English version | Once upon a time

Not in America, not in Europe, but in the East. Fairy tales gained countless versions depending on the culture and many didn't even cross borders into the Old Continent. Maybe you've never heard these stories that come from the land of the Rising Sun, but maybe now you'll include them in the list of your favourite fairy tales.

Did you know that, in 1893, a folklorist surveyed the different Cinderella stories around the world and discovered that the fairy tale was retold in about 345 versions? Today, the number must be in the thousands, though the core of the narrative remains. Some of these versions also find resonance in the East, with Japanese and Chinese editions having some points in common. But there are many enchanting stories on that side of the world that have little to do with the most popular fairy tales in the West. Usually more violent - nothing new, the fairy tales disseminated in Europe come from originals that are much more aggressive in narrative, as for example, in Cinderella by the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhem, in which the half-sisters cut off their feet to fit in the glass slipper, but a bird snitches on them and gouges out their eyes -, they include nuances much more fanciful and far-fetched than the western editions, with girls born from melons and maidens that emerge from snail shells. But they are based on the same principles as fairy tales, which started as folklore with messages and a moral to the story, then romanticized in versions that oppose forces of good and evil, magical interventions - lots of magical interventions - and, often, a debatable and tolerable “happily ever after”, in which the Good triumphs, but not without many hardships in between. The tales that follow (thank you, internet, for having no borders) are just a folkloric sample of cultural differences in distant meridians. Or maybe they are not so different: the old continent has become unaccustomed to literary originals, also more gore (after all, they started out as stories written to be read by adults, until the Grimms softened them to become tales for children) as some of the list that follows, giving way to a retelling of the more polished animated versions.

Beauty and Pock Face

“Beauty and Pock Face” is a Chinese fairy tale that shares similarities with the story of Cinderella and can be found in the collection signed by Wolfram Eberhard entitled Chinese Fairy Tales and Fables. In this story, a man has two daughters by two different women. The eldest daughter, Beauty, born to the first woman, was recognized for her attractiveness; the youngest, from the second wife, was very ugly, so they called her Pock Face. The first woman died when her daughter was still young (though she comes back as a yellow cow), so Beauty's stepmother abused her, giving her a series of tasks that the yellow cow ended up doing for her secretly. When the stepmother found out, she had the cow killed. Beauty then collected the bones and placed them in a vase. One day when her stepmother refused to take Beauty to the theater, the stepdaughter broke everything in the house, including the vase with the bones. But from there came a horse, a dress and a pair of shoes, which the main character used to go to the theater, but on the way she lost a shoe in a ditch. When men passed, she asked for help, but each would only do so if she agreed to marry them. Beauty refused a fisherman because he smelled too much of fish, a rich merchant because he was covered in dust, an oil merchant because he was too greasy, but agreed to marry a scholar. Three days after the wedding, Beauty went to her parents' house and Pock Face convinced her to go to the well, pushing her into the abysm, and then sent word to the teacher that the woman had contracted chickenpox. After a while, she took her sister's place, posing as her to her husband, explaining her appearance as a result of her illness. But in the meantime, Beauty had turned into a sparrow, tormenting her sister for her wrongdoings. The commotion caught the attention of the scholar who, witnessing the attention between the two, sensed that the sparrow was his real wife. To prove it, he asked the bird to fly into a gilded cage, if that were true, but Pock Face grabbed the animal before anything else, killing it and burying it in the garden. In the place where he lay, a bamboo grew that tasted wonderful to the scholar, but it caused Chickenpox-Face to get ulcers on his tongue, so the woman had the bamboo cut and made a bed. The bed was comfortable for the man, but it looked like it was made of needles for Pock Face. She threw it away. It was an elderly lady who rescued it and realized that, since then, whenever she came home, she would find her dinner ready. In time, she caught Beauty's spirit cooking red-handed. The protagonist then asked the lady to give her some magical ingredients: a bowl for her stomach, chopsticks for her bones and juice for her blood, making her human again. She went back to her husband's house and revealed herself, but Pock face wanted to test her to make sure it was her: first they walked on eggs - Beauty broke none, Pock Face broke them all, but she wouldn't admit it. it; then they climbed a ladder of knives - Beauty didn't cut her feet, but Pock Face did, without ever admitting it; finally, they jumped into boiling water - Beauty came up untouched, but Pock Face did not, perishing in the ultimate test. Bela sent her half-sister's body back to her stepmother, who dropped dead when she realized it was her daughter. We doubt anyone has lived happily ever after after all this.

The Fountain of Youth

This Japanese fairy tale was published in the Japanese Fairy Tales by Lafcadion Hearn and tells the story of an elderly couple who lived in the mountains. Every day he cut wood and she weaved. One day, the man discovered a spring and drank from it, becoming young. Excited, he ran home. The woman felt that such a young man deserved an equally young wife, so she would also go to the spring, but so that they would not leave the house unattended, she told him to wait for her. He waited and waited and when the woman didn't come back, he went to her aid. When he arrived at the spring, he found a baby: the lady drank from the fountain too greedily. The man, saddened, picked her up and carried her back home, realizing that when she finally became an adult, he would be old again.

The Rat's Daughter's husband

Also Japanese, this fairy tale - included in Andrew Lang's The Brown Fairy Book - revolves around a couple of mice who have a daughter of unparalleled beauty. In some versions, the story goes that the father would be happy to marry her to a rat from good families, but the mother didn't want her unusually beautiful daughter to marry a common mouse, stating that she should marry the greatest being on the face of the Earth. So they asked the Sun wether he'd marry her, explaining that they wanted a son-in-law who was bigger than anything. The Sun told them that he couldn't take advantage of the couple's ignorance: the cloud, capable of covering his face, was bigger than he was. So they asked the same question to the cloud, which told them that he was easily dethroned by the wind. They asked the wind, which pointed them towards the wall, capable of rising and stopping him. They offered their daughter's hand to the wall, who told them that a rat could reduce it to dust with its teeth. So they married their daughter to a mouse.

Ureongi gaksi

“The Snail Bride” is a Korean fairy tale about a poor man who breaks taboos by marrying a maiden born from a snail shell, but who is later kidnapped by the sovereign. The tale tells that there was a man who lived with his mother because he was too poor to marry anyone. One day, while working in the rice field, a snail started to answer his prayers to find someone, so the man took the talking snail home. Since then, whenever he and his mother returned home at the end of the workday, they had a delicious dinner already prepared for them. One day, the man pretended to go out to find out who cooked and noticed that a beautiful maiden emerged from the snail shell, then rushing to her, and asking her to live with him instead of inside her shell. The maiden told him it was too soon, but the man, impatient, insisted. They got married that same day. Afraid that she would be kidnapped, her now husband never let her out of the house and it was the mother-in-law of the maiden who brought her son lunch while he worked in the rice fields. One day, the mother was not feeling well, and asked her daughter-in-law to take lunch to her husband, but on the way, she came across a magistrate who fell in love with her, taking her with him. The maiden still tried to hide, but her beauty radiated through the trees of the forest. Her husband set out in search of her, never managing to find her, even though he went to the ruler's chambers. The man eventually died of heartbreak and despair and was reborn as a bluebird. The snail bride refused to eat and languished to death, turning into a comb. There are other end-of-the-story variations, but almost all of them are equally unfortunate.

Urashima Tarō

This Japanese fairy tale is named after its protagonist, a fisherman rewarded for saving a turtle and returning it to the underwater Dragon Palace. The rescue happens when Urashima sees a group of children torture a turtle, saving it and returning it to the sea. The next day, a giant tortoise approaches him, revealing that the animal saved was the daughter of the Emperor of the Seas, Ryūjin, who insists on seeing him to thank him. The fisherman gains gills, by the sea creature's magic, where he meets the Emperor and the princess he had saved, Otohime. Tarō stays at the palace for three days, but asks to return to mainland to see his elderly mother. The princess takes pity on him, but wishes him well, offering him a box - tamatebako - that will protect him from harm, but warns him never to open it. When he gets home, everything has changed: the house and mother are gone and the people he knew were nowhere to be found. He asks around if anyone knows a man named Urashima Tarō and finds that the name is only known to describe someone who had disappeared long ago at sea, and eventually realizes that it has been 300 years since he went to the Palace. In anguish, he unconsciously opens the box that the princess had given him, from which a dense white smoke erupts that causes the man to age instantly - his hair and beard turn gray and his back bends with old age. From the sea comes Otohime's sweet voice: “I warned you not to open the box. It contained your old age.” The story was included as one of 12 tales in the fourth edition of Japan's school reading manual Sakura Tokuhon, used from 1933 to about 1940. 

Urikohime

“Princess Melon” tells of a girl born from a melon, which is found streaming down a river by a human couple. When they cut the fruit, a girl emerges from inside it and they call her Urikohime (uri means melon in Japanese). The girl becomes a beautiful maiden, who is one day left alone at home and warned not to open the door to strangers. But the young woman is visited by a suspicious spirit, Amanojaku, who already had her in his sights and ends up forcing its entrance. In one version of the tale, the spirit kills the girl and uses her skin, taking her place, but is unmasked when Urikohime is reincarnated as a bird and reveals the hoax, later regaining her human form. In another, Urikohime is known for her skills at the loom and is therefore betrothed to a prince. Before getting married, Amanojaku kills her (or ties her to a tree) and dresses like her, being taken away in a palanquin to the wedding. But the hoax is also revealed - in the version where she is tied up, she screams for help and is eventually saved, the creature then being chased away.

The Wolf of Zhongshan

This Chinese fairy tale tells of a wolf that crosses paths with King Jian Zi while he was leading a hunt. The man aims for the creature but fails, allowing the wolf to flee. In the midst of fleeing through the forest, he encounters a Mohist thinker named Mr. Dongguo and appeals to the scholar's belief in universal love, begging him for shelter - the philosopher pityingly agrees, hiding it in his satchel. When the hunters emerge, Mr. Dongguo says he does not know the animal's whereabouts, releasing it when the group leaves. When he gets on the donkey to leave, the wolf stops him, asking him to save his life once more, feeding him so he doesn't starve to death, insinuating that he only eats human flesh and, therefore, to save his life, the meal would be the philosopher himself - moreover, he still complains that the bag where he hid him was too tight and that he almost suffocated. The pair discussed the matter, deciding that the case would have to be presented to three elders to decide. The first elder was an old apricot tree, whose experience had been to always bear fruit to children, and now they wanted to unjustly cut him for firewood. The tree sides with the wolf. The second elder was a buffalo, who tells the story of how he served his owners over the years, providing milk and plowing the land. Now its owner wants to cut it up to eat its meat. The buffalo also takes the side of the wolf. The third elder was an old farmer, who argues that he doesn't believe the wolf could fit in such a small bag. The wolf wants to prove that he can, getting back into the satchel, which the farmer then holds, tying it, then beating it with his rake almost to death. The scholar thinks the farmer was too cruel to the animal, but at that moment, a weeping woman appears and reveals to Mr. Dongguo that the wolf had taken his little son with it. The character stops feeling sorry for the creature and delivers the final blow with the farmer's rake. The story, first printed in the Ming Dynasty's Ocean Stories of Past and Present, made the term Mr. Dongguo designate someone naive.

Hachikazuki

The Japanese “Cinderella”, Hachikazuki (“The girl with a wooden cup on her head”) tells the story of a beautiful maiden whose mother, on her deathbed, makes her promise that she will forever wear a cup on her head to hide her beauty (in some versions, the girl is born with the cup on her head). The father remarries and the stepmother is mean to the stepdaughter. The girl runs away from home and gets a job in a lord's mansion. The nobleman's son peeks in under the cup and sees the woman's beauty, falling in love with her. When it is time for the boy to marry, the young man chooses the girl, who insists that the cup be kept on her head during the ceremony. After the wedding, the cup falls to the ground, and turns into precious stones.

Translated from the original on Vogue Portugal's The Fairy Tale Issue, published may 2022.For full credits and stories, see the print issue.