Japanese Myths, Legends & Folktales

Japanese Myths, Legends & Folktales PDF Author: Yuri Yasuda
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462920640
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Here, beautifully illustrated and presented in both English and Japanese, are 12 of the best Japanese folktales--shared with generation after generation of Japanese children. These charming tales engage your imagination as you're carried on turtle-back rides, brought to the underwater palace of the dragon princess, and discover a temple with a "tea kettle" that is really a cunning badger in disguise. Stories include: The Tongue-Cut Sparrow The Strong Boy The Marriage of a Mouse The Fisherman and the Tortoise The Luminous Princess The Peach Boy The Kachi Kachi Mountain The Old Men With Wens The Old Man Who Made Trees Blossom The One-Inch Boy The Lucky Cauldron The Monkey and Crab Fight These stories are all richly illustrated, with 98 color illustrations by two of Japan's foremost children's books illustrators. Executed with great skill and imagination, they bring to life the charming characters of these heartwarming tales of old Japan. The tales were originally written in English by author Yuri Yasuda based on her interpretations of traditional Japanese stories. Here they are fully bilingual--each one accompanied by Japanese text. The Japanese versions of each tale include simple kanji with furigana pronunciations to help learners recognize the characters. Japanese Myths, Legends & Folktales is accessible to both English and Japanese-speaking children, as well as to older language learners who wish to enhance their reading ability. This multicultural children's book will entertain, inspire, and educate in equal measure.

Japanese Myths, Legends & Folktales

Japanese Myths, Legends & Folktales PDF Author: Yuri Yasuda
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462920640
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Get Book

Book Description
Here, beautifully illustrated and presented in both English and Japanese, are 12 of the best Japanese folktales--shared with generation after generation of Japanese children. These charming tales engage your imagination as you're carried on turtle-back rides, brought to the underwater palace of the dragon princess, and discover a temple with a "tea kettle" that is really a cunning badger in disguise. Stories include: The Tongue-Cut Sparrow The Strong Boy The Marriage of a Mouse The Fisherman and the Tortoise The Luminous Princess The Peach Boy The Kachi Kachi Mountain The Old Men With Wens The Old Man Who Made Trees Blossom The One-Inch Boy The Lucky Cauldron The Monkey and Crab Fight These stories are all richly illustrated, with 98 color illustrations by two of Japan's foremost children's books illustrators. Executed with great skill and imagination, they bring to life the charming characters of these heartwarming tales of old Japan. The tales were originally written in English by author Yuri Yasuda based on her interpretations of traditional Japanese stories. Here they are fully bilingual--each one accompanied by Japanese text. The Japanese versions of each tale include simple kanji with furigana pronunciations to help learners recognize the characters. Japanese Myths, Legends & Folktales is accessible to both English and Japanese-speaking children, as well as to older language learners who wish to enhance their reading ability. This multicultural children's book will entertain, inspire, and educate in equal measure.

The Book of Yokai

The Book of Yokai PDF Author: Michael Dylan Foster
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520271017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, readers will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries, some with original illustrations, on more than fifty individual creatures. The Book of Yokai provides a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture. It also invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yokai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, storytelling, and individual and communal creativity. Ê

Japanese Legends and Folklore

Japanese Legends and Folklore PDF Author: A.B. Mitford
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462920713
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Japanese Legends and Folklore invites English speakers into the intriguing world of Japanese folktales, ghost stories and historical eyewitness accounts. With a fascinating selection of stories about Japanese culture and history, A.B. Mitford--who lived and worked in Japan as a British diplomat--presents a broad cross section of tales from many Japanese sources. Discover more about practically every aspect of Japanese life--from myths and legends to society and religion. This book features 30 fascinating Japanese stories, including: The Forty-Seven Ronin--the famous, epic tale of a loyal band of Samurai warriors who pay the ultimate price for avenging the honor of their fallen master. The Tongue-Cut Sparrow--a good-hearted old man is richly rewarded when he begs forgiveness from a sparrow who is injured by his spiteful, greedy wife. The Adventures of Little Peach Boy--a tale familiar to generations of Japanese children, a small boy born from a peach is adopted by a kindly childless couple. Japanese Sermons--a selection of sermons written by a priest belonging to the Shingaku sect, which combines Buddhist, Shinto and Confucian teachings. An Account of Hara-Kiri--Mitford's dramatic first person account of a ritual Samurai suicide, the first time it had been reported in English. Thirty-one reproductions of woodblock prints bring the classic tales and essays to life. These influential stories helped shape the West's understanding of Japanese culture. A new foreword by Professor Michael Dylan Foster sheds light on the book's importance as a groundbreaking work of Japanese folklore, literature and history.

Japanese Tales

Japanese Tales PDF Author: Royall Tyler
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307784061
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Two hundred and twenty tales from medieval Japan—tales that welcome us into a fabulous faraway world populated by saints, scoundrels, ghosts, magical healers, and a vast assortment of deities and demons. Stories of miracles, visions of hell, jokes, fables, and legends, these tales reflect the Japanese civilization. They ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished culture. With black-and-white illustrations throughout Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

Myths & Legends of Japan

Myths & Legends of Japan PDF Author: Frederick Hadland Davis
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 146560796X
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Pierre Loti in Madame Chrysanthème, Gilbert and Sullivan in The Mikado, and Sir Edwin Arnold in Seas and Lands, gave us the impression that Japan was a real fairyland in the Far East. We were delighted with the prettiness and quaintness of that country, and still more with the prettiness and quaintness of the Japanese people. We laughed at their topsy-turvy ways, regarded the Japanese woman, in her rich-coloured kimono, as altogether charming and fascinating, and had a vague notion that the principal features of Nippon were the tea-houses, cherry-blossom, and geisha. Twenty years ago we did not take Japan very seriously. We still listen to the melodious music of The Mikado, but now we no longer regard Japan as a sort of glorified willow-pattern plate. The Land of the Rising Sun has become the Land of the Risen Sun, for we have learnt that her quaintness and prettiness, her fairy-like manners and customs, were but the outer signs of a great and progressive nation. To-day we recognise Japan as a power in the East, and her victory over the Russian has made her army and navy famous throughout the world. The Japanese have always been an imitative nation, quick to absorb and utilise the religion, art, and social life of China, and, having set their own national seal upon what they have borrowed from the Celestial Kingdom, to look elsewhere for material that should strengthen and advance their position. This imitative quality is one of Japan's most marked characteristics. She has ever been loath to impart information to others, but ready at all times to gain access to any form of knowledge likely to make for her advancement. In the fourteenth century Kenkō wrote in his Tsure-dzure-gusa: "Nothing opens one's eyes so much as travel, no matter where," and the twentieth-century Japanese has put this excellent advice into practice. He has travelled far and wide, and has made good use of his varied observations. Japan's power of imitation amounts to genius. East and West have contributed to her greatness, and it is a matter of surprise to many of us that a country so long isolated and for so many years bound by feudalism should, within a comparatively short space of time, master our Western system of warfare, as well as many of our ethical and social ideas, and become a great world-power. But Japan's success has not been due entirely to clever imitation, neither has her place among the foremost nations been accomplished with such meteor-like rapidity as some would have us suppose.

Myths and Legends of Japan

Myths and Legends of Japan PDF Author: Frederick Hadland Davis
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486270459
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Selection of Japanese folk tales. Illus.

The Japanese Myths

The Japanese Myths PDF Author: Joshua Frydman
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500777349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This is a smart and succinct guide to the rich tradition of Japanese mythology, from the earliest recorded legends of Izanagi and Izanami, their divine offspring and the creation of Japan, to medieval tales of vengeful ghosts, through to the modern-day reincarnation of ancient deities as the heroes of mecha anime. While many around the world love Japans cultural exports, few are familiar with Japans unique mythology - enriched by Shinto, Buddhism and regional folklore. Mythology remains a living, evolving part of Japanese society, and the ways in which the people of Japan understand their myths are very different today even from a century ago, let alone over a millennium into the past. Offering much more than any competing overview of Japanese mythology, The Japanese Myths not only retells the ancient stories but also considers their place within the patterns of Japanese religions, culture and history, helping readers to understand the deep links between past and present in Japan, and the ways these myths live and grow. Joshua Frydman takes the very earliest written myths in the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki as his starting point, and from there traces Japans mythology through to post-war State Shinto, the rise of the manga industry in the 1960s, J-horror and modern-day myths. Reinventions and retellings of myth are present across all genres of contemporary Japanese culture, from its auteur cinema to renowned video games such as Okami. This book is for anyone interested in Japan, as knowing its myths allows readers to understand and appreciate its culture in a new light.

Myths & Legends of Japan

Myths & Legends of Japan PDF Author: Frederick Hadland Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description


Japanese Myths & Tales

Japanese Myths & Tales PDF Author: Flame Tree Studio (Literature and Science)
Publisher: Flame Tree Collections
ISBN: 9781787556836
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the creation myth of Izanagi and Izanami designed to explain the origins of the island of Japan, to the hundreds of kami (gods or spirits) and monsters populating the tales, Japanese legends tell the story of the land, the nation, the people and the divine heritage of the emperors of Japan. Often bloody and fantastic, the tales are a powerful, rewarding read, gathered together in the gorgeous, deluxe hardcover binding of the Flame Tree Epic Tales series. The latest title in Flame Tree's beautiful, comprehensive series of Gothic Fantasy titles, concentrates on the ancient, epic origins of modern fantasy.

Folk Legends of Japan

Folk Legends of Japan PDF Author: Richard M. Dorson
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462909639
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Delightfully illustrated, this collection of Japanese myths and fairy tales presents readers with a rich folk tradition. Folk Legends of Japan contains of over one hundred Japanese folk legends. These have been selected by a distinguished American folklorist, drawn from expert Japanese transcriptions of oral legends, and carefully translated in such a way as to bring out the charming, unadorned, and sometimes disarmingly frank folk quality of the originals. Each legend is carefully annotated for the student, scholar, and a full bibliography is provided. Fortunately, the scholarly attributes of the book are now allowed to intrude between the general reader and his enjoyment of the legends themselves. Anyone who loves a genuine old wives' tales, who savors firelit evenings of listening to the folk stories will find much pleasure in these Japanese stories. At the same time the folklorist will find a mine of information, and the Japanophile will discover the folk basis for many of the beliefs and customs that may have puzzled him in the past.