<나무꾼과 선녀>와 일본 <날개옷>설화의 비교연구가 안고 있는 문제점과 가능성

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine the problems of the previous comparative scholarship on the relationship between the swan-maiden tales of Korea and Japan, that is, "The Woodcutter and the Heavenly Maiden" and "The Woman Who Came Down from Heaven" and to find prospects for the better ways of comparing Korean and Japanese tales. In Korea, there have been various versions of swan-maiden tales to the extent that the majority of scholars can divide them into the following four subtypes: (1) the heavenly maiden's flight, (2) the woodcutter's flight, (3) the woodcutter's fulfillment of heavenly tasks, (4) the legend of the rooster. Of those four subtypes, the oral variants of the third subtype, 'the woodcutter's fulfillment of heavenly tasks,' had been the most collected during the period from the late nineteenth century until 1980s. The first version of Korean swan-maiden tales that Garin-Mikhailovskii collected in 1898 also belongs to the third subtype. Consequently, it is necessary for us to examine in detail the tales of the third subtype for the genuine understanding of the intercultural relationships between Korean swan-maiden tales and those of Japan. However, previous comparative scholarship has hardly shown any interest in the oral versions of the third subtype. It is partly because Suk-jae Yim, an eminent Korean folklorist, published rather too late the oral versions he collected during the Japanese colonial period. He published those versions from 1987 to 1993. Accordingly, it was difficult for most of the scholars to refer to those oral versions when they compared Korean swan-maiden tales with their Japanese counterparts. Because of these problems or limits, previous comparative studies between "The Woodcutter and the Heavenly Maiden" and "The Woman Who Came Down from Heaven" have not been very informative to illuminate the cultural exchange or literary relationships between the swan-maiden tales of those two countries. In the present study, while focusing on the subtype named "the woodcutter's fulfillment of heavenly tasks," I have tried to explore its relationships with Japanese swan-maiden tales which incorporate the motif of the son-in-law tasks. In Japanese oral tradition, there have been a good number of swan-maiden tales in which the human husband pursuits his wife to the heaven and fulfills the heavenly tasks assigned by his father-in-law. When comparing Korean swan-maiden tales with their Japanese counterparts with a special emphasis on 'heavenly tasks' or 'son-in-law tasks', we can find significant common narrative elements between them. The majority of Korean oral folktales that recount the woodcutter's trials and tribulations in the heaven tend to contain such motifs as mouse, calabash vine (pumpkin or squash), and arrows. The motifs of mouse and arrows can be also found in the 8th century record, the Kojiki. In the myth of Okuninushi, a mouse appears as a magical helper to save Okuninushi's life in a fire crisis and fetch the arrows that his father-in-law had shot. Moreover, Japanese folklorists have recorded a number of oral 'swan-maiden' versions in which such vines as moonflower, squash, and green peas function as a world tree connecting the earth and the heaven. The Japanese regions where swan-maiden tales having those motifs have been widely collected or recorded are so close to the southern part of Korea that we can think about the possibilities of international folktale exchanges between Silla or BaekJae and the Izumo province. When taking into consideration these similarities between Korean swan-maiden tales and Japanese myth and oral folktales, we can make an assumption about the influences of Korean folktales on the Okuninushi myth and Japanese folktales in ancient times.