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NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Regarding animated flaming wheels, Wanyudo is definitely a Japanese thing. The yokai himself is the result of an ironic (?) punishment for having tortured and killed people in life, and hence he constantly rolls between the world of the living and "Hell" (potentially Yomi, land of the dead?) collecting the souls of the unwary.

That said, there exist other variants on flaming wheels in mythology. Greek mythology features Ixion, who repeatedly violated xenia (ancient Greek hospitality which was super important to maintain on both sides) to the point where he tried to make off with Hera after being invited to Olympus. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for the gods, he was instead tricked into loving an illusion made of clouds, and the resulting descendants eventually became the wild and rowdy centaurs. Having demonstrated his ingratitude and hubris, Ixion himself was then bound to a burning wheel which eternally raced across the sky in punishment.

But what are likely the earliest variant of a mythological flaming wheel are the Judeo-Christian ophanim. Unlike Wanyudo and Ixion, the ophanim were always holy servants of some sort (eventually construed as a choir of angels) who act as the wheels of God's chariot/throne. Their design is of two flaming wheels intersecting orthogonally covered with eyes, which goes to show why angels would often say "Be not afraid!" or something similar in the relevant texts. Seriously, angels are sometimes described as looking like Lovecraftian monsters. The cherubim, who actually pull that same chariot/throne, carry four wings and four faces instead of just looking like a winged human toddler.

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NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






It hasn't been brought up here, but one thing that's distinctive about spoken Japanese is that it's expected to change depending on several factors. These include your own gender, your age, your social postion within the conversation, and of course the same for your audience. Anyway, I'd heard via rumor that this comes up when Jinkuro possesses Momohime's body. Supposedly Momohime herself speaks in the expected style of a young and demure noblewoman, but Jinkuro-Momohime instead talks like a cantankerous old man (which obviously would be very strange for a young lady). Mind you, I've heard all this a few steps removed from the source, so it likely warrants further investigation. (I have zero training in the language, but I can summarize from Wikipedia. :v:)

When both yams and sweet potatoes show up in the cooking, usually I would be wary considering that for years American supermarkets have convoluted the two products based on similarity of shape. (Nearly every product you can find on a shelf that talks about "yams" in such a place instead uses sweet potatoes. :iiam:) But after some research, I'm guessing that (contrary to what you'd expect) both of those might actually be in use at once. The former were native to the general region, while the latter (a Mesoamerican crop) only arrived in Japan in perhaps the 1600s or 1700s. And that still leaves enough leeway for such to show up in cultivation during the Sengoku period. :ms: Food for thought, I suppose.

"Yamato" can refer to several things. Originally it just referred to the metropolitan area (if you could call it that) surrounding the city of Sakurai in south-central Japan. Eventually, given the city's relative prominence, Yamato also came to refer to the province itself. There's a period (of disputed length) in Japan's history in which the imperial court ruled from said province, establishing several palaces in the area during the 400s and 500s AD. And potentially because of this, it was also one of the ancient names of Japan itself. Stemming from a similar source ("yama" can refer in such contexts to mountains or forests), Wo or Yamato was used by 200s AD Chinese scholars to refer to the primary ethnic group of Japan in the same way that the primary ethnic group in China has for centuries been the Han. More precisely, there was a particular character which could be spoken as either name used to refer to Japan's ethnic majority, and due to the weirdness of logographic languages the latter spoken rendering likely had something to do with the once-imperial province. (Or maybe not; the chains of cause and effect are hard to puzzle together from summaries on Wikipedia but the sense I'm getting is that all of these did stem from a single source.) Anyway, because of this business with the Wo/Yamato character (which was eventually replaced by Japanese scholars who felt it demeaned them) "Yamato" eventually came to formally refer to the primary ethnic group in Japan in modern-day demographics and the like. Though if you do ever hear of "Yamato-damashii", be very wary. Literally it refers to the "Japanese spirit", but in practice it's been tied to right-wing Japanese nationalism (which is :stare:-inducing crazypants/disturbing much of the time) since at least the Russo-Japanese War.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






On the topic of the scene with Echigoya and Danjo Shikami, this is apparently a reference to a stock scene and/or other references to that stock scene in Japanese fiction. "Echigoya" in particular is the default name for the Shady Merchant in the scene, so I'm not surprised that he never shows up again.

quote:

The past few times I've tried to post this, I've gotten all tangled up in the story and bailed out. If you're reading this, it means I've finally managed to straighten it all out (more or less) and you are about to learn the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space Japanese novelty snack cakes.

For starters, yamabuki-iro are an actual product. The box displayed at the upper left of the linked page contains nine cakes, an example of which can be seen on the plate next to it. The crust is flavored with sesame, the filling is sweet red bean paste, and each individual container is made to resemble a stack of gold ryo coins. A single box will run you about $30 USD, plus S&H. Why are they worth so much, I hear myself wondering aloud so as to keep the post going? That's a fine question, and I'm glad I asked. Let's dig a little deeper.

On the right side of the page, below a bunch of words and stuff, you can see a small picture in the old sumi-e style. In it, one man is hunched over bowing with a box very much like the one being sold open on the floor next to him, while another man sits up straight, looking vaguely amused. What we're seeing there is a depiction of a stereotypical scene from any one of the thousands of feudal/samurai period pieces that have been the most popular genre of fiction in Japan since at least as far back as they would have been considered contemporary. This particular one is called the "You're-As-Wicked-As-Me Scene", and it goes a little something like this:

The man with his back to us in the picture is the Shady Merchant, and the comfortably seated man is the Corrupt Magistrate. Merchant has come to Magistrate's mansion just as night is falling to obliquely request that a blind eye be turned to their shadiness. As a "gift" for the "inconvenient visit", Merchant has brought a fine, black lacquered wood box. Magistrate opens to box to find it filled with stacks of gold coins, at which point he smirks down at Merchant and delivers the line for which the scene is named. It is a venerable old cliche, like the gunfighters facing off in the middle of Main Street while the townsfolk scurry out of sight, or the true love bursting through the chapel doors just as the reverend asks for any objections or forever hold your peace, and here a small gift company has capitalized on the people's desire to recreate it for themselves.
Perhaps the king of all references to this scene is in the Japanese TRPG Meikyuu Kingdom (currently being translated), which is where the above discussion comes from. Suffice it to say that there's an item in the game which makes three levels of reference to this scene and its cultural derivatives.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






In some circles of Buddhism, reincarnation is not immediate but instead occurs after a wait of 49 days in some intermediate state between death and life. (Tibetan Buddhism in particular refers to such a state as the "bardo".) Additionally, it happens to be the number of days and nights that Siddhartha Gautama sat in meditation before achieving enlightenment, so in this case such a number has a dual purpose. The old monk's comments obviously allude to the former (as he's concerned that Torahime would otherwise be shortly reincarnated), while Torahime herself speaks of some reprieve by the Buddha alluding to the latter.

You didn't mention it on the video, but there's one aspect of Torahime's attire that bears mention nonetheless. Notice how one arm is bare, while her other arm is clothed with some sort of gauntlet? (Which arm is which isn't constant throughout the video, but I presume that's just a result of sprite limitations.) That's a standard style of dress for archers, at least when one's clothing is otherwise loose. Generally your arm holding the bow would be bare so that the released bowstring wouldn't catch on anything, which might injure you and/or throw off the shot. In contrast your draw arm wouldn't have such issues for the most part, except for your draw hand. Holding and then releasing a bowstring tends to be very damaging to the fingers if you aren't protecting them in some way, and thus there exist numerous examples of protective equipment such as finger tabs (for a three-fingered Mediterranean draw) or thumb rings (for a thumb-based Mongolian draw) to ensure that something else takes the brunt of a bowstring moving at over a hundred feet per second. In particular, Japanese-style archery (kyudo) employs a three- or four-fingered deerskin glove known as a yugake.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Iron Chitlin posted:

I believe the painting you referred to is "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa." Probably the most widely seen piece of Japanese artwork in the western world.
Which in turn is the first in a series of prints, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (it's there in the background), by Hokusai. I should note that it's important to have the full title and the artist when referring to the collection. Otherwise we might be referring to Hiroshige's print collection of the same name, or Hokusai's One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji.

Man, Mount Fuji really means something to Japanese culture if two people wanted to paint it 172 times.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Ah, stop complaining about not having enough souls and then going around the souls that are freely available on screen!

I wonder what the original text referred to that corresponded with "ley lines" in this translation. Doubtless there's something from Japanese mythology/folklore that fits, but ley lines themselves are a concept from British pseudoarchaeology less than a hundred years old.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Hmm, I guess we're getting heavily into the mythological allusions here?

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NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






I guess that you haven't read The Dark Tower series, then? Because this ending wasn't nearly as brutal to the protagonist as what happened to Roland at his journey's end. But regardless it's the sort of ending that gives me an evil grin, when we as the audience realize that the protagonist is utterly hosed and are just waiting to see how it plays out. I would at least not assume that Arashimaru is outright dead; after all, when Jinkuro did the same thing to Momohime the latter still hung around as an unwilling ethereal groupie.

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