then graduated with a degree in literature from

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

in 1905. In 1908, he became acquainted with

Kunio Yanagita Kunio Yanagita (柳田國男, Yanagita Kunio, July 31, 1875 – August 8, 1962) was a Japanese author, scholar, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a ...

, and Sasaki began to collaborate with Yanagita on collecting the oral traditions and tales of

Iwate Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It is the second-largest Japanese prefecture at , with a population of 1,210,534 (as of October 1, 2020). Iwate Prefecture borders Aomori Prefecture to the north, Akita Prefectur ...

. In his later years, he became friends with the poet

Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese novelist and poet of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social acti ...

with whom he shared his discoveries. Sasaki suffered from respiratory problems and died at the age of 46. Professionally, Sasaki published a number of books of collected folktales and customs.

Sources

*Yamada, Norio (1977) ''柳田国男の光と影 : 佐々木喜善物語'' (''Yanagita Kunio no hikari to kage'', ''Kunio Yanagida's light and shadow: A Biography of Kizen Sasaki'') 農山漁村文化協会 (Rural Cultural Association); electronic locatio
Hathi Trust Digital Library (search only)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sasaki Kizen Japanese folklorists 1886 births 1933 deaths People from Iwate Prefecture