Hachikazuki

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hachikazuki, illustration from the Sanzōshi- emaki ( 三 草紙 絵 巻 )

The Hachikazuki ( Japanese. 鉢 か づ き , also: hachikazuki hime ( 鉢 か づ き 姫 ) or hachikatsugi hime ( 鉢 か つ ぎ 姫 ), English The Bowl Girl ) is a classic Japanese story and fairy tale that belongs to the otogizōshi genre . The word component kazuki is an archaism and means "to put something over your head". It is derived from the verb kazuku ( 被 く ) and most closely corresponds to the verb katsugu ( 担 ぐ ) that is still in use today . Hachikazuki is thus also a descriptive name that describes a fairytale-like story as a topos , which is commonly referred to as "stepmother's stories" ( 継 子 物 , mamako mono ). The plot of these stories is more or less uniform to stereotypical. A young woman suffers various adversities after being evicted from her parents' home by her stepmother. At the end of the ordeal, however, there is always a happy marriage and a life of prosperity and security. The stories Hanayo no hime ( 花 世 の 姫 , The Flower Princess ) and Ubakawa ( 姥 皮 , The Skin of the Old Woman ) also belong to this topic . Hachikazuki is a special form of these stepmother's stories in that the protagonist is also marked by a disfiguring kettle-shaped headgear that cannot be removed.

overview

Hachikazuki originated in the Muromachi period . The author is unknown. Mulhern's analysis shows that the Portuguese Jesuit Fabian Fucan could be the author and Hosokawa Gracia the real model of the figure Hachikazuki, and that this is not a genuinely Japanese story, but one written by the Portuguese missionaries.

The story remained largely unnoticed for a long time until it was published in the Edo period at the beginning of the 18th century by the Shibukawa publishing house in a collection of 23 stories under the title Goshūgen Otogi Bunko ( 御 祝 言 御 伽 文庫 , Library of the Wedding Counselor ).

content

The story begins with an upscale, childless couple calling on the deity Kannon at the Hasedera temple to have mercy on them and give them a child. Miraculously, the wife conceives a girl, but falls ill when the child turns 13. Before she dies, she puts a kettle-shaped vessel over the girl's head, under which she also places a box. The mother of the girl, who was henceforth portrayed as a “cup carrier”, dies; the father remarries. The stepmother stigmatizes the girl until the father expels her from the house. Drawn in this way, the girl wanders around, deeply worried and aimless. She makes the decision to put an end to her bitter fate and jumps into a river to drown herself. The attempt alone fails because the bell-shaped headgear brings you back to the surface of the water. A Vice Admiral from Yamakage observes the process and takes her home as an assistant for his bathhouse. That man has three sons, the two older of whom are already married. Now it happens that the youngest son Saichō falls in love with the unsightly Hachikazuki. When he sticks to his admission of love, even against the family, the unsightly head covering comes off and reveals the face of a lovely young woman. The box, which was also hidden under the headgear, contains valuable jewelry. The two marry in agreement with Saichō's father and henceforth lead a happy life.

Interpretative approaches

Tales of abandoned stepchildren are numerous among the Otogizōshi. The topos of the exiled and wandering nobleman or nobleman ( 貴 種 流離 譚 , kishu ryūritan ) was first identified in 1924 by the Japanese folklorist and writer Origuchi Shinobu . Accordingly, narratives with this topos have three elements: a main character of high divine descent, the subject of exile or migration and the distance of exile, which creates distance.

Hachikazuki is not aware that she is a mōshigo ( 申 子 ), a desired child that was born to the prayers of a couple. This idea goes back to the old narrative tradition that deals with the connection between humans and gods. A mōshigo embodies the Buddhist concept of wakō dōjin ( 和 光 同 塵 ), the unity of dirt and the sublime. In contrast to comparable stories, the reviled young women recognize the cause of their fate. Hachikazuki, on the other hand, blames headgear for all evils, failing to recognize that it is actually a divine protection. The headgear thus becomes a topos which, as an aid, carries out the presence and protection of the goddess Kannon through the entire narrative action. In contrast to other mamoko mono , the mother entrusts Hachikazuki to a goddess and not to the husband and father of the child, as in the story Chūjōhime ( 中将 姫 ).

In the English-speaking world, the so-called Cinderella stories have a similar theme, but without any reference to Buddhism. In the German-speaking world, the fairy tale of Cinderella has similar themes and motifs, albeit without a disfiguring bowl.

Remarks

  1. ↑ The full name of the publisher is: Shibukawa Shōdōkō Kashiwabaraya Seiemon ( 渋 川 称 堂 柏 原 屋 清 右衛門 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas F. Leims: The emergence of the Kabuki, 1990, p. 233
  2. ↑ Chieko Irie Mulhern: Cinderella and the Jesuits. , in: Monumenta Nipponica XXXIV: 4, 1979, 409-447
  3. ↑ Monika Dix: Hachikazuki Revealing Kannon's Crowning Compassion in Muromachi Fiction , pp. 279-294

literature

  • Steven Chigusa: Hachikazuki. A Muromachi Short Story . In: Sophia University (ed.): Monumenta Nipponica . tape 32 , no. 3 , 1977, pp. 303–331 (English, ubc.ca [PDF; accessed November 9, 2012] with an English translation).
  • Monika Dix: Hachikazuki Revealing Kannon's Crowning Compassion in Muromachi Fiction . In: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (Ed.): Japanese Journal of Religious Studies . tape 36 , no. 2 , 2009, p. 279–294 (English, nanzan-u.ac.jp [accessed March 3, 2014]).
  • Donald Keene : A Neglected Chapter. Courtly Fiction of the Kamakura Period . In: Sophia University (ed.): Monumenta Nipponica . tape 44 , no. 1 , 1989, pp. 1–30 (English, jstor.org [accessed March 1, 2014]).
  • Thomas F. Leims: The Origin of Kabuki . EJ Brill, Leiden 1990 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 3, 2014]).
  • Chieko Irie Mulhern: Cinderella and the Jesuits. An Otogizōshi Cycle as Christian Literature . Ed .: Sophia University. tape 35 , no. 4 , 1979, p. 409-447 (English).

Web links