Momotaro: Akutagawa’s Concerns

“Of course, the fruit that bore Momotaro had long ago flowed away into the mountain stream. But an unknown number of prodigies still sleep within those fruits. When will that huge Yadagarasu next stir the branches of this tree again? Yes, an unknown number of prodigies still sleep within those fruits…”

 

This quote is the concluding sentence of one of the most famous Japanese writers Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Momotaro. Akutagawa criticizes the government’s repurposing of folk stories for propagating national ideology. This was because there was a background when Japan was in the time of imperialism facing China (Qing) and Russia during the Meiji era. The government was setting Momotaro as a symbol for heroism and propagating the need of war to the people of those days. As Gerow in the course reader says, while Momotaro became a central figure in Japanese moral education, he was frequently used during WW2 to represent nationalist military value. According to Morita, an instructor at Nagasaki University Japan, there are at least 63 Momotaro stories in Japan. Akutagawa was one of those who ironically criticized the government by publishing a whole new Momotaro story in 1924. I will compare the second Momotaro story in the reader with 3 versions of Momotaro which are “Momotaro’s Sea Eagle”, Iwaya Sazanami’s “Momotaro” and Akutagawa’s “Momotaro” in terms of “the motive for going to the demon’s island” through Momotaro’s characteristic. The reason why I compare them with the second Momotaro story in the reader is because it depicts the simplest and most generally known Momotaro story.

The Momotaro story itself is very simple. Long ago there was an elderly couple and they found a peach floating downstream. The old women brought the peach back home and when they tried to cut the peach to eat it, a boy appeared from inside who was named Momotaro. Momotaro grew up to become strong and was prepared to fight against the Demon. Momotaro sets off to defeat him, giving millet dumplings to a monkey, a pheasant, and a dog to enlist them as vassals (Gerow, 2007). After defeating the Demon, he brought back the treasures and lived happily ever after. This is more or less the plot of Momotaro, but the 3 stories slightly differ or include some other elements still sticking to this fundamental story. The reason why I focus on the motive for going to the demon island is because the second story in the reader does not provide a clear motive, but the other 3 versions do which will be discussed later. The “Momotaro’s Sea Eagle” is a movie animation made during World War 2 by the Ministry of the Navy of Japan. The plot of Momotaro vs. Demon is depicted in a war situation and there is a cute rabbit included in addition to the main three characters. Millet dumplings are also used as a ration before the animals attack the island. The animals successfully attack the demon’s island and eventually all came back safely. Iwaya’s Momotaro also pretty much follows the fundamental plot but the big difference is that it has a clear reason for Momotaro to defeat the demon which will be examined later on in this paper. For Akutagawa’s Momotaro, the plot is reversed: Momotaro is depicted as a lazy, evil character who tries to conquer the “palm trees soar over it, birds of paradise chirp in it, and it’s a beautiful land of natural paradise” as the demon’s island. Momotaro gets kicked out of the old man and women’s house after he tells them that he does not want to work at all. Since he did not want to work to live, he planned to go to the island to get the treasure and live a life with all the money. From the following paragraph will show each analysis for Momotaro.

The Akutagawa version is quite a shocking work of Momotaro showing many violent scenes when he pillages against the defenseless innocent demons. He depicts Momotaro and the animals as a complete “evil”. Momotaro says “Forward, forward! Kill the demons without leaving any behind as soon as you find them!” and “Like a storm, they chased after the fleeing demons. The dog killed a young demon with just one bite. The pheasant pecked demon children to death with its hard beak. And the monkey—the monkey, simply by being a cousin of us humans, before strangling a demon girl to death, ravaged her to his heart’s content.” Turning over the pages, your image of Momotaro and the animals will totally collapse. After Momotaro’s massacring of the demons, the demon chieftain (along with the other demons that narrowly escaped death) come up to Momotaro for forgiveness but he says “Now, with my exceptional mercy, I will allow you to live. In return, you will present me with every piece of treasure on Demon Island”. In addition he takes his child as a hostage. Akutagawa also includes the revenge by the demons: “When the demon children became adults, they bit the guard pheasant to death, and absconded to Demon Island at once. In addition, occasionally the survivors of Demon Island would cross the sea, and set fire to Momotaro’s mansion or try to break his sleeping neck.” Overall, obviously not the Demon but Momotaro and the animals were the “evil” in this story. This was Akutagawa’s way of cautioning the audience that since Momotaro is always a “hero”, there are people who take advantage of to make propaganda. He concludes his story by saying that even though this Momotaro is dead, the fruit within the 2^nd or 3^rd Momotaro will keep on condemning the predatory nation. Back in those days Japan was conducting wars of invasion and he was concerned about the cyclical battles for revenge: he feared that the cycle of war would continue.

The “Momotaro’s Sea Eagle” does not clearly convey any information on why Momotaro is attacking the demon’s island, but since the audience knows the immediate time is WW2, it is obvious that the attack represents the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. As it is a propaganda film, although Momotaro is shown as a person who exhibits strong rigid leadership against their enemy, Momotaro himself just gives orders to the animals and does pretty much nothing. Since the film is for children in Japan, the audience can see the cuteness of the animals which we cannot see in texts. There are no “treasures” but the victory at Pearl Harbor should be it. In spite of Akutagawa’s awareness of Momotaro’s use as propaganda, this film was made 20 years after his Momotaro.

Iwaya’s Momotaro has a clear, pure reason for going to the demon’s island: Momotaro is sent down by the command of god to protect Japan. Long ago Japan was inhabited by the Ogres and Momotaro needs to get the treasure back from them. The heroism of Momotaro was not only during WW2 but also in the Meiji era when this was published. Especially in the Meiji era, still the power of the Emperor was strong and it met people’s needs for a strong leader. Akutagawa’s concerns arouse from these days and leads to his version in the Taisho era.

There are a variety of Momotaro stories in Japan which has a strong connection to the history of Japan. Akutagawa was one of those who were concerned about Japan as a predatory nation and he was the one who repurposed the Momotaro story as no one has ever done before. Japan did move on to the war, but his work still stood out in literature because of his innovative work of reversing the image of Momotaro and the demon which brought a big impact to convey his critique.

Spirited Away: over-consumption and environment

Spirited Away is a Hayao Miyazaki film in which a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro becomes trapped in a mysterious world and is forced to work in a bathhouse that serves the spirits. Chihiro struggles to save her parents, who have transformed into pigs and receives support from creatures all around her. The film contains several scenes in which meals and food are consumed or shared. In Spirited Away, characters over-consume to fill an internal void created by loneliness or hopelessness, and end up exploiting or harming the environment.

Haku giving Chihiro onigiris in the garden with the soft, tender background music

Comparing No Face with Chihiro points to food’s role in Spirited Away as “filling one’s soul.” Chihiro and No Face have similar backgrounds, though the film mainly shows the paradoxical aspects of each character. Chihiro and No Face are both alone in this world, without their families. Both wandered into this mysterious world alone, and No Face expresses his feelings by saying “I’m lonely, I’m lonely… I want Sen, I want Sen…” On the other hand, Chihiro, a 10 year old girl determined to work in a place maybe forever to help her parents, behaves dauntlessly saying nothing about abandoning her job (this was also because she was told by Haku that if she said one word of going home or quitting her job, she would never get her parents back). In this scene, however, Haku gives Chihiro 3 onigiris in a garden, promting her to cry out of loneliness. In this shot, Haku has his arm around Chihiro’s shoulder to show relief in a calm garden having soft, melodic background music which also imbues the scene with tenderness. This scene is significant because onigiris have a special meaning to children in Japan. Onigiri literally means “handmade” rice balls, not to mention rice is our soul food in Japan. Haku’s handmade onigiris made Chihiro feel secure and relieved which lead her to burst into tears.

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Even No Face has grew big, the food is bigger than himself, scattering the gold

He keeps on saying he is lonely although consuming all the food served to him

No Face, Chihiro (and her animals), and Zeniba at her cabin, greeting them with tea, cake and other food.

No Face, on the other hand, could not find someone to care for him, and he uses his ability to literally ‘make money’ to consume a huge amount of food, even swallowing three employees in the bath house to abate his loneliness. No Face can be seen as representative of vanity and materialism, regarding money as everything and thinking of grasping whatever he wants- including food, authority, even love. He uses his power to make gold to blind employees with their own greed, and have them bring the enormous amount of food to him. His enormous consumption, however, did not make him full, either literally or in his heart: although he comes to look like a monster, he keeps on saying that he is lonely. Food made without anyone’s heart will never make one full, and he realizes his vacancy despite having money and people around him. Later on, he finds out that money was not the thing he needed when he goes to Zeniba’s cabin with Chihiro and makes a manmade barrette for her using no magic. He looks so happy being needed by someone. This scene is when he appreciates the taste of a cake filled with acceptance. Therefore, from both Chihiro and No Face’s perspective, food, when it is prepared with care or love, plays a role of filling out one’s anxiety of love, care, and tenderness when you are alone or when you feel a vacancy in your heart.

All the garbage filling the whole room coming out of the Stink Spirit

Secondly, Miyazaki deploys food and consumer goods as a metaphor for human carelessness and waste. The above scene depicts a pile of junk coming out of the Stink Spirit, who actually turns out to be a river god. Miyazaki’s environmental message is that while we see polluted rivers and avoid them or try not to get involved with them, it is indeed humans that have made that mess. The Stink Spirit came to the bath house to wash off all the sludge and muck made by the human beings. The scene suggests that throwing one thing away would not be a big deal, but having everyone doing it will lead to a serious pollution of the river and because of the egoism of them the nature will die. This plot point is very similar to that of Haku’s because he is also a river god, and in the end we know that his river had been landfilled due to construction of an apartment.

Throughout the film, Miyazaki used food to represent both human values and vices. Food can be used to fill one’s void coming from loneliness or sadness, but at the same time if you over-consume food, it will also lead to a big environmental problem. As long as we have a wasteful society, we will never have a radiant future with a sustainable world as Miyazaki wanted it to be.

Tampopo: the Essence of Food

When you think of food, what would you imagine? Your favorite food, restaurant, when to eat, or whatever; food is literally a means to receive nutrition to live on a life. Especially in Japan, food has been one of the three important elements of living on which are food “shoku”, clothing “i”, shelter “jyu”. In Tampopo, we can observe various aspects when we think of what food is and the essence of it through not only the main plot of Tampopo’s growth but in many scenes including the comical episodes of how you eat a bowl of ramen or the white suited yakuza guy with his mistress in his own movie and so on.

The yakuza having his last words…

This shot, after having the yakuza shot several times by someone and close to death, is interesting because it represents the most contradictory idea of food. The mise-en-scene is having the yakuza in a white suit shot from a close-up angle with almost all his face in it and little space for his mistress’s back of her hair, and is a Dutch tilt shot having his body lying on the ground. Having all the rain, the dismal but somewhat tranquil music, it is obvious that this is a shot of death, but the yakuza’s last words seem very far from death: he talks about the story of hunting wild boars in winter and eating their guts full of yam grilled. It is quite interesting since the last thing of what the yakuza wanted to eat was not the gorgeous foods he has been eating but “yam sausage” which is not the so called fancy, up-scaled food.

From this shot, two important aspects of food can be observed. One is that even though eating food is a means to live on, it also is leading you to death. Second is that the ultimate pursuit of food cannot always be acquired through accumulating a bunch of money. The former lets the audience realize again that human needs to eat food to live on, but of course someday it will come to an end. In other worlds, you eat in order to die, which is, yet still a contradictory phrase, the nature of one’s life.  The latter can be seen through the contrast of Tampopo and the yakuza, as well as the homeless people knowing the best food around the place they live even though they are not that rich. The story of Tampopo is about a simple bowl of ramen which is a reasonable price, and accessible to mostly many people, but with Goro, Gun, Sensei and everyone’s enthusiasm to achieve the goal to make the ultimate ramen makes it not just a bowl of ramen but an excellent meal being accepted by a lot of people in a low price. On the other hand, the yakuza first had fancy food and some waiters serving him but with the film going on he realized not expensive dishes made by top chiefs but the oyster and the yam sausage turned out to be the food he has been pursuing. These three elements, including the episode of the homeless people, illustrates that dwelling on the opulence of food will make you blind of the nature of food.

Even though this scene or the yakuza scene throughout the whole movie has nothing to do with Tampopo herself, it is an important contrastive element to bring us some clues to think of food itself and its role in terms of the essence of food.