Tanigawa Ken'ichi

Tanigawa Ken'ichi ( Japanese 谷川 健 一 ; * July 28, 1921 in Minamata ; † August 24, 2013 ) was one of the most important cultural anthropologists in Japan, especially with regard to historical place-name studies .

Life path

After attending middle school in Kumamoto , he majored in French literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo .

Tanigawa collected information about the way of life and culture of the lower social classes, traditions, rites and legends that have to do with the coast as a buffer zone between sea and land, between ideas of the afterlife and this world. His specialty are place names. Numerous publications appeared from 1957, initially by Heibonsha . In the 1960s he got into a scholarly dispute with Origuchi Shinobu ( 折 口 信 夫 ) and Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962; 柳 田 國 男 ).

His 1973 published “Collection of the Historical Biographies of the Simple People” ( 日本 庶民 生活 史料 集成 ) comprises 20 volumes, the “Compendium of Japanese Folk Customs” (1986; 日本 民俗 文化 大 系 ) 14 volumes. In 1981, the city ​​of Kawasaki set up an "Institute for Research into Japanese Place Names" ( 日本 地名 研究所 ), of which he became director and from which he received an award in 2008. From 1987 to 1996 he taught at the Kinki University of Osaka , where he headed the anthropological institute of this university.

He has received several academic awards for research achievements, including one in 2001 for his Tanka collection. In 2007 he became the Bunka Kōrōsha ("person with special cultural merits").

Works and literature

His collected smaller works have been published successively by San'ichi in 10 volumes since 1980 . Translations into German by a team from the University of Fukui:

• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann (translation): About the Hereafter - Where the soul of the Japanese strives (Preface / Home beyond the Sea), Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, 2005 (first published in 1983 in Heibonsha Publishing company)
• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann (translation): About the hereafter - where the soul of the Japanese strives (Das Jenseits / The birth houses of Wakasa / Islands of the South), in: Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, Vol. 61 (2005 ), 62 (2006)
• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann (translation): About the Hereafter - Where the Japanese Soul Strives (Niraikanai and the Green Islands), Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, 2007
• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann (translation): About the hereafter - Where the soul of the Japanese strives (The Sea of ​​Koshi / Notes from Shima), Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, Series I, Humanitarian, 64 , 2009
• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann, Isozaki Kotaro (translation): About the Hereafter - Where the Soul of the Japanese Strives (The Urishima Legend from Tango), Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, 2014
• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann, Isozaki Kotaro (translation): About the Hereafter - Where the Soul of the Japanese Strives (The Green Tombs of Mino), Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, 2015
• Sho Hayashi, Paulus Kaufmann, Isozaki Kotaro (translation): On the Hereafter - Where the Soul of the Japanese Strives (Afterword and Postscript), Memoirs of the Faculty of Education and Regional Studies, University of Fukui, 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sho Hayashi and Paulus Kaufmann are Germanists who worked at the University of Fukui

Web links

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Tanigawa is the family name, Ken'ichi the first name.