The Fire-Fly’s Lovers (Fairy tale)

Author: William Elliot Griffis

Time Period: 1901 CE–1950 CE

Country or Culture: United States; Japan

Genre: Fairy Tale

Overview

“The Fire-Fly’s Lovers”is a fairy tale about an imperious firefly princess who creates havoc among her insect suitors before marrying a firefly prince. Set in Japan, the story was published in its final form by its creator, American educator, author, and minister William Elliot Griffis, in 1908. Griffis published an earlier form of the fairy tale under the same title, but with an introduction and some minor textual differences, in his 1880 anthology Japanese Fairy World.

Griffis traveled to Japan in 1870 to set up a Western-style schooling system in Echizen Province. From 1872 to 1874, he taught physics and chemistry at the predecessor institution of Tokyo Imperial University. After his return to the United States in 1874, Griffis turned to writing and became a minister. In 1908, he published a definitive version of “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers”in his anthology The Fire-Fly’s Lovers and Other Fairy Tales from Old Japan.

In his preface, titled “Open Sesame,” Griffis explains that his anthology contains both adaptations of indigenous Japanese stories and original stories written by Griffis himself. Griffis states that “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” is one of the stories he wrote himself. The latter tales were “spun from [his] own brain” and “exist in no Japanese text” (vi). Griffis tells his readers that he drew inspiration for his original tales from his observations of “the lovely, the comic, or the pompous side of life in a Daimio’s Castle.” This refers to the castle in Echizen’s provincial capital of Fukui, where Griffis lived and worked upon his arrival in Japan; the title of “daimio,” usually written as “daimyo,”refers to a Japanese feudal lord. Griffis promises his readers that his modern fairy tales “reflect the spirit of Old Japan,” which he was still able to observe personally among the Japanese of the early Meiji era.

Set among the lotus lilies that grow in the shallow waters of the moat of Fukui Castle, “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” opens with the coming-of-age of the fairy tale’s heroine, the firefly princess Hotaru, whose name literally means “firefly” in Japanese. Permitted to leave the family home for the first time, she flies across the countryside and encounters many insects that fall in love with her. However, none of them suits her taste, and she decides to create a challenging test for any insect who wants to marry her, asking her suitors to bring fire to her. As Hotaru waits at home in her flower palace, “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” describes in detail how one insect after another fails in his quest to obtain fire for Hotaru. She eventually marries Hi-maro, a firefly prince from the opposite side of the moat whose inner glow complements her own.

“I have met many admirers, but I do not wish a husband from any of them. To-night I shall stay at home, and if any of them love me truly they will come and pay me court here. Then I shall lay an impossible duty on them. If they are wise they will not try to perform it; but if they love their lives more than they love me, I do not want any of them. Whoever succeeds may have me for his bride.”

“The Fire-Fly’s Lovers”

An analysis grounded in cultural criticism and new historicism shows how “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” functions as a modern fairy tale that gently satirizes cultural and gender relations and reflects some feudal Japanese class attitudes, doing so through the time-honored practice of substituting humans with intelligent talking animals. A feminist analysis looks at the gendered characterization of the imperious firefly Hotaru and her relationship with her male suitors. Finally, a comparative analysis of the actual role of the firefly in Japanese culture evaluates the authenticity of Griffis’s creative use of firefly characters.

Summary

As “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” opens, Princess Hotaru has just come of age, a milestone signified by the “fire” that now “glow[s] in her own body” (Griffis 3). She has spent her entire childhood at home inside a lotus lily that serves as the palace of her father, the firefly king Hi-o (the syllable hi can mean “fire” in Japanese), who now encourages his daughter to leave their home and fly with him across the countryside. He promises Princess Hotaru that he will allow her to marry any proper suitor she may chose.

Despite attracting numerous nocturnal insect suitors on her outings, Hotaru does not like a single one of them. Resolutely, she proposes a nearly impossible challenge to test her suitors. Hotaru invites them to visit her at night at her home, where she explains her challenge to them: “Go and bring me fire and I will be your bride” (Griffis 5). In loving detail that mixes the realistic with the fairy-tale assumption of insects thinking and behaving like humans,“The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” describes the appearance of many different suitors, from the golden beetle to the scarlet dragonfly. Initially, they all approach Hotaru and try to win her on their own terms. In this, they employ a variety of romantic strategies: “[E]ach in his own way, proudly, humbly, boldly, mildly, with flattery, with boasting, even with tears, proffer[s] his love” (6). Yet Hotaru will only accept a suitor if he masters the challenge she has set, and so, each suitor sets out to bring fire to the princess.

Suitor after suitor attempts to obtain fire for Hotaru but is unsuccessful. The golden beetle sees light inside a human dwelling and tears through its traditional Japanese paper windows, only to collide with an iron nail and die from the impact. Trying to reach the flame in an oil lamp, a black bug drowns in the earthenware oil container holding the lamp wick. The dragonfly flies into the fire of an open lamp and is burned to death. The fate of the brilliant hawk moth is similarly tragic. Approaching a candle, the hawk moth gains courage, telling himself, “Now or never, the Princess or death” (Griffis 7). The flame singes his wings, and he falls to the ground and dies slowly.

Even the more clever insects who attempt an indirect or novel approach fail. The ugly clothes moth climbs up inside a hollow paper wick to reach the flame at the top. He dies when a human snuffs the wick of this candle to extinguish it, crushing the insect inside. Even those insects that fly to Buddhist temples to catch fire from the lit candles and lanterns there are unsuccessful. Many are injured and die from exposure to fire or smoke. Reviewing the carnage among the dead insects in the morning, the temple priests and the women attending the lanterns all comment, “Princess Hotaru must have had many lovers last night” (Griffis 8).

The most creative efforts of the insect suitors also yield no results. A carrion beetle discovers some phosphorescent fish scales at the seashore, and a stag beetle finds phosphorescent wood in the forest. Yet by the time they approach the princess’s lotus lily, it has become daylight and their sources have lost their glow.

On a day of many funerals for scorched insect suitors, a firefly prince living on the northern side of the moat, Hi-maro, asks for their reasons and learns of Hotaru’s challenge. Hearing of the “glittering Princess,” Hi-maro immediately falls in love with her (Griffis 9). He sends his chamberlain to King Hi-o and requests Hotaru’s hand in marriage. As the prince has recently assumed the throne of his late father, he is, in effect, a king himself now.

Hearing of Hotaru’s challenge, Hi-maro travels to her palace in front of his own “glittering battalions” of firefly soldiers (Griffis 9). He “fill[s] the lotus palace with a flood of golden light,” but Hotaru is not outshone by Hi-maro, being a blazing beauty herself (9–10). Their meeting is successful and ends in wooing, “and the wooing in wedding” (10). Hotaru is brought to Hi-maro’s northern palace on a palanquin, and the two are married.

“The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” ends with a whimsical explanation for insects’ attraction to light at night. The narrative informs the reader that even though the original lovers are long gone, “still it is the whim of all Fire-Fly princesses” that their suitors bring them fire (Griffis 10). This fact accounts for the many insects that burn themselves on human candles each night or drown in oil lamps. “The Fire-Fly’s Lovers” concludes that this evidence of death-defying male vigor and heroism is the reason why in Japan, “young ladies catch and imprison the Fire-Flies to watch the war of insect-love,” hoping to find suitors as ardent and daring as Hotaru’s (10–11).

Bibliography

Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

Griffis, William Elliot. The Fire-Fly’s Lovers and Other Fairy Tales from Old Japan. New York: Crowell, 1908. Print.

---. Japanese Fairy World. Schenectady: Barhyte, 1880. Print.

Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. Print.

McCullough, Helen Craig. Genji and Heike: Selections from The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Heike. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. Print.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print.