The term or sanjin, as understood in

Japanese folklore Japanese folklore encompasses the informally learned folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people as expressed in its oral traditions, customs, and material culture. In Japanese, the term is used to describe folklore. The academic study o ...

, has come to be applied to a group, some scholars claim,Raja, 556. of ancient, marginalized people, dating back to some unknown date during the Jōmon period of the history of Japan.Konagaya, 47. The term itself has been translated as "

Mountain People Hill people, also referred to as mountain people, is a general term for people who live in the hills and mountains. This includes all rugged land above and all land (including plateaus) above elevation. The climate is generally harsh, with s ...

", or as Dickins interprets the word as "Woodsman", but there is more to it than that. It is from texts recorded by historian

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 ...

that introduced, through their

legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...

s and tales, of the concept of being

spirited away is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film, and Mitsubishi and distrib ...

into

Japanese popular culture Japanese popular culture includes Japanese cinema, cuisine, television programs, anime, manga, video games, music, and doujinshi, all of which retain older artistic and literary traditions; many of their themes and styles of presentation can be ...

Tono Monogatari

According to Yanagita, the Yamabito were "descendants of a real, separate aboriginal race of people who were long ago forced into the mountains by the Japanese who then populated the plains" during the Jōmon period. Yanagita wrote down these folktales in the book ''Tono Monogatari'', though as author Sadler notes:

Kamikakushi

One of the concepts Yanagita presents in ''Tono Monogatari'' is that of, literally, being ''spirited away'', or

kamikakushi In English, to "spirit away" means to remove without anyone's noticing. In Japanese folklore, spiriting away (Japanese: ''Kamikakushi'' ( 神隠し), ) refers to the mysterious disappearance or death of a person, after they had angered the gods ...

. As author Sadler relates:

The Yamabito debate

The stories found within ''Tono Monogatari'' are not without their detractors. Minakata Kumagusu was highly critical of Yangita's research, ''"heaping severe criticism and ridicule on belief that ... the Yamabito ever existed."'' According to records, between 1915–1916,Figal,139. the two scholars exchanged letters debating the existence of the Yamabito. In one famous letter, dated December, 1916, Minakata makes the following claim that while working with an assistant in the

Wakayama Wakayama may refer to: *Wakayama Prefecture, a prefecture of Japan *Wakayama (city) Wakayama City Hall is the capital city of Wakayama Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 351,391 in 157066 househol ...

region of Japan:

Notes

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References

Dickins , Frederick Victor. ''Primitive & Mediaeval Japanese Texts, Transliterated into Roman, with Introductions, Notes, and Glossaries''. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1906.
*Figal, Gerald A. ''Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan''. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 1999. *Foster, Michael Dylan. ''Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Konagaya, Hideyo. "''Yamabito'': From Ethnology to Japanese Folklore Studies". ''The Folklore Historian: Journal of the Folklore and History Section of the American Folklore Society'', Vol. 20, 2003: 47-59. Terre Haute: Indiana State University, 2003.
*Raja, Vijaya. ''The Mountain People Debate.'' ''Japanese Antiquity'', Vol. 73, 1981.
Sadler, A. W. "The Spirit-Captives of Japan's North Country: Nineteenth Century Narratives of the ''Kamikakushi''". ''Asian Folklore Studies'', Vol. 46, 1987: 217-226. Nagoya: Nanzan University, 2003.
*Yangita, Kunio. ''The Legends of Tono.'' Translated with an Introduction by Ronald A. Morse. Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1975. Japanese legendary creatures