cj_jones's review against another edition
4.0
James seems to have gone through considerable work on the provenance of her stories, drawing them from as close to the source as she can get. This edition is apparently well known for the watercolor illustrations by Gobel, but the copy I snagged on forgottenbooks.com renders them in black and white, and low resolution. ):
These are, given a couple of exceptions, very different from the western European stories. As an example, there is a story where Rai-den, God of Thunder, sends his son, who is also a God, down to earth to be born and live there so he knows about humans. This old couple finds him and takes him in. He works super hard and is super respectful and does all the good things, and they didn't have to worry about starving because they were old and couldn't work that hard. After eighteen years (I'm not sure why 18--is that a particularly relevant age to Japanese people a few hundred years ago?) he says "This has been lovely, honored parents, but I'm going home to my August Dad. Bye." And the last line is the two of them wondering how they'll live without him. The old man says "Well, we're old and will die soon anyway."
Different times, different cultures. Oh, and I also found out that Oyuki is a really common name in these stories, maybe the cultural equivalent of Jack.
These are, given a couple of exceptions, very different from the western European stories. As an example, there is a story where Rai-den, God of Thunder, sends his son, who is also a God, down to earth to be born and live there so he knows about humans. This old couple finds him and takes him in. He works super hard and is super respectful and does all the good things, and they didn't have to worry about starving because they were old and couldn't work that hard. After eighteen years (I'm not sure why 18--is that a particularly relevant age to Japanese people a few hundred years ago?) he says "This has been lovely, honored parents, but I'm going home to my August Dad. Bye." And the last line is the two of them wondering how they'll live without him. The old man says "Well, we're old and will die soon anyway."
Different times, different cultures. Oh, and I also found out that Oyuki is a really common name in these stories, maybe the cultural equivalent of Jack.
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