minako arisato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
complementing) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
retrospec2017-07-07 10:03 pm
complementing) wrote in retrospec2017-07-07 10:03 pm
Entry tags:
sixth evocation ✧ cybele
[This time instead of a text wall, the post is a brief video, also seen on the ReVA Facebook page if you follow that. Minako is featured front and center, wearing a yukata and her hair done up-- the perfect image of Japanese summer. She waves cheerily into the camera.]
Hi everyone! Minako here from ReVA to wish you a happy Tanabata! For those who don't know, Tanabata is a Japanese festival celebrating the folk story of Princess Orihime and the cowherd Hikoboshi. The two lovers were separated by Orihime's father, and were only able to meet on the seventh day of the seventh month, after Orihime wished for a way to be able to see Hikoboshi again. A flock of magpies answered her call and carried her to him, allowing them to meet once a year on that same day from then on. The festival is a time for people to send their dearest wishes to the deities and ask them to be granted, so--!
[She steps to the side, and the camera follows her to show a magnificent bamboo plant set up right in the entrance of the ReVA community center.]
Come by the community center and write down your wish! If you tie it to the bamboo plant, it will surely be received by the gods and be granted. [She points to a little red piece of paper already tied there.] This one is mine. No peeking though, or else the wish won't be fulfilled!
One last thing: there are yukatas like this one available for rental here at the community center. Come try some traditional Japanese summer wear, take some pictures, and eat some shaved ice with us!
[She smiles sweetly and playfully salutes the camera in farewell.]
Thanks for watching, hope to see you soon!
[An extra message for her fellow Retrospeccers has been added below the video.]
it doesn't matter if you believe in the gods or you don't
sometimes writing out a wish is emotionally powerful enough to spur you into working towards it, or for fate to nudge you in the right direction
so, for example, if you need help filling out the bingo tile to "grant a friend a wish", I can help arrange for that here! (✩´꒳`✩)
or if you don't want to make the trek but you okay with posting your wish here so it can potentially be fulfilled, that's fine too
Tanabata is closely tied to Obon, the festival honoring ancestors and lost loved ones, so you guys might see something else from me when that comes up too
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are there other star-related folk tales?
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hm it's not related to stars specifically but there's a Japanese folk tale about the princess of the moon called Kaguya-hime
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not at all.
would you mind telling it?
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there was once a bamboo cutter named Taketori no Okina who found a tiny girl inside the bamboo he was cutting at one day. He took her home and he and his wife named her Kaguya-hime and cared for her like she was their daughter. Normally somewhat poor, they were able to pay for the things she needed with the small nuggets of gold that Taketori no Okina somehow kept finding whenever he cut down bamboo from then on.
Kaguya-hime grew up to be a beauty, and despite her adoptive father's efforts otherwise, people started hearing about her, and she became so well known that five princes eventually arrived to ask for her hand in marriage. Taketori no Okina asked Kaguya-hime to choose one of them, to which she agreed, so long as one of them were able to bring back an item for her to prove their worthiness. The items were impossible to get, though, basically relics and artifacts of legend, so naturally they couldn't get these for her, and so she was able to stay happily unmarried for a while
until another suitor called Mikado came to visit her. He was the Emperor of Japan and out of respect to him she couldn't give him a trial, but she still refused to marry him all the same. He went back to his palace without a wife but the two of them became friends and kept in contact regardless
later that summer, Kaguya-hime started acting strangely, crying whenever she saw the full moon. Her adoptive parents were worried for her, and eventually she revealed that she was not of this Earth, that she was actually from the Moon, and it was almost time for her to return there. (Reasons for why she was on Earth vary from it being a punishment to it being for her safety during a war on the Moon. Also, the gold Taketori no Okina had found was from the people on the Moon, to help pay for her stay on Earth.)
The Emperor sent guards to her house to protect her from the people coming for her, but they were blinded by moonlight before they could even raise any weapons. Kaguya-hime had to return to her true home and nobody could change that, especially after she allowed herself to magically forget her compassion and love for the people of Earth. All she left behind were letters for her adoptive parents and the Emperor apologizing for her departure. For the Emperor, she'd left a special potion of immortality, which was essentially her offer for him to join her. When the Emperor read the letter, he had his guards climb to the highest mountain in Japan, where they burned the letter and threw away the potion in answer.
legend says that the Japanese words for immortality, 不死 fushi, became the name of that mountain, and subsequently the name of the Mount Fuji we know today
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i'm not certain that it is supposed to invoke such a feeling, but i do truly feel bad for all involved.
why did she absolutely have to return to the moon? could she not have stayed somewhere she truly loved, with people who loved her as well?
and why did the Emperor refuse her offer of immortality? is ruling so important, or was he caught in the same conundrum as Kaguya-hime, and because he had the choice to stay among those he knew, he decided to?
...i am truly sorry about the questions. doubtlessly they must be hard to answer, given that, as you have said, folktales rarely go into particulars.
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I don't have any concrete answers for you so it's all up to personal interpretation at this point
I think she felt like she had to return to the moon because it was her duty. And who's to say she didn't have loved ones on the moon as well? Deciding which world she loved more, whether to stay or go...I think that's why she cried whenever she saw the moon, even though it was where it she chose to return to in the end. As for the emperor...l think that for the sake of his country, he had to refuse
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that's very understandable.
thank you for telling me though. i enjoyed reading it a lot! truly.
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