Michael Foster (folklorist)

Michael Dylan Foster is a professor of Folklore and the current Chair of the East Asian Languages and Cultures department at the University of California, Davis. His work has focused on Japanese literature and culture. He has published several short stories, articles, and novels.

Career

Foster joined the University of California Davis in 2016.^[1] Foster previously worked in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, and in the Department of Comparative Literature & Foreign Languages at the University of California Riverside.^[2]

Much of his work on Japanese folklore has centered on tales of the supernatural, which was the subject of his first book, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yôkai.^[3] The book received the Chicago Folklore Prize in 2009.^[4][5]

Education

Foster studied for a bachelor's degree in English at Wesleyan University, and graduated with Honors. He studied for a master's degree in Japanese Literature and Folklore at University of California, Berkeley.^[6] He completed an intensive language study in Yokohama, Japan and studied History and Folklore at Kanagawa University.^[4] He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University, in the department of Asian Languages: Japanese.^[6]

Published works

Books

• Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai. University of California Press (2009)^[7]
• The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore. University of California Press (2015).^[8]
• Foster, Michael Dylan (2015). Foster, Michael Dylan; Tolbert, Jeffrey A. (eds.). The Folkloresque Circle: Toward a Theory of Fuzzy Allusion. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 9-781-6073-2418-8. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

Articles

• “Haunted Travelogue: Hometowns, Ghost Towns, and Memories of War.” Mechademia 4.1 (2009) 164-181.
• “What time is this picture? Cameraphones, tourism, and the digital gaze in Japan.” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture Vol. 15, Issue 3 (May 2009): 351-372.
• “The Otherworlds of Mizuki Shigeru.” Mechademia Vol. 3: Limits of the Human (2008): 8-28.
• “The Question of the Slit-Mouthed Woman: Contemporary Legend, the Beauty Industry, and Women’s Weekly Magazines in Japan.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 32, no. 3 (Spring 2007): 699-726. doi:10.1086/510542
• “Strange Games and Enchanted Science: The Mystery of Kokkuri.” The Journal of Asian Studies 65: 2 (May 2006): 251-275.
• “Walking in the City with Natsume Sōseki: The Metaphorical Landscape in ‘Koto no sorane.’” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, vol. 6 (Summer 2005): 137-146.
• “Watashi, kirei? Josei shūkanshi ni mirareru ‘Kuchi-sake-onna’ [Am I pretty? The ‘Kuchi-sake-onna’ legend as seen in women's weekly magazines].” Ed. Komatsu Kazuhiko, Nihon yōkaigaku taizen (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 2003): 635-667.
• “Creating Monsters: Toriyama Sekien and the Encyclopedic Imagination.” Information des Akademischen Arbeitskreises Japan: Minikomi (University of Vienna) no. 64 (2002/2): 7-9.
• “The Metamorphosis of the Kappa: Transformation of Folklore to Folklorism in Japan.” Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 57 (Fall 1998): 1-24.
• “Kindai ni okeru kappa no henyō: kappa to mizu no kankei o megutte [Exploring the Waters: Modern Transformations of the Kappa].” Rekishi minzoku shiryōgaku kenkū (History and Folk Culture Studies), vol. 2 (1997): 161-74.

Short stories

• “Looking Back.” Greensboro Review no. 67 (Spring 2000): 107-115.

• “Old Mack” and “Late Night With Me.” Wisconsin Review vol. 32, no. 2 (1998): 11-14.

• “Sepia.” Southern Humanities Review vol. 29, no. 4 (1995): 345-359; winner of Hoepfner Award for best short story in Southern Humanities Review (1995).

• “Toothpicks.” Northwest Review vol. 30, no. 2 (1992): 59-66.

Research interests

Michael Foster's interests include Japanese folklore,^[9] history, festival, literature, supernatural, and popular culture.^[10]

He has been is working on a book entitled Visiting Strangers: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Gods, which will look at tourism, festivals, and ethnographers in Japan.^[11][12]