Map of Voiceless Voices: Thoughts on Kunio Yanagida (1974)

Map of Voiceless Voices: Thoughts on Kunio Yanagida (1974)

In 1974, Japan was shaken by the first oil crisis as the feverish pace of its rapid economic growth cooled. Rural areas were suffering from depopulation, cities were saturated, and society was filled with nostalgia for what was being lost. Against this backdrop, the name of Kunio Yanagida was being quietly recalled. Yanagida was the founder of folklore, who carefully collected the lives and stories of ordinary people and breathed life into the word "commoners" with his thought. His work, represented by "Tales of Tono," was an effort to record the voices of the unwritten and to build a bridge to the future.

In the literary journals of the year, Yanagida is described not merely as a scholar, but as an embodiment of the ethics of the chronicler. For the intellectuals of the 1970s, the memory of the periphery, which could not be captured in the language of the city, and the attitude of standing in the cracks between these memories, was one of their hopes. Yanagita's methodology of listening, walking, and writing was quietly coming to life as a critical apparatus for the times. And his gaze continues to pose questions to an ever-changing Japan.