The Goblin of Adachigahara
Urban legends are always fun to play around with, and more than anything else, that's what the old woman and her cottage on the haunted plain remind me of. The whispery way the community won't go near the place, stories of people disappearing there after being lured in, even travelers being warned away from the spot—it's all there. I'd love to take the idea of an urban legend and put it in a modern-day, small-town setting, then see what happens.
This one felt a lot like a Halloween slasher movie with a bit of a Beauty and the Beast flair ("Whatever you do, don't go in that room"), which was kind of delightful. It makes me wonder what other fairy tales would mix well with horror tropes, and how they could strengthen each other and freshen each other up. Not sure if I could make something like this work with the word limit, but I do think it could be loads of fun to try another time.
In this story, one of the knights wonders if ogres have returned to the land and are responsible for rumored disappearances—but his friend insists they wiped out all the ogres ages ago. This situation is prime for an ogre revenge plot, so if I were to do a story based on this one, that's probably the element I would keep: the idea that someone/something/some group the protagonist thought he took care of a long time ago has come back, and that can only mean trouble.
When the protagonist of this story finally meets an ogre, the monster is described as having "eyes [that flash] like mirrors in the sunlight." It's a small detail, but that's what sparked my imagination, and I'd like to do a story involving the protagonist being the latest in a series of people to try to take on a monster with eyes like mirrors. Literally and metaphorically—and that's its greatest weapon.
I like the main idea of this story, which involves the protagonist mistaking a cleverly disguised monster for an old family friend. If I were to use that for my story, the protagonist would realize much sooner what's going on, but that would raise all kinds of questions of its own: namely, what happened to the original/real family member or friend, whether they've been transformed or just replaced, and what to do about this monster.
My favorite element in this story was the close bond between Hase and her brother, so that dynamic is probably what I would hone in on if I were to base my assignment this week off of this one.
I like the idea of someone being called in to save an emperor by unconventional means, the way Hase was brought in to write poetry to make him well again. Poetry isn't quite the direction I would take it in, but I think magic or something to do with an old legend could stand in for it just fine.
Bibliography: Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: "Percy Cottage in Rugby, Tennessee, USA." Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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