I'm taking an AP art class at school, and at the end of the year there's a test where you send in a bunch of pictures of paintings and stuff to be scored. Your supposed to pick one topic of concentration that is a part of all of your 24 pieces, for example the life cycle of grapes or butterflies or something.

The concentration I chose was myths, legends, and folk tales of Japan. So what I'm asking here is if any of you know of any of those. It can be anything from the Amaterasu cave myth or the Momotaro tale, or the legend of the Yuki Onna, anything you know of would be helpful for me to research, mostly I'm just getting the same sites over and over again

I wanna do a dog demon (totally wouldn't put suspicious looking stripes of its cheeks or anything, psh! why ever would I do that?) but I haven't found a legitimate story for them yet so...
*sigh...*I wish I had a translation of the Kojiki, I'd be the happiest history geek in the world

In high school, I did a report on Inugami, a dog-spirit or dog demon if you will. Here's the link I found on him: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inugami

He's very interesting, and so is Jishin-namazu. Jishin-namazu was the giant catfish that was believed caused earthquakes and tsunami, blamed during the Ansei quake & tsunami. Here's a picture of Jishin-namazu: www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/172/graphics/ch8/020.jpg

Hope this helped, if you'd like more, let me know.

I've dabbled with folktales and dogs are fairly common, dog demons not so much. Saholia seems to be on the right track for the demon aspect, but if you want to use a spirit, there's always The Old Man Who Made Withered Trees Bloom. That has a specifically white dog in it who is killed and then protects/helps its master as a spirit.

well I'm sure you kind find a good story or two out of the tales of genji, but i don't think there are any dog demon references in it lol

Saholia thank you so much!I'll definitely do a painting of an inugami, oo... and a fish would be cool... with real long whiskers and stuff... . I'm gunna have to look into those. Lady B the old man story is exactly what I'm looking for, thank you.

And Ko Torii, I'm almost half way through the Tales of Genji and I'm thinking it isn't what I'm looking for. Though it draws a lot from real life at the time, its not exactly a folk tale or legend or something, but its a good suggestion. I'll probably do something from that for my breadth pieces, maybe the part where that one girl dies in the temple, or when his wife dies, or when he first sees Murasaki...or, when he's walking by and he hears that other girl playing her instrument. I could pull a lot of feeling out of those, thank you for the suggestion you guys are giving me tons of inspiration!

Also it doesn't have to be dog demons, or demons at all. I really like the folk tales and stories and what not. The Tongue-cut Sparrow is probably my favorite so far, but I haven't been able to figure out a composition for it.

I think you should read the fanfiction Seven Feudal Fairy Tales if you haven't already.

There are some pretty good ones the author references that haven't been mentioned in this forum but I can't remember the names of them. Its been a while since I read it. You can read a fanfic and get idea's for your paintings.

You should also do a painting based off the cat fish that was thought to have cause an earth quake that another person has already mention. I went to the museum a couple days ago and they had some scrolls depicting this and some of the imagery was very cool.

I'm not sure if they'll have pictures of it on their site but you can try.

ROM - Royal Ontario Museum



fanart for my ff Just Like Sesshoumaru

Kittylin wrote:
I think you should read the fanfiction Seven Feudal Fairy Tales if you haven't already.

There are some pretty good ones the author references that haven't been mentioned in this forum but I can't remember the names of them. Its been a while since I read it. You can read a fanfic and get idea's for your paintings.

*basks in your love*