Fanny Alice Hagin Mayer (September 3, 1899 – November 6, 1990) was an American folklorist, translator, and educator. Her work focused onJapanese folktales.

Hagin was born inShenandoah, Iowa, the daughter of Fred Eugene Hagin and Myrtle Edith Willett Hagin. She lived in Japan during her childhood, while her father worked there as a Christian missionary.^[1] She graduated fromGlendale Union High School^[2] and fromOccidental College.^[3] She earned a master's degree from theUniversity of Southern California.^[3]

Hagin taught school in California from 1928 to 1947; she was a vice principal at a junior high school and president of the Toastmistress Club ofGlendale.^[4] She was a member of theWACs duringWorld War II.^[5] After the war she worked in Japan for theAllied occupation forces based inNiigata, as an assistant officer focusing on education and women's affairs. In 1950, she became chair of the English department atTsuda College.^[6][7] She was a lecturer atTokyo Gakugei University in 1959.^[8] In 1960, she spoke at a festival of Asian music and arts atUCLA.^[9] In 1963, she taught atSophia University in Tokyo.^[10]

Mayer's work appeared in academic publications includingFolklore Studies,^[11]Midwest Folklore,^[8]Anthropos,^[12]Japan Quarterly,^[13][14][15]Asian Folklore Studies,^[16][17]Monumenta Nipponica,^[18]Japanese Journal of Religious Studies,^[19] andJournal of Japanese Studies.^[20]

• "Japanese Folk Tales" byYanagita Kunio (1952, translator)^[11]
• "Collecting Folk Tales in Niigata, Japan" (1959)^[8]
• "Character Portrayal in the Japanese Folk Tale" (1960)^[12]
• "Tales for the Little New Year" (1966)^[13]
• "Kenichi Mizusawa, a Modern Collector of Japanese Folk Tales" (1967)^[16]
• The Golden Thread: Japanese Stories for Children byTazu Sasaki (1968, translator)^[21]
• "Available Japanese Folk Tales" (1969)^[18]
• About Our Ancestors: The Japanese Family System by Yanagita Kunio (1970, co-translator with Ishiwara Yasuyo)^[22]
• "Even a Mudsnail" (1970)^[14]
• "The Devoted Fox-Wife" (1971)^[15]
• "Religious concepts in the Japanese folk tale" (1974)^[19]
• "Japan's Folk Tale Boom" (1978)^[20]
• Ancient Tales in Modern Japan: An Anthology of Japanese Folk Tales (1985)^[23][24]
• The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale (1986, editor and translator)^[25]
• "Fauna and Flora in Japanese Folktales" (1981)^[26]
• "Japanese Folk Humor" (1982)^[27]
• "The Calendar of Village Festivals: Japan" (1989)^[17]

Hagin married Emanuel Mayer. They had a daughter, Dorothy,^[10] and they divorced by 1928. Mayer lived her later years inWhittier, California,^[3] where she died in 1990, at the age of 91.^[6] She donated hundreds of volumes of Japanese-language texts to theUCLA Library.^[3]

• 1899 births
• 1990 deaths
• People from Shenandoah, Iowa
• Occidental College alumni
• American Japanologists
• American folklorists
• American women writers
• 20th-century American educators
• American translators

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