The Mirror of Matsuyama

"Hey, Mom. Can I look in the mirror?" "Nope. You can see me just fine."

This week, we look to Japan to provide our fairy tale. The Mirror of Matsuyama is very different from most folktales I've seen. For one thing, the stepmother actually changes her ways and becomes a good stepmother at the end!

This tale revolves around a very sweet misunderstanding. The mother in this tale is gifted with a mirror and whenever she looks into it, she sees her face. It only makes sense, then, when she is dying to gift the mirror to her daughter and tell her daughter to look into it to see the mother's face. After all, that's what the mother saw when she looked at it. The awesome thing about this is that it works. The girl and her mother look enough alike that whenever the girl is troubled, she looks in the mirror and sees a young and pretty version of her mother. Or herself. That simple innocence is part of what strikes me about this tale. The girl is comforted by this mirror because of the lie she believes about it. It's easy to make fun of the girl for not understanding how a mirror works, but I know we've all done something similar and taken comfort from it.

Now, for the stepmother. She must be very insecure in this new household with the child she barely knows. She treats the girl badly, but the more the stepmother yells at the girl, the more the girl keeps looking at something and talking to it. Freaky. So, the stepmother projects her fears on this girl and, instead of talking to her stepdaughter, she talks to her husband about it. So far, we're pretty on par with most stepmothers in fairy tales. They feel like outsiders in their new houses and go to great lengths to let them children feel their discomfort and when things get weird, they talk to their husband. However, once this stepmother realized she was wrong, she apologized right away and everything after that was much better. If only that happened in other stories, the children would have a much easier time! Then again, the plot of those stories would be gone if that happened.

This week's moral is pretty straightforward: If you find out you're wrong, apologize, and move on. Alternatively: Even if you find peace in a lie, the peace is still real.