[The Legend of Urashima Taro Mar. 13, 2018]
I don’t know about you guys, but I love reading a bit of
fantastical myth and find it absolutely fascinating as to how these
stories originated in the first place. It just so happens, that the
island of Kyushu is also home to its fair share of fairy tales, many of
which are related to the birth of Japan as a nation as documented in the
Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan). However, the story I wish to relay
to you today is the legend of Urashima Taro, a local fisherman who
originated from what is now Kagoshima Prefecture.
Urashima Taro was a kind and gentle fisherman, who one day was
finishing up a day’s work when he saw three children beating and hurting
a sea turtle. Chasing the young boys away, Taro saved the turtle and
placed it back into the sea. A few days later while fishing, Taro was
visited by a larger turtle that claimed the one he had saved a few days
earlier was in fact a princess and her name was Otohime. To give thanks
to Taro for his act of kindness, the princess bestowed to Taro a set of
gills so that he could venture under the sea unharmed, and invited him
to visit her in the Dragon Palace on the seafloor, where she and her
father, Emperor Ryujin, would be waiting.
Taro accepted his invitation from the Princess Otohime, and riding
on the larger turtle’s back journeyed to the Dragon Palace where he met
the princess in her human-like form. The princess greeted Taro and to
thank him once again for his kind act, invited him to stay at the Dragon
Palace forever where he would be eternally youthful, and could take the
princess herself as his bride. Taro was shown around Ryujin’s kingdom
by the princess, and every day he discovered something new and marvelous
that echoed in his heart.
After spending three full days with the Princess Otohime in the
Dragon Palace, Taro suddenly remembered his old life back on the shore,
his old parents he had to take care of, and the villagers who would be
worried about where he had disappeared to. The princess seldom wanted
Taro to leave her, but in the end allowed him to return to shore as long
as he took from her a special gift, a decorated box called a
tamatebako, with him. She warned Taro that the box contained a commodity
that was priceless and very precious, and made him promise never to
open the box, no matter how curious he became. Mounting a sea turtle,
Taro bid the princess goodbye and returned to the bay of his beloved
fishing village. However, something was not right. The hills and the
shore were the same, but Taro did not recognise any of the faces that he
saw walk by him. Heading back to his house, Taro saw that his parents
no longer lived there, and questioning the man who had taken up
residence, found to his disbelief that the young fisherman, Urashima
Taro, had disappeared from the village suddenly, some three hundred
years ago. Shocked and dismayed, Taro returned to the beach in a fit of
sadness at never being able to see his family or friends again, since
they had long passed on. Thinking he had nothing else to live for, Taro
opened the tamatebako that the princess had given him, forgetting his
promise to her. Out from the box a purple mist wisped and surrounded
Taro’s body transforming him into very old man with white hair and a
bent over back. For Taro had opened the tamatebako, he would never be
able to return to the underwater world of the Princess Otohime, and that
is how Taro’s life ended.
As you can see this is a pretty interesting story, and was
apparently created as a way of removing disobedience in children. The
supposed site of Urashima Taro’s birth in Kagoshima Prefecture can still
be visited, and there is a beautiful red-laquered shrine that stands
there today, the Ryugu Shrine, which is incidentally where people go to
make wishes to Ryujin himself. Additionally, taking inspiration from
this story, the sightseeing train Ibusuki no Tamatebako runs between
Kagoshima and the onsen resort town of Ibusuki; steam rising from the
roof of the cars in the same fashion that the purple mist was released
from the tamatebako by Urashima Taro.
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