This dissertation argues that folktales, and in particular the Momotaro tale, were important to the construction of national identity in Japan through the interrelated discourses of minzokugaku, kyodo kenkyu (local studies), and kyodo kyoiku (local education movement). Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) founded the discipline of minzokugaku in the first half of the 1930s around the questions: what are folktales, when did they originate, and what do they mean? These questions also guide my own study.

Chapter One establishes the early modern history of Momotaro by focusing on the Edo period (1600-1868) when the tale rapidly gained popularity. I attempt to recover written and urban versions of the tale as a contrast to Yanagita's vision of folktales as products of oral, rural culture. Chapter Two examines Iwaya Sazanami's (1870-1933) adaptation Momotaro (1894) which is the single best known iteration of the tale. Published just before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, this adaptation appeared around the time that the tale began to be read as national allegory. In Chapter Three I examine Akutagawa Ryunosuke's (1894-1927) parodic adaptation Momotaro (1925) and the essay behind it, Iwami Jutaro (1924), which explores narrative consumption and the ideological work of renarration. Chapter Four considers how Yanagita established minzokugaku by defining folktales theoretically in his 1933 work Momotaro no tanjo (The Birth of Momotaro ) and practically in his 1936 guide Mukashibanashi saishu techo (1936, Folktale Fieldwork Guide). In Chapter Five, I look at how from 1930 onwards kyodo kenkyu and kyodo kyoiku were increasingly used to narrate local identities in ways that set these two discourses in opposition to Yanagita's own nationwide, top-down folklore project. While Yanagita's minzokugaku viewed Momotaro as a tale (mukashibanashi) that offered insights into the character of the Japanese people as a whole, the kyodo kenkyu and kyodo kyoiku movements explored Momotaro as a legend with relevance and ties to specific local areas. Chapter Six considers the tale's use as nationalistic propaganda from the 1930s to 1945 which culminated in the production of Momotaro no umiwashi (1943, Momotaro's Ocean Eagles) and Momotaro umi no shinpei (1945, Momotaro's Divine Ocean Warriors).