Minzokugaku

From the 1910s a growing number of teachers, priests, doctors and local historians wrote down what was told in their districts and sent it to journals in Tokyo: Kyōdo Kenkyū from 1913, Tabi to Densetsu from 1928, Minkan Denshō from 1935, and dozens of regional bulletins after the war. Prefectural and municipal histories added chapters of folklore. The Sōgō Nihon Minzoku Goi, a dictionary of folk vocabulary completed in 1956, gathered thousands of local words, among them the names of yokai heard nowhere else.

A record in these sources is one telling from one place in one year, usually a few lines. The betobeto-san that follows you on a night road, the makura-gaeshi that turns your pillow, the azuki-arai washing beans by the stream: this is where they are, and the records library quotes them one at a time.