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Paper short abstract:

It was first told in Azuma kagami that Asaina Yoshihide pulled three same fish out of the sea. When in the Edo period the meaning of the word same changed from ‘ray’ to ‘shark,’ the story of Asaina’s feat was transformed as well. This paper traces the developments of the story in different media.

Paper long abstract:

The warrior Asaina Yoshihide (1176 - ?) came to be regarded as a legendary hero and in the late medieval period occasionally figured in intermedial works such as the illuminated handscroll Asaina monogatari (owned by Chester Beatty Library, Dublin), the illustrated book Asaina (owned by Tokyo University), or the Kyōgen play Asaina. This paper will focus on one episode that first appeared in Azuma kagami, a historical chronicle of the Kamakura period. In this story, Minamoto no Yoriie, the second Shogun of the Kamakura bakufu, hears that Asaina is a good swimmer, and he orders him to demonstrate his swimming skill. Asaina then catches three live fish called same in the sea. The word means ‘shark’ in modern Japanese, but the entry in the Japanese-Portuguese dictionary Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam, compiled by Jesuit missionaries in 1603, shows that before the early modern period the word meant ‘ray,’ which is gentle and never attacks humans. This does not contradict various documents of the time. Furthermore, in war tales (gunki monogatari) such as The Tale of the Heike, swimming masters are often described as being excellent divers. The story of Asaina catching three same (=rays) is therefore thought to represent his high diving ability, rather than his bravery as has been understood in previous studies.

During the Edo period, however, the word came to mean aggressive ‘shark,’ as it does in modern Japanese. In fact, same seems to have meant ‘shark’ in the dialect of the Kanto region since before the medieval period, and the meaning of the word changed throughout the country as the cultural power of Edo increased. In the Edo period, the Asaina story was adapted as a tale of bravery in which he defeats large monsters of fish, and can be found in some literary works such as the novel Asaina shimameguri no ki zenden (1815-1827) by Takizawa Bakin. The change in the meaning of the word has greatly affected the way stories and characters are expressed. This paper will analyze the process of the change based on texts and illustrations as well as their interrelation.