Week 6 Reading Diary: Japanese Mythology Unit

For this week, I chose to read the last half of the Japanese Mythology unit.

In the story of The Labors of Yamato, I have absolutely no idea what "Goddess of Deathless Love" means. I wonder if that got translated funny.

I really like these descriptions of food. They sound very ethereal. "Sweet ambrosial sake they poured into cups of frail-stemmed sea-lilies. Heaps of gem-like fruits gleamed on plates of opalescent anemones."

It's so funny to me to think about hearing people speak like they do in this story during the modern day. And the things they ask of each other are so outlandish.

 

(Image information:"Benzaiten" by Fabio.)

 It was really interesting to me to learn that this statue is the goddess Benten because I've been seeing her for years and never knew who she was. It's been cool to learn more about her story.

Once I found out that Yamoto had a wife and was still pursing the goddess anyway, I liked his character a lot less. His wife is pining for him, and he's off looking for golden apples.

But then we find out that Benten is only trying to trick him to get his sword. I sort of feel like he deserves that.

In the story of the Demon Boar is pretty much the best sentence ever: "Valiantly the pack drove upon him, only to be tossed instantly in air and to fall, tusked through the entrails, in pools of gore." I've never heard anyone use tusked as a verb before, but I'm a fan!

The sense of time and place is very confusing in these stories. The characters are in one location, and then in the next sentence, they've moved somewhere entirely new. But we're not given the progression of actions that led them there. So it's hard to know the relationship between the places.