Rudyard Kipling - after reading The Jungle Book

He had been to Japan twice in 1889 and 1892. He wrote the traveling in『From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel』(1899).  He had arranged trip using World traveling by Thomas Cook. He left from India and Singapore, Hong Kong and finally arrived at Nagasaki, in Japan. He visited famous places in Japan (Nagasaki, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama etc) for one month. He saw beautiful Mt. Fuji as well as growing modernism in Japan. 

According to the English magazine Masonic Illustrated, Kipling became a Freemason in about 1885, before the usual minimum age of 21. He was initiated into Hope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782 in Lahore. He very loved experience at Freemason. He wrote the experience in his novel “The Man Who Would Be King”.

Jungle Book - similar stories? After reading...

The Jungle Book is about a boy raised by animals. Write about a similar story in your culture.

I have read the same story in Japanese comics once.

Japanese most famous comic artist, Tezuka Osamu drew the comic “Black Jack”. I have read the same one as one series in that comics.

I think Tezuka Osamu probably has drawn the story based on “Jangle book”. Or, I think he wanted to introduce this story to Japanese people.

“Black Jack” is the story of the doctor, Black Jack who does not have the official license for doctor, but has top caliber. He could succeed any difficult surgeries, but always charges his patients for very high operation fee instead. The boy raised by the wolves was took to the doctor to adapt the boy to the human world after the boy was abandoned by everyone. I think this was just the story in the case Mowgli returned to the human world afterward. However, the boy ended up to return to jungle in this story, too, although Black Jack tried the various scientific ways on the boy. Black Jack seldom fail his surgeries, but he could not do anything about the boy raised by the wolves. This story finished by advising us ineffectuality of human.


Posted for Hiroshi

Jungle Book - after reading: a respected teacher

Mowgli gets a lot of good advice from his teachers. Write about a teacher you respected and why their advice was important for you.

I was learning calligraphy when I was a student. I was not a good student at all. I went to the school because my friends went to. I didn’t go there when it was too cold to go out in winter. As a matter of course, I had bad writing. My friend always told me that they could not read my letter. I was wasting lecture fee.

We have a culture called, Kakizome that we do calligraphy at the beginning of the year, 2nd Jan usually. My calligraphy school was joining a calligraphy association, which constituted of several calligraphy schools in my city, and one day, the association held Kakizome meeting. Students of other calligraphy schools gather city center. We did calligraphy and those teachers taught us how to fix our letters.

I went to the meeting because my teacher recommended. I spent the boring meeting time, and wrote ugly letter like I did calligraphy in my school. In the end of the meeting, one of the teachers gave us speech, and his word hit me in my mind.

He said, “You must not compare your writing with the one of other people. You do calligraphy to face yourself. Calligraphy is not a competition. You must improve your writing from yours yesterday.”

Since then, although my calligraphy was still ugly, my attitude against calligraphy was changed. It was only one time to see him, but he is one of my respecters.

Posted for Yumi

A respected teacher - Jungle Book after reading

Mowgli gets a lot of good avice from his teachers. 

Write about a teacher you respected and why their advice was important for you.

My 1st grade’s teacher was an old man. He looked very scary face. But he was kind for me. He taught us not only studying but also how we should spend in the school or society. He taught us school discipline, too. The most impressed his advice was that when I come back home, I have to talk about one of my today’s news with my parents. I talked my news every day. This was good for me and my parents. For me, it was good opportunity that I talked with my parents a lot. And for my parents, they could know how I spent in the school. So we talked about my school life a lot every day. I still talk about my news when I meet my parents. He wrote a letter which was written about what we studied that day, almost every day to our parents. And he sent students handwriting New Year’s card every year till he was in poor health. I think if I wasn’t a his student, I spent a different school days. I thank him very much.

Posted for Yuri

Talking Animals - after reading The Jungle Book

There are a lot of stories about animals that talk. 

Describe your favourite one, and explain why you like it.

I only reminded the Japanese old stories for children when I saw this question. Such as Momo-tarou, Akazukin-chan, Urashima-tarou, etc.

After that, I reminded a famous animation from Ghibli. It is "Majo-no-Takkyubin" ("Kiki's delivery service" in English). The heroine is Kiki who is a young witch. She needs to live alone in a city to be a grown witch. She goes to a city with her black cat named Gigi. Gigi can talk to Kiki and always encourages her when she faced problems. But Kiki cannot understand what Gigi says when it comes to the end of story. I think it means the day when Kiki can live her life without Gigi's help.

 I like this story because it gives me a positive feeling after I watch this film.

Posted for Tomoko

The Jungle Book: after reading - a movie pitch

Which is your favourite character in The Jungle Book? 

Imagine YOU are the character, and write an email to Hollywood and explain why the next movie should be about you (and not Mowgli)!

My favorite character in The Jungle Book is Bagheera – Black Panther. He is very strict about the rules. He got angry at Mowgli’s selfish behavior, but he cared about Mowgli very much. When Mowgli was taken away by the monkeys, Bagheera ran quickly to the crowds of monkeys and started hitting, right and left, as hard as he could. I like him since he has not only strictness but also kindness.

I am writing this e-mail to Hollywood since Baloo – brown bear and I are proper to be main character for the next movie. We are in a position to teach Mowgli about the jungle in Wolf-Pack although we are bear and panther respectively. In the movie, we would like Hollywood to cover the background that we attend the wolf-meetings and have the right to say our opinion there. We also would like Hollywood to cover the future of Mowgli from the point of view of us. We still need to teach him about the jungle and see how he grows up there. We are very interested in his growth as a member of Wolf-Pack in the jungle.

Posted for Chinasa