Puppeteers, Mountain Folk and Outcasts

Who were the kugutsu, the wandering puppeteers of ancient Japan? Why were wanderers called Sanka, the "people of the slope"? Who were the released convicts who served as the muscle of the Heian police? And what did Nichiren mean when he called himself the son of a chandala?

Kita Sadakichi (1871-1939) was one of the pioneers of Japanese historical ethnology. In four studies first published between 1920 and 1923 he follows a single word through dictionaries, court diaries, tale collections and Buddhist letters, and reconstructs the social world of the people at the margins of ancient and medieval Japan.

Complete texts, endnotes, a translator's note on the period terminology, and source information. Historical terms for outcast groups are retained and explained as period vocabulary, not as the translator's own usage.