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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Hearn - Rokuro-Kubi - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

If you don't read or speak Japanese -- I don't -- today's title is hard to remember and understand, BUT is a wonderful story from Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan.  Wikipedia tells us even Hearn got it wrong as it's really about a type of rokurokubi whose heads come off, a nukekubi.  (I hear you thinking: Whatever!)  Besides being a case of "Off with their heads!" they are bloodthirsty enough to complete this month's assortment of tales.  
Footnotes omit that Arugi could be translated as Master.
 
This story could have ended in three places, one of which is in this picture, but be sure to continue on to the end of the tale past the courtroom and even the robber.  (It's rather like a piece of music that fools you into thinking it's ended only to add to the enjoyment.)  
That's my October posts of Lafcadio Hearn, but his "Goblin Spider" and "Chin-Chin-Kobokama" are also excellent choices of spooky material and he has other Japanese and Chinese stories worth telling.  Go back to October 4 to refresh your memory about him and his work.  Rokurokubi, including nukekubi have been included in anime and manga and are part of Japanese folklore with various supernatural creatures or Yokai.  Yokai are in a Wikipedia article and may interest you.  Hearn loved the more chilling of those stories,  but the article can also lead you into animal shapeshifters (not unique to Japanese folklore, but certainly can be found in many tales ... and tails?) as well as some others I enjoy like tengu and also the water creatures called kappa.  

For so long Hearn has been our only major English language window into the culture.  Since 1993 my colleague and friend, Fran Stallings, has partnered with Japanese elder storyteller, Hiroko Fujita, touring together in both the U.S. and Japan and making even more Japanese folklore available by creating various books.  I'm told yet another book is once again in the works.  Hurrah!  Don't know a Japanese equivalent, but want to make readers aware of these resources for those of us who appreciate the culture without planning to learn the language other than maybe call someone to verify an occasional bit of pronunciation.



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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories. 

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    


  
There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Hearn - Earless Hoichi - Keeping the Public in Public Domain


Play of Hoichi the Earless  Kobe City Suma Temple
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things is an excellent source of spooky stories by Lafcadio Hearn.  Fans of a movie version saw today's story.  Here is an excerpt of Kobayashi's Kwaidan and it specifically shows Earless Hoichi.  Hoichi the Earless even has its own Wikipedia article, but most of it is a summary of . . . brace yourself for the longer Japanese name, Mimi-nashi Hoichi.  There is, however, a great picture from a theatre production.

Hoichi's Shrine.





Probably few reading this can read Hearn's source by Isseki Sanjin -- one of the reasons Hearn's work is such a valuable window on Japanese folklore.  Wikipedia also notes a variant exists, "Ear-cut  Danichi" from another area, Tokushima Prefecture on Shikoku island.  Personally I dearly love the article's pointing out the actual Buddhist temple where the story is set, even showing what is now know there as 



What I don't care to do is give you a scan from my own copy of the story.  Why? I penciled in notes of how I adapt the story.    O.k. first of all I confess the librarian in me has a problem with writing in a book.  The storyteller in me had two other problems: some of it is too faint to reproduce well and then I also hate to tell people my adaptations are the way to tell the story.  Theres a further practical aspect, it's 20 pages long!  Does that mean I'm not going to give you Hearn's story?  Dunberidiculous!  Internet Sacred Text Archive has done an excellent job of posting it and, besides the online version of the entire anthology of Kwaidan, which I definitely recommend, I would send anyone seeking more Japanese folklore also to the Sacred-Texts page on Shinto and Japanese Religions.  It is not just religious as it includes not only folklore, but also Public Domain cultural resources and all translated in English.

I hope today's segment of Keeping the Public in Public Domain encourages you to try some additional stories too good to be allowed to get dusty in an archive or, worse yet, disappear because nobody reads them.  Remember libraries have limited space, so books not borrowed are eventually removed.  Librarians use a gardening term, weeding, but it means the book is on its way to oblivion unless it can be added to online resources.  Thanks to recent copyright law, many books are a long way from being safely in Public Domain and online collections.  That's a rant for another day and I'll try to put my soapbox away.
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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories. 

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    


  
There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Hearn - Mujina - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

This week's story is the shortest of the four stories I'm posting by Lafcadio Hearn.  He enjoyed the unusual aspects of Japanese folklore, especially when looking at spooky tales.  The story comes from Tokyo of an earlier century and the Mujina is not your usual frightening creature.


























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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories. 

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    


  
There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Lafcadio Hearn and "The Boy Who Drew Cats" -- Keeping the Public in Public Domain

October's a great month for spooky storytelling!  I love so many stories, but a favorite author, Lafcadio Hearn, deserves featuring and he's definitely in the Public Domain.  I'll end this with his best-known and loved "The Boy Who Drew Cats", but want to give more about Hearn first.

This site offers a quick introduction, an interesting Bulletin Board related to his work, and some other resources.  Wikipedia gives the usual thorough, but dry article, yet it gives a good sense of why Hearn's bleak unusual life changed so thoroughly at age 40 when he moved to Japan.  ""Lafcadio Hearn is almost as Japanese as haiku" as the Tuttle publisher's foreword to his works aptly described him.  It's also why Hearn's stories are an excellent glimpse of the Meiji period when Japan was leaving its feudal roots.  His Japanese marriage to a woman from a Samurai family, their own family, naturalization as a Japanese citizen taking the name of Koizumi Yakumo, and teaching, including at the university level, all show a man who finally found where he belonged.
I also went to BrainyQuote for a look at what others felt he said of significance.  His work as a professor of English Literature at Tokyo Imperial University and Waseda University is shown instead of his retelling the Japanese tales I love.  It's interesting, however, because much is made of his moving from Catholic roots to Buddhism and yet his respect for the Bible as literature is repeatedly quoted.  As an indexer, I love his "One of the great defects of English books printed in the last century is the want of an index."
The original art by Suzuki Kason for Hearn's Japanese Fairy Tale Series

Now for my brief introduction to "The Boy Who Drew Cats."  Originally he titled it "The Artist of Cats", it was from a Japanese tale called "The Picture-Cats and the Rat", but Hearn gave his own spooky touches and a different ending from the traditional one of the boy going back to become the abbot of his temple. 

Japanese Fairy Tales not only contained this story, but is one of many books Hearn produced.  That book opens with four stories by him, but includes many other traditional Japanese stories such as "My Lord Bag-o'-Rice", "Tongue-Cut Sparrow", "Urashima", "Momotaro" and more.  Hearn's stories include "The Goblin Spider" which is spooky, too, and I love his cautionary "Chin-Chin Kobakama", but do NOT recommend it at bedtime to children.


The Online Books Page can help you find his work on the internet.  Since he is both a favorite author and fits my guidelines for my Keeping the Public in Public Domain series, I plan to have a story of his for each week in October.  If plans change, I still promise to bring a total of four of his stories.  The other three are less well known, coming from Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, which is a gem for spooky storytellers, if you just can't wait.  (I have two other books of his beyond Kwaidan and an abbreviated Japanese Fairy Tales.  Back to reading!)
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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories. 

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my normal monthly posting of a research project here.  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my monthly postings as often as I can manage it.    


  
There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I recommended it earlier and want to continue to do so.  Have fun discovering even more stories!