Tag Archives: Japanese

Swan Girl

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 16, 2018
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English, Mandarin

Folklore:

This story takes place in Japan and starts off by a old man who goes up to the mountains and finds a swan caught in a trap. The old man frees the swan who flies away after being freed. Later that night after the old man has returned home to his wife when they both hear a knocking at their door, it is a young girl who is lost. The old couple invites her to stay the night and provide her with a meal. As the young girl has nowhere to go the old couple adopts her. They provide the girl with her own room next to living room, one day she brings out a beautiful piece of fabric for the old couple. She keeps creating these beautiful piece of cloth and the old man is able to sell them in town for a lot of money. One strange thing the girl does is makes the old couple promise is to never come into her bedroom when she is making the cloths. The old couple agree because they believe she does not want to be disturbed when she is working. However one day the young girl starts to look haggard and tired so the old couple becomes concerned and decide to peek into her room when she making the cloth. Inside the room they see a swan plucking out its own feathers to make the beautiful fabric. When the swan notices the old couple she flies away leaving behind the beautiful fabric.

Background & Context:

This folklore was collected from a current freshman at USC. It was collected in a casual context over lunch after class one day.  The student is an international student who is ethnically Japanese but grew up in various places in Asia. Before coming to USC she lived in Singapore for seven years and before Singapore the longest she lived in a country was Japan for five years. She learned about the folklore through school as folklore was part of school curriculum and in textbooks. The message of this story she says is, “what goes around, comes around” referring to the old man helping the swan first than the swan returning later to help the old man.

Final Thoughts:

My thoughts on this story is that hold an important message. The message I believe the story holds is treat others how you want to be treated. As the old man helped the swan in the beginning of the story and in return the swan came and helped the old man.

 

Peach Boy

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 16, 2018
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English, Mandarin

Folklore:

This story is a Japanese folktale and begins with an old woman going to the river to do her laundry, at the river she finds a huge peach floating down towards her. Inside the peach she finds a baby boy and decides to raise him with her husband. The old couple names the boy “peach” and he grows up to be a very energetic boy. When the boy grows older he decides to save the village from the demons who torment them. To get to the demons he must journey to the mountains, for the journey his mother packs for him four mochis. During his journey he eats one mochi. He meets a dog and convinces him to join him against his fight with the demons by giving him a mochi. He also meets a peacock and monkey who join him, as he offers them a piece of mochi. Eventually they arrive at the demons hideout and waits for the demons to get drunk, when the demons are drunk the boy and his animal companions attack. While the boy is strong the animals use their individual strengths to fight, an example being the peacock who uses his beak to peck at the demons. In the end they defeat the demons and take the demons treasures back to the boy’s village.

Background and Context:

This folklore was collected from a current freshman at USC. It was collected in a casual context over lunch after class one day.  The student is an international student who is ethnically Japanese but grew up in various places in Asia. Before coming to USC she lived in Singapore for seven years and before Singapore the longest she lived in a country was Japan for five years. She learned about the folklore through school as folklore was part of school curriculum and in textbooks. In the story she refers to the boy’s name as peach but is traditionally peach in Japanese. However she does not recall the Japanese translation for the name. She also explains what a mochi is, a traditional Japanese rice cake usually shaped into a ball.

Final Thoughts:

My thoughts on the story is that it gave an important message. The message of the story is be kind and good to others, as all the characters in the story are rewarded for their good deeds. Examples being the old couple who take the boy in and raise him as eventually he saves their village from demons. Another example being the boy as he gives each animal a mochi so they decide to help him in his journey. Other morals that can be taken from this story is don’t be afraid to ask for help as the boy asked the animals he just met to help him defeat the demons and they agreed. Overall the story is an interesting and unique intriguing it’s readers.

Annotation:

Another place you can find this piece of folklore is in the children’s book Peach Boy: A Japanese Legend by Gail Sakurai.

Tongue Cut Sparrow

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 17, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

Folklore: 

This is a Japanese story titled Tongue Cut Sparrow. It starts out with an elderly couple the old man is kind, while the old woman is cruel. The old man has kept a sparrow in their home but one day the sparrow eats the old woman’s rice glue she becomes very angry so when the old man leaves for work the old woman cuts off the sparrow’s tongue. Chasing the sparrow flies away. When the old man returns home he hears about what has happened to the sparrow and goes into to the woods to search for the bird as he is worried. In the woods the old man finds the sparrow with his family. The family of birds perform a dance for the old man to show their gratitude for caring for their family member. They also offer him a big or small box to pick from and bring back home, the old man takes the small box stating it is easier to carry home. When he opens the box he finds it filled with money, the old woman sees this and decides to search for the sparrows. Once she finds the sparrow and his family they also offer her two boxes, but she takes the big box. In the end when she opens the big box she finds it filled with bugs and monsters.

Background & Context:

This story was told to me in a casual interview style in the evening on a weekday. It was told to me by a Japanese American USC freshman, who has grown up in Honolulu, Hawaii but has visited Japan several times. This student has grown up listening to these stories as bedtime stories or just for entertainment. These stories were told by her parent or grandparents who reside with her family. She explains to me that rice glue is crushed up rice people used in the past for glue. The moral of the story is be kind to all creatures and share with others. My informant also explained that she did not remember the original Japanese for the title of the story.

Final Thoughts:

I agree with the student’s perspective that the moral of the story is to be kind to all creatures and share with others and I would also add that another underlying message is don’t be greedy. As the old man was rewarded for being kind and sharing with the sparrow, he was also rewarded again by not being greedy and picking the smaller box. While the old woman was punished for being greedy and taking the bigger box. Overall this story holds many different important life messages.  

 

Bath Time – Japan

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 4/24/2107
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: Chinese, English

My informant was born and raised in Japan, but moved to America to finish her college degree at the University of San Diego. She told me about a childhood custom that is common among Japanese families.

“In Japan a little daughter and dad shower and bath together is normal–with son too. People from other countries say that’s disgusting. (But) it’s because normally dads don’t have time to communicate with their kids cause the work, so bath time is perfect time to have kids time to them. We did until I was 7 or something.”

I knew she had an older brother, so I asked if her dad would shower with both of them simultaneously or one by one. Her response was:

“Both! But that’s only when we’re little like 3 or 4. After that let’s say probably when I’m taking the bath my dad join me after. We just talk and play in the bathtub. Maybe he help me wash my hair, but not the body.”

I thought it was interesting how my informant pointed out how other countries saw this custom as strange, and felt the need to provide an explanation (almost in a defensive manner). I think it is because in Western culture it is more commonly heard of for mothers to take baths with their children since they are the ones to have given birth and are the “caretakers” of the family. A father  taking a bath with his child–especially a daughter– could be interpreted as inappropriate or even as sexual abuse.

However, baths are a huge part of Japanese custom. Japan has numerous public bathhouses located all over the country, varying from rural to urban areas. These bathhouses have large communal baths that are typically segregated by gender. Visitors comfortably bathe and walk around nude in front of complete strangers. With this information in mind, I was not surprised to hear that it is typical for children to bathe with their fathers.

Japanese Creation Myth (As Told by a Scot)

Nationality: Scottish-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Milton, MA
Performance Date: 3/25/17
Primary Language: English

Context: Gathered from one of my roommates once he found out about my collection project.

Background: My roommate had heard this story from somewhere he couldn’t remember, and thought it would be interesting to see how it reflects the “real” Japanese myth.

Dialogue: I would  love to refresh myself on, like, exactly the history and, like, what the names are and stuff, too, but… I think basically, the gist of it was, there are these gods, or like deities at least, in heaven, in like the spiritual realm, um, and two of them one day, I think by order of, like, the elder gods or whatever, um…. There were two of them who were ordered to go down, or maybe just decided, to go down to Earth, the kingdom of Earth, and basically, like, start humanity, like they would do a little pole dance and then everything was born. More on that in a second! So they go, they go down to Earth…. um, it’s like a male god and a female god… They go down to Earth, they’re like descending this crazy cool pole or whatever, and they like do this dance around the pole, um, and like all of life was born, and then they realized, “Wait a minute… Everything’s shitty! None of this… is good.” And, uh… Wait a minute, I’m trying to remember… The order of the speaking is important here, but I don’t remember the order of the story structure, so… Yeah. I’m about to get it though, I’m about to get it. Anyway, point is, they finish their dance, they gave life to everything, and the girl was like… “Great! We’re done!” And the guy was like, “WOAH, that’s weird, that you talked first, hold on! Let’s start EVERYTHING over.” So they go back up to heaven, and they do the dance again, and the guy says, “Hey, that’s great, we made life!” and then the woman was like, “Yeah, right!” and he’s like, “Okay, awesome, everything’s good.” So that’s Japan’s explanation eternally for, uh— Not explanation for misogyny but just a justification, I guess.

Analysis: Two parts of this stood out to me. The first was what my roommate mentioned, the fact that his version of this myth would most certainly be different from the “real” or “official” one, and how interesting it would be to compare the two versions. There were a good amount of pieces of the myth that my roommate left out, including the name of the deities (Izanami and Izanagi) and how the land of Japan came to be specifically, rather than simply “they gave life to everything.” He also added the element of a “pole dance” to the myth, which isn’t present in any other version I’ve looked through.

The other part of this narrative that stuck out to me was the fact that my roommate saw the myth as a justification of misogyny, rather than simply as a pre-science explanation for how Japan and the world came to be. This is what stood out to me as the main difference between hearing the myth told by someone of Japanese cultural heritage and someone (like my roommate) who is not.

Annotation: I looked up more “official” versions of the creation myth, and found that there was a progression from one version to another to the one that my roommate eventually recounted to me. The most similar version to the one above can be found here. The version being credited as taken directly from “Kojiki, the Japanese ‘Record of Ancient Things'” can be found here.