(no subject)

[flyingmhe.livejournal.com]

Hey, I got a question. 

So we all know Gaara's one-tailed demon is some badger-type thing. (Is it called a tanuki?)

 Then why did Gaara say a long time ago that it was the spirit of an old sand priest sealed in a kettle? Perhaps they didn't know? But then, Shukaku looks nothing like a human, and I don't see how they would have thought some random ghost would make Gaara super-powerful.  

Now I could just be stupid, but anyone got an explanation for this? 

Comments

[mercurychaos]

The sand priest thing might have been the "official story" that was made up to keep the fact that the Sand Village had a bijuu from becoming widely known. It would make sense... I think I remember Chiyo saying that the Akatsuki weren't the first people to think of using the bijuu as weapons, so I imagine that once a village had one they'd want to keep it on the down-low so that people wouldn't try to steal it or something like that.

[flyingmhe.livejournal.com]

Hm, that makes sense now. Thanks.

[thisistony.livejournal.com]

There's a Japanese legend about a badger-teakettle... We all know kishi loves that kind of thing... Let me go find the link to n English adaptation...

[thisistony.livejournal.com]

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=griffis&book=oldjapan&story=kettle&PHPSESSID=b3f5eb97e51

[flyingmhe.livejournal.com]

Hey, I acutally translated that story to Spanish for a school project! I don't know how I missed the connection...

[thisistony.livejournal.com]

Haha, someone wrote it into a naughty fanstory with my favorite pairing (in a kpop fandom XD) and that's the only reason I knew... I didn't make the connection until just now when you made the post XD

i hope this helps

[mymonkeypjs.livejournal.com]

They call Shukaku a raccoon as far as I remember in the anime, but when I'm confused about things, I usually check on it.

Wiki says Tanuki is a raccoon dog used in Japanese culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanuki

According to the online Japanese dictionary I resort to using when people throw random Japanese into their fanfics, Tanuki is a raccoon dog or nyctereutes procyonoides.

http://www.freedict.com/onldict/onldict.php

If you search for raccoon dog or nyctereutes procyonoides in Wiki, you'll find that they are a real creature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyctereutes_procyonoides

As for the spirit thing... um... I have no idea.