Japanese Folktales Read online

  Japanese Folktales

  Prince Yamato Take bade his wife help him to attire himself like a woman.

  Japanese Folktales

  Classic Stories from Japan’s Enchanted Past

  Compiled by

  YEI THEODORA OZAKI

  Foreword by

  LUCY FRASER

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  Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

  © 1970, 2018 by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Co., Inc.

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  LCC Card No. 70-109415

  ISBN: 978-4-8053-1461-6

  First edition, 1970

  Printed in China

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  To

  Eleanor Marion-Crawford.

  Dedicate this Book

  To you and to the sweet child-friendship that you gave me in the days spent with you by the southern sea, when you used to listen with unfeigned pleasure to these fairy stories from far Japan. May they now remind you of my changeless love and remembrance.

  Y.T.O.

  Tokyō, 1903

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Preface

  List of Illustrations

  My Lord Bag of Rice

  The Tongue-Cut Sparrow

  The Story of Urashima Tarō, the Fisher Lad

  The Farmer and the Badger

  The Shinansha, or the South Pointing Carriage

  The Adventures of Kintarō, the Golden Boy

  The Story of Princess Hase: A Story of Old Japan

  The Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die

  The Bamboo-Cutter and the Moon-Child

  The Mirror of Matsuyama: A Story of Old Japan

  The Goblin of Adachigahara

  The Sagacious Monkey and the Boar

  The Happy Hunter and the Skillful Fisher

  The Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Flower

  The Jelly Fish and the Monkey

  The Quarrel of the Monkey and the Crab

  The White Hare and the Crocodiles

  The Story of Prince Yamato Take

  Momotarō, or the Story of the Son of a Peach

  The Ogre of Rashōmon

  How An Old Man Lost His Wen

  The Stones of Five Colors and the Empress Jokwa: An Old Chinese Story

  Foreword

  THE stories collected in Japanese Folktales offer a window into the Japanese imagination. Narrated in an accessible and engaging voice, this book includes many of the most popular, widely known tales from Japan, as well as some more obscure choices. They are of interest to general readers, young and old, and academics alike. Yei Theodora Ozaki, the translator, wrote in her 1908 preface that these “are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folklore.” However, her translations are due more credit than she claims for herself.

  Ozaki does not erase Japan completely from the stories but includes various local details. In some cases she provides a Japanese word and a translation, and in others she allows us to grasp words from context, such as a fisherman catching huge quantities of bonito and tai. Interestingly, the effect of these particularly Japanese terms and practices is shifting in an ever more interconnected world. For instance, characters drink sake and eat raw fish in several of the tales. These may have been esoteric Oriental practices for Ozaki’s contemporaries, but for many today they are familiar elements of Japanese cuisine.

  The stories in this collection, Ozaki says, are loose translations of modern retellings of Japanese folk and fairy tales by Sadanami (Sazanami) Sanjin, the writer better known as Sazanami Iwaya (1870–1933). A major figure in the development of modern fairy tales and children’s literature in Japan, Iwaya’s own “loose” translations—perhaps better described as adaptations—of the Grimms’ fairy tales were published in magazines for young readers from the 1890s, as were his many retellings of Japanese folk and fairy tales, and his own stories.

  Iwaya’s 1894 telling of “Momotarō, or the Story of the Son of a Peach” in particular has become the most influential source for subsequent versions of the tale. While on the surface it appears to be nothing more than a child’s story, it was also accepted as a national allegory of Japan’s imperialist expansion in Asia, a usage that has since been critiqued by many. Other tales in the collection also deserve scrutiny. The Ainu people, indigenous to the northern island of Japan now known as Hokkaidō (and to nearby islands), are depicted in “The Story of Prince Yamato Take” as barbaric rebels in need of violent quelling, as indeed they were by Japanese authorities through much of the contact between these two cultures. Yet another imbalance worth noting concerns gender: collectively, these tales feature more male heroes and protagonists than female ones, perhaps because many of Iwaya’s stories targeted male readers.

  Fairy and folk tales in Japan, as elsewhere, have a long history of complex interactions between oral and literary formats, and were often told for adult audiences in earlier periods. However, when Iwaya was writing, in the Meiji period (1868–1912) of nation-building and modernization, many adults expected the tales to provide nationalistic or “moral” messages for young readers. Certainly, “The Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die” is an ingenious philosophical reflection on the value of mortal life. Many of the other tales use clear, simple contrasts to model good behavior, for instance through the way owners treat their pets: the good man who loves his dog is contrasted with his nasty neighbor in “The Story of the Old Man Who Made the Withered Trees to Flower,” and in “The Tongue-Cut Sparrow,” the man who lovingly c
ares for his bird is contrasted with his selfish wife. The good men are both rewarded for their kindness to these animals, and their counterparts suffer from their selfish actions.

  So, this is not to argue that the tales that reflect prejudices or impart particular lessons should be censored or neglected; rather these issues are part of their value. We should identify bias even as we enjoy these imaginative stories and the new versions they inspire. And while the tales are sometimes problematic or a bit preachy, they can also be very funny. A brilliant example of folk humor and joie de vivre is found in “How An Old Man Lost His Wen,” in which a man is rewarded for his irrepressible urge to dance.

  While the stories may reflect some Japanese cultural context or official agenda, many of the tales are emphatically described as belonging to a mysterious “old Japan,” which is a faraway realm not only for readers of English but for Japanese people themselves. This is especially true for the pre-industrial natural world captured in these stories, which may exist more in the cultural imagination than real life for much of the Japanese population who live and work in suburban and urban settings. A fantastical geography, populated with memorable, communicative creatures emerges from the collected stories here. Stories start, and things happen, when people venture beyond the safety of their homes and fields and into the wilderness. The mountains in particular are removed from the real world. They are the gathering place of dancing demons, and the dwelling place of yamauba, mountain witches of the kind the Buddhist pilgrim encounters in “The Goblin of Adachigahara.” The uncontrollable ocean is another site of adventure and escape. As we see in several tales, it is the kingdom of the Dragon King in his wondrous, inviting palace below the waves.

  Animals have distinct abilities, antagonists and allies. The tanuki (raccoon dog, translated here as “badger”) is by tradition a trickster and shape shifter, often causing trouble for humans. In “The Farmer and the Badger,” also known as “Kachi kachi yama” (“Crackling Mountain”), a tanuki causes such trouble for a human couple that a rabbit takes excruciating vengeance on their behalf. Stories such as “The Adventures of Kintarō, the Golden Boy” also feature alliances between humans and different animal species, some that might not traditionally get along. We learn about animals when they are away from people, too: monkeys are cunning and jellyfish far less so.

  The imaginative power of these landscapes and creatures has inspired Japanese literature and film. The tales collected here will fill some gaps and provide a fascinating backdrop for visitors to Japan, students of Japanese language, or devotees of Japanese literature, manga, film, television, and culture more broadly. For instance, the story of “The Ogre at Rashōmon” is found in ancient anthologies of tales such as the twelfth-century Konjaku mongatari (Tales of Times Now Past), and a fifteenth-century Noh play. The same Rashōmon gate in Kyōto is the setting for Ryünosuke Akutagawa’s short story “Rashōmon” (1915), which in turn gives its title and dark, eerie atmosphere to director Akira Kurosawa’s internationally acclaimed 1950 film of the same name.

  Popular fairy tale characters and animals were also the subjects of early Japanese animation. Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (Momotarō: Divine Sea Warriors, dir. Mitusyo Seo), the first Japanese feature-length animated film, released in wartime Japan in 1945, depicts the story of Momotarō and his animal companions. More recently, folklore has inspired many of the gorgeous animated films of Studio Ghibli, populated with animals, old gods, witches, elderly people benevolent or rascally, and any number of dauntless heroes and heroines from traditional Japanese tales. In particular, Pom poko (dir. Isao Takahata, 1994) brings the tricks and mischief of the tanuki into an environmentally conscious story of the twentieth century, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya (dir. Isao Takahata, 2013) lends vivid new life to “Taketori Monogatari” (The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter), included here as “The Bamboo-Cutter and the Moon-Child.”

  The popularity of these stories and characters is further illustrated by their affects on Japanese tourism. Okayama Prefecture, which claims to be the birthplace of “Momotarō,” has an entire museum dedicated to the tale as well as shrines and castles that are said to be sites from the story. Visitors can pick the famous white peaches of the region and partake of kibi dango, the sweet rice cakes that the Son of a Peach takes on his journey and that his animal companions so desire; they are, he says, “the best kind of cake there is in Japan.”

  Recognizable yet strange, these tales are driven by our fascination with stories as much as any “Japanese psyche.” For English-speaking readers, the tales are entertaining because although we may not know the landscape or the beasts, we understand a bit about the rules that shape this kind of story. Pleasure is found in the small things including the creative ways that rules are broken or followed. Of course, we expect that a bad deed will be punished, but by a crab taking revenge on a monkey with the aid of a mortar, a chestnut and a bee? We also know that wishes may be granted, particularly those of a kindly couple who desperately want a child of their own, but how could we predict the child would emerge from a bamboo stem or a large peach?

  Ultimately, the world moves differently in these marvelous realms and like at the Dragon Palace at the bottom of the ocean, we as readers are invited to step outside of time. Just as sojourners like Urashima Tarō risk coming home to a place quite different from the one they left, when we return from this fantastical world of fairytale and folktale Japan, we see the world as a more enchanted place.

  LUCY FRASER

  DECEMBER, 2017

  Preface

  THIS collection of Japanese folktales is the outcome of a suggestion made to me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folklore.

  Grateful acknowledgment is due to Mr. Y. Yasuoka, Miss Fusa Okamoto, my brother Nobumori Ozaki, Dr. Yoshihiro Takaki, and Miss Kameko Yamao, who have helped me with translations.

  The story which I have named “The Story of the Man who did not Wish to Die” is taken from a little book written a hundred years ago by one Shinsui Tamenaga. It is named Chosei Furo, or “Longevity.” “The Bamboo-cutter and the Moon-child” is taken from the classic “Taketori Monogatari,” and is not classed by the Japanese among their fairy tales, though it really belongs to this class of literature.

  The pictures were drawn by Mr. Kakuzo Fujiyama, a Tokyō artist.

  In telling these stories in English I have followed my fancy in adding such touches of local color or description as they seemed to need or as pleased me, and in one or two instances I have gathered in an incident from another version. At all times, among my friends, both young and old, English or American, I have always found eager listeners to the beautiful legends and fairy tales of Japan, and in telling them I have also found that they were still unknown to the vast majority, and this has encouraged me to write them for the children of the West.

  Y. T. O.

  TOKYŌ, 1903

  List of Illustrations

  Prince Yamato Take bade his wife help him attire himself like a woman frontispiece

  Putting aside all fear, he went forward dauntlessly

  The procession

  The old woman had never been so frightened in her life

  The gate of some large palace

  Urashima Tarō and the Sea King’s daughter

  The farmer’s wife pounding barley

  He set the bundle of grass on fire

  He thought and pondered deeply

  He mounted the dragon

  Then the monkey and the hare hopped out

  The kind general gradually unfolded his plan

  Hase-hime listened in an attitude of respect

  Her father sent for her and told her what was required of her

  Taken
by surprise, she could hardly realize that it was her father

  The crane flew away, right out to sea

  He screamed out to Jofuku to come and rescue him.

  He took the little creature in his hand

  The screens slid open, revealing the Princess

  They all gazed with tearful eyes at the receding Princess

  The wife gazed into the shining disc

  They watched him as he went down the road

  The mother roused herself, and took her daughter’s hand

  He pressed the old woman to let him stay, but she seemed very reluctant

  After him rushed the dreadful old hag

  The monkey began his tale of woe

  The monkey was running after the thief as fast as his legs would carry him

  The Happy Hunter in vain besought his brother to pardon him.

  He took out the Jewel of the Flood Tide

  The deeper he dug, the more gold coins did the old man find

  The withered tree at once burst into full bloom

  The Dragon King blamed the doctor for not curing the Queen

  They beat the jelly fish to a flat pulp

  The monkey proposed the exchange of the hard persimmon seed for the crab’s rice dumpling.

  The monkey began to pluck and eat as fast as he could

  Some of the crocodiles ran after the hare and caught him

  When the Princess had looked at the kind brother’s face, she went straight up to him

  A dagger flashed before his eyes

  A monster serpent appeared

  The peach split in two of itself

  Momotarō returned triumphantly home, taking with him the devil chief as his captive

  Watanabe found the arm of the ogre

  In this way the ogre escaped with his arm

  The demon took the great lump from the old man’s cheek

  There was now a great wen on the right side of his face as on the left

  The Empress Jokwa

  Hako looked back, and saw Eiko unsheathing a large sword