Reading Notes: Japanese Fairytales Part A

For my week 7 reading I chose to read Japanese Fairy Tales

I found it strange in the first story that the mighty dragon god could be so scared about a centipede. Normally, those types of creatures would have reversed roles whether it is in the real world or a story. I liked the change up though and it made the story a little more originally. The unlikely creature being the most powerful was a good change of pace from what would normally be expected from classic story telling. I wonder if this has anything to do with how the Japanese viewed the creatures culturally; maybe the viewed insects as powerful creatures and dragons more common?

The story of Kintaro, AKA "The Golden Boy" starts off so sad. It makes me think of Jungle Book and how Mobley ends up making friends with the animals in place of humans. The choice of animals with whom he surrounds himself with makes sense. The bear, deer, monkey and hare are all animals that are used often in old wise tales. I like how throughout the story the author used Japanese words but put the english translation into parentheses. It made the dialogue between the characters more realistic sounding and helped set the scene as truly taking place in Japan. The story of Kintaro becoming a great warrior makes me think of Hercules. Some differences is in the story of Hercules, he sought out his mentor Philoctetes while Kinatro was sought out by the general of the emperor.

In the story of the Man Who Never Wanted to Die, I liked that they talked about the blow fish and how the people on the island ate it to try and poison themselves to die. In Japan, the blow fish is a delicacy but it also posts a health risk if not cooked correctly. This is interesting that such a tradition is in a story as old as this one. The overall story is a classic case of "you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

One over all thing I really liked about this section of reading was that each story was about two or three parts and then a different story started. This reading set was like a book of short stories. Majority of the stories I've read for this class have been long, ongoing stories about one individual and all the trials and tribulations they go through. This was a nice change of pace and I found it much easier to keep up with what was going on in these shorter stories compared to the longer ones.

Bibliography: 
Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908).