As of this writing, there are just under three weeks until Hiro and I return to Japan. Our last visit was in 2016 after we were settled in our home here in Washington and I had acquired enough paid time off to travel at the end of that year.
2016 marked more than ten years since our prior visit, in summer of 2006, before we moved to Japan. That was right before we moved to Canada, and although we wanted to visit Japan long before 2016, by the time my freelance (translation) income had stabilized, we had begun the US green card process, and Hiro was not allowed to leave Canada during that.
As was true in 2016 will be true in 2023. Although Japan will still feel like home, much will have changed. In 2016, there were many more non-Japanese people at work, especially in Tōkyō. Japan has never been particularly open to immigration, but the increasing median age there means that there are fewer young people available for work. In the seven years since our last visit, I hear that more robots have joined the work force. I’m not a fan of automatons, but I know that unless birth rates in Japan start increasing, robots will be necessary, especially in elder care settings.
At one point in our discussion of our upcoming trip, Hiro likened our return to that of 浦島太郎, Urashima Tarō. Do you know that fairy tale? he asked me. I nodded.
Urashima Tarō was a fisherman of yore who capsized his own vessel when fishing and was miraculously escorted to the Palace of the Dragon King, deep beneath the waves. While there, he was entranced by the King’s daughter, and although she begged Urashima Tarō to remain in the Palace, he voiced his desire to return home.
Whereupon the Dragon King ordered a steed (in some stories it is an ancient turtle, in others, a giant sea bream) to carry Urashima Tarō to the surface. But before the parting, the King presented Urashima Tarō with a jeweled box (玉手匣), forbidding him to look within.
(Don’t you love the blowfish the King’s standard-bearer is wearing a fascinator in this woodblock print by the master of fish drawings, Hokkei?)
Urashima Tarō arrived at home to find everyone he knew either deceased or greatly aged. Despondent, he forgot the King’s admonition and opened the box, whereupon all the years that had passed as but an instant within the Palace returned to Urashima Tarō, aging him instantly.
It’s interesting to note the parallels within the story to other myths and tales. I like the Pandoran aspect of a box that must not be opened, but I also told Hiro about Rip Van Winkle. When I was in middle school, my English teacher, the amazing Ellen Nodelman, took us to Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s final home in what is now Tarrytown, New York. It was Irving who penned Rip Van Winkle (although most remember him more for The Headless Horseman).
Rip only slept for twenty years—it is unclear how long Urashima Tarō was in the Palace, but I surmise that it was at least twice that duration. The theme of a long sleep reverberates through history. The first century BCE sage and rebbe Honi HaMe’agel is said to have slept for seventy years beneath a carob tree. Epimenides of Knossos was said to have slept for fifty-seven years in a cave.
The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus were said to have slept for two hundred years to escape persecution under Emperor Decius. And in Islam, we learn that Uzair’s grief at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was so great that Allah took pity on him and allowed him to sleep until Jerusalem was reconstructed.
There are similar tales elsewhere in Asia. Chinese folklore speaks of 爛柯 (Ranke), who slept for unknown decades after watching a pair of Immortals play go together high in the mountains. The Hindu story of Muchukunda, a king who granted refuge to devas after a battle with asuras, is also similar in that an entire Age is said to have passed during that refuge, and although Muchukunda did not age, his entire family had passed away.
And it is possible that Irving based Rip Van Winkle on the German folktale of Peter Klaus, a goatherd (yodel-ay-he-hoo) who also slept for twenty years.
It seems that no matter where we are in history, where we are on the planet, people are fascinated by sleep and the opportunity to sleep for years on end. For me, I’d be happy with about a week of sleep, as long as it happened after the Japan trip.