THE PROJECTION OF THE NATIONAL INTEGRATION AND COLONIAL HISTORY: THE IMPLIED MEANING OF THE IMAGE OF “MOUNTAIN PEOPLE” IN THE LEGENDS OF TŌNO

Abstract

The Legends of Tōno by Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962) is considered to be a Japanese folklore classic and an excellent literary work as well. This fact caused a long-standing debate about the “authenticity” and “fictionality” of this work. This article analyzes the key part of the book — the “mountain people” series of stories, and finds that this image has three prototypes in the real world: monsters in folk belief, the Ainu people of Japan, and the indigenous peoples of colonial Taiwan. This article further analyzes Yanagida Kunio’s attitude towards Japanese colonialism and finds that he fundamentally opposed the barbarism of Japanese colonialism. In the text of The Legends of Tōno, the author arranged three narrative models of the “mountain people scare the villagers” and finally constructed a holistic literary narrative logic, showing the ideal model of peaceful coexistence between lowlanders and mountain people, or colonizers and indigenous peoples.