Tag Archives: tale

Taketori Monogatari

It’s about a bamboo cutter. He basically just cuts wood all day. Him and his wife and they don’t have any kids. One day he cuts open a bamboo… and inside there is a female baby. And it is glowing and majestic, so he takes it home and shows his wife. And he tells his wife “oh we gotta take care of it”. And he starts to cut down more bamboo and bits of gold come from it. The baby grows up to be a beautiful young woman and all of Japan finds out about her. A group of noblemen try to get her hand in marriage and she has an impossible task for them. Then the emperor hears about it and the woman just rejects him, without a task. He continues to ask her to marry him and she keeps rejecting him. One night it is a full moon and she is staring at the moon, crying at it, and she can’t tell her father and mother why. Then she tells her parents that she is actually from the moon and one day she will have to return soon. Word spreads and the emperor hears. One night, these … people from the moon just come down from the moon, sometimes they are on horses or clouds, and the emperor has his army to protect the woman but the people from the moon take her. Her father writes a letter to her and burns it at the highest mountain in hopes that she will read it. Some believe the mountain is actually Mount Fuji. 

Context: 

This performance was done when the speaker, a college student who grew up in Japan, was sharing Japanese fairy tales that they knew. When asked how the speaker knew of this, they explained that this tale is thousands of years old and is commonly known in Japan, as there have even been cartoons and adaptations of it. The speaker also makes a point that many Japanese stories are not about virtues or sins, but about contemplating random topics such as death or one’s role in society. 

Personal Thoughts:

This fairytale is quite interesting as it uses a lot of moon imagery throughout the story. One can gather that this story focuses on love as well as the woman’s role in society, just as the speaker mentioned was a theme in some fairy tales. The speaker mentions during their rendition of the story that sometimes the people from the moon ride on horses or clouds, which demonstrates well how this story is passed down with different versions, and even telling it today there can be different versions that are mentioned at the same time. Upon hearing this story, it also sounded quite familiar, which is due to the fact that it was adapted into a Studio Ghibli film, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, giving a prime example of how folklore can enter authored literature and into mainstream media. Because Studio Ghibli is such a well-known film company, this allows for the fairytale to have a much more global audience. That being said, the tale also becomes authored literature rather than a folk tale that is passed down, ultimately changing it from versions that are performed, such as the one here. 

For another version of this fairytale, refer to: 

“Taketori Monogatari”. Ohio State University.

https://cjp.asc.ohio-state.edu/books/taketori-monogatari/about

Urashima Taro

This is a fisherman in old Japan. He is walking on the beach and sees a baby turtle being bullied by some youngsters. So he’s like “Scram scram get out of here”. And the turtle talks to him like “thank you so much. I’ll make sure to pay my gratitude”. And he goes about his day, and forgets about it. And one day he is approached by the baby turtle again, and the turtle says “hey if you want to hang out, you can hang out with my family and I, and we can show you a good time. You can ride on my back”. So the fisherman rides on the turtle’s back and goes deep into the ocean where there is eventually an underwater palace. And, it’s basically a kingdom of sea creatures and I believe their version of a princess. A sea human, basically. Because you can breathe underwater when you are with these people. And so they are having a good ol’ time, feasting it up, drinking, partying. And then he realizes “Oh i should probably head back it’s been way too long”. So he tells the person in charge, basically the queen, “Oh i should head back” and she goes “oh you don’t have to head go!”, but he says “no i have to go”. And she tells him “okay you can go but I have a gift for you” and she gives him a box. She tells him “whatever you do you can’t open this box. It’s a box that will protect you but you can’t open it”. He goes back and realizes that everything is different, the shoreline is different, the stores are different. He asks a kid “where is blah blah blah” and the kid says “What are you talking about”. The man realizes that he has been gone for 100s of years and becomes depressed realizing that everything around him was gone. So he decides to open the box and the woman comes out saying “told you not to open” and all the time that he has stolen catches up to him, and he becomes a mummified corpse. 

Context:

This performance was done when the speaker, a college student who grew up in Japan, was sharing Japanese fairy tales that they knew. When asked how the speaker knew of this, they explained that this tale is thousands of years old and is commonly known in Japan, as there have even been cartoons and adaptations of it. The speaker also makes a point that many Japanese stories are not about virtues or sins, but about contemplating random topics such as death or one’s role in society. 

Personal Thoughts:

This fairytale focuses a lot on the idea of how one should spend their life and the consequences of one’s decisions. The informant made a note that this specific fairytale was about how one should not waste their life away by partying, as they could miss their life. From this specific tale, one can gather that this story is trying to teach a specific lesson, having an ending that is about how not focusing on the life in front of you can ultimately destroy you in the end. Since this is a fairytale that is well-known by the folk community, it can be deduced that this fairytale is not only used to tell a story, but also to teach this specific lesson to youth, as with many fairytales from other folk communities.  

For another version of this fairytale, refer to: 

Ozaki, Yei Theodora. “The Story of Urashima Taro, The Fisher Lad”. Lit2Go. 

https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/72/japanese-fairy-tales/4881/the-story-of-urashima-taro-the-fisher-lad/

Ice Girl

  1. Ice Girl

Main Piece: Ice Girl (Tale)

“In the summertime, a young boy and girl become very good friends and they are neighbors. They hang out everyday and the boy sees her as his one companion. One day, he finds a single red rose in his garden, and thinks that that would be a wonderful gift to show her his love for her. When he presents the rose, she blushes and with a big smile throws her arms around him. Autumn passes, and their friendship remains strong. Come winter, the boy goes over to the girl’s house, and knocks on the door to no answer. He waits for a few minutes, and she still never shows up. He sadly goes back home. Weeks pass with no word from her. He sits alone in his bedroom, watching the cold Russian tundra turn icy and snow flurries float by his window. Finally he cannot wait any longer. He sets out into the cold to find her. After hours of trekking through the snow, he finds a small castle of ice–the only shelter in sight. Seeking to warm up, he knocks on the door. It creaks open, and his girl is standing there, a menacing look on her face. “What are you doing here?” she says. He takes a step back in surprise. No hug? No smile from his long lost dear friend? “Go away.” She says. “I need to be alone here. I don’t need your disgusting happiness in my sight.” He doesn’t understand this sudden change in behavior, but he will not give up trying to bring his friend back home. “Are you hungry?” He asks. “We can walk back to my home and I will prepare you a fresh pot of Borsch.” Reluctantly, she takes his hand, still with a frown on her face and they begin the long hike home. As they are walking, he notices a shard of ice stuck in her eye. “What happened to your eye? There is a piece of ice in it.” 

“I broke a vase made out of ice when the winter started, and since then the ice has been stuck in my eye.”

They walk and they walk, and as they walk the winter begins to melt away, with sprouts of flowers from the ground indicating the start of Spring. As the snow melts and the blizzard dies out, he notices the shard of ice in her eye grow smaller and smaller as it melts into tears dripping down her face. Suddenly, she turns to him, with the once familiar smile that he had grown to love. “I’m sorry, Vanya.” She says. “The ice had made me coldhearted and angry, but now I feel that it has gone. Let’s go back home and make the Borsch together.” 

Background Information:

This was told to MD as a child by her mother. Not much is known about the origin of this story because neither MD nor I could find this story on the internet. We believe that it would not be a very difficult story to find being sold in a bookstore in Russia. However, since the winters are not nearly as frigid, for the most part, in the United States, the story does not hold as true as it does in Russia. 

Context of the Performance: 

This is mainly told to children during storytime in Russia. It familiarizes them with the harsh realities of the Russian winter weather. 

My Thoughts:

The Russian winter makes everybody cold hearted and angry and once it passes everybody returns to normalcy. It also provides a lesson that people may feel something or act in a particular way due to something that is not noticeable at first, but can change once the issue has been resolved. It tells about situations that are not fully understood when taken at only face value. 

Anti-Imperial Ghost Story

Text:

“Well, there’s this one that I do know. I don’t know the details but there’s this one well inside the palace museum in Beijing. So there’s this well that makes strange noises at night or something and people say it’s because there was this one princess, or–I don’t think it was a princess–I think it was a servant for the nobles and what happened was she was mistreated and she was very young and she just decided to kill herself in the well, and that became her spirit there, and people say they can see her ghost wandering around the well late at night.”

Context:

Informant (XY) is a student aged 19 from Changsha, China. He spent a few years going to elementary school in Canada but has spent almost his entire life in China. He currently goes to USC. This piece was collected during an interview over dinner in the dining hall. He learned about this from Chinese TikTok. To him, the story is an example of the evils of the past nobility.

Interpretation

This piece demonstrates how new stories are told as a result of modern media. TikTok has created a new medium for folklore to be communicated amongst people. It is also rather interesting to note that this story came to (XY) not from family or friends, but from strangers on the internet. The story also demonstrates anti-imperialist ideas amongst the Chinese people. It is even possible that the story’s circulation was positively impacted by its anti-imperialist nature. It’s a well-known fact that the Chinese government has a group of people creating fake pro-CCP posts on Chinese social media. Could this even be an example of a fake ghost story being circulated by such groups? That question is beyond the scope of this interview.

The Lady of the Lady

TW: Mentions of suicide

Background

Informant is a friend of the mine and a freshman at USC. She is originally from Bethlehem in upstate New York. She does not have any religious affiliations nor ties to any ethnic subgroup within the United States or her specific region. She is referred to as “AK”.

Context

I asked the informant about any urban legends or ghost stories from their hometown.

AK: There was a lake nearby. And I remember going up to visit it for a friend’s birthday and her mom told us a story about how a lady committed suicide by rowing out into the middle of the lake. And then just, I think she must’ve had attached something to her, like a rock or something and she died and she was missing. And then 30 years later, scuba divers went down just to like explore the area and they ended up finding her body like completely preserved. And it looked like she hadn’t aged or like decompose, but when they touched her, she like floated and misted away. And then she was the lady of the lake after that.

Analysis

I asked AK about ghost stories or local legends as she is from upstate New York, and ghost stories are abundant in the Northeast. In this case, the lore of the “Lady of the Lake” is being passed down from a parental figure (although not AK’s specific parent) to children as a story. The origin and accuracy of the story are completely questionable, as there is no specific claim for either.