Book Review
Title: Japanese Stories for Language Learners by Anne McNulty & Eriko Sato
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.5 Stars
I recently reviewed another set of short stories in Japanese and I decided to review the other two collections I have as well. I will follow the same process as before and review the stories individually before averaging out the ratings for the collection overall.
Urashima Taro - ****
Urashima Taro is a Japanese folktale about a fisherman and it dates back to the 8th century. Urashima Taro one day spots some children tormenting a baby turtle and returns it to the sea where it belongs thinking nothing more of it, until several years later the now fully grown turtle returns and as a sign of thanks takes Taro to the Dragon Palace at the bottom of the sea. He spends some time there with a beautiful princess drinking and having feasts but he is worried about his elderly parents and wants to return home. Before he leaves the princess gives him a treasure box and tells him never to open it. Upon returning he realises everything has changed and he can’t find his parents so he opens the treasure box only to turn into an old man and he realises that during the time he was at the Dragon Palace hundreds of years have passed on land. Urashima Taro reminded me a lot of Pandora’s box and it was very quick to read both in English and Japanese.
Snow Woman - ****
Snow Woman or Yuki Onna in Japanese is another folktale about a female yokai (demon) that appears on snowy night and it dates right back to the Muromachi period around 1336-1573. In this story we are following two lumberjacks, Minokichi and Mosaku. One day a freak blizzard forces them to wait out the storm in the ferryman’s hut as he has already left and they fall asleep. Upon waking Minokichi realises that Mosaku has wondered out in the storm where a woman in a white kimono is watching. She agrees to help him as long as he tells no one about her shortly after she leaves he faints to awaken to find Mosaku dead. A few years later he is returning from the same forest and he meets a beautiful woman named Oyuki and they hit it off. They are shortly married and Oyuki gives birth to ten children before Minokichi remembers the woman in white and realises his wife looks a lot like her. He tells her the story from that night that the woman in white told him to never tell. It turns out that the woman in white and Oyuki are the same person and since Minokichi has told the story she should kill him but she doesn’t asking him to take care of their children before disappearing. Again, this had a very Pandora’s box feel to it in that Minokichi was given instructions that he couldn’t follow and as a result he lost both his friend and his wife.
The Spider’s Thread by Ryunosuke Akutagawa - ***
The Spider’s Thread tells the story of Buddha and Kandata, one day while strolling through Paradise, Buddha gazed down in Hell and saw Kandata, a thief and murderer struggling in the Pool of Blood. Buddha sees that despite his horrible deeds Kandata once spared the life of a spider and in Buddhist culture all lives have equal weight and worth and so decides to drop a spider’s thread down into Hell for Kandata. Kandata sees it and at once begins to climb however a great distance separates Hell from Paradise and he has to rest when he notices hundreds and thousands of other sinners climbing the thread. Fearing the thread will break, Kandata claims it as his own and tells the others to get back down into Hell. At this moment the thread snaps and all the sinners including Kandata are plunged back down into Hell. Buddha has been witnessing all of this from Paradise and reflects that trying to escape Hell rather than facing punishment for one’s deeds and Kandata’s selfishness broke the thread and Buddha continues his stroll through Paradise. Understanding this story is easier if you have some knowledge of the story of Buddha and Buddhism but the meanings are clear through that we must all face punishment for our wrongs in order to be reborn and trying to evade those punishments only leads to more punishment.
The Siblings Who Almost Drowned by Takeo Arishima - ***
The Siblings Who Almost Drowned is a story set during the doyo season where a brother and sister along with their friend M are heading down to the beach for one final swim even though they are warned against it by their grandmother because of the large waves. When they get to the beach everything seems fine for a while but they quickly realise they are getting pulled further and further out to see and begins swimming for the shore. However, while M and the brother are good swimmers the sister is not and soon finds herself in trouble. The brother wants to go back for her but knows if he does that they will both drown so he continues swimming to the shore where they can get help. Once he reaches the shore the brother realises M has found a young man who immediately swims out to his sister and brings her back to the shore alive. However, the sister won’t even look at her brother and bursts into tears when their grandmother arrives even the mysterious young man doesn’t talk to the brother and he realises that he did a shameful thing in leaving his sister behind. Afterwards the young man returns home with them while his grandmother thanks him but he still doesn’t speak a word before leaving. The brother reflects later in life that even though the young man was strange and his friend M was murdered one thing that still terrifies him is thinking of his beloved sister sinking beneath the waves. This story has strong theme of survival and family which I really enjoyed but I would have liked to have known more about the mysterious young man.
Gauche the Cellist by Kenji Miyazawa - ***
Gauche the Cellist was an interesting story although I didn’t really understand it that well. We follow Gauche who is a cellist in an orchestra but he is worst player and often gets shouted at for it by the conductor. Every night Gauche practises over and over for hours, however one night a cat comes to his house and asks Gauche to play for him which he eventually does after some arguing. This continues for many nights with different animals appearing to hear Gauche play and some even offer him advice on how he can become a better musician but he doesn’t take any of this seriously. The night before the orchestra’s big performance, Gauche is visited by a mouse and her sick child and asks Gauche to heal him but he has no idea what the mouse is talking about. She explains that sick animals often hide under his house while he is playing and they miraculously get better and he agrees to play for her child and even gives them bread before they leave. On the day of the performance everything goes perfectly and Gauche even gives an encore where he plays amazingly, however, the piece of music he played was a piece he played for the cuckoo who he treated badly and he feels horrible about it. I am not quite sure what the moral of the story was here but it was certainly interesting to read.
Overall, the stories in this collection were interesting especially the sections about the authors or where the folktales originated from. The Japanese used in this collection is pretty simple although you do require some knowledge on kanji as it only provides hiragana translations once or twice for the same kanji so it is expecting you to remember how the kanji is pronounced.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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