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Aug. 14th, 2005 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWith cultural literacy, it turns out that a little dab 'll do ya. See, I was looking for fairy tales (昔話) in Japanese because I can write my fairy tales in Japanese and I wanted some in Japanese to be, er, reading for balance. That was when I got with the cultural literacy thing. Knocked my damn socks off, it did, and I only needed a little bit of clue for that to work its synergistic magic.
The folktale site I happened upon, the same one that had the utterly helpful flash player notice I talked about a couple of days back, contained the story of 桃太郎, a magical little boy who came floating down the river inside a giant peach. He was found and raised by an old, childless couple and went on a journey to build skills, where he travelled about with a dog, a pheasant, and a monkey. He fed them millet dumplings, sort of a power food for him and his animal companions, and eventually went to Ogre Island (The first fifteen times I saw the character for "ogre" (鬼), I thought "Tamahome" because of Fushigi Yuugi.) to take justice to the ogres. (I am not making any of this up, particularly not the part about millet dumplings. You think I could come up with that sort of detail on my own? You do me far too much credit. Just so you know? Millet was what the poor people in Japan ate when they couldn't afford rice. Millet wasn't the classy option. I've had millet. If you thought rice was bland...)
And this is all well and good and I'm sure everyone except![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
not_your_real is surprised at the depth of my clue regarding minor grains of the world, but where the hell is the cultural literacy coming in? Well. Quite some time ago in the テニスの王子様 universe, they had a chibi episode (Tenipuri is based on a manga. The manga isn't over yet and it has the glacial pace that appears to be typical of sports anime. Sometimes they need filler so that the manga can get ahead of the anime again. For some of the filler, they make the characters small and cute and they have them do silly things -- these are chibi episodes. Some of the other chibi episodes have included a western, a domestic comedy, a godzilla movie, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The chibi episode thing is more amusing than it sounds, honest.) where Ryoma is found in a can of Ponta (it's a soda type beverage) that floats down the river to where the old woman (Ryuzaki-sensei,. the coach) is doing laundry. This chibi episode starts out "むかしむかしあるところに" Mmmm-hmmm. This is stock Japanese roughly equivalent to our "Once upon a time". Further along in the episode, Ryoma leaves on a journey to build skills but gets scorned by a dog, pheasant, and monkey, the animals that were travelling companions for 桃太郎 in the official story. Ryoma has millet dumplings just like 桃太郎 did. This is not accidental. It's cultural references that didn't make any damn sense to me until today when I went to read about 桃太郎, whereupon the light went on.
In the chibi episode, after the companion animals scorn Ryoma, he goes to live in a mountain with a bunch of caveman-attired circus performers. (The circus performers are the rest of the tennis team.) After that, he and the team save the freshmen mascots (Horio et al) who are turtles being tortured on the beach by some opposing team people from past episodes. The turtles reward him with a choice of boxes (he takes the small one) and he returns home with tennis rackets and the team. Since this part of the story doesn't appear in the versions of 桃太郎 that I've read, I'm guessing that it's probably some other damn folktale, possibly more than one. Research continues... but the first part of Episode 87-88 (it's a double-size one) comes straight out of 桃太郎.
The folktale site I happened upon, the same one that had the utterly helpful flash player notice I talked about a couple of days back, contained the story of 桃太郎, a magical little boy who came floating down the river inside a giant peach. He was found and raised by an old, childless couple and went on a journey to build skills, where he travelled about with a dog, a pheasant, and a monkey. He fed them millet dumplings, sort of a power food for him and his animal companions, and eventually went to Ogre Island (The first fifteen times I saw the character for "ogre" (鬼), I thought "Tamahome" because of Fushigi Yuugi.) to take justice to the ogres. (I am not making any of this up, particularly not the part about millet dumplings. You think I could come up with that sort of detail on my own? You do me far too much credit. Just so you know? Millet was what the poor people in Japan ate when they couldn't afford rice. Millet wasn't the classy option. I've had millet. If you thought rice was bland...)
And this is all well and good and I'm sure everyone except
not_your_real is surprised at the depth of my clue regarding minor grains of the world, but where the hell is the cultural literacy coming in? Well. Quite some time ago in the テニスの王子様 universe, they had a chibi episode (Tenipuri is based on a manga. The manga isn't over yet and it has the glacial pace that appears to be typical of sports anime. Sometimes they need filler so that the manga can get ahead of the anime again. For some of the filler, they make the characters small and cute and they have them do silly things -- these are chibi episodes. Some of the other chibi episodes have included a western, a domestic comedy, a godzilla movie, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The chibi episode thing is more amusing than it sounds, honest.) where Ryoma is found in a can of Ponta (it's a soda type beverage) that floats down the river to where the old woman (Ryuzaki-sensei,. the coach) is doing laundry. This chibi episode starts out "むかしむかしあるところに" Mmmm-hmmm. This is stock Japanese roughly equivalent to our "Once upon a time". Further along in the episode, Ryoma leaves on a journey to build skills but gets scorned by a dog, pheasant, and monkey, the animals that were travelling companions for 桃太郎 in the official story. Ryoma has millet dumplings just like 桃太郎 did. This is not accidental. It's cultural references that didn't make any damn sense to me until today when I went to read about 桃太郎, whereupon the light went on.In the chibi episode, after the companion animals scorn Ryoma, he goes to live in a mountain with a bunch of caveman-attired circus performers. (The circus performers are the rest of the tennis team.) After that, he and the team save the freshmen mascots (Horio et al) who are turtles being tortured on the beach by some opposing team people from past episodes. The turtles reward him with a choice of boxes (he takes the small one) and he returns home with tennis rackets and the team. Since this part of the story doesn't appear in the versions of 桃太郎 that I've read, I'm guessing that it's probably some other damn folktale, possibly more than one. Research continues... but the first part of Episode 87-88 (it's a double-size one) comes straight out of 桃太郎.
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Date: 2005-08-15 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 10:47 am (UTC)Once upon a time there was a young man named 浦島太郎. One day, he saved a turtle being tortured by some children on a beach. The turtle thanked him by taking him to an undersea castle where he met a very beautiful and kind princess. He had a lot of fun there every day, but after a while he wanted to return home. When he told the princess he wanted to go back, she gave him a box as a present, but told him he must never open it. When 太郎 reached solid ground again, he couldn't find his house anywhere. The people he met on the street told him that there used to be a man named 浦島太郎 living there 300 years before. Hearing this, 太郎 became very sad and opened the box he had got from the princess. When he did so, lots of white smoke came out and he turned into a white-haired old man.