Dante’s presentation is called, “Japanese Folklore’s ‘The Eight-Hundred Years Buddhist Priestess’: Exploring the ‘Gift of Immortality’ in Japanese-Style Animations and Games”
Japanese folklore’s “The Eight-Hundred Years Buddhist Priestess,” featuring the accidental consumption of a ningyo (Japanese mermaid), has been less well-known than equivalent tales in other ancient mythologies (Nicolae, 2020). Despite bringing this tale to life via Japanese-style modern entertainment, it is still less globally recognized due to the cultural and geographical distance (Sever, 2016). This theoretical and qualitative research fills previous studies’ gaps by investigating how this tale depicted the two most significant Japanese media: Japanese anime (animations) and video games. A Qualitative Meta-analysis Review (QMR) was applied to comprehensively investigate the origins of how movie and game directors developed their contents inspired by this mystical tale (Levitt, 2018). The results indicated that anime reflected the positive side of this myth, specifically the potentials of immortality, while video games portrayed its dark truth. Anime such as ‘Lu over the wall’ reflected human’s curiosity about the Earth’s uncharted corners or a caring relationship between the distinct species as described in the anime ‘Ponyo'(Okuyama, 2015). Meanwhile, video games demonstrated the punishments brought by obsessing with ‘eternal life’ (Dumas, 2018), particularly the Corrupted Monk in ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’or the eternal curse of famine at the Hanuda village in ‘Forbidden Siren.’ These research outcomes contributed significantly to world mythology and encouraged entertainment creators to consider implementing Japanese mythology into their exclusive content.
REFERENCES
Dumas, R. (2018). Corrupted Innocence, Sacred Violence, and Gynoid Becomings: The Monstrous-Feminine on the Gaming Scene. In East Asian Popular Culture (pp. 131–169). Palgrave Macmillan.
Levitt, H. M. (2018). How to conduct a qualitative meta-analysis: Tailoring methods to enhance methodological integrity. Psychotherapy Research, 28(3), 367–378.
Nicolae, R. (2020). The myth of eternal youth : two Japanese perspectives. TricTrac: Journal of World Mythology and Folklore, 10(1).
Okuyama, Y. (2015). Japanese Mythology in Film: A Semiotic Approach to Reading Japanese Film and Anime. Lexington Books.
Sever, M. (2016). Japanese Mythology and Nationalism: Myths of genesis, Japanese identity, and Familism. The International Conference on Japan &Japan Studies 2016.
About Dante
Quan Dieu ‘Dante’ Luong holds a bachelor’s degree in English Studies at Hoa Sen University (Vietnam). He has participated in numerous research activities that enriched teaching methodologies and learning materials for English Language Teaching. As a result, Dante’s achievements and contributions are widely recognized by his supervisors, professors, and colleagues.
In 2018, he arrived at Concordia University Chicago to pursue his Master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). After graduating, he performed his internship at the Vietnamese Association of Illinois (VAI), where he developed lesson plans and scheduled English and citizenship courses for Vietnamese immigrants. His interest in mythology originated from his childhood dream of becoming a myth hunter, bringing forgotten tales and myths into the modern world, and motivating people to explore and preserve them. After spending his time reading books, watching films, and doing independent research on myths and legends, he realized their essence and influence on human psychology and inspiration. Implementing old tales to develop new ones is the aspect that fascinates him.
In 2020, he experienced the pain of losing his loved ones due to illness and the COVID pandemic. Attending this year’s Mythologium, Dante looks forward to sharing these unforgettable moments, along with his future ambitions in the field of mythology, with fellow professors and conference audiences here.