Cannonball Read #1

Royall Tyler's Japanese Tales collects over 220 short tales in a 320 page tome. The longest story is probably about 5 pages, while the shortest spans a mere paragraph. Most have morals to teach, although the morals that are stressed have a different priority than those in western tales. There is a heavy prevalence of stories incorporating Buddhist principles and starring often-eccentric monks as well as supernatural tales. I must admit that a lot of the Buddhist stories fell flat for me, but they would probably be especially interesting to a practicing Buddhist.

One of the big morals that is stressed is to not stay overnight in a place unfamiliar to you. Because, you know, that place might be the favorite hangout for a band of hungry Tengu or the headquarters for a skin-splaying and blood-draining band of demons. If someone is being too hospitable in this book, it's probably because they are soul-eating demons.

Another big theme is that Buddha/Kannon/insert-other-deity-here works in mysterious ways. Take the monk who never studied but routinely prayed for good luck in his studies at a certain temple. One evening on his way home, he sees a lovely woman loitering around outside a house, and she invites him in. The monk dines and meets the mistress of the house through a screen (this was quite normal for Japan 1000 years ago -- men and women seldom spoke face to face). He happens to peep at her face through a turned-up corner of the screen and falls in love. Well of course, even though he is a monk, he feels like he MUST lie with her, and tries to pressure her into submitting. She tells him she will, on the condition that he becomes known as the most well-learned monk around and returns to her full of knowledge. Well, of course she's Kannon, trying to get this young monk to study... and yes, he falls for it.

Some more familiar themes include don't boast (or you'll die) and don't be nosy (or you'll die).

One of my favorite stories followed the search of a curious Tengu (Tengu are basically demons that love to torment monks) who is flying over the ocean and hears a faint sound of chanting. He begins to follow the sound and sees it's coming from Mt. Hiei in Japan. So he flys to Mt. Hiei, thinking he'll have some fun at the monks' expense... until he sees where the chanting is coming from. The outhouse of the monks drains into a stream, and even their urine is so holy that it causes holy sutra chanting in the stream, all the way out to the ocean! Needless to say, he turned his heels and fled.

All in all it was a great collection of stories, with a fantastic introduction section by Mr. Tyler that gave a lot of good contextual and historical information. However, I wish there were specific notes to go with each story. I feel like I must have been missing things just by vitrue of these being folktales from Japan that are over 1000 years old. I was also really surprised at the complete lack of any poetry. After reading some Heian-era literature that was chock-full of the stuff, it was strange not to see any poetry at all. I guess maybe these are "low" stories, of common people, and they didn't have access to the requisite education needed to draw on/quote the large body of famous Japanese poetry, often written in Chinese.