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Japanese Folk Tales

       Megumi tells her favorite tales in Japanese, English or in an educational mixture of both. Savor the Japanese culture through whimsical, greedy, and generous spirits, goblins, animals and human beings. (All Ages)

Study Guide & Bibliography

THE PERFORMANCE:
Megumi will combine words, gestures, and audience participation to tell stories, choosing from the following:

Gombei, the Duck Hunter, Kamotori Gombei
Hoichi the Earless, Mimi nashi Hoichi
Kappa Arm, Kappa no Ude
Kappa Spring, Kappa no Izumi
Little One-Inch, Issunboshi
Monkey Heart, Kurage no Ohanashi
Ooka and the Wasted Wisdom, Ooka
Peach Boy, Momotaro
Rat Sutra, Nezumi no Okyoo
The Boy Who Drew Cats, Neko to Kozo-sama
The Broken Promise, Yaburareta Yakusoku
The Crane Maiden, Tsuru no Ongaeshi
The Grateful Jizo, Kasa Jizo
The Last Dango, Odango Hitotsude Danmarikurabe
The Laughing Oni, Waratta Oni
The Leak, Furuya no Amamori
The Magic Fan, Tengu Ougi
The Miraculous Tea Kettle, Bunbuku Chagama
The Moon Princess, Kaguyahime
The Mouse Bride, Nezumi no Yomeiri
The Old Man Who Made Trees Blossom, Hanasakajiisan
The Old Man with a Wren, Kobutori Jiisan
The Old Woman Who Turned into a Baby, Akanboo ni Natta Obaasan
The Snow Woman, Yuki Onna
The Tongue-Cut Sparrow, Shitakiri Suzume
Urashima, the Fisherman, Urashima Taro
Why the Sea is Salty, Umi wa Naze Karai

PROGRAM GOALS:
- To introduce cultural elements of Japan (costume, custom, myth, and language).
- To give students the opportunity to participate in storytelling through song, sound effects, and movement.

ACTIVITIES:
Note: Please choose and modify the following suggestions to fit your students’ needs.

SUGGESTED PRE-PERFORMANCE ACTIVITIES:
For Art
Study the block printing in Elsa Kula and Davis Pratt, The Magic Animals of Japan, Parnassus Press, 1967. Have students experiment with various types of block art, such as with potatoes, linoleum, and wood, to create their own styles. Choose a Japanese story, and make a block print for it.

For Performing Arts
Until recent times, in Japan, only men were allowed to make a living as a hanashika, professional storyteller. They remained seated on a cushion on the tatami (woven floor), and used simple props, such as a fan to tell stories. For rakugo, the art of storytelling resources and references, see
http://rtt.colorado.edu/~asano/rakugo/resources.html

For Visual Arts
Learn about Origami, the art of paper folding, and try it!
http://www.origami.as/home.html

There's a whole art of folding dollar bills, too.
http://members.cox.net/crandall11/money/

For Geography
Locate Japan on a map and on the globe. Check the latitude and the longitude of the northeastern most border and the southwestern border.

Compare the geography and climates of Japan with New Zealand. What aspects are similar? different?

For Language Arts (reading & writing)
Compare and contrast different versions of the same story:
1) Lafcadio Hearn, "The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi," Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Houghton Mifflin, 1904.
2)Naomi Baltuck, "Hoichi," Apples from Heaven: Multicultural Folk Tales About Stories and Storytellers, Linnet Books, 1995.
What are the stylistic differences? What has been lost? added? Why do you think Baltuck made the changes she did (especially the ending)?

Compare and contrast different versions of the same story motif:
- Jeannette Faurot, “The Laughing Oni,” Asian-Pacific Folktales and Legends, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1995.
- Arlene Mosel, The Funny Little Woman, Dutton, 1972.
- Ethel Johnston Phelps, "The Old Woman and the Rice Cakes," The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales From Around the World, The Talman Company, 1981.

Who is laughing? How does the story change when the person(s) laughing switches? Is one version geared toward a more mature audience?

Compare and contrast different versions of the same story:
- Donald Keene, "The Lady Who Loved Insects," Anthology of Japanese Literature, Grove Press Inc., 1955.
- Jean Merrill, The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars, Philomel Books, 1992.

The translation reveals that the original author intended the story to be amusing, featuring a strange, out-of-sorts kind of a woman. The re-telling emphasizes the intelligence and the independence of the young woman, and is sympathetic. How do these different views reflect the attitudes of people of different times?

For Math
The art of origami (see For Visual Arts above) is great for teaching math and geometry. Try it (see books by Tomoko Fuse and Barbara Pearl in the bibliography section below)!

SUGGESTED FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES:
For Art
Have students draw or paint their favorite part of their favorite stories Megumi told. Afterwards, write below the illustration why they liked that part.

For Cooking
After listening to "The Last Dango," make some dango!
Dango (Mochi-ko Type)
Dango: A kind of "mochi," a Japanese snack

1 16oz box Mochi-ko, Blue Star Brand (Koda Farms) Sweet Rice Flour
1 box 12.3oz Mori-nu brand tofu (vacuum pack)
3/4 c water
or
shiratamako
3/4 c water

Mix the first three ingredients by hand.
Let the dough squish through fingers.
Make balls, diameter being 1-2cm.
Drop into boiling water.

Dango has finished cooking when it floats to the surface of the boiling water, and cooks for an additional 2 minutes.

Scoop the cooked dango and drop into cold water to cool.

Eat the dango plain, or with any of the condiments. Yum!

Condiments:
-Sweet and Salty Sauce (see below for the recipe)
-Sweet Azuki Beans (cook them yourself with lots of sugar, or buy it cooked)
-Millet flour ("kinako") mixed with equal amount of powdered sugar
-Maple syrup
-Cinnamon and Sugar

Sweet & Salty Sauce
3 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp. Mirin
1/2c sugar
2 small Tbsp. corn starch ("katakuri-ko")

Mix and heat the first three ingredients. Take off the burner and add corn starch to thicken the sauce.

For Performing Arts
Compare and contrast the various types of performing arts of Japan, besides storytelling (rakugo): Bunraku (puppet theatre), Noh, Kabuki, Kyogen, and Noh.
http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/japan/DanceDrama/Japanese_Drama_Noh.html

In Hoichi the Earless, the main character is a biwa hoshi, or a minstrel who plays a biwa while singing his stories. Learn more about the instrument http://jtrad.columbia.jp/eng/i_biwa.html

For Geography
Research the various famous places in Japan.
- Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. Has many Buddhist temples and the old Imperial Palace.
- Tokyo, the present capital of Japan.
- Hiroshima & Nagasaki, cities where the atomic bombs were dropped during World War II. Famous for museums and memorials for peace.
- Mt. Fuji, one of the most well-known symbols of Japan: a beautifully conical mountain within a day trip from Tokyo.
- Hokkaido, the northern most main island of Japan. With many undeveloped mountains, waterfalls, lakes, and rivers, it attracts many hikers. If you were interested in studying the Ainu, the indigenous Japanese, this would be the place.

If you were planning a vacation there, where would you like to go?
If you wanted to study some of the classical Japanese art forms, where would you go?

For History
Megumi wore a hippari, a type of a top, and mompei, a farmer’s pants. How has Japan’s history, climate, geography, and beliefs affected its fashion? Find out the history of kimono http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/kimono/kimono-history.html

For Language Arts (reading & writing)
How about writing your own Readers’ Theatre? (Use as reference: Aaron Shepard, Stories on Stage, The H. W. Wilson Company, 1993.) Choose and adapt and perform them for your own class. Optional: Perform for students in the lower grades, or for senior citizens at a convalescent hospital. Stories written by Florence Sakade, or Elsa Kula and Davis Pratt are the simplest.

For Music
How about learning some bilingual (Japanese and English) songs? (See below for resources.)

For the Visual Arts
Explore the art of Kamishibai, a mixture of performing and visual art. Work individually, or in groups, to choose a story (or make up one), illustrate, and write it on cardstock paper. Lesson plans. See below for resources

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Naomi Baltuck, "Hoichi," Apples from Heaven: Multicultural Folk Tales About Stories and Storytellers, Linnet Books, 1995.

Patricia A. Compton, The Terrible Eek, Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Sharon Creeden, "Ooka and the Wasted Wisdom," Fair is Fair: World Folktales of Justice, August House Publishers, 1994.

I.G. Edmonds, illustrated by Sanae Yamazaki, "Ooka and the Tosuke's Tax," Ooka the Wise: Tales of Old Japan, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1961.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "The Crescent Moon Bear (Tsuki no Waguma)," Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Ballantine Books, 1992.

Jeannette Faurot, “The Laughing Oni,” Asian-Pacific Folktales and Legends, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1995.

Tomoko Fuse, Unit Origami: Multidimensional Transformations

Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly Japan, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1971.

Lafcadio Hearn, "The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi," Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Twelve Point Series, 1998.

Lafcadio Hearn, Shadowings, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1971.

Lafcadio Hearn, "The Boy Who Drew Cats," The Family Treasury of Children's Stories, Doubleday & Company, 1956.

Donald Keene, "The Lady Who Loved Insects," Anthology of Japanese Literature, Grove Press Inc., 1955.

Helen Craig McCullough (compiler and editor), "The Ancestor of All Romances," "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, 1990.

Jean Merrill, The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars, Philomel Books, 1992.

Miyoko Mitsutani, illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki, The Crane Maiden, Parents' Magazine Press, 1968.

Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee, Passage to Freedom, Lee & Low Books, 1997.

Arlene Mosel, The Funny Little Woman, Dutton, 1972.

Kancho Oda and Ralph McCarthy, The Moon Princess, Kodansha Ltd., 1993.

Ogawa, Omochi Hitotsude Danmari Kurabe (The Silence Contest for the Last Dango), Popura-sha, (printed in Japanese), 1984.

Yei Theodora Ozaki, compiler, The Japanese Fairy Book, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1970.

Barbara Pearl, Math in Motion: Origami in the Classroom

Juliet Piggott, Japanese Mythology, Hamlyn, 1969.

Ethel Johnston Phelps, "The Old Woman and the Rice Cakes," The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales From Around the World, The Talman Company, 1981.

Elsa Kula and Davis Pratt, The Magic Animals of Japan, Parnassus Press, 1967.

Florence Sakade, "The Grateful Statues," "Little One-Inch," "Peach Boy," Japanese Children's Favorite Stories, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1958.

Aaron Shepard, Stories on Stage, The H. W. Wilson Company, 1993.

Claus Stamm, "Three Strong Women," Tatterhood and Other Tales, edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps, The Talman Company, 1978.

Royall Tyler, Japanese Tales, Pantheon Books, 1987.

Post Wheeler (collector), Harold G. Henderson (editor), Tales from the Japanese Storytellers, John Wheatherhill, Inc, 1964.


Videotapes:
Masaki Kobayashi, director, Kwaidan, based on Lafcadio Hearn's book, Kwaidan, Video Yesteryear, 1983, c1964. (Videotape, for High School and Adult)

Organizations:
Japan Society of Northern California, (415) 986-4383
http://www.usajapan.org/

Websites:
Bilingual Songs and CD's Okaasan and Me

Folk Tales: JapaneseCultureAbout.com

Kamishibai: Storycard Theatre

Origami: http://www.origami.as/