, also known as , was a Japanese ethnologist, linguist, folklorist, novelist, and poet. As a disciple of Kunio Yanagita, he established an original academic field named , which is a mixture of Japanese folklore, Japanese classics, and Shinto. He produced many works in a diversity of fields covering the history of literature, folkloric performing arts, folklore itself, Japanese language, the classics study, Shintoology, ancient study, and so on. Yukio Mishima once called him the "Japanese Walter Pater".