Momotarō, Or the Peach Boy: Japan’S Best-Loved Folktale As National Allegory
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Momotarō, or the Peach Boy: Japan’s Best-Loved Folktale as National Allegory by David A. Henry A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Asian Languages and Cultures) in The University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Professor Ken K. Ito, Chair Professor Mark H. Nornes Professor Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen Associate Professor Leslie B. Pincus © David A. Henry 2009 DEDICATION To Chisato, for walking together on the journey. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The University of Michigan was a rich and exciting environment for exploring Japanese literature. I am grateful for a lively cohort to have shared the journey with including Alex Bates, Hoyt Long, Jan Leuchtenberger, Jeremy Robinson, Kristina Vassil, and Bob Rama. Graduate students ahead of and behind me in the program, including Timothy Van Compernolle, David Rosenfeld, Atsuko Ueda, Mimi Plauché, and Jason Herlands, have been generous with both helpful advice and criticism. Michigan’s Asia Library has been an unparalleled resource and I have appreciated the guidance of librarian Kenji Niki’s guidance through its deep stacks. Professor Ken K. Ito’s seminars on modern Japanese literature pushed me intellectually, opened me to the joys of Japanese fiction, and the ethical responsibilities of the critic. Most of whatever intellectual growth I was able to achieve during my graduate study was as a direct result of preparing for and participating in his rigorous class sessions. Professor Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen consistently shared with us the heart of a poet and the probing mind of an intellectual of the first order. Professor Leslie Pincus’ seminars in Japanese history were exciting as models of scholarly dialogue. I am thankful to Professor Mark Nornes for his boundless knowledge of Japanese film and his contagious enthusiasm for both film and the field of film studies. While at Michigan, I was lucky enough to teach Japanese language for several semesters under the direction of Mayumi Oka and Shōko Emori, whose professionalism and teaching skill helped motivate me in my own teaching. My studies were also supported by a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship and the Center for Japanese Studies, for which I am grateful. In 2001-2002 I was lucky to study Japanese language at the Inter-University Center in Yokohama, Japan due to a generous grant from the Blakemore Foundation. Professor Kōno Kensuke’s guidance while I was researching my dissertation at Nihon University was extremely helpful. I am also thankful to his graduate students under his direction. I am thankful for the support to write my dissertation via funding from the Japanese Ministry of Education and from the Fulbright-Hays Scholarship. While researching the Momotarō folktale in Okayama Prefecture I am grateful to local researchers Kahara Naoko and Ichikawa Shunsuke, to Kaihara Yasuhiro of the Okayama Prefectural Museum and to the family of Hashimoto Sentarō. Finally, I am thankful for the detailed and always insightful advice of Professor Ken K. Ito as he has generously given his time to reviewing my dissertation chapters. The better parts of this study are marked by his influence in ways both profound and subtle. The errors and digressions are more clearly my own. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF FIGURES vii LIST OF APPENDICES viii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND FOLKTALES IN JAPAN 1 MOMOTARŌ RESEARCH 16 CONCLUSION 19 I. WRITING ORAL TALES IN THE EDO PERIOD (1600-1868): READING MOMOTARŌ THROUGH VERBAL AND VISUAL TEXTS 20 YANAGITA AND ORAL TALES 25 DATING ‘ORAL’ TALES 27 WRITING ‘ORAL’ TALES 33 TEACHING WITH TALES 44 VISUAL CONVENTIONS: DRESSING THE HERO, COMPOSING THE SCENE 51 CONCLUSION 64 II. CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AS NATIONAL ALLEGORY IN IWAYA SAZANAMI’S MOMOTARŌ (1894) AND BEYOND 67 NATIONAL ALLEGORY AFTER JAMESON 68 NARRATING THE NATION TO CHILDREN 70 iv TROPES OF EMPIRE IN IWAYA SAZANAMI’S MOMOTARŌ (1894) 73 KŌENDŌWA IN TAIWAN 82 CONCLUSION 85 III. AKUTAGAWA RYŪNOSUKE’S PARODY MOMOTARŌ (1925) 87 REWRITING FOLKTALES WITHIN A COLONIAL DIALOGUE: FROM TOKYO TO SHANGHAI AND BACK 89 HERO WORSHIP IN THE NATIONAL IMAGINATION 100 AKUTAGAWA RYŪNOSUKE’S MOMOTARŌ (1925): THE HERO AS VILLAIN 109 CONCLUSION 117 IV. FOLKTALES AND THE FORMATION OF YANAGITA KUNIO’S MINZOKUGAKU IN THE EARLY TO MID 1930S 119 FROM KYŌDO KENKYŪ TO MINZOKUGAKU 123 MOMOTARŌ NO TANJŌ (1933) 133 MUKASHIBANASHI SAISHŪ TECHŌ (1936) 139 CONCLUSION 144 V. MAKING FOLKTALES LOCAL THROUGH KYŌDO KENKYŪ LOCAL STUDIES) AND KYŌDO KYŌIKU (LOCAL EDUCATION) 146 KYŌDO KYŌIKU: MAKING EDUCATION LOCAL 152 FROM FOLKTALE (MUKASHIBANASHI) TO LEGEND (DENSETSU) 159 LOCAL EDUCATORS, ETHNOGRAPHERS, AND ADMEN 168 REWRITING LOCAL IDENTITY AFTER 1945 178 CONCLUSION 188 VI. ANIMATING ALLEGORY IN MOMOTARŌ NO UMIWASHI (1943) AND MOMOTARŌ UMI NO SHIMPEI (1945) 190 v MOMOTARŌ AS NATIONAL ALLEGORY 193 FOLKTALES AS NATIONAL ALLEGORY FROM THE LATE 1930S TO EARLY 1940S 195 ANIMATING FOLKTALES 201 CONCLUSION 209 CONCLUSION 210 APPENDICES 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY 227 vi LIST OF FIGURES FIGURES 1. Opening illustration to Nishimura Shigenobu’s Momotarō mukashibanashi 34 2. Second illustration from Nishimura Shigenobu’s Momotarō mukashibanashi 36 3. Chinese zodiac 38 4. Scene from Momotarō hottan setsuwa, text by Santō Kyōden and illustrations by Katsushika Hokusai 41 5. Actor Ichikawa Danjūrō II in a dramatic mie pose characteristic of aragoto style kabuki 54 6. Gate scene from Akahon Momotarō 54 7. Scene from Kōkū Koku’s Momotarō emaki 58 8. Scene from Kanō Masanobu’s Momotarō emaki 59 9. Illustration of Momotarō at the oni gate from Nishimura Shigenobu’s Momotarō mukashibanashi 60 10. The final scene from Kōsū Koku’s Momotarō emaki 63 11. Scene from Kanō Masanobu’s Momotarō emaki 64 vii LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX A. Momotarō tale found in 1st edition of Japanese School Reader, 1887 213 B. Ki no Tsurayuki’s Kana Preface to the Kokinshū 215 C. Iwami Jutarō by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke 216 D. Momotarō by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke 222 E. Folklore related fieldwork guides issued by Yanagita Kunio 226 viii INTRODUCTION National Identity and Folktales in Japan It has been a very long time indeed since the Momotarō tale first took root in the Japanese soil, and it seems as if the very first form has long since withered away. The original form of the Momotarō story (one might say the myth [shinwa] rather than the folktale [mukashibanashi] ), … no longer exists in our popular culture.1 As the Japanese people moved inland toward the mountains, they began to believe that spirits came down from heaven, to the tops of the mountains, and that they would occasionally come down from the mountains to visit the human world. It is not surprising that they conceived of a spirit entering our world floating down a mountain stream.2 Yanagita Kunio, Momotarō no tanjō (1933) What are folktales? When did they originate and what do they mean? It was through these questions that Japanese folklorist Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) framed the discipline of minzokugaku, or Japanese ethnography, in the first half of the 1930s. Searching for the means to describe Japan’s “national character and distinctiveness,” Yanagita researched folktales in general and the Momotarō tale in particular in his works such as Momotarō no tanjō (1933, The Birth of Momotarō), quoted above.3 The story of a boy born from a peach, Momotarō was by far Japan’s most famous tale in the modern 1 Yanagita Kunio, Yanagita Kunio zenshū. Vol 6 (Chikuma Shobō, 1998) 248. 2 Yanagita (Vol. 6) 257. 3 Ronald Morse. Yanagita Kunio and the Folklore Movement: The Search for Japan’s National Character and Distinctiveness (New York: Garland Publishers, 1990) 1-5. 1 period.4 For Yanagita, it was also an ancient tale that represented deep truths about the Japanese people. In his view, the peach that came bobbing down the river and gave birth to the boy hero was not just a narrative element pleasing to children. As Yanagita suggests in the second quote above, if one only knew how to look carefully enough the peach held within it the very movements of the Japanese people as they settled into their homeland and revealed traces of their spiritual communications with the gods. Although he considered dozens of Japanese tales in detail, Yanagita elevated Momotarō to the status of being representative of both tales in general and the Japanese people as a whole. Multiple versions of the tale existed during the Edo period, as I show in my first chapter, but by the 1890s a single dominant version was disseminated through both Japanese national language readers (kokugo tokuhon) and children’s literature. The plot details are quite simple.5 There was once an old couple. The old woman goes to the river to wash clothes, the old man goes to the mountains to cut firewood. Finding a giant peach floating down the river, the woman takes it home to her husband. As he moves to cut into it, the fruit splits open by itself to reveal a healthy baby boy. The couple raises the boy into his teenage years and then he goes to fight oni, or ogres, who have been attacking his village. He sets off after first asking his father’s permission to go and then receiving millet dumplings from his mother as provisions. En route he enlists a dog, a monkey and a pheasant as retainers and after crossing the ocean he reaches Oni Island. 4 Throughout my dissertation, I will place Momotarō in italics to refer to the tale in general, and Momotarō in unmarked text to designate the main character and hero of the tale. In cases where the tale’s name is part of longer titles, such as Momotarō no tanjō, it will be italicized with that longer title rather than placed in quotes.