Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales (Lang) Part A

This week I picked Japanese Fairy Tales by Andrew Lang.

I was underwhelmed by the first story of the two frogs. I didn't really understand the point of it. I wanted one of the two to learn something, but they both ended up just staying in their own cities. If I tried to adapt this into my own short story, it would end up being about two travelers, but I am not sure where I would go from there.

I liked the full circle style of the Stonecutter story, but I didn't really believe he had truly learned anything at the end so it didn't inspire me.

I really liked the tale of The Maiden With the Wooden Helmet! She was a hard worker, and it would be very easy to do something fun with this. I think I'd like to do a story where her mother trained her to fight instead of training her in home ec. The helmet would be used to shield her eyes, which would be lovely and entrancing because she had some sort of magic ability. Whoever her love interest would be would theoretically see her using the magic, and then it would go well or poorly from there.

As for The Envious Neighbor, I had read this story earlier in the semester while trying to pick out ideas for my Storybook project. While it is a very interesting tale, it makes me sad that the dog dies. However, while watching a Japanese game show special that I love, they parodied the story, and it made me really happy to understand the context.

For the Sparrow story, we actually read it in my Japanese class in Japanese. It was really difficult, and I didn't understand all of it, so it was interesting to see this version of it. While reading the original, I asked my groupmate who was good at Japanese not to tell me what tragedy the old lady brought on the sparrow, so I didn't really like finding out.

I really liked the cat story, but at the end, I wondered what happened to the cats' original owners. I liked Gon defending the princess so if I rewrote this, I would make Gon a stray who wandered in, saves the princess, and then he magically turns into a human, and they fall in love. Or something similar.

I think out of all of my ideas, I like the Maiden With the Wooden Helmet one the most at this point.


Bibliography: "Japanese Fairy Tales" by Andrew Lang.

Image Information: Personal photo taken by my mom.