TIME ONCE AGAIN FOR A VISIT TO HAYATO-OJI-SANS KAMISHIBAI KORNER featuring the ICHIKAWA NEKOJIN KABUKI PLAYERS in Koyo Ozakis famed novel Konjiki Yasha or The Golden Demon. You might also call this Japanese Travel Through Classic Literature. Beginning in 1897, the serialized novel KONJIKI YASHA (Golden Demon) by Kōyō Ozaki appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and became the hit of Meiji Japan. It is the tragic story of O-Miya and her boyfriend Kanichi Hazama, a university student, who had long planned to marry his childhood sweetheart. Part of the story takes place at the Oceanside resort of Atami, in Shizuoka Prefecture, where Kanichi first learns that O-Miya has been backed into a corner by her parents decision for an arranged marriage. She has accepted the marriage proposal of the son of a wealthy banker, Tadatsugu Tomiyama. In celebration, Tomiyama has given O-Miya a huge diamond ring. Kanichi, who is unable to contain his rage, kicks poor O-Miya and shouts, “You’ve been blinded by the diamond!” That phrase, “Diamond ni me ga kurami!” became an instant “buzz phrase” throughout Japan and, in fact, is still used today among many people who never even read the novel! Another “buzz phrase,” more of a curse really, came from the same novel: “May the moon (full moon) of this month’s evening, next month’s evening, and the evening of the month after that be clouded-over with my tears.” Years pass and the now misogynistic and hard-hearted Kanichi, convinced that gold and riches are the only important things in life, has transformed himself into a usurious moneylender – a loan shark – causing a great deal of tragedy and unhappiness to his debtors, including Tomiyama. It is only through a cleansing fire that Kanichi is at last able to change his greedy ways and reclaim his lost love, O-Miya. Although Ozaki’s book was fiction, the site where Kanichi kicked O-Miya was next to a pine tree located at the beach in Atami. The real tree, called fittingly, “O-Miya’s Pine,” was damaged by a typhoon and then removed when the road was widened a long while ago; but a new pine, grown from a sapling or a cone from the original tree, still exists there today.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 20:17:32 +0000
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