Annoyance Will Take Your Tongue, Greed Will Take Your LIfe

Possibly my favorite foreign fable, not for its moral but because I like the plot, is "Shitakiri Suzume", or, as translated into English, "The Tongue-Cut Sparrow". This fable is very old, the exact date of publication unknown, but was written between 1890 and 1901. I haven't been able to find the original author, though I do know it was originally published with an editor by the surname of Hasegaway.
In the fable, there is an elderly couple and the husband's pet sparrow. The old man is kindly and gentle while his wife is mean-spirited and tempered. Some versions vary, with the old man just being her neighbor, though it's always the man who owns the sparrow and the woman is spiteful. The spousal relationship is the one I learned first, so that's the one I stick to.

The old man's sparrow sang every day, and it annoyed the old woman. One day, her husband left to go to the village and she prepared a rice starch to do the laundry with. The old man forgot to lock his sparrow's cage, and the little bird escaped. While the grumpy old woman attended the washing of the clothing, the sparrow found her rice starch and ate it.

Upon finding her starch gone, she sees the sparrow and demands where her starch has gone. The sparrow tells her that he ate it. Angry, the old woman grabs a pair of shears and cuts off the sparrow's tongue, making sure that he'll never sing again. She then releases him to the wild.

When her husband comes home and finds his sparrow gone, he asks his wife where he went and she nonchalantly tells him that she released it to the forest. Distressed, the old man runs into the forest to find his pet.

Along the way, he gets tired and asks some animals if they had seen his sparrow. They told him that they'd seen it heading towards the sparrow lodge deep in the trees. He travels until he finds the sparrow lodge and knocks on the doors. When the sparrows answer and inquire as to why he's there, they let him in. When he enters, he sees his pet sparrow there and happily greets him. The rest of the sparrows are happy to see their visitor and hospitably entertain their guest with dances, skits and eventually dinner. When it is time for the old man to leave, he is offered  two boxes as gifts from the sparrows, saying he may only take one. One box is very big while the other is small. Since the old man is frail and not as strong as he once was, he takes the smaller box.

He returns home very late and his wife starts nagging at him for this. He tells her about his attendance at the sparrow's home and opens his box to see what is in it. It contained many wonderful and valuable treasures, and the wife immediately ceases her chastising.

Forming a plan, she dashes into the forest late at night to obtain the other box he left behind. She rudely awakens the sparrows by banging on their doors and demands for them to entertain her. They reluctantly do so, as they are polite folk. When it came time for the old woman to leave, she greedily took the large box.

Since she too was old and frail, the large box weighed down on her, so she decided to put it down in to rest halfway home in the middle of the forest. Her greed overtook her and she couldn't wait to see its contents. She opened the box and many demons leapt out. They ate her all up and the husband lived contentedly alone for the rest of his life.



This is a popular tale that has even made its appearance in videogames and had many translations. I enjoy this story because of its blunt way of saying not to be too greedy. I think the obvious meaning would be not to be mean and spiteful, but because the woman wanted more riches, she takes a box she can't even handle and is eaten because of it.

Overbearing Heart

A robot was built by a lonely scientist,
When his work was done, it was known as a “miracle”

But something was missing, there was one thing he couldn’t do,
and that was the program called a “heart”

Many years passed,
and the miracle robot that had been left all alone,
made a single wish:

Give me the “heart”, that that person,
The person I’ve always wanted to know,
made for me, until the very end of his life.

Now that that miracle has started to occur,
Why, why won’t my tears stop flowing….?
Why am I shaking? What are these beats inside me?
Is this the “heart” that I wished for?

Mysterious heart, mysterious feelings,
All the joys I had come to know,
Mysterious heart, mysterious feelings,
All the depressing things I had come to know,
Mysterious heart, mysterious feelings,
They all seem so deeply painful…

Now I’m beginning to understand the reason I was born,
Being alone must truly be depressing,
Yes, on that day, at that time,
All the feelings that had dwelled in my memories flowed out of my heart.

But now, I can say these words for real,
to you, my creator, who dedicated his life to me,

Thank you… for bringing me into this world.
Thank you… for the days you spent with me.
Thank you… for everything you’ve given me
Thank you… I will sing for eternity.

Though the song is in Japanese, I've posted only the English lyrics above for better understanding.

This is one of my most favorite songs, not only because it sounds pretty, but because of the meaning. The title of this song, "Kokoro", translates into heart. However, in the Japanese language, this heart it talks about isn't the physical heart that beats in our chests. It's the metaphysical heart that we mean when we say, "That's so sad, my heart hurts!" It has also been translated into "soul" on the occasion.

I personally love the overall theme of this song. Someone who doesn't have feelings or emotion eventually obtains that ability.

There have been a couple interpretations of this song, but I'll go with the one I've heard most.

It starts off with a lonely scientist creating another person. However, like most robots today, he could not give it a soul, personality or feelings. It's impossible, those aren't synthetic things. He worked his whole life in order to create a program that would give the robot a "heart".

He dies after becoming old, and the robot decides to investigate the "heart" program. They activate it and are flooded with memories and feelings. They are memories from their past with the scientist, and all the feelings that would have come with it if the robot had been able to feel at the time. The robot comes to know the happy time, the sad times and all the emotions that make us human.

They also finally understand why they were born: because of the scientist's overwhelming loneliness. Now that they have a "heart", they understand just how painful that loneliness was.

Sadly, and though the song doesn't mention it directly, the power of gaining a "heart" was too much for the robot, who had never felt any of it before. At the end of the song it is dying, promising that though they are dying, they will sing for eternity because of the new "heart" they have been given. I believe it plays on the idea that though you die, you aren't truly gone if you are still remembered, which is a popular theme in Japan. Since the robot gained a "heart", they would live on in memory like any other human.