An Old Guy Learns Something New
One day, at the age of around 42, and considering myself pretty well-educated, I was in a department store in Tokyo when I saw four small figures (which were in fact pencil sharpeners). One was a monkey with a band around his head; another was a man with the head of a pig; a third was a kind of scary-looking guy with long hair; and the last was a saintly Buddhist monk.
I had no idea who or what they were, and passed on.
It was weeks later that I learned that these were the four main characters from one of East Asia's most popular stories--known even in England and Australia, where an originally-Japanese show broadcast from 1978 to 1980 had been translated into English by the BBC, a production known simply as Monkey or, after its theme song, Monkey Magic.
Known in English as Journey to the West, the original novel's Chinese title was Xi You Ji; it was known in Japan by the Japanese pronunciation of the same three characters, Saiyuki. Thereafter, in keeping with the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, I was to see signs of these four characters everywhere.