Japanese Folk Tale

320 The Yanagita Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale
into the room. The lad exclaimed, "There is no half moon on Fifteenth
Night." The priest reluctantly brought out the rest and handed it to
the boy. He said, "The other half was hidden by a cloud."
"Ky6ka banashi" are comical lines of a poem to cover a blunder,
perhaps of a new son-in-law in an outlandish remark while visiting his
father-in-law. The bride hurriedly revises it as she repeats it to impress
her parents with her husband's cleverness.
"Imoji banashi" are tinker tales. Itinerant tinkers told clever tales
as they plied their trade. Their tales tend to be boasts, hence the saying,
"Like a tinker's tale" for somebody's bragging.
"Komori banashi" are jingles which include in them references to
folk tales, much like counting lines of children who bounce a ball, but
no gestures accompany them.
"Usotoki" are tales of an only survivor. There is nobody left to
affirm or deny the account of, for example, the cave-in of a fabulously
rich vein of gold told by the only survivor.
The third matter discussed is that of leading characters of humorous
tales. These stories are "odoke banashi," a number of which are
included in the main body of the text. The characters have names
which sound amusing to Japanese, such as Hikohachi, Kichigo, Kitchyomu,
and the like. Some of the men are numbskulls and others are
rascals, their names changing with the region but the contents of tales
resembling each other. In some instances the episodes are strung
together in a series, but usually they are brief, unrelated events.
Formulas are the last matter presented. The opening formula of
the folk tale varies according to region, but it establishes two points.
The tale is about long ago and the narrator is only repeating what he
has heard and does not vouch for the truth of the tale. This is in
marked contrast to the opening of a legend, which usually establishes
the place where the event occurred and then relates the circumstances.
The closing formulas come in a greater variety of form and
meaning. It may be as brief as "ton," a signal that the end has come,
or a jingle of several lines which shows some ingenuity and humor. Its
purpose is to indicate the end of the tale, that is all there is to it, or
that is how the narrator heard it. Besides these, there are those added
to state the characters prospered ever after or that they lived in ease
or "medetashi, medetashi," which means everything turned out fine.
These formulas are not rendered in- standard Japanese and their meaning
is often obscure. No attempt has been made to render them in
English in this translation because the jingle itself would escape.
The other formula is the phrase employed by listeners who chime
in as the tale progresses. It is something like the AMEN heard in old
time camp meetings which was intended on one hand to encourage the
narrator to continue and in the other to express the listener's approval
and anticipation of what was to follow. The word is brief, varying as
to region, but it is very necessary to the successful rendition of the
story.