Skip to main content

Reading Notes: Japanese Mythology Unit, Part A



Hello!

Earlier in the semester I got to read one of the stories from the Japanese Mythology Unit and really enjoyed it. So, when it was on the list of options for this week I was excited to get more into it. So, I chose it for my part A reading. I think the neatest part about these stories is that they start out with the creation of the earth and the gods and then continue through time to explain the creation of humans, Emperors, and then stories of the Emperor Yamato.

Out of all the stories I think that I enjoyed the stories of Yamato the best. At the beginning of his story, I liked it because there was something relatable about him dreaming of a beautiful mermaid and a cave that he never found after waking up. To me it reminded me of when you are having a great dream, you wake up, and although you try to remember what made you wake up feeling so happy, you can’t. It feels like if you just tried hard enough maybe you could find the memory, but you can’t. That is how I imagine Yamato must have felt returning to that shore again and again looking for the mermaid. Then, after a time he must give up and leave to marry Tacibana. Although I can’t recommend marrying someone when you’re actually still hung up on a mermaid, I think that this scenario is also very relatable to the human experience of giving up unattainable ideals for reality and considering mermaids don’t exist it is even more analogous.

For a story this week, I think it would be interesting to take the same idea as Yamato, his mermaid, and his wife and turn it into a modern story, maybe of two people meeting on a bus or in a bar, but one not being able to find the other again. I could also switch the gender of the characters, making the one searching for the “mermaid” a woman, and the “mermaid” a man.

On the other hand, I could take the “moral” of the story, as I see it (giving up unattainable ideals for reality) , and spin just that into a story. Like someone searching for the perfect college/house/dog/dress etc. and eventually having to learn to be happy with an option they have versus shunning them all for an ideal they won’t attain.

The photo at the beginning of this post is a picture of the Kaguraden of the Shinto Shrine Atsuta-jingū traditionally thought to house the possessions of Yamato after his death.

Bibliography


Romance of Old Japan by E. W. Champney and F. Champney (1917)



Photo Credit

By Bariston [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Notes: The Man in the Moon and Pygmalion

Hello!  I couldn’t quite decide how to start these notes, so I decided I would stick with that theme and take style notes over how the stories in the anthology were started. Many of them started with some form of “ once upon a time,” or “one day” this included the stories in, The divine, Tricksters, and the Fairytales sections. This is a beginning I think a lot of us are familiar with from fairytales and has almost become a cliché in some ways. Unless I was going to write a fairytale, I don’t think that I would use this tool to start a story and even then, I might not. The other stories in the anthology had what I called a “ cold start ,” to distinguish them from the stories that used the “once upon a time” start. There were a few similarities that I noticed. The stories in the Origins section were a very cold start. For instance, “ The Man in the Moon ” only states that there was a blacksmith that didn’t like his job. We don’t learn anything about who he is as a p...

Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales, Part B

Hi! I missed the second reading for this week, so I am making it up today with these reading notes over Japanese fairy tales. This reading included three stories, one of and Ogre, a Goblin, and a Princess not unlike the story of Cinderella. All three of these are from Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki, who is pictured above with her husband. Out of the three stories, I liked the story about the Princes Hase the best, so I took notes over that story specifically. Here are those notes. The story of Princess Hase is told from a third person perspective. In the story there is very little dialogue. In fact, the only dialogue in the pieces, is that of the step-mother right before her poisoning attempt backfires and at the end when Hase’s father finds her hiding in the mountains. I think that this sparing use of dialogue at the worst and best point in the story is an interesting style choice that creased a stronger connection to the story at those points. I think that ...

Reading Notes: Persian Tales Part A

Hello!  This week I chose to read the Persian Tales unit and was not disappointed. Some of these fairy tales like “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul” and “The Wolf-Aunt” reminded me of the Brother’s Grim Fairytales in their more original forms. The others seemed a little more child friendly like we might expect of fairytales today. Thinking of my story for this week, any of them could make a fun base for writing, but I think that the ones that would be the best to work with would be “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul,” “Nim Tanak,” or “Muhammad Tirandaz, The Archer.” For “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul” I would make the circumstances of the boy’s death make more sense to a modern reader, not just based on a bet with his father that he willingly submits to. I would also want to somehow bring the boy back, maybe instead of the Bulbul growing out of the stalk, he does. Or maybe his father doesn’t kill him but hides him instead. Either way I would like for the boy to live. For “Nim T...