Bengali and Japanese Folk Rhymes : A Comparative Study in Oral Tradition

Although they are thousands of kilometers away from each other, Bengal and Japan, the two prominent Asiatic lands, have a glorious heritage. The population of these two lands comes from two different races, yet they have similarities as well as specialties in their history and culture. Folk Literature lies at the heart of traditional culture. One of its integral parts is Folk Rhyme, mostly recited by children, women and peasants. Traditional society of Bengal and Japan nurtured these rhymes for thousands of years. This research, done in Nagoya, Japan in 1990s, is an attempt to compare between Bengali and Japanese Folk Rhymes. It analyzed and compared the history of the collections in the socio-political context; also, a theory was developed centering round the discussion, major characteristics, origin and development and the main trend of the classification. This work is the first attempt to compare exclusively between Bengali and Japanese Folk Literature as well as between folk rhymes of any two cultures.