Ok. This one is wide open in episodes 109+. It is the children singing "The good are evil, and the evil are good." This one was by Shakespeare in his tragedy Macbeth. My challenge is for everyone that locates a quote or reference to post it here. Happy hunting.



[EDIT] What I mean is what the writers slipped into the storyline.

Kinda hard for children in feudal Japan to reference Shakespeare, considering they've never heard of him and he won't write his stuff for another hundred years.

but alas this anime was not written 500 year ago
so many things can be influenced by the things we know about

Hmm... it's also not quite easy to say that the song is in reference to Shakespeare, given that it's in Japanese and I don't think Shakespeare (or much English literature) would referenced a lot of in Japanese writing.



Unless anyone here is really familiar with Japanese literature, it's kinda hard to know. There's a ton of references to Japanese myth and legend, as well as customs and stuff.

One thing I can think of offhand is in volume 4 (the episode with Satoru and Maiyu), where Souta brings Satoru a tree of folded origami paper cranes for good luck. That might be in reference to a story of a young girl named Sadakko from post-WW2 Japan. She heard that if someone folds 1000 paper cranes, they'd be granted a wish. So until the day she passed away, she continued to fold paper cranes.

Actually, this is pretty much customary in Japan as a "get well present". If someone's in the hospital or something generally bad happened to someone, you give them 1000 paper cranes. When my Japanese sensei's father died and she had to go back to Japan for a few weeks, my class spent the rest of that time making paper cranes for her.

It could also mean a general "good luck." Although this is more of a local-Japanese thing, rather than Japan-Japanese; we make 1000 paper cranes to wish anyone good luck.



For instance, this is a wedding gift of 1000 paper cranes. Took 3 months to make this thing... XD

y'all missed the question, even though i do like the lesson. script writers slip in little hints to writers from long ago. Like on Stargate, the team finds a planet that looks like earth and says "there's no place like home," a clear reference to the wizard of oz. that is what i meant.

i think thre is a referance from much Ado about Nothing when Claudio says '' Can the world buy such a jewel'' he was talking about Hero. I think there was a refernce to that in Aladdin, I am not for sure.

There are a few of references in the 2nd IY movie:the first to author Murasaki Shikibu being the author of the first classical japanese works,and Miroku talks about the Onmyou Gogyou which is a Chinese reference on a world view that the Chinese think the universe as five elements:fire,water,wood,metal,and earth.

I thought that it was a reference to Shakespere? Oh well I was just wonderin.

There's that episode where the pig was trying to make Kagome and all the other girls bear his child. He said he was a descendant of the pig(?) in that famous Chinese story of the monkey, the monk, the pig , and..some other guy. Its called Suen wu cong, I have no idea if there's a name for it in English.

[edit] no wait...the monkey is called that. The whole story is xi you ji.. or something like that.

The story is generally translated as Journey to the West.

And just because the anime is Japanese doesn't mean it can't reference international literature. Like jms001 said, that is a reference to Shakespeare, though the actual paradox, as it was written, is "Fair is foul and foul is fair."