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It did take me a long time to get through that book. So many of the stories in it centered around people dutifully committing suicide or mutilating themselves...I could only take it in little doses.
Like the legend of tea.
There was a Buddhist monk who was supposed to stay up all night for a prayer vigil. He fell asleep and was so upset with himself and his dereliction of duty that he cut off his eyelids and flung them to the ground. The eyelids, to mark his devotion to duty, became the first two tea plants, the caffeine in the tea helping other monks stay awake...
The myths that interested me the most were the really old ones about the original gods, such as the Sun Goddess, but they were just a tiny part of the book, many of the stories seemed to date to the Shogunate periods.
Some interesting bits did remind me of bits of the Amber Chonicles by Zelazny, which I recently read. For instance, both feature a fantastic underwater city where you can magically breathe air while visiting. And the Japanese myths have a wonder warrior named Benai, and the Amber ones a wonder warrior named Prince Benedict, though other than their fighting skills, their devotion to duty, and bachelordom they are rather unalike. Zelazny was so into world mythology that I find is quite possible that he was familiar with the Japanese myths while he was writing Amber. Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>
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