“Tokyo Stay” is a project that seeks to unearth the narratives living in Tokyo through the experience of the “stay.” We, the project members, plan and present lectures on research perspectives and methods, inviting fascinating specialists from various fields whom we are eager to hear from.

For the second edition of this project, “Tokyo Folklore,” we invite folklore scholar Akihiro Hatanaka.

As a writer, Akihiro Hatanaka has in recent years published such books as Disaster and Ghosts, whose subject is the Great East Japan Earthquake. As an editor, he focuses on trends in society and writes “21st Century Folklore,” which appears as a series in WIRED.jp, from the approach of folklore–a universal subject which deals with human emotion.

From Hatanaka’s folklore-oriented perspective, which crosses between old and new–from ancient customs and history to modern trends and events–we will attempt to decipher the codes embedded in the city of Tokyo, together with the members of NPO Places and Narratives.