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Royall Tyler

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Japanese Tales (The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) Kindle Edition

by Royall Tyler (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 233 ratings

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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

Print length

532 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Pantheon
Publication date

August 22, 2012
File size

5308 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

These legends and popular tales220 in all, ranging from one to three pagesopen windows upon tradition and reality in medieval Japan. These vigorously and colloquially translated tales recall worlds conjured by Chaucer, Boccaccio, Perrault, and Grimm; East and West meet in common pursuit of ways to endure social and natural adversity. The social adversaries are often robbers, miscreant monks, or retired emperorsbut above all women, especially when disguised as foxes. The natural adversaries are ghosts and demons, snakes and dragons. One survives them all by wit and faithand a dollop of good luck. The Japanese tale shares with the German elements of violence and vulgarity but is finally closest to the hearty bawdiness and comic earthiness of the French and the English tales. Arthur Waldhorn, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“Few readers who start the book will be able to resist going through to the end.”
—The New York Times

“Enchanting. . . . The stories are variously witty, allegorical, mystical, gross, funny, and enigmatic . . . Tyler provides a helpful introduction, and his poised translations are something of a masterpiece.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Royall Tyler’s translations are nothing short of superb—crisp, restrained, ably balancing the ribald and the profound. The results make available masterpieces from five centuries of Japanese literature. This book is a stellar addition to Pantheon’s “outstanding folklore series.””
—Booklist

“Fresh, imaginative, and uniquely organized . . . told in a style clear, homey, and unpretentious, [they] yield great pleasure.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Translated with exceptional skill, this is a perfect example of scholarship concealing scholarship. Tyler has made these tales read gracefully and effortlessly. He writes in a lively and colloquial style that effectively captures the spirit of the originals without being jarringly modern. This is an important book.”
—Donald Keene, Shincho Professor of Japanese, Columbia University

From the Inside Flap

Here are two hundred and twenty dazzling tales from medieval Japan, tales that welcome us into a fabulous, faraway world populated by saints and scoundrels, ghosts and 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 worldview during a classic period in Japanese civilization. Masterfully edited and translated by the acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji, these stories ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished though perennially fascinating culture.

From the Back Cover

Here are two hundred and twenty dazzling tales from medieval Japan, tales that welcome us into a fabulous, faraway world populated by saints and scoundrels, ghosts and 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 worldview during a classic period in Japanese civilization. Masterfully edited and translated by the acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji, these stories ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished though perennially fascinating culture.

About the Author

ROYALL TYLER has taught Japanese language and culture at many universities, including Harvard, the Australian National University, the University of Oslo, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives in Australia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

35.
THE INVINCIBLE PAIR

In Sanuki province there still is a large body of water named Mano Pond that Kōbō Daishi made out of kindness toward the people who live nearby. It is so big, and the dikes around it are so high, that it looks more like a lake than a pond. Its deep waters harbor countless fish great and small, and at the bottom there once lived a dragon.

One day this dragon came out of the water to sun himself, and slithered around on an isolated section of the dike in the shape of a little snake. Just then the tengu of Mount Hira, far off in Ōmi province, flew over in the form of a kite. He dove at the little snake, caught him in his talons, and soared up again into the sky.

A dragon is, of course, immensely strong, but this one had been taken so suddenly that all he could do was hand in the tengu’s claws. The tengu for his part meant to crush the snake and eat him, but that turned out to be impossible since, after all, it was a mighty dragon he had seized and no weakling serpent. Not knowing quite what else to do, the tengu took the dragon back to his lair on Mount Hira and stuffed him into a hole in the rocks so small that the dragon could hardly move. The poor dragon was miserable. Not having a drop of water he could not fly away, and for several days he lay there waiting to die.

Meanwhile the tengu was planning a little foray to Mount Hiei to catch himself a nice fat monk. That night he perched in a tall tree and kept his eyes on the dormitory across the valley on the side of the hill. A monk came out on the veranda to relieve himself. When he picked up the water jar to wash his hands, the tengu pounced, seized him, and carried him off to Mount Hira, where he stuffed him into the hole with the dragon. The terrified monk thought he was done for, but the tengu went off again.

From out of the darkness a voice asked, “Who are you? Where did you come from?” The monk explained what had happened—so suddenly that he still had his water jar—and asked who had spoken. The dragon introduced himself and told his own story. “It’s very tight in this hile, you know,” he groaned, “but I can’t fly away because I haven’t a drop of water!”

“Maybe there’s some left in this jar,” suggested the monk.

“Oh, how wonderful! What luck you’re here! If there is, I can save us both. I’ll take you back home!”

With joyous anticipation the monk turned the jar upside down over the dragon and a drop of water fell out. The dragon was wet.

“All right,” said the dragon, “don’t be afraid. Just close your eyes and sit on my back. I’ll never forget what I owe you.”

The dragon turned into a small boy, took the monk on his back, smashed the rock walls of their hole, and burst forth amid thunderclaps and bolts of lightning. Huge clouds gathered in the sky and heavy rain fell. The monk was frightened but trusted the dragon enough to hang on. He was deposited instantly right where he had started, on the veranda of his dormitory on Mount Hiei. The dragon flew off.

With all the crashing and roaring, the other residents of the dormitory were sure that any second a bolt would destroy them. Then suddenly the thunder stopped and blackness fell. When the sky cleared, they discovered their colleague who had vanished the other night, and he answered their astonished questions by telling them his story.

The dragon pursued the tengu everywhere in search of revenge. At last when the tengu was cruising the streets of the Capital, disguised as a warrior-monk soliciting donations for his temple, the dragon swooped down and killed him with one blow. Suddenly the tengu was a kestrel with a broken wing, and he was trampled underfoot by the passersby.

On Mount Hiei the monk repaid his debt by reading the sutras faithfully on behalf of his friend the dragon. Each had saved the other’s life—surely the result of a deep karmic bond between them in lives gone by.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004G606KS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; Reissue edition (August 22, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 22, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5308 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 532 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #768,780 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #579 in Folklore & Mythology
- #1,335 in Fantasy Anthologies & Short Stories (Kindle Store)
- #2,303 in Fantasy Anthologies

Customer Reviews:
4.5 233 ratings

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Royall Tyler

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I retired from the Australian National University in 2000. For twenty years my wife and I bred alpacas on our farm in New South Wales. Although we sold our main herd in 2013, we still have a few beautiful brown, grey, or black alpacas, and we still live on our farm. In summer we often see blue-tongue skinks: a fairly big, slow lizard that really does have a blue tongue. Sometimes one turns up at my study window, asking to come in.

In the meantime, since 2012 I've been self-publishing books with CreateSpace. By April 2016 there were five. Now, in May 2016, there are seven. So I've bought my own ISBNs and moved to my own imprint: Blue-Tongue Books. I've re-published the earlier, CreateSpace books under the Blue-Tongue imprint, and of course the two new ones start out with it. Perhaps in time there will be one or two more, or perhaps not.

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4.5 out of 5

233 global ratings

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C. E. Stevens

Wonderful stories, excellent translation

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2007

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"Japanese Tales" boasts an incredibly rich assortment of old Japanese stories, most either from or about the Heian period, an early classical golden age of Japanese culture and literature. The stories themselves evoke a great number of moods, and cover topics that run the gamut from vulgar (even the Japanese aristocrats of a thousand years ago enjoyed fart jokes) to austere. Most interesting is the incredible juxtaposition and intertwining of the spirit world with the "real" world. Asking the people of this classical age whether they believed in demons, fox spirits, bodhisattva, and the like would be about as ridiculous as asking people of the modern age whether they believed in puppies and bunnies. It's not a question of belief--these creatures and deities simply "exist".

The translations are excellent, and it is an incredible credit to Royall Tyler that these stories--set in a time a millennium removed and half a world away from the reader--are so accessible and easy to read. Tyler effectively groups the stories by topic, giving the reader a bit of structure to the wonderfully diverse range of tales. The introduction is packed full of information, but perhaps my only (small) complaint is that with the large number of place names mentioned it would have been nice if a map had been included. Overall though, this collection of tales is an excellent addition to the canon of English translations of ancient Japanese literature and provides great insight to the mind and world of Heian Japan. "Japanese Tales" should be a must-read for all people interested in the folklore and literature of Japan.

29 people found this helpful

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Moa, Sweden

Great book

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2022

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This book is perfect for those who are interested in the Japanese culture. I really enjoy reading all the tales that this book contains. I can strongly recommend it!

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Sfrost

Interesting Collection of Lore

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2016

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I love legends and folklore, and this collection has a good mix of holy, bawdy, humorous, and odd tales. Not a scholarly translation, but a well-researched and entertaining one.

One person found this helpful

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Merrily Baird

a treasure bag of wonderful japanese tales

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2004

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For my money, everything that Royall Tyler touches turns to gold, and that is as true of "Japanese Tales" as it is of his more recent translation of "The Tale of Genji." In "Japanese Tales," he has assembled and artfully translated 220 stories published between the ninth and fourteenth centuries in Japan, stories that are often difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere in English. For the most part, these are not the extended stories that we tend to call fairy tales in the West, and the book is not designed to provide reading material for children. What it does provide is a very solid sampling of the types of tales the early Japanese used to provide moral guidance, explain how things came to be, and record historical moments. And if that were not enough, Tyler's outstanding introduction, 35 pages in length, provides a lucid understanding of life in Heian-period Japan and beliefs about everything from serpents and mountains to deities and demons. This is simply a book you cannot afford to miss if your interests in Japan are those of either an enthusiastic amateur or a focused scholar.

77 people found this helpful

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The Tally Ho

250 Short Medieval Stories from Japan

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2017

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There are 250 short medieval stories from Japan in this book. The book is only 333 pages long, so it is easy to see that most of the stories in the book are only a page or two long each. The stories are nicely divided into 42 sections regarding different subject mater, for example: Surprises, Haunts, Magic, Ascetics, Desire, etc. I found the book to be very enjoyable and it gave a lens into medieval Japanese culture.

16 people found this helpful

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Likes2Read

A "Japanese 1001 Nights"

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2010

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This book is a wonderful treasury of short tales from the Heian and Kamakura periods (Circa 1100-1300 CE) that will be of interest to anyone with an interest in Japanese literature. The stories that Royall Tyler has selected for this collection are often weird and gross but wonderful in their own way and often very funny as well. I have a difficult time imagining anyone turning to page 14 of this book and reading "The Tapeworm's Sad End" and not wanting to read the rest. This is a volume worthy of a place on the bookshelf next to that better-known collection of tales from the east, The 1001 Nights.

One person found this helpful

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Mitch DLG

The best introduction to any book I've ever read.

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2018

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I bought this book for the sake of reading folk tales from another part of the world, but what I became enthralled with is the introduction. The author of this book delivers a master class in pre-feudal Japanese history, and how it differes from feudal Japan, while ensuring he also explains why stories were selected, and the relevance both to a modern reader as well as those these stories originated with. I learned a great deal of information, and that introduction has made the stories much more enjoyable. They are not your happy-sappy Disney fairy tales at all, but a wonderful insight into a different culture, if you are not Japanese.

21 people found this helpful

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Jessica Engelbrecht

This fairy tale collection is great for anyone interested in Japanese mythology

Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2015

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This fairy tale collection is great for anyone interested in Japanese mythology. As the author says in the introduction many of these stories have never been translated before, and make a great companion to similar collections so you don't have to worry about too much overlap. The pace of these tales may seem uneven to the American reader but this is simply a difference in cultural perspective; the editor has gone to great lengths to make the book more readable by staggering stories by theme and length and it definitely improves the experience!

6 people found this helpful

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Julian PG Riches

Was Late but is otherwise a clearer remarkable book

Reviewed in Canada on October 7, 2022

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The book comes with a beautiful cover and everything was good. It was late but it was worth the wait. No bad feelings whatsoever.

Sebas

Good but I wish for better artwork!

Reviewed in Germany on March 28, 2021

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Good but I wish there was better art work in!

Amazon カスタマー

英語の勉強に最適

Reviewed in Japan on April 20, 2020

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細かい表現などの英語の勉強に非常に有効です。

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Luckonluke

A wonderful collection

Reviewed in Italy on August 11, 2015

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Of old japanese tales, wonderfully translated and beautiful to read. The foreword by Tyler is accurate and complete: it provides every preliminary information you need to fully appriciate these literary accomplishments.
Why these tales have been sorted by themes, and not by the ancient books they belong to, it is still a mistery to me, and overall i felt a lack of information about the original sources, but this is such a minor issue! This book is a huge masterpiece of translation, even more important because ancient japanese literature is yet to be explored in so many of it's works...

angie

japanese tales

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2014

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Bought for my sixteen year old son who is interested in japanese history didnt want anything to heavy so this is ideal very happy with purchase

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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Royall Tyler

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