Japanese folklore

Japanese folklore encompasses the folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people.

In Japanese, the term minkan denshō (民間伝承, "transmissions among the folk") is used to describe folklore; the study of folkloristics is known as minzokugaku (民俗学). Folklorists also employ the term minzoku shiryō (民俗資料) or "folklore material" (民俗資料) to refer to objects and arts they study.

Folk religion

Men dressed as namahage, wearing ogre-like masks and traditional straw capes (mino) make rounds of homes, in an annual ritual of the Oga Peninsula area of the Northeast region. These ogre-men masquerade as kami looking to instill fear in the children who are lazily idling around the fire. This is a particularly colorful example of folk practice still kept alive.

A parallel custom is the secretive Akamata-Kuromata ritual of the Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa which does not allow itself to be photographed.

Many, though increasingly fewer households maintain a kamidana or a small Shinto altar shelf. The Shinto version of the kitchen god is the Kamado kami (かまど神), and the syncretic Buddhist version is the Kōjin, a deity of the hearth enshrined in the kitchen.