In September, NHK, which I watch via satellite as TV Japan, started running a new serial drama called Teruteru Kazoku. NHK has been running these for fifty years: wholesome stories of Japanese women told in fifteen minute daily episodes over the course of six months. This current drama is sort of like Japanese Little Women, set in Osaka from 1950 or so onward.
In the show, the wacky Iwata family likes to make teruteru-bouzu (照る照る坊主) for good luck and good weather. One makes a teruteru-bouzu of a small scrap of white cloth or paper with a small rag or cotton ball wadded into the center and a tie around the cotton ball to make like a neck, and then one hangs it up by the neck. To my American eyes, they look like little Halloween ghost dolls. They also draw smiley faces on them, although whether that's traditional or just for the show, I can't say.
So for the first month the show is on, I have to get used to seeing these little ghosts, smiling and hanging by the neck, everywhere. Big ghosts appear in family portraits, without the family's awareness. In one especially surreal scene, when the little girls are learning how to ice-skate, some adult-human-sized ghosts skate around with the little girls and make a conga line with them. Maybe this looked cute to the Japanese audience, but it looked creepy to me, especially with the big smiley faces on the ghosts.
Can you see what's coming? By the time Halloween rolled around and folks in my neighborhood decorated their houses with cobwebs, skeletons, witches and ghosts, I was wandering around wondering, "Why all the teruteru-bouzu?"
283 words | February 1, 2004 08:38 PM | Lost in translation