It’s story time: the tradition of presenting folklore texts in Japan

Abstract

This paper reviews the principles of traditional fairy-tale presentation in Japan. The subject has not been previously covered in specialised research in our country, even though the rules for orally presenting fairy-tales and works of other genres of folklore have had a profound impact on Japanese culture, specifically the structure of Mediaeval Japanese literary works, and even the behavioural model of the Japanese people. This paper studies the customary rules for telling fairy-tales and the relationship between the narration’s time frame and traditional rituals. We particularly emphasise that, rather than being chaotic or random, the process of story-telling was always timed to fall on specific dates and specific times, as well as calendar days, and was in accordance with the traditional perception of “good” and “bad” days. Fairy-tales were considered the most effective way of safeguarding the individual and one’s household and family from misfortune and illness. We focus particularly on the importance of various structural elements of Japanese fairy-tales. Each of the elements played a specific role in the process of engaging with the audience. We consider the unique features of the beginning and ending of Japanese fairy-tales and typical formulas for the middle. We also analyse the relationship between the story-teller and the audience and the techniques for getting the audience engaged in the narrative and prompting them to enter a special communicative state. In Japanese tradition, the act of story-telling was reciprocal; the audience was not passive. On the contrary, members of the audience could even rate the narrator’s performance. Notably, the process of getting the audience to enter and then be drawn out of a special communicative state was a form of art. Each story-teller had their own ways of ensuring that the audience was fully immersed in the narrative, of “shutting off” the outside world, making the listeners hang on their voice, and eventually, making them “snap out” of the story and come away transformed by its life-affirming symbolism. Finally, we examine the traditional folkloric techniques of communal story-telling, known as dandan-katari and hyaku-monogatari . This particular form of communal leisure and, often, communal ceremony shaped the structure of several literary genres, shedding light on yet another aspect of how the tightly intertwined folkloric and literary traditions of Mediaeval Japanese literature have been preserved.

Keywords

• japan
• story-teller
• folk tale
• presentation timing
• structural narrative elements
• audience categories