Don’t open the box!

An acquaintance of mine recently wrote a short story based upon the Japanese folk-tale, Urashima Taro, which got me thinking about the story. 

I am sure that every Japanese person will be familiar with the story.  There are a number of different versions, but the most common is as follows:

Urashima Taro is a young man who sees a small sea-turtle being tortured by some children on the beach.  He rescues the turtle, and it turns out to be a princess, the daughter of the God of the Sea.

So to thank Urashima Taro, the turtle takes him to a caslte under the sea, where he enjoys feasting and dancing for three days.  However, he gets lonely to see his village again and so asks to go home.  The princess takes him home but first gives him a magic box, saying that it will protect him and that he should on no account open it.

When Urashima Taro gets home, 300 years have passed and he doesn’t recognise anyone.  In a daze, he opens the box and a white smoke emerges, covering him.  He then turns into an old man.

And that’s the end of the story.  It seems a little bit harsh on Urashima Taro, doesn’t it?  Even though he helped the turtle, in the end he loses his family and friends, and his youth, and he only enjoyed three days in the underwater castle.

But is there a moral?  Perhaps it could mean that the God of the Sea cannot be understood by humans, and seems cruel.  In an island nation like Japan, with many disasters at sea, typhoons, tsunamis and so on, then people would have felt like this.

Or perhaps Urashima Taro lost his sense of time in the underwater castle because he was having too much fun.  While he was enjoying the feasting and dancing and talking with the princess, his family and friends were hard at work.  Maybe the moral is about hard work, about not avoiding your responsibilities.

If you have a blog to write, don’t start by checking your emails and the Scottish football gossip.  If you do, then you might forget the time and your life will pass you by!  In that case, perhaps the magic box that you should never open is your email inbox.

Thank you, Urashima Taro.  You have taught me a valuable lesson.  What’s this?  A new email!  Sorry, I’ve got to go.

 

Vocabulary:

an acquaintance – Someone you know.

a folk-tale – A traditional story, passed from person to person.

to torture someone or something – To deliberately cause extreme pain to someone or something.

“You should on no account open the box” – Whatever you do, don’t open the box./ You must not open the box, no matter what.

to be in a daze – To be confused, when your brain is not functioning properly.

to emerge – To come out.

to be harsh – To be hard or unfair.