Reading Notes: Reading B: Japanese Fairy Tales

For the second part of the Japanese Fairy Tales retold by Yei Theodora Ozaki, the reading also consisted of only three longer tales. The first two tales were about monsters. In the first tale, The Goblin of Adachigahara, a goblin disguised as an elderly woman almost eats a man who narrowly makes an escape. In the second tale, The Ogre of Rashomon, a great ogre eats up people who come by his gate at night so a brave night goes off and fights him. Long story short the ogre loses his arm when they battle then years later turns into an old lady to trick the night so he can get his arm back. One thing both of these stories have in common is they use old women to shapeshift into and trick whomever they are trying to get. This could be used for a tale about another monster that Kintaro the samurai warrior would need to defeat to earn the title “greatest hero of his country”. The third tale was the entire reason I choose this unit, The Story of Princess Hase. The tale is very close to the tale of Cinderella so I was curious what similarities and difference the two would have. Both tales have a young girl whose mother dies and the father then marries an evil woman who hates the little girl even though she is good. But what if the little girl was not as sweet as the father and servants believed, then would it be okay that the stepmother is mean to her? A difference between the two is that in the Japanese version, the evil stepmother has a son and when she attempts to poison the Princess ends up killing her son. But what if the son lived, would he become hateful to the Princess like his mother or would be secret friends with the Princess?

The 2015 live action Disney Cinderella. Source: Flickr by BagoGames