Stealing The Dragon's Pearl, a tatebanko

[John Wagenseil]

A tatebanko of Princess Tamatori stealing the precious pearl from Riujin, the sea dragon.

http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/vbdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=2622

The legend of Princess Tamatori (Tamatorihime), or Ama, developed around the historical figure Fujiwara no Kamatari (614-69), who was the founder of the powerful Fujiwara clan. Upon Kamatari’s death, the Tang dynasty emperor, who had received Kamatari’s beautiful daughter as a consort, sent three priceless treasures to Japan in order to comfort his grieving lover by honoring her father.
During a storm, one of the treasures, a pearl, was stolen by the dragon king, at the inlet of Fusazaki. Kamatari’s son Fujiwara no Fuhito (659-720) went to the isolated area in search of the pearl. There, he met and married a beautiful pearl diver, who bore him a son.
The pearl diver, now Princess Tamatori, full of love for their son, vowed to recover the stolen pearl. After many attempts, Princess Tamatori was finally successful when she sang a lullaby to the dragon and the grotesque creatures guarding the pearl, putting them to sleep. Upon reclaiming the treasure, she was chased by the awakening sea monsters. She cut open her breast and hid the pearl inside the wound; the cloud of blood helped her escape. She gave the pearl to her husband but died from the wound. She is revered for her act of self sacrifice.

The story of the pearl diver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ2b_DbzIDA
The Pearl Diver by E. Thomalen - Synopsis (http://www.ethomalen.com/pearl/index.htm)

[Pat_craft]

I haven't seen this tatebanko !!! Thank you very much for the upload John !!!
Thank you for the link too !

That's remember me that I have another tatebanko about this story. A very bad one unfortunatly.

[whulsey]

Thanks John, really like the artwork.

[jleslie48]

A tatebanko of Princess Tamatori stealing the precious pearl from Riujin, the sea dragon.

http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/vbdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=2622

The legend of Princess Tamatori (Tamatorihime), or Ama, developed around the historical figure Fujiwara no Kamatari (614-69), who was the founder of the powerful Fujiwara clan. Upon Kamatari’s death, the Tang dynasty emperor, who had received Kamatari’s beautiful daughter as a consort, sent three priceless treasures to Japan in order to comfort his grieving lover by honoring her father.
During a storm, one of the treasures, a pearl, was stolen by the dragon king, at the inlet of Fusazaki. Kamatari’s son Fujiwara no Fuhito (659-720) went to the isolated area in search of the pearl. There, he met and married a beautiful pearl diver, who bore him a son.
The pearl diver, now Princess Tamatori, full of love for their son, vowed to recover the stolen pearl. After many attempts, Princess Tamatori was finally successful when she sang a lullaby to the dragon and the grotesque creatures guarding the pearl, putting them to sleep. Upon reclaiming the treasure, she was chased by the awakening sea monsters. She cut open her breast and hid the pearl inside the wound; the cloud of blood helped her escape. She gave the pearl to her husband but died from the wound. She is revered for her act of self sacrifice.

The story of the pearl diver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ2b_DbzIDA
The Pearl Diver by E. Thomalen - Synopsis (http://www.ethomalen.com/pearl/index.htm)

love this model. I'd like to build, but I can't figure it out, are there any pictures of it completed?

[John Wagenseil]

love this model. I'd like to build, but I can't figure it out, are there any pictures of it completed?

Greetings, there are a couple of construction hints on the sheet.

First, some (but not all) of the tabs will have a mark or characters on them, which are to be matched up to a similar mark on another tab. Sometimes the marks are shorthand scribbles, so you have to use your imagination to get them to match up.
In this tatebanko, the castle walls have characters on their tabs.

Second, most tatebanko, including this one, will have a tiny line drawing of the completed scene tucked away in an inconspicuous blank space between the parts.
Here it is a line drawing in the upper left hand corner (the sheet oriented with the mermaids head pointed up), located in a space between the parts of the blue castle seawalls. The drawing is diagonal to the edges of the sheet. It shows the layout of the castle walls and a suggested arrangement of the figures.

The archway with the dragon head (and a fish holding a sashimi knife in its opening) has a pair of diamonds on either side of the opening. These match the diamonds on the tabs of the gates located by the right hand edge of the sheet.

Hopefully this should get you started. I have done a couple of tatebanko and ended up with left over parts because I could not figure out where they went, and worse yet, only realized where they went after making it impossible to fit them in as an afterthought.

If a 19th c. Japanese child could assemble a tatebanko, they should be easy enough for a 21st c. adult to assemble :rolleyes:.

I have encountered a few tatebanko where the tab marks do not match, they were either numbered ( one to four or five were easy to figure out, since they were dots or slashes, after that the numbers were in mysterious characters) or I suspect they were marked in "alphabetical order" in an archaic cursive script that even my Japanese pen-friend could not figure out (Japanese orthography is so complex that some publications have interlinear romaji or alternative kana over infrequently used kanji, or ambiguous or regional or archaic spellings; many modern Japanese cannot read old hand-writing or old books written in pre-reform characters (hentaigana).)

(As an after thought I am mildly peeved at a certain college in Japan which has a collection of tiny lo-res thumb nails of tatebanko on its web site, but no printable high-res images available for download. I felt a moment of excitement when I stumbled across the web page, and then crushing disappointment when I realized that I had been cruelly teased.)

[jleslie48]

"a 19th c. Japanese child could assemble a tatebanko" the problem is, of course, there are never any 19th c. japanese children around when you need one. ;)

[MrConk]

Thanks for the instructions. My mind is still reeling. When I regain my equilibrium I hope to figure out if I could reduce this to a small shadow box I have.

[John Wagenseil]

...... I hope to figure out if I could reduce this to a small shadow box I have.

If you are running Windows Irfanview and Paintnet are free programs you can use to resize images.

[papermodelfan]

The space probe Hayabusa2 just returned from a mission to the asteroid Ryugu, where it snatched up a load of rocks, and just landed them in Australia. Why am I mentioning this here? Because Ryugu is what the Japanese called the undersea castle of the Dragon King (Full title Ryugu-jo). Seems like they named the asteroid knowing they were going to take something home from it.



Maybe it is a reference to this tatebanko-illustrated legend of Princess Tamatori, the pearl-diver (ama), reclaiming the giant pearl from the castle and taking it home. But that is not the only legend about taking something from the Dragon-King's castle - in a totally separate tale, the story of Urashima Taro, the young fisher boy is carried to the undersea castle by a grateful turtle he had rescued, where he is given a treasure box by the Dragon King's daughter and told never to open it. He takes the box home, opens it, and in a flash 100 years have passed by. Given the bad outcome, I bet the asteroid namers had pearls in mind rather than time-shifting box.



Question for John Wagenseil. Where did you originally come across this tatebanko?

[airdave]

"The space probe Hayabusa2 just returned from a mission to the asteroid Ryugu, where it snatched up a load of rocks..."

While the sample acquired from the asteroid might be "a pearl" to scientists,
it will probably seem a little less than impressive to the common man.

The "load of rocks" consists of "1500 grains of asteroid particulate".
Basically not much more than a smidgen of dust.
Each grain no more than 10 micrometers in size.
(A human hair is at least 20 micrometers thick)
Apparently they were shooting for 1gram of material.

Still, its amazing that humans made it to the asteroid and landed on it and brought a sample home!

I do love the connection to the tatebanko though!
Thanks Rob.

[Damraska]

When stealing giant pearls from grotesque sea monsters I highly recommend the following strategy. First, catch some fish and chop them up. Next, drop the chopped fish into the water a goodly distance from the lair of the grotesque sea monster from whom you wish to steal a giant pearl. Leftovers from dinner also work for this purpose. When the creature comes to feed, dive down and take your prize from the empty lair. In my experience, this method provides far superior results to all forms of singing, including playing songs by Enya through underwater speakers. Please note that you should never dive when stinking like fish guts unless you enjoy getting eaten by grotesque sea monsters.

At no point should you ever consider stabbing yourself when stealing giant pearls. To carry a giant pearl, secure a suitable pouch around your waist before the dive, in front of your body for easy and quick access. Your blood in the water will not confuse grotesque sea monsters but will serve as a wonderful lure for sharks that will promptly eat you.

Remember, kids, the well prepared thief who avoids bleeding grows rich and old. *cue GI JOE song*

This post is what happens when you lose interest in the model you are working on and decide posting in one of the forums you occasionally frequent is a wonderful idea. :/