Impressions of Laura VanArendonk Baugh’s Traditional Japanese Novella Kitsune-Tsuki

Another American author featured as a speaker at the recent virtual World Fantasy Con 2020 is Laura VanArendonk Baugh, and when I saw she had a few books set in Japan, I was intrigued since I love the East Asian fox myth and have written some far less traditional books featuring them myself. The first book in Baugh’s duology is Kitsune-Tsuki, a short novella of only 90 pages written in 2012 that serves as an introduction to the characters and traditional Japanese setting.

Baugh starts the book off with a slightly long glossary. Best practices in using foreign words in literary translation into English usually recommends translating as many of the foreign terms as possible into English and only retaining a sparing number that aren’t already loan words in English. It’s a little much here, though most English-speaking authors are most likely to be unfamiliar with translation guidelines like that, but she does it right when she uses many of the Japanese terms with the translation in English beside it. That makes things much easier for the reader if you want to retain the flavor of the culture. For foreign language majors, we become used to reading translations of novels with large sections of endnotes, but most of the general reading public can only tolerate a little of those kinds of foreign details intruding on their reading.

The story begins with onmyouji master Tsurugu being summoned to the house of one of the daimyo. Although the story doesn’t state the historical era or location, I would assume it is in the Heian era by default given some of the cultural details, such as the moon-gazing party complete with poetry contest that were popular during that time or the length of the lady of the manor’s hair. I would be interested to hear why she chose to approach the myth from the perspective of the male magician, however. It’s very traditional, but traditional stories about fox spirits normally are not terribly flattering to powerful women. I have never come across a traditional story from Japan depicting a male kitsune, though they are attested to in China, and modern Japanese pop culture and light novels certainly have filled in that gender gap with male fox characters. Baugh spoke at World Fantasy Con on other topics and read from her other works, so I didn’t get a chance to hear what she had in mind.

It does have some nice depictions of Tsurugu’s magic, though I’m more familiar with mudras from Buddhism and Indian traditional dance. Here’s one particularly charming moment:

…He opened his hands to reveal an orange animal, a dog or wolf or fox. ‘A trickster I may be, but never common.’ He set the origami figure on the mat beside his knee and watched as it bounded toward Shishio.

Shishio twitched backward, his hands falling naturally to his weapon, and then caught himself as the paper figure cavorted harmlessly…. (p.12)

By the end of the first chapter, Tsurugu is joined by a sidekick Shishio, who is a servant in the daimyo’s household, but the real story doesn’t begin until the second chapter with the mysterious theft of rice at an Inari Shrine, which kitsune statues typically guard. The rest of the book covers Tsurugu and Shishio collaborating to investigate the theft to determine if it was due to the supernatural meddling of kitsune, human thieves, or carelessness. There was a very popular series of novels in Japan that I read a volume of a long time ago featuring this kind of setup as well as a series of movies based on them that I’ll soon be covering, and this reminds me a little of those, too, with the almost detective story-style setup.

A surprising but satisfying plot twist near the end really made me sit up and take notice. Now I’m really intrigued by what the second, more substantial, volume may offer since it clearly isn’t as much of rehashing traditional tales than it first seemed. I’ll be looking at the second volume later this year in this space. This novella definitely evokes The Tale of Genji with its cultural details, though sometimes it seems too reliant on that novel for references and content. Admittedly, however, I’m far more familiar with the text of the old novel than most people, so perhaps it wouldn’t be noticed by the average American reader.

Clearly Baugh, also an anime fan, has done her homework on the cultural details, though what’s interesting to me from a research perspective is the nicknaming of the onmyouji’s sidekick Shishio as “Wolf,”or, ookami in Japanese. I have done a lot of work on the topic of wolf legends in Japan and have presented on it for a number of years now, but I don’t see any particular connection to that history in her reference here. It is a nice, seredipitous choice, however. The author’s website is https://lauravanarendonkbaugh.com/.

The Life and Works of Korean Author Kim Dongni

Tags

Korea, Literary, Prize Winners

Kim Dongni – From Collection Cover

This year on my main blog, the Ice Pine Palace (see links in the left column here for my affiliate blogs), my Literati Corner selection will be a novella and short stories by a very famous Korean author. Kim Dongni (김동리金東里) was born in 1913 in the historical city of Gyeongju in North Gyeongsang Province, though his real name was Kim Sijong. His literary career began in 1934 when his poem “Egret” (백로白鷺) won the Seoul morning newspaper The Chosun Ilbo’s annual New Year’s literary contest. In the next few years, he won more literary contests run by Korea’s prominent newspapers. In 1935, he won The Joong Ang Ilbo’s New Year’s literary contest with the novel A Hwarang’s Descendant (화랑의 후예), and in 1936, he won The Dong A Ilbo’s New Year’s literary contest with his novel Mountain Fire (산화 山火).

He later served as president of the Joseon Youth Literary Association in 1947, became a member of the Academy of Arts in 1954, and became a professor at Seorabeol College of Arts in 1955. He later served as president of the Korean Writers’ Association in 1969 and as president of the College of Arts at Chung-Ang University in 1972.

He also wrote literary criticisms, including the 1946 essay “The True Intentions of Pure Literature” and the 1954 essay “National Literary Theory.” He was part of the nationalist school of literature that had formed in Korea after independence from Japan. In 1982, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, though he didn’t win it, and he died in 1995.

Here is a list of selected works and their publication dates:

Rock 《바위》 (1936 – poetry)

A Shaman’s Story 《무녀도巫女圖》 (1947 – short story)

The Post Horse 《역마驛馬》 (1948)

Culture and Humanity 《문학과 인간》 (1948 – literary criticism)

Red Clay Notes 《황토기黃土記》 (1949)

A Strapping Young Man Returns 《귀환장정歸還壯丁》 (1951)

Dance of Existence 《실존무實存舞》 (1955)

The Quarter Cross 《사반의 십자가》 (1958) (my note: I need to see the hanja before I can be sure of this translation of the title)

The Life-Size Buddha 《등신불等身佛》 (1963)

Nature and Man 《자연과 인생》 collection of essays, no date given

The collection of his stories that I’ll be reading selections from on my main blog this quarter includes the following stories:

• Eulhwa (을화乙火Fire Bird? New Fire? I’ll try to solve the problem of how to translate the title as I read the novel)
• “A Shaman’s Story” (무녀도巫女圖)
• The Danggogae (Ridge) Shaman (당고개 무당)
• A Moon Tale (달 이야기)
• The Swastika Mirror (The Mandeok Cross Mirror? 만자동경曼字銅鏡) – (Note: Doopedia shows the swastika is somehow connected to a Silla era musician named Mandeok)

I’m not sure yet how many of the selections I’ll get through, but I want to at least read Eulhwa and “A Shaman’s Story”. These are, incidentally, the stories that form the basis for the animated Korean feature film by Ahn Jae-huun “The Shaman Sorceress” that I reviewed earlier in 2020 here on this blog after it screened at the virtual Annecy International Animation Film Festival. It should be interesting to see how the story developed from a short story to a novella then to a modern film.

Sources: https://www.doopedia.co.kr/doopedia/master/master.do?_method=view&MAS_IDX=101013000719860 and short story compilation biography. There’s a much more detailed timeline for his life at the end that I didn’t pull from much, however.

A Chinese Twist on an Old Greek Favorite – Cindy Pon’s “Beautiful Venom”

I’m going to be continuing my look at the variations on the Chinese White Snake story, and Cindy Pon’s “Beautiful Venom” is a short story published in 2017 in the fantasy genre with some echoes of that story. The main character Mei Du, who is part snake, starts it off by carelessly destroying statues near a temple with her unwieldy body as she slithers toward the statue of the Goddess of Purity. It turns out that Mei Du is the Medusa with snakes for hair who has the power to turn mortals to stone, and she believes the Goddess of Purity has betrayed her prayers. When she finally stands before the statue, she realizes yet another of a long line of male avengers has followed her to destroy her.

Mei Du does sound vaguely like Medusa in Chinese, though the actual transliteration would be 美杜莎, meidusha. I actually like Pon’s abbreviated version more since it doesn’t immediately give you the idea that this is a retelling of a Greek myth, though the actual translation in Chinese would be, based on a later part of the story, 美毒. This is pronounced the same way and actually does mean, beautiful venom. But even before the end of the first scene as the champion arrives to challenge her to the death, the other characters have Chinese names that don’t evoke the Greek tradition, so clearly this story isn’t as familiar as it first appears.

The second scene shifts abruptly to Mei Feng, daughter of the Jia household who is getting her portrait painted in a bid to become one of the Emperor’s concubines. Clearly we are back in a Chinese setting or a fictional place based on it at least. Given the way her mother prattles on embarrassingly about Mei Feng’s beauty, it echoes both the traditional myth of Medusa’s curse as well as Andromeda and her boastful mother Cassiopeia. The descriptions of these more traditional Chinese scenes are lush and detailed.

However, when Mei Fang meets a shining man named Hai Xin in the garden of their family home that is off limits to men, the story threads start to come together in a shocking way.

Here is one of the many, really beautiful descriptions in the piece, though there are so many it’s hard to choose from them:

“Mei Feng forced herself to look into his face, stared into his eyes. Light spilled forth from his gaze, but darkness too, swirled within. It was like falling into the sun; like drowning in a star-filled sky. Then she was tossed on tumultuous waves, tasting brine in her mouth, her vision blinded by rough sands and the swirl of the sea.”

The story has a very strong, realistic feminist subtext that is quite appealing and well-executed. I think it’s hard not to feel the sense of injustice the story presents: blaming the victim is a very normal experience for women in all cultures across all eras. It was originally published in Because You Love to Hate Me (Bloomsbury, 2017). Many thanks to World Fantasy Con 2020 for providing a copy. Author Cindy Pon’s website is http://cindypon.com.

The Lucky Cat Series Gets Feted By the 2020 Royal Dragonfly Awards

I’m happy to announce that the Lucky Cat Series won a few new awards the other day. Here is the announcement from the 2020 Royal Dragonfly Awards:

https://www.storymonsters.com/book-briefs/2020-royal-dragonfly-winners-announced

Volume 3 of the series, Lucky Cat and the Gods of War, won 1st place in the political novel category; volume 4, Lucky Cat and the Kaiju Horde, won 2nd place in the same category; and volumes 2 and 1 from the series got honorable mentions, which is the award’s third place slot. I also got a few honorable mentions among a crowded field for my volume 3 and 4 book trailers.

Cats rule, but you knew that already, didn’t you? I think it was the dolls’ revenge that really must have caught their eye if they particularly liked the last few volumes, though I myself am partial to volumes 2 and 3 in the early timeline, though the whole series is a lot of fun. Be sure to check them out and thanks to Royal Dragonfly for the accolades!

Vintage Anime “Panda and the Magic Serpent” Still Charms After Sixty Years

Panda and Fox Dance in “Panda and the Magic Serpent”

I heard about this vintage Japanese animated film from 1958 depicting a version of the Lady White Snake story and just had to watch it. It is available on Amazon for viewing, though the colors are washed out to the point of zero contrast in some frames:

The main characters have the same names as the traditional Lady White Snake story, but in this story, the snake is connected to the storm specifically, and her encounter with the young boy take place in a single lifetime. When Xu Xian is a boy, he has a white snake as a best friend whom he wants to see again and is trying to find now that he is an adult. The magical snake, in the meantime, has turned into a beautiful woman. She has her maid as her sidekick as usual, but Xu Xian has a cartoon talking panda and fox as his sidekicks.

The couple reconnects one day as Xu Xian plays the flute at his house and hears Lady Bai playing the erhu in the distance accompanying him, but when he goes to the source of the sound, she has vanished. Panda and fox, however, retrieve her abandoned erhu, which he takes home with him so he can pine over her. Interestingly enough, the erhu, which is a two-stringed traditional Chinese instrument not a lute like the English translation of the film calls it, has a drum typically covered with a python’s skin, which is a wonderfully evocative touch to the story. It provides a subtle reference to the character’s snake identity. The adaptation is a lovely beginning for the film, and I am currently covering the traditional tale on my main blog from an original Chinese storybook for comparison.

Lady Bai gives Xu Xian an erhu

Their adversary is Fahai, who has a crystal ball that tells him when a spirit is near though he’s not explicitly identified as a Buddhist monk in this version. He senses Lady Bai and her attendant are nearby and decides he needs to get rid of them. Meanwhile, Lady Bai’s maid Xiao Qing uses the erhu to lure Xu Xian to their magically transformed house for a visit.

Clocking in at a little over an hour, the storyline departs from the traditional tale and introduces a whole lot of unrelated subplots and dramatic plot twists, but it has some sweet depictions of the young couple’s love affair and fun moments with the sidekicks dancing in the grand house, though this leads to a jewel heist that tips off Fahai, who is already on the trail of the snake woman.

When Xu Xian is arrested and condemned for sorcery, he is taken away to do hard labor for his crime as part of Fahai’s plot to separate the lovers. And this isn’t even halfway through the film. The story then pivots to the antics of the White Pig criminal gang and the work camp Xu Xian is assigned to as Fahai whips up crowds against the evil snake spirits and tries to convince Xu Xian to renounce his ties to Lady Bai. By the end, Lady Bai must decide whether to give up her supernatural powers to save Xu Xian.

It’s a nice little film that could easily compete with Disney productions. This film would have been released around the time of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Lady and the Tramp,” though it’s a shame the color wasn’t preserved as well. Strongly recommended for all ages. 

I am covering the Chinese storybook version of the traditional tale on my main blog starting here:

A Beautiful Snake Woman Searches For the Man She Loves Across Many Lifetimes – The Story of White Snake, Part 1 – Literati Corner

John Hsu’s “Detention”: Haunting Memories of State Murder

Shot from the “Detention” film trailer

I finally got a look at director John Hsu’s historical horror film “Detention,” which is currently showing at the online Nightstream Film Festival this weekend and is making the rounds along the film festival circuit this year. When I first saw the trailer, I was riveted, and the film did not disappoint. Since I completed my Lucky Cat Series novels, I’ve been keeping an eye out for any similar works that tap into 20^th century political terror and explore them through horror tropes, and this one hits all of the right notes. My comments will contain some spoilers, so be forewarned if you continue reading.

Set in 1962 Taiwan during the “White Terror” when the island was under martial law and citizens were monitored by the Taiwanese Garrison Command, the Taiwanese secret police under the nationalist government, a group of high school students and two of their teachers are caught participating in an illegal book club. Based on a popular video game, which I also looked up for this post since I’ve never heard of it, the film is a stylish horror flick told through flashbacks and lurid hauntings. It focuses on a couple of students who wake up at the school at night, but now everything has turned sinister and they are stalked by some terrifying apparitions as they encounter hints of what happened to the book club after their arrest.

Here is the official trailer:

I’m not one for graphic content, either in what I write or what I watch, so I was pleased to see that there were only two scenes I had to look away from during the film because it got too violent. The spooky parts stay within the motif of the political consequences for their crime, and the school has a creepy, supernatural version of a secret police officer running around the place whom I wished we saw more. Otherwise, the setting effectively creates an atmosphere of dread, from the burlap sacks placed over detainees’ heads to the blood-stained books we find the phantom book club reading in a secret room of the school.

Then the moment finally comes where we see the cover of the banned book in question as the traitor is revealed. Tight camera focus in on the title. Whoa, what? Run that video back a moment. The book the teacher gets in trouble for reading is really Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons”? I have a BA in Russian language and literature and did a paper and presentation on Turgenev’s short stories for my lit class, and I never would have considered him some sort of radical author. Not in the least. So what is going on here? Did it have some sort of Quo Vadis double meaning to the Taiwanese that made it dangerous? Was the government just paranoid? Ivan Turgenev was an 19^th century Russian author who was very respected by prominent European authors, so it seems to be a pedestrian choice for the book club to be reading when they come to the attention of the secret police. Then again, in these situations, that kind of overreaction by totalitarian states is pretty typical.

Glancing over some of the actual history of the time period, the authorities targeted anyone they considered communist sympathizers, pro-democracy activists, and everyone in between not deemed loyal enough to the nationalist government who belonged to the country’s intellectual elite. Even a figure such as Lee Teng-hui, who later became president of Taiwan, came to their attention, as did writer Bo Yang who translated a Popeye comic strip in a way that the leaders though was denigrating president Chiang Kai-shek. Bo Yang had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for his translation, so perhaps there really was nothing wrong with Turgenev per se.

The film’s ultimate message emphasizes the importance of surviving the secret police and being a living witness so what happened will not be forgotten. I also looked at some clips from the video game that are posted online, and they continue this theme. From the little I saw, it looks like a good adaptation of the game without being too faithful to the original.

Screenshot from the video game version of “Detention”

Ahn Jae-huun’s Animated Film “The Shaman Sorceress” Wows at Annecy

Although it has been a few months since Annecy’s virtual edition of their animation festival this summer, I wanted to cover a film that they showcased there that perhaps hasn’t gotten much airplay beyond that festival. One of the spectacular entries was Korean feature-length animated film, “The Shaman Sorceress,” which is based on a Korean novel whose author Kim Dong-ri was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982. (I’m looking for a copy in Korean to feature on my main blog, so we’ll see what I can come up with.)

This film, which has beautiful, detailed panels and great music, is about a family clash over religion that illustrated the larger conflict in Korean society between tradition and modernization/Westernization. The shaman mother must confront the fact that the son whom she sent off to a Buddhist temple for school has converted to Christianity. The main characters are all well-developed and much more sympathetic than I anticipated.

Here is the trailer:

And here is a short interview with the director:

I have to get a little personal here since there is a striking sequence where the mother dances with the long sleeves in the forest, as can be seen in the trailer above. The long, flowing sleeve dance is a very old Chinese classical dance from what I understand, and I was lucky to get to study and perform it under the direction of a local Chinese teacher in 2009. It’s not an easy thing to master, but the results are quite striking.

The Sleeve Dance

It looks like there is a video they recently posted of the music for the film:

As far as I know, it isn’t on any streaming platform or DVD as of yet, but be on the lookout for it. It’s quite moving and well-done.

Lady White Snake Gets Spectacular Film Adaptation From China’s Light Chaser Animation Studio

White Snake Among the Floating Dandelions

Gkids, a Japanese animation distributor, recently picked up Chinese-animated feature film White Snake, and it’s now available on Amazon Prime. Gkids was recently in the virtual dealer room at a virtual anime con I attended, and they had a great list of films that were mostly available for digital rental, and since I have an interest in Asian animation beyond Japan, I jumped at the chance to get a look at this CGI version of the old Chinese tale.

I think the old tale of Lady White Snake isn’t that well known in the West, perhaps because of a peculiar cultural difference in animal preferences. European-based fairy tales and preferences lean more toward furry mammals as cuddly or loveable creatures, but East Asia shows a marked preference for reptiles, whether snake or dragon. I’m going to dig up a Chinese language version of the original classic to cover on my primary blog, Ice Pine Palace, later in the year, probably for Christmas, to get readers caught up on the story.  

Here is the subbed trailer for the film (since I don’t do dubs):

You can watch the full-length feature here on Amazon Prime, or get the DVD if you prefer:

White the CGI can get a little clunky at times and the character development of the villains and basic setting information is pretty thin, the story is still enjoyable. A feast for the eyes, the character design is top notch with some truly memorable characters such as the yao jade dealer with two faces on her head, or the strangely beautiful juxtaposition of the huge white snake slithering through a mountain valley full of floating, white dandelion seeds.

Some other great moments include a couple of Taoist magicians who are after Lady White Snake, such as one whose magic makes the golden cranes on his shirt come to life and attack the two snake demons he is fighting, and the main villain of the piece with his army of what appear to be flying origami warriors.

Over my years on the programming committee for Silk Screen, I’ve gotten a look at a few major animated films from China, and I think this is the best I’ve seen. I definitely recommend it.

My Fall 2020 Schedule and A New Interview

As we get into the last few months of 2020, I have some new events to announce that I’m participating in. First up is C’monfluence, which is the writers track of the old Confluence convention. That is slated for October 2^nd through the 4^th and has gone virtual this year. I’m on the schedule in a few places, and that should be posted soon.

https://confluence-sff.org/cmonfluence-2020/

I’ll be on a few of the panels and will be prowling the Discord server as a monitor under my Lady Xiansa blogger handle, so be sure to check that out.

Next up will be the virtual World Fantasy Convention 2020, where I will be turning into a fan girl of Hickman and Weis for sure, though anything else I’ll be doing that weekend is TBA. That is scheduled for October 29^th through November 1^st.

https://www.wfc2020.org/

The last two events are in limbo since they are still scheduled as in-person events and have been cancelled at least once this year. Living Dead Weekend Monroeville is supposed to go forth the weekend of November 6^th, but we’ll see. Then Steel City Con is tentatively slated for the weekend of December 4th.  

I also recently did an interview with Book Reader Magazine, which you can access here.

Featured Author Wendelin Gray

Next time, I’ll be back to our scheduled reading.

Wendelin Gray Speaks at Crunchyroll’s Virtual Con and More!

I got notification recently that I got a few coveted speaking slots at some major anime cons across the US that have gone virtual this year. First up is Otakon Online 2020, where I will be doing abbreviated versions of my Ainu and Godzilla panels. Be sure to look for that at a computer near you August 1^st.

https://www.otakon.com/online/

Next, I will be presenting “Dark Journeys: Saiyuki and Hell Girl” at the Virtual Crunchyroll Expo 2020, which will be held from September 4^th through 6^th.

https://expo.crunchyroll.com/

This panel is one of a four-part series I do on occasion at anime cons discussing the religions of East Asia, and this is the first time in eight years that I’ve presented this particular installment, which features an examination of Buddhist sutras and sects emphasizing heaven and hell as well as some discussion of Buddhist-Christian syncretism in these anime.

I will also have a virtual booth in their artist alley at the Crunchyroll Expo, so be sure to check that out, too.

If you’re looking for something interesting to do from the comfort of your living room, be sure to check out both events.