Charter Oak State College Far East Folktales Questions The co-author of this lesson is Yoshiko Sakai, student in this course in fall 2000. My humble thanks
Charter Oak State College Far East Folktales Questions The co-author of this lesson is Yoshiko Sakai, student in this course in fall 2000. My humble thanks to her.
Read
The story of Fah Mulan in the Course Materials.
Ballad of Mulan audio ()
The story of Momotaro, Peach Boy and other stories from Japan. The Chinese Cinderella, the original tale, so it is claimed, for all the others: The Chinese Cinderella
Momotaro (http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/folk/momotaro/index.html)
Momotaro audio ()
Japanese Folktales (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/japan.html#peachling)
Yeh-Shen Yeh-Shen – Alternative Formats pdf
4. After you have done the reading, view the Disney movie “Mulan.”
Questions for the Discussion Board
List the differences between the story and the movie. Use a list format:
Story vs Movie
Is Disney’s Mulan really China’s Mulan? Is the movie the same story? Is the character the same?
Is Momotaro a character that has appeal for an American audience? How can we help western audiences understand the importance and appeal of Momotaro?
What are we teaching readers about the cultures of the far east by including these stories? Please concentrate on our cultural differences, which really define what it means to be from the Far East, as opposed to the West.
How shall we deal with Disney studios and movies in our textbook? Include? Include with cautions to the readers? Exclude as not literary? Something else? Think like an editor and come up with a recommendation about what to do with these international movie versions of these stories.
Response
Please respond to at least one colleague in the class with a substantial response that shows your agreement/disagreement/questions about their answers to the questions for the lesson.
Research
Please evaluate these websites for inclusion in our textbook:
Solomon, Charles. ’Momotaro,’ a Japanese World War II-Era Propaganda Animation Film, Finally Gets a DVD Release. Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2017, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-japanese-animation-momotaro-20170530-story.html.
Story of Spirits (East Asia) (http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/060.html)
Welcome to the Asian Folktales (http://www.worldoftales.com/Asian_folktales.html)
How Disney Came to Define What Constitutes the American Experience (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-disney-came-define-what-constitutes-american-experience-180961632/)
Please note that this last site is not the same as the second site.
Extra for Experts
A former student suggested that we consider these three, very popular, books:
“The Gas We Pass-The Story of Farts” by Shinta Cho
“Everyone Poops” by Taro Gomi
“The Holes in Your Nose” by Genichiro Yagyu
These books are available for purchase through ebooksellers, on youtube, and may be available by interlibrary loan from your local library. Please review all three of these books and comment on them as possible additions to this lesson about the culltures of the far east–perhaps they’re not so reserved as we think?.
Lecture:
Sometimes because a culture is distant from the United States, in terms of geography and levels of literacy, there is little of its “literature” as we know it available to readers of English. It is difficult to get a representative piece of literature where the choices are so limited.
Sometimes the literature that is available is so unusual or sometimes offensive to United States cultural values that it does not become commercially viable. So those cultures that do not have much published literature sometimes find the lack of commercial interest means that there will not be more published literature. This is a vicious cycle that this course, with the able assistance of the internet, seeks to break.
Mulan
Lecture
The literature of the Far East is some of the most different from our own and from European assumptions about stories. It is also some of the most inaccessible, because of distance and language barriers. Consider that the keyboard you’re working on now would not work at all for you in China or Japan because the characters and symbols are not based on our alphabet.
For many western readers, the stories of Momotaro and Fah-Mulan in their originals do not seem to have enough action, perhaps because much of what goes on is embedded in the cultural assumptions, which give importance even to small actions.
Concepts of family honor above all, including individual lives, and the inequality of girls and women permeate these stories. Men and sons are more important than women and daughters. Also important is reciprocity, of giving back when one has received, and of due proportion in the give-back. Reciprocity is a spiritual, not a social value; shame in not following through on promises and reciprocating will fall not only on the one who causes the shame, but also on the whole family. I understand from a native reader, a student in an earlier class, that Momotaro is full of tension and implied mental action, exactly around this issue.
Momotaro doll
By the 1990s, multi-cultural and equal rights themes in education meant that the Disney studios needed to look at the stereotypes of their earlier movies and cast about for more acceptable material and heroines. The movie that caught the most criticism about stereotypes was “The Little Mermaid.” More assertive, less Euro-centric and traditional material and heroines began to be expected, by critics, movie-goers, and schools.
The Disney studio has also “repurposed” and changed the stories substantially, to suit an American audience and to work well as a full-length movie with musical accompaniment.
Disney’s influence on folktales is indisputable. The studio has taken on the recording of oral tales from other cultures and retranslating them to a new medium, the animated, feature-length film. This retranslating has brought world-wide recognition of the stories. “Mulan” is a gift to this class; research about Mulan has sprung up around the movie and its legendary heroine. But being the subject of a Disney movie is both a blessing and a curse.
Keep in mind this question as you deal with “Mulan”: How much change can any editor make before the story becomes too much changed to be the original story? This is much the same question asked before, especially about folk tales, but I think we need to think about it again, given the change from one medium-the folktale-to another-the animated, full-length movie.
“Momotaro” is one of the most beloved Japanese folk tales. It is told with great solemnity by children, who recite it by heart. Another former student of mine, a native of Japan, points out that the stories on pitt.edu site are very different than the more authentic ones from web-jpn. The fighting in the stories seems to be added by westerners. Keeping promises is also more important in web-jpn; at least part of the reason this story is so popular is that Japanese parents use it to teach children to keep promises and to be humble. So even when stories purport to be authentic, it may take a native to help us verify the authenticity.
I’ve just noticed how often I’ve said “please” in this assignment–could it be some civilizing Asian influence?
Anecdotes
I had a lot of trouble getting my boys to view Mulan at all. They knew clearly that the heroine was the star, and were sure they wouldn’t be interested in a movie about a girl. After all, they remembered pretty clearly the mushy stuff in “Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast”-love stories both.
When I finally insisted that I needed to see this movie for research purposes, the younger one–who has been addicted to Harry Potter–thought it was pretty funny and pretty interesting. The fact that Mulan was a warrior and prone to many of the same foibles that any raw recruit might have won him over, as did the action in battle, the little dragon, and the threesome of fellow raw recruits. Neither of us finished the movie experience humming any of the songs. That’s one clear failing of this movie, at least from Disneys commercial perspective
