TARO, the boy ARTO by Pia Santaklaus

18 October 2008

Hi Brett,

I enjoyed today’s Cinemateque feature TARO, THE DRAGON BOY (1979) and present a few personal thoughts:

I understand this Japanese animation is an adaptation of a famous Japanese folk tale.
However, I cannot pinpoint which particular folk tale or how old that folk tale might be, but noticed this particular retelling owed a great deal to ancient Greek mythology and in particular the myth of Heracles. Until proven otherwise, I imagine this to be the case.

The Homeric heroic archetype on a great odyssey is strongly hinted in Taro, whose tale also includes fantastic personalities, creatures, beasts and challenges.

I believe TARO is based on the strong-man archetype classically found in the Heracles/Hercules story from many centuries BC. Heracles was the greatest and strongest Greek hero, the half-divine son of Zeus/Jupiter to a mortal woman. In TARO, Taro has dealings and ultimately friendship with a Red Demon who becomes the ‘Thunder God’ in the sky, not at all unlike the main traits of Zeus/Jupiter (the sky god of thunder whose symbol was the thunderbolt).

Like Hercules (and later Superman), Taro uses his super strength for good, to help save humanity. He is guided to destroy monsters, rights wrongs and perform various ‘Olympian’ services. Taro too meets an old man (The mentor archetype) who gives him purpose and further strength (equal to 100 men).

Heracles had a twin mortal brother born to his mortal mother. They shared the same mortal mother, though Heracles was also strongly involved with the goddess Hera/Juno. In the Roman telling of the Heracles story, Heracles suckled on a sleeping Goddess’s breast as his real mother was a mere mortal. In a sense, Heracles had two mothers as does Taro whose mother was a mere mortal but also a powerful dragon. Hera sent 2 serpents to kill the baby Heracles as he lay in his cot. The young babe throttled the serpents and thrived.

As a baby, Taro suckled on the milky white eye-balls of his dragon mother who consequently was left blind so that the child might thrive. Perhaps the 2 eyeballs are a variation on the serpent theme though Taro’s mother wanted to keep an eye on him –Ha! Suckling on eyeballs adds a new spin on “Eat with your eyes” or “eye-watering foods”. I understand some cultures still actually eat the eyes of various beasts and birds. Anyway, eyes are organs that detect light. In Roman mythology, Lucina was the goddess of childbirth “she who brings children into the light”.
Furthermore the Greek Goddess Artemis (also known as a goddess of light) is the Goddess of hunting, forests and fertility. While pregnant, Taro’s mother selfishly hunted for fish knowing that it would be beneficial in her state. Fish is widely recognized as a good food source for nutrients promoting good eyesight.

Taro, like Heracles was a champion who performed good deeds on his journeys, making the world a better place and learning about self-sacrifice along the way.

As with Unico, Taro seems to carry some oedipal complex. Taro imagines his mother to look like his pretty young muse friend with a musical pipe in her mouth and when Taro finally meets his dragon-mother, he must grip the horns and she says “mount me”. A later scene finds her in a bare naked state facing her son and embracing him, her full, fleshy breasts pressed in a tender hug. At one point in the movie, Taro is enveloped in snow and dying. He calls out for his Mother in this moment of crisis. Help arrives in the form of a pale horse. The iconography is not unlike that in UNICO (1979) in which the mother is seen as a white unicorn.

In TARO, a glorious flying horse is not unlike the mythical Pegasus. Incidentally, the flying white horse in TARO reminded me of the flying white unicorn in the recent screening of Tezuka’s UNICO (also 1979).

The name Hercules/Heracles itself means ‘Glory of/through Hera’ which suggests a powerful ‘maternal’ or female undercurrent in the hero’s life. Heracles was tormented by Hera as Taro is tormented in his difficult journey to find his dragon mother.

Taro meets a pretty, young girl, who plays the flute; she might be seen as Taro’s muse.
At one point Taro imagines his long-lost mother looks like this girl. She taught him modesty.

Classic Heracles iconography portrays him nude and holding a long club and later donning a lion skin to cover some of his nudity. Taro too is shown in various states of undress, genitals exposed, until he later wears a loin cloth. There may be reasons; Firstly, the boy may be entering a more mature age where innocence is replaced by experience and so for modesty’s sake, he wants to cover his own ‘sex’. Secondly, it may have to do with the concept of a superior man. In the ancient Analects by the Chinese philosopher Confucius we find three things which the superior man guards against. In youth he guards against lust (and so the modesty), then, when he is strong and the physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsomeness and when he is old he guards against covetousness.

When Taro kills the fearsome giant ‘Black Demon’, in a sense he kills that part of him that is lustful, quarrelsome and covetous. Like Heracles, the Black Demon carried a long dangerous club.

Heracles made himself a slave and spent some years in the servitude of various persons, one being Queen Omphale of Lydia. Taro too allows this to happen as he dedicates himself to others.

The music in the film is beautiful and very classical in a Japanese sense, however in one part when Taro wanders onto the plantation of an exploitative old lady (“rich old hen”), behind a veneer of classical Japanese instrumentation can be heard the disguised yet clear Western structure of a backwater-swampy 12 bar blues as though Taro’s stay at the old lady’s rural farm was somehow akin to the Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-1938) who stopped at the crossroads to make his rumored deal with the devil. Johnson himself lived on a rural plantation much of his life.

In another scene Taro enters the house of a lusty, busty, possessive woman who frightens him and Taro runs away. This may have allusions to the jealous third wife of Heracles who was instrumental in his death due to an acidic woven shirt she gave him which had destructive properties. The lusty lady in TARO also had a spinning wheel with which to weave a shirt.
In one of Heracles’ Labours he had to clean the filthy Augean horse stables and he cleverly did this task by rerouting two rivers so the filth would be washed out. Taro also is seen diverting various rivers and manipulating dams.

Various task-masters would often refuse to honour agreements made with Heracles and this too is also represented in Taro’s journey. Heracles had to capture the Erymanthian Boar. Wild boars feature in TARO, however Taro captures their hearts in a friendly way. Heracles was a Demi-God due to his strange heritage. He was not the cleverest hero, but certainly the strongest and one of the most courageous, witty and playful. Heracles was also known for his sexual prowess and for completing 12 Labors for King Eurystheus. Taro, like Heracles becomes a cultural hero. In Taro’s case, he gains great recognition by spreading the good grain (rice) to the poorer peoples.

Heracles has been connected with Melqart (Phoenician God) and Shu (Egyptian God) and it is thought that via Greco-Buddhist culture, (which developed between 4th century BCE and 5th century CE), the far east received the Heracles myth. This may be witnessed in various Japanese Buddhist temples in the Nio guardian deities. A consequence of a long chain of cultural interactions begun with Greek forays into India from the time of Alexander The Great, Indo-Greek rule was established for centuries and extended and flourished in the Hellenized empire. It is now believed that Greco-Buddhism influenced the artistic and conceptual development of Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism before Buddhism was adopted in Central and Northeastern Asia from the 1st century CE and ultimately spreading to China and Japan.

There is debate as to the earliest anthropomorphic images of Buddha; some scholars believe these images were a result of of Greco-Buddhist interaction. Before this innovation, Buddhist art was dominated by symbolic representations which didn’t portray him in human form. The Greeks worshipped human form and were probably the first to represent Buddha this way. The Greeks developed syncretic divinities, fusing together potentially incongruous religious symbols. (eg Sarapis is a God combining both Greek and Egyptian Gods). In India, the Greeks helped combine the Greek God Apollo with traits of Buddha to create a single divinity. In early sculptures, Buddha is represented with unmistakable external characteristics wearing a classic Greco-Roman toga and having curly Mediterranean hair. Gradually, this anthropomorphic representation of Buddha took on more Indian and Asian appearance. Other Buddhist deities were influenced by the Greeks. Heracles (the protector deity of Demetrius I) was the model for the Buddhist protector VAJRAPANI who was later seen as the strong Japanese protector deities NIO (seen at the entries of many Buddhist temples). It has also been suggested that the Japanese wind god FUJIN was inspired by the Greek BOREAS.

Rulers were sometimes deified by the Greeks, particularly in the wake of Alexander The Great’s far-reaching reign. This concept of god-king seems to have been absorbed by early bodhisattvas who had probably also exchanged intelectual and philosophical ideas with the Greeks and who sometimes portrayed Buddha with the face of Apollo. Buddha was elevated to man-god status in purely human form as was done in the West. Buddha’s life-cycle and story shares similarities to the Greek man-gods (eg Heracles) of old.

Anywaves, perhaps too much analysis. Interblending produces the new. Though based on older concepts, Taro is still modern and most enjoyable as a film.

Thanks Brett. Nice choice. Thanks also to the generous Japan Foundation for providing the subtitled print.

Pia Santaklaus