Reading Notes: Ozaki Part A

Reading Notes

Ozaki Part A

I’ve been waiting to get into these stories reading weeks since the start of the semester! Asian stories of myth and fairytale were the exact pieces I wanted to draw from for my semester project in this course. Considering I want to take a very “adventure” style vibe, I decided to read Ozaki’s stories of Japanese Fairytales that documented encounters with ogres, serpents, kings, and even supernatural being. The first half of my reading was actually surprising for me. I thought I’d like it more than I did? There go right into each story speaking in third person and even third person omniscient, which is fine, but it took away from the overall set up in the story for me. Much of it was build up to describe who was being talked about and then the actual story became more of a fragment instead of the main picture. It got better towards the final part of the reading, something I was thoroughly impressed with. Lots of Onomateopia were included as well in the storytelling. The effect of words like this is great to me because it makes the story slightly interactive! The writer is getting you to experience that crash, that bang, that thud, at the same time the protagonist would have to. I appreciate that since it’s third person you also are left wondering “oh what’s going to happen next” rather than “well I know this and this happens so... I expected this and this.” It’s a position I want to take in storytelling while adding in more dialogue to help shape the characters a bit better. The final story of this half of the reading did a beautiful job at that! My goal is to use it as inspiration in my project later on.

Bibliography: Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki
Image: Origami Figure (Pexels)