@article{oai:teapot.lib.ocha.ac.jp:00035641,
 author = {杉谷, 隆 and Sugitani, Takashi},
 journal = {お茶の水地理},
 month = {Jun},
 note = {application/pdf, 紀要論文, \
1.Magpies'bridge\\r\\\
 In the East Asia, there are two old stories concerning the Seventh of July Festival. One story, Called Star Vega, explains the origin of the festival as follows: The Emperor of the Universe had a daughter(the star Vega) who was a skilled weaver. After he let her marry an earnest cattleman(the star Altair), she became lazy with happiness. Then the Emperor divided the two stars by the Milky Way, allowing them to meet only once a year, on the 7th of July. On that night, a huge number of magpies gather to make a bridge for the Emperor's daughter. Young Chinese women, wishing to be good sewers like Vega, hold the festival on the evening of the July 7th. In the Japanese Islands, the magpie(Pica pica)lives in the lowlands of the northern part of Kyushu island facing Korea and China; it is regarded as a naturalized animal. Its Japanese name of kasasagi is thought to be of Korean origin. The popular version states that the bird was introduced from Korea when 150,000 samurai led by Hideyoshi Toyotomi invaded there twice in 1592 and 1597; it is also possible, however, that they entered Japan as early as 300 BC, along with numerous Chinese and Korean immigrants. An ancient Chinese document written in the 3rd century states that the magpie did not live in the Wa kingdom(the former name for Japan). According to the archaeological evidence, the capital of Wa was located somewhere in the Nara basin in the Kinki District on the main island. In the 8th century, the Imperial Government of Nara edited a series of Fudoki(Regional Geography), one of which stated that magpies inhabited a mountain near Kobe. However, the description of the bird's zoological characteristics resembled that of a jackdaw(Corvus dauuricus), and Kyushu's Fudoki had little description of the area's flora and fauna. Another governmental document entitled Nihon Shoki(Japanese History) states that a Korean ambassador gave the Emperor a brace of magpies as a gift. In spite of the ambiguity of its existence, the magpie has been mentioned in Japanese literature since the end of the 8th century; Japanese poets and novelists adapted the romantic idea of the magpies' bridge from Chinese poems. At this time China was ruled by the Tang Dynasty, and, during this prosperous age, the idea was widely accepted as a novel symbol of dating lovers. It is dubious whether Japanese intellectuals really knew of living magpies, because their description was zoologically wrong in some cases. For example, Murasaki Shikibu wrote in her Genji Monogatari(A Story of Prince Genji), "a kasasagi stood in the shallow river water. "Present scientists think this bird must have been a gray heron(Ardea cinerea), or ao-sagi. She may have mistaken a kasasagi(magpie) for a sagi(heron)--a simple pronunciation error. Later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, encyclopedists correctly recorded the magpie's existence in Kyushu, but it has not been able to proliferate throughout the islands due to ecological competition with native crows living in the forests. Searching through the Internet home pages, the term of kasasagi is contained in several per cent of the Japanese pages concerning the Seventh of July Festival; the symbol of magpies' bridge has gained little popularity among the ordinary Japanese people who have never seen the bird with their own eyes.\\r\\\
2.Angel Wife\\r\\\
 The Chinese traditional of the Star Vega Festival, or Qiqiaojie, was adopted by surrounding countries, and became mixed with other respective traditions: airing clothes in Korea, and the Aqua-god Festival in Japan. In early July, in ancient Japan, people used to pray to the god of rivers and rain for a rich harvest in autumn. As the rain fell from the sky, they attributed it to this astrological folktale. Prior to Star Vega, the story of Angel Wife had spread throughout East Asia. The standard Japanese version goes as follows: Once upon a time, a man accidentally found lady angels bathing in a pond., He stole one of their feather-robes in order to trick its owner into marriage; they wed, had children, and lived happily for several years. One day, the wife discovered her feather-robe and flew back to the kingdom in the sky, leaving a melon seed behind. The husband planted the seed, and the stem grew and grew into the sky. He climbed up to the kingdom to meet his wife's parents. They didn't approve of the marriage, so they tested the man with difficult farm-related problems. He solved all the problems but one, with the help of his wife's advice("his dog's advice" in another version). In the last problem, he failed to cut a fruit of melon from end to end. Surprisingly, as he cut, a flood spouted from the fruit to make a river, which divided the man and wife. The wife called out that she would meet him on every 7th day, but he misheard the date for the 7th day of the 7th month. In China's marginal regions, there are other versions of this story, one of which happily ends when the man solves all the problems. Another one,perhaps mixed with the later Star Vega story, provides the man and wife with a magpies' bridge from the earth to the sky. Ethnologists think that the melon was adopted in the Japanese version because it was a favorite food of the Aqua-god. However, melon was not a native plant to Japan, and, according to ancient Chinese documents, it was star Vega who ruled the melon fruit. Therefore, we have to deny the uniqueness of the Japanese version; the symbolism which the ancient Japanese attributed to the fruit, of course, is unique and important.\\r\\\
3.Symbolism of the melon\\r\\\
 Why did the angel wife insist on cutting the melon lengthwise? Kunio Yanagita, the founder of Japanese ethnology, conjectured that this melon is a gourd to be divided into two small canoes. Ken'ichi Tanigawa pointed out the symbolism of the gourd as a vessel of life. I think that the melon is a symbol of the human uterus. When the fruit gets fat, the tissue of its surface tears to make stripes. The same biological phenomenon occurs on a pregnant abdomen. The connection between a melon and stripes can be proved by an old term of uri bo (melon boy)--another name for wild piglets, who have white stripes on their back. Introducing an element of pregnancy into the story, a dog's assistance to solve the problems would suggest an easy delivery, like the dog. This ethnological belief has been so popular among the Japanese that an expectant mother still wears a belt-like charm on the Day of Dog indicated in the calender. Then, the angel wife's prohibition concerning the melon may imply the danger of having sexual intercourse with the pregnant wife. The husband must have ignored this prohibition in the real story. As a result, the wife suddenly miscarried and went to the Great Beyond. Once a year in the festival of the Seventh of July, her soul could come back to accompany him. The Seventh of July Festival was also once known as the Festival of the Dead, though this festival is now held on the 15th of August, according to Buddhism and the solar calender. Cutting the melon lengthwise was, I assume, not an important element of the story, but instead an erotic metaphor for the female genitals. Here we should remember that Angel Wife begins with such sexual behavior as peeping and stealing clothes. This eroticism assuring fertility must have been indispensable to the festival for a rich harvest. To pursue this symbolism further, the fruit of a melon includes young seeds that remind us embryos. We have to 'curette' them to eat the pulp. Also in sericulture, one has to boil cocoons to reel silk, killing the chrysalides in them. When the natives in this archipelago were civilized in the Neolithic Age, the females, who were newlyengaged in gardening and sericulture, may have begun holding a festival in order to let those nature-souls rest in peace. I would call this sense of sin as the essence of our awareness of nature.},
 pages = {37--46},
 title = {七夕説話のシンボリズム},
 volume = {42},
 year = {2001}
}