The various episodes selected from the countless field notes Yanagita took provide, from a literary point of view, a peerless model of conciseness. In his sentences can be found a perfect economy, his words used as sparingly as gold.

That is the wonder of the Tono book. We are looking at tales in the making. Yanagita gives us a rare glimpse of story-telling as process, rather than product.

The Tono monogatari takes its place with the Kinder und Haus-Märchen of the brothers Grimm as a landmark collection in the history of folklore studies…In making The Legends of Tono available in English translation Ronald Morse, the perceptive biographer of Yanagita-sensei, has placed Asian and folklore scholars in his debt. It deserves a wide attentive audience outside its own country to match the readership it has rightfully earned at home.