"Deja lu or deja entendu"?: Comparing a Japanese Fairy Tale with European Tales

"Reading fairy tales from the world over, one is struck time and again by a feeling of déjà lu or déjà entendu," says Maria Tatar in The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, because, she declares, fairy tales have a "persistent thematic and structural uniformity" (63-64). In the Japanese fairy tale, Hachi-kazuki-hime (The Princess Who Wore a Bowl), the reader can see many features characteristic of European tales as well and can experience "a feeling of déjà lu or déjà entendu" reading it. If closely compared with European tales, however, Hachi-kazuki-hime shows many Japanese motifs and icons that do not appear in European tales. Can the story of Hachi-kazuki-hime offer evidence that fairy tales of the world consistently have a "persistent thematic and structural uniformity"?

Hachi-kazuki-hime is one of the stories now called otogi-zoshi that appeared in Japan in the early fourteenth century; otogi-zoshi tales show many similarities with European tales. Folk and fairy tales have interested Japanese people since olden times. Since the publication of a first literary folk tale in 897, many books of folk tales have appeared in Japan. ¹ The period from the end of the twelfth century until the end of the sixteenth century was an age of war: until then, Japan was always under the power of emperors and noble people. Warriors started governing Japan in the name of the emperor, and the leaders of the government changed continuously. This time of war lasted for four hundred years; people created otogi-zoshi under these circumstances, and so they echo the ideas of this age. Otogi-zoshi tales were both for adults and for children, and their purpose was to provide entertainment and hope to the common people who lived under the pressure of the war. Like fairy tales or German Märchen, otogi-zoshi are not realistic; the narratives take place in a fictional world, and characters perceive supernatural and surreal events as being natural, although no magical power appears. Like early European folk tales, otogi-zoshi tales are always simple, easy, and short. Although otogi-zoshi tales are literary texts, these tales eventually started circulating as part of the oral tradition of the illiterate.

The plot of Hachi-kazuki-hime resembles the plots of European tales in many ways. Hachi-kazuki-hime is the story of a maiden who goes through many difficulties because of the bowl she wears on the head, but who finds happiness in the end. The story begins with a couple who are happy but have no child, a popular motif among such European tales as Snow White or The Juniper Tree. In these tales, the couple eventually has a child, but the birth of that child also brings misfortunes; in Hachi-kazuki-hime, the mother dies when the girl is only thirteen. After the death of the mother, the father of European fairy tales marries another woman, and the stepmother always brings new difficulties; it is the same in Hachi-kazuki-hime. The stepmother dislikes the heroine, who wears a bowl that her mother put on her head before the death. To get rid of the maiden, the pregnant stepmother treats her in a mean way, hoping to keep the fortune all to herself after her husband's death, and Hachi-kazuki-hime leaves the house. Hachi-kazuki-hime finds a place at a rich man's house, but she has no magic, dress or beauty to aid her, unlike the heroines in All Fur or The Maiden without Hands, so that she has to work to survive. Just as the dwarves expect Snow White to do all the housework in return for living with them, the rich family requests that Hachi-kazuki-hime work as a servant as compensation for living in their house...