Part 8: Mythology Dissection 1
The Cutters
Time for one of these again! Today's Dissection will cover The Cutters, horror of horrors!
The Cutters (Old Man and Old Woman Tongue Cutter in the Japanese version) are based on the tale of Shita-kiri Suzume, or “The Tongue-Cut Sparrow.”
Painting of the Tongue-Cut Sparrow. Note that the scissors depicted look just like Mrs. Cutter's hair ornament and Mr. Cutter's mustache.
In the story, an old woodcutter finds an injured sparrow in the forest. Taking pity on it, he brings it home to nurse it back to health. For some reason, the woodcutter’s wife takes an instant dislike to the bird. In some versions of the story, she doesn't like it because she thinks it's dirty and resents it for eating their food; in others, she's jealous that her husband pays attention to the bird instead of her
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One day, while her husband is out cutting wood, the wife feeds the sparrow a large amount of starch and cuts out its tongue! In other versions of the story, the sparrow eats all the woman's starch while she's out and she cuts off its tongue as punishment. In either case, the sparrow flees to the mountains in fear.
When the woodcutter returns and finds the sparrow gone, he demands of his wife what had happened. Upon hearing the story, he is very saddened and goes into the mountains to look for his sparrow friend. Once there, the old man encounters a small group of sparrows who lead him to their mountain sanctuary: an inn nestled deep in a grove of bamboo.
The sparrow clan of the sanctuary dance and sing for the old woodcutter and offer him food. As a parting gift, and as a thank-you for taking care one of their own, the sparrows offer the man a choice of two baskets to take home with him: a large basket and a small one. Being arthritic and somewhat frail, the old man chooses the smaller basket, since it would be easier to carry down the mountain.
When he returns home, the woodcutter opens the basket, and finds that it's full of gold and jewels! As he's telling his wife where he got such riches, she becomes very interested in the larger basket, the one her husband did not choose. The wife makes the journey up the mountain herself, to the sparrows’ sanctuary, hoping to get her hands on the larger basket.
The sparrows welcome the woman in and happily offer her the same choice of two baskets. Greedily, she dives on the large one, only to discover that it’s full of monsters! Terrified, she flees back to her home, but the monsters follow her. They torment her and haunt her dreams until she goes insane and dies. In other retellings, the monsters chase her down the mountain and she falls to her death.
Her husband lives out the rest of his days with the sparrows.
Kerrrrrrr posted:
I noticed you said that it's hard to draw straight lines. Well if you hold the Z button while in the brush drawing screen, it will make your strokes perfectly straight! It's not the most accurate thing in the world, but it's great for quick power slashing. Or for some of the later brush techniques that require more than one straight line.
Yeah, I've never gotten it to work. Like Fedule said, it could use some work.
Pesky Splinter posted:
Sorry, I've been out of the loop a bit.
Did you have a nice vaccation?
The PS2 uses the analogue stick to try to draw the lines and such. It's spectacularly awkward at times, especially during one future sidequest which I won't go into, because it's nearly impossible to draw a straight line. Luckily it's fairly lenient at times on what it counts as a "line".
It's ok! Nice to have you back. There's lots more available for you to post too, when you get around to it. And yes, I had a lovely vacation. Didn't really want to go back.
Interesting about the PS2 controls. I've never actually played the PS2 version so I don't know how easy/difficult the controls are. I have a write-up ready that covers the differences between the two versions. I've been waiting for an opportune time to post it. Guess maybe soon?