★★★★☆ Tono, a small area in Tohoku, is well known by Japanese for their memorable legends, thanks to this book. If you are interested in local or Japanese ghost and yokai stories, this is where you should begin your quest.
🔽 log 🔽
The Legends of Tono REMIX
Kunio Yanagida
Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Read 2024.4
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
The original version by Kunio Yanagita was written in 1910, this version I read was "remixed" in 2013 by a mystery writer Natsuhiko Kyogoku.
Tono is in Tohoku region in the north of Japan, not far from the area destroyed by tsunami.
It's not a vast area geographically, but incredibly rich in folklores and probably the only village associated so strongly with their local legends, because of this book.
In other words, we must consider ourselves lucky that Tono's legends are preserved by the folklorist Yanagita, and can't help but wonder how many hundreds of thousands of local stories and legends have been wiped out in history, disappeared like they had never existed.
Even kids outside of Japan know words like "yokai" thanks to a popular anime, and if you are familiar, you recognise many "characters" or concepts in this book.
Monsters or ghost in the mountains, or by the river - you find similar themes in stories of the brothers Grimm, because it is universal.
Anything outside of your village is dangerous, so is any wider knowledge than what they give you.
It's not written to scare you, it's just a collection of the legends... but I admit it's pretty scary. It doesn't help the fact that I live in a countryside.
The original book was written in 1910, since then there have been many versions, including a manga by Shigeru Mizuki but this version I read was "remixed" by Kyogoku, using more modern Japanese language for today's readers.
When you think about it, Yanagita also collected folklores that were already pretty old then, so it's not unusual that it gets modernised or re-translated time to time, especially if what you are interested in is the actual stories from centuries ago and not the language of 100 years ago.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
The Legends of Tono
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
The Legends of Tono
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
The Legends of Tono (English)
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