Status Updates From Japanese Fairy Tales

This is harder than it should be

This is an odd book

I'm loving this!

Reading two stories every night before bed. Loving it.

Pouring the elixir of life into the fire? Kinda based Mikado

Heyyyy - nine tailed fox maiden!

Silly little rats. I know this is redundant, with the book being names ‘Japanese Fairy Tales’, but yeah these stories are proper fairytales indeed. I feel nostalgic reading them.

Every story involving Ama Terassu just has me picturing Amaterasu in Ōkami, the video game.

Idk i kinda think the lady should’ve gotten to stay in her garden and romance her peony prince or whatever but sure, fine if she’s happy i guess

Silly

«The Star Lovers»
The Weaving Maiden… Daughter of the Deity of Light… my heart… need to know immediately if this is a genuine traditional story cause wow

The Black Bowl got to the romantic in me ngl… maybe just period hormones but… uhuah
And the next story is called The Star Lovers?? I fear I might cry

‘Green Willow’ was sick, love a mystic souls-tied-to-tree.
‘The Flute’ made me wonder if this story might have inspired Yone in league of legends… however little…

Rice rice baby

Advantage on earth is better than advantage in Heaven!

From this day I throw away my old and wicked heart, and in its place I put a new one, clean and full of repentance.

simplesmente aterrorizada com o camponês e o texugo

Hayatımda duyduğum en tuhaf, en ürkütücü ve de en anlamsız masallar 🤯

Officially lost it at the airplane 👍

Næs

The Story of Yamato-Takeru is very different here than the saga in the Kojiki, being more of a childish fairy tale of fights against robbers and bandits rather than the moving saga of an anti-hero who is doomed to a life of combat by virtue of his excess strength and brutal character.

The White Hare of Inaba, though it sounds like a simple animistic fairy tale, is in fact divine myth present in the Kojiki.

Read "The Happy Hunter and the Skilful Fisher", in truth a rendering of the myth of Hoori and Hoderi from the Kojiki. It's very different from the actual rendering of the myth: Hoderi doesn't forgive Hoori and is just using the fish hook as an excuse to dethrone him, he is the ruler of Japan which I don't think they are (?), the entire Toyotama-hime story is omitted, etc.

Story is of circum-Pacific distribution.

read the Taketori Monogatari here. Wonderful story, and one with much to say about: the story seems to derive from the myth of Cheng'E, though with much that is original. The motif of five samurai having to get one fabulistic object each seems to be a repeat of the sailing theme in the Argonauts story as well as the romance of Kilhwch and Olwen, where one man must get five such objects.

The "Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die" is a variation on the Gilgamesh motif, search for immortality which is ultimately vain and pointless. The story has a Buddhist or perhaps Taoist character - the start begins with some backstory about Xu Fu, here called Jofuku, the famous deified Qin-era alchemist, so you have a bit of history within a story.

The Kintaro story has a remarkably Indo-European character to it: the infinitely strong boy warrior who is kept out of society in the mountains until he is founded by a Samurai trainer, i.e. he is needed for warfare. Achilles specially is very similar!

I forgot this book on the plane back... ig this is a DNF for now 😭😭

30/07/2024

30/07/2024