Princess Hachikazuki and Prince Saisho pledge their love

Hachikazuki or Hachi Katsugi (

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

: 鉢かづき; English: "The bowl-bearer princess") is a Japanese folktale of the ''

Otogi-zōshi are a group of about 350 Japanese prose narratives written primarily in the Muromachi period (1392–1573). These illustrated short stories, which remain unattributed, together form one of the representative literary genres of the Japanese med ...

'' genre. It refers to a maiden of noble birth who wears a bowl on her head and marries a prince. Hachikazuki hime was first written in the

Muromachi period The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate (''Muromachi bakufu'' or ''Ashikaga bakufu''), which was officially established in 1338 by t ...

(14th-16th centuries). An akahon (red book) with many drawings for children was published in the middle of the Edo period (18th century, circa 1735-45) by Urokogataya.

Summary

In olden times, there lived a couple with a beautiful daughter, sometimes called Hachibime. On her deathbed, the girl's elderly mother makes her promise to always wear a wooden bowl on her head to cover her beauty. As an alternate opening, the girl is born with a wooden bowl on her head. Whatever the case, her father remarries, and her step-mother is cruel to the girl. The girl escapes from home to another town and employs herself in a menial position in a lord's mansion. One day, the lord's son takes a peek inside the wooden bowl and sees a woman of great beauty. He falls in love with her. When it is time for him to choose a wife, Hachikazuki takes part in the bride selection and is chosen by the youth. The girl says the bowl must stay on her head through the ceremony. After they marry, the bowl falls from Hachikazuki's head and she discovers it contained jewels and other treasures. Alternatively, the bowl breaks in many pieces and they turn into precious gems.

Translations

The tale was translated into

German language German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Ita ...

as ''Das Mädchen mit dem Holznapfe'' ("The Girl with the Wooden Bowl") by David August Brauns ( de). In

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

compilations, the tale is known as ''The Wooden Bowl'', ''The Black Bowl'', ''The Maiden with the Wooden Bowl'', or ''The Maiden with the Wooden Helmet'' (

Andrew Lang Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University ...

's translation).

Distribution

Folklorist

Seki Keigo was a Japanese folklorist. He was joined a group under Yanagita Kunio, but often came to different conclusions regarding the same folktales. Along with collecting and compiling folktales, Seki also arranged them into a series of categories. This ...

listed three published sources where the tale appears: one from Saitama; another from Hyogo and the third from

Tokushima is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Tokushima Prefecture has a population of 728,633 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,146 km2 (1,601 sq mi). Tokushima Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the north, E ...

Analysis

Folklorist

Marian Roalfe Cox Marian Roalfe Cox (1860–1916) was an English folklorist who pioneered studies in Morphology for the fairy tale ''Cinderella''. In 1893, after being commissioned by the Folklore Society of Britain, she produced ''Cinderella: Three Hundred and F ...

, in her work ''Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin and, Cap O' Rushes'', listed ''Hachihazuki'' ("The Girl with the Wooden Bowl") as belonging to the cycle of ''

Cinderella "Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...

'' stories, albeit of a indeterminate affiliation. In the same vein, professor Chieko Irie Mulhern lists ''Hachikazuki'' as part of the Japanese Cinderella cycle, which she states has been introduced and developed by literary works of Jesuits. Japanese scholar Hiroko Ikeda classified the tale, translated as ''Princess Bowl-on-the-Head'', as type 510C of her Japanese tale index, thus close to other ''Persecuted Heroine'' types in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index: ATU 510A, "Cinderella", and ATU 510B, "

Donkeyskin ''Donkeyskin'' (french: Peau d'Âne) is a French literary fairytale written in verse by Charles Perrault. It was first published in 1695 in a small volume and republished in 1697 in Perrault's ''Histoires ou contes du temps passé''. Andrew Lan ...

Adaptations

The tale was adapted as ''Lily and the Wooden Bowl'', by Alan Schroeder in 1994."Lily and the Wooden Bowl (Book Review)". In: ''PublishersWeekly''. Date: 09/01/1994. Retrieved: July 24th, 2021. Url: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-30792-5 The tale was used as inspiration for the novel ''Six Crimson Cranes'' by Elizabeth Lim.

Summary

Translations

Distribution

Analysis

Adaptations

References

Further reading