これは私が高校生の時にアメリカ留学期に、地元の民話を紹介したい一心で英訳した「雷とふんどし」に修正を加えたもの。英語が得意だったはずなのですが、やはりそこは高校生レベル。＾＾； 今読むと、恥ずかしいミスだらけですが、ご愛嬌ということで (笑)。
This is the English translation of the folk story, ‘Thunderboy and the Loincloth’ which I brought it together with myself to USA for one year school exchange program. I thought I was quite good at English back then, but when I revised it today… this is literally ‘a Japanese high school kids level’. Anyway, hope you enjoy this Hachimanyu’s heritage! 😉
– 雷とふんどし (Thunderboy and the FUNDOSHI*) –
One day, a man said:
“Don’t you think there’s something unusual?”
The sky was blue and the clouds were floating, but there was not a single white clothes anywhere around the village.
“I thought so, too. Why are there any clothes on a sunny day like this?”
“Maybe it’ll start raining soon?”
The person who hung the long bleached cloth could somehow forecast if it was going to rain or not.One day, someone started to say:
“That’s the thunder boy’s loincloth!”
And pointed out the white cloth. The shape of white cloth blowing back and forth in the wind looked just like it. From that day, the farmer worked when they could see the thunder boy’s loincloth, and they didn’t work if they couldn’t.
SARASHIYA* was very careful about the weather because it was very important to make white, white clothes.
“Thunder boy is watching the weather very closely.”
“He needs a loincloth to do his job!”
The elderly people in Gokiso still talks about this famous story about Gokiso village from a long time ago.
■Fundoshi
= Fundoshi is traditional Japanese men’s underwear made of a long narrow cloth to be worn around the loins.
■SARASHIYA
= Bleach Store. In these stores, they washed and exposed cotton cloth to make it whiter. Sometimes they spread clothes on the open field, but usually they expose them by hanging them on a large cloth hanging poles about 5 to 10 times longer than common hanging poles, and put them in a very high place. In those days, people could hear the clothes making a flip-flap (PATA-PATA) sound by the wind anywhere in the Gokiso village.
Hachimanyu 