Stories Repeat Themselves

Yoshimasa Ogawa

Description

This book presents modern-day interpretations of old tales known to all Japanese people. The first story is connected to a famous tale of a young fisherman who was taken to the beautiful undersea palace of Dragon King by a turtle that he had saved. There he spent an extremely enjoyable time, treated to delicious dishes and entertained by beautiful girls. Indulging in the dreamlike life, he lost track of time and completely forgot about his life back in the fishing village. When he finally returned home, none of his family or friends were around. Then, he opened the treasure box that the king had given him as a farewell gift, and a plume of smoke came out and turned the young fisherman into an old man in an instant. In this book, a young businessman has a stroke of good luck and starts climbing the administrative ladder. While working at an overseas branch, he loses track of time and neglects communicating with his wife, who is struggling to raise their baby daughter single-handedly. Suddenly, a tragedy occurs, and he loses all the people he has loved.
In another story (related to The Woman of the Snow, a tale of a beautiful female ghost in the snowy mountain regions), an honest, hardworking woman is forced to punish her husband who neglects his responsibilities as a husband and father. Yet another story (based on One-Inch Warrior, an extremely small samurai warrior) describes a very small karate practitioner who turns an adversity into an opportunity. The author presents fictitious stories depicting contemporary Japanese people’s experiences. These new stories reflect the principal patterns in human nature and conduct illustrated in the old tales.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 02 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669829805
• Langue: English

Extrait

STORIES REPEAT THEMSELVES
Once Upon a Time...and Now
 
 
 
 
 
 
Yoshimasa Ogawa
Cover Illustrator: Ms. Takako Maruyama
 
Copyright © 2022 by Yoshimasa Ogawa.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022911295
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-2982-9

Softcover
978-1-6698-2981-2

eBook
978-1-6698-2980-5

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 07/21/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
835670
 
Fairytales, legends, and popular anecdotes: we all grow up listening to simple stories. Several different versions exist for each story, and the exact sources are sometimes unknown. However, these stories have been told repeatedly over a long period of time because they reflect experiences shared by everyone and teach moral lessons. History repeats itself, as the saying goes; so do stories. This book introduces just a few such tales. These tales illustrate patterns in people’s conduct and behavior but don’t report the exact facts.
Author
CONTENTS
Back from a Mission in a Faraway Land
The Proud and the Plodder
A Growth on the Jaw
Mr. Head Honcho
The National Hero
Locked in the Desk Drawer
Oni Buster
Turning an Adversity into an Opportunity
The Flag Carrier
BACK FROM A MISSION IN A FARAWAY LAND
ONCE UPON A TIME in a small seaside village, there lived a young fisherman named Taro Urashima. One day, he was strolling along the beach and found a gang of local boys kicking and poking sticks at a turtle. Urashima talked to the boys and persuaded them to stop abusing the animal and set it free. Thanks to his conscientious intervention, the turtle could escape and return to the sea.
A few days later, the same turtle came back to the beach and invited him to visit the undersea palace of Dragon King. He rode on the turtle’s back, dove into the water, and was shown to a beautiful palace at the bottom of the sea. The king, or the lord of the palace, extended his full appreciation to Urashima for saving the turtle’s life, and treated him to delicious dishes and wines. Beautiful young girls sang and danced to entertain him, and he spent a truly enjoyable time day after day, completely oblivious to the human world that he left behind. After the passage of some time, however, he suddenly thought of his family and friends back in the seaside village. People in the palace wanted him to stay there forever, but he really missed his folks, and asked them to send him back home. They agreed to take him back to the village and presented him with a treasure box, telling him that all the wonderful memories at the deep-sea palace were packed in it. They warned him, however, that he should never open it in the outside world.
He was escorted back to the fishing village on the turtle’s back. After seeing the turtle off, he walked around the village and noticed that none of the people he knew were present. Then, he could not resist the temptation to find out what was in the treasure box. The moment he opened it, a plume of smoke came out, and it turned Urashima into an old man in an instance. The treasure box was intended to contain the lapse of time that he had lost track of while staying at the palace of the Dragon King.
(From Fisherman Urashima Toro )
 
AND AFTERWARD . . .
In 1960 in Tokyo
It was about a month since a strange old man had emerged out of nowhere and started roaming the public places on the island of Tsukuda. He was about 175 cm, rather tall for a Japanese man in his generation. Although he wore an old-fashioned suit and a pair of worn-out shoes, one of the local residents who had seen him indicated that his wire-rimmed glasses had the letters Bvlgari stenciled on its side. But his peculiar looks and behavior puzzled everybody who witnessed or ran into him.
Tsukuda Township was located on a small island near the mouth of the Sumida River, which flowed into the Tokyo Bay. It was a fifteen-minute walk from the commercial districts of Ginza and Nihonbashi but had been set off by the river, forming a closely knit community. Many of the residents had lived there for generations, forming a cultural enclave where people maintained intimate relationships with one another and conformed closely to the social standards and customs of their group. Therefore, the arrival of a drifter disturbed their peace of mind to a considerable degree, and his strange mien and antics added to their concern. From dawn to dusk, this man ambled along the riverside and then sat on the northern tip of the island where the river branched off. There he spent hours, staring toward the main stream.
Geologically, the island had formed when the sand and dirt carried from upstream piled up. As a result, this island divided the Sumida River into two major tributaries, which ran along both sides of the island and then flowed into the Tokyo Bay. A careful observer noticed and reported that this drifter was always looking across the west-side tributary toward a certain point on the other shore. As the crow flies, it was about five or six hundred meters from his position to the point on which his eyes were focused. All the residents of the neighborhood were wary of his enigmatic ritual of sitting there for hours and gazing at the other side of the river, but nobody bothered to report it to the police because he had done no harm to the neighbors.
Back in 1582, about four centuries before, Nobunaga Oda, who had reigned over the country until then, was suddenly attacked and killed by a rebel retainer named Mitsuhide Akechi. The historic event was afterward remembered as the Upheaval at the Honnoji Temple. At the time, Ieyasu Tokugawa, another major retainer of Nobunaga, who would start the Tokugawa feudal government thirty years later and whose descendants would continue to reign for the next two and a half centuries, was vacationing in Kyoto. He rushed to Osaka to settle the issues after this incident, struggling through the back ways to reach his destination as quickly as possible. However, he became stranded when he came to a flooded river.
When Ieyasu was lost from action, the local fishermen stepped forward to help him and his followers cross the river by bringing in many fishing boats. Ieyasu deeply appreciated their help and was impressed by their ability to adeptly transport an entire army across the flooded river. This timely encounter led to the initiation of a friendly relationship between the feudal lord and the Osaka fishermen, and they continued to communicate with each other and exchange courtesies on a regular basis. In 1613, when Ieyasu established the Tokugawa government, he invited the local fishermen to move to Tokyo, offering a piece of land for residency near the Tokyo Bay, and granted them a privileged position as an official food provider for the government. Thus, the immigrant fishermen from Osaka started their life on this island.
Currently, the residents of the island engaged in such businesses as running fish markets or producing and selling pickled fish known as tsukudani . But it was still an island with no bridge that linked it to the inner city, and they ferried people across the river using a rowing boat. There was already a movement to build a bridge, but they would have to wait for several years before the city government would eventually approve the construction project. In such a closed community, it was easy for a mystery drifter to be the target of the residents’ gossiping.
“He’s nuts, sitting at the same stupid place all day, every day!”
“But at least, he doesn’t do any harm. So just leave him alone, okay?”
People talked about him all the time. Naturally, they warned their children to stay away from him.
One day, however, two five-year-old boys named Jiro and Yasu ran into him while passing through the area. Their eyes met the man’s! Although they were alarmed and ready to dash home at once, the two young boys’ curiosity got the better of them. After exchanging glances with each other, they walked up to the drifter and initiated a quick conversation. “How are you doing, Grandpa?” Yasu asked.
The man looked up slowly and turned his glazed eyes toward Yasu, and then to his friend Jiro. The two young boys felt shivers running down the spine and inquired each other’s expression for a cue to dart toward their homes. But at least neither felt that they were in a life-threatening situation. They then noticed that although his hair was gray, the man was actually much younger than people had always said he was. He seemed to be in his early forties or even younger—perhaps, just a little older than their own fathers.
“I’m fine,” the man replied in a soft but clear and unaccented voice.
“What . . . what are you looking at?” Jiro asked, while Yasu was stunned for the moment. Now