Me o Samase Toragorô is a collection of seven short stories about Torano Toragorô (tora means "a tiger"), a tiger child, living in a bamboo bush on a mountain. Toragorô first appeared in Pu, a literary coterie magazine of stories for young children established by Ozawa Tadashi (1937 -) and others. (Ozawa was a student of Waseda University when modern Japanese children's literature was born in 1959.) Me o Samase Toragorô, published in book form in 1965, is a forerunner of modern Japanese stories for young children.
The theme of this story is a child's identity and independency. In
the first story, a fox inventor invents a machine that can double things.
A monkey has one apple made into two apples, and a rabbit has one carrot
made into two. Having nothing to be doubled, Toragorô goes into the
machine to make himself into two, hoping that while one self can take a
nap, the other can go search for dumpling. Toragorô successfully
becomes two, but these two selves quarrel as to which is the real Toragorô.
The fox has to make a machine to make two things back into one. Two Toragorôs
become one, and says shyly: "I am the only Toragorô. I am happy
that there is only one Toragorô in the world." In the second
story, "Kiba o Nakusuto" [When One Loses His Fang], Toragorô
loses his right fang. His mother says that he is not Toragorô because
he has only one fang, and drives him out of the house. Then Toragorô
has to search for his fang.
The image of a tiger puffing a tobacco pipe in a bamboo bush recalls
the beginning phrase of Korean folk tale, "Once upon a time, when
a tiger still smokes. . . ." The scene of Toragorô's questioning
a chicken, a pig, and a sheep, and being given tasks ["Kiba o Nakusuto,"]
recalls the Japanese folk tale "Shita Kiri Suzume" [A Sparrow
Who Has Cut Off Her Tongue]. In this way, Me o Samase Toragorô has been influenced by folk tales. Ozawa has also been influenced by the works of Miyazawa Kenji, which can be seen in the scene of Toragorô's search Toranosuke.
Illustrations by Inoue Yôsuke skillfully depict Toragorô
and enrich the world of this story. In 1980 Kôdansha Pocket Book
edition was published.
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