I was lucky to have to read these two books back-to-back for this joint review. Joined in their respective treatment of the work of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), one of twentieth-century Japan's most important and influential scholars of Japanese culture, they are nonetheless very different books that are ultimately complementary, best read together for a whole that forms more than two halves. Alan Christy's wide-ranging history of minzokugaku (folk studies; native ethnology) takes Yanagita as only one—but a big one—of many people responsible for the founding and flourishing of minzokugaku, while Melek Ortabasi's focus on Yanagita offers close readings that delve deeply into key texts from his massive oeuvre in fresh and provocative ways.
Reading them in their order of publication (which I strongly recommend), I initially presumed that Ortabasi's The Undiscovered Country would be eclipsed by the scope and brilliance of Christy's A Discipline on Foot, but I...
