• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.69
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• pp.373-400
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• 2017

The objective of this study is to compare the modern transformation of a folk tale in each country. A folk tale is a story about a man who obtained an ability to see the original look of humans with tiger's eyebrows successfully found a new wife suitable for him by using them. In Korea, China, Japan, and India, folk tales similar to have been transmitted. 'Tiger's Eyebrows' is differently shown in each country like 'Wolf's Eyebrows' in Japan, 'Tiger's Whisker' in China, and 'Vulture's Feather' in India. This paper looked for works that modernly transformed this folk tale in each country. In the results, there were diverse works in each country such as fairy tale book, musical, short story, and game in Korea, full-length novel in China, and fairy tale, animation, and cartoon in Japan. Meanwhile, in India, there was only a mention of the folk tale in a collection of papers. Among them, there were works showing the significance of modern transformation in the aspect of genre or contents like a short story of Korea, a full-length novel of China, and a cartoon of Japan. The Korean novel shows that human is a being with the animal's instinct while human tries to ignore it. On the other hand, the Chinese novel shows that humans are not much different from animals especially in case when facing pains or death. The Japanese cartoon shows that it is meaningless to feel shame as human in the world which is filled with monsters or animals. In India, there were no works modernly transformed because Indian folk tales might be stories based on the mythic belief rather than fun.