A Comparative Study: The Folktale of Jaka Tarub (Indonesia) and Tanabata (Japan)

Abstract

A folktale owned by one country can also be found in another country with either the same theme or motive. As there is numerous folktale around the world, it turns out that folktales from Indonesia have many similarities to folktales from Japan, one of which is Jaka Tarub folktale from Central Java and Tanabata folktale from Japan. This research aimed to discover the similarities and differences of the story structure and cultural element of the two folktales. In analyzing, the researcher employed three approaches, namely Greimas narratology structuralism approach to analyzing the story structure, cultural approach to analyze the cultural element and comparative literature approach. The result of this study indicated that there was both similarities and differences of story structure and cultural element. However, both Jaka Tarub and Tanabata did not influence each other as they represented their own characteristics which were descriptions of the society where they came from.

Struktur dan Fungsi Cerita Rakyat Paser Putri Petung di Kabupaten Paser Kalimantan Timur

“…Danandjaja (2007) mengatakan bahwa cerita prosa rakyat merupakan satu genre folklor lisan Indonesia yang diceritakan secara turuntemurun, bentuknya berupa mite, legenda, dongeng, atau pun seni tradisi, dan upacara tradisi. Sebuah cerita dapat dikisahkan dengan menggunakan bahasa Indonesia dan dalam beberapa kesempatan, mungkin juga bahasa daerah dan bahasa asing (Wardarita & Negoro, 2017). Cerita rakyat memiliki ciri-ciri: (1) disampaikan turun-temurun dan pewarisannya mulai dari nenek moyang hingga sekarang (satu generasi ke generasi berikutnya); (2) bersifat anonim, sudah tidak diketahui siapa penggarangnya; (3) kaya nilai-nilai luhur, mengandung nilai-nilai kebaikan; (4) bersifat tradisional, disebarkan dalam bentuk relatif tetap atau dalam bentuk standar; (5) memiliki banyak versi dan variasi; (6) memiliki bentuk klise dalam susunan atau cara pengungkapannya; (7) disampaikan secara lisan, disebarkan melalui tuturan; dan (8) tersebar dan berkembang dari mulut ke mulut, yaitu ekspresi budaya yang disebarkan, baik dari segi waktu dan ruang melalui mulut (Hidayat et al, 2019).…”

Delineating the [D/J]iwa: Dissection of selected Filipino and Indonesian folktales

“…Evident through related literature, several studies focus on the dissection of the souls in understanding further the cultural identity of the nation: the Filipino psyche or "Diwa" [4,5] and the Indonesian psyche or "Jiwa" [6,7]. However, a gap is seen in considering the bonds of the two countries in the premise of arriving towards a significant cultural common ground.…”

Indonesian Folk Narratives: On the Interstices of National Identity, National Values, and Character Education

“…Many studies have been devoted to investigating the structure and social function of Indonesian folk narratives (for example, Amin et al 2013;McKean 1971), their potential use for teaching language, such as English (for example Prastiwi 2015; Sukmawan and Setyowati 2017), and in comparison with folk narratives from other countries (for example Donaldson 2014;Astuti et al 2016;Wardarita and Negoro 2017). A large number of studies have also performed content analysis on the folk narratives through various lenses such as feminist perspectives (for example Rosliana 2013; Masykuroh and Fatimah 2019;Nurhayati 2019), children's literature and violence (Masykuroh 2016), and systemic functional linguistics (Efransyah 2018), to quote only a few.…”