2008-02-12 - 2:28 p.m.
Don't Judge a Book (or Story) by Its Cover (or Title and Pictures)
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Sorry to anyone who was tricked into believing that I was getting these folk tales from real-life grandmas. Working at full speed, it takes me about fifteen minutes a page to hash through this stuff - so really half an hour a page - and I don't know any real-life grandmas who would have the patience to bear with me through that.
The book I'm currently sourcing from was commissioned by a local PTA committee. I'm actually pretty proud of this because it is the first book that I've attempted to read which doesn't have the little phonetic characters (which are, for anyone interested, called furigana) lined up beside every single kanji. Go me!
Usually I choose which story I'm going to do by theme. The kappa stories have already all been done because those ones are my favorite. And the fox stories are nearly all done because I like them too. The samurai stories remain almost completely untouched because I only do those ones when I kind of masochistically want to drive myself crazy because, for some reason, the samurai stories are always next to impossible to understand.
Sometimes I choose stories based on where they took place. That is, based on whether or not they happened somewhere I think I want to go. Now that I don't have friends and have to travel hundreds and hundreds of kilometers to be able to go somewhere I could dance to songs I already know, translating folk tales and then hunting down and visiting where they took place is some of the most fun I have.
Other times, I just read the titles and look at the pictures to decide which stories seem like they might be interesting. This is actually a pretty bad idea because it isn't until I've already invested a fair amount of time and effort that I realize that some of these stories are really, really boring.
Like this one, for example. The only picture in this story was of an eagle flying away with a kid in a basket. I read the title, applied my Disney-influenced-Western-honky-assumption-making mechanism to it and assumed that this would be some sort of Peter Pan type story, which would have, I thought, been good.
I was, however, wrong. Don't even bother reading past here if you're busy today.
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Naked Island, as translated by ELOFTING@HOTMAIL.COM
Long ago, there lived a young woman in Asamushi Village, near present-day Aomori City.
One day, like any other, the woman went to work in the fields, leaving her baby safely in a large basket nearby.
As the young woman worked, an enormous eagle swooped down from the sky, grasped the basket in its sharp talons, and then, with it, flew back up into the sky.
The whole thing happened so quickly that the baby's mother hadn't had time to do anything but watch. Now, as the eagle began to fly away, the young woman went crazy in distress and tore off through the field after it.
"My baby! My baby!" she screamed as she ran in pursuit.
The eagle - and the young woman following close behind - crossed over open fields, mountains and rivers and, finally, reached the sea.
It seemed like the eagle would keep on flying, beyond where the young woman could follow. But suddenly it landed on the top of a small island just offshore.
"My baby! My baby!" still screaming, the young woman ran into the ocean, swam to the little island, and began to climb.
But the island rose sharply out of the sea and was incredibly steep. The young woman grabbed onto small bunches of grass, little trees that grew here and there, anything she reach to help her climb. But nothing was substantial enough to support her weight and the grass ripped and the trees snapped as she attempted to climb.
The woman thought of nothing but the safety of her child and, even as her hands began to bleed, she struggled fursiously to reach the island's top. Blood from her hands flowed and stained the ripped up grass, the broken trees, and the island's surface.
Finally, somehow, the young woman managed to reach the island's top and she hugged her baby - which was completely unharmed - tightly in her arms.
The eagle was no where to be seen.
The island's rocky surface is still, to this day, stained a reddish colour from the young woman's blood. And the grasses and trees never grew back. It is for this reason that locals now call this place Naked Island.
