Week Seven: Comparisons Essay

This week I read Japanese Fairy Tales and because I'm trying to get ahead (I have some crazy upcoming weeks), I already did next week's over Tibetan Folktales. Since I read them so close to together, I noticed many similarities and differences between them that I wanted to discuss here. They are both cultural fairytales, featuring magic powers, talking animals and lessons learned.

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In Japanese Fairy Tales, many of the stories featured good and evil characters, each punished or rewarded for their good or bad deeds. The Envious Neighbor is punished for his devilish ways and using his neighbor's good fortune to further his own riches. And many stories featured the Japanese racoon dog, a Tanuki, and his pack of tricks and manipulations. These stories gave insight into this Japanese animal and parts of their culture that seeped into the stories.

In the The Tibetan Folktales, the stories also had similar themes and characters. Animals and humans existed together, talking and being friends or enemies. Characters were also punished for their bad intentions and rewarded for their honesty. In The Ingratitude of Man, a man helped another man, fox, rat and snake from a cliff and in return they all helped him except the man. In the end, the ingratitude of man got him arrested and imprisoned.

While all of the stories had obvious similarities among them: themes and morals of good and evil and actions punishment and reward. What differed is what interested me. While all of the Tibetan Folktales had proverbs at the beginning, they also featured a prominent sense of god or higher spiritual being. In The Violinist they open the door to hell and push the wicked king in themselves. Also in The Man and the Monkeys, after the man betrays the monkeys that helped him, the Monkey god interfered and kills the man. These signs of god and religious beliefs are present in the Tibetan Folktales, while they don't exist in the Japanese Fairy Tales. The Japanese Fairy Tales may have the same morals, but don't mention once the existence of a god that is pulling the strings above. The concept of good and evil is punished and focused on man and the earthly world, instead of guided by another being. I think this is really interesting to see within the stories. It makes me wonder about the religious views that Japan has culturally and historically had, and if these views affect their customs or traditions. Just from these stories, I would conclude that they don't, at least not as much as they do in the Tibetan tradition.

I think it's also intriguing to note that, even without these religious concepts and aspects, the Japanese fairy tales are still very similar to the Tibetan ones. Both have the same concept of good and evil, bad and good, and punishment and reward. Does that lead to the notion that these are inherently human (or animal) feelings and not originating from a religious base? Maybe some morals begin there, but it argues that even those without religious aren't without moral code. Just a few thoughts.

Overall, I enjoyed both units and thought they had a lot of interesting things to say about their respective cultures.