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Urashima TarōFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Urashima Tarō (浦島太郎) is a Japanese legend about a fisherman who rescues a turtle and is rewarded for this with a visit to the Palace of the Dragon God (or Ryūgū-jō) under the sea. He stays there for three days and, upon his return to his village, finds himself 300 years in the future. The tale has been identified as the earliest example of a story involving time travel.[1]
HistoryThe name Urashima Taro first appears in the 15th century (the Muromachi period), in the book Otogizōshi, but the story is much older, dating back to the 8th century (the Nara Period). These older books, such as Nihon Shoki, Man'yōshū [2] and Tango no Kuni Fudoki (丹後国風土記) refer to Urashima Taro as Urashimako, though the story is the same. This represents a change in Japanese naming customs; in the previous eras, -ko (child) was used for both male and female names, while in later times it was mostly a female name element, replaced with -tarou (great youth) in boys' names. StoryOne day a young fisherman named Urashima Tarō is fishing when he notices a group of children torturing a small turtle. Tarō saves it and lets it to go back to the sea. The next day, a huge turtle approaches him and tells him that the small turtle he had saved is the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, who wants to see him to thank him. The turtle magically gives Tarō gills and brings him to the bottom of the sea, to the Palace of the Dragon God (Ryūgū-jō). There he meets the Emperor and the small turtle, who was now a lovely princess, Otohime. 
Tarō stays there with her for a few days, but soon wants to go back to his village and see his aging mother, so he asks Otohime permission to leave. The princess says she is sorry to see him go, but wishes him well and gives him a mysterious box called tamatebako which she tells him never to open. Tarō grabs the box, jumps on the back of the same turtle that had brought him there, and soon is at the seashore. When he goes home, everything has changed. His home is gone, his mother has vanished, and the people he knew are nowhere to be seen. He asks if anybody knows a man called Urashima Tarō. They answer that they had heard someone of that name had vanished at sea long ago. He discovers that 300 years have passed since the day he left for the bottom of the sea. Struck by grief, he absent-mindedly opens the box the princess had given him, from which bursts forth a cloud of white smoke. He is suddenly aged, his beard long and white, and his back bent. From the sea comes the sad, sweet voice of the princess: "I told you not to open that box. In it was your old age ..." This story bears a striking similarity to many other tales, including that of Oisín and the earlier Chinese legend of Ranka. VariationsAs always with folklore, there are many different versions of this extremely famous story. In one, for example, after he turned into an old man he took the body of a crane, in another he ate a magic pill that gave him the ability to breathe underwater. In another version, he is swept away by a storm before he can rescue the turtle. Also, there is a version in which he dies in the process of aging (his body turns into dust), as no one can live 300 years. Commemoration
A shrine on the western coast of the Tango Peninsula in northern Kyoto Prefecture, named Urashima Jinja, contains an old document describing a man, Urashimako, who left his land in 478 A.D. and visited a land where people never die. He returned in 825 A.D. with a Tamatebako. Ten days later he opened the box, and a cloud of white smoke was released, turning Urashimako into an old man. Later that year, after hearing the story, Emperor Junna ordered Ono no Takamura to build a shrine to commemorate Urashimako's strange voyage, and to house the Tamatebako and the spirit of Urashimako. In popular cultureThe story influenced various works of fiction and a number of films. Among them are manga and anime such as Dragonball Z, Detective Conan, YuYu Hakusho, Urusei Yatsura, Love Hina (whose lead male character is called Urashima Keitaro), Doraemon, Kamen Rider Den-O (the namesake of the Imagin Urataros, given by Naomi), Cowboy Bebop, Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi (One of the men in the Otogi Bank is called Urashima Tarou, he becomes lovers (although not extremely faithful) with a girl named Otohime, who is always being bullied with the nickname 'Turtle') [3] Ghost Sweeper Mikami and RahXephon.[4] It is retold in and used as the basis for the short story “Another Story” by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in her story collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, named for the character of this story. Urashima Tarō is referenced in the video game Policenauts. In the video game Okami, Amaterasu chases away a group of children who are bullying a fisherman by the name of Urashima who claims that he was taken away to the Dragon Palace by "Orca". Urashima tells Amaterasu that she can find Orca at the dock when the sun first rises. Amaterasu meets Orca, and after she proves herself worthy of the journey to the Dragon Palace by finding a hidden whirlpool, Orca take her to the Dragon Palace where she meets the queen of the Dragonians, Otohime. The oldest known animated adaptation Urashima Tarō of the tale premiered in 1918.[5] During the 1970s, VARIG, a Brazilian airline, used him in a series of commercials, with the turtle bringing him to Brazil. After a while, he enjoys his stay, but grows old and longs to return to his home in Japan, so a woman (presumably the princess) gives him a box with an airplane ticket home, which when he opens also becomes much younger. Notes and references
See also
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