Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki), Part B

· Ok, so the first story is about the priest who stays at the old woman (cannibal goblin)’s house. He looks into the back room, and it’s full of bones, so he runs away. Even though it ended up being very good that he looked, I’m kind of annoyed that he broke his promise to the old woman. What if I changed the story to where she only ate people who disobeyed her, so if he’s honest and doesn’t look in the room, he’s safe?

· An arm is such a strange thing to have taken. What about a bracelet or something? Also, I feel like he should ask this woman a question she would only know the answer to if she actually is his old nurse.

· What if I rewrite the story so that Watanabe successfully keeps the arm from the ogre, but then because of that the ogre keeps bothering him and everyone, because he doesn’t want to leave the area until he has his arm back?

· The next story is just like Cinderella.

· What if I focus on the stepbrother’s point of view? Maybe he is good and kind, and loves his sister, and wants his mother to be kind to her?

· Ahhh I’m so sad the little boy diedL. Is there something else, less extreme, that I could have happen to him?

· What if I moved the setting of this tale, so that instead of saving the emperor by praying in verse, she had to petition a principal to make recess longer by asking him in free-style rap, or something more modern like that?

· So he finds her and learns the truth and takes her home… This story reminds me a bit of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. What if I mix the two, and have the servant be friend with seven dwarves out in the woods, and she befriends them and charms the animals and such?

(Tatsuta River)

Bibliography:  Japanese Fairy Tales, retold by Yei Theodora Ozaki