Morimi's Kyoto is certainly a gathering place for stale university students, but this ethnic group is intertwined with the self-congratulatory characteristics of the otaku people. Its keywords are "folklore" and "other worlds".
Among the Kyoto Double Treasures, which have recently become popular in Japan, Manjo Mugaku and Noboru Morimi do have many common characteristics (the two are particularly popular in Taiwan) - their imagination and high ability to construct an unbounded virtual world. Previously, Marumeier was analyzing the "Kamogawa Hermo" (also known as "Kamogawa Little Devil") of Wancheng Muxue, and tried to outline his classical traditional context, so as to teach people to understand that the world of Wancheng Muxue did not come out of thin air. Similar reading strategies can be applied to Noboru Morimi, who is also a master of Japanese folk culture.
In Folklore in Small Cities, Takako Tanaka has a good understanding of the folklore magic of Noboru Morimi's novels. She pointed out that although Morimi has made it clear in "Beauty and bamboo forest" that his pen has always been based on the Sakyo And Shangkyo districts of Kyoto City, in the final analysis, although there is a realistic contrast in his "Kyoto", it is basically a construct in a fictional world, and it is not for readers to use according to Tu Suoji's travel guide.
Morimi's Kyoto is certainly a gathering place for stale university students, but this ethnic group is intertwined with the self-congratulatory characteristics of the otaku people. The intoxicating object has the impression that Kyoto is an incredible place because of its empty talk and travel through the past and the present, which makes the world of novels communicate strongly with each other. Takako Tanaka believes that the key words are "folklore" and "other worlds", which I think is the highlight of the arrow.
The folk world of "The Top Heaven Family"
In Morimi Noboruhiko's novels, the most popular one in recent times is "The Top HeavenLy Family", because the adapted animation was only played in 2013, and then the characters became the object of pursuit, especially the second brother of the Tanuki family, Yajiro Shimomo, who lost his ability to transform due to guilt, and became a frog that lived at the bottom of the well, which was more pitiful and became a popular cartoon character.
"The Top Heavenly Family" chooses the idea of a human, tanuki, and a tengu to construct a "different world" of virtual reality in Kyoto. In fact, the story of the ever-changing tanuki has been widely circulated in Kyoto's folklore. In the Muromachi period's "Kanwen Imperial Records", there is a mention of a maid revealing her true body in a town sake house. Since Edo, the activities of the various tanuki cats have been heard from time to time, and in the "Database of Strange Monsters" of the International Center for Japanese Studies, there is an episode in which the "Eight Guards Tanuki" who is transformed into a human body is caught and exiled in the Kamogawa River. Morimi also appeared in morimi's pen "Eight Guards Daimyō", which is the application strategy of the changeable tanuki folk culture into the world.
As for the description of the tengu, it is Morimi's usual skill. Kurama Tengu mentioned in "The Top Heavenly Family", of which Kurama in "The Mirror of The Night Mountain" is the place where the Gion Festival is used as the stage and the "big shop owner" assists in cultivating "super goldfish". For example, in "Spring Is Short, The Girl Moves Forward!" Higuchi in the book also explicitly states that "the tengu is coming.". Looking down on everything in the air is precisely the behavioral characteristic of the tengu, which has become a strong folk trivia in Kyoto. In fact, in daily life, parents also threaten their children from time to time, in order to "play outside and return late will be caught by the tengu" - the folk haze of being caught by the tengu, in the "Top Heaven Family" turned into a beautiful girl Bentian was caught by the red jade tengu teacher of RuyiYue Pharmacist Workshop, on the one hand, it was a forbidden room cultivation plot, and Bentian was also bred to become a top witch, from weak to strong to become a key figure in the novel.
In fact, the novel mentions that Ruyiyue Yakushiba rests in the "Demon King Cedar" near the Kumano Shrine, which is a real thing in the real world, but it is only in another place. In Inoue Raishou's Kyoto Folklore Chronicle, it is pointed out that the "Demon King Sugi" is near the site of the Nishiji Temple in Minami Ward, and is "the tree where the Demon King monk of Kurama is perching at night", which is probably also a folk material that Morimi used to inspire him.
The mystery of the bottom of the well
Just mentioned in the "Top Heaven Family" is the most popular second brother Yajiro, he incarnated as a frog habitat is the water well of the Rokudo Zhenhuangji Temple in Higashiyama. The background of this well is not clearly explained in the novel, but it turns out that it has a lot to do in reality. Takako Tanaka pointed out that according to the Honma shrine examination, this well was the entrance and exit of on-earth for ono, who served as a nobleman in the Heian period. Every day, after completing his duty in hell, He returns to the real world (there is also a saying that the cloud exit is in Saga). Therefore, in the novel, Yajiro blames himself for suspecting that he killed his father because he was drunk (caught as an ingredient for tanuki hot pot), so he turns into a frog and then loses his transformation magic, and remains at the bottom of the well, symbolizing his death in the boundary between life and death- neither returning to the sun to face his relatives, but also not having the courage to end his life and leave.
Until the Shimoya family fell ill with the Yichuan family due to electoral affairs, and the Shimoya family, from his mother to his brothers, was in danger, Yajiro finally re-released his potential in danger, incarnated into his most famous "Pseudo-Reiyama Tram", and rushed out to save his family, from the frog at the bottom of the well, turning back to the human world, just closely following the metaphor of the original well - from the edge of hell back to the human world, just became the opportunity to start the process of Yajiro's regeneration.
An extension of the cave
In fact, in "The Top Heaven Family", the inside and outside of Kyoto's bustling streets, and the tanuki cat access places in Morimi's pen are all constructed with the concept of caves. This is true of the bar "Zhu Glass" in Sanjo, Teramachi, or the Nishizaki Genyoumon Shop, a house in Sanjo Takakura, where the former has a narrow entrance but becomes a vast liquor store when it enters the ground, and the latter extends to the vast open sea when it enters. Of course, that echoes the habits of tanuki cats in reality, and the incredible space behind the cave is the basis for the construction of the "other world", and it is also a clear proof that Kyoto is the place where the virtual and the real converge mentioned above.
One of the key constituent properties of Morimi's "other world" is the space of variation presented. In "The Top HeavenLy Family", the scene of Benten and Yakushifang enjoying cherry blossoms on the rooftop, Benten and Yasaburo wandering in the arched courtyard of Teramachi, or Benten placing Yakushiba on the roof of the South Block are all methods of spatial construction in another world. This includes the aerial perspective that only tengu can appreciate, or the other world that can be seen through the power of magic (including the life and death entrance and exit boundary guarded by The Yaji God), which is the cultivation method of Morimi's Kyoto folk magic.