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Hello Youtube. This is The Faustian Man.
Now, I know I said that I wouldn't extrapolate or interpret yet,
but I found that unless you have a degree in Japanese anthropology,
mythology, or folklore, you may have a hard time understanding or following
alot of hidden meanings or outright definitions in these videos,
so I'm gonna still keep them interesting and hopefully more so
with a little interpretation and, I promise,
just a little bit of extrapolation and definition.
So let's begin.
Today we have, The Woman who eats nothing from the Hiroshima Prefecture.
Now one word they use in this, is called the Oni.
O-N-I.
Oni means monster, goblin, troll, that type of thing.
They don't really have a word such as that so it's Oni.
O-N-I. Oni. I'll just be pronouncing that in the standard American as Oni.
The Woman Who Eats Nothing.
I heard that once upon a time there was a man
who had been single until his later years.
His friends encouraged him to marry, saying:
"Isn't it about time to take a bride?"
"I don't mind waiting for a woman however long it takes,
but if you find a maiden who eats nothing, please introduce me," he said.
One evening, a beautiful woman arrived at his door who said,
"I am a traveler, but I am in trouble as it is getting dark already.
I wonder if you would give me a place to stay tonight."
"I wouldn't mind your staying overnight,
but unfortunately I have no food in the house,"
he said, trying politely to refuse her request.
Japanese people won't outright say something to you.
They'll kind of make it sound off putting like it's not a good place to stay.
So that's how he's trying to refuse her.
But the woman insisted, "I don't eat anything at all.
I am a woman who does not eat. I need only a place to stay."
The man was surprised to hear that and so let her stay.
The woman made no sign of getting ready to leave the next morning.
She did various house chores for him, so he let her stay longer.
And the best thing of all was that she worked hard all day without eating a thing.
Soon, the man became somewhat concerned about her not eating day after day
and told her to eat a little something at least.
The woman simply refused saying, "It's enough for me just to smell food."
He was so proud of her and told his friends that there was no wife better than she.
But none of them believed him.
Now another thing you have to understand is that there is no,
in traditional Japan as well as other Asian places,
there is no ceremony for marriage.
Marriage is actually a gathering.
Someone becomes your wife just by living with you.
There is no real ceremony.
Finally, one of his best friends came to him.
"What's wrong with you! You haven't noticed?
Your wife is no human being. Wake up!" The friend pointed at him.
"That's impossible," the man gasped.
"You are the only one who doesn't know about it.
It's a rumor all over the village. Never!
There's no one in the world who does not eat.
If you don't believe me, why don't you find out yourself?
Just pretend to go away but then climb up to a ceiling beam
where she won't be aware of you."
One day, before his trip to town, he told his wife,
"I will be back quite late tonight."
After going about a mile or so he went back and climbed up
onto the ceiling beam and hid himself from his wife.
After she was alone, the woman started to wash rice and made a big fire to cook it.
When it was cooked, she made thirty-three rice balls.
Then she got three mackerel from the kitchen and broiled them over the fire.
And then she sat on the mat with one knee up like a man.
He just watched in amazement and wondered what would happen next.
Now, another thing is that the Japanese are very big into form
and roles and not necessarily identity.
Because she's breaking her role as a woman and going into a man's role,
it would be considered very strange and alien.
Almost if you were watching your wife talk in a man's voice.
Something just as crazy.
She untied her hairdo and her hair fell down,
he saw a large open mouth in the top of her head.
She tossed rice balls and broiled mackerel into that opened mouth
one after another completely devouring them.
Now here's the Japanese pun, and the joke is,
the top of your hair with a little mouth, right?
What would that look like having a second mouth surrounded by hair?
I'm going to go, probably, out on a limb here and say this is a joke
with the *** minora and majora, for the *** surrounded by hair.
It's a joke and perhaps it was also changed later when westernization came in.
Japanese have changed alot of their things with westerners coming in,
to make their country seem a little different.
Sort of similar to the way Christianity affected the original fairytales.
You'll see the same thing here with Buddhists.
Totally frightened to see such a sight,
he sneaked down from the beam and ran to his friend's house.
"Ah, that's just what I told you. And tonight you should go home
as if nothing has happened," the friend said.
So the man did so. When he got home she was in bed suffering from a headache.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Well, nothing's wrong, but I don't feel so good,"
she replied in a cat-like voice.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Would you like to take some medicine
or call the shaman?" he asked.
"I don't know what to do," she said,
and she looked as if she might jump on him.
"All right. I will get the shaman right away for you.
Wait a few minutes." He ran to his friend's and brought him back home.
"What sort of curse is on her? Hm.. A curse with three-sho rice!
A curse with three mackerel!" his friend shouted.
The woman jumped out of bed and cried,
"Grrrr! You must have been spying on me!"
She jumped on his friend and began gobbling him up from his head down.
Shocked, the man tried desperately to escape.
The woman was already finishing his friend when she caught him,
picking him up by the nape of the neck like a kitten.
And she thrust him up on her head and ran off to the mountain.
Through the fields and over hills she went, running like a rabbit.
In the later videos I will talk about zen and the idea of the way of the kitten,
and the way of the monkey. The way of the kitten means being helpless.
When they came to a forest, he grabbed a branch
which happened to be right in front of his eyes.
The woman-who-eats-nothing [Oni] did not notice this at all.
She ran, ran, and ran.
The man climbed down from the tree and hid himself in some wild plants:
mugwort and Japanese wild iris. He kept silent.
Now mugwort, has some kind of medicinal properties
sometimes if handled rightly but it's particularly dangerous to pregnant women.
In Japan, they would have known this and I believe
they're trying to say that she is pregnant or they had some kind of affair.
He kept silent.
The devil-woman came back to where he was hiding.
"Oh, I know you are in those plants.
Wherever you hide, I can find you."
She was about to jump on him, but suddenly jumped back instead.
"Oh, how terrible! Mugwort and iris poison my body.
They make my body rot. How regretful, how bitter!
If only these grasses weren't here! I would have eaten you up also."
So the man thought: "Now I am safe."
He threw those plants at the oni.
I heard that even the oni could be killed by the poison of those plants.