Tales of magic In Japan and Norway Tiril Bryn Thesis submitted for the degree of Candidata Philologiae in Cultural History Department of Culture studies and Oriental Languages 23rd of April 2007 University of Oslo - 1 - Abstract Fairytales are universal expressions that have been used in the nation-building process in both Norway and Japan. I have posed these questions; in what sense are they universal, and how have they been used. My hypothesis is that fairytales contain universal elements connected to the universality of myth, at the same time as they are marked by time, place and customs in the area they are found. I have three Japanese fairytales that I have compared with three Norwegian fairytales with the same AT-number. The fairytales are: AT 302:Momotaro, the Peach Boy and The ogre’s (devil’s) heart in the egg AT 425: Issun Boshi, One-Inch Boy and East of the sun West of the moon. AT 475: Urashima Taro and Friends in life and death. I have analyzed the fairytales in pairs as shown above. I have used Vladimir Propp’s 31 functions to break the tales into components and then I have used different key words to reveal different layers in the stories. Through structure and action, I have looked at the first layer in the fairytales that is connected to the similarities and the universality. The next layer is in between similarities and differences, and I have used the key word symbol images. The last layer is connected to differences and cultural references and the key words here are characters and their attributes. I have used the comparison to shed light on the similarities and differences, and then I have looked at how the Japanese fairytales have been used in the nation-building process in Japan in the Meiji-period through the key words identity and moral. The analysis shows that there are many similarities between the Norwegian and Japanese fairytales. These similarities are connected to the fairytales as a universal genre; they are connected to myths and a certain kind of moral that is visible through the abstract style of the fairytale. The symbols highlights some of the aspects with connections to the past, that were valuable in the nationbuilding process, as well as showing a link between the fairytale landscape and the landscape of dreams. The cultural references are the most important part of the fairytales in connection to the nation-building process: the cultural characteristics together with the moral in the stories, were among the elements which were used to create national identity in Norway and Japan. - 2 - Acknowledgments Thanks to: My supervisors at the Department for Cultural studies and Oriental languages: Bjarne Hodne and Reiko Abe Auestad. For great inspiration and help: Balder Bryn Morsund, Cecilie Desiree Widtsteen, Morten Bachke, Erle Bryn, Morten Joakim Vatn, Kathleen Marchant and Berit Øraker. Thanks to the The Scandinavia-Japan Sasakawa Foundation for economical support for my journey to Japan. - 3 - Contents Foreword __________________________________________________6 Question _________________________________________________________________ 7 Hypothesis _____________________________________________________________________ 7 Definition of fairy tales____________________________________________________________ 8 Material________________________________________________________________________ 9 The fairytales ___________________________________________________________________ 9 Presentation of the Collectors and the period when the fairy tales where collected. __ 10 Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe ___________________________________________ 10 Inspiration for artists_____________________________________________________________ 13 Yanagita Kunio and Keigo Seki ____________________________________________________ 14 The story of ordinary people. ______________________________________________________ 15 AT - numbers __________________________________________________________________ 17 Method _________________________________________________________________ 17 Comparison and definitions of “culture” and “nationalism” ______________________________ 17 Vladimir Propp and Max Lüthi _____________________________________________ 20 The functions – a permanent element________________________________________________ 22 The relation between characters and functions_________________________________________ 23 The functions __________________________________________________________________ 25 Comparison of texts_______________________________________________________ 27 1. Structure and action ___________________________________________________________ 28 2. Symbol images _______________________________________________________________ 29 3. The characters and their attributes ________________________________________________ 30 4. Identity and moral_____________________________________________________________ 30 Jørgen Moe and the folktales _______________________________________________ 31 Myths and Modernization__________________________________________________ 33 Moral, loyalty and filialty_________________________________________________________ 34 The Rescript on Education ________________________________________________________ 35 The enemies ___________________________________________________________________ 37 THE ANALYSIS__________________________________________40 The hero ________________________________________________________________ 40 Similarities ____________________________________________________________________ 45 In between similarities and differences ______________________________________________ 51 - 4 - Differences ____________________________________________________________________ 56 How have the farytales been used?__________________________________________________ 60 Search and find __________________________________________________________ 62 Similarities ____________________________________________________________________ 66 In between similarities and differences ______________________________________________ 70 Differences ____________________________________________________________________ 73 How have the fairytales been used? _________________________________________________ 75 Guidance to Tokoyonokuni (The other world) _________________________________ 77 Similarities ____________________________________________________________________ 80 In between similarities and differences ______________________________________________ 83 Differences ____________________________________________________________________ 87 How have the fairytales been used? _________________________________________________ 89 Conclusion ______________________________________________________________ 92 Literature list: __________________________________________________________________ 96 - 5 - Foreword In this work I have combined two interests, my fascination of fairytales, and my curiosity about Japanese culture. In a bookshop in London, I found the book Japanese folktales by Royall Tyler and that was where the idea was born. From my childhood I have many memories of Norwegian folktales by Asbjørnsen and Moe, and the book Japanese folktales made me truly curious about what the Japanese folktales would be like. Apart from the childhood experience of fairytales, my interest awakened anew when I first heard about how it was a universal genre, that fairytales with similar narrative structure and similar topics (almost identical stories) existed all over the world. I was intrigued by how this could be, and that was one of the reasons I started to study folklore at the University of Oslo. Fairytales originally belong to an oral tradition with their roots in a long gone past. Many different influences of time, place and history have marked the fairytales throughout the years and of course the process of collecting and publishing the stories have changed them a lot. This last change, from oral to published material is connected to the creation of a modern nation in Japan and in Norway. The basis of the identity-process was to create a feeling of being part of a group (Japanese and Norwegian), and to make that possible a big ideological process took place. ...the people must also be influenced, their hearts and minds made one.1 The fairytales were a part of the quest to create and define identity, and to build links to the past that could legitimate the idea of typical national values, connected to nativism and historical lines to a glorified past. The most interesting part here is how a universal genre such as the fairy tale has been used to create national myths. A major work of studying the fairy tale as a universal genre have been done by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson in the The Types of the Folktale, published in 1961. They created the system of AT-numbers where the fairytales are thematically arranged after the content and motives in the stories. My work consists of the comaprison of three Japanese tales with three Norwegian tales with the same AT-numbers. Another important aspect of the comparison is how the fairytales are 1 (Carol Gluck, Japan`s Modern Myths 1985. Page 3) - 6 - collected and published, and I have found that Yanagita Kunio and Keigo Seki have worked with similar folkloristic methods as Peder Christian Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. (Royall Tyler’s folktales have a different origin and could not be used for comparison, even though the book was the beginning of it all.) Oslo, 25th February 2007, Tiril Bryn Question Fairytales are universal expressions that have been used in the nation-building