XXXII Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 26–28 апреля 2023 г.

646 XXXII Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки Секция XVI In some stories, the change of level is clearly not indicated. The hero may come to another world in some strange way, «he turns out» to be there. At the same time, for traditional consciousness or for a child (as the main target audience of the narrator) the very fact of transition to another world does not appear to be something unusual. In fact, various strange creatures, whether devils or beautiful celestial maidens, do not represent something impossible in real life. Transitions from one level to another have characteristic features. Rarely does a hero manage to penetrate another world on his own. More often he is assisted in this by some kind of guide or a wonderful vehicle. For the underwater kingdom, this could be a boy in a boat or a turtle taking the daring man to the Dragon’s palace 1 , a shark speaking in a human voice 2 , water sprites kappa, accompanied by which the protagonist acquires the miraculous ability to breathe under the water 3 . On the journey to the mouse underground world, the mice themselves tell the hero how to get into the hole under the pine tree 4 ; ants tell the grandfather, who saved one of them in the rain, how to crawl into the ant passage under the ground 5 . Note that there are cases when the hero of a fairy tale enters the underworld by himself through a large hole in the ground 6 . Of course, a man needs help in order to get up onto the clouds or to the heavenly world (which is located above the clouds). The heavenly maidens themselves can fly using clothes or wings made of crane feathers 7 , some of the maids use special vehicles (Uguisu-hime soars into the sky on a white cloud descended from the Moon 8 ). For a man, the situation is somewhat more complicated: he is pulled into a cloud on a thread of golden yarn 9 , he has to get up into the clouds climbing the stem of a bean tree 10 or, for example, waving a magic fan 11 . Further on, one can get to the palaces of the Heavenly Lord from the clouds riding a magic horse 12 . Somewhat apart are the worlds of the middle level. Cats, raccoon dogs and foxes in fairy tales live on the same level with ordinary people: with the ability to change their appearance, they can even live with people as one of the family members. In addition, fairy tales often mention the places where animals and birds live as a community: “the 1 Легенды и сказки древней Японии. Сост., предисл., пер. В. Н. Марковой. СПб: «Кристалл», 2000. PP. 13, 76 2 Ibid, p. 193 3 Ibid, p. 195 4 Ibid, p. 66 5 Ibid, p. 441 6 Ibid, p. 178 7 Ibid, p. 27 8 Ibid, p. 25 9 Ibid, p. 27 10 Ibid, p.183 11 Ibid, p. 132 12 Ibid, p. 132