ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Kunio Yanagita’s methodological development, and examine certain aspects of his methodology which bear similarities to the functionalist approach of Malinowski. Yanagita seems to have encountered the works of the scholars during his stay in Europe from 1921 to 1923, when he was sent to Geneva to represent Japan as a member of the mandated territories committee of the League of Nations. To assess the influence of these scholars on Yanagita, and to closely examine whether his acquaintance with their work is reflected in the methodological development of his own, is of significance for understanding what was later established as ‘Yanagita Ethnography’. Yanagita’s interest in Japan’s folk religion derived from his study of agro-politics, especially from the research he had undertaken on agricultural villages in Japan. The subject-matter to be investigated in Yanagita’s ‘own method of research’ was basically the art and customs of village life which reflect the internal life of a common person.
