Description: By re-examining the gender-specific behaviors of both the animal-woman and her human spouse, this book recovers the sociocultural and historical contexts that underlay their behaviors to demonstrate the actual gender characteristics that shaped the original Japanese Animal-Wife tales, highlighting the assertive, rather than naïve, personality of women in early Japanese folktale tradition.
Review Quotes: "Japanese Animal-Wife Tales is an instructive book particularly for cross-cultural analysis of the themes of animal-wife tales in Japan, Scotland, and Korea. It is recommended to anyone who is interested in animal-wife folktales and folktales in general." (Noriko T. Reider, Western Folklore 75.2)