Pre-June Bedtime Story: Some Interesting Research (Patreon)

(Above image is Urashima Taro by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi)

June's Bedtime Story is recorded and edited and waiting for final touches from Richard. Richard is super busy today, so I set it gently 'next in line'. I'm hoping to have it up by tomorrow. *fingers crossed* Then I'll get to work on July's story.

I've been working on a story I wanted to submit to an anthology as well as June's Bedtime Story. By happy coincidence, both involved fishermen. So I did some reading about fishing back in the Edo Era.

I thought this was interesting: Back in the day, horse tails were used for fishing lines. I just watched a video and I guess that's nothing new. It was done all over the world. But I found a quote from some old text that gave some interesting instructions when choosing what kind of horse tail to use. 

As follows,

Black horses have thicker tails but they're brittle and break easy, so don't use those. White horses' tails are too weak. Don't use those. So I'm guessing use brown? You'll also want to cut the strand of tail, not pull it. And never use a dead horse's tail hair. 

Boiling it in tofu water made it stronger evidently. 

It was called basu / 馬素　(below)

However, the wealthy, upper class folk back then used to have fancy outings on the river on nice boats with cushions to sit on and saké to drink. 

They would use fishing rods that were about the length of a pair of chopsticks and made of silver or gold. Instead of horse tail though, they'd use the long hair of a rich woman, several strands braided together, actually The 'game' was to catch a small fish and not break the line, so they had to be careful. 

So I thought that was interesting. 

Urashima Taro in English and Japanese coming soon! 

XO,

terrie